Breakthrough reveals not just who’s connected—but who’s leading the pack As summer winds down, many of us in continental Europe are heading back north. The long return journeys from the beaches of southern France, Spain, and Italy once again clog alpine tunnels and Mediterranean coastal routes during the infamous Black Saturday bottlenecks. This annual migration,...
Science & Technology
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Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: How Subtle ‘Sponsored Content’ on Social Media Tricks Us into Viewing Ads
Scientists find that people mostly avoid social media ads when they see them, but many ads blend in seamlessly How many ads do you see on social media? It might be more than you realize. Scientists studying how ads work on Instagram-style social media have found that people are not as good at spotting them...
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AI Web Browser Assistants Raise Serious Privacy Concerns
Popular generative AI web browser assistants are collecting and sharing sensitive user data, such as medical records and social security numbers, without adequate safeguards, finds a new study led by researchers from UCL and Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria. The study, which will be presented and published as part of the USENIX Security Symposium, is the...
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Is Writing with AI at Work Undermining Your Credibility?
With over 75% of professionals using AI in their daily work, writing and editing messages with tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude has become a commonplace practice. While generative AI tools are seen to make writing easier, are they effective for communicating between managers and employees? A new study of 1,100 professionals reveals a critical paradox...
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The Trump Administration’s Multi-Front Assault on Federal Research Funding
In the first few months of the second Trump administration, the federal government has rapidly dismantled its longstanding support for scientific research and technology development. Since World War II, the United States has directed significant public resources toward research and development, particularly for academic institutions. These investments have shaped both U.S. and global innovation ecosystems. U.S....
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Plants Seek Friendly Environments Rather Than Adapt
As jewelflowers spread into California from the desert Southwest over the past couple of million years, they settled in places that felt like home, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis. The work, published July 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the ability of plants and animals...
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Early Visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-Century Astronomer Who Used Science Fiction to Imagine the Red Planet
Living in today’s age of ambitious robotic exploration of Mars, with an eventual human mission to the red planet likely to happen one day, it is hard to imagine a time when Mars was a mysterious and unreachable world. And yet, before the invention of the rocket, astronomers who wanted to explore Mars beyond what...
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One Single Rule Helps Explain Life from Ocean Depths to Open Savannas
A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has found a simple rule that seems to govern how life is organised on Earth. The researchers believe this rule helps explain why species are spread the way they are across the planet. The discovery will help to understand life on Earth – including how ecosystems respond to global...
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AI Meets the Conditions for Having Free Will – We Need to Give It a Moral Compass
AI is advancing at such speed that speculative moral questions, once the province of science fiction, are suddenly real and pressing, says Finnish philosopher and psychology researcher Frank Martela Martela’s latest study finds that generative AI meets all three of the philosophical conditions of free will — the ability to have goal-directed agency, make genuine...
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Q&A: What Makes an ‘Accidental Dictator’ in the Workplace?
The professional world has no shortage of micromanagers — or, as Penn State School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER) faculty members Craig L. Pearce and Hee Man Park like to call them, “accidental dictators.” But leaders don’t have to fall into that trap, according to an article published in the journal Organizational Dynamics co-written by Pearce, Brova Family Endowed Professor of leadership...
