Do phone bans in schools work?

Most parents have some concerns about phone use. This is an interesting study from the UK, that investigated phone bans in schools.

The study covered 30 schools (20 had phone bans, 10 didn't), with the students aged 12-15.

Their main finding: phone bans don't meaningfully affect/improve mental wellbeing.

Basically the phone bans only reduced phone and social media use slightly, and kids still used their phones at home.

Important point: the phone bans weren't uniform or super strict in all cases -- e.g. some schools just told students keep their phones in their bags.

So we can't say that "phone bans will NEVER work". They just didn't have a huge impact, on average, in the way they were implememted in those 20 schools.

Does flying increase cancer risk?

Going on a tangent from another Board. We were talking about "space weather" and landed on the question of "flying and radiation".

Found this literature review found that:

aircrew have higher rates of certain cancers, such as melanoma, non-melanoma skin cancer, and breast cancer in female flight attendants, compared to the general population. However, the evidence does not clearly prove that cosmic ionizing radiation alone causes these cancers, because other factors—like disrupted sleep patterns, lifestyle, and exposure to chemicals—also affect risk.

(Quoting the Credo summary)

To me, it sounds plausible. Flight attendants, pilots, and frequent flyers beware!

Season 17, Episode 48: 3 Ways Space Weather (Possibly) Impacts Your Everyday Life

Hey StarTalkians! Season 17, episode 48 was a sit-down discussion with Neil, Chuck and guest Dr. Lika Guhathakurta, a heliophysicist at NASA. The latter half addressed space weather, coronal mass ejections and the many ways in which the sun can – and does – impact our lives.

Super Solar Storms with Lika Guhathakurta - StarTalk Radio

One of Dr. Guhathakurta’s papers delves into what she calls “everyday” space weather, and overlaps with a lot of the podcast discussion.

Carrington-Like Events

Around 50 minutes into the show, they discuss the so-called “Carrington Event” of 1859, and Dr. Guhathakurta also covers this issue in the paper mentioned above. But as her paper points out, there have been others.

A 1989 space weather event knocked out transformers in New Jersey, the United Kingdom and Quebec, with Quebec also losing power for 9 hours. In 2003, geomagnetic storms caused blackouts in southern Sweden and possibly damaged transformers in South Africa.

3 Everyday Effects of Space Weather

Those events are more dramatic – thankfully, we don’t have that type of thing every day. However, that doesn’t mean space weather doesn’t have everyday impacts.

1: Power Problems

It doesn’t have to be a Carrington-like event for space weather to impact your electricity supply. A paper referenced by Dr. Guhathakurta looked at data on insurance claims for industrial electrical equipment, cross-referenced with space weather conditions. While they struggle to pin down a precise dollar amount for the cost – it’s probably in the billions – they calculate that 500 claims are submitted in the US annually because of space weather.

2: Cosmic Rays During Flights

When you travel by plane, you’re exposed to more cosmic rays – high-energy particles originating in distant events like supernovae. At solar maximum, the sun’s magnetic field actually protects us, but at times of lower solar activity, we’re exposed to more. A study looking at this calculated that flying at high latitudes for 12 and a half hours exposes you to as much radiation as a chest X-ray, or about half that for mid-latitudes.

3: The “Blurry Vision” of Your Satellite Navigation

Dr. Guhathakurta estimates [2] that about a third of the inaccuracy of satellite navigation devices come down to space weather. Irregularities in the ionosphere can refract and scatter their signals, leading to what she calls “blurry vision.” It isn’t a huge effect, but it is definitely something you’ll notice often!  

I should probably drink more coffee

Think coffee is a bad habit? Research actually suggests otherwise. This umbrella review of 218 meta-analyses concludes that 3-4 cups a day is associated with lower risk for heart disease and all-cause mortality. Check out the source to read more!

Does Socialisation Reduce Cognitive Decline? A New Study Says Yes

For people who don’t already have dementia, but are worried about it, learning about protective factors and risk factors for cognitive decline is one of the only steps you can take. A common piece of advice is to remain socially active, but does it really make a difference?

A new study [1] looked into this and found a very clear correlation between higher levels of social engagement and better cognitive performance.

Why Researching the Impact of Social Engagement is Difficult

Defining social engagement isn’t as easy as you might think. As a paper tackling this issue points out, researchers tend to use many different, overlapping terms. For example, social participation, social connectedness and community engagement are all used, and other studies may focus instead on social isolation. The paper points out that the subtle distinctions between these methods makes it difficult to interpret the evidence as a whole.

What the New Study Adds

The new research [1] used a composite measure called the Social Engagement Index, which covers specific things like whether you live with other people, whether you went out for fun in the past month, whether you visited friends or family, whether you’re married, employed and more. The idea is to cover many metrics of social engagement and use all of them to produce the final score.

They used data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study from 2011 to 2019, which covers Americans aged 65 or older enrolled in Medicare, and discounted anyone likely to have dementia at the start of the study. They found that higher social engagement (at baseline) was associated with a reduced decline in memory, orientation (i.e. what day is it? Who is the vice president?) and executive function. This was also incremental: the more engaged, the better the outcome.

Does Social Engagement Reduce Cognitive Decline?

The overall picture isn’t as clear as we might like. A “systematic review of reviews” covered this issue (section 4.1 for a summary) and despite emphasizing that low social engagement increases your risk, concluded that the data on the presumed protective effect is inconsistent. That said, the difference between a protective effect and avoiding an increase in risk seems more of a philosophical issue than a practical one.

As the new study also suggests, it certainly seems better to be socially engaged than to not be.

Shingles Vaccine Protects Against Dementia

A flagship study came out in Nature in 2025 that solidified a long observed finding, that the Shingles (Herpes Zoster) vaccine can protect against dementia.

Previous studies were classic observational cohort designs which can fail to show causation or account for confounding factors. This 2021 study found "a combined analysis estimated a 31% lower risk" and indicated the need for stronger research.

In comes the 2025 Nature study, this time a natural experiment arose:

To provide causal as opposed to correlational evidence, we take advantage of the fact that, in Wales, eligibility for the zoster vaccine was determined on the basis of an individual’s exact date of birth. Those born before 2 September 1933 were ineligible and remained ineligible for life, whereas those born on or after 2 September 1933 were eligible for at least 1 year to receive the vaccine.

The finding:

We show that receiving the zoster vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis over a follow-up period of 7 years by 3.5 percentage points (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.6–7.1, P = 0.019), corresponding to a 20.0% (95% CI = 6.5–33.4) relative reduction. This protective effect was stronger among women than men.

Interestingly, the newer recombinant vaccines seem to be ever more effective than the live-attenuated vaccines (the ones tested in the Nature experiment), though more studies are in the pipeline to deepen this finding.

The mechanism for why the protective effect happens is still TBD, though some hypothesize that detrimental impact of getting Shingles on the brain may cause long term damage that leads to dementia.

Either way, the impacts seem clear, the Shingles vaccine seems like a must-get in a full range defense against dementia.

Autism rates probably not rising

Thought this study (a systematic review) deserved its own post. The review concluded:

About one in every 100 children worldwide is diagnosed with autism, and this number has gone up over time, mostly because people are more aware of autism and better at identifying it.

The review covered:

71 studies from 34 countries ... covering 99 different estimates of autism prevalence.

(Quotes from the Credo summary or the study.)

The point is, we aren't actually facing spike in autism -- whether due to vaccines or otherwise.

Hottest place in the galaxy... Oxfordshire?

Any Infinite Monkey Cage listeners here? Was listening to this episode on Fusion, and they talked about a nuclear fusion reactor in Oxfordshire.

As I understand it, to enable fusion, you need an extremely hot environment.

In the Oxfordshire reactor, scientists conducted an experiment with temperatures so high, that it momentarily became the hottest place in the solar system. Hotter than the sun.

How cool is that. And I found this paper, of a particularly well-known experiment using the reactor (scientists were able to generate a record amount of energy from fusion).

Ok to let babies cry themselves to sleep?

Came across this study (a small randomised control trial) that tested (a version of) this question.

Basically, they say it's fine. (well, a "gentler" version -- where parents don't completely ignore babies, but wait a few minutes before checking in on crying babies)

The researchers compared two techniques (to put babies to sleep):

• (A) "graduated extinction" (parents wait longer and longer before responding to a baby's cries)

• (B) "bedtime fading" (bedtime is gradually moved later)

• [and a control group, where parents were given basic information]

They were trying to test whether method A (graduated extinction) was harmful (since you let the babies cry by themselves).

Their main conclusion (from the credo summary):

both graduated extinction and bedtime fading led to babies falling asleep faster. The graduated extinction group also woke up less during the night and spent less time awake after falling asleep.

...

After one year, there were no differences between groups in children's emotional or behavioral problems, and no differences in how securely children were attached to their parents

🚨AI-Generated Videos : Can We Really Tell If an AI-Generated Video Is Fake? 🎥

As use of major LLMs become more widespread, we have been seeing a crazy influx of AI-generated content on our feeds. It used to be fairly easy to spot - with a character sporting six fingers or something phasing through a solid object; but with recent improvements, these videos are getting harder and harder to tell.

This new paper, published mid-August 2026, is an interesting read, specifically surveying crisis-themed content, titled:

Can We Defend Against AI-Generated Video Attacks on Real-World Crisis Events? A Systematic Evaluation of Detectors, Generators and Social Dissemination.

They systematically evaluate how well detectors perform on crisis-themed content, how generation conditions affect detectability, how humans perceive authenticity, or whether detectors remain reliable after videos are shared and altered during social dissemination.

📦 Core Contribution: RA-Bench Dataset

The authors also introduce RA-Bench, a large-scale benchmark for AI-generated video detection that uses real videos as anchors, matching real-world crisis scenarios:

• Total videos: 17,886

• Real anchors: 1,830 authentic crisis/event videos across 10 social-risk categories

• Generated clips: 16,056 synthetic clips created from:

  • ✅ 4 open-source generators

  • ✅ 5 closed-source generators

• Designed to reflect real-world crisis contexts rather than generic footage

🔍 They then tested different types of AI detectors, including specialised deepfake detectors and multimodal AI models, like CNNSpot, UnivFD and ReStraV .

🚨The results were sobering.

1. Current detection methods were not reliable for crisis scenarios.

2. No single type of detector consistently worked across different AI generators. A detector might perform well on videos from one generator but struggle with another.

3. Impact of social media dissemination: Uploading, compressing, resizing, and reposting a video can destroy the subtle clues detectors rely on, making fake videos even harder to spot.

4. Videos that were most convincing to humans were also harder for AI detectors to identify.

This is especially concerning since crisis events are high-stakes environments where misinformation can escalate rapidly, highlighting the need for detectors robust to evolving video generators.