Despite being roughly half their size, female gorillas can, and frequently do, overpower male gorillas when competing for status and resources, according to a recent study.
This discovery challenges the traditional belief that gorilla society is strongly patriarchal – characterised by male dominance over females – and has implications for the origins of human gender dynamics.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, and the University of Turku, Finland, analysed 25 years of data gathered by observing the behaviour of gorillas in four different groups.
Wild mountain gorillas have long been considered an example of strict male power structures among primates, due to the vast size difference between males and females – the starkest size difference among any great ape.
It’s true that gorilla society is hierarchical. Each group has one alpha male at the top, and the rest of the gorillas compete for status below him.
But this new study concluded that gorilla hierarchies are much more gender balanced than previously believed.
“Gorilla females often outrank males,” lead author Dr Nikos Smit, researcher at Max Planck and Turku, told BBC Science Focus. “This is important for our understanding and interpretation of power relationships; it is not all about size and strength.”
In fact, 88 per cent of female gorillas outranked at least one adult male in groups with multiple males – mostly if those males were particularly young or old.
Additionally, when female gorillas engaged in conflicts with non-alpha males, they were victorious more than a quarter of the time, despite being significantly smaller than their opponents.
Senior author Dr Martha Robbins – director of the Bwindi mountain gorilla research project – told BBC Science Focus that this success was likely due to the relationship between these high-ranking females and their alpha male.
“The gorillas are aware of their social position and the social dynamics in a group,” she said. “These non-alpha males are bigger and physically stronger than the adult females, but they know that they should restrain themselves to avoid aggression from the alpha male. If they want to remain in the group, it is better to acquiesce.”
This picture demonstrates the size difference between a female (seen on the left with an infant) and a male mountain gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda – Credit: Martha Robbins
The scientists found, too, that the prize for winning these conflicts seemed to be priority access to food – another finding that contradicts previous research.
Scientists used to think that female gorillas only fought other females for food, while male gorillas mainly competed with each other for female mates. But it turns out that males and females all fight over food.
The scientists concluded that these findings had implications for our understanding of gender dynamics in human societies.
They wrote that the dominance of men over women was not “an apparent and immediate consequence of evolution,” but instead the result of “the flexible social and mating systems of humans.”
And, they continued, this is further supported by the observation that among bonobos – one of our closest living relatives, alongside chimpanzees – males are much bigger than females, but females are dominant over the males.
From this, scientists have concluded that it’s unlikely humans inherited patriarchy from our primate ancestors.
Read more:
About our experts
Dr Nikos Smit is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His research focuses on the evolution of social and mating systems, and the boundaries between conflict and cooperation.
Dr Martha Robbins is the director of the Bwindi Mountain Gorilla Research Project and a group leader in the department of primate behaviour and evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Her research focuses on the evolution of sociality.
“Fuckin’ hot!” are the first words out of Sam Nivola’s mouth when I meet him in the back of a small Japanese restaurant.
I’ve just asked him “How are you?” and it’s a fair response, considering it’s the hottest day in New York City since 2012. We’re on St. Mark’s Place, where the triple-digit temperature has caused even the crust punks, a mainstay of this stretch of the East Village, to slither toward refuge in tattoo parlors and liquor stores.
“I walked two blocks to get down here, and I’m pouring with sweat already,” says Nivola, clad in a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” T-shirt and a baseball cap concealing his boyish brown curls. I omit the fact that I arrived 15 minutes early for the sole purpose of drying my face with paper towels in the restroom.
“This weather is gnarly,” he says. “It’s worse than Thailand!”
Nivola spent seven months on that country’s sweltering beachfront shooting Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” in which he played the brooding and awkward teenager Lochlan Ratliff, whose desire to impress his older brother, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, results in a near-death smoothie experience and some brother-on-brother incest. The role turned the 21-year-old Nivola into one of Hollywood’s most promising young stars — and perhaps a new kind of sex symbol.
“It’s totally changed my life and the scope of my career,” says Nivola, who previously had modest parts in the Noah Baumbach film “White Noise” and the Nicole Kidman-led Netflix whodunit “The Perfect Couple.” “When ‘The White Lotus’ was at its peak, I literally couldn’t walk down the street in Brooklyn — my hometown — without being swarmed.”
The swarming got so bad that, in search of a quiet place away from all the fanfare, Nivola and his friends once prompted ChatGPT, “What is the worst bar in the East Village?” The result was a taproom where speaking is strictly prohibited. “We’re yelling, ‘This place is fucking awesome!’ and everyone’s like, ‘Shhh!’” recalls Nivola, buckling forward, index finger pressed to his lips.
Richie Shazam for Variety
Perhaps this is why Nivola has brought me here, to this mostly vacant “sleeper hit” of a restaurant tucked underneath a barbershop. He’s taken command of the menu. When I ask him what’s good, he rattles off a handful of dishes before asking eagerly, “Are you down to share?”
Nivola grew up in the Brooklyn indie film scene. He watches one to two movies per day. He begins more than one sentence with “Not to be pretentious, but …” In other words, acting is in his blood. But his parents, Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola (of “Newsroom” and “Face/Off” fame, respectively), initially discouraged him from following in their footsteps, fearing their son would hurtle himself toward an unstable and often difficult life. They forbade him from auditioning for roles before he turned 18.
Still, when Nivola was 17, his high school drama teacher helped him net an audition for “White Noise,” in which he’d play the son of Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig’s characters. It was during the pandemic, and Nivola sent in a self-tape in secret. He only told his parents about the opportunity once he made it to the next round. “Holy fucking shit, it’s a Noah Baumbach movie?! You have to do the callback!” he remembers his parents saying. (Nivola’s younger sister, May, ended up playing his sibling in the film.)
I say the words “nepo baby,” and Nivola breaks into tickled laughter. “Other than my genes, I don’t think I can attribute much of my success to my parents,” he says. “I feel proud that I’ve done it for myself, and sometimes in spite of them.”
Of his first movie role, he says, “I didn’t get my dad’s agent to call up so-and-so. I did it by myself. I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to be able to say that anything I’ve achieved has been because of anyone other than me. And I’m proud of that.”
These days, when a Nivola family stroll is interrupted by a fan asking for a selfie, odds are the camera is pointed toward Sam. “But that just goes to show the trappings of fame,” he says. “Because I’m not half as talented as my father or my mother.”
If Nivola’s first leap of faith was the secret audition tape, then his second was dropping out of college after just one semester at Columbia, where he studied Latin and film. “My parents were upset,” he says. “It totally scared them, which is understandable. I wasn’t happy at the time because I couldn’t dedicate everything in me to acting. And,” he says, blushing, “I have problems with authority figures.”
Nivola spent the next couple years auditioning, with his big break happening just a few months before his friends put on caps and gowns.
The story of how Nivola landed “The White Lotus” is “boring,” he insists between sips of beer. There was a tape, then a callback read with Mike White, and then three days later he got the part. “I’m just grateful that there are people who are not casting things based on how many Instagram followers you have,” Nivola says. (He has 145,000.) “They’re casting based on who is right for the job. Like, ‘You might not be Jacob Elordi, but you’re the guy.’”
Richie Shazam for Variety
If the casting process was unremarkable, the filming was anything but. The shooting of the third season of “The White Lotus” was, by the accounts of some of Nivola’s castmates, a seven-month slog that featured unbearable humidity, sickness and behind-the-scenes drama. And throughout that time, Nivola lived in a hotel room that was identical to Lochlan’s. While it was isolating and confusing, those blurred lines made it easier for him to step into the character.
“I’ve always been the actor that’s like, ‘You got too stuck in your character? Fuck you. That’s bullshit,’” says Nivola. Then he traveled across the world and hung out almost exclusively with actors playing his family members, including Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey, who rarely dropped those North Carolina accents. “Sometimes I actually felt like I wasn’t myself,” Nivola says. “I finally understood the thing of getting lost in your character.”
And that brings us to the incest. When the drug-fueled intimacy between on-screen brothers lit the internet on fire, Nivola didn’t take kindly to the discourse. “It was at times painful. It’s hard when people view your character as a monster or pervert or freak,” he says.
Headlines deemed the scene, in which Lochlan kisses his brother on the mouth and then jerks him off in a threesome, “shocking,” “sickening” and “so disgusting and unnecessary.” On social media, Lochlan was labeled a “creep” and a “sicko.” Meanwhile The Daily Beast asked, “Is It OK to Think the ‘White Lotus’ Incest Scene Was Hot?,” and Nivola’s DMs were flooded with thirsty older men.
“It was hard feeling like people had lost sympathy for this guy that I lived inside. I got a little defensive,” Nivola says. “You have to love your character, otherwise you’re fucked. My character jerked off Patrick. I don’t like that. It’s a bad thing he did. But I try not to pass judgment.”
After “The White Lotus,” Nivola says he’s been inundated with offers to play similar roles — “socially awkward, virginal kids who are a little weird,” as he defines it. “I’m starting to feel a little boxed in by the characters I’ve played in my career. But I’m also finally getting offers to do things where I’m a little more grown up. Hopefully the next one will be something a little different.”
Nivola is set to star opposite fellow “White Lotus” alum Connie Britton in Hulu’s coming-of-age mystery “Phony.” And he recently wrapped production on a Bobby Farrelly film, “Driver’s Ed,” that he hopes will breathe life into a wilting genre: the R-rated comedy. (“We say ‘fuck’ so many times,” he assures.)
“It’s rare to have comedies at all. It’s been pretty dry for a little while,” Nivola says. (He lives with his girlfriend, Iris Apatow, whose father, Judd Apatow, reinvented the studio comedy in the 2000s.) “Can you think of any good ones that have come out in the last five years? Other than ‘Friendship’?” He attributes the decline to studios being more financially “conservative.”
“They’ve ‘Moneyball’-ed the film industry!” Nivola says, pointing his chopsticks at me in a Wolverine claw. “Everything is about data now — and trying to predict, to the nearest dollar, how much money a movie’s going to make. It screws the idea of risk-taking, and comedy is more about risk-taking than any other genre.”
In terms of careers he admires, the first name on Nivola’s mind is Tom Cruise. “He’s excelled in every kind of movie,” he says. “He gives one of the greatest comedic performances of all time in ‘Tropic Thunder,’ and he’s not at all a comedian. ‘Jerry Maguire,’ ‘Risky Business,’ ‘Magnolia’ — he’s an incredible dramatic actor. And then he has this whole latter half of his career of being an action star.”
Richie Shazam for Variety
But when ageless box office magnets like Cruise exist, Nivola isn’t convinced Hollywood is interested in birthing new ones.
“The old movie stars are getting plastic surgery, and they’re looking younger and they’re staying young. You have these really old people playing young roles. And it’s not giving any space for the young’uns to move in and make a name for themselves,” Nivola says. “With all due respect to those people, one day they won’t be here anymore, literally, and they will have to create new stars.”
He adds, “I think Timothée Chalamet is one of the best actors alive, and he’s a total star. He’s one of a very few examples I could come up with. But it’s a different kind of movie star; he’s not huge and jacked. He looks a little more like me.” Nivola glugs down the rest of his lager. “I wish!”
Even in his young career, Nivola has worked with some of today’s most celebrated talent. In “White Noise,” he uttered the words of an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and acted opposite two Oscar nominees. On “White Lotus,” he put his trust into television’s topmost taboo breaker.
And on Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” he learned the hard way the humbling power of the edit. In the Oscar-nominated biopic, Nivola played Leonard Bernstein’s son, Alexander. He remembers filming a pivotal scene with Cooper in which the legendary composer reprimands his son for smoking a joint before the boy confronts him about his lifetime of hypocrisy and infidelity, saying something to the effect of “You’re cheating on my mother with men. Who are you to tell me what to do?”
When the film premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2023, SAG-AFTRA was on strike, so Nivola gave his tickets to some buddies and planned to meet up with them for a drink afterward. Nivola was waiting at a bar around the corner when his friends broke the news: “Dude, you’re not really in the movie.” Nivola was dumbfounded: “‘What do you mean? What about my big scene?!’”
He admits now, “I was slightly annoyed to be chopped out of the movie. But, annoyingly, it was the right decision.” Bisecting a piece of spicy tuna on rice cake with a chopstick, he says, “I don’t like to be the guy that gets their feelings hurt about being cut out.”
Nivola praises Cooper as an “innovative filmmaker” and a “lovely guy,” and says he still thinks about what he calls the “Bradley Cooper shot”: “Just taking a camera around and following the actors around and letting them do whatever they want and rolling for 30 minutes straight.”
It’s just now settling in for Nivola that he is, by all metrics, a successful actor. For a kid who was raised by famous people, he never expected to be famous himself. “I love acting so much that I would be totally content working a run-of-the-mill, 9-to-5, minimum-wage job for the rest of my life if I got to do this on weekends,” he says. So now that he is surrounded by a team of industry professionals and his phone is ringing off the hook, he finds himself in a surprising predicament.
“It’s a lot easier when you’re starting at ground zero to look upwards and be like, ‘There’s all this exciting stuff that could happen but probably won’t’ versus being catapulted to the top of this totem pole where suddenly it’s like, ‘How do I hold on to it? How do I stay up here?’ At least, that’s what people tell you your mindset has to be,” Nivola says. “It’s scarier to hold on to something for dear life than it is to be grasping at a potential future.”
Plus, it’s a weird time in Hollywood. Movie theaters are shuttering, production has plunged and thousands of gig workers are scrambling to find work. Opportunities to audition are few and far between. Earlier this year, as if these anxieties bubbled up to the point of combustion, Los Angeles, the global center of the movie industry, literally burst into flames.
“One of the biggest fears I have is that nothing can afford to shoot in America anymore,” Nivola says. The business model of moviemaking in the U.S. is so out of whack that “you can hire a team of 10 gaffers in Hungary for cheaper than hiring one key grip in Los Angeles.”
“It’s so silly, Trump saying he’s going to put a tariff on foreign films,” he says. “That’s the opposite of what we need to be doing. It’s not that we shouldn’t be watching foreign films; it’s that we need more tax incentives to shoot movies in America.”
He wishes the U.S. would take a lesson from the state-funded British Film Institute, which promotes filmmaking in the U.K. — and subsidizes movie tickets to people under 26 at Nivola’s favorite London cinema. “It’s mobbed with kids my age watching weird, old Kurosawa movies,” he says. “It’s packed every weekend because it’s cheap, and that’s because taxpayer dollars are going toward art instead of toward fucking missiles.” He stakes his chopsticks into the table. “Not to sound cliché, but it’s just so frustrating. Like, take a little bit of that Tomahawk money and put it into movies and inspire a generation of people.”
He sets his utensils down and smiles. “I also must plead ignorance and say I don’t know what I’m talking about. I took a crash course in economics in college.”
We’ve spent half our dinner trash-talking Hollywood, so Nivola wants to make one thing clear: “I just want to say for the record that I am optimistic about the future of the film industry.”
A couple years ago, he started a production company called Cold Worm with two of his best friends. They’ve made two feature films on five-figure budgets — one funded entirely by grants and the other by private investors. Nivola has directed a short film through the banner — about a lovesick stoner who falls victim to a flirtatious scheme — and he’s written several scripts that he’s in the process of pitching. It’s a priority for Cold Worm to land an overall deal at a studio, but Nivola says, “We’d rather make good movies than get filthy rich.”
It was not long ago in Wales that Nivola realized the dream of indie filmmaking is still alive. He was shooting a movie in what he calls “the most depressing town in Europe” on a shoestring budget, sharing a bed with his two co-producers. They didn’t have enough towels, so they attempted to air-dry their bodies in the freezing temperatures. “It was miserable,” Nivola says, “and it was one of the most fun times of my life.”
A bunch of kids, joyously suffering for a shared vision, journeying into the unknown to make something from nothing. “That will never die,” insists Nivola. “As long as there are people fighting the fight and trying, it’s going to be OK.”
Styling: Alex Badia; Senior Fashion Market editor; Emily Mercer; Senior Market editor, accessories: Thomas Waller; Fashion assistants: Ari Stark and Kimberly Infante; Grooming: Kumi Craig/The Wall Group; Look 1 (trench coat): Full look: Calvin Klein Collection; Look 2 (cover, tank top): Full look: Acne Studios; Look 3 (black look): Coat, blazer, sweater and pants: Ferragamo; Belt: Déhanche, Gloves: 032C; Look 4 (popcorn): Jacket: Marine Serre; Shirt: Gucci; Pants: Louis Gabriel Nouchi; Tie: Brooks Brothers
Even though Dunder Mifflin will not be returning to TV, there will be little drops of The Office sprinkled throughout the follow-up series, The Paper, premiering September 4 on Peacock with four episodes. Two new episodes will follow every Thursday through September 25.
The show’s first trailer and first-look episodic photos of the cast are available above and below, respectively.
The Paper, a mockumentary from Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, is set in the same universe as NBC’s Emmy-winning hit The Office and features the documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch. The crew is searching for a new subject when they discover a historic Toledo newspaper, The Truth Teller, and the eager publisher trying to revive it.
Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) is hired as the struggling paper’s new editor-in-chief, and he has plenty of ideas to help the old periodical recapture its glory days. However, the task proves to be harder than expected. During a staff meeting, Ned learns their combined journalism experience is lacking in a major way. None has worked at a real paper before, but a couple of good sports tout their experience writing a junior high school term paper, and the other his social media posts from Twitter. A third reveals he’s part of a group chat. For some reason, Ned doesn’t quit on his first day.
As luck would have it, a little piece of the past has also found its way into the present. Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez), former Dunder Mifflin accountant and two-time Dundee Award winner, is back, much to his chagrin. In the trailer, Oscar is a total grouch when he reconnects with the documentary crew that followed him and his colleagues across 9 seasons, and things get ugly.
But fret not, the cameras have plenty of new characters’ lives to follow, including Esmerelda (Sabrina Impacciatore), Mare (Chelsea Frei), Detrick (Melvin Gregg), Adelola (Gbemisola Ikumelo), Adam (Alex Edelman), Nicole (Ramona Young), Ken (Tim Key), Barry (Duane Shepard Sr.), and Travis (Eric Rahill).
While watching, fans of the OG series will be unable not to guess which character is most like their favorite original characters. Let’s get the ball rolling with Impacciatore’s character being most like Michael Scott, though others may disagree.
The creators and executive producers of The Paper are Daniels and Koman. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant — who created the original British version of The Office — also exec produce along with Howard Klein, Ben Silverman and Banijay Americas (formerly Reveille). Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, is the studio.
First look photos are available below.
(l-r) Sabrina Impacciatore as Esmeralda, Ramona Young as Nicole
Aaron Epstein/Peacock
(l-r) Duane Shepard Sr. as Barry, Oscar Nunez as Oscar
John P. Fleenor/Peacock
Domhnall Gleeson as Ned
Aaron Epstein/Peacock
From left: Chelsea Frei as Mare, Ramona Young as Nicole, Melvin Gregg as Detrick, Gbemisola Ikumelo as Adelola, Alex Edelman as Adam, Eric Rahill as Travis and Oscar Nuñez as Oscar
John P. Fleenor/Peacock
Domhnall Gleeson as Ned, left, and Tim Key as Ken
Aaron Epstein/Peacock
Sabrina Impacciatore as Esmeralda and Domhnall Gleeson as Ned
John P. Fleenor/Peacock
From left: Ramona Young as Nicole, Chelsea Frei as Mare and Melvin Gregg as Detrick
Republic of Gamers (ROG) is an ASUS sub-brand dedicated to creating the world’s best gaming hardware and software. Formed in 2006, ROG offers a complete line of innovative products known for performance and quality, including motherboards, graphics cards, system components, laptops, desktops, monitors, smartphones, audio equipment, routers, peripherals and accessories. ROG participates in and sponsors major international gaming events. ROG gear has been used to set hundreds of overclocking records and it continues to be the preferred choice of gamers and enthusiasts around the world. To become one of those who dare, learn more about ROG at:
Lithium deficiency in the brain could be an underlying contributor to Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research led by scientists at Harvard Medical School in Boston, US. The findings suggest that it may be possible in future to stall or reverse the disease by administering lithium, though this has not yet been shown in patients.
Harvard neuroscientist Bruce Yankner initially noted that giving high concentrations of lithium dampened signs of Alzheimer’s in mice. His team then measured levels of various metals in post-mortem brains of participants in the Religious Orders Study, a long-running medical study involving Catholic nuns, priests and brothers aged 65 year and older. Of 26 metals, only lithium was significantly reduced in those with mild-cognitive impairment, a forerunner of Alzheimer’s disease.1
Abundance of zinc was higher and copper lower in those with Alzheimer’s, agreeing with previous reports. However, Yankner notes that ‘by far the most significant alteration was in the reduction of lithium in the Alzheimer’s patients’.
Lithium has previously been proposed as an Alzheimer’s treatment, while a 2017 nationwide study in Denmark reported a link between higher levels of lithium in drinking water and a lower incidence of dementia.
After their initial observations, Yankner’s team fed both healthy mice and mice with Alzheimer’s-linked genetic mutations a diet 90% reduced in lithium, which cut levels in their blood by 90%. Their brains nevertheless retained lithium at 50% the levels of mice fed a normal diet.
This halving of lithium in the mouse brain boosted the formation of amyloid plaques, tangles of tau protein and pro-inflammatory signals from brain immune cells, all of which are considered hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. In turn, this speeded up the loss of brain connections and cognitive decline.
RNA sequencing analysis revealed that gene expression was changed in multiple brain cell types when lithium was deficient. The researchers suggest that this is partly due to lithium’s natural role in blocking an enzyme called GSK3b, dysregulation of which has been linked to Alzheimer’s.
The team also noted that lithium levels were higher in amyloid plaques than nearby regions, suggesting that a build-up of plaques traps more lithium. They suggest that a shortage of lithium could weaken the ability of specialised immune cells called microglia to clear amyloid, while more amyloid traps more endogenous lithium and exacerbates the deficiency.
‘It was intriguing how widespread the effects of lithium deficiency are – on amyloid, tau tangles, [the nerve insulator] myelin, inflammation and a loss of synapses and axons,’ says Yankner. ‘This is a potential mechanism for multi-system degeneration that gives rise to dementia.’
Restoring function
Yankner’s team tested 16 lithium salts for their propensity to become trapped in amyloid plaques. They found that lithium carbonate, which is currently used in the treatment of mood disorders, was easily trapped within the positively-charged plaques. Lithium orotate had the lowest affinity for amyloid, and further tests in mice showed promise. ‘Microglia from lithium-deficient mice were impaired in their ability to degrade amyloid-beta peptide,’ says Yankner. ‘When the mice were treated with lithium orotate, they had that ability restored. It was quite impressive.’
The team now hope to move towards a clinical trial with a lithium salt that can steer clear of amyloid plaques and be easily administered. However, Yankner cautions that nobody should take lithium based on this study, until it is proven in human trials. At high levels, lithium can be toxic, causing intestinal and neurological symptoms.
Serge Gauthier, a neurologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, describes the findings as ‘spectacular’. ‘The potential of low supplemental doses of lithium has been suggested in the past,’ he notes. Gautier says that he is not aware of a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s in long-term lithium users, but notes that people with bipolar disorder are often excluded from Alzheimer’s research.
‘These are some of the most compelling data yet that lithium is a physiological signalling ion, rather than an irrelevant trace metal that is only important as a drug,’ says Ashley Bush, a neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne, Australia, who has written a separate commentary on the new research in Nature.2 He notes that in addition to GSK3b, ‘it is likely that there are further biochemical targets whose activities or interactions might be modulated by lithium’.
According to Bush, the study opens up many questions, such as whether lithium levels in people decline with normal ageing, whether lithium is an essential element and what would be an optimal dietary intake. ‘Lithium orotate deserves to be tested in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease and mild-cognitive impairment,’ he adds.
Mutations in the gene encoding PI3Kα are associated with several types of cancer, but selectively targeting oncogenic signalling while leaving physiological PI3Kα activity intact has proved challenging. A new study in Science reports the design of an oral small molecule, BBO-10203, that disrupts a cancer-associated RAS–PI3Kα interaction but preserves other PI3Kα functions including regulation of insulin signalling.
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When Oliveira last fought in Brazil, he submitted Kevin Lee via guillotine choke, but that bout came in an empty arena due to the COVID-19 pandemic and represented the last UFC event for the next couple of months. The last time Oliveira fought in front of a Brazilian crowd came in November 2019 when he knocked out Jared Gordon in the first round. Overall, Oliveira is 6-0 fighting in his home country under the UFC banner.
His opponent, Fiziev, is coming off a bounce-back win in his own home show as he took a decision verdict over Ignacio Bahamondes. “Ataman” had lost his previous three fights — a majority decision defeat to Justin Gaethje, a TKO loss to Mateusz Gamrot that came as the result of a knee injury, and a second decision loss to Gaethje after Fiziev accepted the bout on short-notice — but his performance against Bahamondes looked steady and technical. The 32-year-old is regarded as one of the most wicked strikers in a division full of them, and he’ll look to play spoiler against Oliveira.
Stay tuned to UFC.com for any updates regarding fights and events.
It’s fair to say that few wireless earbuds are as iconic as Apple’s AirPods. In fact, we’re not sure there are any. The latest Apple AirPods 4 continue to set the standard, boasting enhanced features and a refined design that makes them more comfortable to wear than previous iterations. But these are still AirPods, which means that they don’t come cheap. That is, unless you happen to buy them at the right time. Like today.
Right now, Amazon is offering these for just $100, after a sweet 22% (or $29) discount. This isn’t the lowest we’ve seen these earbuds fall to, but it isn’t all that far from it. Just make sure to order yours soon — these deals don’t tend to hang around for long.
Apple AirPods 4 are available in two formats, and this is the version without active noise cancellation. These AirPods will usually run you $129 (the ANC model typically retails for $179), but with this discount, you’ll pay only $100. These AirPods have been redesigned so they can fit more comfortably. Apple also included an H2 chip that allows for voice isolation whenever you’re in situations that require you to take calls in a noisy environment. The AirPods 4 also offer personalized spatial audio and a battery life of up to 20 hours.
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These latest AirPods are dust- and waterproof and include a smaller case for easier carrying. You can also use them with Siri for added voice control options, which lets you start calls or choose your audio. Plus, you can now shake your head or nod to respond to any prompts received.
Looking for deals on other new Apple devices? We’re rounding up the best iPhone 16 and Apple Watch Series 10 deals, too.
Check out our list of the best AirPods deals if you want to shop previous models. We also have a list of the best wireless earbuds deals in case you still want to compare models. Fancy picking up a pair of AirPods 4 with ANC? They’re currently on offer for just $149, a nice $20 discount.
HEADPHONE DEALS OF THE WEEK
Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.
Why this deal matters
Apple makes solid audio gear, and the AirPods offer good sound quality and a comfortable fit for most people. These AirPods don’t have noise-canceling features, but for just $100, this is a deal you can’t pass up.
CNET is always covering a wide array of deals on tech products and much more. Start with the hottest sales and discounts on the CNET Deals page, and sign up for the CNET Deals Text to get daily deals sent straight to your phone. Add the free CNET Shopping extension to your browser for real-time price comparisons and cash-back offers. And peruse our gift guide, which includes a full range of ideas for birthdays, anniversaries and more.
The average T Tauri (top) and VLMS (bottom) sample JWST spectra. The detected molecular species are highlighted. The C2H2 and H2O regions (yellow and blue, respectively) show the regions over which the fluxes are integrated. Most of the unlabeled lines in the T Tauri average are various H2O transitions. — astro-ph.EP
The chemical composition of the inner regions of disks around young stars will determine the properties of planets forming there.
Many disk physical processes drive the chemical evolution, some of which depend on/correlate with the stellar properties. We aim to explore the connection between stellar properties and inner disk chemistry, using mid-infrared spectroscopy.
We use JWST-MIRI observations of a large, diverse sample of sources to explore trends between C2H2 and H2O. Additionally, we calculate the average spectrum for the T Tauri (M∗>0.2 M⊙) and very low-mass star (VLMS, M∗≤0.2 M⊙) samples and use slab models to determine the properties. We find a significant anti-correlation between the flux ratio of C2H2/H2O and the stellar luminosity. Disks around VLMS have significantly higher FC2H2/FH2O flux ratios than their higher-mass counterparts.
We also explore trends with the strength of the 10 μm silicate feature, stellar accretion rate, and disk dust mass, all of which show correlations with the flux ratio, which may be related to processes driving the carbon-enrichment in disks around VLMS, but also have degeneracies with system properties.
Slab model fits to the average spectra show that the VLMS H2O emission is quite similar in temperature and column density to a warm (∼600 K) H2O component in the T Tauri spectrum, indicating that the high C/O gas phase ratio in these disks is not due to oxygen depletion alone. Instead, the presence of many hydrocarbons, including some with high column densities, points to carbon enhancement in the disks around VLMS.
The observed differences in the inner disk chemistry as a function of host properties are likely to be accounted for by differences in the disk temperatures, stellar radiation field, and the evolution of dust grains.
Sierra L. Grant, Milou Temmink, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Danny Gasman, Aditya M. Arabhavi, Benoît Tabone, Thomas Henning, Inga Kamp, Alessio Caratti o Garatti, Valentin Christiaens, Pacôme Esteve, Manuel Güdel, Hyerin Jang, Till Kaeufer, Nicolas T. Kurtovic, Maria Morales-Calderón, Giulia Perotti, Kamber Schwarz, Andrew D. Sellek, Lucas M. Stapper, Marissa Vlasblom, L.B.F.M. Waters
Comments: Accepted for publication in A&A. 15 pages, 9 figures. ArXiv abstract is shortened Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) Cite as: arXiv:2508.04692 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2508.04692v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.04692 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Sierra Grant [v1] Wed, 6 Aug 2025 17:56:05 UTC (797 KB) https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04692 Astrobiology, Astrochemistry,
