This week two studies appeared highlighting the gulf in artificial intelligence models for different medical imaging applications. One study, from doctors at Army Medical University in Chongqing, China, analyzed 517 separate psychiatric studies using 555 different AI models to assess neurological images and assist with diagnoses. It gave a dismal assessment, finding the models overwhelmingly have poor clinical applicability and a long way to go before they are ready for any actual psychiatric diagnosis in practice. A second study, however, found AI to be much more useful at imaging the torso. Doctors at the University of Copenhagen retrospectively analyzed 1,529 chest X-rays taken from adults in four hospitals in Denmark in early 2020 and found that an AI tool could identify abnormal chest X-rays with 99.1% sensitivity—better even than clinical board-certified radiologists. That suggests AI is ready for prospective clinical trials to test its ability to make thoracic diagnoses. Radiology

According to researchers at the University of Cambridge, high-income Western societies would benefit from embracing some of the caregiving and child-rearing methods of hunter-gatherer societies, which reflect the reality of human existence for 95 percent of its evolutionary past—a topic we have explored before. The hunter-gatherer approach may be better for children’s mental health, they suggest. Practices include things like almost constant physical contact for infants (generally ~90 percent of their daylight hours), receiving up to 50 percent of caregiving from unrelated “alloparents,” and spending lots of formative time in mixed-age playgroups without adult supervision. The researchers offer practical solutions for Western society to explore, like infant massage and babywearing, increased sibling and extra-familial involvement in childcare, and adjustments to school systems away from lecture-style early education. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

A new study by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville suggests that some novel autism risk genes may not be detectable in large-scale genetic studies because the power of those studies depends on observing variants frequently enough to ensure the ability to statistically correlate them with autism. Some risk genes, shorter ones for instance, can be missed in such studies. This new work describes a different approach called convergent co-expression, which could “facilitate the identification of novel risk genes not captured by even the best-powered sequencing studies to date,” the authors write. Cell Genomics

Searching for a fun new DIY science tool? Researchers at Winona State University in Minnesota have developed a way for a mere $50 to turn a smartphone into a powerful fluorescence microscope capable of imaging the microscopic world down to a resolution of 10 microns, about the size of an average bacterium. They repurposed recreational LEDs from flashlights and took filters from theater stage lights and incorporated them into a simple frame of wood and plexiglass. Calling their invention the glowscope, they anticipate it could put fluorescence imaging technology in the hands of students everywhere. Normally such microscopes cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars and tend to be found in core facilities or only the best funded labs. Scientific Reports

The sexual orientation of parents is not an important determinant of children’s development, according to a new study by researchers at Guangxi Medical University in Nanning, China, and Duke University School of Nursing in Durham, North Carolina. In a meta-analysis of 34 studies published between 1989–2022 (mostly in the U.S. and Europe), they looked at the difference between sexual minority and heterosexual families in terms of family outcomes—things like educational attainment or the long-term physical or psychological wellbeing of both the parents and children. The outcomes were similar between sexual minority and heterosexual families, and if anything sexual minority families had even better outcomes in certain ways. Where they did not, social factors like stigma, discrimination, and laws preventing gay marriage were implicated. BMJ Global Health

The vertical transmission of microbiomes from mothers to their babies that happens during and after childbirth is crucial for healthy infancy, and in recent years doctors have made the somewhat worrying observation that babies born from Caesarian sections get less microbial “seeding” since they lack the normal exposure they would get passing through the birth canal. But expanding on those previous reports, researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have now shown that babies born via C-sections can be compensated through breastfeeding and other contact with their mothers. Following 120 mother-infant pairs for the first 30 days after birth, they show that seeding happens from many different microbiome niches. And in a mechanism that would make even NASA engineers enamored of multiple redundant systems jealous, they show one microbiome seeding may compensate for the lack of another. Cell Host & Microbe

Reflections on those dead critters in the bottom of bottles of mezcal has been the source of mystery for years (and in the morning after, head-achy regrets). Where did those worms come from? The answer is, they are locally sourced in Oaxaca, Mexico, where 80 percent of the world’s mezcal is produced, but the industry has never spilled its secrets. Now researchers at the University of Florida have a definitive answer: They are offspring of the agave redworm moth Comadia redtenbacheri. First introduced into mezcal as a marketing strategy by Mexican entrepreneur Jacobo Lozano Paez after World War II, the “worms” are not really worms at all but larvae. Sequencing the DNA of 18 different mezcal worms from different producers, the researchers determined that they were all from the same species of moth, whose numbers are thought to be declining in recent years, putting pressure on the industry as well as local gatherers in Oaxaca who rely on finding wild-caught larvae to supplement their income. PeerJ

Adults of three insects species previously presumed to be the mezcal worm (A–C): The agave redworm moth Comadia redtenbacheri, the tequila giant skipper butterfly Aegiale hesperiaris, and the agave snout weevil Scyphophorus acupunctatus. Courtesy of PeerJ and (a) Mark Rosenstein/Brewster, Texas; (b) Ricardo Arredondo, Michoacan, México; (c) Simon Oliver, Granada, Spain.