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Muslims, Atheists More Likely to Face Religious Discrimination in the United States
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Muslims, Atheists More Likely to Face Religious Discrimination in the United States

Muslims and atheists in the United States are more likely than those of Christian faiths to experience religious discrimination, according to new research led by the University of Washington. In the study, which focused on public schools because they are government-run, community-facing institutions, the researchers tested responses to an individual’s expression of religious belief. In...

News Coverage in Chicago Disproportionately Devalues Black and Hispanic Lives
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News Coverage in Chicago Disproportionately Devalues Black and Hispanic Lives

The recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery added new momentum to the Black Lives Matter social movement in the United States. But Stanford researchers have found that local news media have not treated Black and Hispanic lives as equal in value to white lives in stories. Forrest Stuart, associate professor of...

When Bots Do the Negotiating, Humans More Likely to Engage in Deceptive Techniques
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When Bots Do the Negotiating, Humans More Likely to Engage in Deceptive Techniques

Recently computer scientists at USC Institute of Technologies (ICT) set out to assess under what conditions humans would employ deceptive negotiating tactics. Through a series of studies, they found that whether humans would embrace a range of deceptive and sneaky techniques was dependent both on the humans’ prior negotiating experience in negotiating as well as...

When Painting Reveals Increases in Social Trust
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When Painting Reveals Increases in Social Trust

Scientists from the CNRS, ENS-PSL, Inserm, and Sciences Po revealed an increase in facial displays of trustworthiness in European painting between the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries. The findings, published in Nature Communications on 22 September 2020, were obtained by applying face-processing software to two groups of portraits, suggesting an increase in trustworthiness in society that closely...

COVID-19 Vaccines: Open Source Licensing Could Keep Big Pharma from Making Huge Profits Off Taxpayer-Funded Research
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COVID-19 Vaccines: Open Source Licensing Could Keep Big Pharma from Making Huge Profits Off Taxpayer-Funded Research

An international, multi-billion-dollar race is underway to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, and progress is moving at record speed, but with nationalistic, competitive undertones. If and when an effective vaccine is invented, its production will require an unprecedented effort to vaccinate people across the globe. However, for the country that invents a safe and effective vaccine,...

Why You’re Getting So Many Political Text Messages Right Now
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Why You’re Getting So Many Political Text Messages Right Now

Text messages and emails from political campaigns are pouring into Americans’ phones and inboxes right now. It’s happening to political junkies, to people who gave their phone numbers to campaigns, and even to people who try to keep their contact information off mass mailing lists. I study political campaigns, including how they use social media...

Humans Ignite Almost Every Wildfire That Threatens Homes
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Humans Ignite Almost Every Wildfire That Threatens Homes

Summer and fall are wildfire season across the western U.S. In recent years, wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes, forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and exposed tens of millions to harmful smoke. Wildfires are a natural disturbance for these regions, but when combined with climate change and housing growth in the wildland-urban...