your science briefing for 02.12.2025

A dramatic burst of human evolution in Tibet, the one simple, science backed trick to avoid getting sick, the two numbers to gauge your inner villain, and more...

Tibet is mostly known for monks, mountains, and temples in popular culture. But to the scientists studying human evolution, it’s also one of the most interesting places on the planet. Over the last 10,000 years, a new mutation of how the blood of native Tibetans carries oxygen has allowed them to adapt to altitudes at which most of us would struggle, and their genes show textbook signs of active natural selection for a more oxygen dense version of hemoglobin… (ScienceAlert)

Winters in the Northern Hemisphere usually mean more illness as we tend to spend more time indoors, giving germs and viruses more opportunities to infect us in cozy but enclosed spaces, and the cold can stress our immune system. But here’s a very simple way to stay ahead of at least some bugs according to researchers. Just keep your phone clean as a lot of nasty stuff gets on its screen. You know, the screen you spend an awful lot of time touching and raising to your face every day… (IUSM)

If we ever want to have safe self-driving transport that has a much better chance of knowing exactly what it’s seeing and can be trusted off rails and restricted roads, a new LIDAR system — which uses lasers to build a 3D map of its surroundings — from a collaboration between Heriot-Watt University, the University of Glasgow, MIT, and NASA JPL could help. Using far more efficient detectors, this new LIDAR produces accurate scans from up to a kilometer away, allowing AI models more time to make the right decision in real time… (Eureka)

In another edition of problems AI can and should actually solve, scientists were able to make major strides in modeling the mathematics behind turbulence using AI to do its best simulation of quantum computing, with answers emerging from a probability space instead of brute computation. This new approach means we can look forward to deeper understanding of weather systems on Earth and other worlds, and better, more efficient aerospace designs… (CTV)

Whenever psychologists study evil and antisocial behavior, they focus on the idea of the Dark Tetrad: four personality aspects that predict malicious tendencies and, well, terrible personalities. But a team of researchers says that the Tetrad is oversimplified and antisocial behavior waxes, wanes, depends on context, and is a result of a web of potentially negative traits summed up by a D Factor, or Dark Factor Of Personality. (I assume that D For Douchebag was rejected by the reviewers.) They’ve even set up a portal for you to get in touch with your own D if you’re up to the task and want to help with their research… (Psychology Today)