#Designing better asteroid explorers

“#Designing better asteroid explorers” Credit: CC0 Public Domain Recent NASA missions to asteroids have gathered important data about the early evolution of our Solar System, planet formation, and how life may have originated on Earth. These missions also provide crucial information to deflect asteroids that could hit Earth. Missions like the OSIRIS-REx mission to Asteroid…

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#Quantum body scanner? What happens when vector vortex beams meet scattering media

“#Quantum body scanner? What happens when vector vortex beams meet scattering media” Vector vortex beam before (left) and after (right) scattering process in latex bead solution. Credit: I. Gianini, Sapienza Univ. di Roma, doi: 10.1117/1.AP.2.3.036003 SPIE Propagate light through any kind of medium – be it free space or biological tissue – and light will scatter. Robustness to scattering…

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#How we ‘hear’ the shape of a drum

“#How we ‘hear’ the shape of a drum” Credit: CC0 Public Domain How is it that we can recognise the shape of an object despite only seeing a limited range of wave lengths? Radboud mathematician Walter van Suijlekom explains in a new publication in the journal Communications in Mathematical Physics on 14 July. “We can…

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#Laws offer limited protection against price differentiation by algorithms

“#Laws offer limited protection against price differentiation by algorithms” Online stores can use algorithms to charge some customers higher prices than others. European laws only offer limited protection against such price differentiation. Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, Professor of ICT and Private Law at Radboud University, has written about this very topic in an article that was…

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#New study shows rural westerners strongly support environmental protections

“#New study shows rural westerners strongly support environmental protections” Rural voters in the American West have a strong commitment to environmental protections and conservation, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Wyoming, Duke University and the University of Rhode Island. This finding holds true even when protections may negatively impact…

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#Multi-disciplinary study provides evidence of forced migration by pre-colonial Incas

“#Multi-disciplinary study provides evidence of forced migration by pre-colonial Incas” Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2005965117 A team of researchers with members from several institutions in the U.S., one in the U.K. and one in Peru, has found evidence of forced migration by pre-colonial Incas. In their paper published in…

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#The settlement of Europe could be the result of several imigration waves by a single population

“#The settlement of Europe could be the result of several imigration waves by a single population” Montmaurin-La Niche mandible. Credit: M. Martínez de Pinillos The Dental Anthropology Group of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), in collaboration with the paleoanthropologist Amélie Vialet of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris,…

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#Black mental health patients hit hard by COVID-19, social injustice: ‘We were already at a breaking point’

“#Black mental health patients hit hard by COVID-19, social injustice: ‘We were already at a breaking point’” Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Dr. Brandi Jackson, a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said the COVID-19 pandemic has been her most difficult period as a psychiatrist. With an uptick in anxiety and depression in her…

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