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Categories: Anthropology: Cultures, Computer Science: Virtual Reality (VR)

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Seeking to better understand more about the origins and movement of bubonic plague, in ancient and contemporary times, researchers have completed a painstaking granular examination of hundreds of modern and ancient genome sequences, creating the largest analysis of its kind.

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Neanderthals in Combe-Grenal (France) preferred to hunt in open environments, and their hunting strategies did not alter during periods of climatic change, according to a new study.

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The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the  people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Now, researchers describe genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old that help to fill the gap and show geneflow from people moving in the opposite direction from North America to North Asia.

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The analysis of ancient DNA allows scientists to trace human evolution and make important discoveries about modern populations. The data revealed by ancient DNA sampling can be valuable, but the human remains that carry this ancient DNA are often those of the ancestors of modern Indigenous groups, and some communities have expressed concerns about the ethics of sampling by outside parties. A group of scientists make the case for involvement of descendant communities in all aspects of the research process.

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Using a new method based upon comparing DNA mutation rates between parents and offspring, evolutionary biologists have revealed the average age of mothers versus fathers over the past 250,000 years, including the discovery that the age gap is shrinking, with women's average age at conception increasing from 23.2 years to 26.4 years, on average, in the past 5,000 years.

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Archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons.

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A virtual reality game offers an objective assessment of attention deficit disorders and may lead to an improved therapeutic approach.

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Psychologists had people learn words from two phonetically similar languages in virtual reality environments. Those who learned each language in its own unique context mixed up fewer words and were able to recall 92% of the words they had learned. In contrast, participants who had learned both sets of words in the same VR context were more likely to confuse terms between the two languages and retained only 76% of the words. Regardless of group, those participants who felt immersed in the VR world remembered more than those who did not feel immersed.

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Enhancing the virtual experience with the touch sensation has become a hot topic, but today's haptic devices remain typically bulky and tangled with wires. Researchers have now developed an advanced wireless haptic interface system, called WeTac, worn on the hand, which has soft, ultrathin soft features, and collects personalized tactile sensation data to provide a vivid touch experience in the metaverse.

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Sediment cores obtained from Eifel maar sites provide insight into the presence of large Ice Age mammals in Central Europe over the past 60,000 years: Overkill hypothesis not confirmed. Herds of megafauna, such as mammoth and bison, have roamed the prehistoric plains in what is today's Central Europe for several tens of thousands of years. As woodland expanded at the end of the last Ice Age, the numbers of these animals declined and by roughly 11,000 years ago, they had completely vanished from this region. Thus, the growth of forests was the main factor that determined the extinction of such megafauna in Central Europe.

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By breaking the laws of physics in a virtual reality environment, researchers find that changing the location of a virtual assistant's voice in specific ways can be used as a tool to build rapport with customers.

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Modern Papuans' immune system likely evolved with a little help from the Denisovans, a mysterious human ancestor who interbred with ancient humans, according to a new study.

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Gait analysis systems measure certain metrics to give their results. These results then drive clinical treatment for gait correction. However, detailed gait analysis requires expensive equipment, and a lot of space, markers, time. Measurements from markerless, video-based gait analysis systems, on the other hand, are inaccurate. To improve upon existing systems, researchers have now combined RGB camera-based pose estimation and an inertial measurement unit sensor for gait analysis. This significantly reduces errors in the process.

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A new study analyzing stone tools from southern China provides the earliest evidence of rice harvesting, dating to as early as 10,000 years ago. The researchers identified two methods of harvesting rice, which helped initiate rice domestication.

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Devastating megafires are becoming more common, in part, because the planet is warming. But a new study suggests bringing 'good fire' back to the U.S. and other wildfire fire-prone areas, as Native Americans once did, could potentially blunt the role of climate in triggering today's wildfires.

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For over a century, one of the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Spain has been long considered a Neanderthal. However, new analysis from an international research team dismantles this century-long interpretation, demonstrating that this fossil is not a Neanderthal; rather, it may actually represent the earliest presence of Homo sapiens ever documented in Europe.

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Gamers who buy 'loot boxes' are up to two times more likely to gamble, shows new research.

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Testing time perception in an unusually lifelike setting -- a virtual reality ride on a New York City subway train -- an interdisciplinary research team found that crowding makes time seem to pass more slowly.

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Researchers have devised a computer-based platform for drug discovery that could make the process more effective, more efficient and less costly.

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A team of researchers has identified a group of human DNA sequences driving changes in brain development, digestion and immunity that seem to have evolved rapidly after our family line split from that of the chimpanzees, but before we split with the Neanderthals.