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Categories: Anthropology: Cultures, Mathematics: General

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A comprehensive analysis of an archaeological site in Saudi Arabia sheds new light on mustatils -- stone monuments from the Late Neolithic period thought to have been used for ritual purposes.

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A researcher has solved a nearly 60-year-old game theory dilemma called the wall pursuit game, with implications for better reasoning about autonomous systems such as driver-less vehicles.

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Peru's first great empire, the Wari, stretched for more than a thousand miles over the Andes Mountains and along the coast from 600-1000 CE. The pottery they left behind gives archaeologists clues as to how the empire functioned. In a new study researchers showed that rather than using 'official' Wari pottery imported from the capital, potters across the empire were creating their own ceramics, decorated to emulate the traditional Wari style. To figure it out, the scientists analyzed the pottery's chemical make-up, with help from laser beams.

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Researchers have discovered artefacts produced by old world monkeys in Thailand that resemble stone tools, which historically have been identified as intentionally made by early hominins. Until now, sharp-edged stone tools were thought to represent the onset of intentional stone tool production, one of the defining and unique characteristics of hominin evolution. This new study challenges long held beliefs about the origins of intentional tool production in our own lineage.

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Comparing the colors on pieces of ancient Peruvian pottery revealed that potters across the Wari empire all used the same rich black pigment: a sign of the empire's influence.

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Researchers have discovered evidence of horse riding by studying the remains of human skeletons found in burial mounds called kurgans, which were between 4500-5000 years old. The earthen burial mounds belonged to the Yamnaya culture. The Yamnayans had migrated from the Pontic-Caspian steppes to find greener pastures in today's countries of Romania and Bulgaria up to Hungary and Serbia.

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Mathematical research brings new understanding of crowd formation and behavior.

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A new study finds that high school students identify more with math if they see their math teacher treating everyone in the class equitably, especially in racially diverse schools. While the relationship between teacher equity and math identity was evident across races, there was an interesting exception. Black students, in general, had strong math identities, regardless of their teacher's actions.  Learning about the factors that affect student math identity is important because a student's attitude towards the subject influences the courses that they take as well as their future career selections. This study suggests that teachers may have a larger role to play in helping students develop a positive math identity than previously recognized.

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An international team of researchers analyzed the genomes of 180 indigenous Africans from a dozen ethnically, culturally, linguistically, and geographically diverse populations. The results shed light on the origin of modern humans, historical migrations, linguistic evolution, and local adaptation, and lay the groundwork for more people to benefit from precision medicine.

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A large Bronze Age debris deposit in Mycenae, Greece provides important data for understanding the history of animal resources at the site, according to a new study.

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Large-scale genomic analysis documents the migrations of Ice Age hunter-gatherers over a period of 30,000 years -- they took shelter in Western Europe but died out on the Italian peninsula.

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A new study reports on genomic data from a 23,000-year-old individual who lived in what was probably the warmest place of Europe at the peak of the last Ice Age. The oldest human genome recovered from the southern tip of Spain adds an important piece of the puzzle to the genetic history of Europe.

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Researchers test cognitive abilities of the language model GPT-3.

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Researchers have discovered what they believe is the earliest use of steel in Europe -- on Iberian stone pillars from the Final Bronze Age.

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Octopus arms coordinate nearly infinite degrees of freedom to perform complex movements such as reaching, grasping, fetching, crawling, and swimming. How these animals achieve such a wide range of activities remains a source of mystery, amazement, and inspiration. Part of the challenge comes from the intricate organization and biomechanics of the internal muscles.

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Theoretical chemists have developed a theory that can predict the threshold at which quantum dynamics switches from 'orderly' to 'random,' as shown through research using large-scale computations on photosynthesis models.

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A new study explores 'balancing selection' by analyzing thousands of modern human genomes alongside ancient hominin groups, such as Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes. The research has 'implications for understanding human diversity, the origin of diseases, and biological trade-offs that may have shaped our evolution,' says evolutionary biologists.

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Using artificial intelligence (AI), researchers can now follow cell movement across time and space. The method could be very helpful for developing more effective cancer medications.

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A new study finds that a 200-year-old technique called Fourier analysis can reveal crucial information about how the form of artificial intelligence called deep neural networks (DNN) learn to perform tasks involving complex physics. Researchers discovered the technique can directly connect what a DNN has learned to the physics of the complex system the DNN is modeling.

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Along the shores of Africa's Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research. The study presents what are likely to be the oldest examples of a hugely important stone-age innovation known to scientists as the Oldowan toolkit, as well as the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals. Excavations at the site, named Nyayanga and located on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya, also produced a pair of massive molars belonging to the human species' close evolutionary relative Paranthropus. The teeth are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains yet found, and their presence at a site loaded with stone tools raises intriguing questions about which human ancestor made those tools.