Study Takes a Shot at Quantifying Toxic Masculinity: A major study drawing on nearly 50,000 participants from New Zealand challenges common assumptions about “toxic masculinity,” finding that only a small minority of men exhibit the most hostile and damaging traits. Researchers identified five groups, with just 3.2 percent classified as “hostile toxic,” while over a third were considered “atoxic.” Importantly, feeling strongly “manly” did not predict harmful attitudes: many men who valued their gender identity showed no signs of toxicity. The most hostile group tended to be older, economically disadvantaged, less educated, and emotionally dysregulated, rather than wealthy or socially dominant stereotypes. The findings suggest that toxic masculinity is not widespread, that masculinity itself is not inherently harmful, and that rigid, extreme gender expectations—rather than masculinity per se—pose the greatest social and psychological risks. (Nature)

An Epigenetic “Reset” Helps Dyrk1a Mice Recover Synapses and Behavior
A new Neuropsychopharmacology paper links synaptic and behavioral problems in Dyrk1a-mutant mice to a broad shift in chromatin regulation. The authors report widespread downregulation of synaptic genes alongside changes in chromatin state, arguing that the mutation pushes neurons toward a less plastic transcriptional program. They then test an epigenetic intervention: inhibiting LSD1 (a histone demethylase) partially restores synaptic gene expression and improves electrophysiological and behavioral readouts in the mutant mice. The work positions epigenetic modulation as a way to compensate for a neurodevelopmental risk gene without directly “fixing” that gene, and it highlights chromatin enzymes as druggable levers for circuit function. (Nature)

Gut Repair Has an Epigenetic Throttle: IL-4 → STAT6 → G9a → H3K9me2: In Nature Communications, researchers identify histone H3K9 dimethylation (H3K9me2) as a dynamic mark that rises during intestinal regeneration and falls during acute injury. They trace control of this mark to the methyltransferase G9a: deleting G9a in intestinal epithelial cells, or inhibiting its activity, impairs regeneration and reduces survival after irradiation. Mechanistically, integrative genomic assays suggest G9a-mediated H3K9me2 closes chromatin and represses a set of cell-cycle arrest genes (including Rb1cc1, Rb1, Cdkn1a, and Pten), supporting stem-cell proliferation during repair. The paper also ties immune signaling into the loop, proposing IL-4/STAT6 as an upstream activator of G9a during regeneration. (Nature)

Sperm Carries an RNA “Aging Clock,” With a Midlife Cliff: A University of Utah Health team reports that sperm aging isn’t just about DNA: sperm RNA profiles shift progressively with age in mice and humans, and the authors describe a sharper transition at midlife. Using a sequencing approach they call PANDORA-seq, they detect RNA species that standard methods miss, revealing a pattern where longer RNA fragments become more common and shorter fragments less common over time. In mice, they observe a pronounced transition between roughly 50–70 weeks, and they report analogous aging-linked RNA shifts in humans. The study also connects “old RNA” to altered cellular metabolism, offering a plausible mechanistic bridge between paternal age and offspring health risks that goes beyond mutations or methylation alone. (EurekAlert!)

Paternal Age, Imprinted Regions, and Sperm DNA Methylation Shifts Tied to Autism Risk: A EurekAlert release spotlights research in Aging-US examining how sperm DNA methylation changes with paternal age at imprint control regions, and how that could relate to autism spectrum disorder risk in offspring. The authors focus on age-specific methylation alterations at genomic regions known to regulate parent-of-origin gene expression, proposing these sites as a plausible vulnerability point where aging-related epigenetic drift might have outsized developmental consequences. While the underlying paper was published in late December, the release emphasizes the broader pattern: advanced paternal age correlates with increased ASD risk, and methylation at imprinted loci offers a testable molecular pathway linking paternal aging to altered gene regulation after fertilization. (EurekAlert!)

Plants’ “Winter Memory” Comes Into View, Molecule by Molecule: A report on work out of the University of York describes SlimVar, a microscopy/analysis method that can track single molecules deep inside thick living plant tissue (up to ~30 micrometers into roots), where light scattering usually prevents clear imaging. Using SlimVar, the team follows proteins VIN3 and VRN5 involved in vernalization: silencing a flowering-blocking gene after prolonged cold. During cold exposure, these proteins cluster in the nucleus; the researchers report the clusters roughly double in size, and some persist after warming, which they interpret as durable “memory hubs” that help a plant remember it has experienced winter. Beyond flowering, the piece frames this as a new window into environmental epigenetics in intact tissues. (Phys.org)

“Safe Alone” Isn’t Safe Together: Mixture Exposure Leaves Multi-Generation Epigenetic Scars: A National Taiwan University study (covered by Phys.org) argues that chemical risk assessment can miss real-world mixture effects. In a C. elegans model, researchers test two contaminants at their individual NOAEL (“no observed adverse effect level”) doses: polystyrene nanoplastics and the preservative butylparaben. Each alone appears harmless at that benchmark, but together the combination significantly reduces reproductive output for up to four generations, including descendants never directly exposed. The team probes early embryos and reports oxidative stress plus changes in an epigenetic mark, H3K4 trimethylation, implicating chromatin regulation (via the enzyme SET-2) as part of the transgenerational mechanism. The takeaway is blunt: “no-effect” thresholds may not protect against combinations. (Phys.org)

String Theory’s Dark-Energy Breakthrough Comes With One Extra Dimension: Quanta reports on work by Bruno Bento and Miguel Montero that produces an explicit de Sitter (positive-energy) solution within a string/M-theory framework, addressing a long-standing mismatch between string theory’s best-controlled constructions (often anti-de Sitter or zero-energy) and our accelerating universe. The model’s dark energy is dynamical and expected to weaken over time, which the story notes lines up with some tentative observational hints discussed in recent years. But the win comes with a catch: the construction lands in a 5D de Sitter universe rather than our familiar 4D spacetime, leaving an open problem of how to shed that extra dimension without breaking the solution. Still, the article frames it as a new frontier for “realistic” string cosmology. (Quanta Magazine)

NASA’s TESS Pauses Exoplanet Surveying to Watch an Interstellar Comet: NASA Science announces that the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will temporarily interrupt its normal observing plan (Sector 99) to perform a dedicated look at interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. The rationale is simple: interstellar visitors are rare, and TESS can deliver continuous, high-precision photometry that may capture subtle brightness variations linked to outgassing, rotation, and evolving activity as the object moves through the inner solar system. The post highlights timing around the comet’s solar approach, implying an opportunity to watch how activity turns on or changes as heating increases. While TESS is best known for planet transits, NASA frames this as a chance to repurpose its strengths for small-body science and interstellar-object forensics. (NASA Science)

Northern California’s “Pioneer” Plate Fragment May Help Explain a Major Earthquake: Science News covers research reporting a previously hidden slab fragment beneath Northern California’s Lost Coast, attached beneath the North American plate “like gum stuck to a shoe.” The team uses swarms of tiny, hard-to-feel earthquakes as a kind of seismic backlight to map complicated structures near the Mendocino triple junction, where the San Andreas system meets the Cascadia subduction zone. The newly identified fragment (described as a remnant of the ancient Farallon Plate) could help resolve a long-standing puzzle from the 1992 magnitude 7.2 Cape Mendocino earthquake: the event was surprisingly shallow given expectations for where the subducting Gorda slab should be. The story frames the discovery as both a tectonic-history clue and a hazard-relevant structure. (Science News)

“Technosignature Archaeology”: Sharpening the Search for Alien Artifacts: WIRED reports that the hunt for extraterrestrial technology is expanding beyond radio signals toward “physical traces” and broader technosignatures. The story describes researchers rethinking where artifacts could hide and what counts as evidence: mining historical data (including pre-Sputnik observations), scanning Earth’s neighborhood for odd satellites or debris with unexplained origins, and using modern sky surveys to flag anomalous objects, including interstellar visitors, that might warrant closer scrutiny. A key theme is methodological maturation: the push to define testable hypotheses, reduce bias, and design observational strategies that can distinguish natural oddities from genuinely suspicious signatures. Even if the odds are long, the article argues that new data pipelines and survey capabilities make systematic “artifact search” less speculative than it once sounded. (WIRED)
https://www.wired.com/story/the-search-for-alien-artifacts-is-coming-into-focus/

Thailand’s “Miracle” Dugong and the Vanishing Sea Cows: A Guardian Environment piece chronicles the alarming disappearance of dugongs along Thailand’s Andaman Coast and the solitary survival of one animal nicknamed “Miracle.” Once a bay hosting as many as 13 dugongs, Tang Khen Bay now supports only Miracle after widespread seagrass die-offs devastated the critically endangered marine mammals, specialized feeders on seagrass meadows. Strandings of dead or emaciated dugongs have more than doubled in recent years, and scientists link the collapse of seagrass to a mix of pollution, sediments, dredging, warmer seas, and human development that reduces light and oxygen for the plants. Volunteers and local amateur conservationists use drones and community alerts to monitor and protect the remaining animals. While small restoration efforts are underway, experts warn that more extensive ecosystem recovery and marine management are urgently needed to prevent further losses. (The Guardian)