Friday, June 20, 2025

Social factors may determine how human-like we think animals are

Cell Press

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Graphical abstract Amici et al. / iScience
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Credit: iScience/Amici et al.

From depressed polar bears to charismatic pandas, conservationists have used anthropomorphism, or the practice of attributing human qualities to non-human subjects, to garner public support for conservation efforts. In a new study publishing June 18 in the Cell Press journal iScience, scientists tease apart some of the social factors that influence whether people view animals similarly to humans. The researchers found that factors such as social integration, urban living, formal education, and religion can affect an individual’s tendency to assign human characteristics to animals. This in turn may affect their willingness to engage with conservation programs.

“Unfortunately, anthropomorphism significantly influences conservation efforts,” says author Federica Amici of Leipzig University. “Species that appear more human-like or exhibit human-like behaviors usually tend to receive more attention, funding, and public support. This preference can overshadow the ecological importance of less charismatic species, undermining broader conservation goals.”

To understand the personal factors that may influence an individual’s tendency to anthropomorphize, the research team conducted a survey of 741 adults from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia, and Spain. The questionnaire focused on participants’ upbringing as well as on their perceptions about animals’ physical similarity to humans and their beliefs about animals’ capacity for emotion, consciousness, and free will. The survey found that socially isolated people more often associate animals with human emotions and physical similarity than their more socially connected counterparts.

“People who feel lonely or aren’t well connected to others often try to meet their need for social connection by seeing human-like qualities in animals or other non-human things,” says Amici. “For example, there is literature showing that individuals who are chronically lonely are more likely to treat their pets as if they have human thoughts and feelings than those who have strong social ties.”

Those with more “urban” experiences—such as having a pet, visiting zoos, or consuming media with animals—had the strongest trend toward anthropomorphism across the survey. These participants were more likely to assign consciousness, emotions, and intentionality to animals than those with fewer of these interactions. In contrast, those with greater formal education were less likely to think animals had autonomy.

Religious upbringing also had an impact, with participants of monotheistic faiths like Islam and Christianity being less likely to ascribe consciousness or free will to animals in comparison to participants from religions such has Buddhism and Hinduism. Agnostics and atheists also gave less free will to animals on average, with a score comparable to those of Christian faith.

“While we know that religious systems provide comprehensive sets of values, norms, and beliefs that shape how people relate to nature and animals, I was struck by the clear difference between monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions in terms of anthropomorphic tendencies,” says Amici. “Non-monotheistic religions appear to contribute more strongly to envisioning a space of coexistence between humans and other species.”

Taken together, these results help identify communities where attributing human traits to animals may enhance conservation strategies. However, Amici notes that identifying the underpinnings of anthropomorphism should not be the primary aim.

“I think anthropomorphizing species can be an effective approach, but it should be used with caution,” says Amici. “This could be counterbalanced by emphasizing other aspects, such as the species’ crucial ecological role. Whatever approach conservationists take, I believe it is essential to remain aware of the many cognitive and emotional biases that shape human perceptions of nature and other animals.”

The researchers noted that while the study captures larger trends, the results are not representative of the full breadth of people’s views and experiences surrounding anthropomorphism.

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iScience, Amici et al.: “Experience with animals, religion and social integration predict anthropomorphism across five countries” https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)00954-X

iScience (@iScience_CP) is an open access journal from Cell Press that provides a platform for original research and interdisciplinary thinking in the life, physical, and earth sciences. The primary criterion for publication in iScience is a significant contribution to a relevant field combined with robust results and underlying methodology. Visit: http://www.cell.com/iscience. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Journal

iScience

DOI

10.1016/j.isci.2025.112693

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Experience with animals, religion and social integration predict anthropomorphism across five countries

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2025

Message in a bubble: using physics to encode messages in ice

Cell Press

Inspired by naturally occurring air bubbles in glaciers, researchers have developed a method to encode messages in ice. Publishing June 18 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science, the paper explains how the team encoded frozen messages in binary and Morse code by manipulating the size and distribution of bubbles in ice. The method could be used to store short messages in very cold regions such as Antarctica and the Arctic, where conventional information storage is difficult or prohibitively expensive.

“In naturally cold regions, the use of trapped air bubbles as a means of message delivery and storage uses less energy than telecommunication and is more covert than paper documents,” says mechanical engineer and author Mengjie Song, affiliated with the Beijing Institute of Technology. “These ice messages can be preserved for a long time and the messages they carry are easy to visualize and read.”

As water freezes, dissolved gases are squeezed out and pushed together, forming trapped pockets of air (e.g., bubbles). These bubbles are either egg-shaped or needle-shaped and can usually be found within three-dimensional chunks of ice. To investigate how these air bubbles form in ice, the team used a cold plate to freeze a two-dimensional layer of water between two transparent sheets of plastic. Then, they tested different temperatures and orientations to examine the impact of freezing rate and direction on bubble formation.

They found that suddenly increasing the freezing rate by sharply decreasing the cold plate temperature resulted in a single bubble layer. Faster freezing rates resulted in egg-shaped bubbles, so by gradually reducing the freezing rate, they were able to produce consecutive layers containing differently shaped bubbles: the first layer contained only egg-shaped bubbles, followed by a layer with egg- and needle-shaped bubbles, followed by a layer of needle-shaped bubbles—and finally a bubbleless layer of clear ice.

“Since bubble position and shape are determined by the freezing rate, it is possible to manually control the freezing rate to manipulate the shape and distribution of bubbles in ice,” says Song.

Next, the researchers tested whether they could use this information to encode messages in ice. To do this, they assigned bubble sizes, shapes, and positions to distinct characters within Morse and binary codes. Then, they programmed their cold plate to control the rate and direction of freezing, resulting in a slice of ice with appropriately positioned and sized air bubbles.

To read the frozen message, the team took a photo of the ice and converted it to gray scale. Then, they trained a computer to automatically detect the position and size of the air bubbles based on their gray value (bubbleless regions are dark gray, whereas bubbles are almost white). Based on these grayscale values, the computer decoded the frozen message into binary or Morse code and then converted the message into a readable format—in this case, as English letters and Arabic numerals.

After comparing Morse and binary coding methods, the researchers concluded that binary coding is the better option because it is able to store messages that are around ten times longer.

Being able to control the position and distribution of bubbles in ice could have applications beyond messaging, the researchers say. For example, since bubbles decrease ice’s mechanical strength, placing bubbles in a straight line could enable ice sheets to be neatly snapped, like the perforated line on a graham cracker. The method could also help scientists understand how bubbles form in other solid materials, such as aluminum, which cannot be imaged internally.

“Our findings can be widely applied in many areas,” says Song. “In our daily life, we can manipulate bubbles to efficiently produce ice with different bubble contents and create beautiful ice sculptures. In industry, our research can help with metal smelting and manufacturing, as well as de-icing for aircraft and ships.”

In the future, the team plans to investigate the impact of gas type and concentration on bubble ice characteristics and to further examine bubble formation in three-dimensional contexts.

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This research was supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing Municipal Commission of Science and Technology, Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park Management Committee, Department of Science and Technology of Hebei Province, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Key Laboratory of Icing and Anti/De-icing, and the Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program by the Beijing Association for Science and Technology.

Cell Reports Physical Science, Shao et al., “Manipulating trapped air bubbles in ice for message storage in cold regions” www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(25)00221-8

Journal

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2025.102622

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

anipulating trapped air bubbles in ice for message storage in cold regions

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2025

Climate change cuts global crop yields, even when farmers adapt

A sweeping new analysis finds that rising global temperatures will dampen the world’s capacity to produce food from most staple crops, even after accounting for economic development and adaptation by farmers

Stanford University

Maps — image:
Projected end-of-century change in crop yields resulting from climate change in a scenario where emissions remain high, accounting for adaptation to climate and increasing incomes.
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Credit: Adapted from Hultgren et al. (Nature, 2025)

In brief:

New research offers the most comprehensive look yet at how global crop yields are likely to change as the planet warms.
After adjusting for how real farmers adapt, researchers estimate global yields of calories from staple crops in a high-emissions future will be 24% lower in 2100 than they would be without climate change.
U.S. agriculture and other breadbaskets are among the hardest-hit in the study’s projections, while regions in Canada, China, and Russia may benefit.

The global food system faces growing risks from climate change, even as farmers seek to adapt, according to a June 18 study in Nature.

In contrast to previous studies suggesting that warming could increase global food production, the researchers estimate that every additional degree Celsius of global warming on average will drag down the world’s ability to produce food by 120 calories per person per day, or 4.4% of current daily consumption.

“When global production falls, consumers are hurt because prices go up and it gets harder to access food and feed our families,” said Solomon Hsiang, professor of environmental social sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a senior author of the study. “If the climate warms by 3 degrees, that’s basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.” That’s a high cost for a world where more than 800 million people at times go a day or more without food because of inadequate access.

The projected losses for U.S. agriculture are especially steep. “Places in the Midwest that are really well suited for present day corn and soybean production just get hammered under a high warming future,” said lead study author Andrew Hultgren, an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “You do start to wonder if the Corn Belt is going to be the Corn Belt in the future.”

Hsiang and Hultgren worked on the analysis with more than a dozen scholars over the past eight years as a project with Climate Impact Lab, a research consortium that Hsiang co-directs with University of Chicago economist Michael Greenstone, Rutgers University climate scientist Robert Kopp, and climate policy expert Trevor Houser of the Rhodium Group.

“This is basically like sending our agricultural profits overseas. We will be sending benefits to producers in Canada, Russia, China. Those are the winners, and we in the U.S. are the losers,” said Hsiang. “The longer we wait to reduce emissions, the more money we lose.”

Limits to adaptation

The study draws on observations from more than 12,000 regions across 55 countries. The team analyzed adaptation costs and yields for crops that provide two-thirds of humanity’s calories: wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, barley, and cassava.

Previous studies failed to account for realistic adaptation by farmers, assuming either “perfect” adaptation or none at all. The new study is the first to systematically measure how much farmers adjust to changing conditions. In many regions, for example, they switch crop varieties, shift planting and harvesting dates, or alter fertilizer use.

The team estimates these adjustments offset about one-third of climate-related losses in 2100 if emissions continue to rise, but the rest remain. “Any level of warming, even when accounting for adaptation, results in global output losses from agriculture,” said Hultgren.

The steepest losses occur at the extremes of the agricultural economy: in modern breadbaskets that now enjoy some of the world’s best growing conditions, and in subsistence farming communities relying on small harvests of cassava. In terms of food production capacity from staple crops, the analysis finds yield losses may average 41% in the wealthiest regions and 28% in the lowest income regions by 2100.

The modeling points to a 50% chance that global rice yields will increase on a hotter planet, largely because rice benefits from warmer nights, while the odds that yields will decline by century’s end range from roughly 70% to 90% for each of the other staple crops.

Higher emissions bring bigger losses

With the planet already about 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial levels, farmers in many areas are experiencing longer dry spells, unseasonable heat waves, and erratic weather that undermines yields, even when inputs like fertilizer and water improve.

The study modeled future crop yields under a range of warming and adaptation scenarios. By 2100, the authors estimate global crop yields would be dragged down 11% if emissions rapidly plummet to net zero and 24% if emissions continue to rise unchecked.

In the shorter term, by 2050 the authors estimate climate change will drag global crop yields down by 8% – regardless of how much emissions rise or fall in the coming decades. That’s because carbon dioxide emissions stay in the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing damage for hundreds of years. “If we ignore those long-run damages, we assign an economic value of zero to them, and that is clearly wrong,” Hultgren said.

New tools aim to help policymakers target resources

Hsiang, Hultgren, and colleagues are now working to help governments make informed decisions about where to direct adaptation investments, recognizing that many farmers still lack access to even basic agricultural resources, such as better fertilizer and accurate weather data.

The team is working with the United Nations Development Program to disseminate the new climate risk insights to governments around the world and developing a system to identify communities most at risk of yield declines and where targeted support can be most effective. “We’re focusing on how to make it so that this is not actually what our future looks like, even if we can’t get our act together on the emissions side,” Hsiang said.

A favorable climate, he added, is a big part of what keeps farmland productive across generations. “Farmers know how to maintain the soil, invest in infrastructure, repair the barn,” Hsiang said. “But if you’re letting the climate depreciate, the rest of it is a waste. The land you leave to your kids will be good for something, but not for farming.”

Hsiang and Greenstone are also affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Additional authors of the study are affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley; the National Bureau of Economic Research; Rhodium Group; BlackRock; University of Chicago; Rutgers University; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; University of Delaware, Newark; and Fudan University in Shanghai.

This research was supported as a project from the Climate Impact Lab, which received funding from the Carnegie Corporation; the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago; the International Growth Centre; National Science Foundation (#SES143644); Sloan Foundation; Tata Center for Development; the Skoll Global Threats Fund; King Philanthropies; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Fund; The University of Chicago Booth School of Business; and Mark Heising and Liz Simons. Co-author Jiacan Yuan received grants from the National Key Research and Development Program of China and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Global warming exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above the 2001-2010 average would likely cut global food production capacity from six staple crops by nearly a quarter.

Credit

Adapted from Hultgren et al. (Nature, 2025)

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09085-w

Article Title

Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2025

Better images for humans and computers

ETH Zurich

image:
Thin-film technology: One of the two perovskite-based sensor prototypes that the researchers have used to demonstrate that the technology can be successfully miniaturized.
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Credit: Empa / ETH Zurich

In brief:

Taking better photos with less light: that is the promise of a new perovskite image sensor developed by researchers at ETH Zurich and Empa.
The new sensor is more light-sensitive, reproduces colours more accurately and offers significantly higher resolution than conventional silicon sensors.
In addition to digital cameras, the perovskite sensor is particularly well suited for medical analysis or for automated monitoring of the environment and agriculture.

Image sensors are built into every smartphone and every digital camera. They distinguish colors in a similar way to the human eye. In our retinas, individual cone cells recognize red, green and blue (RGB). In image sensors, individual pixels absorb the corresponding wavelengths and convert them into electrical signals.

The vast majority of image sensors are made of silicon. This semiconductor material normally absorbs light over the entire visible spectrum. In order to manufacture it into RGB image sensors, the incoming light must be filtered. Pixels for red contain filters that block (and waste) green and blue, and so on. Each pixel in a silicon image sensor thus only receives around a third of the available light.

Maksym Kovalenko and his team associated with both ETH Zurich and Empa have proposed a novel solution, which allows them to utilize every photon of light for color recognition. For nearly a decade, they have been researching perovskite-based image sensors. In a new study published in the renowned journal Nature, they show: The new technology works.

Stacked pixels

The basis for their innovative image sensor is lead halide perovskite. This crystalline material is also a semiconductor. In contrast to silicon, however, it is particularly easy to process – and its physical properties vary with its exact chemical composition. This is precisely what the researchers are taking advantage of in the manufacture of perovskite image sensors.

If the perovskite contains slightly more iodine ions, it absorbs red light. For green, the researchers add more bromine, for blue more chlorine – without any need for filters. The perovskite pixel layers remain transparent for the other wavelengths, allowing them to pass through. This means that the pixels for red, green and blue can be stacked on top of each other in the image sensor, unlike with silicon image sensors, where the pixels are arranged side-by-side.

Working image sensors

Thanks to this arrangement, perovskite-based image sensors can, in theory, capture three times as much light as conventional image sensors of the same surface area while also providing three times higher spatial resolution. Researchers from Kovalenko's team were able to demonstrate this a few years ago, initially with individual oversized pixels made of millimeter-large single crystals.

Now, for the first time, they have built two fully functional thin-film perovskite image sensors. “We are developing the technology further from a rough proof of principle to a dimension where it could actually be used,” says Kovalenko. A normal course of development for electronic components: “The first transistor consisted of a large piece of germanium with a couple of connections. Today, 60 years later, transistors measure just a few nanometers.”

Perovskite image sensors are still in the early stages of development. With the two prototypes, however, the researchers were able to show that the technology can be miniaturized. Manufactured using thin-film processes common in industry, the sensors have reached their target size in the vertical dimension at least. “Of course, there is always potential for optimization,” notes co-author Sergii Yakunin from Kovalenko's team.

In numerous experiments, the researchers put the two prototypes, which differ in their readout technology, through their paces. Their results prove the advantages of perovskite: The sensors are more sensitive to light, more precise in color reproduction and can offer a significantly higher resolution than conventional silicon technology. The fact that each pixel captures all the light also eliminates some of the artifacts of digital photography, such as demosaicing and the moiré effect.

Machine vision for medicine and the environment

However, consumer digital cameras are not the only area of application for perovskite image sensors. Due to the material's properties, they are also particularly suitable for use in machine vision. The focus on red, green and blue is dictated by the human eye: These image sensors work in RGB format because our eyes see in RGB mode. However, when solving specific tasks, it is advisable to specify other optimal wavelength ranges that the computer image sensor should read. Often there are more than three – so-called hyperspectral imaging.

Perovskite sensors have a decisive advantage in hyperspectral imaging. Researchers can precisely control the wavelength range they absorb by each layer. “With perovskite, we can define a larger number of colour channels that are clearly separated from each other,” says Yakunin. Silicon, with its broad absorption spectrum, requires numerous filters and complex computer algorithms. “This is very impractical even with a relatively small number of colours,” Kovalenko sums up. Hyperspectral image sensors based on perovskite could be used in medical analysis or in automated monitoring of agriculture and the environment, for example.

In the next step, the researchers want to further reduce the size and increase the number of pixels in their perovskite image sensors. Their two prototypes have pixel sizes between 0.5 and 1 millimeters. Pixels in commercial image sensors fall in the micrometer range (1 micrometre is 0.001 millimetre). “It should be possible to make even smaller pixels from perovskite than from silicon,” says Yakunin. The electronic connections and processing techniques need to be adapted for the new technology.

“Today's readout electronics are optimized for silicon. But perovskite is a different semiconductor, with different material properties,” says Kovalenko. However, the researchers are convinced that these challenges can be overcome.

Perovskite image sensors can, in theory, capture three times as much light as conventional image sensors of the same surface area while also providing three times higher spatial resolution.

Credit

Visualisations: Sergii Yakunin / ETH Zurich and Empa

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09062-3

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Vertically stacked monolithic perovskite colour photodetectors

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2025

Key evidence links Harbin individual’s nearly complete skull to a Denisovan

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

“What Denisovans looked like, despite their genetic contributions to present-day East Asians and Oceanians?” This is one of the most important questions that has arisen since the discovery of the Denisovans 15 years ago.

Now, recent research by a team led by FU Qiaomiei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and JI Qiang of Hebei GEO University has helped answer this question by confirming that a nearly complete hominin skull discovered near Harbin belongs to the Denisovan lineage. It dates back to at least 146,000 years ago.

The team developed a method for automatic identification of human populations based on ancient proteins, revealing the most informative ancient human proteome to date. They also optimized extraction techniques and developed bioinformatic algorithms to trace the evolution of ancient human DNA from Pleistocene dental calculus, successfully retrieving host mitochondrial DNA from the dental calculus of the Harbin cranium.

These evidences suggest that the Harbin cranium is indeed Denisovan and is linked to the early Denisovan lineage from Siberia. These findings were recently published online in the journals Science and Cell, respectively.

The Harbin cranium, dating back at least 146,000 years, provides crucial insights into the wide distribution of Denisovans in Asia. Prior to this discovery, Denisovan fossils were limited and fragmentary, complicating our understanding of their morphology and evolutionary history. The Harbin fossil, identified as a new species, Homo longi, shares significant morphological similarities with Denisovan remains found at other locations.

The research team conducted independent palaeoproteomic analyses and innovative ancient DNA experiments on the Harbin cranium and its dental calculus. For the first time, their findings conclusively linked the nearly complete skull to the Denisovan population, resolving a question that has persisted since Denisovans were first identified through ancient DNA in 2010.

Using a newly established palaeoproteomic system, the team analyzed mass spectrometric data from the Harbin cranium, identifying over 308,000 peptide-spectrum , more than 20,000 peptides, and confirming 95 endogenous proteins. This extensive dataset surpasses previous results from contemporaneous fossils.

The team also discovered 122 single amino acid polymorphisms (SAPs) unique to Hominidae species, confirming the Harbin individual’s classification within the Homo genus.

Notably, they identified three variants unique to Denisovans, establishing a phylogenetic link between the Harbin individual and Denisova 3.

Despite the challenges of ancient DNA research, the team successfully retrieved mitochondrial DNA from dental calculus samples with a lot of effort. They optimized extraction methods and constructed multiple libraries, ultimately identifying Denisovan-specific mutations for further analysis.

The results confirmed that the Harbin individual belongs to an early mtDNA lineage of Denisovans, suggesting a wide distribution from Siberia to Northeast China during the late Middle Pleistocene. This study highlights the potential of dental calculus for preserving ancient human DNA, opening a new window into the genetic research of Middle Pleistocene hominins.

The two studies not only resolve the classification controversy surrounding the Harbin cranium and reveal the relatively complete skull morphology of Denisovans, but also provide important references for identifying other ancient human fossils in East Asia that may belong to the Denisovan lineage, such as those from Dali and Jinniushan.

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adu9677

Article Title

The proteome of the late Middle Pleistocene Harbin individual

Article Publication Date

18-Jun-2025