Mathematicians studied the flow of human crowds and developed a way to predict when pedestrian paths will transition from orderly to entangled. Their findings may help inform the design of public spaces that promote safe and efficient thoroughfares. 

New Haven, Conn. — Most job candidates know to dress nicely for Zoom interviews and to arrange a professional-looking background for the camera. But a new Yale study suggests they also ought to test the quality of their microphones.

A tinny voice caused by a cheap mic, researchers say, could sink their chances.

Through a series of experiments, the study demonstrates that tinny speech — a thin, metallic sound — during video conferences can have surprisingly deep social consequences, leading listeners to lower their judgments of a speaker’s intelligence, credibility, and romantic desirability. It also can hurt an individual’s chances of landing a job. These effects could be a potential source of unintentional bias and discrimination, given the likelihood that microphone quality is correlated with socioeconomic status, the researchers said.

A study conducted by researchers from Syracuse University’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders reveals that brain stimulation shows promise in reducing fatigue.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania, the University of Algarve and the University of Porto in Portugal, and the University of Leipzig, have discovered that chimpanzees living in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania employ a degree of engineering when making their tools, deliberately choosing plants that provide materials that produce more flexible tools for termite fishing.