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The Dark Tetrad personality traits of sadism, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism have long been associated with perpetrating negative behavior, but can they also put someone at higher risk for victimization? A study published in Frontiers in Psychology suggest that these traits may be associated with higher rates of being the victim of bullying.

Bullying is a serious and pervasive problem that can be associated with many negative outcomes for victims, including depression, anxiety, substance use, and even suicidality. Due to these potentially grave outcomes, research has attempted to delve into the dynamics surrounding bullying, including what makes people more likely to become a perpetrator and/or a victim of bullying.

The Dark Tetrad traits are typically linked with antisocial and criminal behaviors. They are personality traits that are frequently associated with a lack of empathy, increased manipulation, and a disregard for other people.

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U.S. cyber intelligence staff is vastly outnumbered by Chinese hackers, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray told Congress as he pleaded for more money for the agency.

“To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI Cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1,” Wray said in prepared remarks for a budget hearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday.

The disclosure highlights the massive scale of cyber threats the U.S. is facing, particularly from China. Wray said the country has “a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations—big or small—combined.”

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The study parrots engaged in various social behaviors that researchers would often see amongst groups of birds or in the wild, including dancing and singing together.

Parrots are socially complex animals, outperforming 6-and 7-year-old children in puzzle activities and memory skills. When kept as pets, these birds frequently lack suitable stimulation to meet their high social, cognitive, and emotional needs.

A recent study by the University of Glasgow and Northeastern University looked at this issue by using 18 pet parrots to see if video calls could help them meet their social demands.

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The G7 expressed their commitment to threats from outside, as worries about digital absolutism in nations like China persist.

The digital ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries have decided that “risk-based” regulation on artificial intelligence (AI) should be adopted.

TheG7 encouraged the ethical use of AI, including the ChatGPT AI bot created by the US company OpenAI, according to media reports.

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“Now with reflexes, we think we can one day pick and place in every possible way, so that a robot could potentially clean up the house.”

Reacting to stimuli on the fly has been exclusive to living beings for much until now. In a world of uncertainties, adjusting to changes in our surroundings has been a big reason why we’re still around as a species.

In their pursuit of giving robots a human touch, MIT engineers have now developed a gripper that grasps by reflex.

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A pair of anthropologists at Tulane University has solved the mystery of the Mayan 819-day count, a type of ancient Mesoamerican calendar system. In their paper published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, John Linden and Victoria Bricker suggest that the calendar might be representing a much longer timescale than others had considered.

In studying ancient Maya inscriptions, prior researchers had come across mention of a system they referred to as the 819-day count, which appeared to be in reference to a of some sort. But the had not left behind any other sort of definition or text describing how it might fit in with their regular calendar system. Prior researchers had found some evidence suggesting that it might be tied to the synodic period, the cyclic period that describes when a given planet will appear at a given point in the sky. They noted that for Mercury, the synod period is 117 days, which, when multiplied by seven, equals 819. Unfortunately, the same formulation did not work with the other , leaving the 819-day count a mystery—until now.

When the researchers struck upon the idea of extending the amount of time that the 819-day count might be used for representing the synodic period for all of the known planets over many years, they found things lined up perfectly. They found, for example, that multiplying 819 by 20 equals 16,380 (approximately 45 years). And 13 cycles of Saturn’s 378-day synodic period adds up to 4,914 days, which is the same as six times 819.

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