In the 2008 film The Dark Knight, there is a scene in which a would-be criminal decides against committing a crime after he sees the Bat Signal in Gotham City’s dark sky. The man chooses to mind his behavior since Batman could see him. But that’s in the fantastical world of comic book movies. That type of thing can’t happen in real life… right? Well, psychologists in Milan, Italy put this to the test.
In a psychological experiment, researchers from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore found the sudden appearance of Batman caused people to become more altruistic. This mass change of behavior among a group has led Francesco Pagnini, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Università Cattolica, and his team to coin this prosocial behavior the “Batman Effect.”
The experiment was fairly simple. Professor Pagnini had a woman who appeared to be pregnant get onto a train with 138 people, including an observer planted to gauge the reactions of the passengers—would any of them offer their seat to her?
The second part of the experiment had the same scenario, but included a man in a Batman costume getting onto the train from another entrance. The purpose of the experiment was to see if an unexpected event, such as the appearance of a superhero, shook up people’s routines and increased awareness of the present moment.
The results of the experiment were surprisingly like a comic book. Without “Batman,” only 37.66% of the passengers offered their seats to the pregnant woman. However, 67.21% of the passengers offered their seats when an unexpected Dark Knight appeared on their subway train. In other words, Batman’s presence caused roughly twice as many people to kindly offer their seats to the pregnant woman compared to a “normal” ride. Another interesting note was that 44% of the people who offered their seats when the Caped Crusader was on the train reported not having seen anyone in a Batman outfit, suggesting that unexpected events could promote prosocial behavior even in the absence of awareness.
“Our findings are similar to those of previous research linking present-moment awareness (mindfulness) to greater prosociality; this may create a context in which individuals become more attuned to social cues,” said Professor Pagnini in a statement. “This suggests a potential mechanism through which novelty and unpredictability promote prosocial behavior, strengthening theories linking attentional shifts to increased social responsiveness.”
Pagnini didn’t rule out that Batman and what he represents played a significant factor in the experiment’s results (aside from the unexpected nature of a superhero taking the subway with regular passengers).
“It is also possible that the superhero figure enhanced the relevance of cultural values, gender roles, and norms of chivalrous help, consistent with research on the ‘priming’ effect associated with superheroes,” added Pagnini. “The figure of Batman could therefore play a prosocial priming role.”
The result of this experiment has had some psychologists offer methods for people who want to be more altruistic or improve their daily lives. It may not be a picture of Batman, but having a photo of someone you admire or aspire to be like can help motivate you towards goals that reflect who they are or what they’ve accomplished. In terms of the subway experiment, that shows that making a slight change in your routine, such as taking a different route to work or a different place to have coffee, would force your brain off of auto-pilot to take in the differences of life around you.
The result of this experiment shows that a little bit of shake-up of your usual routine could increase your awareness of what and who around you could use your help. This could help you become more of a superhero in real life (costume optional).
Plastic waste has been a growing global issue for years. The United Nations Environment Programme says that 19 to 23 million metric tonnes of plastic waste leaks into lakes, rivers, and oceans each year. Given the threat microplastics pose to animal and human health, efforts to find green replacements have intensified—and they’re working. Scientists from Singapore and Spain have found a strong, potentially viable replacement for plastic made from shrimp shells.
A research team based at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Barcelona has made a biodegradable plastic alternative out of chitosan. Chitosan is a compound created by combining shrimp shells with trace amounts of nickel. It contains a structural molecule found in the shells of crustaceans and insect exoskeletons. Usually discarded as a waste byproduct of shrimp and crab processing, chitosan is commonly produced during seafood preparation and commercial fishing.
The issue with chitosan, though, was that it weakens and dissolves in water. That is, until recently.
How chitosan got stronger
Dissolving chitosan flakes into a weak acetic solution and mixing them with dissolved nickel chloride and water produced surprising results. Scientists then poured the mixture into molds to dry. The process yields a thin, green-tinted film with the strength of commonly used plastics like polypropylene. Even better, when submerged in water, the film grows 50% stronger. This increased durability matches the characteristics of polycarbonate and PETG, plastics commonly used in commercial single-use water bottles.
Researchers then stress-tested the chitosan material by molding it into cups and containers. They were able to confirm it could hold water without leaks. In terms of biodegradability, the chitosan material reached its half-life in four months in a standard soil burial test. By contrast, most commercial plastics can take centuries to decompose under similar conditions.
Researchers found that this is not only a better biodegradable plastic alternative, but also one that produces zero waste during creation. When the chitosan/nickel film is submerged, about 87% of the nickel washes out. That wash water can then be reused again and again from one batch of chitosan to the next. According to the researchers, the nickel content of a single AAA battery would provide enough nickel to manufacture more than a dozen chitosan drinking cups.
The potential future
Rigorous testing to assess the material’s limits for medical use and consumption still needs to be done. That said, the Food and Drug Administration has already approved products containing chitosan and nickel individually in the past. Barring any troubling research about their combined safety, the outlook is quite positive for future use.
Hopefully, seafood and battery waste can be reduced, helping lower plastic waste in a three-way win for the environment.
In the United States, gut health is a big deal. According to a 2022 survey by the American Gastroenterological Association, 40% of Americans deal with digestive problems that disrupt their day-to-day lives. Many try different diets and supplements to assuage these issues, as well as use probiotics to improve overall digestion—but there might be a better way. Scientists may have found a way to analyze and pinpoint potential digestive problems; all you need to do is put on some special underwear and fart.
Researchers at the University of Maryland wanted to find a better way to monitor and measure human gut bacteria in the name of microbiome research. While past methods allowed them to see what gut bacteria species are living in the human body, there was no accurate way to see what the gut bacteria was doing hour by hour. Well, they seem to have found a way: a pair of underwear with a tiny sensor clipped near the rear can now record data from a person’s flatulence.
This “Smart Underwear” measures the amount of hydrogen gas emitted each time a person passes gas, monitoring the gut bacteria’s activity within a person. Hydrogen gas is typically produced when certain gut bacteria breaks down undigested food. The whole thing may sound silly (and smelly), but early tests of this device have been able to detect dietary changes in people with 94.7% accuracy. This device and method of analyzing gut bacteria is better than most current tools that analyze stool samples, blood, or breath for such data. The Smart Underwear also has a battery that can last for a week without compromising comfort for the wearer.
“The Smart Underwear comfortably attaches to the exterior of the user’s underwear near the perineal region via a snap system, in which a small plastic snap on the inside of the underwear fabric fits into a corresponding hole on the Smart Underwear on the opposite side of the underwear,” wrote Santiago Botasini and their colleagues in the study. “This sandwiches the fabric in place through friction, ensuring a stable but comfortable attachment of the Smart Underwear. Once attached, the Smart Underwear passively captures hydrogen concentration in flatus, as well as temporal dynamics including the frequency and duration of flatus events enabling longitudinal measurements of gut microbial metabolism.”
“Healthy adults produced flatus an average of 32 times per day” #SmartUnderwear#Flatus is the medical term for gas that is expelled from the digestive tract through the rectum #Fartshttps://t.co/9OO7XVbmXW
While additional studies are needed, this current study of 38 participants seems to suggest this device could help doctors. The Smart Underwear could pinpoint specific food sensitivities and intolerances within their patients, which proves to be a much better and more accurate practice than relying on patients self-reporting via “food journals” to capture patterns.
The study shows that self-reporting isn’t always accurate. For example, the device revealed that the participants farted 32 times per day on average, which is more than double the typically cited daily average of 14 incidents.
It will be a while before gastrointestinal doctors start prescribing Smart Underwear to figure out what’s causing their digestive discomfort, but the research is promising. At any rate, whether the Smart Underwear will be used just for studies or becomes a widespread method to identify food intolerances, getting more information will ultimately lead to a sweeter smell of success over time.
Today the world of Egyptology faces a silent crisis – not of looting, although that plays a part, but of disconnection. Walk into any major museum, from Copenhagen to California, and you see glass cases filled with what could be called orphaned artifacts: remarkable objects, often acquired in the 19th and early 20th century, that have been completely stripped of their histories. You can see what they are – a mummy’s painted foot case, a golden mask – but we have no idea where they came from. They are beautiful, but historically they are mute.
Many objects entered museum collections at times when excavation and collecting practices were very different from today. In the past, excavated objects were often divided between institutions around the world, and display was prioritized over documentation. Over time, connections between pieces were lost. As a result, museums around the world hold remarkable artifacts whose backstories are thin, fragmentary or missing altogether.
Archaeologists like me working in the field today regularly uncover fragments: broken pieces of objects that once formed part of something larger. In some cases, those fragments may share the same underlying geometry with objects already held in museums. For example, a mummy’s foot case and a newly found shard may have been produced using the same mold, so they share a consistent three-dimensional form even if they are now separated by time, distance and absence of documentation.
Traditionally, evaluating whether a fragment matches up with a specific museum object has relied on visual judgment and incomplete records, rather than a quantitative comparison of shape.
This gap between excavation archaeology and museum collections is one of the most persistent challenges in the field. My research asks a simple question: Can we use digital tools to test whether fragments and museum objects might be related and, in doing so, recover parts of their histories that were previously inaccessible?
Reuse over time and looting shifted and damaged the contents of an ancient Egyptian tomb. This displaced mummy mask could have a relationship to other artifacts already in museums around the world. Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo
A long-standing problem in archaeology
Archaeology is, by nature, fragmentary. Objects break, decay or are disturbed over centuries. Traditionally, archaeologists have relied on visual inspection, stylistic comparison and written records to propose connections between fragments and objects. These approaches are still essential, but they also have limits. Visual judgments can be subjective, and archival documentation is often incomplete or inconsistent.
As a result, many potential links between excavated material and museum artifacts have remained speculative or have never been proposed at all. An object in a museum may appear complete yet still have a fragmented history. Without a way to test relationships systematically, fragments often remain sidelined as secondary or uninformative.
More than a century ago, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie argued that an object’s value lies not in its beauty but in the information it carries. An unremarkable fragment with a known history, he believed, could be more important than a finely made object without one. Today, digital tools are giving archaeologists new ways to put that idea into practice.
Archaeologists can use handheld 3D scanners to noninvasively map objects in very fine detail. Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo
Turning objects into data that can be compared
One of those tools is 3D scanning. Using portable scanners, it is now possible to capture the full surface geometry of an object with high precision, without touching or damaging it. Every curve, contour and variation in thickness can be recorded digitally.
Once scanned, an artifact becomes more than an image. It becomes data: a detailed digital model that can be rotated, measured, compared and analyzed. Importantly, this process is noninvasive. Fragile objects do not need to be moved, dismantled or physically tested.
For archaeologists and museum curators, this process opens up new possibilities. Objects held in different institutions, or fragments stored in excavation archives, can be compared digitally, even if the originals never leave their locations.
Scanning is only the first step. The real challenge lies in comparison. Rather than asking whether two pieces look similar, computational shape analysis allows researchers to ask a more precise question: How similar are their shapes?
In simple terms, the computer compares the geometry of two surfaces. It looks at curvature, thickness and spatial relationships, measuring how closely one surface matches another. It’s like comparing a kind of geometric fingerprint.
This approach doesn’t replace expert judgment. Instead, it supports it by providing measurable evidence that can confirm, refine or challenge visual impressions. It allows archaeologists to move from intuition to testing.
When a fragment meets a museum object
In a recent study published in the journal Heritage Science, I applied these methods to Graeco-Roman Egyptian funerary artifacts made of cartonnage, a composite material of linen, plaster and paint.
I created high-resolution 3D scans of excavated cartonnage fragments and compared them with an intact funerary mask held in a museum collection. The goal was not to reconstruct the object physically but to test whether their shapes were compatible in meaningful ways.
The comparison focused on three-dimensional geometry rather than decoration. This matters because cartonnage masks were often shaped in molds: If two objects were formed in the same mold, they can share highly consistent curvature and thickness patterns even when their painted surfaces differ.
The mask reference surface is shown in gray, while the aligned fragment is colored based on the surface-to-surface distance at each point. Green indicates a good match with almost no distance. Cooler colors show areas where the fragment lies below the reference mask, and warmer colors show where it lies above. Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo
I used a distance-mapping approach called deviation mapping. After aligning the 3D model of an excavated fragment to the corresponding region of the intact museum object, the algorithm calculates the distances between the two surfaces at thousands of points. Areas where the distances were consistently small are geometrically very similar. Areas with consistently larger distances indicate that the fragment’s shape diverges from the reference surface.
In this case, the surfaces corresponded closely, with differences generally of less than a millimeter – a level of agreement consistent with production in the same mold rather than a coincidental visual resemblance.
What mattered most was not a single “match” but the ability to evaluate relationships transparently and reproducibly, using shared digital evidence.
One of the most powerful aspects of this approach is that it works across distance. Researchers can easily share digital models, allowing them to compare fragments and objects held in different institutions, without transporting fragile artifacts. Excavation archives, museum collections and research institutions can begin to speak the same digital language, reconnecting evidence that has long been separated by geography and history.
The work I describe here, part of my recent CRAFT Project, does not use artificial intelligence or machine learning. It relies on computer-based shape comparison and careful interpretation of metrological results. But it sits within a broader movement in heritage research.
Across the world, researchers and institutions are beginning to combine 3D scanning with machine learning to explore collections in different ways. For example, the EU-funded RePAIR project uses AI and robotics to help reassemble fragmented archaeological artifacts, while major institutions such as the Smithsonian are experimenting with AI-driven analysis of large 3D collections.
Together, these projects point to a future in which digital tools play an increasingly active role in how museums and archaeologists understand the past.
Digital archaeology is sometimes associated with flashy reconstructions or virtual displays. But its deeper value lies elsewhere. By giving fragments a new analytical role, digital methods allow archaeologists to recover relationships that were long thought irretrievably lost.
New digital methodologies are breathing new life into a long-standing archaeological principle: Modest fragments can carry outsized significance when they clarify an object’s origins and its lost context, finally allowing it to find its way back home.
