Science X

A brief VR embodiment exercise shifted automatic age attitudes more than stated opinions. Young men who embodied Albert Einstein showed a medium-to-large reduction in implicit age bias, while explicit ratings of older workers stayed essentially unchanged. The result suggests VR may affect deeper, automatic responses, but it remains unclear how long the change lasts beyond the lab.

Myo-inositol may support fertility-related outcomes in PCOS, with some pooled analyses suggesting higher ovulation rates and roughly doubled pregnancy success. But the evidence remains patchy: studies use different doses, combinations, treatment lengths, and endpoints, and no key outcome is consistently supported by high-quality trials.

Carvings in southern Siberia may connect rock art to Khakas shamanic initiation rites. At Oglakhty, 17th- and 18th-century images include three shamans near rock cracks, including one whose upper body is replaced by a drum as he appears to run into a crevice. The carvings suggest the rock’s natural features may have been part of the imagery, though their full meaning remains unresolved.

A built-in cell “antenna” may help explain how cells detect the weak electric fields around wounds. In cell tests, removing Galvanin erased reliable electric-guided migration in fast-moving cells, while adding it boosted that response. Its highly negative outer region appears to shift toward the positive side in a field, though how its inner tail connects to the cell’s steering machinery remains unresolved.

Age 6 appears to mark a shift in sunk-cost thinking. In experiments with 484 children ages 4 to 7, 4- and 5-year-olds responded at chance between identical items even after prompts about effort or waste. Children ages 6 to 7 became more likely to choose the higher-effort option, though their responses were not at the ceiling.

TOI-1710 b appears to orbit almost perfectly backward relative to its star’s rotation, with a tilt near 180 degrees. For a warm Neptune, that is an unusually extreme misalignment. A proposed companion of roughly 5 Jupiter masses at about 15 AU may help transfer the tilt while preserving the planet’s nearly circular orbit, but that outer world still awaits confirmation.

Generative AI’s clearest classroom benefit appeared in problem-solving, especially when students used it as a scaffold and then revised the output themselves. But more than half of classroom experiments offered no specific strategy, and 42.7% flagged at least one cognitive risk. The contrast points to a missing piece: not the tool alone, but how it is integrated into learning.

Low caffeine doses were enough to improve endurance time-trial performance, with 4–6 mg/kg producing the most consistent effect at about 2.18% faster finishes on average. The analysis also found no qualifying real time-trial evidence above 6 mg/kg, leaving the effect of higher doses unresolved.

A new anthropoid species from Libya’s 39-million-year-old Dur At-Talah site adds to one of Africa’s oldest diverse primate communities. Known from just two upper molars, Saharopithecus salemi has a mix of dental traits that hints early relatives of monkeys and apes may have reached Africa in multiple waves from Asia.

Within seconds of a gentle poke, Trichoplax reorients thousands of cilia in unison and crawls away. This millimeter-scale animal has no nerves or muscles, yet its escape response appears to depend on a rapid, coordinated, calcium-dependent shift in basal-body orientation across the lower epithelium.