Diverse and inclusive teams are not merely a moral imperative but also a catalyst for scientific excellence in robotics, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems point out in a study. The team now published an article in which they outline how a scientific community can benefit if its leadership fosters an environment of diversity and inclusion, and propose a leadership guide for roboticists to help reap these benefits.

In tourism and elsewhere, the term polycrisis has been used to describe the simultaneous occurrence of disparate crises in which the temporal dimensions of the past, present and future become mutually implicative. From this point of view, critical reflection on the role of tourism planning in building the future is essential since our decisions in the present have the power to shape the tourism of tomorrow. Tourism planning specifically is dedicated to the design and management of the future of tourist destinations. This study argues that beyond a strategic and efficient design and management of destinations, planning can become an ethical practice that aspires to build more desirable, fair and sustainable tourism futures

U.S. veterans report average happiness levels of 5.41 out of 7, with greater happiness most associated with reporting greater purpose in life, lower depressive symptoms, and higher optimism, emotional stability, and resilience

German survey respondents rated images of tattooed models as less beautiful than images of the same models with no tattoos, however younger people, tattoo artists and those with body art tolerated more ink, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 11, 2024 by Selina M. Weiler and colleagues from Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany.

A research group led by Johannes Müller at the Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, at Kiel University, Germany, have shed light on the lives of people who lived over 5,600 years ago near Kosenivka, Ukraine. Published on December 11, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the researchers present the first detailed bioarchaeological analyses of human diets from this area and provide estimations on the causes of death of the individuals found at this site.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has announced Morgan Fogarty, who is expected to receive her PhD in Imaging Science from Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) in February, as the recipient of the 2025 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship in Problem-Driven Biomedical Optics and Analytics. The annual award of $75,000 supports interdisciplinary problem-driven research and provides opportunities for translating new technologies into clinical practice for improving human health. Fogarty will be recognized at the Sunday evening plenary session during SPIE Photonics West, scheduled for 26 January 2025.