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Humans tend to repeat familiar actions when making sequential decisions, even when better options exist

Behavioral scientists have been trying to uncover the patterns that humans follow when making decisions for decades. The insights gathered as part of their studies can help shape public policies and interventions aimed at prompting people to make better decisions, both for society and for their own well-being.

In many cases, humans are known to make decisions that they think will maximize the rewards they receive while minimizing their losses. Sometimes, however, people’s choices are guided by automatic processes that they are unaware of and can be adversely impacted by so-called biases, systematic tendencies to fall into specific patterns of thought or behavior.

Researchers at TUD Dresden University of Technology recently carried out a study exploring the possibility that repeating specific decisions over time could decision-making, even in instances in which people’s actions affect the rewards they will receive. Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that when making sequential decisions (i.e., when asked to make a series of choices back-to-back), humans often tend to repeat familiar actions, even if alternative ones would yield greater rewards.

Double detonation: New image shows remains of star destroyed by pair of explosions

For the first time, astronomers have obtained visual evidence that a star met its end by detonating twice. By studying the centuries-old remains of supernova SNR 0509–67.5 with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), they have found patterns that confirm its star suffered a pair of explosive blasts.

Breaking Ohm’s law: Nonlinear currents emerge in symmetry-broken materials

In a review just published in Nature Materials, researchers take aim at the oldest principle in electronics: Ohm’s law.

Their article, “Nonlinear transport in non-centrosymmetric systems,” brings together rapidly growing evidence that, when a material lacks inversion symmetry, the familiar linear relation between current and voltage can break down, giving rise to striking quadratic responses.

The study was led by Manuel Suárez-Rodríguez—working under the guidance of Ikerbasque Professors Fèlix Casanova and Luis E. Hueso at CIC nanoGUNE, together with Prof. Marco Gobbi at the Materials Physics Center (CFM, CSIC-UPV/EHU).

People who adopted pets during the pandemic often struggled to access vet care, study finds

During the COVID-19 pandemic when many were stuck at home, people adopted more pets than average, but then struggled to find adequate veterinary care. Kayla Pasteur of Purdue University, U.S., and colleagues reported these findings and other pandemic pet trends, which were published in a study in the open-access journal PLOS One.

In the U.S., about 58 million U.S. households keep one or more dogs and 40 million keep at least one cat. These animals often provide a source of enjoyment, and in the home, so it’s no surprise that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in pet purchases and adoptions.

In the new study, researchers investigated trends in during the pandemic to understand which groups were acquiring pets and how the pandemic impacted their ability to access veterinary care. The team analyzed answers to an of 751 U.S. residents – of which 79% were pet owners – conducted in late 2021.

Clingy planets can trigger their own doom, Cheops and TESS suggest

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission have caught an exoplanet that seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits. These tremendous explosions are blasting away the planet’s wispy atmosphere, causing it to shrink every year.

This is the first-ever evidence of a “planet with a death wish.” Though it was theorized to be possible since the nineties, the flares seen in this research are around 100 times more energetic than expected.

The work is published in the journal Nature.

Slithering snakes: The science behind the motion of a young anaconda

The motion of snakes has long fascinated humans: they undulate, they sidewind, they crawl, they even fly.

Together with herpetologists, researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered and quantified a new type of locomotion in juvenile anacondas.

As adults, these large snakes are better known for their slow, lumbering gait, but the researchers discovered that young anacondas are much more spry—capable of a quick, one-off, skating movement the researchers dubbed the “S-start” due to the shape the snake makes with its body.

Shape-shifting particles allow temperature control over fluid flow and stiffness

Imagine a liquid that flows freely one moment, then stiffens into a near-solid the next, and then can switch back with a simple change in temperature. Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and NYU Tandon have now developed such a material, using tiny particles that can change their shape and stiffness on demand.

Their , “Tunable shear thickening, aging, and rejuvenation in suspensions of shape-memory endowed liquid crystalline particles,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates a new way to regulate how dense suspensions—mixtures of solid particles in a fluid—behave under stress.

These new particles are made from liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), a material that combines the structure of liquid crystals with the flexibility of rubber. When heated or cooled, the particles change shape: they soften and become round at higher temperatures, and stiffen into irregular, angular forms at lower ones. This change has a dramatic effect on how the flows.

Strong magnetic fields flip angular momentum dynamics in magnetovortical matter

Angular momentum is a fundamental quantity in physics that describes the rotational motion of objects. In quantum physics, it encompasses both the intrinsic spin of particles and their orbital motion around a point. These properties are essential for understanding a wide range of systems, from atoms and molecules to complex materials and high-energy particle interactions.

When a magnetic field is applied to a quantum system, particle spins typically align with or against the field. This well-known effect, known as spin polarization, leads to observable phenomena such as magnetization. Until now, it was widely believed that spin played the dominant role in how particles respond to magnetic fields. However, new research challenges this long-held view.

In this vein, Assistant Professor Kazuya Mameda of Tokyo University of Science, Japan, in collaboration with Professor Kenji Fukushima of School of Science, The University of Tokyo and Dr. Koichi Hattori of Zhejiang University, found that under strong magnetic fields, the of magnetovortical matter becomes more significant than spin effects, leading to reversing the overall direction of angular momentum. The study will be published in Physical Review Letters on July 1, 2025.

New imaging technique captures every twist of polarized light

EPFL scientists have developed a new technique that lets researchers watch, with unprecedented sensitivity, how materials emit polarized light over time.

Light isn’t just bright or dim, colored or plain. Its waves can also twist and turn, in a phenomenon called . Think about the glasses you wear at a 3D movie, which use light polarization to make each eye see a slightly different image, creating the illusion of depth.

Polarization is key for future technologies, from quantum computers to secure communication and holographic displays. Many materials emit light in ways that encode information in its polarization, as if we were using the direction of light waves to send a message. Among these phenomena is a form known as circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), a special type of light emission produced by chiral materials where light waves spiral either left or right as they travel.

Heaviest tin isotopes provide insights into element synthesis

An international team of researchers, led by scientists from GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt, Germany, has studied r-process nucleosynthesis in measurements conducted at the Canadian research center TRIUMF in Vancouver. At the center of this work are the first mass measurements of three extremely neutron-rich tin isotopes: tin-136, tin-137 and tin-138. The results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The high-precision measurements, combined with nucleosynthesis network calculations, help to better understand how are formed in the universe, especially through the rapid neutron capture process (the r-process) occurring in neutron star mergers.

The data reveal the neutron separation energy, which defines the path of the r-process on the nuclear chart. The study found unexpected changes in the behavior of tin nuclei beyond the magic neutron number N=82, specifically, a reduction in the pairing effect of the last two neutrons.