⚑ Social Science Press Releases

A new study has introduced a more accurate way to evaluate how biochar interacts with water, offering important insights for agriculture, soil management, and environmental sustainability. Biochar, a carbon-rich material produced from biomass, is widely used to improve soil quality and water retention. However, understanding how biochar affects soil water behavior has long been challenging due to limitations in existing measurement methods. Researchers have now developed a new approach called the dynamic contact angle method, which provides ...

American politics is increasingly characterized by high levels of polarization and divisive rhetoric, despite stated preferences among voters for civility and substantive debate. Sean J. Westwood and colleagues sought to understand what might incentivize a politician to use divisive rhetoric by analyzing 2.2 million public statements from the 118th US Congress. Using a large language model, the authors broke floor speeches, press releases, newsletters, and posts on X into roughly two-sentence chunks and classified a chunk as a personal attack if it targeted a specific individual or group and criticized personal characteristics, motivations, or integrity rather ...

To handle increasing wastewater loads, sewage treatment plants are adopting more advanced treatment processes. However, many of these approaches require additional space and energy, highlighting the need for more efficient alternatives. Chemical-enhanced primary treatment (CEPT), which uses chemicals, instead of microorganisms, to promote flocculation and coagulation of sewage, has attracted significant attention for reducing energy consumption and operation costs in sewage treatment plants. The sewage sludge produced during treatment can be further processed through pyrolysis, a high-temperature process that can reduce sludge volume, degrade pollutants, and produce value-added materials. ...

Approximately 14% of college students across the United States experience period poverty – meaning they cannot afford to purchase or access menstrual products. A new study of 462 college students in the University of Hawai’i school system reveals that period poverty may be notably higher for this population.   Period poverty can be a heavy burden for college students. Prior research links insufficient access to safe hygiene products (ex., tampons, sanitary napkins, pads, menstrual cups) with mental health challenges, increased risk of urogenital infections ...

AMHERST, Mass. — It’s well known that alcohol consumption is an age-old method for coping with stress. But surprising? research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that, when such self-medication begins in early adulthood, negative cognitive effects start to show up in middle-age—even after long periods of total abstinence. These effects include a decreased ability to cope with changing situations, an increased likelihood to drink when stressed and the kinds of cognitive decline associated with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The new research, published recently in the journal ...

Reliable and scalable water level prediction is crucial in hydrology for effective water resources management, especially when considering challenges owing to climate change, urbanization, improper land use, and high-water demand. It directly impacts the availability and distribution of freshwater in rivers and reservoirs. Therefore, accurate forecasting via early warning systems is a highly useful technique for flood mitigation, agricultural irrigation, ecosystem and environmental sustainability, and numerous other applications. In this regard, physically-based hydrodynamic river models can be used. However, these tools require enormous amounts of data, making them less useful in data-scarce ...

By tracking nearly every movement of a tiny fish’s life from adolescence to death, a new study reveals a hidden behavioral blueprint of aging – one that can predict a fish’s age or how long an individual will live. This is possible based on behavioral patterns visible early in life, researchers report. Aging in vertebrates unfolds over long and complex timescales and is influenced by a myriad of factors. Behavior provides a powerful window into an animal’s internal state and has been shown to reflect the aging process in several species, including humans. However, the ability to continuously ...

To understand how professional networks contribute to persistent gender disparities in corporate leadership, researchers analyzed data from more than 19,000 corporate employees over 20 years. Publishing March 12 in the Cell Press journal Patterns, their results show that educational, employment, and social networks matter for both men and women, but women rely on more complex social networks to reach director-level positions than men. Women with professional ...

Gender differences in poverty rates in the United States may be associated with women’s differing circumstances — particularly the burden of dependent children — rather than inherent to gender itself, according to a new study published March 11, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Patti Fisher of Virginia Tech, U.S. Women in the United States face higher rates of poverty than men, and their access to economic resources and opportunities is more limited. While factors such as employment, education, and health status are known to influence poverty risk, it has been unclear whether men and women are affected differently by these factors, ...

PORTLAND, Ore. – Drug delivery researchers have vastly improved the potential of genetic therapies by overcoming the challenge of consistently getting genes and gene-editing tools where they need to be within cells. Findings of the study spearheaded by Oregon State University College of Pharmacy graduate student Antony Jozić were published today in Nature Biotechnology. When gene therapies enter a cell, they are often sent to lysosomes, the cell’s trash and recycling centers, where therapeutic genetic material is broken down ...

A new study in Health Economics indicates that the rapid expansion of online sports betting in the US may be increasing risky alcohol consumption among young men. Using national survey data and modern policy‐evaluation methods, investigators compared substance use across US states that have legalized sports betting since 2018 versus those that have not. The team found that legalizing online sports betting has led to a significant rise—around 10%—in binge‐drinking frequency in men aged 35 years and younger who already report binge drinking, while not affecting smoking rates. The authors noted that their data rely on self-reported ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Social media users are more likely to watch TV programs that are endorsed by members of their political party, a recent study suggests. However, individuals’ racial identity and their perceptions of racial and political ingroup norms and the demographics of a program’s intended audience also play roles in their decisions. Stewart Coles, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, surveyed 1,259 Black and white Republicans and Democrats to see how their intentions to view a fictitious TV program were affected by their race and political party and those of the person endorsing it. Coles found that certain ...

More than 184 million people in rural sub-Saharan Africa rely on shared handpumps for clean water. However, more than 50,000 of the pumps are broken, leaving millions in jeopardy of losing their safe water supply. New research from the University of Notre Dame studies how local nongovernmental organizations in Ethiopia, Malawi and the Central African Republic decide when to maintain and repair 3,584 community handpumps when information about pump functionality is incomplete or uncertain. The ongoing research has helped NGOs provide more consistent and safe access to water for more than a million people ...

WASHINGTON, March 10, 2026 — Due to climate change, plants’ pollination season has been growing longer and longer. As a result, people are exposed to allergens for extended periods each year, raising a major public health concern. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University and two French universities, the University of Rouen Normandy and the University of Lille, developed an advanced computational model of outdoor airflow through trees. They used ...

Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered that the constant gnawing of rodents isn't just a reflex or a consequence of a tough diet. It also triggers a release of dopamine in the brain—which acts as a biochemical reward or incentive—through a newly identified neural circuit. Although the circuit was discovered in mice, it could also be at work in other mammals, the researchers said, adding to a growing body of evidence that there's a deeper connection between our brains and our oral health and habits. "In the old point of view, everyone sort of believed that gnawing was ...

(TORONTO & TURKU, March 10, 2026) JMIR Publications, a leading open-access digital health research publisher, and the University of Turku (UTU) are pleased to announce a new Flat-Fee Unlimited Open Access Publishing Agreement. This partnership, effective January 1, 2026, through December 31, 2026, replaces individual Article Processing Charges (APC) with an Institutional Publishing Fee (IPF) that covers all UTU affiliated researchers. JMIR’s institutional partnerships have a track record of successfully reducing administrative burden, eliminating ...

Does modernization—economic growth, technological advancement, globalization, increased education, and urbanization—reduce cultural differences? Conventional wisdom suggests that as nations get richer and more educated, a globalized, modern culture emerges featuring low birth rates, high divorce rates, and an overall focus on the individual. Thomas Talhelm tests this hypothesis using the World Values Survey, which has collected data in a broad range of countries since 1981. Notably, variation in values between countries in the World Values Survey has grown from 1981–2017. ...

High temperatures have long been empirically linked to violence, conflict, and aggression at the societal level—a troubling pattern in a warming world. Alessandra Cassar and colleagues sought to explore the effect of high heat on individual egalitarianism, resource maximization, selfishness, spite, and competitiveness. The authors invited university students in Colombia, India, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States to play games that involved making choices about whether to share, whether to reduce another player’s payoff at a cost to oneself, as well as whether or not to compete. ...

Materials that encourage mineralization, mimicking the process in the human body, are becoming increasingly important in medicine and technology. This process, which occurs at the interface between inorganic materials and organic coatings, can facilitate the formation of biological tissue, aid in detecting specific ions, and even assist in removing contaminants from water. The process performance depends largely on the material's ability to trigger nucleation, the initial step where minerals begin to form, and to support continued crystal growth. Among the various bioorganic coatings (eco-friendly surface coverings made from renewable biological sources) ...

A new study from researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that middle and high school students spend nearly one-third of the school day on their smartphones, checking them dozens of times, often for social media and entertainment, with frequent checking linked to weaker attention and impulse control.  The research examined how often adolescents use their phones during school and whether that behavior is related to their ability to focus and regulate attention. By objectively tracking smartphone use every hour over a two-week period, the study generated thousands of real-world data points, ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study found that youths use smartphones approximately one-third of the school day; this use was associated with reduced cognitive control. These findings highlight the need for school-level policies and digital literacy programs that address not only overall screen time but also habitual smartphone-checking behaviors that fragment attention.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Eva H. Telzer, PhD, email ehtelzer@unc.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.1092) Editor’s ...

Washington, March 5, 2026—The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has announced the winners of its 2026 awards for excellence in education research. “We are honored to recognize the recipients of the 2026 awards, an outstanding and inspiring group of education researchers and leaders,” said AERA Executive Director Tabbye Chavous. “Their contributions continue to advance education research and positively impact countless students, educators, and the environments in which they live, learn, and work.” AERA will honor the recipients at the Awards ...

A new study from Hiroshima University showed that, among university students just entering the workforce, those with optimism about the future better manage 'reality shock' through formation of an career-related identity.  ‘Reality shock’ is a widely recognized psychological phenomenon in which new graduates become distressed upon entering the workplace and finding that the reality of working life doesn’t match their expectations. This can lead to disappointment, confusion, depression, and anxiety, and can lower employment ...

Sungkyunkwan University (President: Jibeom Yoo) announced that a joint research team led by Professors Han-Ki Kim and Bo Ram Lee from the School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering has developed a next-generation transparent electrode technology that completely eliminates the use of the rare metal indium, while maintaining high performance and significantly extending device lifetime. Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs), which have recently attracted considerable attention as a key technology for next-generation ...

Jackdaw chicks learn about predators by listening to adults, new research shows. Scientists played recordings of predator calls to chicks in their nests – and paired the sounds with either adult jackdaw “alarm” calls or “contact” calls that indicate no danger. Chicks that heard predator sounds paired with alarm calls learned to fear the predator – becoming more vigilant on hearing that sound again – while chicks that heard contact calls did not. The study, by researchers at the University ...