behavior

Have you ever caught a baby's eyes and suddenly felt judged? New research suggests that feeling may not be entirely imaginary.If you've done something a baby disapproves of, they might be using their gaze to single you out.  A series of experiments, conducted among 8-month-old infants, has now found evidence that preverbal children are moral third-party observers.When witnessing an act of aggression – played out by simple animations on a computer screen – infants in the study focused their attention more on the aggressor…

When I woke up the morning before my hands-off preview of Stray, developer BlueTwelve Studios’ game about a feline hero wandering a city, I was immediately greeted by my own cat, Mirah. She hopped up onto my bed and curled up right on my chest, as has become one of her new habits in recent months. In the hour leading up to the preview, she’d run through her usual morning routine, like hopping up on the side of the tub when I finished showering and trying to lick the water. When I finally sat down at my desk and…

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Internal email: Microsoft splits its HoloLens group and parts ways with the group's head Alex Kipman, who a recent Insider story cited for “toxic” behavior — Microsoft is splitting its HoloLens mixed reality group and parting ways with Alex Kipman, the leader of the group … Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Internal email: Microsoft splits its HoloLens group and parts ways with the group's head Alex Kipman, who a recent Insider story cited for “toxic”…

In Meta’s Horizon Worlds, a player’s avatar is force-fed a bottle of “vodka.” Report writers noted that it taking place virtually did not make it feel any less invasive.Screenshot: SumOfUs VideoIt took less than an hour for one researcher studying Meta’s titular metaverse to be “virtually raped” after putting on the VR headset for the first time. After days of witnessing and experiencing rampant conspiracy theories, sexual harassment, racism, and homophobia, writers of a recent report said the tech giant is entirely…

In this phase, scores among the liberals—both overall and for vaccine willingness—remained consistently in the 80s, no matter what. Ahn thinks the stagnant number could mean that liberal compliance was already at a “ceiling,” a high past which it couldn’t improve. Or, perhaps, they were in fact less sensitive to disgust.But among conservatives, cuing disgust changed intentions more than showing people news stories about incentives or showing benign images. The overall compliance score was about 65 among those who saw…

Kashmir Hill / New York Times: Proctoring companies like Honorlock that track students' keystrokes and cursor movements during exams to prevent cheating allegedly punish normal behavior — An unsettling glimpse at the digitization of education. — Give this article- - - Read in app Kashmir Hill / New York Times: Proctoring companies like Honorlock that track students' keystrokes and cursor movements during exams to prevent cheating allegedly punish normal behavior — An…

Far and wide around the world, a whole bunch of animals are yawning right now. Maybe they're ready to sleep; maybe it's because they're hot and bored.But if one thing is certain, the very thought of yawning makes us want to open our mouths and take a deep breath for some reason. (I've already stifled several yawns, and I'm barely a paragraph in.)  While scientists are reasonably confident they understand the physiological purpose of yawning, the reasons it's so contagious among social animals is still unclear.As is often…

Throughout history, important cities around the world have flourished along river banks. But rivers can also be destructive forces. They routinely flood, and on rare occasions, they can abruptly shift pathways.  These "channel-jumping" events, which are called avulsions, have caused some of the deadliest floods in human history.Avulsions on China's Yellow River killed over 6 million people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Similar events have been linked to the decline of Mesopotamian civilization along the…

Researchers in UCI’s Department of Computer Science set up a course on the UCLA campus to test the reactions of driverless cars to ordinary objects being placed on the side of the road. Their study found that boxes, bicycles, trash cans and traffic cones can cause a driverless vehicle to halt abruptly, potentially creating a hazard and impacting delivery of passengers and goods. Credit: Ziwen Wan / UCI When a driverless car…

Researchers experimenting with genetically engineered hamsters have found that the biology behind social behavior may be more complex than we thought. The team used CRISPR to block a certain neurochemical signaling pathway, and found that the animals’ social behaviors changed in unexpected ways.The key to the study is a hormone known as vasopressin. Among other functions, this hormone plays a key role in social behaviors, including pair bonding, sexual motivation, cooperation, social communication, dominance and…