Gregory M. Dickinson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Institute for Humane Studies

You open a free app to do one simple thing. Before you even start, a full-screen message asks whether you want to try the paid version. The “Start free trial” button is large, bright and hard to miss. The option to keep using the free version is smaller, buried at the bottom. The same prompt appears again tomorrow. And the day after that.

A lot of people look at screens like that and think, “Surely this has to be illegal.” We even have a name for them, “dark patterns.” They feel pushy. They waste time. They seem designed to wear you down. But in most cases, they are perfectly lawful.

“Dark pattern” is not a legal term with a clear boundary. It is a broad label for digital designs that nudge, pressure, confuse or trap users. As a legal scholar who studies consumer protection and digital design, I think the most important thing for readers to understand is that the label “dark pattern” covers a broad spectrum.

Some of that spectrum is just annoying. Some of it is aggressive salesmanship. And some of it crosses the line into deception or coercion. Federal and state consumer protection laws are mostly aimed at that last category. They do not ban every design choice people dislike, only those that trick or coerce.

Annoying isn’t illegal

That reality may sound unsatisfying, but it is not unusual. Offline life is full of things that are irritating but not unlawful. Think of the cashier who asks whether you want to sign up for the store credit card, then points out the discount you are turning down, then asks again. Most people know exactly what is happening. They roll their eyes, say no and try to shop somewhere else next time.

The same is true online. A repeated pop-up can be obnoxious. A guilt-inducing button can be tacky. But consumers recognize ordinary annoyance for what it is. In many cases, the market answer is simple: Close the app, ignore the pitch or take your business elsewhere.

Similarly, law does not ban persuasive sales pitches just because they are effective. A car salesperson who keeps steering you toward the upgraded model is trying to influence your choice. So is the airline clerk who offers travel insurance. So is the restaurant server who asks whether you want dessert. Salesmanship is nothing new. Digital design often borrows from familiar techniques.

That helps explain why lawmakers cannot simply outlaw “manipulation.” And so many interfaces are built to persuade, openly and lawfully.

What crosses the line

What the federal FTC Act and analogous state consumer-deception statutes usually care about is not whether a design is annoying. They focus on whether the design is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer. That is the core idea in modern consumer protection law.

So a design is likelier to be unlawful when it hides key facts, makes an optional choice look mandatory or tricks people about the effect of the button they are pressing. A fake countdown timer, a disguised ad, a misleading one-click purchase button or a cancellation path that looks finished when it is not are all different from ordinary hard selling. Those designs do not just pressure users; they can deceive them.

That is also why the app maker’s intent is not always the key question. In many consumer protection cases, a company does not get a free pass just because no one said, “Let’s trick people.” The legal question is often about effect: What would a reasonable user likely understand from this screen?

Research on dark patterns reinforces that concern. Even relatively mild designs can push people into choices they would not otherwise make. And regulators have increasingly focused on subscription flows, hidden fees and cancellation obstacles for exactly that reason.

Why it feels like dark patterns are everywhere

One reason people might think there are no laws against dark patterns is that they see them so often. But that frequency reflects that the term covers a wide range of conduct, from lawful nagging to outright deception.

It also reflects enforcement limits. Regulators cannot chase every irritating screen on every app and website. They have to prioritize the worst cases. That leaves a lot of borderline conduct in the wild, which makes the whole problem feel bigger and murkier to ordinary users.

So when people ask why there is not a law against dark patterns, the best answer is that there already is, but the law does not prohibit every annoying or high-pressure design. It targets lies, misleading cues and coercive obstacles.

That line can be fuzzy. But the fuzziness is not a mistake. It is what you get when the law tries to separate persuasion from deception in a world full of both.

Gregory M. Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Institute for Humane Studies

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sabrina Lenzen, The University of Queensland

Imagine your elderly mother needs help to get out of bed, shower and manage her medications – and then waiting more than a year for that support to arrive.

According to a federal government report released this week, that is no longer a worst-case scenario. It is now the national average.

Australia, like many developed countries, is ageing rapidly. By 2063, about one in five Australians will be older than 65. And the number of people aged over 85 is expected to more than triple in that same period.

That means many more Australians will soon need help at home or in residential aged care.

So what did this report – which some critics say the government “buried” in a busy budget week – actually say?

And will extra aged care funding announced in this week’s federal budget help shorten waiting lists?

A fraught sector

In 2025, the federal government spent roughly A$40 billion on aged care services. That makes it one of the costliest items in the federal budget. And this figure is projected to keep rising in coming decades.

Despite this investment, the aged care sector is still plagued by concerns around neglect, understaffing and poor quality of care. This led the federal government to launch the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety which, in 2021, delivered 148 recommendations for reform.

So, what’s gone wrong?

Research consistently points to two major pressures that are stretching the aged care system.

The first is workforce shortages. Aged care has struggled to attract and retain workers, particularly in regional Australia. This is because wages have historically lagged behind comparable sectors, such as nursing and disability care.

Meanwhile, many residential aged care facilities across Australia are operating close to capacity. And demand is continuing to rise, with projections showing we’ll need 10,000 new beds each year.

The second pressure is infrastructure constraints. Research shows 80% of older people who need support would prefer to receive it at home. That’s where home care services come in. These help older people with everyday tasks such as showering, cleaning, meal preparation and medication management.

However, many Australian homes aren’t built to support older people, because they lack key features such as ramps, grab rails and walk-in showers, and equipment such as walking frames or hospital-grade beds.

These two factors are pushing more Australians into residential aged care. In 2020–21, about 11,000 people who were waiting for a home care package entered residential care, likely because their needs weren’t being met at home.

Now the government report released this week shows the average older Australian is waiting more than 12 months to get an aged care bed or at-home support.

Why wait times matter

The delays are primarily a supply problem, not an assessment problem.

On average, the home care package assessment takes around four weeks. But once people are assessed and approved, they join a queue that can stretch for many months, simply because there are not enough places to meet demand.

When older people wait this long for support, their health can rapidly deteriorate. Research suggests delayed access to home care is associated with higher rates of hospitalisation and earlier entry into residential aged care.

Longer wait times also have financial costs to government. Government data shows home care support typically costs between $10,000 and $78,000 per person per year. That’s compared with the estimated $90,000–150,000 for a residential aged care place. These high costs largely come from the need to cover accommodation, meals, staffing and facility costs.

Will the government fix this?

This week’s federal budget announced $3.7 billion in additional funding over four years to support older Australians. Part of this will go towards delivering 5,000 additional aged care beds each year.

The government also confirmed older Australians will continue receiving fully funded personal care services, such as showering and clinical care. Those services will be delivered under the new Support at Home program. However, co-payments will apply to some non-clinical services including cleaning, transport and meal preparation.

However, research suggests this co-payment model may discourage some older Australians from getting the care they need. That’s because even modest out-of-pocket costs can deter people – particularly those on lower incomes – from using health services. And any savings made through co-payments will likely reappear elsewhere in the health system, for example to pay for increased hospital admissions.

The bottom line

The budget’s investment in 5,000 new residential aged care beds annually is an important first step, but won’t solve the waiting list crisis.

The government must also release more home care packages, and speed up the process between assessment and delivery of care. Otherwise, we risk creating an aged care sector where wait lists never end and older people are denied the care they deserve.

Sabrina Lenzen, Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Emmalee Ford, University of Sydney

Menstruation is once again a hot topic on social media, thanks to a new health trend known as “cycle syncing”.

It involves aligning your diet and exercise habits to each phase of your menstrual cycle. For example, you may only do gentle exercises such as yoga or eat more fermented foods during the first phase of menstruation.

Social media influencers are spruiking cycle syncing as a more natural way for women to manage negative symptoms, such as period pain, and be more in tune with their bodies.

So how does it work? And is it supported by research?

The menstrual cycle

During menstruation, the body sheds the uterus lining to prepare for pregnancy. This usually happens every 28–35 days. But bleeding is only one part of the menstrual cycle. The menstrual cycle can be divided into three main phases:

1. follicular phase, where the body releases a hormone called the follicle-stimulating hormone to help follicles grow in the uterus

2. ovulation, where the ovary releases a mature egg that may or may not be fertilised

3. luteal phase, where the body releases a hormone known as progesterone that thickens the lining of the uterus, in preparation for pregnancy. But if the egg is not fertilised, the uterus will shed its lining and this cycle repeats.

Throughout the menstrual cycle, fluctuating hormone levels can cause symptoms such as fatigue, cramps, bloating, mood swings and changes in appetite.

Does ‘cycle syncing’ work?

Advocates of cycle syncing say it helps women manage period symptoms and meet the the body’s changing energy needs during menstruation.

However, specific claims often conflict with each other. For example, some who promote cycle syncing suggest eating fermented foods and fresh vegetables during the follicular phase, while others recommend eating lean proteins and wholegrains. Certain cycle syncing advocates emphasise doing cardio workouts and other high-intensity exercise in the follicular phase. Meanwhile, others say swimming or cycling are better options to manage period symptoms.

However, there is little evidence to support these claims.

Various systematic reviews – which summarise all the available research on a specific question – have found no evidence that doing exercise during certain phases of the menstrual cycle improves muscle development or performance. This is the case with both resistance training which aims to build strength, and aerobic exercise, which increases your heart rate.

It also does not appear to reduce your risk of muscle injuries. Research shows immune function may fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle, but one systematic review found this variation is unlikely to impact exercise.

However, research suggests female athletes may feel less motivated or confident playing sport in the late luteal phase. They were also more likely to think they performed worse at the start and end of their period. This may be because symptoms such as cramping, back pain and tiredness make exercise seem much harder during menstruation.

But research suggests certain types of exercise, including strength training and relaxation-based exercises, may help relieve period pain.

There’s even less evidence examining the link between nutrition and different phases of the menstrual cycle. One 2024 study suggested women may be hungrier or eat more during their luteal phase, compared to the follicular phase. This may be because during the luteal phase, the body consumes more energy to prepare for a potential pregnancy.

However, one systematic review found no conclusive evidence that changing your diet reduces symptoms such as cramps, bloating and fatigue.

What to do instead

Existing studies looking at the relationship between diet, exercise and different menstrual phases have produced extremely varied results. And there are still many gaps in current research, including what the mechanism behind cycle syncing actually is and what its benefits may be.

So for those who want to manage period symptoms, the best approach is to be patient with yourself and listen to bodily cues. For example, if you slept badly because of night-time cramps, you don’t need to do a high-intensity workout the next morning. Consider going for a walk instead. And if you feel extra hungry near the end of your period – in the luteal phase – it’s fine to eat a little more.

The jury’s out as to whether cycle syncing actually works. But making small lifestyle tweaks could help make your time of the month that bit more manageable.

Emmalee Ford, Adjunct Lecturer, Sexual and Reproductive Health, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

David Tuffley, Griffith University

The human brain is remarkably complex, with trillions of connections that control how you move, think and feel.

Yet it’s still vulnerable to debilitating conditions such as paralysis, stroke, epilepsy and various neurodegenerative diseases.

Scientists are investigating if a kind of technology, known as the brain-computer interface, could help patients move and communicate better.

So how does it work? And what are the potential risks?

What is a brain-computer interface?

A brain-computer interface works by reading electrical signals produced by the brain, which it translates into digital signals that an external computer can understand. The computer then sends instructions – such as the command to move a cursor, steer a wheelchair or read a sentence aloud – back to the brain. This whole process happens in real time, allowing patients to do tasks more independently.

There are two types of brain-computer interfaces:

Non-invasive

Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces are worn externally, usually in the form of electroencephalogram headsets. An electroencephalogram, or an EEG, is a type of test that measures activity in the brain. This technology is already available on the consumer market, found in everything from meditation apps to video games.

Invasive

Invasive brain-computer interfaces are surgically implanted. This involves placing electrodes – devices that carry electrical signals from the body to medical instruments – directly onto the exposed surface of the brain. These interfaces aim to help restore key functions such as speech and mobility in people with a disability, caused by conditions such as stroke or spinal cord injury.

It is this second category that’s attracting attention from investors and scientists. Several companies – including early developer Blackrock Neurotech, Australian-owned Synchron, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink – are racing to get implantable brain-computer interfaces to patients.

Under current regulations, only a handful of clinical trial participants globally can access this technology. But this may change as interest grows. The international brain-computer interface market is expected to be worth roughly A$14 billion by 2033, up from its current value of just under $3 billion.

Their role in health care

Brain implants may sound dystopian, but they are a promising part of neuroscience research.

More than three billion people worldwide live with a neurological condition that affects their motor, communication or sensory functions. Examples include stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy and traumatic brain injury.

Brain-computer interfaces are particularly helpful for communication. In one 2023 study, paralysed patients that used a brain-computer interface were able to communicate up to 78 words per minute. That’s a five-fold improvement from the 15 words per minute achieved by patients in 2021. And recent research shows this technology is still rapidly improving.

Beyond communication, surgeons are using brain-computer interfaces to map brain activity in real time. This is particularly useful during complex or high-risk procedures, where surgeons must protect key brain regions.

Sleep researchers are also using this technology to analyse brain signals in people who may have a sleep disorder, such as insomnia or sleep apnoea. Brain-computer interfaces may be a more accurate way to diagnose and treat such disorders, compared to other methods such as sleep diaries that rely on participant reports.

Scientists are also investigating how these interfaces could be used in rehabilitation, particularly for people with conditions such as depression, epilepsy, stroke and Parkinson’s disease.

What are the risks?

Here are three worth noting.

Physical harm

Any kind of brain implant can cause physical damage that may affect how neighbouring brain regions work.

For example, if there’s bleeding in a part of the brain that controls speech or movement, even a small blot clot could impair those functions. And while infections in the brain are rare, they can cause swelling and further complications if not immediately treated.

Research suggests there are long-term effects of having foreign material inside the skull. Over time, the brain treats the implant as an intruder, forming scar tissue around it in a bid to destroy nearby brain cells and stop the implant from working. Regular movements such as breathing may also create friction between the hard implant and soft brain tissue, causing some brain regions to become inflamed.

Cybersecurity threats

One recent study found a large-scale breach of brain-computer interface systems could theoretically allow hackers to access sensitive neural data, such as patients’ thoughts and memories. Hacking may also enable them to impair a patient’s cognitive functions such as the ability to concentrate, or even manipulate motor signals to affect how well they move. That’s a scary prospect, especially if these devices become more common in health care and other sectors. In the United States, some jurisdictions are already working to protect neural data rights in law, but there are still major regulatory gaps.

Unequal access

Currently, getting a brain implant will set you back between $50,000 to $140,000. That doesn’t include the cost of ongoing maintenance and follow-up care. So ordinary patients are unlikely to access this technology anytime soon, widening the gap between who can and can’t afford to improve their health.

Where to next

Brain-computer interfaces are a promising new technology, but they come with risks.

We urgently need more high-quality research into the long-term effects – both physical and psychological – of permanent brain implants. Importantly, this research should be funded publicly and not just by a handful of large, profit-driven companies.

David Tuffley, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Applied Ethics and CyberSecurity, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Narendar Manohar, Black Dog Institute; Hiroko Fujimoto, Black Dog Institute, and Peter Baldwin, Swinburne University of Technology; UNSW Sydney

Many Australian children struggle with their mental health. Recent data shows around one in seven children (13.9%) aged 4–17 experiences a diagnosable mental illness.

So what can actually help?

Our research shows the most powerful influences on children’s wellbeing begin at home. We analysed data from 5,501 children tracking their mental health over a decade or more, from early childhood through to their mid-teens.

While we often talk about improving mental health services to address current needs, our findings underscore how important prevention is.

To improve children’s mental health, we need to better support their parents through measures that reduce stress and instability, such as access to stable housing, financial security, mental health care and social connection.

What we did and what found

We looked for patterns in the data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. First, we identified challenging behaviours and symptoms of mental illness such as anxiety, low mood and restlessness across the whole group. Then we homed in on children who showed declining mental health over time and examined what they had in common.

Our most striking finding was that around 10–15% of Australian children developed severe and persistent symptoms of anxiety, emotional distress and behavioural difficulties. This kind of ongoing distress could begin as early as four or five years of age.

What set these children apart was their home environment. The risk of long-lasting mental health difficulties was much higher for children:

• whose mothers experienced depression or anxiety

• who experienced harsh or hostile parenting, or parental conflict or violence

• whose mothers lacked social support

• who grew up in financial hardship or housing stress.

Research shows poor mental health among primary caregivers, regardless of gender, is linked to worse mental and physical health for children.

Our study focused on mothers because they were the primary respondents in the dataset and were most often identified as the child’s primary caregiver. This reflects broader patterns in Australia, where mothers still tend to take on a larger share of caregiving responsibilities.

Risk factors rarely occur on their own

This isn’t about blaming individuals. It reflects broader systems that leave families without adequate support.

Consider a family where a parent is juggling insecure work, struggling to pay rent, battling their own anxiety, and feeling cut off from support networks. In this environment, parenting becomes harder, tensions rise, and the child absorbs that stress.

The research found children facing multiple difficulties were at far greater risk than those exposed to only one or two. Some individual factors were strongly associated with poor outcomes. For example, exposure to parental violence more than doubled the odds of persistent and severe mental illness symptoms.

Our findings suggest addressing several of these pressures together (not just treating the child’s symptoms) could make a substantial difference. Based on statistical modelling, we estimated that reducing factors such as parental psychological distress, hostile parenting and partner violence could potentially prevent up to 40% of severe and persistent mental health problems in young Australians.

But there is no simple quick fix to break such structural hardships. Governments need to provide coordinated, multifaceted support across housing, employment, mental health services and community infrastructure.

What families actually need

Accessible mental health care

This means shorter waitlists, affordable services, and options that fit around work and family responsibilities.

There have been positive steps in recent years including expanded telehealth and community mental health programs. But many families still struggle to access timely and affordable support.

Parenting support

Evidence-based parenting programs, which give parents practical strategies for managing kids’ anxiety and their own conflicts, can also help.

One example is the Australian parenting program Cool Little Kids. Its online modules focus on managing children’s fear and anxiety around things such as separation, trying new activities and sleep. Among children whose parents completed the program, a review found there was a 21% reduction in anxiety disorder diagnoses in the first year after the intervention, and 45% in the second year.

Housing stability

Secure tenancies allow children to stay in the same school and maintain friendships, reducing stress and disruption. Renters and lower-income families are more likely to experience housing insecurity and repeated moves, meaning many children face ongoing instability during critical developmental years.

Financial security

Australian research shows that policies such as paid parental leave reduces depression in new mothers, with at least 2–3 months being especially protective.

Australia has expanded both paid parental leave and childcare subsidies in recent years, but gaps remain. While these policies have improved support for many families, access is still uneven. Casual workers, lower-income households and families facing housing or financial stress are particularly vulnerable.

Combined with affordable childcare and income support, further investment in these areas could help prevent children’s mental health conditions.

Social connection

When caregivers feel supported and connected, children tend to do better. Local playgroups, community centres and parent networks can reduce parental isolation – a risk factor strongly linked to poorer child mental health in our study.

Australia already has many of these supports through organisations such as Playgroup Australia and local neighbourhood and family centres. But access remains uneven and many families still struggle to find affordable and culturally safe services in their local area.

Prevention starts earlier than we think

The message from our research is clear and compelling: supporting parents early on is the most direct path to supporting children, now and in the future.

When families have stable housing, manageable financial pressure, and access to mental health care, children are less likely to develop serious mental health problems later on.

Narendar Manohar, Research Fellow in Workplace Mental Health, Black Dog Institute; Hiroko Fujimoto, Research Officer in Workplace Mental Health, Black Dog Institute, and Peter Baldwin, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Swinburne University of Technology; UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sally Christine Reynolds, Bournemouth University

For most of the 20th century, the model of human origins was a tree: with the trunk dividing into branches, and then twigs. Each species of human relative (hominin) was a neat, single branch.

As an undergraduate, I was taught that Homo sapiens was one of these branches that emerged in Africa, spread across the world, and displaced every archaic human it encountered.

Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and other ancient relatives were evolutionary dead ends – unfortunate cousins who left no descendants. In the 30 years since I left university, those early lessons are now radically revised.

That neat replacement story is now comprehensively wrong, largely thanks to studies like the one published in Nature this week by Qiaomei Fu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues. The paper achieves something that would have seemed impossible a decade ago: it recovers meaningful biological information from H. erectus fossils far too old for DNA.

Instead of genetic sequences, the team extracted ancient proteins from the enamel of six teeth from three Chinese sites – Zhoukoudian (which, in the early 20th century, produced fossil remains known as “Peking Man”), Hexian and Sunjiadong – all dating to around 400,000 years ago.

Homo erectus is widely regarded as the first hominin to leave Africa; the evidence suggests this species had moved into Eurasia nearly two million years ago. It remains the most geographically widespread human ancestor that ever lived. The new study indicates that Homo erectus exchanged genes (probably through interbreeding) with Denisovans in East Asia roughly 400,000 years ago.

The study suggests that some of that genetic legacy, it now appears, was passed on to living people in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and across south-east Asia.

Tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the body, and its proteins survive long after DNA has degraded beyond recovery. What the team found in those proteins is striking. All six specimens share a previously unknown amino acid variant – a tiny molecular signature, a single letter changed in the protein sequence, never seen in any other hominin alive or dead.

This variant clusters these east Asian H. erectus into a distinct group, confirming their identity and settling a long-running debate about whether the unusual Hexian fossils were H. erectus at all. A second variant they share, however, is not unique to H. erectus.

It also appears in Denisovans – a mysterious archaic (non-Homo sapiens) human group known mainly from a cave in Siberia. The corresponding genetic variant turns up in living people at frequencies of 21% in the Philippines and about 1% in India, distributed in a pattern that matches what we’d expect if it entered modern humans via Denisovan ancestry.

The most reasonable interpretation is that H. erectus populations in east Asia passed this variant to Denisovans through interbreeding, and Denisovans later passed it on to the ancestors of modern south-east Asians and Oceanians. This transfer of genetic material from one species to another is known as introgression.

The lineage we once thought was a dead end has, it turns out, left a small but detectable trace in living human genomes – a molecular thread connecting a Peking Man tooth to living people in Asia.

A pattern repeated

But the significance of today’s paper extends well beyond the specific variant or the specific populations involved. What it really shows is that interbreeding between archaic human lineages was not exceptional. It was routine.

Every major hominin lineage we have been able to examine genomically shows admixture. Modern humans outside Africa carry roughly 2% Neanderthal DNA. Papuans and Aboriginal Australians carry an additional 2–5% Denisovan ancestry.

West African populations carry genetic signatures from an unidentified archaic lineage. Even Denisovans themselves, as today’s study adds further weight to, received gene flow from something older and more diverged — likely H. erectus.

A 2019 review in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology documents at least three distinct introgression events from Denisovan-like populations into south-east Asian and Oceanic ancestors alone, some occurring as recently as 20,000 years ago. The picture is not one of clean lineages but of a tangled web of contact and exchange extending across millions of years.

The implications are far-reaching. Our genomes are not the product of a single unbroken lineage emerging from Africa. They are mosaics, assembled from contributions by multiple archaic groups, each adapted to its own regional environment.

Some of the Denisovan-derived variants in Papuan genomes, for instance, appear to influence immune function. The H. erectus-derived variant identified today has unknown functional consequences – that remains an open question – but the precedent from other gene variants that have introgressed (genes that have passed from one species into another) suggests that adaptation to new environments may have been part of the story.

Ghost populations

Perhaps most intriguing is what the new paper implies about all the populations we cannot yet study. H. erectus survived in Indonesia until perhaps 100,000 years ago. Homo floresiensis, the diminutive “hobbit” species, was present on Flores when modern humans arrived. Another human lineage, Homo luzonensis, occupied the Philippines.

None of these populations have yielded DNA, and until today none had yielded any molecular data at all. Were they also absorbed, at least partially, into the human populations that replaced them? The genomic evidence from living people has not, so far, detected their signal clearly – but the tools available until recently were blunt instruments.

The proteomic approach demonstrated in today’s paper offers a way forward. If proteins can be recovered from H. erectus enamel at 400,000 years, the same approach applied to floresiensis or luzonensis material might finally reveal whether those lineages, too, contributed something to the humans who came after them.

The old metaphor of a tree – a single trunk branching into distinct species – has been quietly replaced in the scientific literature. It might be better to consider the process as a braided river, with many channels running partly together and partly apart, exchanging water continuously.

This new study is one more confirmation that when ancient human populations disappeared, they left traces of themselves behind.

Sally Christine Reynolds, Associate Professor in Hominin Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yasamine Salkar, Georgia State University

At a recent dental appointment, I was unexpectedly seen by a new provider in my longtime dentist’s practice. Early in the visit, he realized we were both Iranian American. Like me, he had been born and raised in the United States. We were both fluent English speakers and fully accustomed to navigating American medical settings.

After we briefly discussed how the war in Iran was affecting our families there, something shifted. The exchange was short, but deeply human. I left feeling an immediate sense of connection, trust and familiarity with a provider I had only just met.

That experience helped me better understand something I had long observed among immigrant families – that immigrant patients often seek out healthcare providers from similar backgrounds. What they are often seeking goes beyond a shared language or cultural familiarity.

I am a health administration professor and lawyer who studies how people navigate health systems. In my work, and through conversations with immigrant families, including my own, I have seen how subtle interactions in clinical settings can shape whether patients feel confident or dismissed and unsure about returning for care. For some, choosing a doctor with a similar background represents their best attempt to feel more understood.

The fact that many patients actively seek out providers who share aspects of their cultural background, even when doing so may require additional effort or limit their options, illustrates that it is not a minor preference, but a meaningful part of how people experience care.

Beyond a shared language

Immigrants make up a growing share of patients in the U.S., accounting for about 15% of the population.

Large national studies suggest that patients often seek providers with whom they share a cultural background. That choice is especially pronounced among racial and ethnic minority patients, those who speak a language other than English at home and those with public insurance.

Even as the U.S. physician workforce becomes more diverse, many patients still report difficulty finding providers who share their cultural or linguistic background. At the same time, some evidence suggests the number of foreign-born physicians may also be declining. In my view, that makes the effort to find such providers all the more noteworthy.

A shared language may seem like the most obvious explanation for why immigrants seek out doctors from similar backgrounds. And in many cases, it does matter. When patients and clinicians speak the same language, communication improves and medical errors decline, especially for patients who are not fluent in English.

But language alone does not explain experiences like my own.

Narrative research on immigrant patients describes broader issues. For example, a patient might raise a concern about a persistent symptom, only to feel too quickly dismissed, or hear an explanation delivered in a simplified way that does not match their level of knowledge or experience.

These moments can be subtle, but as they accumulate over time, they may contribute to a sense that medical care feels transactional or dismissive rather than responsive to patients’ concerns. Even patients who are fully fluent in English and comfortable navigating the health system may come to expect not to be fully heard.

That expectation can shape where people feel comfortable seeking care.

Why shared background can matter

Sharing a background, whether through race, ethnicity, language or cultural experience, can sometimes help create a sense of connection – especially at the start of a relationship.

But research suggests the relationship is more nuanced than simply matching patients and doctors by identity. The way a doctor communicates, as well as whether they listen carefully, take concerns seriously and involve patients in decisions, also plays a central role.

In one study that examined physician-patient relationships across racial and ethnic groups, patients who felt personally similar to their physician – for example, in how the physician communicated, approached decisions or seemed to understand their concerns – were more likely to trust their doctor, feel satisfied with their care and follow medical advice.

Research on patient-centered care has similarly found that patients value interactions where they feel respected, understood and able to communicate openly.

Together, these studies suggest that while shared backgrounds can sometimes help create trust, communication and interpersonal connection may matter just as much.

More research is needed to understand how much these experiences reflect differences in communication itself versus connection spurred by a common background. But for immigrant patients, it may not be the shared identity itself that matters most, but the expectation that it will help them feel more easily understood. When patients consistently struggle to find that experience, shared background can become one of its few visible signals.

Understanding why immigrant patients make these choices ultimately reveals something more universal: Trust in medicine is shaped not only by clinical expertise, but by everyday human interaction. And patients value this quality so highly that they actively seek out providers who they believe will offer that sense of understanding and connection.

Yasamine Salkar, Clinical Assistant Professor of Health Administration, Georgia State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Paul Hough, University of Westminster

While some people can spring out of bed at six in the morning and go straight into their day, others prefer to wake up later as they’re most productive in the afternoon or evening. This difference is due to your chronotype – the biological tendency to prefer certain times of day for sleep, waking and activity.

But these aren’t the only factors affected by your chronotype. A growing body of research also suggests that your chronotype can affect the benefits you see from exercise.

People who naturally rise early and feel sharpest in the morning are “early chronotypes”, whereas those who prefer to wake later and function better in the afternoon or evening are “late chronotypes”. People who fall in between are “intermediate chronotypes”.

Your chronotype is determined by your circadian rhythms – the body’s natural daily cycles that repeat around every 24 hours. Although these are strongly influenced by our environment, they function even without external cues such as daylight and food. These rhythms affect our physiology, behaviour and health.

Our circadian rhythms are controlled by the body’s circadian system, which is made up of tiny biological clocks composed of proteins, which are found in organs and tissues. These clocks rely on genes that help coordinate when different processes happen, such as when we feel alert or sleepy.

The circadian system also influences many other bodily functions, including blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar regulation and blood vessel function. As these factors are also affected by physical activity, this may explain why aligning your workouts to your natural chronotype can be beneficial.

Some studies support this, suggesting that the time of day people exercise can influence health outcomes – including cardiovascular fitness and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity and some cancers.

However, as these were observational studies (which only show associations rather than cause and effect), they can’t definitively prove that the findings were solely caused by the timing of the exercise.

But a recent randomised controlled trial has investigated whether aligning workouts with chronotype could enhance the benefits of exercise. The researchers specifically looked at people who were at risk of cardiovascular disease.

Participants were grouped according to their chronotype, which was measured using a specialist questionnaire. Morning types exercised between 8–11am and evening types exercised between 6-9pm. A third group exercised at the opposite time to their chronotype (morning types in the evening and evening types in the morning).

Participants whose exercise was aligned with their chronotype experienced greater improvements in blood pressure, aerobic fitness, blood glucose, cholesterol and sleep than participants whose training times were misaligned with their chronotype.

But though these improvements show that timing exercise to your chronotype can enhance its health benefits, there are a couple of important nuances.

Even the group that exercised at the supposedly wrong time still experienced health benefits, showing that exercise is beneficial even when it doesn’t align with your chronotype. The study also did not include intermediate chronotypes, who make up around 60% of the adult population. For these people, the timing of exercise may be less important.

Based on the available evidence, exercise timing appears to be a meaningful consideration, particularly for people who are strong morning or evening chronotypes.

Beyond your chronotype

So how do you know your chronotype?

Most people have an intuitive sense of this based on when they naturally prefer to sleep and wake. However, work schedules and care-giving responsibilities often force us into routines that conflict with our chronotype. Over time, this makes it harder to be sure of your chronotype.

For this reason, researchers developed a questionnaire to help you determine your chronotype. The 19 questions include what time you feel you’re at your peak and how easy you find it to wake up in the morning.

Once you have a clearer sense of your chronotype, you can start thinking about when to schedule your training.

However, chronotype isn’t the only factor that can affect training and how you respond to exercise. This is good news for those who may not be able to align workouts with their chronotype.

For instance, body temperature usually peaks in the afternoon regardless of chronotype, which enhances muscle function. This is why strength, speed and coordination tends to be best in the afternoon, making it a prime window for resistance training and technical practice for most people.

Habitual training time can also shift performance over time as the body adapts to the time you regularly train. So even if you’re naturally a night owl, consistent morning training may eventually make you perform better at that time.

Another critical factor to consider when deciding when to workout is sleep.

If you haven’t slept well the night before, research suggests it’s better to exercise earlier in the day, regardless of your chronotype. This is because the drive to sleep, known as “sleep pressure”, builds steadily from the moment you wake up and peaks just before you fall asleep. By evening, growing sleep pressure makes exercise feel harder and can impair your performance.

Exercising late in the evening can also reduce sleep quality, particularly when the session is intense. As a general rule, leave at least a two-hour gap between exercise and bedtime.

There’s no single best time to exercise that works for everyone. While the evidence on the long-term health benefits of matching exercise time to chronotype is growing, some principles apply broadly.

Peak performance varies by chronotype, and matching your workout time to yours may help you train harder and achieve better health benefits. However, any exercise is better than none – regardless of timing.

If you’re a night owl but can only train in the morning, a warm-up is essential. Wear extra clothing and start with 10-15 minutes of light aerobic activity to gradually increase body temperature and increase alertness.

If evenings are your only option, opt for moderate or low-intensity activities (such as yoga or a jog) to avoid disrupting sleep.

Paul Hough, Lecturer Sport and Exercise Physiology, University of Westminster

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Pratik Raul, University of Canberra and Jeroen van Boxtel, University of Canberra

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible blindness among ageing people globally. Around one in seven Australians over the age of 50 have some signs of AMD.

The disease results in blurred and distorted vision, and often loss of function at the centre of the eye’s visual field.

The best current treatment involves a series of injections to slow the progression of the disease, but this process can be expensive and difficult with potentially negative long-term effects.

In our latest research, we trialled a surprisingly effective non-invasive way to improve the vision of people with AMD: augmented reality headsets that add “visual noise” to what they see.

Noise – and how it can help

We usually think of noise as an annoyance. If you are listening to the radio, auditory noise makes it hard to hear the music.

However, it turns out that the right amount of controlled noise can actually be beneficial. This is due to an interesting phenomenon called stochastic resonance.

In the right circumstances, a little bit of noise can make a faint signal “loud enough” for us to detect.

Different forms of noise, such as tactile noise (vibrations) or auditory noise, have been used previously to improve balance, gait and hearing in patients.

Visual noise (essentially static, like on a detuned TV) has also been shown to improve performance on computer-based letter identification tasks.

However, it had not yet been tested in a device that could actually serve as a visual aid for people with AMD.

Augmenting reality with a little bit of noise

In our new study, we used the Microsoft HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset to introduce visual noise to what people with AMD saw.

Twelve patients with a particular kind of AMD (called the exudative variant) wore the headset and completed a standard letter chart vision test (this type of letter chart is often used for measuring visual driving ability). We assessed their performance with no added visual noise against several different amounts of added noise.

The patients’ vision improved with medium levels of visual noise, as predicted by stochastic resonance.

On average, there was a small improvement, showing people could read about half a line lower on a letter chart. This moved the average from 6/13.5 to 6/12 vision in our study, which is the minimum standard for driving a private car or motorcycle. If this were to occur for an individual, that could mean the difference between being allowed to drive or not being allowed to drive.

Additionally, we also saw the effect in a control group of healthy individuals, although the amount of vision gain was smaller. This suggests that people with healthy vision can also benefit from this setup.

What does the future look like?

Our study showed that noise-adding augmented reality devices may be a promising avenue for non-invasive visual aids for AMD patients. An approach like ours could help improve the quality of life in AMD patients while supporting greater independence.

Our work is only a proof of concept at this stage. Further research is required in various contexts (such as reading and driving tasks), with more patients, before we know how it might work in practice.

Pratik Raul, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Canberra and Jeroen van Boxtel, Associate Professor, Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Canberra

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Madeleine Pownall, University of Leeds

In the US state park of Robbers Cave, Oklahoma, Carolyn Wood Sherif is standing squinting up at the sun. The two wooden cabins before her rattle with shrieks and cries from excited 11-year-old boys. They have been split into two groups of 11 and encouraged to bond.

Over three long, laborious weeks in the summer of 1954, Wood Sherif watches as these boys become enthusiastically dedicated to their allocated groups. When instructed to compete for resources, they grow hostile towards their opponents. The experiment descends into inter-group violence and aggression.

This research was among the first naturalistic psychological studies to show how group formation can lead to prejudice and intense conflict. It is considered a classic study upon which the subdiscipline of social psychology – how mind and behaviour are influenced by the presence of other people – was born. Wood Sherif should have made her academic career from it.

But in many ways, scientific research is a culture, a club. There are people with the power to warmly invite others to participate, and others who are intentionally kept out. Many female scientists have suffered because of this power imbalance.

‘A wife helping her husband’

Wood Sherif ran the Robbers Cave study with her longstanding collaborator, colleague and husband, Muzafer Sherif. Yet while he enjoyed an illustrious career, her intellectual contributions to social psychology were literally written out of the historical record.

Wood started working as Sherif’s research assistant in 1944. At the time, his department at Princeton University did not allow women to be faculty members or graduate students, but he had the power to make an exception. They married a year later.

The pair collaborated extensively for over a decade. Wood Sherif was often the driving force behind their research, yet her scientific writing was often attributed solely to her husband. Wood Sherif’s name was removed from academic papers when they were circulated. “I was seen as a wife helping her husband,” she later recalled.

After her husband was awarded the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1968, Wood Sherif began to realise that social psychology might never welcome her in the same way. She joined the American women’s movement, a national campaign for legal, social and political gender equality. This connected her with more women in her discipline who were having similar frustrated experiences. Finally, Wood Sherif found a welcoming academic home.

She turned her focus sharply to identifying and exposing the presence of bias in psychology. Her core thesis was that it was flawed because most research was based on men’s experiences and treated male behaviour as the “normal” standard, leading to distorted and damaging views of women.

In 1979, Wood Sherif wrote my favourite psychological paper of all time. The paper, titled Bias in Psychology, offered a demolition job of psychological science over 16 glorious pages.

She warned that psychologists had gone awry by attempting to mimic the methodologies of the “hard sciences”, such as physics and chemistry, without first considering how these standards did not naturally apply to the scientific study of human beings in context.

Wood Sherif argued that people should be studied within their social context. She criticised psychologists for reducing complex human experiences into compartmentalised units that might have been easier to study, but were disconnected from real life.

She explicitly rejected the discipline’s reliance on experimental methods. Rather, she implored her peers to embrace the messy human aspects of their work in order for it to be useful, writing:

What goes on in our laboratories, clinics and classrooms must be seen for what it is: cultural phenomena and events where we can learn about individuals, provided we understand the times and the larger societies of which they are parts.

Wood Sherif set the agenda for a new, critical subdiscipline: feminist psychology. This includes analyses of how gender shapes both our experiences as people and the work we do as psychologists. Longstanding male bias in psychology has served as its manifesto.

As she pivoted away from social psychology, Wood Sherif’s work became funny, personal and prophetic. In their 1998 reappraisal of her seminal 1979 paper, psychologists Rhoda Unger and Arnold Kahn noted how her writing “provokes and excites as well as amuses”.

Sadly, this writing was also largely ignored. Cited predominately by feminist scholars, it never gained the discipline-wide impact it deserved.

The story of Wood Sherif, and psychology’s longstanding rejection of her work, has had a powerful impact on me. She helped me understand that we cannot evaluate the state of our science without first evaluating who is welcome within it. This is the crux of my own research, which I categorise as “feminist metascience”.

The garden of forking paths

Wood Sherif died in 1982 aged 60, but her ideas are arguably more relevant now than ever. Following widespread concerns about the replicability of psychological research in the 2010s, many psychologists are realising their research may be less objective than was previously believed.

Issues such as confirmation bias and the “garden of forking paths” (the many flexible decisions researchers make during analysis that can produce misleading results) are receiving widespread attention.

But while psychology is now in an era of science reform, there are two parallel conversations going on – by those who continue to insist upon reproducibility to strengthen psychological research, and those trying to reform the science as communal, compassionate and open to issues of bias.

The latter approach has been championed by a new generation of women in the discipline. They are forced to repeat the same critiques Wood Sherif made decades ago, because her warnings about bias and objectivity were not heeded.

There are, of course, many other examples of women’s contributions being written out of the scientific record. As I document in my new book Absent Minds: The Untold Story of the Women who Changed Psychology Forever, women have time and again been relegated to supporting roles as wives, secretaries or assistants of scientists, rather than scholars in their own right.

There is one, simple, enduring lesson that stories like Wood Sherif’s tell us: listen to women.

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Madeleine Pownall, Associate Professor in Psychology , University of Leeds

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Mary M. Hausfeld, University of Limerick

Scientific discoveries rarely happen alone. Modern research often involves teams spanning institutions and even countries. Yet when research is published in academic journals, credit is reduced to a list of names – a list that can shape careers.

Authorship is a key signal of expertise. It influences hiring, promotion, and funding decisions. Despite this importance, the process for determining authorship is often far from transparent.

In principle, authorship should reflect intellectual contributions. In practice, decisions about who becomes an author and whose name appears in the most prized position – often first or last – are negotiated within research teams. My research with colleagues has found that women report more negative experiences around authorship decisions.

Norms vary widely across disciplines, and unclear standards combined with power dynamics can create problems, especially for women researchers.

One of these is ghost authorship: when researchers who meaningfully contribute do not receive authorship. Another is gift authorship: when individuals who do not meaningfully contribute are included as authors.

Deciding who gets credit for a research project is complicated, even when everyone has positive intentions. These collaborations can span years, and individual roles often shift over time. Students graduate, researchers move institutions and projects evolve. As a result, authorship decisions are often shaped not just by contributions, but by a set of informal or “hidden” rules that are rarely made explicit.

These hidden rules can include power dynamics between senior and junior researchers. Junior researchers, such as PhD students and postdocs, often depend on supervisors for funding and future opportunities. This can make it difficult to raise concerns about authorship.

The standards for determining contributions may be ambiguous. While there’s recently been more discussion about the different ways someone can contribute to a project, authors may disagree about which contributions matter most. For example, how should writing the paper be weighed against collecting or analysing the data?

Fear of reputational harm could also discourage open discussion about credit. Because researchers are concerned about being labelled “difficult to work with” they may avoid raising concerns about authorship, even when the stakes are high.

Gifts and ghosts

To see how these decisions play out in practice, my collaborators and I surveyed more than 3,500 researchers across 12 countries – one of the largest studies of its kind. We asked researchers about their experiences with disagreement about authorship, comfort discussing authorship in their teams and experiences with problematic authorship practices.

We found that questionable authorship practices are remarkably common. In our study, 68% of researchers observed gift authorship, and 55% of researchers observed ghost authorship.

While experiences of authorship were similar across researchers in the natural sciences and social sciences, another pattern emerged. Women researchers reported experiencing more problematic authorship practices in collaborations. They encountered more disagreements over authorship decisions and felt less comfortable raising authorship concerns.

This is especially concerning given what researchers call the “leaky pipeline” in academia – where women are more likely to leave the field or are less likely to progress to senior positions over time. These patterns suggest that the hidden rules of authorship affect women and men differently.

Why it matters

These numbers aren’t just statistics. They represent missed opportunities, strained collaborations and careers quietly knocked off course. Authorship plays a central role in research careers, and even small differences in recognition can accumulate over time. When credit is uneven, opportunities become uneven. This shapes who stays in academia and whose ideas define a field. Over time, this may also push talented researchers away from academic careers or worsen existing inequalities like the leaky pipeline.

Universities rely on collaborative environments that are not only productive, but also fair. Addressing issues with authorship and its hidden rules is essential to continue moving toward better science.

In a separate study of US PhD-granting universities, my colleagues and I found that fewer than 25% had publicly available authorship policies. Even when policies did exist, they rarely offered guidance on how to handle concerns or resolve conflicts. Clearer institutional guidance and accessible dispute resolution procedures would provide researchers with a framework to more effectively navigate authorship.

In addition, authorship training can encourage earlier and more open conversations about authorship within research teams, particularly for junior researchers who may feel less comfortable raising these issues. Promoting more transparent documentation of individual contributions can help ensure that authorship reflects the work that was actually done, even as roles evolve over the course of a project. Training would clearly benefit early-career scholars, but would also be important for more senior academics who supervise doctoral students and help shape research norms.

When authorship is transparent and openly discussed, it can empower stronger research teams, more equitable career progression and greater trust in the scientific process. Science is a team effort, and our systems for giving credit should reflect that reality.

Mary M. Hausfeld, Assistant Professor in Management, University of Limerick

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