Can large language models (LLMs) reason by analogy? Some outputs suggest that they can, but it has been argued that these results reflect mimicry of the results of analogical reasoning in the models’ training data. To test this claim, LLM’s have been asked to solve counterfactual problems that are unlikely to be  similar to problems in training data sets. Here is an example: Let’s solve a puzzle problem involving the following fictional alphabet: [x y l k w b f z t n j r q a h v g m u o p d i c s e] Here is the ...

An experimental study suggests that people are less likely to behave in a trusting and cooperative manner when interacting with AI than when interacting with other humans.  Scientists use experimental games to probe how humans make social decisions requiring both rational and moral thinking. Fabian Dvorak and colleagues compared how humans act in classic two-player games when playing with another human to how humans act when playing with a large-language model acting on behalf of another human. Participants played the Ultimatum ...

Locusts have undersized babies—with their first lunch already in their guts—in dry conditions. Desert locusts have two distinct modes—solitary and gregarious—that are behaviorally and visibly different. The insects also live in the Sahara desert, an environment with frequent dry conditions. Koutaro Ould Maeno and colleagues explored how a lack of moisture and the presence of other locusts shift reproductive resource allocation in the insects. In lab experiments, the authors raised locusts in crowds and in isolation. Crowd-reared females produced fewer, larger eggs than females raised in ...

Epidemics of infectious disease often come in waves, but the causes of these waves aren’t clear, frustrating efforts to predict or mitigate them. Are waves of infection caused by transmission seasonality, viral mutations, implementation of public health interventions, or something else? Claus Kadelka and colleagues model how human behavior, in response to information about disease risk, can create waves. There is frequently a lag between infection prevalence and the information about that prevalence reaching the public. Once ...

Public healthcare emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can drastically disrupt healthcare systems with long-term repercussions. The effects of such healthcare crises are more pronounced in the aging population, who are particularly vulnerable to chronic infections and sudden disruptions in healthcare. The COVID-19 outbreak that emerged in December 2019 quickly spread worldwide, and several emergency measures were urgently implemented to curb its transmission. During the initial phase of the pandemic, stringent measures like social distancing, isolation, and mandatory wearing of masks were implemented. Unfortunately, ...

In a world first, Canadian scientists at the CRCHUM, the hospital research centre affiliated with Université de Montréal, have identified microRNA able to protect small blood vessels and support kidney function after severe injury. For the four million people diagnosed with chronic renal failure in Canada—and millions more abroad—this scientific advancement could have a major impact on early diagnosis and prevention of the disease. Previously, there was no known reliable biomarker for evaluating the health of these capillaries and for developing ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2025 annual meeting quantifies the amount of sleep loss experienced by first-time mothers in the weeks after giving birth and is the first to identify the unique type of sleep disruption that persists throughout the first months of motherhood. Results show that the average daily sleep duration of new mothers was 4.4 hours during the first week after giving birth compared with a pre-pregnancy sleep duration of 7.8 hours. Their longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep also fell from 5.6 hours at pre-pregnancy to 2.2 hours in the first week after delivery. Nearly one-third of participants (31.7%) went more than 24 hours without sleep ...

Philadelphia, May 27, 2025 – Researchers have found that central body fat, especially around the abdomen, is more strongly linked to psoriasis risk than total body fat, particularly in women. This link between central fat and psoriasis remained consistent regardless of genetic predisposition, indicating that abdominal fat is an independent risk factor. The study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier, provides insights that could help improve early risk prediction and guide personalized prevention strategies. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that can have a significant impact on quality of life. Many individuals with psoriasis also ...

A UC Riverside-led study has found that a smartphone app that tracks household water use and alerts users to leaks or excessive consumption offers a promising tool for helping California water agencies meet state-mandated conservation goals. Led by Mehdi Nemati, an assistant professor of public policy at UCR, the study found that use of the app—called Dropcountr—reduced average household water use by 6%, with even greater savings among the highest water users. Dropcountr works by interpreting water-use data from smart water meters, which many utilities originally ...

Scientists have found that global warming in the Middle East and North Africa is making breast, ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancer more common and more deadly. The rise in rates is small but statistically significant, suggesting a notable increase in cancer risk and fatalities over time.   “As temperatures rise, cancer mortality among women also rises — particularly for ovarian and breast cancers,” said Dr Wafa Abuelkheir Mataria of the American University in Cairo, first author of the article in Frontiers ...

How long have you been doing your current job? Have you ever thought about trying a new profession? How difficult does change seem to you? The current rapid transformation of the labor market is putting many workers to the test: they struggle to keep up and move into new roles, while at the same time companies are having difficulty finding qualified personnel. A new study has analyzed the French labor market using methods from statistical physics, and found that over 90% of jobs today function as bottlenecks: they are easily accessible, but once entered, they become traps from which ...

Milan, Italy: Pharmacogenomics studies how individuals respond to drugs based on their genetic code. Using that knowledge to guide prescribing in routine care could lead to better outcomes for patients and save money for health systems. Generating pharmacogenomic data in the laboratory is relatively straightforward, but a major challenge is making that information available to frontline healthcare professionals in a clinically relevant format and timeframe. This has meant that, to date, only a limited numbers of patients have been able to benefit from such individually optimised treatments. Dr John McDermott, ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 26 May 2025    Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, threads, and Linkedin         Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing ...

How does a bird learn its birdsong? Tomoko Fujii and Masashi Tanaka, from Waseda University, explored what drives a zebra finch to approach and imitate other zebra finches to learn its birdsong in a new JNeurosci paper.  The researchers explored song learning in young male zebra finches as they interacted with “tutor” adults that already knew their birdsongs. Young zebra finches preferably approached tutors that sang longer but less frequently. Fujii and Tanaka next probed the role of a brain region traditionally linked to emotions in mammals (the amygdala) in this song-learning process. To examine the ...

Background and objectives Lung Squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) represents the second most common non-small cell lung cancer. Although studies identified adenocarcinoma-like driver mutations in LSCC using next-generation sequencing (NGS), the disease is challenging to treat due to the limited number of detectable mutations for targeted drug therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the mutation profiles of LSCC detected by NGS to assess the relationships between different driver mutations and clinicopathological parameters. Methods NGS ...

FRANKFURT. Otodus megalodon was the largest predatory fish in Earth’s history: Measuring up to 24 meters, it was longer than a truck with a trailer and weighed almost twice as much. Embedded in its jaws were triangular teeth the size of a hand, and its bite had the force of an industrial hydraulic press. It swam through the world’s oceans between 20 and 3 million years ago, frequently on the hunt for prey to satisfy a calorie demand as vast as its size: According to estimates, it required around 100,000 kilocalories per day. Science widely assumed that megalodon’s main calorie intake was in the form of ...

Toronto, ON – Climate change and extreme weather events are threatening the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of young adolescents in Kenya, according to a new study published earlier this month in BMJ Global Health. The study reveals that food, water, and sanitation insecurities are placing young adolescents aged 10-14, especially girls, at increased risk of school dropout, transactional sex, gender-based violence, and early pregnancy. “Climate change isn’t just an environmental issue, it’s an urgent public health ...

Males are more than four times more likely to receive an autism diagnosis than females. But a new study by researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine has found no clinical differences in autistic traits between the sexes in toddlers when they are first diagnosed with autism. The study was published in Nature Human Behavior on May 26, 2025. The findings have potential implications for early diagnosis and intervention for autistic children. Between 2002 and 2022, the researchers assessed more than 2,500 male and female toddlers between 12 and 48 months of age. Of these toddlers, 1,500 were ...

Africa's predominantly rainfed agricultural sector is highly vulnerable to erratic rainfall and the impacts of climate change. Despite having significant irrigation potential, only a small fraction of Africa’s arable land is currently equipped for irrigation. A new policy brief by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) - Implementing the IDAWM Framework to Enhance Agricultural Water Management in the African Union – developed in collaboration with Centre on Climate Change & Planetary Health of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, International ...

A new guideline to diagnose and treat hypertension is aimed at helping primary care clinicians, including family physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists, manage the disease. The new guideline, the first of 2 from Hypertension Canada, is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.241770, and will be republished with permission in Canadian Family Physician and Canadian Pharmacists Journal, with a summary in Canadian Nurse. Hypertension is the most common modifiable risk factor for heart disease and death, affecting about 1 in 4 adults in Canada. Canada has been a ...

Milan, Italy: A new, rapid testing method will greatly help the diagnosis of rare diseases in babies and children, according to research to be presented to the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Monday). While rare genetic diseases are uncommon, as their name suggests, there are more than 7,000 types of disease caused by mutations in more than 5,000 known genes, affecting approximately 300 million individuals worldwide. Currently about half of all patients with a suspected rare disease remain undiagnosed and existing testing methods for undiagnosed conditions are typically slow, ...

Milan, Italy: Neuropathy, a disorder in which damage to nerves can impair sensation and movement, has many causes, including infection1. Now, researchers from the UK have identified distinct genetic changes in a newly-discovered neuropathy and believe that their work will provide insights into the causal mechanism and why some previously healthy people develop neuropathies after infection whereas others do not. Dr Rob Harkness, a postdoctoral research Fellow at the University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, will tell the annual ...

In recent years, the concept of "rewilding" has risen to prominence in the conservation community, but to date, most efforts have been concentrated on large protected areas far from cities—and consequently, far from urban areas suffering pronounced biodiversity losses. In a recently published BioScience article, Patrick Finnerty (University of Sydney) and colleagues make the case for "urban rewilding" as a vital approach for addressing biodiversity losses, focusing on the rapidly expanding cities that are soon expected to be home to ...

A gene that regulates the development of roots in vascular plants is also involved in the organ development of liverworts — land plants so old they don’t even have proper roots. The Kobe University discovery highlights the fundamental evolutionary dynamic of co-opting, evolving a mechanism first and adopting it for a different purpose later. When scientists discover that a gene is necessary for the development of a trait, they are quick to ask since when this gene has been involved in this and how the evolution of the gene has ...

The murder of George Floyd could have been avoided if police had responded to the concerns of bystanders reveals research led by Lancaster University. George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25 2020. For the first time, psychologists have analysed 12 videos recorded on the body-worn cameras of the attending officers, the smartphones of bystanders and local CCTV cameras from 19:55 until 20:42 (CST) on the date of his death. Their research published in American Psychologist examines the range of verbal and physical ...