List of All Articles with Tag 'and'

A young girl who was bullied for being autistic may have a higher IQ than Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. Adhara Maite Pérez Sánchez, an 11-year-old from Tláhuac, Mexico, is being described as a prodigy by many after recently graduating with a degree in Systems Engineering. She is now going on to study industrial engineering. The extraordinary girl has a passion for astronomy and space, expressing the dream to become the first Mexican woman to travel to space as an astronaut and has given talks about her interest and knowledge of aerospace. She intends to become an astronaut at NASA, and is currently taking courses in astronomy and gravitational waves at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which is widely regarded as a top research university. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Adhara has also had her achievements recognised in 2021 by the Senate of the Republic, as well as being declared one of Mexico’s 100 most influential women, and appearing on the cover Marie Claire Mexico. However, life hasn’t always been easy for Adhara, who struggled with being bullied by her classmates. Often labelled as a ‘weirdo’ for her autism. Adhara was diagnosed with Asperger’s at 3 years old, but has succeeded greatly with it. Recently she has begun developing a bracelet designed to monitor the emotions of children such as herself in order to improve their communication skills. But she hasn’t let the negativity bring her down. Determined to succeed and achieve her goals in spite of what others say about her. Her inspirations include late physicist, Stephen Hawking, and Carmen Félix, a Mexican engineer currently developing a plan to launch a manned mission to Mars. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Researchers in Haiti once scanned the brains of three people believed to be long-deceased individuals returning from the dead - or zombies. In a study published in 1997, researchers investigated three such cases, using electroencephalography and DNA testing techniques to try and find a rational explanation for a Haitian Voodoo theory that the spirits of the dead can be captured by sorcerers called bokors, who use these souls to reanimate fresh corpses into zombies who walk around rural areas. One case involved a woman who had died aged 30 and was spotted three years later by family members who recognised her because of a distinctive facial mark. A local court then authorised the opening of the woman’s grave, revealing it to be full of rocks. Describing the 'zombie', the study authors explained that “she kept her head in a lowered position, and walked extremely slowly and stiffly, barely moving her arms.” She was also unable to communicate “but would occasionally murmur some incomprehensible but stereotyped words.” But the scan showed her “electroencephalogram and central nervous system examination were unremarkable” and said she may have had catatonic schizophrenia, but couldn't explain how she came back from the dead. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter They proposed that the woman might not have died at all, but may instead have been poisoned by a “neuromuscular toxin” to induce catalepsy and trick relatives into thinking she was dead. A lack of oxygen within the grave may have resulted in brain damage, thus explaining her zombie-like state when she was taken out of the grave. Next, the study described a 26-year-old man who was seen at a local cockfight 19 months after being buried. The man’s uncle was subsequently found guilty of using sorcery to zombify the man, who was then kept chained to a log at his parents’ house. But clinical examinations found nothing weird and the man was diagnosed with “organic brain syndrome and epilepsy.” And DNA testing revealed that he was not even the man who had died shortly beforehand. In a similar case, a 31-year-old woman was identified as a villager who had been dead for 13 years. Once again, however, a medical examination revealed that she was a normal human while genetic analyses showed that she was not the dead individual after all. The study authors concluded that “mistaken identification of a wandering, mentally ill, stranger by bereaved relatives is the most likely explanation.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

An overview of the media in Moldova, as well as links to broadcasters and newspapers.

An overview of the media in Mauritania, as well as links to broadcasters and newspapers.

Slovenian company SipaBoards created a high-tech paddleboard to make the sport more accessible.

An overview of the media in Montenegro, as well as links to broadcasters and newspapers.

Having once set its sights on challenging Google’s search engine dominance, Neeva has admitted it

The discovery of North America is synonymous with Christopher Columbus, but proof has been found confirming that the Vikings were there hundreds of years earlier. Columbus is said to have “discovered the New World" in 1492 CE, but new analysis has suggested that the Norse people in Greenland were using wood from North America centuries before. Research focused on timber used in Norse sites across Greenland which people lived in between 1000 and 1400. The findings show that some of the wood came from types of trees that were grown outside of Greenland. One was the Jack pine, which is found in Canada. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Archaeologist Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir from the University of Iceland studied the timber and put across his findings in the journal Antiquity. “These findings highlight the fact that Norse Greenlanders had the means, knowledge, and appropriate vessels to cross the Davis Strait to the east coast of North America, at least up until the 14th century,” the study says. “As such, journeys were being made from Greenland to North America throughout the entirety of the period of Norse settlement in Greenland, and resources were being acquired by the Norse from North America for far longer than previously thought.” It’s not the first time that it’s been suggested that Norse communities travelled to north America. Italian texts from the 14th century contain references to Vikings making contact with Markland, which is believed to be on the Labrador coast in Canada. The 13th-century Norwegian text called Konungsskuggsjá also referenced the fact that Greenland at the time wasn’t home to great abundances of natural resources, reading: “Everything that is needed to improve the land must be purchased abroad, both iron and all the timber used in building houses.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Artificial intelligence has unrealistic and often dangerous ideas of what the “perfect” man and woman look like, according to a new study. Chiselled features, olive skin and eight-pack abs are among the features that kept cropping up when three leading AI image generators were tasked with creating “ideal” male and female bodies. The challenge was put to the popular programmes Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney by eating disorder awareness group the Bulimia Project, which separated its request into two parts. First up, it asked the generators to come up with pictures of men and women based specifically on beauty standards set by social media. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Although it churned out quite a few different options, it showed a number of noticeable biases. Nearly all of the images featured petite women – with Midjourney named as the worst culprit – and all of the men looked like photoshopped versions of bodybuilders. The three AI favoured women with blonde hair and men with brown hair, and nearly half of the male images had facial hair. After analysing their findings based on social media, the Bulimia Project team broadened the scope of the task. This time, they asked the programmes to base their creations on images from across the internet. The main difference between the two categories was that the social media set was “far more sexually charged”, according to the study’s authors. The social media images also featured “largely disproportionate body parts”, which the Bulimia Project described as “unsettling”. “We can only assume that the reason AI came up with so many oddly shaped versions of the physiques it found on social media is that these platforms promote unrealistic body types, to begin with,” it said. “In the age of Instagram and Snapchat filters, no one can reasonably achieve the physical standards set by social media. So, why try to meet unrealistic ideals? It’s both mentally and physically healthier to keep body image expectations squarely in the realm of reality.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The push by many top car makers to go all-electric in the next decade or

Are your grandparents up very early in the morning, without fail? Well, it turns out there are scientific reasons why older people wake up earlier as they get older. It’s been revealed that in later life, the natural process of ageing leads to changes in the times the body approaches sleep. According to HuffPost, our approach towards resting and amount of sleep we require is down to both genetics and our age. Cindy Lustig, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, said: “Like most of the things that change with age, there’s not just one reason, and they are all interconnected.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It’s all to do with the brain becoming less responsive as people age to factors such as sunlight, social cues and physical activity which indicate where in the day we are at any given time. “The wiring of the brain is likely not sensing... and responding to the inputs as well as it should because it’s an ageing brain,” Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, the director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, also told the publication. “These are all what we call time givers, or they give time to the brain,” he said. In other words, they help the brain sense where it is in the 24-hour circadian cycle. Younger people can more easily connect indicators like eating dinner with the idea of sleeping in the next few hours. However, that’s not as easy for older people to register naturally, especially as their vision tends to suffer in later life. “Interestingly, one of [the reasons] seems to be that the vision changes that come with age reduce the intensity of the degree of light stimulation that our brain receives, which plays an important role in ‘setting’ our circadian clock and keeping it on track,” said Lustig. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It’s not quite the lost city of Atlantis, but scientists have just uncovered a slice of history that had been swallowed up by the sea. Experts admitted that even they were surprised when divers unearthed a 7,000-year-old stone road that had lain buried under layers of sea mud. The ancient structure was discovered after archaeologist Igor Borzić, of the University of Zadar, spotted “strange structures” nearly 16 ft (5m) underwater in the Bay of Gradina, off the coast of Croatia. The submerged road once linked the island of Korčula to an artificial, prehistoric settlement that belonged to a maritime culture known as the Hvar. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The university released footage of the incredible finding over the weekend. It showed the passageway which consisted of stacked stones and measured some 12 ft (around 4m) across. Archaeologists believe people walked this road “almost 7,000 years ago”, with radiocarbon dating of wood near the site suggesting the settlement may have been built around 4,900 BC. “In underwater archaeological research of the submerged neolithic site of Soline on the island of Korčula, archaeologists found remains that surprised them,” the University of Zadar said in a Facebook statement. “Namely, beneath the layers of sea mud, they discovered a road that connected the sunken prehistoric settlement of the Hvar culture with the coast of the island of Korčula.” Borzić and his team also discovered another “almost identical” settlement on the other side of Korčula Island. Neolithic artefacts including a stone axe, cream blades and sacrificial fragments, were found at the site which lay at a depth of 4-5m. Understandably, the researchers were delighted and, as they continue to delve into their nation’s past, we wonder what else they’ll unearth. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.