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Rafael Núñez, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the leaders of QUANTA, accepts that many animals might have an innate appreciation of quantity. However, he argues that the human perception of numbers is typically much more sophisticated, and can’t have arisen through a process such as natural selection. Instead, many aspects of numbers, such as the spoken words and written signs that are used to represent them, must be produced by cultural evolution — a process in which individuals learn through imitation or formal teaching to adopt a new skill (such as how to use a tool).

Although many animals have culture, one that involves numbers is essentially unique to humans. A handful of chimpanzees have been taught in captivity to use abstract symbols to represent quantities, but neither chimps nor any other non-human species use such symbols in the natural world.

during excavations at Border Cave in South Africa, archaeologists discovered an approximately 42,000-year-old baboon fibula that was also marked with notches. D’Errico suspects that anatomically modern humans living there at the time used the bone to record numerical information. In the case of this bone, microscopic analysis of its 29 notches suggests they were carved using four distinct tools and so represent four counting events, which D’Errico thinks took place on four separate occasions1.

Photo: iStock/Getty Images By Joshua Jamerson Mar 1, 2018 7:18 am ET 0 COMMENTS Save Article Save Remove View Saved Articles <circ

He also dashed conservative hopes that he would support a move now for gun owners who legally carry concealed firearms in one state to carry them in the other 49 states, a long-sought goal of the National Rifle Association.

he bucked Republican orthodoxy by suggesting the swift removal of guns from people who are potentially mentally ill,

He backed away from creating a third party and has soured on the costly prospect of launching his own TV empire or social media startup.

And though he was supposed to build a massive political apparatus to keep his MAGA movement afloat, it’s unclear to Republicans what his PAC is actually doing, beyond entangling itself in disputes with Republican icons and the party’s fundraising arms.

Ex-president Donald Trump finds himself adrift while in political exile. And Republicans, and even some allies, say he is disorganized, torn between playing the role of antagonist and party leader.

I’m telling you he did not use that word, George. And I’m telling you it’s a gross misrepresentation. How many times do you want me to say that?” Perdue said after host George Stephanopoulos pressed him for an answer.Perdue was one of several lawmakers participating in a meeting with Trump last week when the president reportedly&nbsp;referred to immigrants from African nations, El Salvador and Haiti as coming from "shithole countries."

Trump allies see 's***hole' controversy as overblownTrump allies see 's***hole' controversy as overblownPlay VideoPlayMute0:00/0:43Loaded: 0%0:00Progress: 0%Stream TypeLIVE-0:43&nbsp;SharePlayback Rate1xChaptersChaptersDescriptionsdescriptions off, selectedCaptions

"Following comments by the President, I said my piece directly to him yesterday. The President and all those attending the meeting know what I said and how I feel. I've always believed that America is an idea, not defined by its people but by its ideals," Graham said.&nbsp;

In an interview on conservative talk radio, Sen. Ron Johnson, one of former President Donald Trump’s strongest supporters, said he didn’t feel threatened by rioters violently storming the Capitol. Instead, he said, he might have been scared if the participants were Black Lives Matter or Antifa supporters — a comment with strong racial overtones.

I knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, and so I wasn't concerned,”

"Now, had the tables been turned — Joe, this could get me in trouble — had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned," Johnson said.

As&nbsp;House Democrats prepare their case for impeachment, attention increasingly will focus on the nation's founding document, which outlines the unique roles of Congress, the president and the federal courts.

And so, the question: Has Trump violated the Constitution?

And does that justify ending his presidency?

freedom to protest

Meanwhile, government leaders both around the globe and right here in the U.S. are threatening to limit freedom of speech, with everything from legislation to litigation to violent force.&nbsp;

Individuals can exercise their First Amendment rights in various ways—from writing a letter to a government or community leader, to marching in a protest, putting a sign on their lawn or kneeling for the national anthem.&nbsp;

Early last year, Tobias Natterer, a copywriter at the ad agency DDB Berlin, began pondering how to evade Russian censors. His client, the German arm of nonprofit Reporters Without Borders (RSF), was looking for more effective ways to let Russians get the news their government didn’t want them to see. RSF had been duplicating censored websites and housing them on servers deemed too important for governments to block—a tactic known as collateral freedom. (“If the government tries to shoot down the website,” Natterer explains, “they also have to shoot down their own websites which is why it’s called collateral.”)

. Anyone searching those numbers on Twitter or other platforms would then find links to the banned site and forbidden news. Talk about timing. Just as they were about to launch the strategy in Russia and two other countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine. The Kremlin immediately clamped down on nationwide coverage of its actions, making the RSF/DDB experiment even more vital.

“We want to make sure that press freedom isn’t just seen as something defended by journalists themselves,” says Lisa Dittmer, RSF Germany’s advocacy officer for Internet freedom. “It’s something that is a core part of any democracy and it’s a core part of defending any kind of freedom that you have.”

There are no secrets online. That emotional e-mail you sent to your ex, the illness you searched for in a fit of hypochondria, those hours spent watching kitten videos (you can take that as a euphemism if the kitten fits) — can all be gathered to create a defining profile of you.

Your information can then be stored, analyzed, indexed and sold as a commodity to data brokers who in turn might sell it to advertisers, employers, health insurers or credit rating agencies.

you can take steps to do the technological equivalent of throwing on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. Some of these measures are quite easy and many are free.

When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.”

And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.

There are five weeks to go until Election Day, but almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years&nbsp;ago.

Biden’s 2019 tax return shows taxable income of $944,737 and a federal tax bill of $299,346. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, reported $3,018,127 in taxable income and paid $1,185,628 in&nbsp;taxes.

There are five weeks to go until Election Day, but almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years&nbsp;ago.

like that Jack in the Box ad that appears whenever you get near one, in whichever app you have open at the time—and as popular apps harvest your lucrative location data, the potential for leaking or exploiting this data has never been higher.

Every time you say “yes” to an app that asks to know your location, you are also potentially authorizing that app to sell your data.

They aim to compile a complete record of where everyone in America spends their time, in order to chop those histories into market segments to sell to corporate advertisers.

Web’s biggest snoop of all: Google. Seen from the inside, its Chrome browser looks a lot like surveillance software.

It turns out, having the world’s biggest advertising company make the most popular Web browser was about as smart as letting kids run a candy shop.

In a week of Web surfing on my desktop, I discovered 11,189 requests for tracker “cookies” that Chrome would have ushered right onto my computer

in wealthy places on China's periphery — Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea — a rapid response swung into action.One reason was that they had learned from the past.

“We were all burned very badly with SARS, but actually it turned out to be a blessing for us.”

Political will, dedicated resources, sophisticated tracking and a responsible population have kept coronavirus infections and deaths in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore relatively low. South Korea, with more deaths, has led the way in widespread testing.

she told districts that were seeking guidance on how to operate during the coronavirus pandemic that it was not her responsibility to track school district infection rates or keep track of school reopening plans.

initiatives that rolled back civil rights protections for minority children

predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crushing debt while granting them useless degrees.

delirium: they were confused, disorientated and agitated2

A similar study1 published in July compiled detailed case reports of 43 people with neurological complications from COVID-19

between 10,000 and 50,000 people have experienced neurological complications.

Despite fears, COVID-19 infections did not surge when schools and day-care centres reopened after pandemic lockdowns eased.

More than 65,000 schools in Italy reopened in September, as case numbers were climbing in the community. But only 1,212 campuses had experienced outbreaks four weeks later1. In 93% of cases, only one infection was reported, and only one high school had a cluster of more than 10 infected people.

Researchers suspect that one reason schools have not become COVID-19 hot spots is that children — especially those under the age of 12–14 — are less susceptible to infection than adults, according to a meta-analysis4 of prevalence studies

When testifying before the Senate Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “I think everyone should have control over how their information is used.” He also said, “You have full access to understand all—every piece of information that Facebook might know about you—and you can get rid of all of it.”

Not exactly. There are important classes of information Facebook collects on us that we can’t control. We don’t get to “opt in” or remove every specific piece. Often, we aren’t even informed of their existence—except in the abstract—and we aren’t shown how the social network uses this harvested information.

The website log is a good example, in part because of its sheer mass. The browsing histories of hundreds of millions—possibly billions—of people are gathered by a variety of advertising trackers, which Facebook has been offering to web publishers ever since it introduced the “Like” button in 2009.

wearables can serve another purpose — determining whether you’re a productive employee. The data-obsessed may be quick to embrace such an assessment, but what if an employer has access to that information as well?

The researchers say their mobile-sensing system, which consists of fitness bracelets, sensors and a custom app, can measure employee performance with about 80 percent accuracy.

The system monitors physical and emotional signals that employees produce during the day and uses that data to create a performance profile over time that is designed to eliminate bias from evaluations

A national plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and return Americans to jobs and classrooms is emerging — but not from the White House.

a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control:

Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected.