Tara DiMaio
Reporter, Technology and Mind & Behavior
@tara_dimaioTara DiMaio is based in Los Angeles, CA, and covers Technology and Mind & Behavior for The Academic Times. Prior to that, Tara worked on the communications team at The Good Food Institute and was a news and lifestyle reporter for PETA. She published a series on alternative protein that now promotes a research program with over $8 million awarded in grants. Tara has a degree in environmental studies and marketing from The George Washington University.
A feeling of disgust about meat can be a powerful predictor of how much meat a person eats — even more so than self-control — and may offer a way to reduce meat consumption on a global scale, according to new research on the psychology of eating behaviors.
A new artificial intelligence method rapidly and accurately estimates where a medical device such as a life support tube should be placed, allowing patients to receive near-instant care while easing the workload of busy radiologists and other health care workers.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have invented the first software that predicts the battery charge of electric vehicles in the different climatic and geographical conditions that impact their energy use, determining the best place for charging stations — including sites on the ground for terrestrial vehicles or vertiports for electric jets and other aircraft to take off and land.
Americans took far more prebiotics and probiotics in 2018 than in preceding years, and this marked increase in the use of supplements and other products was likely motivated by a growing public interest in gut microbiome health, according to researchers with the National Institutes of Health.
Schools with significant class engagement and more disciplinary structure may protect students from the downstream effects of sexual harassment, such as depression, substance use and even suicide, according to trailblazing research from University of Virginia investigators inspired by the #MeToo movement.
The coronavirus pandemic had a strong effect on the dreams of secondary school students during the spring lockdown of 2020 — especially those who reported emotional distress, according to a study that examined dreaming among adolescents in three European countries in granular detail.
Consulting clients may prefer to work with male professionals who have relatively small faces, often perceived as conveying trustworthiness, instead of males with relatively wide faces, according to new research that advances our understanding of how photographs may influence business relationships in the era of remote work.
A new artificial intelligence model realistically predicts how humans type on touchscreens — even making typos and correcting them — in a simulation that could inform typing aids for people with motor impairments or other disabilities. Scientists can now automate the most challenging parts of designing shapes from RNA at the nanolevel, a method known as RNA origami. The inventors of that technique have released new software that substantially accelerates and improves the process and could one day yield custom structures for use in personalized medicine.
Imagination may be the most powerful predictor of whether players care about characters in augmented reality games such as Pokémon GO, new research shows, signaling that nostalgia may be less of a driver of engagement with multimedia franchises in the multibillion-dollar AR gaming industry than some might expect.