QuoteThere's actually a very limited scenario where cannibalism actually makes some sort of sense, the study concludes: when other food is very scarce, when the cannibalized humans are dead (so there's no energy expended in hunting), when the meat can be cooked for safety, and when you're not consuming people who were themselves cannibals.

As cannibal 'chains' build up – so someone eats the flesh of someone else who was also a cannibal – so do the dangers of pathogens spreading. A community that relies on cannibalism gets killed off pretty quickly.

The researchers even point to a real-world example: the Fore people of Papua New Guinea were extensively hit by a fatal brain disease called kuru, which only faded when the community gave up the practice of eating their dead as part of the rituals at funerals.

Kuru is a prion disease, spread by misfolded proteins that aren't eliminated through cooking like other pathogens can be.

https://www.sciencealert.com/mathematics-reveals-why-human-cannibalism-keeps-reappearing

QuoteThe team created an Otto cycle—the thermodynamic process that powers car engines, among other things—inside a superconducting circuit.

https://phys.org/news/2026-07-world-superconducting-quantum-path-larger.html

QuoteOne adult victim first met Brown-Miller and Smith through social media and initially considered them friends, according to court records.

The woman was standing outside a 7-Eleven near Brown-Miller's Philadelphia neighborhood when a black car with tinted windows pulled up. Brown-Miller sat in the passenger seat while another man drove.

Terrified because Brown-Miller allegedly always carried a handgun and had threatened her family again, she got into the car, investigators said.

She was taken to a Holiday Inn in Philadelphia, where prosecutors say she was forced to have sex with men for money over the next two days.

https://nypost.com/2026/07/25/us-news/sex-trafficked-woman-fights-her-way-out-of-nj-motel-room/

QuoteAt the heart of his model, however, is a simple concept: every relationship has a critical threshold, or a minimum level of relationship strength below which the relationship is mathematically doomed to fail.

"If your feelings fall below this threshold and stay there, the mathematics predicts an inevitable decline toward separation," says Pujo-Menjouet. "However, understanding this threshold gives couples a powerful tool: they can recognise danger zones and take corrective action."

https://studyfinds.com/the-secret-to-lasting-love-mathematical-equations/

QuoteWhen ant larvae of this species are fed woodpecker droppings, they can become infected with the tapeworm Anomotaenia brevis – and so begins an insidious cycle.

Infected ants start to change color, becoming pale yellow rather than their usual darker brown. They tend not to grow as big as their nest mates, and even start to smell different – in fact, they seem to emit pheromones that other ants interpret as being from a queen.

As such, the workers roll out the red carpet for the infected ants. They bring them food, carry them around, and groom them, to the detriment of the rest of the colony.

"At the molecular level, infected workers showed a profile that was partially queen-like."

These changes were linked to metabolism, the immune system, stress, and aging, which helps explain their longer lives and why other ants give them the royal treatment.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-wild-parasite-makes-ants-live-longer-and-tricks-others-into-worshipping-them-scientists-finally-know-how

QuoteThere are few pleasures greater than letting a piece of chocolate melt slowly on your tongue. Indeed, the proximity of chocolate's melting point to our own body temperature is one reason it is so widely appreciated.

https://phys.org/news/2026-07-mouth-car-ongoing-scientific-quest.html