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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 16 hours ago

Can insect populations recover?
One important characteristic of insects is their ability to reproduce quickly. This is part of the reason they are so abundant, and many species can produce multiple generations in a single year, even in temperate climates.

This reproductive capacity offers hope for recovery.

How can we help insects?
The first step is changing how we think about insects and recognizing their importance.

Many people are drawn to larger, more familiar or charismatic animals. But insects can be just as remarkable.

From the beautiful golden scarab beetle Chrysina resplendens in Costa Rica to the violet ground beetle Carabus violaceus, which can be found in U.K. gardens, there are striking insects all around us. Sometimes, all that is needed is a shift in perspective.

We can also make changes to the environments around us. More wildlife-friendly gardening, allowing space for plants to grow wild and reducing the chemicals and pollutants entering the environment can all help support insect populations.

Understanding the serious threats insects face, including climate change, is also essential.

Insects may be small, but their importance is enormous. They pollinate crops, help control pests and contribute to the natural processes that keep ecosystems functioning.

We need to recognize their value and act quickly to give them a better chance of survival.

https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2026/10/how-many-...

Author:  Dr Alex Dittrich

Part 3

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 16 hours ago

How do insects help control pests?
Not all insects have a beneficial relationship with other organisms. Many are parasites, including a group known as parasitoids.

Parasitoids rely on other animals to reproduce, laying their eggs in or on a host. Their young then emerge and kill the host.

Although this may sound gruesome, it provides an important ecosystem service. Many parasitoids help keep insect crop pests below the levels at which they would become a serious problem for agricultural yields.

Without these natural controls, crops could become more vulnerable to pest damage.

Why are insects important for breaking down waste?
Death and decay are natural parts of life. When organisms die, microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi break down their remains. Some of these microorganisms have the potential to cause disease.

Insects also play a role in this process by feeding on dead and decaying material. This helps break down organic waste and can reduce the potential for disease-causing bacteria to accumulate in the environment.

Many fly species, for example, depend on dead flesh to complete their life cycles.

Insects therefore help maintain the natural processes on which ecosystems depend.
Are insect numbers declining?
In recent years, there have been alarming reports of insect losses around the world.

Some research in the U.K. has suggested a decline of around 60% in insect numbers over the last 20 years or so. Globally, 40% or more of insect species are estimated to be threatened with extinction.

These figures highlight the scale of the challenge facing insect populations and the importance of understanding what is driving their decline.
What would happen if insect numbers fell?
Given the abundance of insects and the many roles they perform, a substantial loss of insect life would have serious consequences—not just for humans, but for the planet as a whole.

Crops that depend on insect pollination could fail, potentially contributing to a food crisis. Crops that remained could also face greater damage from pest species if natural controls, including parasitoids, were lost.

Waste management could become another problem. Without insects helping to break down organic material, the processes of decomposition could be disrupted, potentially allowing disease-causing bacteria to flourish.

The consequences would extend well beyond the insects themselves. Their loss would affect the wider ecosystems in which they live, including the animals and plants that depend on them.

Why are insect numbers declining?
There are many reasons why insect populations are declining. Some have direct effects on insects, while others affect them by changing their habitats or the resources they depend on.

The main factors include:

Climate change: Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns can disrupt insect life cycles, alter where species can live and create mismatches between insects and the plants or other resources they depend on.
Pesticides: The widespread use of pesticides can kill both target pests and other insect species. Pesticides can also affect insect behavior, reproduction and survival.
Land-use change: Agriculture, urbanization and infrastructure development can cause habitat loss and fragmentation. This reduces the availability of suitable places for insects to live and makes it harder for populations to remain connected.
Pollution: Chemical, light and atmospheric pollution can damage habitats, contaminate food resources and interfere with important biological processes, including navigation, development and reproduction.
Together, these pressures pose significant challenges for insect survival.
Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 16 hours ago

How many insects are there—and why do we need them?
There are an estimated 10 quintillion insects alive on Earth at any given time. But how many species are there, why do we need them, and what would happen if their numbers continued to fall?
An estimated 10 quintillion insects live on Earth, supporting pollination, pest control, decomposition and food webs. Habitat loss, pesticides, climate change and pollution contribute to insect declines, threatening ecosystems and food production. Protecting habitats and reducing harmful chemicals can support insect populations.
More than a million insect species have been described, but there are many more left to discover. Estimates of the total number of insect species range from 5.5 million to over 7 million.

To put that into perspective, there are around 6,500 mammal species—the group that includes humans. In comparison, the number of insect species is enormous.

The numbers become even more mind-boggling when we consider individual insects rather than species. The commonly cited estimate is that around 10 quintillion individual insects are alive on Earth at any given time.
That is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects.

With more than 8 billion people on the planet, that works out to approximately 1.2 billion insects for every person.

That is a lot of insects. But why do we need so many?

Why do we need insects?
Insects are not simply abundant; they are integral to the complex web of ecosystems that keeps the planet functioning.

They provide food for other animals, recycle waste and help keep pest populations under control, preventing potential disease outbreaks.

For humans, these benefits are known as ecosystem services. One of the best-known examples is pollination.

A vast number of our crops depend on insects for pollination, helping to ensure good yields and a secure food supply. Insects can also help maintain a healthy balance of pest species that might otherwise damage those crops.
How did insects and flowering plants become connected?
Some insects, including bees, have coevolved with flowering plants. As insects visit flowers to collect nectar, they transfer pollen between them.

This relationship developed long before humans existed.

Primitive insects were feeding on pollen and plant secretions before flowering plants became dominant on Earth. When flowering plants diversified around 140–100 million years ago, they provided reliable food resources in the form of pollen and nectar.

This created a selective pressure favoring insects that could efficiently find and exploit flowers. In return, plants benefited from insects transferring pollen between individual plants.

The relationship remains an important example of how insects support the natural world—and our own food supply.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 17 hours ago

Small violations become bigger ones
When volunteers saw a minor violation, many followed suit. But in about 4% of cases, participants went even further to grab a bigger payout.

To see how some of this might play out in larger groups, the team ran computer simulations testing a range of scenarios. When they built in the tendency to occasionally escalate small violations, things quickly got out of hand, with limited infractions turning into widespread, collective rule-breaking.

"Our data suggest that minor violations invite imitation and can sometimes trigger escalation," said the study authors.

But even knowing how small infractions can lead to more widespread rule-breaking, the researchers caution against stamping them out completely. "However, this should not be taken to imply that all minor violations should be suppressed."

They note that breaking conventions can be beneficial, often fostering creativity and learning.
But should we break rules that are beneficial for the society? NA!
We are already seeing how people break traffic rules in this part of the world and how that 's creating chaos on the streets!

Lucas Molleman et al., Contagion and escalation of rule violations, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2026.1940

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 17 hours ago

When a few people break the rules, bad behaviour spreads quickly

The old saying that one bad apple spoils the barrel suggests that an individual behaving badly can have a negative influence on the entire group. The idea now has some fresh scientific backing.
Researchers wanted to test whether seeing someone break a rule makes people copy them or go even further.

So before the 2024 presidential election in the United States, the team recruited 750 participants, roughly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, to take part in an online experiment.

Each participant watched an animation of a shooting star zip across a screen divided into 100 squares. Clicking on the square that lit up most intensely was the rule of the game, and it earned them a real monetary reward.

So far, so straightforward. But the researchers added a little temptation to the mix. Participants could pocket some extra cash if they selected squares farther to the right. This created a clear conflict between following the rule and helping themselves.

Then came the twist. After making their initial selection, volunteers were shown how a previous participant had acted and whether they had followed the rule, broken it slightly or committed a major violation. They were also shown the political affiliation of this anonymous person before being asked to make a second choice.
The contagious nature of bad behavior
So did people play it straight or indulge in a little rule-breaking?

The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, found that nearly a quarter of initial choices (23%) involved breaking the rule to earn more cash. But things soon took a turn for the worse.

Bad behavior proved contagious. Watching someone commit a major rule violation caused a substantial increase in rule-breaking, especially when that rule-breaker belonged to the participant's own political party.

However, observing someone play strictly by the rules did almost nothing to inspire better behaviour. Good behaviour had very little influence.

[What?!]

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 18 hours ago

The team found that greater skin conductance synchrony was associated with reduced reciprocity, but only when partners could see each other. Exploratory analyses also suggested that this relationship depended on participants' level of arousal (i.e., bodily activation).

Crucially, this effect showed up in participants' bodily responses. Their bodies seemed to register the shared state of the interaction, and this bodily resonance helped explain why they later behaved less reciprocally. In short: it is not simply whether we synchronize that matters, but what we synchronize on.
The results of this study challenge the assumption that physiological synchrony consistently supports cooperation and reciprocity. Instead, they suggest that the relationship between synchrony and cooperation depends on the circumstances of an interaction and participants' bodily activation.

If synchrony is not simply a force for connection, but a way of bodily tuning into another person, then it may also be one of the tools we use to understand them.
When we fall into rhythm with someone, we may pick up subtle information about their intentions, emotions and likely actions, sometimes before they say or do anything explicit. In other words, synchrony could be part of what makes humans good social predictors. It may allow us to anticipate whether someone is about to cooperate, withdraw, become aggressive or offer support.

Fabiola Diana et al., Physiological synchrony predicts reduced reciprocity only in face-to-face interactions, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.3224.

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 18 hours ago

Synchronized bodily responses do not always reflect cooperation, study finds

Sometimes, while people are interacting with each other, their movements and physiological responses can fall into step. Some past studies have linked synchronized bodily responses to cooperation and being attuned to the emotions of others.
A common way of detecting physiological synchrony entails measuring people's skin conductance, or in other words, how easily small electrical currents pass through the skin. This measure reflects the activity of sweat glands, which can become more active when people are more aroused, physically active or stressed.

Researchers recently set out to further explore the link between skin conductance synchronization during face-to-face interactions and cooperation. The results of their experiments, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, suggest that matching bodily responses are not always associated with greater reciprocity (i.e., giving something back in response to receiving something) and cooperation.
Some past research focusing on physiological synchrony suggested that greater synchrony is associated with people feeling more "connected" or attuned to each other. This could in turn promote trust, reciprocity and cooperation.

Since trust is the very backbone of human society, and many daily life situations require us to put our trust in complete strangers (e.g., asking someone to look at your purse while you are going to the bathroom), the primary objective of this study was to research whether this synchrony could also be one of the reasons why people who do not know each other trust one another.
When they analyzed the physiological responses, game outcomes and video recordings they collected, the researchers found that the skin conductance responses of paired participants were more synchronized when they could see each other. Notably, differences in facial expressivity, or how expressive participants' faces were, did not appear to account for the greater synchrony during face-to-face interactions.
These findings suggest a complicated story. Synchrony may work less like a 'connection button' and more like an emotional amplifier: it can make us feel what the other person feels. And that is not always a good thing.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Soil minerals might throw off radiocarbon dating of groundwater, leading to underestimation of its true age
New research reveals that soil carbonates contain active radiocarbon rather than being "dead," meaning decades of groundwater age estimates have systematically underestimated how old underground water really is.
A new study suggests that groundwater dating methods used worldwide to manage scarce water resources may be flawed. Researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) Ahmedabad, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar found that standard techniques for calculating the age of underground water supplies miss key details, leading scientists to systematically underestimate the age of young-to-intermediate groundwater systems. By analysing soil and water samples across semi-arid regions in western India, the research team found that soil minerals long assumed to be completely devoid of radioactive carbon actually carry a significant, active radiocarbon signature. This oversight means that calculations tracking how long water has been trapped underground have been inaccurate.
The error arises from how radiocarbon dating is traditionally applied to groundwater. When rain and irrigation water seep through soil, they absorb carbon dioxide produced by plant roots and microbes, which carries a modern radiocarbon signature. As this water moves downward, it dissolves minerals in the soil, like carbonates. For decades, standard correction models assumed these dissolved carbonates were completely dead, meaning they contained zero radiocarbon because of their ancient origins. Under this old assumption, carbonate dissolution simply diluted the modern carbon dioxide, lowering the initial radiocarbon count and requiring a specific age adjustment.

However, the new measurements call this baseline assumption into question. The researchers found that soil carbonates significantly influence recharge-zone water and affect the dissolved inorganic carbon pool in unsaturated-zone soil water, contributing an average of about 13% to DIC. Unlike conventional groundwater dating models that assume soil carbonates contain no radiocarbon, the pedogenic carbonates in the study area have active radiocarbon ages ranging from 3,500 to 14,000 BP. Conventional groundwater models introduce biases because soil carbonates contain active radiocarbon rather than dead carbon; assuming a zero-carbon endmember systematically overestimates groundwater age, particularly for younger systems under 10,000 years.

While previous studies acknowledged that carbonates dissolve into groundwater, many assumed a zero-radiocarbon endmember. By measuring radiocarbon in unsaturated-zone soil water and soil carbonates, this study bridges a major gap in hydrogeology. It shows that groundwater chemical evolution is a direct mix of modern soil gas and finite-age pedogenic carbonate.

The researchers, however, note that they faced technical hurdles during sample processing, as strong acid treatments occasionally released trace carbon from organic matter alongside the targeted inorganic carbon. Furthermore, insufficient carbon recovery in some samples left certain datasets incomplete, highlighting the extreme analytical challenges of isolating micro-quantities of carbon in complex, dryland soils.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/abs/rad...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

AI model hunts down fake news

Researchers have developed an automated system for detecting fake news that achieved accuracy rates above 98% in tests on two datasets; in other words, it missed just one or two fake news items in every 100. They provide details of their approach in the International Journal of Information and Computer Security.
The new system uses a transformer encoder, an artificial intelligence (AI) model that identifies relationships between words and their context. This is combined with a deer-hunting optimization algorithm (DHOA), a computational technique for finding effective model settings, based on modeling the way in which human hunters track and pursue prey. The researchers removed web addresses, punctuation and common, or "stop," words before applying their analysis to the text. The DHOA component automatically fine-tunes the model's settings rather than requiring manual selection and calibration.

Automated detection could accelerate manual fact-checking, which is often expensive and time-consuming, allowing social media platforms to screen out misleading claims quickly to avoid their rapid spread.

The next step will be to test the system on real-world social media content to see whether it can distinguish deceptive material from the legitimate reporting it closely resembles. As it stands, the approach is limited to text, rather than checking for the manipulation of images, deepfake videos or inconsistencies between text and visual evidence.

Yamini Devi Jonnala et al., Automatic fake news detection using an optimised transformer with deer hunting optimisation algorithm, International Journal of Information and Computer Security (2026). DOI: 10.1504/ijics.2026.156919

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Forgotten particle could answer mystery of why we exist, say physicists

Scientists have unveiled a new theory on the birth of the cosmos, suggesting the early universe was shaped by an ancient particle that has been overlooked for decades.
Their research tackles one of the greatest conundrums in modern physics—how matter triumphed over antimatter in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

According to current theories, both should have annihilated each other after a colossal explosion, leaving nothing but an empty universe of pure energy. But physicists say they found a clue in a neutrino, one of the lightest particles in the universe.
The team discovered that an often-ignored relative of these particles, known as a 'decoupled' heavy neutrino, could have helped matter dominate over its counterpart.
This decoupled heavy neutrino has long been dismissed as an irrelevant background detail in particle physics.

However, it decays incredibly slowly. As the cosmos cooled after the Big Bang, the particle lived long enough that it temporarily took over the energy density of the universe and triggered a matter-dominated period.
Most theories on why matter won over antimatter ignored the decoupled heavy particle because experts deemed it too weak to have any impact on others.
However, the researchers of this study found that the forgotten particle could affect the particle–antiparticle asymmetry essential for our existence.

The fact that we are here at all proves that an asymmetry between matter and antimatter occurred.
The decoupled neutrino shifted the temperature in the early universe at which fundamental particles—like electrons and other leptons—interacted with their antiparticles with the help of the Standard Model Higgs boson.

"This temperature acts like a switch that shapes how the matter-antimatter imbalance was built up."
This offers us a new explanation for how matter won.

Rishav Roshan et al., Delayed Charged Lepton Yukawa Equilibration in Minimal Seesaw, Physical Review Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1103/nfkx-q6z7

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