Society

Firearm purchasing patterns can shift in response to specific events, including presidential elections, according to Rutgers Health researchers.... Read more

It's common to wonder as tax season ramps up: Are taxes too high? According to a new study by University of Cincinnati economics professor David Brasington, the answer is no, at least when it comes to Ohio's city service taxes. These taxes go toward local services such as funds for... Read more

As controversy over Australia's new hate laws continues, last weekend's so-called March for Australia rallies were the latest in a string of events that have raised the temperature of public debate.... Read more

Legal efforts to tackle excessive personal information collection by social media giants could transcend international boundaries if nations moved away from a focus on assessing competition using the value of data, a new study says.... Read more

A new analysis of 471 U.S. counties has found that, for everyday travel, people from counties with particularly strong political leanings—whether liberal or conservative—are more likely to visit like-minded destinations. Zhengyi Liang and Jaeho Cho of the University of California, Davis, U.S., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS... Read more

Engineering can create weapons systems or systems for defense and well-being. But can engineering create peace? In a Perspective, Guru Madhavan and colleagues propose an expansive mode of engineering practice that seeks to reduce conflict. The work is published in PNAS Nexus.... Read more

Estimates of unlicensed online gambling in the Nordic countries vary widely and are often based on non-transparent data sources. This is shown by a new scoping review published in PLOS ONE. Led by researchers from, among others, Karolinska Institutet, the study reviews 32 reports and finds that figures describing the... Read more

When people encounter racism or discrimination, they don't all respond in the same way. Some calmly challenge the remark, some file a complaint, others confront the offender aggressively—and many say nothing at all.... Read more

There's been much published about the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, which looked at the impact of intervention on delinquency in young Massachusetts boys. The groundbreaking research followed up with study participants for decades after the fact and found that the interventions they received as youths did not help them later in... Read more

Generative deep learning models are artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can create texts, images, audio files, and videos for specific purposes, following instructions provided by human users. Over the past few years, the content generated by these models has become increasingly realistic and is often difficult to distinguish from real... Read more

Academic freedom is often described as a cornerstone of democratic society. Politicians regularly claim to defend it, universities invoke it in mission statements and most members of the public say they support it in principle.... Read more

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing our society and economy. A new study shows that the majority of people believe that artificial intelligence is displacing more human labor than it is creating new opportunities. Scientists at the University of Vienna and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) demonstrated a causal link: the stronger this... Read more

The House of Lords has voted to back a ban on social media for under-16s, putting pressure on the government ahead of its own upcoming consultation on the matter.... Read more

Career pressure—not ideology—causes military officers to protect or overthrow dictators. New research from the Department of Political Science shows that ambition and anxiety can transform "ordinary men" into the regime's ruthless henchmen—or into those who bury the regime.... Read more

Information that we select for ourselves, such as things we click online, has a stronger impact than passively acquired information on our perception of truth and falsehood.... Read more

From a social sciences perspective, people with radical, extremist, or fundamentalist attitudes are similar in some respects: In most cases, they are younger and less educated men who feel that they are not taken seriously enough. This is one of the key findings of a research team led by professor... Read more

Africa confronts escalating internal migration and displacement crises fueled by intensifying climate hazards—particularly prolonged droughts—and persistent armed conflicts, which compound vulnerabilities across the continent.... Read more

Oskari Lahtinen, Senior Researcher at the INVEST Research Flagship Center at the University of Turku in Finland, has developed validated tools for studying "woke" attitudes on both the political left and the political right.... Read more

YouTube is a key tool in recruiting far-right activists to the largest British fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA), according to new research.... Read more

When an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in south Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026, what happened next looked familiar, at least on the surface. Within hours, cellphone footage spread online and eyewitness accounts contradicted official statements, while video analysts slowed the clip down frame... Read more

In a week filled with news about President Donald Trump's aggressive moves to take control of Greenland, the world got a window into his thinking about the concept of "peace."... Read more

The language used to describe conflicts naturally reflects assumptions about how different forms of violence emerge and develop.... Read more

As the US administration led by Donald Trump has continued to reassert its interest in owning Greenland, Europe has become more and more concerned about the security situation in the Arctic.... Read more

Political published writing retains an "important and complex role" in the national conversation—despite huge social and technological changes this century, a new book shows.... Read more

Incorporating living conditions and job opportunities in cities into mathematical models of human mobility improves model accuracy. The traditional gravity model of human mobility uses the distance of a move and the population of a destination city to predict migration patterns, with larger cities exerting more "pull" than smaller cities.... Read more

The staff running the federal World Trade Center Health Program has been cut by 25% as the number of sick 9/11 survivors the group treats is expected to increase by 10,000 this year, the Daily News has learned.... Read more

When the United States recently escalated its confrontation with Venezuela—carrying out strikes in Caracas and capturing President Nicolás Maduro—the moves were framed as political intervention.... Read more

Most people assume that when an election comes down to two main parties, the logic of voting is straightforward: weigh up the options and choose the least bad one.... Read more

Researchers at TU Wien are developing a model that interprets opinions not as diametrically opposed poles, but as overlapping areas at the group level.... Read more

Eileen Higgins won a historic victory in December. She became the first woman ever elected mayor of Miami, as well as its first Democratic mayor since 1997.... Read more

Opinion polarization is often considered as the primary driver of social friction, leading to exhaustive efforts to force a consensus. However, new research suggests a more pragmatic goal: reducing the friction of disagreement without necessarily eliminating the diversity of opinion.... Read more

Mass shootings in white-majority neighborhoods received roughly twice the news coverage of mass shootings in neighborhoods where a majority of residents were people of color, while coverage of police-involved shootings was disproportionately high in majority-minority communities, according to new research.... Read more

When a protest by angry traders about what they see as the Islamic Republic's poor handling of the economy morphed into a national uprising across Iran, the authorities moved quickly to shut down the internet. It's a tactic the regime has used before. Closing down communications makes it harder for... Read more

Once the world's most populous nation, China is now among the many Asian countries struggling with anemic fertility rates. In an attempt to double the country's rate of 1.0 children per woman, Beijing is reaching for a new tool: taxes on condoms, birth control pills and other contraceptives.... Read more

Oceans shape everyday life in powerful ways. They cover 70% of the planet, carry 90% of global trade, and support millions of jobs and the diets of billions of people. As global competition intensifies and climate change accelerates, the world's oceans are also becoming the front line of 21st-century geopolitics.... Read more

Researchers at The University of Manchester are calling for stronger, coordinated partnerships to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking, warning that gaps between organizations risk leaving victims and survivors without consistent protection and support.... Read more

As global officials confirm that 2025 was Earth's third-hottest year on record, a new poll shows Americans are sharply divided over the role of science in the United States.... Read more

A new study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland sheds light on young Finnish environmental activists, discovering that their activist identities are multidimensional and even contradictory at times. The study has explored how young environmental activists construct their identities and the cultural narratives associated with activism, emphasizing intergenerational responsibility,... Read more

Governments across the world want AI to do more of the heavy lifting when it comes to public services. The plan is apparently to make things much more efficient, as algorithms quietly handle a country's day-to-day admin.... Read more

New findings from the University of East London show that online risk-taking is widespread among young people, with behaviors such as digital piracy, accessing risky online spaces or engaging with harmful content having a high potential to lead to more serious offenses.... Read more

Social media is often criticized for fueling misinformation and violence, but it could actually play a role in preventing genocide and mass atrocities—if used strategically.... Read more

Sports are often viewed as an escape from the problems of the real world. But when a Colombian soccer star's father was kidnapped, the resulting media coverage helped move the story from the field of play to front-page news that united a country, cast doubt on peace negotiations and influenced... Read more

Donald Trump is clearly in a hurry to dominate the political narrative in his second term of office. He began 2026 with strikes in Syria against Islamic State groups, the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, threats to intervene in Iran and the declaration that the US would take control... Read more

President Donald Trump's insistence that the U.S. will acquire Greenland "whether they like it or not" is just the latest chapter in a co-dependent and often complicated relationship between America and the Arctic's largest island—one that stretches back more than a century.... Read more

A study in Economic Inquiry reveals how changes in immigration attitudes in an area spread to other localities and highlights the role of media language and social networks in shaping political attitudes.... Read more

The detail of the European Union's long-awaited accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is like a "three-dimensional puzzle" because of the several vital and interlocking elements which need to be agreed, a new study suggests.... Read more

Most people in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy clearly endorse military support for Ukraine. They overwhelmingly reject Russia's positions on territorial claims and restrictions on Ukraine's political sovereignty.... Read more

Diversity among students and researchers is a common goal across academia. This has been driven by a desire to increase opportunities for the historically marginalized in higher education—moving away from the straight, white and male personification of academia.... Read more

A new study into one of the world's most popular tobacco leaf production processes has revealed its particularly damaging harms to the environment and how it impacts farmers' lives in Zimbabwe.... Read more

Kleptocratic "ecosystems" should be seen as transnational enterprises and national security threats, with the recovery of assets legally linked not only to the individual criminal acts but to the systemic harm caused to national security and democracy, experts have warned.... Read more