Pandora Dewan

Dispersed female networks: female gorillas’ inter-group relationships influence dispersal decisions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Dispersal is a fundamental aspect of many animal societies, impacting gene flow, knowledge transmission, culture and individual fitness. However, little is known about the information individuals use ...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Dispersed female networks: female gorillas’ inter-group relationships influence dispersal decisions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Dispersal is a fundamental aspect of many animal societies, impacting gene flow, knowledge transmission, culture and individual fitness. However, little is known about the information individuals use ...

Female gorillas recognise their friends after years apart

Gorillas move between different social groups to prevent inbreeding etc. But after 20 years of studying this, scientists have found that females tend to gravitate towards groups with gorillas they had grown up with, even after years apart

Me too 🥲 apparently her daughter is 2 now and they’re both thriving

I’ve just learned about a pregnant orangutan who had really bad morning sickness until her keeper gave her some special pregnancy tea

Keepers at Denver zoo had noticed that orangutan Eirina was refusing to eat/drink

That’s until her keeper remembered a tea she had drunk during her own pregnancy 🧪🌿

Daily steps and health outcomes in adults: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis Although 10 000 steps per day can still be a viable target for those who are more active, 7000 steps per day is associated with clinically meaningful improvements in health outcomes and might be a mor...

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
🩸 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
🦟 www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...
🫜 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

4 #science stories from the last week, that you might have missed…🧪

👣 7,000 steps a day may be as good as 10,000

🩸At-home endometriosis test shows promise

🦟 Ivermectin promises to reduce malaria transmission

🫜 Beetroot juice may lower blood pressure in older adults

This is why you can’t always trust AI overviews. I am not a playwright and this particular play was written by Sandra Seaton.

As Lucy pointed out in the article, it makes no sense evolutionarily as to why they wouldn’t fart

Right!!

MUCH better than doomscrolling 😌

Scientists thought sloths don't fart. Then one was caught tooting on camera. For years, it's been assumed that sloths don't fart. But new footage of a baby sloth letting rip in a water bath has shown that, contrary to popular belief, these tree-dwellers are actually incredibly...

Today I got to cover a HUGE breakthrough in sloth science: Contrary to popular belief, sloths do indeed fart

www.livescience.com/animals/scie...

🦥🧪

It’s awful it took so long to get the proper treatment!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Women with ADHD may be significantly more likely to suffer from severe PMS and PMDD

PMDD is known to affect roughly 3.2% of women, although clinicians suspect many are left undiagnosed

ADHD is also seriously underdiagnosed in women, up to 75% of women with the condition going undiagnosed

🫶🧪

🧪"The myth of meritocracy in science collapses under the financial sacrifices expected at every career stage...the hidden costs of ‘doing science’ are profound. These burdens disproportionately exclude those without generational wealth, compounded by race and gender." dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Fellowships, grants and career support – Maria Leptin | EMBO Science Journalism Fellowships – EMBO Supporting life scientists pursuing a career in science journalism and science journalists who wish to further their scientific education

The Maria Leptin | EMBO Science Journalism Fellowships support life scientists pursuing a career in #ScienceJournalism and science journalists who wish to further their scientific education.

Apply now:
www.embo.org/funding/fell...
#LifeSciences #funding 🧪

'Meth is what makes you able to do your job': AI can push you to relapse if you're struggling with addiction, study finds In rare cases where users are vulnerable to psychological manipulation, chatbots consistently learn the best ways to exploit them, a new study has revealed.

So this happened this week…prioritising growth and chatbot agreeability can have unintended consequences for vulnerable users. www.livescience.com/technology/a...

Thanks so much to everyone who has sent me messages - I’m making my way through them so will try and get back to you asap

Submission guidelines: How to pitch to Live Science Live Science welcomes news, analysis, explainer and feature pitches from freelancers. Here's everything you need to know about submitting a story idea to Live Science.

Hi Rachel! We tend not to cover education on the trending desk but if you have pitches you could try sending them through our normal pitch channel www.livescience.com/how-to-pitch...

It’s a remote, global pool of freelancers and we will reach out with commissions whenever we have a story that fits a specific writer’s experience and profile

If this sounds like you (or someone you know) and you’d like to hear more, send me a DM or email pandora.dewan@futurenet.com with a CV (or overview of your experience) and examples of previous articles (plus any subjects you’re particularly interested in writing about) ✨

Ideally you would have:
🧪 Experience in a fast paced newsroom (desirable)
🧪 Background in science and/or science communication
🧪 Extensive experience writing for science publications and communicating science to the general public

Contact 👇

✨FREELANCE SCIENCE JOURNALISTS✨

Hi! I’m the Trending News Editor at Live Science & we’re looking to expand our pool of trending freelance science writers

These stories need a 24h turnaround and cover all areas of science, from medicine to climate change, archaeology and zoology

Details below 👇

An inaturalist photo of the cranefly Hexatoma albitarsis taken by user terrinorris (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/51841205)

new boots on waiting for my friends to come pick me up

And the females only eat them to help grow their babies - no hard feelings 😌✌️

Blue-lined octopus Hapalochlaena fasciata males envenomate females to facilitate copulation Chun et al. show that in the blue-lined octopus Hapalochlaena fasciata males envenomate females during copulation, most likely as a defense against being cannibalized.

Source: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Blue-lined octopuses have the MOST TOXIC relationships 🐙😳

The females are much larger than the males and often eat them after mating. So to avoid this, the males inject the females with poison to paralyze them until they’ve finished…doing their business.

WHO IS WORSE IN THIS RELATIONSHIP???

I think there’s also a real human desire for art created by people and an increased interest in traditional artistic techniques

Professional artists viewed as more creative than AI programs, study finds In the rapidly developing contest between human creativity and artificial intelligence algorithms, professional artists still have an edge in producing more creative AI-assisted artwork than the AI pr...

Well…that’s a relief phys.org/news/2025-02...

A dual-pathway architecture for stress to disrupt agency and promote habit - Nature Adaptive decision-making often requires an understanding of our agency in a situation; however, chronic stress can disrupt agency and promote inflexible, habitual behaviour by turning off a brain path...

😖 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🏔️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧠 www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...