**A Key Palaeolithic Site Bridging Anatolia and the Aegean: Biber Deresi, Assos**

"_Biber Deresi is identified as a key site, facilitating hominin movement and communication between Asia and Europe, and providing a novel contribution to the Palaeolithic map of the Aegean._"

Karahan, G. and Arslan, N. (2025) ‘A Key Palaeolithic Site Bridging Anatolia and the Aegean: Biber Deresi, Assos’, European Journal of Archaeology, 28(3), pp. 281–303. doi: doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2025.10.

@archaeodons @academicchatter

**Raising concerns on the dangers of linking biological invasions to human migration**

"_In summary, in the current political climate, as invasion discourses about migrants are indeed a global trend from Europe and the US to South Africa, India or Hong Kong, drawing parallels between biological invasion and human migration risks facilitating the misappropriation of invasion science research by political ideologies, potentially criminalising migrant communities and legitimising exclusionary measures of migrants._"

Barbulescu, R. et al. (2025) ‘Raising concerns on the dangers of linking biological invasions to human migration’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 48(13), pp. 2496–2501. doi: doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025..

@science @academicchatter

**Spaces of Hybridized Prefatory Extremism (HYPE) on Social Media**

"_While extremism is usually perceived to be a matter of extreme ideologies and methods, social media enables and shapes distinct hybridization processes by which conspiracy beliefs, personal grievances, and various ad hoc convictions are combined with ideology fragments, consequently producing new extremist narratives._"

Petersen, L. N., & Johansen, M. B. (2025). Spaces of Hybridized Prefatory Extremism (HYPE) on Social Media. Social Media + Society, 11(2). doi.org/10.1177/20563051251340 (Original work published 2025).

:iphonex: 🚽 **Smartphone use on the toilet and the risk of hemorrhoids**

"_The study suggests that prolonged engagement with smartphones while using the toilet may be associated with an increased prevalence of hemorrhoids._"

Ramprasad C, Wu C, Chang J, Rangan V, Iturrino J, et al. (2025) Smartphone use on the toilet and the risk of hemorrhoids. PLOS ONE 20(9): e0329983. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0.

@science

🧬 **Ancient DNA connects large-scale migration with the spread of Slavs**

"_Our data demonstrate large-scale population movement from Eastern Europe during the sixth to eighth centuries, replacing more than 80% of the local gene pool in Eastern Germany, Poland and Croatia. Yet, we also show substantial regional heterogeneity as well as a lack of sex-biased admixture, indicating varying degrees of cultural assimilation of the autochthonous populations._"

Gretzinger, J., Biermann, F., Mager, H. et al. Ancient DNA connects large-scale migration with the spread of Slavs. Nature (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-094.

@archaeodons @science

🇬🇧 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 📖 **No Country for Travellers British visitors to Spain and Portugal, 1760–1820**

"_The travellers’ memoirs reflect changing perceptions of Spain and Portugal as modernisation raised new hopes that vied with pessimism and ancient prejudice, and also the persistence of cultural stereotypes, while the counterintuitive relationship between civilian travel and armed conflict emerges through a case study of the Peninsular War._"

🔗 uclpress.co.uk/book/no-country.

@histodons @bookstodons

**‘Keseph’: The Use of Silver Money in the Southern Levant from the Middle Bronze Age to the End of the Iron Age (~ 2000–600 BC)**

"_The Southern Levant saw significant use of silver during the final stages of the Middle Bronze Age, with the first silver-currency hoards appearing at Shiloh and Gezer (~ 1650/1600–1600/1550 BC), predating other regions. Although silver was temporarily replaced by gold in the Late Bronze Age, it re-emerged as the dominant form of money by the Late Bronze Age IIB, ~ 1300 BC, a status it retained until the end of the Iron Age (~ 600 BC), despite occasional shortages._"

Eshel, T. ‘Keseph’: The Use of Silver Money in the Southern Levant from the Middle Bronze Age to the End of the Iron Age (~ 2000–600 BC). J World Prehist 38, 5 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s10963-025-091.

@archaeodons

**Morphodynamic Foundations of Sumer**

"_We propose that tidal irrigation offers a plausible jumpstarting mechanism for high-yield, diversified agriculture providing an impetus for urbanization. As access to sea was restricted by delta build-up and tides shifted with the advancing deltaic coast, intensified reliance on mercurial river regimes eventually led to the expansive fluvial irrigation network of Early Dynastic city-states._"

Giosan L, Goodman R (2025) Morphodynamic Foundations of Sumer. PLOS ONE 20(8): e0329084. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0.

**The Politics of Small Business Owners**

"_...we find consistent evidence that small business owners are more likely to identify with and vote for right-wing parties. We find that this tendency cannot be fully explained by factors that cause people to select into being small business owners. Rather, we identify a key operational channel: the experience of being a small business owner leads people to adopt conservative views on government regulation._"

Malhotra, N., Margalit, Y. and Shi, S. (2025) ‘The Politics of Small Business Owners’, British Journal of Political Science, 55, p. e94. doi: doi.org/10.1017/S0007123425000.

@politicalscience

📰 **You are what you read: Antagonistic narcissism predicts increased preference for antisocial and reduced preference for prosocial information**

"_In two studies, we investigated how antagonistic narcissism affects one’s choice of news headlines. We also examined narcissists’ social motives, (affective) empathy, and sensation seeking as potential underlying mechanisms (S2)._"

Chen, J. et al. (2025) 'You are what you read: Antagonistic narcissism predicts increased preference for antisocial and reduced preference for prosocial information,' Journal of Research in Personality, p. 104653. doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2025.104.

@psychology

"_Hayek’s abandonment of the established view on the Aristotelian roots of the Austrian school can be better understood by considering the intellectual environment of his time. His eventual adoption of Karl Popper’s point of view on Aristotle meant taking a stance against Karl Polanyi’s democratic socialism and distancing himself from Wilhelm Röpke’s Catholic conservatism_"

Karp, M. (2025) ‘HAYEK ON ARISTOTLE: THE DEBRIS OF A GENEALOGY OF MODERNITY, VIA POPPER, POLANYI, AND RÖPKE’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 47(3), pp. 317–338. doi: doi.org/10.1017/S1053837225000.

@histodons @economics

🖥️ **Does generative AI help in learning programming: Students’ perceptions, reported use and relation to performance**

"_Frequent AI use links to lower scores, likely as weaker students rely more on study aids._"

Lepp, M. and Kaimre, J. (2025) 'Does generative AI help in learning programming: students’ perceptions, reported use and relation to performance,' Computers in Human Behavior Reports, p. 100642. doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.10.

@ai

**Rise of the alt-White? Examining the prevalence of perceived racial and gender discrimination among White men from 2014 to 2023**

"_Taken together, these results suggest that we identified two distinct ‘types’ of White men who feel discriminated against: (a) an economically disadvantaged group seeking to explain their disadvantage (the Disenfranchised) and (b) a more privileged group threatened by recent social progress for structurally disadvantaged groups (the Radicalized)._"

Lilly, K. J., Kimberley, C., Bertenshaw, Z., Bahamondes, J., Sibley, C. G., & Osborne, D. (2025). Rise of the alt-White? Examining the prevalence of perceived racial and gender discrimination among White men from 2014 to 2023. British Journal of Social Psychology, 64, e70010. doi.org/10.1111/bjso.70010.

@psychology @socialscience

**Genetic Evidence of Yersinia pestis from the First Pandemic**

"_This study provides the first genomic evidence of Y. pestis in the Eastern Mediterranean during the First Pandemic, linking archaeological findings with pathogen genomics near the origin point of the Plague of Justinian._"

Adapa, S.R.; Hendrix, K.; Upadhyay, A.; Dutta, S.; Vianello, A.; O’Corry-Crowe, G.; Monroy, J.; Ferrer, T.; Remily-Wood, E.; Ferreira, G.C.; et al. Genetic Evidence of Yersinia pestis from the First Pandemic. Genes 2025, 16, 926. doi.org/10.3390/genes16080926.

@archaeodons @science

🇵🇹 🧬 **The genetic history of Portugal over the past 5,000 years**

"_We reveal dynamic patterns of migration in line with cultural exchange across millennia, but also the persistence of local ancestries._"

Roca-Rada, X., Davidson, R., Williams, M.P. et al. The genetic history of Portugal over the past 5,000 years. Genome Biol 26, 248 (2025). doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-037.

@science @archaeology @anthropology

🇮🇳 🇩🇪 **Manoeuvring Across Academia in National Socialist Germany: The Life and Work of Devendra Nath Bannerjea**

"_The article explores the relationship between knowledge production and National Socialist state politics through the lens of Bannerjea’s life, focussing on the exchange of resources between Bannerjea and the National Socialist apparatus._"

Framke, M. Manoeuvring Across Academia in National Socialist Germany: The Life and Work of Devendra Nath Bannerjea. N.T.M. 31, 307–332 (2023). doi.org/10.1007/s00048-023-003.

🖥️ **Fidelity of Medical Reasoning in Large Language Models**

"_When forced to reason beyond familiar answer patterns, all models demonstrate declines in accuracy, challenging claims of artificial intelligence’s readiness for autonomous clinical deployment._"

Bedi S, Jiang Y, Chung P, Koyejo S, Shah N. Fidelity of Medical Reasoning in Large Language Models. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(8):e2526021. doi: doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkope.

🖥️ **Does ChatGPT Ignore Article Retractions and Other Reliability Concerns?**

"_In a follow-up investigation, 61 claims were extracted from retracted articles from the set, and ChatGPT 4o-mini was asked 10 times whether each was true. It gave a definitive yes or a positive response two-thirds of the time, including for at least one statement that had been shown to be false over a decade ago._"

Thelwall, M., M. Lehtisaari, I. Katsirea, K. Holmberg, and E.-T. Zheng. 2025. “ Does ChatGPT Ignore Article Retractions and Other Reliability Concerns?.” Learned Publishing 38, no. 4: e2018. doi.org/10.1002/leap.2018.

"_The Seleucid era was the first to introduce continuous counting of years, a system adopted by many societies for over a millenium. Its usage gradually declined during the Middle Ages and early modern period, and today it is preserved only by a small group of Yemenite Jews for religious purposes. This article explores the preservation of this calendar within the Jewish community of Yemen, where it was referred to as the “Era of Contracts” (Minyan ha-Shetarot)._"

Anzi, M. The Seleucid Era and Rhythms of Time Consciousness in Modern Jewish Yemen. JEW HIST (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s10835-025-094.

@histodons

**”My AI is Lying to Me”: User-reported LLM hallucinations in AI mobile apps reviews**

"_The estimated prevalence of user-reported LLM hallucinations (RQ1) at 1.75% of AI-error-related reviews, while seemingly modest, represents a high-impact, low-frequency type of error that significantly erodes user trust. For product managers and QA leads, this signals that while hallucinations may not be the most common complaint, their presence is a critical indicator of deep model failure._"

Massenon, R., Gambo, I., Khan, J.A. et al. ”My AI is Lying to Me”: User-reported LLM hallucinations in AI mobile apps reviews. Sci Rep 15, 30397 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-154.

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