Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 5h

Human exceptionalism is at the root of the ecological crisis, claims evolutionary biologist #biology #biodiversity #ecology #humanity https://phys.org/news/2025-10-human-exceptionalism-root-ecological-crisis.html

Human exceptionalism is at the root of the ecological crisis, claims evolutionary biologist

In the grand story of evolution, the crowning human distinction is our big brain. But our large heads have been slow to recognize a less admirable trait of Homo sapiens—self-centeredness.

phys.org

Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 15h

And then there were none: Australia’s only shrew declared extinct #biodiversity #conservation #ecology

https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-none-australias-only-shrew-declared-extinct-265988

And then there were none: Australia’s only shrew declared extinct

Australia’s only known shrew has been declared extinct. Its loss emphasises the need for national protection of Australia’s rare and unique wildlife.

theconversation.com

Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 1d

CW: Nobel peace prize and Trump

The people who were hoping for a Nobel peace prize for #Trump live in a fantasy world.

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Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 1d

Climbing catfish. Now I've seen everything 🤣 #science

Thousands of climbing catfish filmed scaling waterfalls | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Thousands of climbing catfish filmed scaling waterfalls

New footage provides rare insight into the daring migration of an enigmatic fish

www.science.org

Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 1d

China's Tianwen-2 is on its way to Kamoʻoalewa, an asteroid that currently doubles as a "quasi-moon" of Earth. The spacecraft will collect samples & bring them back home.

On its outward trajectory, Tianwen-2 looked back and got this lovely view of our planet. 🧪🔭

english.news.cn/20251001/ef3...

This image released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Oct. 1, 2025 shows a view of the Tianwen-2 probe alongside Earth, captured by the probe during its deep-space journey. The newly released image, acquired by a monitoring camera mounted on the probe's robotic arm, showcases China's five-starred red flag and the white return capsule against the backdrop of a distant, blue Earth. (Some slight image processing by me.)

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 3d

Amazing: Comet ATLAS formed some 8 billion years ago. It made about 3 dozen circuits around our galaxy. It entered our our solar system & just passed 30 million kilometers from Mars...

...where ESA's ExoMars orbiter captured these images of the interstellar comet! 🧪🔭

www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

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Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

University wrongly accuses students of using artificial intelligence to cheat https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-09/artificial-intelligence-cheating-australian-catholic-university/105863524

University caught out using AI to wrongly accuse students of cheating with AI

An Australian university has accused thousands of its students of cheating with artificial intelligence. The problem? Many have done nothing wrong.

www.abc.net.au

Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

I completely support students using genAI well and condemn universities using unproven AI based evaluation tools to harass innocent students. #genai

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Michael J Hildebrand @michaeljhildebrand.bsky.social · 2d

Stomp fascism out of this country before it can stomp us all out of existence.

#ice #dhs #nationalguard

music clip: “If I Had a Hammer” by Sam Cooke

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Kaiser Lab @dkaiserlab.bsky.social · 3d

From line drawings to scene perception — our new review argues for moving beyond experimenter-driven manipulations toward participant-driven approaches to reveal what’s in our internal models of the visual world. 👁️✍️🛋
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Characterizing internal models of the visual environment | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Despite the complexity of real-world environments, natural vision is seamlessly efficient. To explain this efficiency, researchers often use predictive processing frameworks, in which perceptual effic...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 3d

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted “no one has died” as a result of U.S. foreign aid cuts. In Myanmar, the grieving father of a 2-year-old boy who died after their food rations were cut calls such claims a lie.

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

bit.ly

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3d

#WarRavagedPortland

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Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

The racist loons of Aussie sure are self projecting with this one. Ethnic cleansing indeed. #aussie

www.reddit.com/r/sydney/s/T...

A printed note delivered to a student's mailbox saying overseas students get out of Australia! They are invaders and ethnic cleansers, economic competitors and a national security problem! Australia first!

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Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

Perhaps it is more about who we entrust with the entirety of the software pipeline and supply chain. 🤔💻📜 #Trust #Software #Security #SupplyChain

Reflections on trusting trust | Communications of the ACM https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358198.358210

Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

Reflections on trusting trust, Ken Thompson's seminal paper that forces us to think about how hidden processes and abstractions in how software is written, compiled, distributed and run means we can never be sure about anything when we look at a program's source code.

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 2d

Life-size rock engravings of camels, gazelles, and other animals, found in Saudi Arabia and dating to between 12,800 and 11,400 years ago, demonstrate human occupation of an arid environment, according to a paper in Nature Communications. go.nature.com/4o1ON0p 🏺 🧪

This is figure 2, which shows rock art panels at Jebel Arnaan. Tracings highlight the layering of engravings, showing phase 1 in green, phase 2 in yellow, phase 3 in white and phase 4 in shades of blue.

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Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

Emily Blunt and Sag-Aftra join film industry condemnation of ‘AI actor’ Tilly Norwood | Film | The Guardian Emily Blunt and Sag-Aftra join film industry condemnation of ‘AI actor’ Tilly Norwood | Film | The Guardian https://share.google/MkhvdiCNeU41PGBQc

Emily Blunt and Sag-Aftra join film industry condemnation of ‘AI actor’ Tilly Norwood

US actors’ union joins stars in opposition to Norwood, which it says was created ‘using stolen performances’

share.google

Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻 @abesamma.bsky.social · 2d

The future is moving too fast for humanity. #ai

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 4d

Using health crises as weapons in great power rivalry is not new. Nations use them because they’re effective & inexpensive.

During the Cold War, the USSR ran a massive AIDS disinfo campaign in Africa against the US to blunt the US soft power. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-de...

Lessons From Operation "Denver," the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign

Historian Douglas Selvage sheds light on a conspiracy theory that reverberates to this day.

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 4d

The impact of these intelligence operations are still with us today. The Soviet Operation Denver campaign spread false stories about the U.S. inventing HIV, and while it wasn’t about vaccines, it helped create broader distrust in science and public health that still fuels vaccine skepticism today.

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 4d

They know it's not true, but that's not the point.

"Republicans post fake image of Oregon protest – using photos of South America" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Republicans post fake image of Oregon protest – using photos of South America

A federal judge had blocked Trump’s request to deploy California national guard to Portland

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 4d

Many people who spread misinfo are fully aware that what they’re sharing isn’t true, but they continue to do so b/c it supports their beliefs, reinforces their worldview, or helps push a particular narrative. In other words, accuracy often takes a back seat to persuasion or emotional satisfaction.

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Emily Hunt @emily.space · 4d

Today's reading begins with Lise Meitner, who co-discovered nuclear fission (she wrote the paper!) and was in general an INCREDIBLE trailblazing scientist.

Except, as a Jew, she had to flee Nazi Germany to Sweden and lost her professorship in Berlin. The men she worked with got the prize instead 🧪🔭

Lise Meitner - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Simeon Schmauß @stim3on.bsky.social · 6d

Last night, NASA's Perseverance rover looked up at the night sky once more, to capture interstellar #comet 3I/Atlas flying by the red planet.

The distance was "only" 0.2 AU or 30 Mio km, far closer than the comet ever got to Earth. 🔭 #3IAtlas

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon Schmauß

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Reposted by Abraham Samma🔬🔭👨‍💻

Simeon Schmauß @stim3on.bsky.social · 8d

I think Perseverance may have spotted interstellar comet 3I/Atlas last night from Mars!

After stacking 20 images from Mastcam-Z, I found a faint smudge of light in the constellation Corona Borealis close to the location where the comet was expected. 🔭

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon Schmauß

image of the night sky showing a starfield with several dark and bright stars that are quite elongated due to the long exposure time.

the stars of the constellation corona borealis are annotated in green. a faint smudge, perhaps comet 3I/Atlas is marked with a red circle.

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