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How climate shapes the meanings of words across languages

When English speakers say "rose" and Chinese speakers say "ηŽ«η‘°," do they mean the same thing? A Peking University team led by Professor Bi Yanchao explored this question using word embeddings from 53 languages, behavioral ratings from speakers of eight languages and exploratory multilingual brain imaging data. Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that word meanings are organized along shared neurocognitive dimensions, while differences across languages are associated with climate.

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Maya altar and offerings at abandoned Belize sites highlight enduring ritual activities

Archaeologists excavating Maya sites at Kaxil Uinik and Ayiin Winik in Belize have discovered the first reported Late Postclassic altar in the region, along with additional evidence that Postclassic Maya people continued to visit abandoned locations. The study, published in Latin American Antiquity, indicates that these activities fit into a broad pattern of Postclassic veneration of earlier Maya civilization after its decline.

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Oldest Maya Long Count calendar date may reveal how royalty turned time into power

Archaeologists working at the ancient Maya site of El Palmar in Campeche, Mexico, have discovered what may be the earliest known Long Count calendar date in the Maya lowlands. It is carved into a stone monument and is interpreted as Aug. 31, AD 180, in our modern calendar. The finding could reveal insights into how the earliest Maya rulers used time to stake their claim to the throne.

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New dating of Spain's Sala Keimada rock art sanctuary reveals thousands of years of continuous use

The Centro Nacional de InvestigaciΓ³n sobre la EvoluciΓ³n Humana (CENIEH) has participated in a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports on Sala Keimada, one of the rock art sanctuaries in Cueva Palomera, the main cave of the Ojo GuareΓ±a Karst Complex (Merindad de Sotoscueva, Burgos, Spain).

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'Super-connected' teenagers key to tackling violent crime, study suggests

Young people with the most connections to other suspected offenders of any age are almost five times more likely to carry knives than the average youth suspect, according to a new analysis of more than 200,000 U.K. police records. This top 5% of "super-connected" children aged 10–18 are almost three times more likely to commit violent crime, seven times more likely to commit robberies and nine times more likely to be involved in organized crime than the wider youth suspect population.

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More people with disabilities are seeking work, report reveals

The June 2026 National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) report reveals a large increase in job-seeking among people with disabilities, signaling that more individuals are entering the labor force as economic pressure intensifies. This finding aligns with last month's nTIDE forecast that rising prices would push more people with disabilities to seek employment, while progress in employment access continues.

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Politicization in humanities scholarship may compromise scholarly standards

A national report co-authored by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa sociologist has found that while the humanities and social sciences continue to produce rigorous and valuable scholarship, some disciplines are experiencing instances where scholarly standards have been compromised as political considerations shape research and academic evaluation.

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Protected bike lanes, not painted lanes, lift NYC bikeshare ridership, analysis shows

Protected bike lanes increase Citi Bike ridership in New York City, but painted bike lanes and sharrows do not show a statistically significant causal effect on ridership after accounting for confounding factors, according to a new study from researchers at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering published this week in npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport.

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