"When you see a face, you scan it, identify if it's friend or foe and make a decision about whether to move forward or avoid it, " said Dr. Barry Kosofsky, chief of neurology at Cornell Medical Center, who was not affiliated with the study.

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This becomes problematic in virtual conversations because the massive mental resources that would ordinarily be occupied with scanning your face have nothing to scan, so they imagine it.

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Sure, we've seen hypothetical approaches before, but this rendition lacks the mess and time requirements of previous methods by allowing customers to snap an image of their face, and then scan electronic tags of interesting looking makeup in order to dash their on-screen persona with whatever they please.

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The radiation astronauts would face on a round trip would be comparable to getting an abdominal CT scan "about once every five days, " said Cary Zeitlin, principal scientist for the NASA-led Martian Radiation Environment Experiment.

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