SMTnet

Healthful eating as a manhood threat

May 28, 2026 | Joseph A. Vandello, Jennifer K. Bosson, Timothy Andrew Caswell, Jenna R. Cummings

Two studies investigated how men's dietary choices are influenced by the perceived genderedness of foods, specifically how men tend to avoid healthy but feminine foods due to concerns about masculinity. In Study 1A, college students rated various foods and diets on masculinity and femininity, establishing gendered associations. Study 1B found that the perceived genderedness of foods significantly predicted men's food preferences, regardless of traditional gender roles and healthiness. Study 2 ......

Strongly Nonlinear Nanocavity Exciton Polaritons in Gate-Tunable Monolayer Semiconductors

May 28, 2026 | Zhi Wang, Bumho Kim, and Bo Zhen

Achieving optical nonlinearities at ultralow light intensities in solid-state platforms is crucial for advancing nonlinear and quantum photonic technologies. This study presents a novel approach by coupling a charge-tunable MoSe2 monolayer to a planar photonic crystal nanocavity to create highly nonlinear two-dimensional exciton polaritons. The combination of the monolayer's excitonic resonance and the nanocavity's strong mode confinement significantly enhances polariton-polariton interactions, enabling all-optical switching of the cavity spectrum with very low ......

Digital Discovery of Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors

May 28, 2026 | Mario Krenn, Yehonathan Drori, and Rana X Adhikari

Gravitational waves, first theorized a century ago, are distortions in space-time resulting from extreme cosmic events like black hole mergers and supernovae. Their detection has been made possible by innovative human-designed detectors, yet many experimental configurations remain unexplored. This study presents a computational strategy that identifies unconventional detector topologies, achieving performance that significantly surpasses existing designs under realistic conditions and potentially increasing the observable volume of the Universe by up to 50-fold. Additionally, the best solutions ......

Chimpanzee culture beyond the conspicuous: Evidence for broad-scale observational social learning in wild individuals

May 28, 2026 | Nora E. Slania, Mariana Gomez-Munoz, Ayrin-Sophie Piephoh, Catherine Hobaiter, Klaus Zuberbuhler, Caroline Schuppli

Wild chimpanzee cultures have often been studied through group comparisons of noticeable skills, leaving their everyday behaviors largely unexplored. This study focuses on individual cultural processes to evaluate the extent of cultural repertoires and role model selection among wild eastern chimpanzees. It confirms that these chimpanzees engage in peering, which is the close observation of others for social information. The results indicate that chimpanzees observe a variety of everyday skills, including feeding and grooming, and they direct their peering ......

Adventitious carbon breaks symmetry in oxide contact electrification

May 25, 2026 | Galien Grosjean, Markus Ostermann, Markus Sauer, Michael Hahn, Christian M. Pichler, Florian Fahrnberger, Felix Pertl, Daniel M. Balazs, Mason M. Link, Seong H. Kim, Devin L. Schrader, Adriana Blanco, Francisco Gracia, Nicolás Mujica and Scott R. Waitukai

Insulating oxides are prevalent solid materials in the universe and significantly influence natural phenomena through their ability to transfer electrical charge during contact. The critical symmetry-breaking parameter responsible for this charge transfer, particularly in samples of the same oxide, has remained unidentified. This study reveals that adventitious carbonaceous molecules from the environment act as the symmetry-breaking factor in contact electrification (CE) of identical amorphous silicon dioxide (SiO2). Using acoustic levitation,...

Km-scale mounds and sinkites formed by buoyancy driven stratigraphic inversion

May 13, 2026 | Jan Erik Rudjord and Mads Huuse

Oligo-Miocene strata in the northern North Sea contain vast sand-cored mounds, referred to as 'sinkites,' which are large-scale sand bodies that have sunk beneath low-density bio-silicious ooze rafts. Utilizing a 3D seismic dataset along with petrophysical logs, researchers found that these sinkites violate the law of superposition, indicating a stratigraphic inversion caused by buoyancy instabilities between the rigid ooze rafts and younger, denser sand. The sand slurry dislodged the ooze rafts, which were bordered by early-stage polygonal faults due to ......

Penguin guano is an important source of climate-relevant aerosol particles in Antarctica

Apr 30, 2026 | Matthew Boyer, Lauriane Quéléver, Zoé Brasseur, Barry McManus, Scott Herndon, Mike Agnese, David Nelson, Joseph Roscioli, Frederik Weis, Sergej Sel, Giselle L. Marincovich, Francisco J. Quarin, Angela Buchholz, Carlton Xavier, Pablo J. Perchivale, Veli-Ma

Gaseous ammonia, while influential in atmospheric processes, is critically underrepresented in atmospheric measurements. This limits our understanding of key climate-relevant processes, such as new particle formation, particularly in remote regions. Here, we present highly sensitive, online observations of gaseous ammonia from a coastal site in Antarctica, which allows us to constrain the mechanism of new particle formation in this region in unprecedented detail. Our observations show that penguin colonies are a large source of ammonia in coastal Antarctica, whereas ammonia originating from the Southern Ocean is, in comparison, negligible. In conjunction with sulfur compounds sourced from oceanic microbiology, ammonia initiates new particle formation and is an important source of cloud condensation nuclei. Dimethylamine, likely originating from penguin guano, also participates in the initial steps of particle formation, effectively boosting particle formation rates up to 10000 times. These findings emphasize the importance of ecosystem processes from penguin/bird colonies and oceanic phytoplankton/bacteria on climate-relevant aerosol processes in coastal Antarctica. This demonstrates an important connection between ecosystem and atmospheric processes that impact the Antarctic climate, which is crucial given the current rate of environmental changes in the region....

Quantitative Mineral Resource Assessment of Lithium Pegmatite Deposits in the Northern Appalachian Orogen, USA

Apr 30, 2026 | Niki E. Wintzer, Christopher S. Holm-Denoma Jacob E. Poletti Dalton M. McCaffrey Stanley P. Mordensky, Erik R. Tharalson and Collin Cronkite-Ratcliff

Lithium demand is projected to increase more than 48 times by 2040 due to electric vehicle production and other energy storage needs. Most lithium production is outside of the USA, thereby increasing supply chain vulnerability. The combined end use importance and heightened supply risk of lithium make this lightest metallic element a critical commodity to the USA. To mitigate this supply risk, the US Geological Survey is actively assessing lithium deposits in the USA. Herein, we detail an assessment for lithium-mineralized pegmatites in the US northern Appalachian Mountains. Permissive tracts were generated by cross-referencing tectonic and geologic maps and mineral occurrence data with mappable criteria derived from generalized and region-specific lithium pegmatite ore deposit models; tracts were then ranked as having high, medium, or low permissibility. Available geophysical and geochemical data were found to be of minimal utility for this deposit type at the scale of the assessment. The number of undiscovered deposits were estimated and integrated into probabilistic simulations, which included an expanded and updated global grade and tonnage model of pegmatite-hosted lithium ore. The estimated total amount of undiscovered resources for the northern Appalachian Orogen has a median value of 1,410,000 metric tons of Li2O when considering moderate correlation across sub-regions. At a confidence level of 90%, a resource of at least 90,000 metric tons of Li2O remains undiscovered, and at a 10% confidence level, a resource of as much as 7,380,000 metric tons Li2O remains undiscovered. After applying an up-to-date economic filter to convert median contained lithium to recoverable material, a correlated total of 900,000 metric tons of Li2O may be economically extractable, equating to enough Li2O to provide the current annual US lithium supply deficit (presently obtained through net imports) for 127 years at 2025 rates of apparent consumption. This period of provision will inevitably shorten with projected increasing consumption rates, emphasizing that further research could be completed to better delineate regions of high lithium resource potential and support exploration and domestic production....

Debritic head formation during the Tōhoku-oki 2011 tsunami reveals enhanced risk in mud-rich coastlines

Apr 22, 2026 | Patrick D. Sharrocks, Jeffrey Peakall, Natasha L. M. Barlow, David M. Hodgson, James McKay and Hajime Naruse

Tsunamis pose a major hazard, exaggerated by large floating debris within the flow. However, understanding of how finer sediment (sand, silt and clay) influences the tsunami flow remains incomplete, introducing uncertainty in predictive models of their impact. Typically, a turbulent and dilute tsunami wave is assumed, but the differing conditions at the flow front have yet to be quantified. Here, videos of the 2011 Tōhoku-oki tsunami in the Sendai Plain, Japan, were analysed to document trends in the properties of the tsunami flow front. Results reveal rapid temporal and abrupt spatial changes in velocity and the development of a steep gradient to the flow front (∼25–59°). Deposits reveal the tsunami flow had a high mud content and caused almost continuous erosion for at least 2 km inland. This evidence shows that a highly cohesive flow with a dense debritic head formed in the mid-shore region, transforming from an initially turbulent flow through the entrainment of cohesive material. The altered hydrodynamics and the greater force exerted by a dense debritic head highlight the need to incorporate debritic heads into tsunami hazard assessments on mud-rich coastlines, where the hazard will be enhanced....

Searching for surficial water ice in lunar permanently shaded regions (PSRs) with ShadowCam

Apr 16, 2026 | Shuai Li, Mark S. Robinson, Brett W. Denevi, Madeleine R. Manheim, Erwan Mazarico, Robert V. Wagner, Emerson J. Speyerer, Prasun Mahanti

Airless bodies such as the Moon, Mercury, and Ceres have permanently shaded regions (PSRs) that can cold trap water ice. Mercury and Ceres have substantial ice deposits in their PSRs, but lunar water ice distribution remains uncertain because of sparse detections and limited data. Here, we assessed surficial water ice in lunar PSRs using high-resolution observations from ShadowCam onboard the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. We used the high reflectance and forward-scattering optical properties to search for water ice in lunar PSRs. We found no evidence of widespread water ice in PSRs at abundances above the detection limit of 20 to 30 wt % but could not rule out widespread low-content water ice. A few small locations with both high reflectance and forward-scattering behavior were observed, which could be consistent with (>10 wt %) ice. Future missions with low detection limits (<1 wt %) of water ice can test our findings....