meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland
@meharpist.bsky.social
3.1K followers 300 following 99 posts
I'm Nature's Deputy Editor for ecology, evolution and social science and handle papers in cog neuro, psych, and a variety of behavioral and social sciences. When I'm not working, I'm a mom (and sometimes even try to find time to play my harp or ski).
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 2d
or in the original paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Creative experiences and brain clocks - Nature Communications
Creative experiences such as dance, music, drawing, and strategy video games might preserve brain health. The authors show that regular practice or short training in these activities is linked to brains that look younger and work more efficiently.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 2d
I play the harp and have always loved music and being creative, so was very excited to see this paper in Nature Communications showing that creative hobbies may slow brain aging! 🧪 Read more in @nature.com's news coverage: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Creative hobbies could slow brain ageing at the molecular level
To keep the mind young, dance the tango.
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 5d
And for anybody who's interested, here's a link to the original paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour - Nature
People cheat more when they delegate tasks to artificial intelligence, and large language models are more likely than humans to comply with unethical instructions—a risk that can be minimized by introducing prohibitive, task-specific guardrails.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 5d
One of "my" recent @nature.com papers showed how delegating tasks to AI/LLMs can increase dishonest behavior... and I'm delighted to say that it was picked up by @sciam.bsky.social. Read more in their story here: www.scientificamerican.com/article/peop...
People Are More Likely to Cheat When They Use AI
Participants in a new study were more likely to cheat when delegating to AI—especially if they could encourage machines to break rules without explicitly asking for it
www.scientificamerican.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 16d
I feel very proud to be part of @nature.com, and to have colleagues who handled this excellent #DeepSeek paper that describes DeepSeek-R1, because it's the first widely used commercial LLM that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
DeepSeek-R1 incentivizes reasoning in LLMs through reinforcement learning - Nature
A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing t...
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 16d
I love taking trains so was so glad to see @nature.com's recent editorial advocating for sustainable rail travel www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Make trains great again — for the sake of people and the planet
As railways enter their third century of service, research must support their renaissance for more-sustainable travel that supports human development.
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 17d
It's accompanied by an excellent News and Views that explains how this primes the brain for decline in later years www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Years of hits to the head prime the brain for decline
Repetitive head impacts trigger neuronal loss and disrupt blood vessels and immune cells long before the accumulation of neurotoxic tau protein.
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 17d
I feel like this should go without saying, but repeated hits to the head can only be bad: A recent @nature.com paper describes the neuron los and inflammation caused by repeated head trauma in young athletes 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Repeated head trauma causes neuron loss and inflammation in young athletes - Nature
Repetitive head impacts from contact sports are associated with brain inflammation, vascular damage and neuron loss that are independent of hyperphosphorylated tau pathology.
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 20d
Would you let AI (LLMs) cheat for you? New work out in @nature.com shows that people are indeed willing to instruct AI in ways that will benefit themselves, despite not being totally honest. Great work by @nckobis.bsky.social and @iyadrahwan.bsky.social et al 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour - Nature
People cheat more when they delegate tasks to artificial intelligence, and large language models are more likely than humans to comply with unethical instructions—a risk that can be minimized by ...
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 22d
Did you know that people who move to more walkable cities in the US end up walking more? This seems obvious, but is quite solid evidence for the influence of the built environment on human activity and well-being. Read more in the @nature.com paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity - Nature
By analysing the smartphone data of 2,112,288 participants, in particular observing and comparing the activity of the same individual in two different environments, we find that increases in the walka...
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 23d
It's based on a recent @nature.com paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors - Nature
Climate change made 213 historical heatwaves reported over 2000–2023 more likely and more intense, to which each of the 180 carbon majors (fossil fuel and cement producers) substantially contributed.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 23d
Did you know that scientists have been able to link heatwaves to the carbon emissions from specific companies? Read more in @nature.com's recent new story 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Heatwaves linked to carbon emissions from specific companies
Nearly one-quarter of heatwaves would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without global warming — and can be attributed to the emissions of individual energy producers.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 27d
or in our news coverage www.nature.com/articles/d41...
An abiding mystery of the French Revolution is solved — by epidemiology
The period of panic and unrest called the Great Fear was triggered by deliberately spread rumours, according to methods borrowed from pandemic playbooks.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 27d
Hear more about this work on the nature podcast www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Viral spread: how rumours surged in revolutionary France
Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 27 August 2025
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 27d
How did rumors spread in revolutionary France? A recent @nature paper take an epidemiological approach to understand the spread of the "great fear" in France... and is an example of the type of social science work that we are now publishing www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Epidemiology models explain rumour spreading during France’s Great Fear of 1789 - Nature
Epidemiological methods are used to show that the Great Fear of 1789, a series of peasant insurrections in rural revolutionary France, was driven by deliberate political action rather than spontaneous...
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Sep 5
I've always felt that @bsky.app is better for research-related information, an opinion supported by @nature.com 's survey and a recent arXiv preprint: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Sep 5
And for those with less time, the authors put together a short summary that explains the study, it's contributions, and some opinions of experts in the field: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How the brain’s amygdala reacts when making decisions to avoid losses
Neural noise increases before choosing to explore other options when faced with possible adverse consequences.
www.nature.com
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Sep 5
People explore unfamiliar options more when deciding how to avoid losses than when seeking gains, shows a recent paper published in @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning - Nature
Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 25
The @nature.com news story is based on this paper in Nature Microbiology www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A defined microbial community reproduces attributes of fine flavour chocolate fermentation - Nature Microbiology
An in-depth microbiological and metagenomic analysis of Colombian farm and fermentation facilities resulted in the design of a defined microbial community that can reproduce the flavour of fine chocol...
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 25
Why does chocolate taste so good? One answer is the microbes www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Why chocolate tastes so good: microbes that fine-tune its flavour
Manipulating the microbial communities involved in cocoa-bean fermentation could make chocolate even more delicious.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 21
The content produced by genAI is based on others' ideas... does this count as plagiarism? Read more in this fascinating @nature.com news feature: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What counts as plagiarism? AI-generated papers pose new risks
Researchers argue over whether ‘novel’ AI-generated works use others’ ideas without credit.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 11
It seems that concepts that used to be science fiction are rapidly becoming reality. How can we make sure this happens in the most responsible way possible? A Perspective in @nature.com by Iyad Rahwan et al outlines a method for researching "science fiction" science 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The science fiction science method - Nature
The ‘science fiction science’ method simulates future technologies and collects quantitative data on the attitudes and behaviours of participants in various future scenarios, with the aim of predictin...
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 8
And for those of you who want a more concise and accessible summary, read the research briefing here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Parent-of-origin effects found for gene variants that affect human growth and metabolism
Some genetic variants have opposing effects depending on whether they are inherited from the mother or the father.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 8
Did you know that the same gene can have the opposite effect on a child, depending on whether it came from the mother or father? I definitely didn't until I read this @nature.com paper 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Parent-of-origin effects on complex traits in up to 236,781 individuals - Nature
A novel multistep strategy reveals how parent-of-origin effects shape complex traits in large-scale biobanks.
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meharpist.bsky.social
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · Aug 1
Why is it that immigrants tend to make less money than natives? a recent @nature.com paper shows it's primarily due to immigrants' lack of access to high-paying jobs 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs - Nature
Data from nine European and North American countries reveal that the disparity in earnings between immigrants and natives is largely a result of segregation of immigrant workers into lower-paying jobs...
www.nature.com
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