Today’s r/science slate shows how systems-thinking is reshaping what we compute, how we heal, and how we communicate risk. Across labs and lived experience, researchers and commenters are pushing on the boundaries between biology, behavior, and technology.
Engineering living systems—and language—for performance
Researchers are reframing hardware and therapy through biology: a prototyping effort to turn shiitake mushrooms into living processors that behave like memristors, while a targeted immunotherapy using nanoparticles delivering IL-12 directly to ovarian tumors promises more precise, durable immune activation. Both threads emphasize low-footprint, high-specificity design—materials that remember and immune signals that persist.
"Let me know when you can run Doom on a mushroom...." - u/spambearpig (1604 points)
Even the words we use to steer models matter: a cross-lab benchmarking study suggests Polish can be the most effective prompting language for large AI systems, outperforming English on multi-task accuracy. For scientists and educators, this is a reminder that interface choices—from a fungal memristor’s electrical vocabulary to human linguistic structure—can meaningfully shift outcomes.
Risk signals, trade-offs, and model updates
Public health research leans into complexity: a birth-cohort analysis indicates adolescents who start cannabis before 15 face markedly higher odds of regular use and downstream health care needs. Complicating prevailing beliefs, a randomized crossover trial in schizophrenia found that cannabidiol pre-treatment worsened cannabis-induced memory impairment and psychotic symptoms rather than protecting against THC.
"When I was in college I was a pretty heavy smoker, I actually stopped because I was having issues with anxiety and weed in general was just getting in the way of going out and doing stuff. I still smoke on occasion now, but its generally months or years in between. I know people don't like to hear it, but I think just like everything else, over use / abuse of weed was always going to eventually be found out to have some negative side effects...." - u/GraphicH (457 points)
Training and environment also recalibrate our risk landscape: university students who completed Stop the Bleed instruction reported increased fear of mass casualty events alongside higher self-efficacy to intervene. Meanwhile, atmospheric chemists report that wildfire smoke acts as a sunlit chemical reactor producing reactive peroxides that significantly degrade downwind urban air, signaling the need to upgrade air-quality models for a warming world.
Bodies, hormones, and identity shape behavior
Physiology and experience intertwine: qualitative interviews on exercise-induced orgasms deepen understanding of how internal sensations can integrate into sexual life across development. Comparative aging work with long-lived Rottweilers points to intact testes exposure as a buffer against frailty-related mortality, reframing how hormone dynamics may influence resilience.
"It’s important to note that this study shows that neutering raises the risk of death specifically by frailty, not by all causes. Sterilized dogs on average live 1.5 years longer than intact dogs. So get your pets sterilized." - u/hananobira (2489 points)
Culture adds another layer: surveying political psychology, researchers found that right-wing ideological dispositions correlate with stronger support for animal products and aversion to vegetarian or vegan diets. Taken together, these threads show that biology sets constraints, but social identity—and the environments we inhabit—directs which paths people take.