https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1143266

INTRO: A newly popular college drinking trend, the blackout rage gallon (BORG), fosters binge drinking and can lead to a host of alcohol-related harms, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, published at Rutgers University.

Prevalent in the drinking culture at many U.S. colleges and universities since around 2020, BORGs are one-gallon plastic jugs filled with alcohol and a choice of mixings and flavorings. Preparation for a BORG event, which is often a daytime gathering such as a tailgate or festival, typically involves decorating one’s personal BORG with a clever phrase or social-media-ready pun--for example, “It’s BORG o’clock somewhere” or “BORG to be wild.”

“Excessive drinking in young adults has been fueled by drinking games for many decades,” says lead researcher Andrea C. King, professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago. “But the mixing of hard liquor and additive flavorings in BORGs may be particularly harmful given the sweetness of the beverage and the lure of sharing one’s BORG and tasting others’ concoctions.”

The gallon-sized drink can contain up to a fifth of liquor, or about 17 standard drinks, according to survey answers obtained from more than 100 study participants from a range of private and public U.S. colleges and universities. King’s study is the first to present data on BORG use, as well as users’ and non-users’ perceptions and attitudes, positive and negative consequences, and future intentions.

“Nearly one third of respondents said they experienced a blackout from a BORG event,” says King. “While almost all reported they got buzzed or drunk, some (17%) vomited, and many (59%) said or did embarrassing things, we know that blackouts—that is, disruptions in memory consolidation due to heavy imbibing of alcohol—are a more serious consequence.”

The study also refers to reports of BORG use resulting in injuries and emergency room visits in several instances.

Such findings underscore misconceptions about BORGs, which social-media influencers originally touted as supporting harm-reduction efforts: Some BORG recipe ingredients shared online include electrolytes, caffeine, and/or water to offset a hangover or minimize drunkenness. The study’s data show that BORGs do not support these positive effects... (MORE - no ads)

Pre-European Indigenous Australian population was much larger than previously thought and decimated after arrival of First Fleet
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1143782

INTRO: Australia had a much larger Indigenous population before the arrival of Europeans than previously thought, according to new research.

The research also demonstrates much larger population losses resulting from colonisation than previously believed, with an estimated 93 per cent of the pre-European population removed in less than 80 years following the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet.

Professor Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University Global Ecology Professor and a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures (CIEHF), is part of a national research group working with Indigenous partners to investigate Indigenous population sizes through time.

Using sophisticated computer modelling they calculated that the Indigenous population was up to 7 times larger than previously estimated. “Understanding the size of Indigenous populations in Australia before European invasion in 1788 is essential to truth-telling and reconciliation,” says Professor Bradshaw.

The research team arrived at new population estimates through reviewing ethnographic observations, archaeological and genetic reconstructions, and modelling environmental carrying capacity across the continent to estimate the Indigenous population size before colonisation.

Many previous estimates are anchored by one of the earliest attempts at determining pre-colonisation populations by anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in the 1930s, who calculated a population of 250,000 people.

However, he acknowledged these values did not account for the impacts of lethal diseases, and frontier and structural violence. Increasingly, these impacts have been shown to be far more extensive than previously known and suggest that early figures underestimate the number of people across Australia.

Using modelled and genetics-based estimates (supported by, but not relying on, historical or ethnographic accounts), the researchers calculated a median pre-colonial Indigenous population of 2.22 million, or 0.29 people per square kilometre.

This compares with previous historical estimates of only 250,000–1,000,000 people, which the researchers say are underestimates due to the far-reaching impacts of disease, and frontier and structural violence that had affected populations by the time of early Australian censuses.

The new estimate also allows calculation of the number of excess deaths in the post-1788 era. To align with early census records, the model estimates 2.06 million excess deaths (an average of about 28,200 per year) occurred between 1788 and 1861.

These estimates show that by 1861, only about 7% of the estimated pre-colonial population survived... (MORE - no ads)

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1144000

INTRO: A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Queen Mary University of London, and other European institutions analysed a dataset representing almost 300,000 kilometres of Roman roads across the former empire, creating the most detailed quantitative picture yet of how the Roman road network was structured.

The study, published in Nature Communicationsfff on 15 September, challenges the idea that roads of the empire were uniformly straight and the famous saying that “all roads lead to Rome.” The analysis draws on "Itiner-e, The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads" and applies network centrality, a method for measuring how important a given point is to overall connectivity, to model the empire's road system.

"The study shows that Roman engineers adapted road construction to the landscape. While they favoured straight routes where possible, the roads were generally less straight than major modern ones. Mountains, valleys, rivers and settlements all helped shape their routes, while engineering techniques such as terracing, rock cutting, retaining walls and bridges allowed roads to cross challenging terrain,” says Dr. Adam Pazout from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, lead author of the study.

"The research reveals a sophisticated network in which provincial capitals often acted as vital crossroads, mediating regional overland communications. Crucially, these results are robust when we account for gaps and inconsistencies in the archaeological records," adds Dr. Matteo Mazzamurro from Queen Mary University of London.

The consistently high centrality of provincial capitals and main roads suggests that the development of the network involved complex, system-level decision-making. Rome itself was not the dominant hub of the Empire’s land transport network, and the late antique capital Byzantium was more central to empire-wide land mobility... (MORE - no ads)

Science is (partially) socially constructed
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/scie...nstructed/

EXCERPT: People decide which questions to ask, how to ask them, how to define terms, how to categorize nature, where to set thresholds of confirmation, which outcomes are meaningful, how to determine which studies get published and disseminated, and which scientists get promoted, get funded, and win awards. Science is also a community effort, and it works best when groups of scientists collaborate and provide a check on each other.

At the same time, the very nature of science means that the findings of science are constrained by reality. There is a “mind independent reality” and that reality pushes back. Some philosophers of the mid 20th century forgot that part, which is what lead to post-modernism notions that the findings of science are all socially constructed. They aren’t... (MORE - details)

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New Carlo Rovelli book challenges science's understanding of reality and the universe
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/14/nx-s1-596...lo-rovelli

EXCERPTS: This "God's-eye view" is also what's claimed as the purpose and promise of physics in many popular books on the subject. But, now, comes a new book by physicist Carlo Rovelli that explicitly rejects any path to an ultimate reality.

[...] As Rovelli puts it in his latest book, "Physics is often credited with a power it does not have: that of exhausting what can be known about the world. This is nonsense. Knowing the physical laws of the world does not amount to knowing the world."

This is a radical claim about physics, particularly for one of the world's most well-regarded physicists. Not only does it directly contradict the scientific triumphalism that one finds in many popular books about science, it's also a view that crashes against the perspectives of many contemporary philosophers of science. But as Rovelli writes, "we never leave the circle of perspectives." For him, this irreducibility of relationship is the central lesson of relativity and quantum mechanics.

One of the most original aspects of Rovelli's argument is to draw on philosophical sources beyond the usual suspects in the Greek or European tradition. He relies heavily on the classical philosophies of India and Asia... (MORE - details)

https://www.sciencealert.com/cern-detect...iggs-boson

EXCERPTS: Scientists have been producing and measuring entangled particles such as atoms and photons for decades, more recently hoping to exploit them for quantum communications and quantum computing. In 2024, the ATLAS Collaboration reported the first observation of quantum entanglement between pairs of top quarks produced at the LHC.

Z bosons do things a little differently. Unlike top quarks, which have two possible spin states, Z bosons have three – a distinction that, in the language of quantum information, makes a Z boson a qutrit, rather than a two-state qubit.

"And that makes another important difference, because this is the first time entanglement has been measured with elementary particles that are qutrits," Aguilar-Saavedra explained.

[...] There's a catch, though. A Higgs boson has a mass of around 125 GeV, while a Z boson weighs in at around 91 GeV. There simply isn't enough energy available for the Higgs to produce two ordinary Z bosons at once. So at least one of them has to be virtual.

Virtual particles are strange even by quantum-physics standards. They emerge fleetingly during collider interactions, but can't be observed as free particles in the way their "real" counterparts can. That raises an intriguing question: if one of the Z bosons in the pair is virtual, can it still participate in something as fundamentally quantum as entanglement? The new result suggests that it can.

[...] But the experiment also raises another, more intriguing question about the virtual Z itself. Physicists don't entirely agree on what it means to say a virtual particle "exists". Unlike ordinary particles, virtual particles can't be directly observed; some physicists regard them primarily as mathematical ingredients used to describe interactions.

Yet here, a virtual Z appears to behave in a strikingly particle-like way – it carries spin information that can become entangled with another Z. "One can ask: do virtual particles exist, or are they a construct of our minds that we use to calculate things?" Aguilar-Saavedra said.

He cautioned that the result doesn't settle that philosophical question, but said it could "shed a little light on whether virtual particles are particles or not."

"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then what we're looking at must be a duck," he said. "In this case, a virtual duck." The results have been published in Physical Review Letters...... (MORE - missing details)

RELATED (eurekalert): Oxford physicists help uncover ‘spooky’ quantum effect in the Large Hadron Collider

https://www.acsh.org/news/2026/09/12/hav...essed-food

EXCERPTS: The Environmental Working Group recently compared ultra-processed foods across major fast-food chains and found one conspicuous exception: Chipotle. That makes for an appealing yet incomplete nutritional story.

[...] This is not Chipotle’s first time in the food-borne illness rodeo. [...] My point here isn't to shame or blame Chipotle. Fresh and minimally processed produce is an important source of foodborne outbreaks because, unlike many highly processed foods, it often receives no final "kill step"—such as cooking or pasteurization—before reaching the consumer. None of the foodborne illness cases involved ultra-processed buns, sandwich meats (I’m looking at you, pepperoni), sauces, or dressings.

One hidden ingredient in processed foods is safety. The same industrial food system EWG criticizes for its processing also employs processing steps that address genuine food-safety problems. Processing isn't nutritional vandalism; it can perform useful functions.

EWG wants to frame the fast-food trade-off largely as convenience versus long-term health. But another axis matters: microbial safety. Fresh, minimally processed ingredients can offer nutritional advantages while retaining risks that cooking, preservation, and other processing steps are specifically designed to reduce. None of that makes ultra-processed food "healthy."

It simply reminds us that processing isn't a toxin; it's a technology. The relevant question isn't whether a food has been processed, but what the processing does, what problem it solves, and what trade-offs it creates... (MORE - missing details)

Drug improves sexual function for patients with depression, study finds
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1143897

INTRO: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and an inadequate response to standard antidepressants who received an add- on treatment with the drug lumateperone saw significantly improved sexual function, found a new study led by a University of Virginia School of Medicine researcher.

In a study of 480 patients, significant improvements in sexual function were seen in patients who were randomized to receive a daily 42 mg dose of lumateperone added to their antidepressant therapy compared with patients whose additional treatment was a harmless placebo. Improvements were seen across multiple patient groups including those with baseline sexual dysfunction, women, younger and older adults as well as across various aspects of sexual functioning (desire, arousal, orgasm and pleasure).

Approximately 68% of patients with major depressive disorder have sexual dysfunction, and the sexual side effects of antidepressant medications are a leading reason patients stop treatment. Lead researcher Anita H. Clayton, MD, a psychiatrist at UVA Health, hailed the findings as an important step forward in the management of sexual dysfunction in patients with depression... (MORE - no ads)

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What can go wrong with genital fillers?
https://theconversation.com/men-and-wome...ong-289872

EXCERPTS: Fillers are everywhere now – smoothing lines, plumping cheeks, adding volume around the eyes, nose and lips in clinics up and down the country. But some men are now having fillers injected into their penises to increase their size. [...] Research is limited when it comes to the risks, but a recent study estimated that complications occur in about 9% of men receiving hyaluronic acid fillers.

These complications can include bruising and swelling, as well as lumps and nodules. More serious problems include skin irritation, tissue breakdown and infections. The timing of these problems can vary. Bleeding and bruising tend to occur during the first week or two. Nodules may appear around the third week. Infections often appear around six or seven weeks after treatment, although they can occur years later.

In severe cases, infection can progress rapidly to multiple organ failure. There have also been cases of tissue death requiring part of the penis to be removed. And in March, social media influencer Igho Ubiribo, known as “Ego”, died from a pulmonary embolism following a penis filler procedure in Thailand.

Hyaluronic acid is not the only way men are trying to increase penis size. Another option involves taking fat from elsewhere in the body and injecting it into the penis. This carries its own risks. These include injecting fat into the wrong area, as well as swelling and bruising. Men can also develop lumps or deformities caused by uneven fat distribution or the death of the injected fat.

There is also the risk of infection with bacteria such as S aureus or E coli. In the most serious cases, tissue can die or the patient can die from a fat embolism.

Another treatment being offered for sexual enhancement is PRP, or platelet-rich plasma. These injections are not just marketed to men. The so-called “P-shot”, or priapus shot, is promoted for men, while the “O-shot”, or orgasm shot, is marketed to women... (MORE - missing details)

Pretty bad when you actually have to be paid to vote a certain way, as if there was no merit in voting that way to begin with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6t-KjM_BPo&t=28s