zlatiah

When researchers in Uganda set up camera traps to monitor African leopards (Panthera pardus pardus) and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) in a national park last year, they had no idea that they would record so much more than just those animals. Several of the traps, placed outside a cave known to host Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus), caught on video a multitude of creatures feasting on the winged mammals. The bats are known carriers of Marburg virus, which can transfer into humans and cause a fatal haemorrhagic fever, so the footage offers real-time insight into how disease can spread.

The researchers... reported videoing 10 species scavenging on or catching bats at Python Cave in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. They saw blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis) dipping into the cavern to grab bats, a fight between a crowned eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus) and a Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) over two bats captured by the eagle, and a leopard standing almost upright to snag bats from the cave. This might be the first confirmation that leopards hunt live bats. “It’s never been seen,” says study author Alexander Braczkowski, who is the scientific director of the Kyambura Lion Project in Kampala. “Sometimes he would eat 30, 40 bats in a night.”

Even more astounding is that the team caught on video more than 200 people — tourists, trainees from a local wildlife institute and children with school groups — approaching the cave during the four-month period when the cameras were active. Only one visitor, a tourist, wore a mask. This is despite warnings posted around the cave about Marburg virus, which has no proven treatment or vaccine.

I'd highly recommend checking the associated video. YouTube link for the video content if you can't access the news or the research article: https://youtu.be/gzL8DL6YrN8

Byline - Study of 600,000 US military veterans shows that those who took anti-obesity medications were less likely to develop some complications of substance-use disorders.

Blockbuster GLP-1 medications might help people to avoid becoming addicted to drugs, including alcohol, cocaine and opioids, a massive study suggests [see ref]. It also found that, for those already dealing with addiction, the treatments are linked to a 50% reduction in the risk of dying from substance abuse.

The findings, published today in The BMJ, come from an analysis of electronic health records from more than 600,000 people in the database of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which provides care for millions of military veterans. The study is the latest suggesting that GLP-1 drugs — which mimic a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 and are mainly prescribed to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes — can also play a part in curbing addiction.

The observational study confirms what physicians are seeing in their clinics and the results of some small clinical trials. But larger clinical trials are still needed to demonstrate whether the drugs could truly help people with substance-use disorders, specialists say.

The linked study (open access). They also have a very nice visual abstract that displays the results: https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-086886

Byline - A field experiment shows that turning on the algorithmic feed on the social-media platform X in 2023 shifted political opinions to the right, whereas turning it off had no effect on political attitudes. The algorithmic feed led users to follow more right-leaning accounts, which they continued following when the algorithm was off.

If you couldn't access the news article: one of the innovations was that the authors also continued to follow the users after the 7 weeks of the "experimental trial", and found that people still followed the same accounts, thus their political opinion shifts stuck around

The paper itself, open access & consists of only 4 easy-to-read main figures:

• Germain Gauthier, Roland Hodler, Philine Widmer & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. The political effects of X’s feed algorithm. Nature (2026): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2

Exercise pumps up your muscles — but it might also be pumping up your neurons. According to a study published today in Neuron, repeated exercise sessions on a treadmill strengthen the wiring in a mouse’s brain, making certain neurons quicker to activate. This ‘rewiring’ was essential for mice in the study to gradually improve their running endurance.

Betley and his colleagues[...] decided to focus on the ventromedial hypothalamus, a brain region that regulates appetite and blood sugar. The team then zeroed in on a group of neurons in that region that produce a protein called steroidogenic factor 1 (SF1), which is known to play a part in regulating metabolism. A previous study found that the deletion of the gene that codes for SF1 impairs endurance in mice.

Betley’s team monitored the activity of SF1 neurons in mice running on a treadmill and found that these cells were indeed activated by exercise. Interestingly, one group of SF1 neurons became active only after exercise sessions ended. After several training sessions, the number of neurons that were activated post-run, as well as the magnitude of their activation, increased.

When the researchers examined brain slices from mice that had trained consistently over three weeks, they saw changes in the SF1 neurons’ electrical properties compared with mice that had not repeatedly exercised. These changes indicated that the neurons in the trained mice had become easier to activate. They also found that repeated exercise doubled the number of synapses — connections between the neurons — that were ‘excitatory’, or primed to fire off an electrical signal.

Finally, the authors used optogenetics — a technique that can activate or inhibit genetically engineered neurons with light — to ‘switch off’ SF1 neurons in the mice after they exercised. When these neurons were turned off, the mice didn’t improve their running performance over time, becoming exhausted more quickly than mice in which SF1 neurons were not switched off.

The research article itself (open access): Kindel et al.. Exercise-induced activation of ventromedial hypothalamic steroidogenic factor-1 neurons mediates improvements in endurance. Neuron. URL link. The graphical abstract does a very good job of explaining the research

Nearly 40% of new cancer cases worldwide are potentially preventable, according to one of the first investigations of its kind, which analysed dozens of cancer types in almost 200 countries.

The study found that in 2022, roughly seven million cancer diagnoses were linked to modifiable risk factors — those that can be changed, controlled or managed to reduce the likelihood of developing the disease. Overall, tobacco smoking was the leading contributor to worldwide cancer cases, followed by infections and drinking alcohol. The findings suggest that avoiding such risk factors is “one of the most powerful ways that we can potentially reduce the future cancer burden”, says study co-author Hanna Fink, a cancer epidemiologist at the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

From the research abstract:

In 2022, an estimated 7.1 million of 18.7 million new cancer cases (37.8%) were attributable to 30 modifiable risk factors—2.7 million (29.7%) in women and 4.3 million (45.4%) in men. The proportion of preventable cancers ranged from 24.6% to 38.2% in women and from 28.1% to 57.2% in men across regions. Smoking (15.1%), infections (10.2%) and alcohol consumption (3.2%) were the leading contributors to cancer burden. Lung, stomach and cervical cancers represented nearly half of preventable cancers.

The research article in question: Fink et al., Global and regional cancer burden attributable to modifiable risk factors to inform prevention. Nature Medicine (2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04219-7

Think about your breakfast this morning. Can you imagine the pattern on your coffee mug? The sheen of the jam on your half-eaten toast?

Most of us can call up such pictures in our minds. We can visualize the past and summon images of the future. But for an estimated 4% of people, this mental imagery is weak or absent. When researchers ask them to imagine something familiar, they might have a concept of what it is, and words and associations might come to mind, but they describe their mind’s eye as dark or even blank.

... the topic received a surge of attention when, a decade ago, an influential paper coined the term aphantasia to describe the experience of people with no mental imagery.

Much of the early work sought to describe the trait and assess how it affected behaviour. But over the past five years, studies have begun to explore what’s different about the brains of people with this form of inner life. The findings have led to a flurry of discussions about how mental imagery forms, what it is good for and what it might reveal about the puzzle of consciousness: researchers tend to define mental imagery as a conscious experience, and some are now excited to study aphantasia as a way to probe imagery’s potentially unconscious forms.

The article itself went into a lot of past and current research into aphantasia and is quite detailed, worth a read if you are interested (especially if you are also quite high on the aphantasia scale like OP)

Try this archive.org link if it is paywalled

Edit: some of you all should take the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVID). The article only gave an excerpt, there seem to be a few free ones floating on the internet

Byline: A study has outlined eight indicators of toxic masculinity in heterosexual men — and finds that ‘manliness’ is not necessarily a problematic aspect of masculinity.

How rife is the problem of ‘toxic masculinity’ in Western societies? A research study run in New Zealand has found that only a small percentage of men surveyed fell into the worst category of hostile toxicity — and that a desire to feel ‘manly’ wasn’t necessarily indicative that a person held socially damaging views.

In 2024, Sanders and his colleagues published a ‘toxic masculinity scale’, identifying 28 questions that assessed the degree of toxicity expressed by white male university students in the United States. Psychology doctoral candidate Deborah Hill Cone at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and her colleagues have now added to this with a more all-encompassing view of toxicity and a larger, broader sample of men in a study published in Psychology of Men & Masculinities.

The team dug into the results of the 2018–19 New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a broad survey with responses from nearly 50,000 people. More than 15,000 of the participants identified as heterosexual males and had answered relevant questions such as “being a woman/man is an important part of how I see myself” and “inferior groups should stay in their place”.

In a statistical analysis, the respondents fell into five groups. The good news is that only the smallest group (3.2% of the men) was characterized by the researchers as ‘hostile toxic’, whereas the largest group was ‘atoxic’ (35.4%)... Hill Cone and her colleagues found two moderate groups split between those who were more- or less-tolerant of people from sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQ+) , and a ‘benevolent toxic’ group, whose members got relatively high scores in measures of sexism but not in hostility... The odds of men in the sample having the hostile toxic profile were higher for those who were older, single, unemployed, religious or an ethnic minority, as well as those high on scales of political conservatism, economic deprivation or emotional dysregulation, or who had a low level of education... “The entitled rich tech bro or frat boy didn’t really appear” in the hostile toxic group, says Hill Cone. Instead, the hostile toxic group was made up mainly of marginalized, disadvantaged men... Importantly, how central ‘being a man’ was to someone’s sense of self wasn’t particularly predictive of which group they landed in. Although the men in the hostile toxic group did tend to report that their gender was important to them, so did many men in the other categories.

Of course as pointed out: this is a well-executed study but is only in New Zealand. Results may vary depending on location. Results are overall not surprising.

The two featured key studies are both open access:

• The toxic masculinity scale developed by Sanders et al.
• The featured study by Hill Cone et al. itself

Sometimes the hardest part of doing an unpleasant task is simply getting started – typing the first word of a long report, lifting the dirty dish atop an overfilled sink, or removing the clothes from an unused exercise machine. The obstacle isn’t necessarily a lack of interest in completing the task, but the brain’s resistance to taking the first step.

Now, scientists may have identified the neural circuit behind this resistance, and a way to ease it. In a study published today in Current Biology, researchers describe a pathway in the brain that seems to act as a ‘motivation brake’, dampening the drive to begin a task. When the team selectively suppressed this circuit in macaque monkeys, goal-directed behaviour rebounded.

Previous work on task initiation has implicated a neural circuit connecting two parts of the brain known as the ventral striatum and ventral pallidum[...] But attempts to isolate the circuit’s role have fallen short[...] In the new study, Amemori and his team used a more precise approach. They first trained two male macaque monkeys to perform two decision-making tasks. In one, completion earned a water reward; in the other, the reward was paired with an unpleasant puff of air to the face. Each trial required the monkeys to initiate the task by fixing their gaze on a central spot on a screen until the reward-punishment offer appeared. This allowed the researchers to measure motivation by how often the monkeys failed to begin.

Not surprisingly, monkeys were more hesitant when the possibility of punishment loomed. But that changed when the team used a targeted genetic technique to suppress signalling from the ventral striatum to the ventral pallidum. Although the suppression had little effect on the monkeys’ behaviour during the reward-only trials, it made them significantly more willing to start in the face of a potentially unpleasant outcome. The suppression did not, however, alter how the animals weighed reward against punishment.

If confirmed in humans, the findings could shift how clinicians approach one of depression’s most debilitating symptoms. Treatments often aim to restore enjoyment or reduce anxiety, yet many patients continue to struggle to start simple tasks. By pinpointing a circuit that selectively dampens motivation in the face of discomfort, the study opens the door to therapies aimed at lowering that barrier.

Note that the authors acknowledged that this is a smaller study that was done on only two male monkeys, so future studies should include females, find specific cell types, and find biochemical pathways across the signaling circuit

The paper (should be open access): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.12.035

Any dog owner will tell you that dogs understand many words, and studies support this impression. In addition to dogs with regular, “family dog” knowledge levels are dogs with an extraordinary level of word comprehension. These dogs have been called “gifted word learners” and they appear idiosyncratically across countries, breeds, and households. Dror et al. examined the ability of these dogs to pick up words through conversations not directed at them. Using an approach designed to study understanding in toddlers, they found that the dogs were able learn words through overhearing just like, or even better than, 1.5-year-old children. —Sacha Vignieri [Editor]

From abstract:

... In this study, we demonstrated that a small group of Gifted Word Learner dogs, which possess an extensive vocabulary of object labels, can learn new labels by overhearing their owners’ interactions. Moreover, we show that these dogs can acquire novel object-label mappings even when the labels and objects are not presented simultaneously. Taken together, these results suggest that Gifted Word Learner dogs possess sociocognitive skills functionally parallel to those of 18-month-old children.

Note that this is only for what the authors described as a subset of "gifted dogs": "Although dogs readily learn action labels (23), to date, behavioral evidence of learning object labels were documented in only a small group of dogs (24). We previously defined this small group as Gifted Word Learner dogs..."

The full article seems to be behind paywall/institutional access. If anyone finds a full-text link please definitely share here

Asking because... On one hand I do see smartphones being released left-and-right, and they are rather integral to modern life

On the other hand I'm still chugging alone with my Pixel 6a that I bought 3 years ago with a replaced battery and a somewhat clogged charging port... and all my previous phones I only replaced when they have serious deficits that make them difficult to use

Wondering when you all replace phones. Please definitely mention it too if you ended up repurposing the old phone for something else

People are increasingly using video calls for high-stakes interactions that once required face-to-face contact... But video calling introduces a new communication issue: minor glitches, or intermittent errors in the transmission of audiovisual information during a virtual interaction.

Here, through five experiments and three supplementary studies using both live and recorded interactions, we show that minor audiovisual glitches during video calls harm interpersonal judgements in consequential life domains (for example, hiring decisions after a virtual interview, or trust in a medical provider after a telehealth visit). In addition, two archival datasets from real-world video calls reveal that glitches are associated with both reduced social connection and a lower likelihood of being granted criminal parole.

We find that audiovisual glitches damage interpersonal judgements because they break the illusion of face-to-face contact (for example, by distorting faces, misaligning audio and visual cues or making movements appear ‘choppy’), evoking ‘uncanniness’—a strange, creepy or eerie feeling. As the uncanniness of a glitch increases, so does its negative effect on interpersonal judgements. Furthermore, audiovisual glitches undermine interpersonal judgements only in video calls that simulate face-to-face interaction, showing that the negative effect produced by glitches goes beyond mere disruptiveness, comprehension difficulties and negative attributions...

Despite being considered a boon to access, virtual communication might unintentionally perpetuate inequality. Because disadvantaged groups often have poorer internet connections, they are likely to encounter more glitches, and, in turn, to experience worse outcomes in consequential contexts such as health, careers, justice and social connection.

Paper (linked in post) is paywalled; try this direct link to the PDF if you can't access it (let me know if this doesn't work)

Also see their data and code source on ResearchBox

Associated Nature News report: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03820-z.

Additional context:

Native speakers of my mother tongue do not all understand each other due to some pretty extreme dialects. Now that I'm in Europe, I've noticed multiple instances of people sometimes not understand the dialect of someone from a village 10-20 km away...

In contrast, for example most American, British, and Australian people can just... understand each other like that?? I never thought much about it before but it's pretty incredible

Edit: thanks everyone, and clearly I didn't think of certain parts of the UK when I was in the shower and thought of this...