Society

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

A new study in the Journal of Economic Geography has revealed that European "due diligence" laws designed to make multinational companies accountable for labor and environmental abuses are beginning to give a voice to some of the world's most vulnerable workers.... Read more

If there are two things the internet loves talking about, they're conspiracy theories, and who may or may not be a narcissist.... Read more

Christian Reconstructionism is a theological and political movement within conservative Protestantism arguing that society should be governed by biblical principles, including the application of biblical law to both personal and public life.... Read more

Eighty years ago, Canada enacted executive orders to banish more than 10,000 Canadians of Japanese descent, stripping thousands of citizenship in the process. Named a Top 100 Book of 2025 by The Hill Times and described as "essential reading for history buffs" by The Globe and Mail, a new book... Read more

A new study finds that worrying about police brutality and harassment is associated with physical markers of cardiovascular health risk in Black women in the United States. The study found the association was most pronounced for Black women concerned about potential interactions between their children and police.... Read more

The Group of Twenty (G20) emerged from the financial turmoil that followed the collapse of the Thai currency in 1997, which rapidly spread financial instability from Thailand to the rest of Asia.... Read more

Rising trade frictions over the past decade have sparked urgent questions about their long-term impact on global economies. The U.S. now applies tariffs of 66.4% on Chinese exports, which is higher compared to the average rate of 19.3%, while China retaliates with a 58.3% import tariff on U.S. exports, higher... Read more

For more than three decades, DHS provided vital demographic and health data on population, health, HIV, and nutrition in over 90 countries. Its termination leaves major gaps in tracking the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in low- and middle-income countries.... Read more

A new study led by Yale anthropologist Catherine Panter-Brick examines how stakeholders in socially diverse, conflict-affected societies conceptualize everyday peace, drawing on a comparative analysis across different groups of people. The findings offer insights that can inform peacebuilding policies and strategies across the globe.... Read more

Public support for broad-based taxation risks eroding when voters learn that the super-rich pay lower tax rates than ordinary citizens, according to new research co-authored by King's academics.... Read more

Money talks, and new research from Northwestern University suggests that it often speaks louder than an American voter's commitment to democratic norms.... Read more

An international project investigating the form, content and consequences of online conspiracy theories has found that in German-speaking countries, such theories often originate locally and have come to form a complex ecosystem of alternative news websites, print media and parts of the political spectrum.... Read more

A new study on how U.S. defense attorneys think about autism and use strategies informed by neurodiversity in their work finds that attorneys saw autism through a medical lens and acknowledged the need for better ways to secure accommodations for their clients in court.... Read more

A new study has concluded that in New Jersey's largest city, crime was concentrated significantly around corner stores compared with other commercial venues. The study's findings have implications for crime prevention, urban planning, and community safety policies.... Read more

In communities around the Amazon Rainforest, there's a pervasive belief that large landowners use their money to influence local politics to benefit their operations.... Read more

More than two years of war in Gaza have left many Palestinian children too weak to learn or play and convinced they will be "killed for being Gazans," a new report warns. The University of Cambridge-led study also includes the first analysis of education in the West Bank and East... Read more

Two things are clear from a University of Michigan analysis of nearly 200,000 Twitter posts between 2012 and 2022. One, people are really good at identifying peak pollen season: The largest volume of tweets about pollen often lined up with pollen counters hitting their biggest numbers. And two, liberal users... Read more

Older adults tend to do well at identifying falsehoods in experiments, but they're also likelier than younger adults to like and share misinformation online.... Read more

Researchers at the University of Basel have developed a tool that measures when people engage in dialog across political divides. The results show that personal factors play a greater role in people's willingness to engage in dialog than the controversial nature of a topic.... Read more

Donald Trump joked in 2016 that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not lose support. In 2024, after two impeachments and 34 felony convictions, he has more or less proved the point. He not only returned to the White House, he turned his... Read more

In 2025, youth-led protests erupted everywhere from Morocco to Nepal, Madagascar and Europe. A generation refused to remain silent in the face of economic precariousness, corruption and eroding democratic norms and institutions.... Read more

By any measure, 2025 was not a good year for world peace.... Read more

Among his other ongoing projects, US President Donald Trump has spent much of his second term on a renovation. The Oval Office has been converted into a miniature palace festooned with gold bling, the rose garden has been paved over, a triumphal arch is planned and the new ballroom will... Read more

A new study shows that moral arguments appealing to care and fairness can persuade both liberals and conservatives in the United States. By contrast, arguments grounded in the "binding" moral foundations—loyalty, authority and sanctity—primarily influence conservatives.... Read more