Untangling Yarn (Bedimmed Boundaries), by Wangari Mathenge, whose work was on view last month at Nicola Vassell Gallery, in New York City © Wangari Mathenge. Courtesy the artist and Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York City
Researchers determined that the Stonehenge Altar Stone came from northeast Scotland, speculated that an internal structure in the Step Pyramid of Djoser was a hydraulic elevator, unveiled a cup from a Persian necropolis depicting Hermes Psychopompos leading a dead woman to the underworld, and compared the newly discovered skeletons of a woman and a young man killed in the eruption of Pompeii, concluding that the former “stayed alive much longer . . . only to collapse in agony, falling over the edge of the bed in the ash-charged air.” Mammoths may have been killed with planted pikes rather than with thrown spears. It was determined that Viking Norway was less hierarchical and more violent than Viking Denmark, where the 6 percent of the population who died violently were almost always formally executed. An interdisciplinary team concluded that the last universal common ancestor was a prokaryote-grade anaerobic acetogen that had a primitive immune system and lived approximately 4.2 billion years ago. Geophysicists found that warming upper waters in the extratropical North Atlantic weakens the trade winds in a feedback loop, proposed that the doldrums are caused by sinking rather than rising air masses, and warned that the center of the Greenlandic ice sheet may melt again sooner than expected. Large earthquakes may be predictable weeks to months in advance. AI researchers determined that large language models pose no existential threat to humanity and created an AI algorithm that can detect scientific articles written by other AI algorithms. Chemists warned of the risk posed by poisonous Victorian books.
Chinese doctors and veterinarians reported success in using magnetic rings to circumcise eight beagles and in unburying the penises of forty-two adult men, discovered that from hatching to adulthood the testes of both Chinese and European ganders develop asymmetrically, discerned the “previously enigmatic” role of INO80D in the spermatogenesis of the Chinese mitten crab, and used electroacupuncture to alter the brain function of male rats to mitigate premature ejaculation. Turkish doctors reported a case of penile autoamputation with religious delusion. The gut microbiomes of month-old thoroughbred foals can predict future racing success. Forty percent of recordings of Atlanta infants contain more squeal clustering than would occur randomly and 39 percent contain more clustered growls. Autistic Swedish seven-year-olds are likelier than their neurotypical peers to engage in gender-nonconforming play, brain scans can predict genetic markers of autism with 89 to 95 percent accuracy, and Liverpudlian autistic children reported that social-deception games are useful in learning how to lie.
A survey of 97,000 Japanese people between 2020 and 2022 found that the Nintendo Switch has a more pronounced positive effect on the mental health of adolescents than the PlayStation 5. EEG experts disagreed on whether, in the future, brain waves could be used to read dreams and long-term memories. The hippocampus makes three copies of each memory. Psyche may not be the exposed core of a differentiated planetesimal but instead an entity that originated past the snow line. Cocaine sensitivity may be decreased by rosemary extract, and the livers of thirteen Brazilian sharp-nosed sharks all tested positive for cocaine. Humpback whales use bubble nets as tools. A newly excavated fossil species of small penguin was found to mark the transition toward modern penguin wings, and little penguins were found to be sensitive to pile-driving. Scientists coerced fruit flies into walking on tiny treadmills.
