Most people think they are open-minded and would like others to perceive them as such. But for the things that matter mostβreligious beliefs, for example, or the meaning of lifeβfew of us are genuinely willing to consider that we might be wrong, let alone do the hard work of revising beliefs. At a fundamental level, we humans are somewhat closed-minded.
Research published in the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology has taken inspiration from the hunting behavior of the fish-eating bird of prey, the osprey, and combined this with inspiration from quantum computing to improve machine translation, particularly for long sentences and technical texts between Chinese and English.
When kids watch cartoons, they're absorbing much more than a plot. Thanks to the use of foreign accents in shows, they're also learning a shorthand for moral character, new research from the University of Toronto Mississauga suggests.
Workshopping, an iterative process in which creators share ideas, test what works and refine what doesn't through collective feedback, is at the heart of any writers group. This collaborative dynamic inspired George Mason University Ph.D. student Shiwei Hong to explore whether artificial intelligence (AI) could benefit from a similar approach.
If the drug trade has helped define the modern Mexican state, writes the author of a new article in The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, so too have wars on drugs. In "From Bandit Hunting to a War Against 'Social Poisoners': Counterinsurgency as Drug War and Drug War as Counterinsurgency in 1960sβ1970s Southern Mexico," author Alexander AviΓ±a argues that the strategies eventually employed against Mexican drug traders were first developed in the violent suppression of rural guerrilla movements.
In recent years, anti-immigration sentiment has become increasingly common around the world. A common concern surrounding immigration is its potential impact on the host country's welfare system, including health care. Such concerns can reduce public support for accepting immigrants and for redistributive welfare policies.
A Stanford team used geospatial data and detection algorithms to achieve a tenfold increase in rescues from modern slavery in the Brazilian Amazon. Now, they are planning to expand their approach.
Since the 1980s, there has been extensive research on the effectiveness of treatment for perpetrators of sexual crimes against children. Studies have examined rehabilitation programs, the role of clinicians and the factors associated with recidivism. However, what remains unclear is how these factors interact to influence recidivism once treatment is over.
Music and singing in soccer stadiums are not random entertainment. They follow clear patterns. And those patterns vary systematically from country to country.
Users who participate in online communities linked to conspiracy theories show distinctive linguistic characteristics even when discussing apparently neutral topics, such as films, music, cooking or science, and even before they take part in conspiracy communities.