South Africa’s ruling party risks losing almost a quarter of its support unless it brings the country’s worst

A federal judge blocked two portions of North Carolina’s new abortion law from taking effect while a lawsuit continues

Support for war-torn Ukraine will top the agenda at G7 finance talks on Thursday, but ministers and central bankers will also weigh concerns ranging from banking...

North Carolina Republicans have enacted vote-count restrictions and weakened the governor’s ability to oversee elections and other state regulatory bodies by overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes

Pokémon GO trainers want to know how they can get Buzzwole, the Ultra Beast, in Pokemon GO.

New Zealand goes to the polls Saturday in a general election that's shaping up to be a tight race between the two major parties, with the economy and a cost of living crisis dominating campaigning nine months after former prime minister Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned.

The future or organ transplantation could be defined this ultra thin implantable device that can

Playing with dolls could help the social development of children - including those with neurodiverse conditions such as autism, according to a study. The research, from Cardiff University, found children exhibiting higher levels of autism traits showed increased brain activity in a key region associated with social processing when engaging in conversations with individuals during doll play. The new findings suggested that broader social engagement with others while engaging in doll play was a unique pathway to social development for these children. This was in contrast to what was observed in neurotypical children, who were more likely to discuss the dolls’ thoughts and emotions. However, researchers said that despite this difference, it showed that both groups may be able to benefit from doll play by using it as a tool for practising social scenarios and developing social skills, such as empathy. The findings are the latest release from a multi-year study by the Centre for Human Developmental Science at the university’s School of Psychology. Previous years have focused on neurotypical children and found wide-ranging social and developmental benefits of playing with dolls. Now, in its third year, the research team has replicated those results with a more diverse range of participants, including children aged between four and eight displaying both high and low levels of traits associated with autism. Lead researcher Dr Sarah Gerson said: “Our study shows that doll play can encourage social processing in children, regardless of their neurodevelopmental profile. “The findings show that all children, even those who display neurodivergent traits commonly associated with autism, may use doll play as a tool for practicing social scenarios and developing social skills, such as empathy.” State-of-the-art functional, near-infrared spectroscopy equipment was used to explore brain activation while children played with dolls and on tablets, both by themselves and with another person, replicating conditions from the first year of the study. While observing children, researchers saw increased brain activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) region - which is heavily involved in social and emotional processing such as empathy - when playing with dolls, for both play with a social partner and during solo doll play, but less so during solo tablet play. The study’s results suggest that doll play could support social processing, regardless of a child’s neurodevelopmental profile, but through different pathways. For children displaying fewer autistic traits in the research, talking about the mental states and emotions of the dolls they were playing with was associated with increased pSTS activity. In contrast, for those displaying more autistic traits, talking with others during doll play, even when playing by themselves, led to more social processing on a neural level. Other research has shown that social processing and empathy skills are important determinants in children’s future emotional, academic, and social success. The study was a collaboration with the Wales Autism Research Centre. ‘Create a more inclusive and supportive environment for their development’ Its director Dr Catherine Jones said: “The study reinforces how it is important that that we acknowledge and value neurodiversity. “This means recognising and valuing the diverse ways in which children’s brains work and approaching social development in a way that is inclusive and accommodating for all children, regardless of their neurodivergence. “By embracing all ways that children choose to play, we can create a more inclusive and supportive environment for their development.” Since the landmark publication of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the effects of play have been thought to be positive for kids’ social skills and creativity, but this has never been scientifically evidenced at the brain level. The multi-year long-term study, commissioned by Barbie, is the first time key Piaget theories on play have been scientifically evidenced via brain imaging and the first to use neuroimaging evidence with natural doll play, meaning there was no prescribed storyline to show how the brain is activated during doll play. Michael Swaisland, head EMEA of insight and analytics, Mattel, said: “We are proud to know that when children, regardless of their neurodevelopmental profile, play with Barbie, their playtime may benefit their development. “As Barbie continues to inspire the limitless potential in every child, we are delighted to know, through neuroscience, that playing with dolls may encourage the development of social skills such as empathy in children, including those who display neurodivergent traits commonly associated with autism. “We look forward to uncovering even more benefits of doll play through our long-term partnership with Cardiff University as we look to shine a light on the benefits the play pattern has towards development, that parents might not have been aware of.” Parents and caregivers can visit here to learn more about the research and access resources. Read More Toys children play with can have an effect on their success in adulthood The best exclusive discount codes this payday Many parents of under 5s on less than £50k ‘quit work due to childcare costs’ – survey

Trader Joe’s is recalling a broccoli cheddar soup that may contain insects and cooked falafel that may contain rocks, about one week after the grocery chain recalled two cookie products over similar concerns

Madison Beer turned heads at the Billboard Music Awards by donning a $1,580 Nensi Dojaka minidress with sheer panels and sleek stiletto heels

By Renju Jose SYDNEY Workers at Chevron's Gorgon and Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in Australia plan

OpenAI has built a new bot that will crawl over the internet, gathering information to educate artificial intelligence systems. Operators of websites will be forced to actively opt out, and block the bot, if they want to stop it taking data from their site. Artificial intelligence systems such as OpenAI's ChatGPT rely on vast amounts of data to train their models and learn how to give the correct outputs. So far, much of that data has been taken freely from the web. That has prompted numerous complaints from authors and other web users. Many have criticised OpenAI and others for taking personal information and copyrighted content to train their models, with that writing potentially informing or even being replicated in the system's answers. Artificial intelligence companies have also faced criticism from others who claim that such crawlers are stretching their web infrastructure. Elon Musk, for instance, has said that the load from such bots has forced Twitter to place limits on how many posts users could see on the site. OpenAI's existing ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 were trained on data taken from the internet that was taken up to late 2021. There is no way for owners of that data or the websites it was gathered from to remove it from OpenAI's models. Now OpenAI says that the new system, named 'GPTBot', will be crawling over data and writing on the web to gather more information to train future models. It told website administrators that they should include instructions to the bot to stop it from crawling a website, if they did not want that information to be gathered. Administrators are able to include such information in a file called "robots.txt", which gives instructions to other crawlers such as those used by Google for its search results. OpenAI says the bot "may potentially be used to improve future models". It also says that it is built to "remove sources" that require a paywall, gather personally identifiable information or have text that violates its rules. It suggested that letting the bot access sites "can help AI models become more accurate and improve their general capabilities and safety". Read More Meta’s Twitter rival Threads sees ‘steep drop in daily users by 80 per cent’ Google Assistant will be ‘supercharged’ with AI like ChatGPT and Bard PayPal launches dollar-backed cryptocurrency