A new study from the University of Kansas shows that in “hookup culture,” — in which young people may engage in sex without the traditional courtship practice of dating – there is a discrepancy between what college students are saying and what they are doing when it comes to sexual activity on dates. KU scholars...
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People Prefer Interacting with Female Robots in Hotels
People are more comfortable talking to female rather than male robots working in service roles in hotels, according to a study by Washington State University researcher Soobin Seo. The study, which surveyed about 170 people on hypothetical service robot scenarios, also found that the preference was stronger when the robots were described as having more...
Which Political Ideologies Make People More Likely to Dismiss the Risk of Covid-19?
A study published in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that people who embrace the ideologies of libertarianism and anti-egalitarianism are more likely to disregard the risks of COVID-19 and oppose government actions. Assistant professor Yilang Peng of the University of Georgia analyzed data from two surveys to investigate the relationship between attitudes toward COVID-19 and specific political...
How Fuel Poverty ‘Gets Under the Skin’
The rocketing price of fuel could be making people’s physical and mental health worse – according to a new study from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Researchers investigated how fuel poverty – not having enough money to heat your home – impacts health and wellbeing. They found that not being able to keep homes...
Book Traces Evolution of Computer from Unusual to Ubiquitous
Over the last 50 years, the computer has been transformed from a hulking scientific super-tool to a diverse family of devices that billions rely on to play games, shop, stream entertainment and communicate. “A New History of Modern Computing,” a new book by Thomas Haigh, (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) UWM professor of history, and Paul Ceruzzi,...
Biden Nominee Could Shake Up Court’s Liberal Wing
If President Joe Biden follows through on his promise to nominate a Black woman to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, longer-term change to the court is possible, based on voting patterns of Black female judges versus white male judges, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis. The study, “Replacing Justice Breyer,”...
Trump’s Tweets: Telling Truth From Fiction From the Words He Used
Social media has supercharged the spread of information—and misinformation, which presents significant challenges when trying to distinguish between fact and fiction on social media platforms like Twitter. One of the most prolific, widely shared, and highly scrutinized Twitter accounts of the past several years belonged to former U.S. President Donald Trump. In the final year...
Book Review: How Africa Was Central to the Making of the Modern World
Journalist, photographer, author and professor Howard W. French’s Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, is the most recent in a long career of thoughtful and significant literary and journalistic interventions. It demands an account of modernity that reckons with Africa as central to...
Groundbreaking Study Uncovers First Evidence of Long-Term Directionality in the Origination of Human Mutation, Fundamentally Challenging Neo-Darwinism
A new study by a team of researchers from Israel and Ghana has brought the first evidence of nonrandom mutation in human genes, challenging a core assumption at the heart of evolutionary theory by showing a long-term directional mutational response to environmental pressure. Using a novel method, researchers led by Professor Adi Livnat from the...
Mexican Town Protects Forest from Avocado Growers, Cartels
Regular citizens have taken the fight against illegal logging into their own hands in the pine-covered mountains of western Mexico, where loggers clear entire hillsides for avocado plantations that drain local water supplies and draw drug cartels hungry for extortion money. In some places, like the Indigenous township of Cheran in Michoacan state , the fight...