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Lego to Remove Gender Stereotypes From Toys

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Legos

Lego is working to eliminate gender stereotypes from its products after a study revealed that both parents and kids continue to view toys as gendered. A survey from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, commissioned by Lego, found large differences remain in the toys parents expect boys to play with and those they expect girls to play with, Lego reported. These attitudes are also connected to the type of career paths parents ultimately encourage their children to follow. For example, the survey found that parents were five times more likely to encourage girls to dance and dress up, … Read more

STUDY: Bi Erasure is Common, Even Among Gays & lesbians. Duh.

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bisexual flag - pixabay

Erasure of bisexual men is common, even among other people in the LGBT+ community, according to new research. The study, published in the European Journal for Social Psychology, found that most people still believe bisexual men are more attracted to other men than they are to women. Meanwhile, most people believe bisexual women are equally attracted to both men and women – suggesting that there is a problematic bias in perceptions of bisexuality. To complete the study, researchers polled 787 people on their perceptions of bisexuaity, according to PsyPost. Participants were told that the study was investigating people’s views on … Read more

STUDY: Video Games Must Do Better With LGBTQ+ representation

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Video Games - Deposit Photos

A damning new study has highlighted the lack of diversity in video games and how Twitch streamers perpetuate toxic masculinity. The study, titled “The Double-Edged Sword of Online Gaming”, explores how gaming can both help and hinder male gamers, with poor representation countered by community. It comes from The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and Promundo-US. The study found that male characters outnumber female by four-to-one, and white characters outnumber characters of colour three-to-one. Those white characters are significantly more likely to display violence compared with characters of colour (51.7 per cent of characters compared with 33.6 per cent). Full Story from … Read more

STUDY: Saturn’s Core Mighty Be Soupy (But Is It More Minestrone or Clam Chowder?)

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pea soup - pixabay

Saturn’s rings aren’t just a beautiful adornment — scientists can use the feature to understand what’s happening deep inside the planet. By using the famous rings like a seismograph, scientists studied processes in the planet’s interior and determined that its core must be “fuzzy.” Instead of a solid sphere like Earth’s, the core of Saturn appears to consist of a ‘soup’ of rocks, ice and metallic fluids that slosh around and affect the planet’s gravity. The new study used data from NASA’s Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn and its moons for 13 years between 2004 and 2017. In 2013, data … Read more

STUDY: Apex Legends is Most Diverse Video Game

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Apex Legends - Seer

Apex Legends is the most diverse game, according to a new study. The study, by gaming company Diamond Lobby, analysed the diversity of video game characters across gender and race. The top finding is that almost 80 per cent of preset characters in games are male, while 54 per cent of main characters are white. The study looked at over 100 games from 2017 – 2021, beginning with the 10 highest selling titles from each year and then adding in major releases from the biggest publishers. Games with fully customisable characters were then removed (such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons) … Read more

Hollywood Fail: No Trans Characters in Major Films in Four Years

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Transgender Flag

There hasn’t been a single trans or non-binary character in a major Hollywood film for four years, proving Hollywood still has a long way to go towards LGBT+ representation. LGBT+ media advocacy organisation GLAAD released its ninth annual Studio Responsibility Index Thursday (15 July), which tracks the representation of queer characters released by eight major Hollywood studios in 2020. The study found that there were no trans or non-binary characters represented in any of the 44 films released by the eight largest film studios. According to GLAAD, this is the fourth year in a row that trans and non-binary characters … Read more

Space is a Dusty Place

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space dust - pixabay

Every year, 5,200 tons of extraterrestrial dust fall to Earth. This gentle rain of bits of comets and asteroids far outweighs larger meteorites that hit the planet, according to research to be published April 15 in the journal Earth & Planetary Science Letters. Only about 10 tons (9 metric tons) of larger space rocks land on Earth annually. Despite the large quantities, it’s hard to detect space dust or track its annual accumulation in most places due to precipitation that washes dust away. And in most places, dust originating on Earth swamps dust from space. But in Adélie Land, Antarctica, … Read more

SPACE: We Should Study (And Maybe Seed) Dead Worlds

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Europa - Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The search for life in the universe tends to focus on habitable environments. But to answer questions about how life emerged and spread, as well as the limits of habitability, researchers may want to consider looking at dead worlds — and perhaps even (very carefully) seeding them with life. “The biological study of lifelessness seems counterintuitive, because biology is the study of life,” said astrobiologist Charles Cockell of the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. But in a paper set to be published in April in the journal Astrobiology, Cockell makes the case that focusing entirely on living worlds leaves … Read more

SCIENCE: Do Octopuses Dream?

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octopus - pixabay

When octopuses snooze on the seafloor, their skin sometimes pulses with an array of colors, and at other times, they become pale and plain. These alternating patterns mark two distinct stages of the octopus sleep cycle, a small study suggests. During “active sleep,” when an octopus’s skin ripples with dazzling colors, the cephalopod may experience something similar to our rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, the authors wrote in the study, published March 25 in the journal iScience. Humans do most of their dreaming during REM sleep, but for now, we don’t know if cephalopods also drift off to dreamland — or … Read more

Hollywood Blockbusters Continue Dismal Record of Queer Representation

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Just two per cent of big budget films released in the last decade have had meaningful LGBT+ representation, according to an academic. Dr Ellie Lockhart, who has a PhD in communications, has been analysing recent films to figure out what kind of queer-themed films do well at the box office. As part of her research, Lockhart has been analysing LGBT+ representation in small, independent dramas and big budget films – and while representation is lacking in both, it’s especially bad in the major studio releases. “Here’s the raw truth: I found just under 100 movies to include from 2010 to … Read more