A mysterious tusked animal depicted in South African rock art might portray an ancient species preserved as fossils in the same region, according to a study published September 18, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Julien Benoit of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The Horned Serpent panel is a section of rock...
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‘They’re Eating Pets’ – Another Example of Us Politicians Smearing Haiti and Haitian Immigrants
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance continues to defend the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating area cats and dogs. That outlandish idea has been thoroughly debunked since former President Donald Trump repeatedly raised it as an anti-immigrant talking point in the Sept. 12, 2024, presidential debate. Trump never...
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Beneath the Brushstrokes, Van Gogh’s Sky Is Alive with Real-World Physics
Vincent van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night” depicts a swirling blue sky with yellow moon and stars. The sky is an explosion of colors and shapes, each star encapsulated in ripples of yellow, gleaming with light like reflections on water. Van Gogh’s brushstrokes create an illusion of sky movement so convincing it led atmospheric scientists...
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Police Body-Camera Footage as Data
A study uses body-worn camera footage as a source of data on police-community interactions. Nicholas Camp and colleagues analyzed transcripts from 615 police stops made in California by Oakland Police Department police officers before and after a procedural justice training, which focused on officer communication in routine traffic stops. The training included findings by the...
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Men Behind the Wheel: Three Times More Violations and Accidents Than Women
Men are three times more likely than women to commit traffic violations while driving and to be involved in accidents. Moreover, they are more likely to create situations on the road that are highly dangerous to others. Men are also twice as likely to drive under the influence and nearly one-third more likely to receive...
.jpg?sfvrsn=8588c21_5 "Two Visions of National Security at the Harris-Trump Debate")
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Two Visions of National Security at the Harris-Trump Debate
A roundup of the candidates’ statements across seven national security themes In between former President Trump’s false claim of Haitian migrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio and another false claim that Vice President Harris was promising to perform transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison, a Trumpian conception of national security did emerge from Tuesday...
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The U.S Housing Crisis: What Americans Need to Know
ousing is front and center in both of the major parties’ campaigns for the White House. Voters, particularly young voters, consistently rank concerns around housing as one the leading issues that will determine who they vote for in November. A recent poll found that neither party has a clear edge on the issue. We asked two RAND experts to bring...
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Key Witness in Trial of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Seeks No Prison Time at Upcoming Sentencing
Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried ’s collapsed cryptocurrency empire and his former girlfriend, is seeking no prison time at her sentencing later this month. Lawyers for Ellison made the request shortly before midnight Tuesday in a filing in Manhattan federal court in advance of a sentencing scheduled for Sept. 24. The...
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New Study Questions the Theory of a Violent Invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the Late Prehistory
A study by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the University of Murcia (UM) challenges the theory that warrior groups with a ‘Steppe’ genetic component originating from Eastern Europe violently replaced the male population of the Iberian Peninsula some 4,200 years ago and presents a different scenario, in which groups with ‘Steppe’ ancestry mixed...
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Neutral News Sources Could Exploit Today’s Polarized Mediascape to Boost Revenue − Here’s Why They May Choose Not To
Even news outlets perceived as politically neutral can benefit from today’s polarized media environment. The past decade has seen a surge in partisan online news sites that patently skew toward one side of the American political spectrum, from the right-leaning Blaze Media to the openly liberal Axios. Money is a primary driver of this media...
