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Researchers recently studied the relationship between numerical information in our vision, and how it affects our perception of space - and discovered subtle asymmetries that color our view on the world.

They wanted to see if numbers in our vision create “attentional biases” so volunteers were asked to identify the center of lines and squares filled with numbers. It showed how our perception of space is a complex interplay between “object-based” processing and our processing of numerical information.

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Bees have the reputation of being incredibly organized and spending their days making sure our food ecosystem is functioning. Neither is accurate. Unless you are an almond farmer in California and rented bees that were delivered in giant trucks, they have no impact on your food, and they are also not working non-stop for the hive.

Instead, they may be genetically wired to beg for food.

Male bees -“drones” - actually cannot digest pollen, the most important source of protein for bees. To avoid starvation, they depend on worker bees feeding them a pre-processed paste that workers make from pollen. It's not a communist love-fest, though, drones instead must convince workers to provide the food.

Over time, they evolved to be able to beg.

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While 2025 will arguably not be remembered as a very positive year for humankind, for many reasons - first and foremost, raging wars and raising inequalities -, as we near its end some have tried to find good things to say about this particular revolution of our planet around the Sun. 
And who am I to blow against the wind? I have to tell you, 2025 for me has been a formidable year. But before I go into a list of achievements, let me paint this rosy picture in broad strokes. 

Professional achievements

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You’re in your mid-40s, eating healthy and exercising regularly. It’s the same routine that has worked for years.

Yet lately, the number on the scale is creeping up. Clothes fit differently. A bit of belly fat appears, seemingly overnight. You remember your mother’s frustration with the endless dieting, the extra cardio, the talk about “menopause weight.” But you’re still getting your periods. Menopause should be at least half a decade away.

So what’s really going on?

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High blood pressure is an important risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease and premature death. Medication can reduce those risks so it makes sense that if someone is prescribed an angiotensin receptor blocker like Losartan continue to take it.

Yet people don't. A new cohort from Sweden using over 341,000 participants found that fewer than half were on their medication up to three years later. It can't be cost, their health care is overwhelmingly subsidized. It may be side effects.

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The Monday after New Year's is colloquially called Divorce Day, but it's more than marriages ending. Lots of people in longer relationships, and certainly seasonal holidates, just want to get through the holidays before pulling the plug. That Monday this year is January 5th.

Alone may be better, something better may be out there as well, but it may also be the case that one or both people simply have unrealistic expectations that their TV movie fantasy should be reality.

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Christmas can be hard. For some people, it increases loneliness, grief, hopelessness and family tension, and the festive season has a way of turning ordinary concerns into urgent ones. Not because something terrible is guaranteed to happen, but because more is often at stake: money, time, family dynamics, travel and expectations.

A large study found a small but consistent dip in people’s wellbeing in the run-up to Christmas. One psychological process that often shows up under this pressure is worry.

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A small, icy moon of Saturn called Enceladus is one of the prime targets in the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. A new study strengthens the case for Enceladus being a habitable world.

The data for those new research findings comes from the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004-2017. In 2005, Cassini discovered geyser-like plumes of water vapor and ice grains erupting continuously out of cracks in Enceladus’ icy shell.

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Desire to have a short-term companion for the holidays - a "holidate" - is common enough that it gets its own portmanteau but the reasons may not always be positive. A survey commissioned by the American Psychological Association found that 43 percent of U.S. adults report stress levels during this time of year high enough it makes the season difficult to enjoy.

The pressure is all the usual stuff some people struggle more than others over, like money and difficult families, but they are magnified in this narrow window of time. It may be why Thanksgiving is the source of so many angry, depressing movies. 

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A recent survey by found that over 28 percent of adults claim they have an intimate, even romantic relationship, with an LLM (Large Language Model), colloquially deemed Artificial Intelligence - "AI".(1)

It seems plausible because 41 percent of people believe in psychics and ghosts.

What may be surprising is the demographics of the people embracing this new technology. It isn't young people, they know it's not real, it is Baby Boomers. Not only are they fine with AI relationships, over 50 percent say they can engage in a romantic relationship with an AI guilt-free.

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Ford is the latest company to take a massive write-off on current electric car production- nearly $20 billion. Because making them would be even more costly.

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With criticism due to an overspending frenzy funded by student loan debt still in full swing, some universities want to get back to education and not be social justice platforms for its employees to groom children to their beliefs.

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From an early age, my life’s goal was to get at “the truth.” There were only two obvious career paths: Science, or investigative journalism. I went the first route, becoming an academic researcher. Proud of the path I chose, and always admiring the other one.

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Lard wasn't that long ago. Given the renewed prevalence of Health Whisperers, those progressive forms of trad wives who fetishize the ancient ways and call soup "bone broth", it is probably an alternative sold at high cost to people who also buy raw milk.

For my father, lard was a way of life. Bread made in my grandmother's kitchen with lard and salt and pepper was his school lunch. That wasn't bleak to him, he didn't go to therapy about it, it was just his life. We were poor when I was a child, below the poverty line most of the time, but not as poor as he'd been. He had provided us a better life than he'd had. 

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Since 2022, when I got invited for a keynote talk at a Deep Learning school, I have been visiting with increasing frequency the northern Sweden town of Lulea, and its Technology University (LTU). In 2023 I spent three months there, invited by Marcus Liwicki and Fredrik Sandin to join the Machine Learning group for some studies of neuromorphic computing applications to particle detectors. Then toward the end of 2023 they were able to secure funding to invite me as a WASP Guest Professor. I thus spent at LTU some four months in 2024, but this year I have spent there over 6 months, as the research collaboration with the computer scientists of LTU has become more intensive. 

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A doctor who told you to smoke cigarettes "in moderation" would likely lose their license, but alcohol has long been known as a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, deemed such before the International Agency for Research on Cancer was hijacked by activist epidemiologists as likely as not to be caught signing contracts with predatort trial lawyers, and has gotten 'in moderation' hand-waving by the medical community.

Maybe it is due to the amount of money the American Medical Association gets from the alcohol industry, maybe it is because there are 6X as many alcohol drinkers as there are smokers, but one thing certain is 'in moderation' free passes have nothing to do with science.

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Bleeding hosts and stigmatizations are the best-known medieval miracles but less known ones, like a scorched cherry twig miraculously sprouting, a diseased swamp becoming fertile land, and healing the broken leg of an ox, are getting a new look. 

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Is it possible for there to be ghosts? – Madelyn, age 11, Fort Lupton, Colorado

Certainly, lots of people believe in ghosts – a spirit left behind after someone who was alive has died.

In a 2021 poll of 1,000 American adults, 41% said they believe in ghosts, and 20% said they had personally experienced them. If they’re right, that’s more than 50 million spirit encounters in the U.S. alone.

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Environmental activists have claimed for decades that PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are "forever" chemicals that have been causing disease. Once former Natural Resources Defense Council environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. joined the Republican team, their belief in homeopathic effects and endocrine disruption was adopted by some on the right.

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Remember when a small bacterium from California’s Mono Lake was supposed to rewrite the very definition of life? Headlines screamed: NASA finds “alien” life on Earth!

The organism reportedly swapped out precious phosphorus - one of life’s six essential building blocks - for arsenic, the toxic villain in murder mysteries. For science communicators and, let’s be honest, journalists hungry for clicks, it was a dream come true.

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