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Two friends out walking their dogs along the eastern coast of Scotland unexpectedly found an archaeological goldmine. After wind gusts as strong as 55 mph blew away sand on the dunes of a beach near Angus, Ivor Campbell and Jenny Snedden (along with their pooches Ziggy and Juno) spotted the unique indentations in a layer of long-dried clay. 

The pair contacted a local archaeologist, and researchers from the University of Aberdeen quickly descended on the picturesque seaside locale to preserve the discoveries. Since time was of the essence, the team improvised using a quickly assembled toolkit including Plaster of Paris purchased from a nearby craft store.

Thanks to the team’s rapid work, researchers have now documented Scotland’s first examples of ancient preserved human and animal footprints. Using radiocarbon dating, experts estimate these geological time capsules date back to around 2,000 years ago.

“We had to work fast in the worst conditions I’ve ever encountered for archaeological fieldwork—the sea was coming in fast, with every high tide ripping away parts of the site, while wind-blown sand was simultaneously damaging it,” University of Aberdeen archaeologist Kate Britton recounted. “We were effectively being sand-blasted and the site was, too, all while we were trying to delicately clean, study and document it. So it became a race against the elements.”

Although the entire find was destroyed within 48 hours of its discovery, Britton’s team managed to both physically and digitally map the location while also taking plaster molds of the scene. An initial assessment of the data indicates that the area was once visited by a mix of animals like deer, as well as humans. The findings date back to the late Iron Age—a pivotal time in the region’s history.

Only a handful of similar sites have been discovered across the UK. Credit: University of Aberdeen

“It’s very exciting to think these prints were made by people around the time of the Roman invasions of Scotland and in the centuries leading up to the emergence of the Picts,” added archaeologist Gordon Noble.

Researchers have documented similar tracks at only a handful of sites across the United Kingdom, many of which no longer exist today.

“It is incredibly rare to see such a delicate record saved, taking only minutes to create and hours to be destroyed, a snapshot of what people were doing thousands of years ago,” said project collaborator William Mills. “While this site was very short lived, it demonstrates the potential for similar finds—any of the clays of the wider Montrose basin area could preserve more of this important archaeological information.”

The post Dog walkers find 2,000-year-old footprints on beach in Scotland appeared first on Popular Science.

Paleontologists still know comparatively little about fin-backed Spinosaurid dinosaurs. But while the newest addition to the family is impressive, Spinosaurus mirabilis isn’t making it easier for researchers. In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers at the University of Chicago describe S. mirabilis, a species that stalked present-day central Africa around 95 million years ago. At first glance, the dinosaur is instantly iconic. Its head crest is shaped like a curved sword called a scimitar, and measures 20 inches long. However, the dinosaur’s overall anatomy and Cretaceous stomping grounds showcase Spinosaurid’s unexpected and fascinating evolutionary culmination.

“This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team,” said study co-author Paul Serano.

S. mirabilis stands apart from its relatives due to where paleontologists discovered their specimen. Serano’s team uncovered the first fossil evidence in 2019 while excavating a remote region of the central Saharan desert in Niger. Previous Spinosaurid specimens have all been found in ancient coastal deposits near prehistoric shorelines, but the first S. mirabilis bones were located far inland—somewhere between 310 to 610 miles from the nearest marine habitats. Given the nearby presence of long-necked dinosaurs in river sediments, paleontologists now believe this Spinosaurus lived in a forested region crisscrossed by waterways. According to Serano, it would have been a fearsome sight no matter where it lived.

“I envision this dinosaur as a kind of ‘hell heron’ that had no problem wading on its sturdy legs into two meters of water, but probably spent most of its time stalking shallower traps for the many large fish of the day,” he said.

The jaws of S. mirabilis were evolved to trap fish similar to many crocodiles today. Credit: Dani Navarro

Based on the crest fossil’s inner vascular canals and exterior texture, the team theorizes that the cranial accessory was likely housed in keratin and brightly colored. They also contend S. mirabilis finally puts to rest the theory that Spinosaurus primarily lived and hunted in marine environments. Aside from the location of its discovery, S. mirabilis is the first dinosaur known to possess an interdigitating piscivorous (or “fish trap”) mouth. This anatomy features a lower jaw with teeth that protrude out between the upper set—a trait previously only seen in flying pterosaurs, marine ichthyosaurs, and semiaquatic crocodilian predators. This also makes S. mirabilis the only Spinosaurid with the distinct dental arrangement.

A 3D reconstruction of the skull of ‘S. mirabilis.’ Credit: Daniel Vidal, courtesy of Fossil Lab

For as much as S. mirabilis contextualizes its wider dinosaur family, it raises many more questions about its life, habitat, and role in the Cretaceous era. 

“I’ll forever cherish the moment in camp when we crowded around a laptop to look at the new species for the first time,” said Serano. “That’s when the significance of the discovery really registered.”

The post New dinosaur discovered in Sahara desert was a horned ‘hell heron’ appeared first on Popular Science.

While Super Bowl LX is over, the big game still echoes in the minds of many viewers. Not the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordination (or the New England Patriots’ lack thereof), mind you, but all those annoyingly catchy commercial jingles. It’s not your fault if a 30-second advertisement spot’s melodic hook continues to keep you up at night, however. Pop culture’s most successful earworms are rarely a fluke—they’re often carefully crafted to maximize memorability. Today, you can even pursue a Bachelor’s degree in commercial songwriting.

The mathematical study of tones dates at least as far back as the 5th century BCE Pythagorean philosophers of ancient Greece, but there is still a lot to learn about the numbers behind the notes. At the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, computational mechanics researchers recently examined musical melodies from an algebraic standpoint and found that there is an unsung component to many popular tunes: symmetry. Their findings were presented at the 6th AMMCS-International Conference on Applied Mathematics, Modeling, and Computational Science.

“Our goal was to build a clear mathematical bridge between abstract algebra and the experience of listening to music,” said study co-author Olga Ibragimova. “When we think of melodies as shapes we can transform, it becomes clear that composers have been using these kinds of symmetries intuitively for centuries.”

Ibragimova and her colleagues primarily relied on group theory, a subset of mathematics focused on transformations and mirrored patterns. They first assigned each of the chromatic scale’s 12 notes a corresponding 1-12 numerical placeholder, then broke down various melodies into discrete note groups. This allowed them to express tunes as algebraic notation. The team then analyzed how some of the most common techniques affect overall song structures. Among these were melodic concepts like inversion (flipping a tune), transposition (shifting it up or down scales), retrograding (reversal), and translation (movement over time).

They focused on two primary symmetry types—tonal and positional. With those concepts in mind, they were able to create formulas that illustrate how a melody can evolve while either retaining a foundational structure or purposefully altering it in predictable patterns. 

“What surprised us is how cleanly the mathematics separates tonal structure from positional structure,” explained systems design engineer and study co-author Chrystopher Nehaniv. “This duality helps us identify patterns that are not obvious by ear or by looking at a musical score. It also means we can systematically construct and count all possible symmetric melodies for a given length.”

Ibragimova and Nehaniv believe their work may help composers with conceptualizing new music possibilities, as well as pave the way for new methods of songwriting and research. But while this may help some artists, others continue to credit the ineffable qualities of music composition. 

“Whenever the goal is just to write something that’s very catchy and is going to get stuck in people’s heads, that’s, like, the least I think about,” songwriter Nick Lutsko tells Popular Science. “It’s kind of the first thing that comes to my head and I just go with it. I don’t overanalyze or overthink it. It’s not intellectual whatsoever.”

Lutsko has multiple full-length albums of his own, as well numerous comedy releases that have garnered an dedicated, international fanbase. In 2022, he won a Webby Award for his musical work on an Old Spice ad. You may even have one of his songs stuck in your head right now. He penned not one, but two of those absurdly memorable jingles that ran during this year’s Super Bowl.

As is the case in many corporate ad campaigns, Lutsko was one of multiple songwriters to receive prewritten lyrics with a prompt to put them to music.

“The first time I read those lyrics, the melody came to me as I was reading them,” he explains. “I know [people] talk about algebraic equations and the math or science behind songwriting, but to me it’s almost supernatural. I think it’s because it comes from a place of familiarity.”

At the same time, Lutsko doesn’t fault anyone who turns to the mathematics of music for their inspiration. Remember the commercial songwriting major route? Lutsko took it himself.

“It doesn’t irk me. I went to school for [it],” he says. “But I’ve always been more interested in creative expression. Like, science was always my worst subject in school. It’s just not how my brain works. I just want to have fun and not think about it too much.”

The post Can’t stop humming that tune? Thank math. appeared first on Popular Science.

Bananas are in trouble. The popular fruit is threatened by a fungal disease called Fusarium wilt of banana (FWB), which blocks the flow of nutrients and makes it wilt. In the 1950s, the pathogen even made one species–Gros Michel bananas–functionally extinct.

Fear not though, scientists are on it. In 2024, a team identified the molecular mechanisms behind the microbe that destroys bananas. Scientists at The University of Queensland in Australia have now made another step towards protecting the global banana supply. The team identified a region in the banana genome that controls resistance to a strain of Fusarium wilt called Sub Tropical Race 4 (STR4), which affects bananas in subtropical regions. The newly discovered genomic region is detailed in a study published in the journal Horticulture Research and could lead to new banana varieties that are more resistant to disease.

“Fusarium wilt—also known as Panama disease—is a destructive soil-borne disease which impacts farmed Cavendish bananas worldwide through its virulent Race 4 strains,” Dr. Andrew Chen, a study co-author and geneticist, said in a statement. “Identifying and deploying natural resistance from wild bananas is a long-term and sustainable solution to this pathogen that wilts and kills the host plant leaving residue in the soil to infect future crops.”

The team crossed a wild banana called Calcutta 4 with susceptible bananas from a different subspecies. When they exposed the cross-bred plants to STR4, they compared their DNA with the bananas who had died from the pathogen with those that didn’t. They found that the Calcutta 4 banana is resistant to STR4 infection on chromosome 5.

Generations of Calcutta 4 crosses were grown to identify STR4 resistance was carried in chromosome 5.  Image: Professor Elizabeth Aitken.

“This is a very significant finding; it is the first genetic dissection of Race 4 resistance from this wild subspecies,” Chen added. 

Scientists spent five years on this complicated project to help save bananas from extinction. Each generation of banana crosses needed to grow for at least 12 months before it was studied and then used for further breeding once it flowered. 

According to the team, the discovery will help develop banana varieties that are more resistant to Fusarium wilt. While the Calcutta 4 banana does have critical genetic resistance, it is not suitable for commercial cultivation because “it doesn’t produce fruit which are good to eat.”

“The next step is to develop molecular markers to track the resistance trait efficiently so plant breeders can screen seedlings early and accurately before any disease symptoms appear,” said Chen. “This will speed up selection, reduce costs and hopefully ultimately lead to a banana that is good to eat, easy to farm and naturally protected from Fusarium wilt through its genetics.”

Banana suppliers around the world are working to protect the industry valued at $140 billion. Bananas are also considered the fourth most important food crop in the world, following wheat, rice, and maize. About 80 percent of bananas are for local consumption, and over 400 million people rely on the fruit for 15 to 27 percent of their daily calories.

“It’s easy to take the banana for granted—simple, familiar, always there. But behind that simplicity lies one of agriculture’s most coordinated and collaborative supply chains,” Fresh Del Monte Produce chairman and CEO Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh said in their July 2025 earnings call. “Protecting it is our shared responsibility—and if we don’t act collectively to support growers and stabilise this supply chain, we risk seeing this fruit—and the livelihoods behind it—disappear before our eyes. That reality weighs heavily on me and drives much of our focus today.”

The post New discovery could help stop banana extinction appeared first on Popular Science.

SpaceX will make a large moonbase by 2036 as part of the industrialization needed for scaling AI data centers in space. SpaceX will need to make mining and factories on the moon in order to increase space based AI satellites from 100-1000 Gigawatts per year to 10 to 1000 terawatts per year. 10 Terawatts would ...

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The 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey featured numerous fictional future technologies and many of them are or will still happen. Over fifty organizations contributed technical advice to the production, and a number of them submitted their ideas to Kubrick of what kind of products might be seen in a movie set in ...

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Marques Brownlee will likely be sold the first commercial Tesla Cybercab that will be used outside of Tesla. Most Tesla Cybercabs will be built and used internally for the Tesla robotaxi fleet. Marques made a bet that a Cybercab would not be made and sold for less than $30,000 before 2027 and delivered to a ...

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Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 19th February 2026, CyberNewswire

After over 40 years of recovery efforts, one population of the wood stork (Mycteria americana)is being removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife. The large birds are as tall as 45 inches with wingspans that can reach 65 inches and are the only native storks in the United States. They are primarily found in the southeastern United States, where they feed on fish. 

Wood storks were listed as endangered in 1984, when its population had dropped by over 75 percent—from roughly 20,000 nesting pairs to about 5,000 nesting pairs—primarily due to wetland loss. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has determined that the birds are no longer in immediate danger of extinction. The FWS estimates that the wood stork breeding population has 10,000 to 14,000 nesting pairs across roughly 100 colony sites. They are now found on the coastal plains of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. 

Dedicated conservation efforts and the birds’ adaptability are some of the likely reasons behind this rebound. They have adapted to new nesting areas, including coastal salt marshes further north, flooded rice fields, floodplain forest wetlands, and even golf courses and retention ponds.

“Even when they’re in odd habitats, it’s still exhilarating to see these wild birds doing what they do in a natural marsh,” Dale Gawlik, endowed chair for conservation and biodiversity at Texas A&M University’s Harte Research Institute, told USA Today. “The birds have the flexibility to explore new habitats and eat new foods and that might be really important in a period when the environment is changing rapidly, like it is now.” Gawlik worked on wood stork recovery in Florida before moving to Texas.

However, not everyone is convinced that the birds should be taken off of the Endangered Species List. Environmental groups including Audubon Florida and the Center for Biological Diversity fear that their populations have not recovered enough. Advocates are concerned about what would happen if wood stork colonies are found on private lands when they are no longer federally protected. Wildlife officials in North Carolina supported removal, while the state of Georgia supported it with caveats, raising similar concerns about private land. 

They also still face the uphill battle of future habitat loss in wetlands.

“This is a short-sighted and premature move. Wood storks need wetlands to survive, and that habitat is facing overwhelming pressure,” Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) Wildlife Leader Ramona McGee wrote in a statement. “It is disappointing that Fish and Wildlife Service largely brushed away serious concerns about how losses to wetlands protections and climate change’s consequences for our coast increase threats to our U.S. population of wood stork.  This delisting comes at a time when species face a storm of proposed federal rollbacks to habitat protections that are likely to imperil wood storks and countless other Southeastern species.”

The FWS says it has a 10-year post-delisting monitoring plan to make sure that the species’ recovery is maintained. The official delisting of the wood stork will finalize on March 9, 2026.

The post Wood storks to be removed from federal Endangered Species List appeared first on Popular Science.

Language can’t stay still for long. It’s constantly evolving alongside the cultures that use them—and slang frequently showcases this complex relationship at its most creative, playful, and strange. While some terms or phrases may linger for centuries, most of today’s slang terminology is more current. That often makes it difficult to keep up with the times, let alone understand casual communications of the past.

That’s where Jonathon Green came to the rescue. In 1993, Green started compiling 500 years of English slang by sifting through mountains of primary sources. The culmination was Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three-volume reference set containing 10.3 million words over 53,000 separate entries. It was first published in 2010, but the printed reference tomes are out-of-date and out-of-print only 16 years later. Today, an original copy of Green’s Dictionary can easily set you back over $1,300.

Like slang itself, Green is for the people. Following a few more years of work, the lexicographer—a studier or compiler of dictionaries—transferred his entire project online for anyone to peruse. As Open Culture recently highlighted, Green’s Dictionary of Slang is now available for free as its own, regularly updated website. Not only that, but it includes more than 60,000 additional quotations along with 2,500 new entries and sub-entries. The site also contains search tools as well as a predictably gigantic source bibliography. For an additional subscription fee, users can also gain access to additional citations and advanced search options.

“Language does not reach an end, nor does research,” Green wrote in his original introduction to the website in 2016. “GDoS Online is therefore a project in continual development. As well as the natural expansion of the material on offer, it is our intention to add to the way the information is displayed, both as to quality and quantity.”

With a little persistence, regular perusal of Green’s Dictionary may help revive some long forgotten gems: it’s well worth your next stoppo, if nothing else.

The post Groovy! Dive into the world’s largest online slang dictionary appeared first on Popular Science.

I reveal • How Grok 4.20’s 4-agent system (Captain Grok + Harper + Benjamin + Lucas) works with shared weights for massive efficiency • The bombshell “MacroHard” project: digital humans that watch your screen, move your mouse, and automate repetitive white-collar work using Tesla Hardware 4 chips in parked cars • Why this could create ...

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Elon Musk confirmed to me, Brian Wang, that the current beta model is the ~500B parameter base model. Overall early consensus from testers, it beats or matches frontier models (GPT-5, Claude 4/Opus 4.5, Gemini 3) in practical coding, simulations, iterative work, and real-world agentic tasks. XAI Grok 4.20 will scale to 16 agents in Heavy ...

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A rare dinosaur fossil on display at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, tells a gory story. The skull from a large plant-eating Edmontosaurus has a tooth lodged into it, indicating that it may have met its final moments as a meal. The tooth in question belongs to one of the most famous dinosaurs on earth—Tyrannosaurus.

Montana was once home to Tyrannosaurus rex, the most famous of several known members of the fearsome Tyrannosauridae family. This apex predator stomped around until the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, roughly 66 million years ago. It lived alongside large plant-eaters like Triceratops and the duck-billed Edmontosaurus. 

In 2005, paleontologists found a nearly complete Edmontosaurus skull in the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in eastern Montana. Now on display at the museum, a reexamination of the skull revealed one striking detail: a Tyrannosaurus tooth stuck inside its face. The findings are  detailed in a study published today in the journal PeerJ.

The full Edmontosaurus skull. The triangle indicates where the tooth is embedded. Image: Montana State University/Museum of the Rockies.

“Although bite marks on bones are relatively common, finding an embedded tooth is extremely rare,” Taia Wyenberg-Henzler, a study co-author and University of Alberta doctoral student, said in a statement. “The great thing about an embedded tooth, particularly in a skull, is it gives you the identity of not only who was bitten but also who did the biting. This allowed us to paint a picture of what happened to this Edmontosaurus, kind of like Cretaceous crime scene investigators.” 

When comparing the embedded tooth to all of the known prehistoric inhabitants in the Hell Creek Formation, they found that it closely matched teeth of Tyrannosaurus. CT scans of the skull helped the team discover more details about the wound.

“A fossil like this is extra exciting because it captures a behavior: a tyrannosaur biting into this duckbill’s face,” added co-author and Museum of the Rockies’ Curator of Paleontology John Scannella. “The skull shows no signs of healing around the tyrannosaur tooth, so it may have already been dead when it was bitten, or it may be dead because it was bitten.”

The Tyrannosaurus tooth. Image: Montana State University/Museum of the Rockies.

Tyrannosaurus was one of the largest carnivores to ever walk the Earth and paleontologists have been studying their feeding habits for decades. The tooth found inside this Edmontosaurus skull gives another look into Tyrannosaurus behavior. According to the team, the way that the tooth is embedded in Edmontosaurus’ nose suggests that the duck-billed dino met its toothy attacker face-to-face. Typically, this happens to an animal that is ultimately killed by a predator. 

“The amount of force necessary for a tooth to have become broken off in bone also points to the use of deadly force,” said Wyenberg-Henzler. “For me, this paints a terrifying picture of the last moments of this Edmontosaurus.” 

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The post A Tyrannosaurus tooth embedded in dinosaur skull tells a violent story appeared first on Popular Science.

Despite their popularity, for their seemingly helpless-looking eyes and flat faces, short-skulled (or brachycephalic) dogs like the French bulldog often have serious difficulty breathing. A study published today in the journal PLOS One found that in 12 breeds, a flat face, collapsing nostrils, and rounded physique puts them at a higher risk for developing common breathing conditions. Pekingese and Japanese chins were noted to be the highest risk.

The study examined the risk of Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS) in 14 short-skulled dog breeds. Image: Anthony Lewis (www.anthony-lewis.com), PLOS, CC-BY 4.0

For breeds like bulldogs and pugs, their shortened skull shape can lead to a condition called Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS). It causes exercise intolerance, difficulty breathing, and wheezing and can lead to surgery. Pugs, French bulldogs, and bulldogs are the most well-known and studied brachycephalic breeds, but there are several other dog breeds that could face these same issues. 

“BOAS exists on a spectrum. Some dogs are only mildly affected, but for those at the more severe end, it can significantly reduce quality of life and become a serious welfare issue,” Dr. Fran Tomlinson, a study co-author for the University of Cambridge Veterinary School, said in a statement. “While surgery, weight management and other interventions can help affected dogs to some degree, BOAS is hereditary, and there is still much to learn about how we can reduce the risk in future generations.”

To better understand what characteristics predict BOAS, the team collected data from 898 dogs representing 14 different breeds, including boxers, King Charles spaniels, Chihuahuas, and Pekingese. They measured the animals’ skulls and noses, bodies and necks, and checked them for symptoms of BOAS.

They graded the dogs for BOAS on a scale from zero to three—zero indicating few symptoms and three meaning the dog had difficulty exercising and getting enough air. The team then compared the 14 breeds to pugs, French bulldogs, and bulldogs. 

Pekingese had a rate of BOAS similar to bulldogs, with only 11 percent of pekingese dogs breathing freely. The Japanese chin also fared poorly, with only 17.4 percent free of symptoms. The King Charles spaniel, shih tzu and Boston terrier had between 25 and 50 percent of dogs at grade zero. The Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Pomeranian, boxer, and Chihuahua fared best, with between 50 and 75 percent of dogs at grade zero. 

Four Boston terrier study participants with (from left to right) study authors Dr. David Sargan, Dr. Fran Tomlinson, and Dr. Jane Ladlow, all from the Cambridge Veterinary School. Image: Fran Tomlinson.

The two breeds at a high risk for BOAS—the Pekingese and Japanese chin—had high rates of nostril narrowing, with about 6 percent and 18 percent of dogs respectively having open nostrils. 

According to the team, this shows that BOAS varies widely amongst brachycephalic breeds. Understanding the differences and pinpointing key risk factors could help scientists develop more targeted and effective strategies to help dogs at risk. 

“This research would not have been possible without the support of dedicated owners and breeders who volunteered their dogs to take part,” the authors add. “Their enthusiasm and willingness to engage with health testing highlights how much people care about improving breed health.”

The post Chihuahua, boxer, and 10 other dog breeds at risk of breathing troubles appeared first on Popular Science.

How Many Scheduled Reminders & Queries Can xAI Grok 4.20 Handle Per User? Current practical limit is 150–200 active trackers comfortably, with no degradation in quality. It can simultaneously track dozens of companies, technologies, events, launches, earnings, regulatory filings, production numbers, funding rounds, etc. Real-world usage, it routinely manages 80–120 active items for power users ...

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Most mammals grow up in single parent homes. It’s estimated that over 95 percent of the planet’s nearly 6,000 known mammalian species rely almost exclusively on mothers to nurture and raise their offspring. But even when dads stick around, it’s not always smooth sailing. Fatherhood can range from attentive and caring to downright violent behaviors—but why this spectrum exists remains largely a mystery to evolutionary biologists.

Take the African striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio), for instance. Males can exhibit diverse responses to their young after becoming fathers. Particularly caring mice dads will groom their pups and even insulate them with their bellies against inclement weather. Meanwhile, other fathers may ignore or hurt a litter’s weaker siblings.

Although a simplified example, the striped mouse can serve as a proxy for other mammals including humans. Knowing this, researchers at Princeton University recently investigated the neurological underpinnings of rodent fatherhood. Their new study published today in the journal Nature indicates that a specific molecular group inside the brain may largely determine how dads react to their progeny.

To learn more, the team recorded the neural activity of male striped mice when placed in various situations both with and without pups. They soon noticed that neural activity in the brain’s medial preoptic area (MPOA) increased whenever the males encountered a young mouse. These MPOA spikes weren’t uniform, however. Higher activity in the region corresponded with helpfulness, while lower recordings aligned with hostility. Although this isn’t the first time that biologists noted MPOA’s relation to parenting, past research largely linked it to rodent females after becoming mothers.

“But in the case of these males, it’s not pregnancy or even parenthood that transforms their brains,” Forrest Rogers, a neuroscientist and study co-author, said in a statement. “Bachelors can be just as capable of caring as experienced dads.”

Rogers and his colleagues noticed MPOA was not the only area that tied to parenting. Surprisingly, the more caring mice dads also displayed lower levels of a gene called Agouti. This gene is typically known for its influence on metabolism and skin pigmentation, not fatherhood.

“Discovering this previously unknown role in the brain for parenting behavior was exciting,” said Rogers.

After finding this new link, researchers wanted to know what conditions influenced Agouti gene expression in the MPOA. Contrary to what one may initially assume, they found that solitary males possessed low levels of Agouti compared to males who lived in groups. Especially high levels also sometimes muted neural activity in the MPOA.

Artificially boosting Agouti through gene therapy reinforced these observations, too. Male mice who were previously nurturing became less interested or even volatile towards pups if they produced more Agouti. As a remedy, the team later relocated some of these males from communal to solitary living conditions. This naturally lowered their Agouti levels, making them more interested in the mice pups again.

“Our findings point to Agouti as a potential evolutionary mechanism that allows animals to integrate environmental information, such as social competition or population density, and adjust the balance between self-preservation and investment in offspring,” added study co-author and neuroscientist Catherine Peña.

Forrest, Peña, and their collaborators are still interested in examining which specific environmental factors may influence Agouti levels in mammals like striped mice and humans. At the same time, they warned against viewing their findings as a one-size-fits-all solution for parenting behaviors. Instead, they hope to help other researchers identify factors that may contribute to higher risks of issues like father figure neglect or abuse.

“Parenting is a complex trait. We’re not suggesting that you can take a pill to become a better parent, or that struggles with parenting reflect some molecular deficiency,” said Peña.

The post Biologists discover gene that may determine ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dads appeared first on Popular Science.

Present-day Japan may see its fair share of bears, but the islands’ big cat populations are long gone. Between 129,000 and 11,700 years ago, temporary land bridges allowed the ancient predators to migrate between mainland Asia and the islands. Paleobiologists have long believed tigers were the primary cats to make this trek, but recently analyzed evidence published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests a different timeline.

“Our findings challenge the prevailing view that tigers once took refuge in Japan and that cave lion distribution was limited to the Russian Far East and northeast China,” explained the study’s authors. “These findings provide evidence that lions, rather than tigers, colonized the Japanese archipelago during the Late Pleistocene.”

The earliest big cats got their start in Africa around 6.4 million years ago, but it would take another 5.4 million years for the first lions to travel into northern Eurasia. While their tiger cousins largely migrated toward Eurasia’s southern regions, the predators still occasionally crossed paths in the “lion–tiger transition belt,” an area spanning portions of the Middle East through Central Asia into eastern Russia where the two intermingled.

Amid these Late Pleistocene migrations, Earth also experienced glacial periods that lowered sea levels and revealed land bridges linking Asia’s lion–tiger transition belt to the Japanese archipelago. Fossil records suggest that many tigers took advantage of these pathways, but they are not without some instances of mistaken identity. According to the study’s authors, researchers previously catalogued these big cat fossil discoveries based on morphological evidence instead of more reliable DNA data.

To double-check these past conclusions, the team reexamined a set of fossil specimens using genetic sequencing and radiocarbon dating. Although many examples are now in poor condition, five yielded enough information to facilitate lineage profiling. In each case, the “tiger” in question instead possessed molecular information aligning with a now extinct species of cave lion (Panthera spelaea). Even more striking, the team didn’t find any tiger evidence in Japan from the Late Pleistocene.

Radiocarbon analysis of one specimen indicates that it lived around 31,060 years ago, but researchers believe the first cave lions possibly arrived as far back as 72,700 years ago. It now appears the big cats also thrived on the islands for at least 20,000 years after their species went extinct in Eurasia. Researchers believe the reason for their prolonged survival is what brought them to the archipelago in the first place—the land bridges.

“This extended survival of cave lions may reflect Japan’s unique paleogeographic history,” they wrote, adding that “This finding extends the known range of cave lions in East Asia and refines our understanding of how far south the lion–tiger transition belt shifted during this period.”

The post Prehistoric Japan was home to cave lions—not tigers appeared first on Popular Science.

A common immature attitude to desire is to assume that you are entitled to what you passionately desire, and to then cry if you don’t get it, to pressure others to give it to you. If you still don’t get it, a common response is to then declare that you’ve given up on the entire category, and just don’t care anymore.

For example, you fall in love with someone who rejects you, and then declare you are done with love, and will just live alone. Or you want a career as an actor, but then fail there, and so declare that jobs don’t matter, they are just a paycheck. Or you try to elect socialist utopian, who then betrays your hopes, so you decide it’s all corrupt, and you might as well elect partisans on your side.

A more mature stance, adopted by the wiser and more experienced, is to admit that you care a lot, but even so you can’t always get your favorite outcomes. Thus you must search carefully for the best feasible options. (LLMs confirm this overall story: 1,2,3.)

Regarding culture, the most common attitude I see is naive entitlement. Such folks fully embraced the aesthetic and moral views of their childhood, schools, associates, and entertainment sources. They see the views of folks from other times and places as just wrong, and expect history to prove their judgements right. They are typically disappointed when later generations reject many of their cultural truths.

The second most common attitude I see is among folks who have come to realize that cultures change greatly over time, and that the reasons they were given to embrace their local cultures don’t really stand up to scrutiny. In response to evidence that their culture is likely to decay and be replaced by very different ones, such folks often express indifference. They don’t care much which cultures win in the long run.

These both seem, to me, immature stances on cultures. A more mature stance is to admit that the future won’t preserve your culture by default, and that in fact it might not preserve very much of it. But then to ask what you most value in your culture, and to search for ways to preserve those best features. Even if you maybe can’t save much.

Folks with a mature stance on cultural desire are ready to help me think about how to fix cultural drift.

Time for a status update on cultural drift. I’ve been pondering solutions, and now see at best only three weakly promising options. The other possible approaches seem to me at best only modest supplements to these three best solutions.

The first solution is for some rather large polity to adopt a very competent form of governance (e.g. futarchy) tied to an ex post measurable sacred goal correlated greatly with the capacity of our main world civ over the next few centuries. Citizens should see this goal as sacred so that they are proud to sacrifice for it, and ashamed to abandon it. Polls suggest some possible goals: the date when a million people live in space, or when we achieve physical immortality. This approach requires that that we find, prove, and adopt a competent form of governance, tie it to such a sacred goal, and do so for polity so large that its actions have a substantial influence on the overall chance of our main world civ achieving this goal. Yes, this seems a long shot. Futarchy to help firm cultures seems a good training ground.

The second solution requires groups where members somehow become strongly attached to the goal of group adaption itself, even though few today feel much attachment to it, or see it as remotely sacred. Yes, that seems harder, especially given the modern taboo on “social Darwinism”, but an advantage of this approach is it that can work for much smaller groups. We’d create a way to measure ex post group adaptive success in a few centuries, make market estimates today of those future measures, and then reward/punish group leaders as those estimates rise/fall. This requires substantially competent governance, and could fail if the world too strongly shares many maladaptive global norms and status markers. Yes this also seems a long shot.

While I have separate posts on the above two approaches, this is my first post on the third solution: more capitalism. Which, yes, also seems a long shot. The parts of our world that are driven by capitalism today, such as tech and commerce, seem to have healthy cultural evolution, even though they are subject to many maladaptive global norms. So the idea here is to get more parts of our world to be more driven by capitalism.

Yes, many other parts of our world, such as marriage, parenting, sex, friendship, and art, are mostly “voluntary”, but that’s not “capitalism” for my purposes here. Just as kings of old who “owned” nations were also not very “capitalist”. The issue here isn’t what choices are voluntary, or who owns what, but which behaviors are strongly directed by for-profit ventures who use the powerful tricks we’ve learned over recent centuries to manage such orgs. Tricks like as stock price signals, hostile takeovers, boards of directors, CEOs with stock options, clear performance metrics for employees, standardized job roles, and so on. These tricks, added to basic capitalist freedoms and incentives, are what let capitalism be so powerful today at enforcing and evolving adaptive behaviors.

Some examples of how capitalism might drive more behaviors:

• We might pay lots to parents. For example, we could give them a transferable right to a percentage of the future tax revenue that those kids pay as adults. While parents might try to manage this by themselves, investors and for profit ventures such as boarding schools seem likely to get involved to advice, shape, and manage parenting in big ways.

• We could have capitalist governance of towns, cities, or larger sized government units. This could induce much stronger adaptive incentives re policies that governments set or influence. For example, they might make citizenship transferable.

• We could change bequest and charity laws to let organizations that pay low tax rates primarily hold assets and reinvest their returns. If allowed to persist for generations, such orgs would accumulate most of the world’s capital. As a result, the world would have far more capital, investment rates of return would fall to econ growth rates, and capitalism would care lot more about the long term future.

• Making hostile takeovers of firms much easier would greatly increase competitive pressures to make firms efficient.

• Heath and life insurers, merged together, could let people buy only cost-effective medicine.

• Crime vouchers could help clients be cost-effective at avoiding committing crimes, and at punishing them if they do commit crime.

• Tax career agents could help guide key life choices, such as re education, careers, or even marriages.

Note that, like the second approach above, this approach could also fail if the world too strongly shares maladaptive global norms and status markers.

While this third “capitalist” approach seems more “libertarian” than the other two, I fear it doesn’t seem libertarian enough to excite most self-identified libertarians, who likely prefer the current artisanal non-capitalist ways that we manage marriage, parenting, sex, friendship, art, etc.

What about the other approaches I’ve discussed before? AI/ems would strengthen selection pressures, but not directly address other drift issues. Spreading across stars would induce variety at the largest scales but not address within system drift. Nationalism, recently risen and now falling, seems too weak to drive sufficient competition. Deep multiculturalism seems very hard, unpopular, and only addresses the variation issue. These can at best supplement the main three approaches.

Added 15Feb: A poll finds this approach to be most favored:

Let me emphasize that all these approaches require a group or polity using them be sufficiently insular re a wider world culture’s norms and status markers.