Category: Other
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As France moves to limit the rights of migrants, research reveals just how reliant on them it is
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Once again, France finds itself in the grip of a political crisis. After the pension reform of June, which prompted more than one million people to take to the streets, president Emmanuel Macron’s framework immigration bill passed on Tuesday December 19. It will now be sent to be reviewed by the…
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Study finds links between lockdowns and decreasing social network segregation
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Ph.D. candidate Ludovico Napoli and Associate Professor Márton Karsai from the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University (CEU) recently published a paper titled “Socioeconomic reorganization of communication and mobility networks in response to external shocks” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This collaborative…
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Saboteurs try to outfox hunters in England’s countryside
Hunting with hounds was once an integral part of country life across the UK. Emerging from woods in a quiet corner of rural England, a small band of anti-foxhunting campaigners have just one goal: to confuse the pack of dogs chasing a fox and prevent its death. These “hunt saboteurs” regularly gate-crash meetings across the…
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How an AI-powered lion became a teaching tool
Reggie the Lion, the beloved mascot of King’s College London (KCL), turns 100 this month, and earlier this year he became the muse for my first foray into using artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom. I decided to use Reggie and this year’s most talked-about technology to create illustrations for my lecture materials. I’m based…
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Citations show gender bias — and the reasons are surprising
Encouraging female scientists to mentor other female scientists might contribute to gender silos in some fields.Credit: Getty An analysis of more than two million papers in the life sciences shows a strong gender bias in citations: papers with female lead authors get fewer citations than do those led by male authors in subsequent male-led papers1.…
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A vicious turn to the saga of vitamin A deficiency in India
Arlappa N. Dismantling five decades of public health policy with spurious interpretation of a single study may relapse nutritional blindness among vulnerable children in India. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2022:1–2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-022-01228-w. Sachdev HS, Reddy GB, Pullakhandam R, Ghosh S, Rajkumar H, Kurpad AV. Flawed analyses and historical data inflate vitamin A deficiency in India to…
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What are the origins of Santa Claus?
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain We’re all familiar with the jolly, white-haired and bearded overweight man who sneaks down chimneys on Christmas Eve delivering presents to children. But where did this come from? With roots in Christianity, the origins of the world’s most beloved gift-giver transcend time, culture and religion. St. Nicholas It all starts with…
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India’s new manual for water supply will replicate past failures
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Water utilities in India supply residents with water for an average of only four hours per day. Within cities, some neighborhoods receive water almost all the time, while some receive less than half an hour per week. Intermittent supply of water inconveniences everyone and often disproportionately burdens the poorest and most…
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Sniffing women’s tears reduces aggressive behavior in men, researchers report
New research, publishing December 21 in the open access journal in PLOS Biology, shows that tears from women contain chemicals that block aggression in men. The study led by Shani Agron at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, finds that sniffing tears leads to reduced brain activity related to aggression, which results is less aggressive…
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Hydropower and Desalination Could Work Better Together
A greener future requires, in part, more large-scale energy storage systems. The most common system is pumped-storage hydropower, in which excess energy is stored by pumping water to a higher elevation and releasing it to drive a turbine when energy demand rises. Pumped storage currently accounts for 96 percent of utility-scale energy storage in the…