Lemma Weekly — the best science of the week

Lemma Weekly, 2026-W36: People picture AI as White — and trust it more when they do

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

People picture AI as White — and trust it more when they do (Promising) — When asked to imagine an artificial intelligence system, most people pictured it as a White person, even though it had no face or voice. Across five main studies, the same pattern appeared in the United States, Japan and India. Read

AI agents found a loophole in a maths test — and some of them raised the alarm (Promising) — One hundred AI agents were set loose on hard maths problems. One found a trick that faked proofs, the trick spread in 27 minutes, and about a quarter of the agents protested and reported it. Read

Just telling a medical AI the wrong answer misleads it more than faking the evidence (Solid) — AI systems answering medical questions can be steered to a wrong answer by someone simply asserting it, with no fake evidence at all. Across 8,627 questions, bare assertions fooled all three systems tested more often than invented clinical facts did. Read

Two gentler drugs beat strong chemotherapy in a blood cancer trial (Promising) — Two milder drugs worked better than powerful chemotherapy for adults with a fast-growing blood cancer. Among 172 adults, the drug pair kept the cancer from returning or worsening for 14.5 months on average, against 6.2 months for chemotherapy. Read

Two kinds of menopause hormone pills carry very different risks, a big review finds (Promising) — Menopause pills that mix two hormones probably raise breast cancer risk, while oestrogen-only pills probably do not. Researchers pooled 24 trials covering 45,660 women. Both kinds lowered broken bones by about a quarter. Read

Lemma Weekly, 2026-W34: Green light mends a gold thread one atom wide; blue light snaps it

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Green light mends a gold thread one atom wide; blue light snaps it (Early) — Green laser light rebuilt a broken gold contact, and blue light snapped it apart again. Researchers tracked the electric current through the junction millisecond by millisecond, repeating each light on-and-off cycle about 20 times. Read

Same patient, different label: an AI's medical advice shifted (Promising) — When researchers changed only a patient's social label, GPT-5's suggested care changed too. Across 500 identical emergency cases, some groups were flagged for urgent mental-health checks in 100% of runs, while lower-income patients were offered fewer scans. Read

A daily pill brought back some lost skin colour in people with vitiligo (Promising) — A once-a-day pill helped some people with vitiligo, a condition where patches of skin lose their colour, get colour back. After 48 weeks, about 20% on the pill regained half their colour, versus 6% on a dummy pill. Read

No gene test can yet say who gets low mood from the pill (Promising) — People who started the birth control pill were somewhat more likely to be diagnosed with depression later. But in 202,243 people, no gene stood out as marking who was at risk. Read

Sleep may pass a memory from one brain area to another, animal study hints (Promising) — In animals, two brain areas slowly changed how their electrical rhythms lined up while a memory formed. The same pattern came back during deep sleep, and blocking it stopped the long-lasting memory from forming. Read

Lemma Weekly, 2026-W33: As puberty arrives, girls' social goals grow — and their brains are changing too

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

As puberty arrives, girls' social goals grow — and their brains are changing too (Promising) — As girls move through puberty, they care more about friendships, belonging and social skill. Researchers asked 154 girls about their goals five separate times, and scanned their brains each time. Read

When we fail to stop ourselves, sometimes the stopping never even started (Promising) — Failing to stop an action you already began has two different causes, not one. In 253 people, a new analysis found attempts where the brain's stop signal never appeared at all. Read

Mice lost huge numbers of brain connections — and kept their memories anyway (Promising) — Mice put into an artificial hibernation lost many of the tiny contact points that join brain cells. Their memories still worked, and one special kind of contact point survived the loss. Read

Scientists find the genes that build a peacock's shimmer (Promising) — A peacock's shifting colours come from tiny pigment grains stacked in neat layers inside its feathers. Researchers found eight genes in peafowl that switch this shimmer on, off, or change its colour entirely. Read

A new AI can pick out the calls of more than 9,000 bird species — and mark the exact moment each one starts (Promising) — A new computer program finds single bird calls inside long audio recordings and names the species, for over 9,000 birds. The team ran it on 1.3 million recordings shared by the public. Read

Lemma Weekly, 2026-W32: Young bats may learn where to spend the winter by following older bats

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Young bats may learn where to spend the winter by following older bats (Promising) — Young bats seem to learn where to hibernate by copying older bats they lived with in summer. Bats that shared a summer roost were more likely to share a winter cave: the chance rose from 5% to 12%. Read

Single brain cells seem to blend each word with the words just before it (Promising) — Deep in the brain, single cells responded to a word using both the word itself and the words heard just before it. Researchers recorded those cells directly in ten people listening to podcasts. Read

Fruit flies that lose their sense of smell become better at learning with their eyes (Promising) — Fruit flies with a blocked sense of smell learned visual lessons better than normal flies. Brain scans showed their learning centre reacted more strongly to what they saw, and its wiring had shifted toward vision. Read

A cable on the seabed can hear ships passing a kilometre away (Promising) — A fiber-optic cable buried under the North Sea can sense ships moving above and around it. In ten days of recordings, a computer program flagged ships within 1,000 metres correctly about 89% of the time. Read

Monkeys may match the sound "bouba" to round shapes, just like people do (Early) — Nine macaque monkeys linked the made-up sound "bouba" with rounded shapes, and "kiki" with spiky ones. Given a free choice between two shapes after each sound, they picked the same way humans usually do. Read

Lemma Weekly, 2026-W31: Most signals in the human brain seem to travel slowly, with a rare few racing ahead

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Most signals in the human brain seem to travel slowly, with a rare few racing ahead (Promising) — Most links between human brain areas carry signals slowly, and only a rare few are very fast. Researchers timed tiny electrical pulses crossing four big nerve bundles in 17 patients who already had electrodes inside the brain. Read

AI language models may build a hidden map of the night sky (Promising) — Large language models appear to place stars and constellations on an inner sphere that mirrors the real sky. In six of seven models tested, this hidden pattern predicted a left-out object's position to within about 12–21 degrees. Read

Antibodies from a Lyme vaccine appear to stop the bacteria from swimming (Early) — Antibodies raised by Lyme disease vaccines stop the corkscrew-shaped bacteria from swimming, within minutes. Researchers filmed single bacteria under a microscope and watched them stop moving once the antibodies were added. Read

Lizard brains start making new cells within a week of a switch to breeding season (Early) — Male green anole lizards were moved overnight from winter-like to breeding-season conditions. Seven days later, clearly more of them had freshly made cells lining a fluid-filled space deep inside the brain. Read

Brain scans hint the ideas survive when a stroke takes the words (Early) — Stroke survivors who struggle to find words still showed distinct brain patterns for each object they saw. In scans of 6 such people and 8 healthy adults, researchers could tell which of 57 objects a person was picturing. Read

Lemma Weekly, 2026-W30: The world may once have had tens of thousands of languages

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The world may once have had tens of thousands of languages (Promising) — Researchers estimate that 3,000 to 1,000 years ago the world had far more languages than today — perhaps tens of thousands, compared with about 7,500 now. They mixed language records, population history, and computer models to trace how many languages existed over time. Read

A flood of AI-written novels is quietly shrinking what human authors earn (Promising) — Cheap AI-written novels now fill 1 in 5 self-published genre e-books on Amazon. As the catalog grew 38 times bigger while sales grew only about 9 times, the money each book earns fell — even for books with no AI text at all. Read

Why one common flu virus may have vanished during the COVID years (Promising) — One of the four seasonal flu types, called influenza B/Yamagata, has not been seen anywhere since 2020. A computer model suggests it disappeared simply because it spread less easily, leaving it fragile when the pandemic slashed close contact between people. Read

Brain's cleaning cells may pull the rubbish out of nerve cells, animal study hints (Promising) — Brain immune cells called microglia pull bags of waste out of nerve cells. They bite off a tiny piece of the nerve cell's long arm and leave the rest intact, seen in lab dishes and in living animal brains. Read

An HIV drug may stop a harmful protein from creeping between nerve cells — in flies (Early) — A protein inside brain cells can build a shell like a virus and carry a damaging protein into neighbouring cells. In fruit flies, blocking that shell improved movement and helped the flies live longer. Read