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| [https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/6/2191782/-Students-Solved-Gerrymandering-For-A-Science-Project-The-Court-Should-Use-Their-Method-In-Alabama by shaggydaahoud 9/06/23] | | [https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/6/2191782/-Students-Solved-Gerrymandering-For-A-Science-Project-The-Court-Should-Use-Their-Method-In-Alabama by shaggydaahoud 9/06/23] |
| Back in 2020, three middle school students from Eastern New York solved the issue of gerrymandering, and their team leader won a $10,000 STEM prize for it. Kai Vernooy, James Lian, and Arin Khare devised a method for determining the level of gerrymandering in a state, and then applied a mathematical algorithm to draw fair and balanced districts. Coincidentally, in this 2020 article from Forbes about their project, Alabama was used as an example.1 | | Back in 2020, three middle school students from Eastern New York solved the issue of gerrymandering, and their team leader won a $10,000 STEM prize for it. Kai Vernooy, James Lian, and Arin Khare devised a method for determining the level of gerrymandering in a state, and then applied a mathematical algorithm to draw fair and balanced districts. Coincidentally, in this 2020 article from Forbes about their project, Alabama was used as an example.1 |
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| ==== DNA from cave dirt tells tale of how some Neanderthals disappeared= ====
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| [https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-cave-dirt-tells-tale-how-some-neanderthals-disappeared?utm_campaign=news_daily_2021-04-15&et_rid=35100799&et_cid=3736250&fbclid=IwAR3y5_DrNAhZIIqlrKAC4L8EQYQ52ltBloCpOE66ZBOSUeAwlyGwW4PSKYE by Ann Gibbons 4/15/21 Science Advisor]
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| Estatuas cave in northern Spain was a hive of activity 105,000 years ago. Artifacts show its Neanderthal inhabitants hafted stone tools, butchered red deer, and may have made fires. They also shed, bled, and excreted subtler clues onto the cave floor: their own DNA. "You can imagine them sitting in the cave making tools, butchering animals. Maybe they cut themselves or their babies pooped," says population geneticist Benjamin Vernot, a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), whose perspective may have been colored by his own baby's cries during a Zoom call. "All that DNA accumulates in the dirt floors."1
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| ===== Visiting green spaces deters mental health drug use, researchers find =====
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| [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/17/visiting-green-spaces-deters-mental-health-drug-use-researchers-find by Damien Gayle 1/17/23 The Guardian]
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| Visits to parks, community gardens and other urban green spaces may lower city dwellers’ use of drugs for anxiety, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, and asthma, research has found.
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| Researchers in Finland found that visiting such areas three to four times a week cuts people’s chances of turning to drugs for mental health problems or high blood pressure by a third, and for asthma by about a quarter.1
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| ===== Billionaire-funded group driving effort to erode democracy in key US states =====
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| [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/23/foundation-government-accountability-democracy Brendan Fischer 6/23/2023 The Guardian]
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| The Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based group affiliated with the alliance of conservative thinktanks called the State Policy Network, has played a key role in recent efforts to raise the threshold for passing citizen ballot initiatives from a simple majority to a supermajority, and to make it harder to place measures on the ballot in the first place.
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