Weird World: Science & Society

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

Anti-Fatberg Invention Could Help Unclog City Sewers

Nov. 13, 2024 — Engineers have invented a protective coating for concrete pipes that could help drastically reduce the formation of fatbergs in ...

Chimpanzees Perform Better on Challenging Computer Tasks When They Have an Audience

Nov. 8, 2024 — When people have an audience watching them, it can change their performance for better or worse. Now, researchers have found that chimpanzees' performance on computer tasks is influenced by the ...

The Secrets of Baseball's Magic Mud

Nov. 4, 2024 — The unique properties of baseball's famed 'magic' mud, which MLB equipment managers applied to every ball in the World Series, have never been scientifically quantified -- until now. Researchers now reveal what makes the magic mud so ...

Keeping Fewer Friends Protects Aging Monkeys from Diseases

Oct. 28, 2024 — Becoming less sociable protects older monkeys from getting ill, new research ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:32pm EST

Scientists Unveil Strategies to Make Self-Driven Vehicles Passenger-Friendly

Nov. 6, 2024 — Automated vehicles promise to improve urban mobility, but passenger trust remains a challenge. Providing timely, passenger-specific explanations for ...

Move Along, Moose: Study Reveals the 'Most Canadian' Animals

Oct. 25, 2024 — What is the 'most Canadian' animal? Spoiler: it's not the beaver, or the moose. A new study ranks species of terrestrial vertebrates in Canada by their level of Canadian evolutionary distinctness: ...

People Hate Stories They Think Were Written by AI: Even If They Were Written by People

Oct. 21, 2024 — AI-written stories are getting better, but people still distrust AI-generated ...

People Sympathize With Bullied AI Bots

Oct. 17, 2024 — In a new study, humans displayed sympathy towards and protected AI bots who were excluded from ...

Are Auditory Magic Tricks Possible for a Blind Audience?

Oct. 4, 2024 — Magic tricks make the impossible seem possible. Magicians have long captivated audiences with visual tricks, such as pulling a bunny from a hat or sawing someone in half, but tricks that rely on ...

Multilingual Gossip in Elizabethan London

Sep. 24, 2024 — Stranger churches in early modern London had 'eyes everywhere' to hear, spread and dispel gossip in multiple languages, according to new ...

'Out-of-Body' Research Could Lead to New Ways to Promote Social Harmony

Sep. 9, 2024 — Out-of-body experiences, such as near-death experiences, can have a 'transformative' effect on people's ability to experience empathy and connect with others, new research ...

How to Catch a Criminal Using Their 'Skin Shedder' Profile

Aug. 22, 2024 — A pioneering new DNA forensics technique is looking for a reliable method to measure a suspect's individual level of natural shedding of skin and other cells to add to, and compare with, evidence ...

Scientists Condition Crocodiles to Avoid Killer Cane Toads

Aug. 13, 2024 — Scientists have trialled a new way to protect freshwater crocodiles from deadly invasive cane toads spreading across northern ...

New Interpretation of Runic Inscription Reveals Pricing in Viking Age

Aug. 13, 2024 — A new interpretation of the runic inscription on the Forsa Ring (Forsaringen in Swedish), provides fresh insights into the Viking Age monetary system and represents the oldest documented value record ...

Texting Abbreviations Makes Senders Seem Insincere, Study Finds

Nov. 14, 2024 — If you want to seem sincere and receive more responses to your texts, spell out words instead of abbreviating them, according to new ...

Explaining Science Through Dance

Nov. 5, 2024 — Explaining a theoretical science concept to high school students requires a new way of thinking altogether, which is precisely what researchers did when they orchestrated a dance with high school ...

Into the Great Wide Open: How Steppe Pastoralist Groups Formed and Transformed Over Time

Oct. 30, 2024 — With the 'time-traveling ability' of archaeogenetic studies it has become possible to shed light onto the dynamic past of human populations world-wide. Integrated with archaeological and ...

AI-Generated News Is Harder to Understand, Study Finds

Oct. 24, 2024 — Readers find automated news articles poorer than manually-written texts in relation to word choice and use of ...

Study Explains Why Laws Are Written in an Incomprehensible Style

Aug. 19, 2024 — A new study on 'legalese' suggests this convoluted language acts to convey a sense of authority in legal documents. The researchers also found that even non-lawyers use legalese when asked ...

How 'Winner and Loser Effects' Impact Social Rank in Animals -- And Humans

Aug. 19, 2024 — A new article provides a narrative review of the relevant similarities and distinctions between nonhumans and humans to assess the causes and consequences of winner and loser effects in ...

AI Poses No Existential Threat to Humanity, New Study Finds

Aug. 12, 2024 — Large Language Models (LLMs) are entirely controllable through human prompts and lack 'emergent abilities'; that is, the means to form their own insights or conclusions. Increasing model ...

Modern Behavior Explains Prehistoric Economies

Aug. 1, 2024 — What if the 'Market Economy' always existed? Archaeologists tried to answer this question by researching how much Bronze Age people used to spend to sustain their daily lives. Their results ...

Smell Reports Reveal the Need to Expand Urban Air Quality Monitoring, Say Researchers

July 31, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered surprising insights into the Vancouver region's 'smellscape' using data from the Smell Vancouver app. Analyzing 549 reports from one year of app data, they ...

Breaking MAD: Generative AI Could Break the Internet, Researchers Find

July 30, 2024 — Researchers have found that training successive generations of generative artificial intelligence models on synthetic data gives rise to self-consuming feedback ...

How Spreading Misinformation Is Like a Nuclear Reaction

July 30, 2024 — Researchers develop a new type of rumor propagation model, taking inspiration from nuclear reactions. Their model can provide fresh insights on how online disinformation spreads and how to combat it. ...

Study Uses Game of Thrones to Advance Understanding of Face Blindness

July 23, 2024 — Psychologists have used the hit TV series Game of Thrones to understand how the brain enables us to recognize faces. Their findings provide new insights into prosopagnosia or face blindness, a ...

Development of 'Living Robots' Needs Regulation and Public Debate

July 22, 2024 — Researchers are calling for regulation to guide the responsible and ethical development of bio-hybrid robotics -- a ground-breaking science which fuses artificial components with living tissue and ...

Can Consciousness Exist in a Computer Simulation?

July 19, 2024 — A new essay explores which conditions must be met for consciousness to exist. At least one of them can't be found in a ...

Want to Spot a Deepfake? Look for the Stars in Their Eyes

July 17, 2024 — In an era when the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) images is at the fingertips of the masses, the ability to detect fake pictures -- particularly deepfakes of people -- is becoming ...

When There's Money to Lose, Phone Usage While Driving Drops

July 10, 2024 — Researchers discovered that feedback plus cash incentives designed with insights from behavioral science reduces phone use while ...

Small, Adsorbent 'Fins' Collect Humidity Rather Than Swim Through Water

June 26, 2024 — Clean, safe water is a limited resource and access to it depends on local bodies of water. But even dry regions have some water vapor in the air. To harvest small amounts of humidity, researchers ...

Parliamentary Members Use Simpler Language on Hot Days

June 13, 2024 — Climate change has many widespread and complicated effects on the well-being of people and the planet, and a new study has now added a surprising one to the list. After analyzing the language used in ...

Ritual Sacrifice at Chichén Itzá

June 12, 2024 — Rising to power in the wake of the Classic Maya collapse, Chichen Itz was among the largest and most influential cities of the ancient Maya, but much about its political connections and ritual life ...

Some Countries Could Meet Their Total Electricity Needs from Floating Solar Panels

June 4, 2024 — Floating solar photovoltaic panels could supply all the electricity needs of some countries, new research has shown. The researchers calculated the daily electrical output for floating photovoltaics ...