Science

New research reveals gambling messages during the opening weekend of this season’s football Premier League have almost trebled since last year, putting fans including children at risk.

The findings highlight the explosion of gambling marketing and how the industry’s current self-regulation is failing. Leading experts and politicians are now calling on the Government to prioritize public safety and make tackling the issue a top goal.

The report, led by the University of Bristol, shows football fans are being constantly bombarded with gambling marketing across TV and radio, as well as social media during live match coverage and related news reports. Nearly 30,000 (29,145) gambling messages were counted in total across these channels during a single weekend—almost triple the 10,999 recorded over the same period last year.

Co-lead author Dr. Raffaello Rossi, a marketing researcher from the University of Bristol, said, “This new evidence shows how much the industry is out of control—with gambling ads now flooding Premier League coverage. Just a few months ago, a new code of conduct was published by industry to curb marketing during football events, but the policy has had no impact on the volume whatsoever.

“It’s clear that the industry’s attempt to self-regulate is wholly inadequate and tokenistic. Despite having had years to put in place effective measures to protect consumers, the gambling industry continues to prioritize profit over safety.”

During live broadcasts of six Premier League matches, findings showed gambling messages, including logos and ads shown during live matches, more than trebled from 6,966 at the same time last year to 23,690 this year—a 240% increase.

The worst-hit match studied—West Ham United v Aston Villa—contained 6,491 gambling messages, equating to around 30 per minute. In previous studies, gambling messages peaked at around 3,500 per match.

Dr. Rossi added, “It’s more than a failure of policy—it’s a failure to protect the public and the problem has been allowed to proliferate unchecked. We must stop relying on ineffective self-regulation, which is designed to fail, and use existing legislation to restrict gambling marketing like most of our European counterparts. The Secretary of State has all the legal authority to act on this now.”

During match play more than 10,000 gambling messages were detected, because the industry’s ‘whistle-to-whistle’ ban, designed to keep gambling marketing in check, only applies to TV commercials during ad breaks, rendering the policy ineffective.

Lord Foster of Bath, chair of Peers for Gambling Reform, said, “These statistics reveal the woeful inadequacies of industry self-regulation. Despite the purported ‘whistle-to-whistle’ ban, we continue to see games saturated with gambling advertising, sponsorship and marketing messages, with figures showing that the number of gambling messages in the opening weekend had more than doubled from the previous season to a staggering 29,145 messages.

“It is simply not good enough. The Government and the Gambling Commission must immediately act to reform gambling advertising, sponsorship and marketing. With political will, these reforms can be implemented now without the need for new legislation.”

Replicating last year’s investigation, a 10-strong team of researchers painstakingly analyzed around 24 hours of live match coverage, 15 hours of Sky Sports News coverage, 15 hours of TalkSport radio broadcasts, and gambling advertising posted on Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) from 16 to 19 August.

The report revealed how gambling operators are also successfully exploiting social media to reach vast audiences, including children, with gambling ads on these platforms being viewed over 24 million times. Some of the most popular social media posts featured Premier League players and aren’t obviously identifiable as gambling advertising—a technique known as content marketing—making children especially vulnerable.

Three-quarters (74%) of the content marketing posts collected were not clearly identifiable as ads, breaching key advertising regulations. The research team has reported from its study more than 100 offending social media ads by major gambling brands to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for investigation.

“The findings demonstrate the continued negligence of self-regulation of gambling marketing in football, with measures failing to reduce exposure to children and vulnerable audiences. Our research highlights the need for the Government to intervene and move beyond the industry’s voluntary measures, to fully ensure children and young people are protected,” co-lead author Dr. Jamie Wheaton added.

Multi-disciplinary experts in marketing, law, psychology, and personal finance at the University of Bristol are at the forefront of tackling gambling harms and influencing regulatory reform.

Last season’s investigation resulted in Dr. Rossi presenting evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Gambling Related Harms and House of Lords Peers for Gambling Reform. Both groups have since cited the evidence and appealed for the Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to accelerate and step up proposed legislation in the white paper, much of which has yet to take effect.

Former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton CBE, who experienced gambling problems himself and together with his wife is a patron of this research initiative, said, “Last year’s results were bad enough, but this year’s are both shocking and disturbing. Gambling advertising during football events has become relentless, and this study clearly shows just how out of control it has become in the UK.

“What concerns us most is the impact on children, who are being exposed to gambling marketing at an unacceptable level. We are proud to be patrons of this study, which highlights a serious and growing problem that demands urgent action.”

Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, former vice chair of the Gambling Harms All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), added, “This appalling evidence shows us that, as I warned previously, the industry could not be trusted to regulate itself. Sadly, the regulators are toothless and as a result we are all being flooded with adverts that the vast majority of us do not want to see.

“Enough is enough. This Government and the Gambling Commission must act swiftly to deliver regulation capable of meaningfully reducing exposure to gambling advertising and help save lives.”

Next month on Thursday 10 October, the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research, based at the University, will host an international conference, uniting leading international researchers, those who have experienced gambling harms first-hand, government bodies, treatment providers, political commentators and regulators to discuss the current issues in gambling harms research.

Professor Agnes Nairn, co-director of the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research, said, “University researchers have a vital role to play in producing strong evidence such as this and then holding industry and its regulators to account so all consumers are properly protected from the wide-reaching risks.

“The Bristol Hub, supported by leading global experts, is working hard to advance our understanding of the complexity of gambling harms and to push for positive change, as part of the University’s commitment to champion social justice.”

A detailed study of more than 770 teacher strikes in the United States between 2007 and 2023 found that the strikes benefit teachers and classrooms, and have no measurable impact on students.

Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant professor of public policy at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, was the lead author of the study, “The Causes and Consequences of U.S. Teacher Strikes,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The study looked at how strikes affect public school teacher wages, working conditions and productivity, as well as the reasons behind the strikes. The authors found that 89% of strikes were in part for higher wages and more than 50% were for improved conditions such as lower class size and increases in support staff.

And the strikes largely work. Teacher pay rose on average by 8% by the fifth year after a strike; class sizes went down and per-student spending went up; and school districts spent more on student support staff such as nurses and social workers.

“Despite legal restrictions in many states, teacher strikes have proven to be powerful tools for advancing worker interests, contrasting sharply with the decline in strike effectiveness in the 1980s and 1990s,” Lyon said, noting that people had “written off the effectiveness of strikes since Reagan fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers in 1981. However, this research shows that in the past 16 years teacher strikes have been potent forms of leverage for achieving compensation gains in the public sector.”

The study says that teacher strikes have impacted roughly 11.5 million students, leading to the cancelation of a total of 3,403 days of school (48 million student days idle) over the past 16 years.

Even so, the researchers found “no evidence of sizable positive or negative effects of strikes on students.” For strikes that lasted longer than two weeks, there was a slight decline in math achievement, but that was made up within a year. And most U.S. teacher strikes are short—two out of three ended in five days or less.

Co-authors of the study were Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, and Matthew Steinberg, an education economist who is director of research and evaluation at Accelerate, a nonprofit that studies strategies to improve student learning.

Lyon, who studies educational policy, including inequality, governance and teacher politics and policy, is on leave from the University this year on a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education.

This study complements her past work, soon to be published in the American Educational Research Journal, demonstrating that the teaching profession is facing historic lows across multiple dimensions of societal prestige, student interest, teacher preparation and job satisfaction.

This study comes at a critical moment, at the beginning of a new school year with the teaching profession confronting unprecedented challenges and Americans witnessing a surge in strikes, partly spurred by large-scale teacher strikes in 2018.

She swiped right and wants to meet up. Soon, you’ve both had a few drinks and dim the lights. Suddenly, the mood shifts: She pulls back, puts a hand up, even says no.

Do you respect your date’s refusal? Research from Binghamton University’s Psychology Department sheds light on which men might choose to ignore a lack of consent and why.

Their research explores how men make decisions in high-risk sexual situations, which could potentially offer insights into prevention. “Does No Mean No? Situational and Dispositional Factors Influence Emerging Adult Men’s Intentions to Use Assault in Response to Women’s Sexual Refusal During Hookups” was recently published in the journal Sexual Abuse.

“We found that adherence to cultural myths about what constitutes rape was the strongest predictor of assaultive behavior, even controlling for other personality factors,” said Psychology Professor Richard E. Mattson. “We may, therefore, be able to curtail some assaults by dispelling these myths through education.”

However, underlying beliefs or the particulars of a situation form only part of the picture. The risk for sexual assault is even more strongly linked to who a man actually is in terms of personality—a factor that may be less amenable to change.

Which men present a risk?

The researchers focused on “emerging adults,” a category that ranges from the late teens to the mid-to-late 20s. Individuals in this age range are more likely to find themselves in higher-risk sexual situations, such as hookups, rather than long-term, exclusive sexual relationships, Mattson explained. It’s also a time when individuals are still developing beliefs and behaviors related to sex, making them more amenable to intervention.

When approaching sensitive topics such as rape, researchers ask about specific behaviors in given situations and also assess and correct for a subject’s tendency to report in socially desirable ways. While a small subgroup of likely perpetrators underreport their actual risk level, men typically have few problems reporting rape in research studies, Mattson acknowledged.

“A high proportion of men report that they would commit a considerably violent rape if they could be assured that they would not get caught,” he said. “This may sound surprising, but the men that are likeliest to commit rape also tend to carry traits that make their reporting less surprising, like high levels of impulsivity and adherence to hypermasculine ideologies that see nothing wrong with male sexual dominion.”

During the study, 420 college-age men were presented with six random vignettes that depicted a hookup, and various forms of sexual refusal—verbal, nonverbal and a combination of the two.

According to their findings, factors that predispose men to sexual assault include rigid adherence to traditional gender roles, which assume male dominance; personalities that exhibit a callous disregard for others; sexism, whether overtly hostile or benevolent; and low empathy. Other factors include a belief in rape myths and ideologies that promote social dominance, such as right-wing authoritarianism.

Many of these factors overlap, Mattson pointed out; someone who believes that manhood is demonstrated through heterosexual conquest is also more likely to believe the myth that it’s not rape if the victim doesn’t fight back.

There is also a small correlation between a preference for impersonal sexual liaisons and sexual assault. Individuals with psychopathic traits tend to avoid emotional intimacy and favor impersonal sex, as do hypermasculine men, Mattson said.

“We found that men’s sexual decisions varied more from man-to-man than for a given man across different scenarios,” Mattson said. “Stated plainly, our findings suggest that the use of sexual assault tactics appears to be more about who the man is characterologically rather than the particulars of the sexual situation in which he is found.”

The only aspect of the situation that reliably mattered was the level of sexual intimacy at the time the partner gave her refusal, Mattson said.

While clear, direct communication about sex is important, the findings suggest that the power of no isn’t absolute; its influence on men’s decision-making wanes as the level of intimacy ramps up. Because the study centers on hypothetical vignettes—essentially, a thought experiment—you can’t attribute this phenomenon to physiological arousal.

Seeing the red flags

Not all men pose sexual dangers, Mattson stressed; a sizeable subgroup of study subjects respected a woman’s refusal and reported that they wouldn’t pressure or coerce her in any way. However, even some of the “nice guys” were susceptible to prevailing rape myths, suggesting that education may play an important role in preventing sexual transgressions.

Unless you know someone well, it may be challenging to figure out whether they believe rape myths or have psychopathic traits. Hypermasculinity, however, tends to be performative and may be easier to spot, Mattson said.

Many troubling characteristics have a common theme: a need for self-serving hierarchical relationships, so pay attention to how he treats his friends and other people around him. People with psychopathic traits sometimes present as charming and have no reservations about lying to gain trust, making them trickier to weed out.

On the law enforcement and policy front, it’s important to know that a subset of men is likely to be sexually transgressive regardless of the situation, Mattson pointed out. Sex education campaigns that focus on the need for affirmative consent are unlikely to sway these individuals, who often aren’t held accountable due to roadblocks in reporting and prosecuting sexual assault.

What can help is outreach to victims, lessening their feelings of shame and self-blame while encouraging reporting and training third parties who are likely to interact with victims, such as emergency room staff, he said.

While the study focused on heterosexual sex and casual hookups, sexual violence spans both the gender spectrum and relationship type.

“Whether or not the effects we presently observed can help explain sexual violence in these other contexts is not entirely clear,” Mattson said. “Additional research that expands in these directions will therefore be important.”

Venus is often described as a hellscape. The surface temperature breaches the melting point of lead, and though its atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, it contains enough sulfuric acid to satisfy the comparison with Hades.

But conditions throughout Venus’ ample atmosphere aren’t uniform. There are locations where some of life’s building blocks could resist the planet’s inhospitable nature.

Among the rocky planets, Venus has by far the largest atmosphere by volume. So, while its surface is inhospitable, its atmosphere has regions that are the most Earth-like of anywhere else in the solar system. Scientists have wondered if life could survive in parts of the planet’s upper atmosphere, and the discovery of the potential biomarker phosphine (though it was later disproved) generated more interest.

One reason Venus keeps coming up in discussions around habitability is that it’s accessible, whereas exoplanets aren’t. Venus is easily reached, and we currently have one orbiter in place, the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft. Three other missions to Venus are planned for the mid-2030s: NASA’s Veritas and DAVINCI and the ESA’s EnVision.

Nobody is convinced we’ll find life on Venus. But the planet can teach us a lot about chemistry and biology and their limits.

In new research, a team of scientists tested different building blocks under Venus-like conditions to see if they can withstand the planet’s perilous nature. The research is “Simple lipids form stable higher-order structures in concentrated sulfuric acid.” The lead author is Daniel Duzdevich from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. The paper is posted on the preprint server arXiv now and has been submitted to the journal Astrobiology.

Venus’ surface isn’t a candidate for habitability. But regions in its atmosphere may be. The issue is that much of Venus’ sulfuric acid is concentrated in discrete clouds rather than diffused throughout its atmosphere.

“The Venusian surface is sterilizing, but the cloud deck includes regions with temperatures and pressures conventionally considered compatible with life. However, the Venusian clouds are thought to consist of concentrated sulfuric acid,” the authors explain.

They wanted to test if any of life’s “fundamental features” could withstand Venus’ challenging environment. Can any of life’s chemistry resist sulfuric acid?

“Organic chemistry in concentrated sulfuric acid is rarely studied yet surprisingly rich, with recent work supporting the notion that complex organic molecules, including amino acids and nucleobases can be stable in this unusual solvent,” the authors write.

If simple organic molecules can remain stable in sulfuric acid, it’s an interesting observation in favor of life. But it takes more complexity than that, and that’s what this research focuses on.

“One fundamental feature of life is cellularity: the differentiation of “inside” (the contents of a cell, including information, molecules, and all their interactions) and “outside” (the environment), in addition to a mechanism for communication and exchange between the two,” Duzdevich and his co-researchers write.

The researchers focused on lipids, the membranes that define cells. Lipids are the foundation of cellular structure, not only as membranes between cells but also as membranes that create distinct parts of the interior of cells.

“The cell membrane is especially important in extreme environments because it must help maintain the homeostasis of the intracellular environment against otherwise harsh external conditions,” the authors write.

The researchers performed lab experiments to determine whether lipids can withstand Venus’ harsh environment. They asked two questions: Can simple lipids resist decomposition by sulfuric acid, and can the lipids form stable higher-order structures like they do in cells?

The researchers placed masses of lipids in vials and exposed them to different concentrations of sulfuric acid and measured each vial at specific intervals. Their results show that some lipids can survive exposure to the acid and even form structures.

Interested readers can explore the detailed chemistry for themselves.

In summary, the results suggest that stable membranes can form and persist in the presence of sulfuric acid. Life uses water as a solvent because it’s a polar molecule, can form networks of hydrogen bonds, has a high heat capacity, and, of course, is abundant on Earth. But it’s not abundant everywhere.

Critically, this study shows that some aspects of the chemistry of life don’t require water as a solvent. Instead, they can tolerate and use sulfuric acid as a solvent. “Here, we show the unexpected stability of complex membranous structures in another polar solvent: concentrated sulfuric acid,” the authors write.

What does this mean for exoplanet habitability and astrobiology?

“Concentrated sulfuric acid as a planetary solvent could be widespread on exoplanets, either on exo-Venuses or on other rocky planets that are desiccated as a result of the stellar activity of their host star,” the researchers explain.

And, of course, sulfuric acid is present in large amounts at Venus.

“Concentrated sulfuric acid is also present in our immediate planetary vicinity as a dominant liquid in the clouds of Venus, further emphasizing its importance for planetary science, planetary habitability, and astrobiology,” the authors write.

The question of whether life could somehow survive in Venus’ clouds is one that won’t go away. We’re new at the astrobiology game, and we’re simply not in a position to rule things out. It might seem far-fetched, but science is an evidence game, and evidence can be surprising.

This study doesn’t present evidence that can answer the question—big questions like this are answered incrementally—but it does present an intriguing result.

“By demonstrating the stability of lipid membranes in this aggressive solvent, we have taken a significant step forward in exploring the potential habitability of the concentrated sulfuric acid cloud environment on Venus,” the authors conclude.

The heated 2024 U.S. presidential election is frequently characterized as a choice between democracy and dictatorship, or democracy and autocracy, especially with the publication of Project 2025, the extreme, far-right playbook supposedly written for a Donald Trump or other Republican administration.

It may be surprising then, that in many examples, autocrats around the world have used institutions of democracy to consolidate and gain autocratic power.

UCLA sociology professor Cecilia Menjívar, who co-edited a recent double issue of American Behavioral Scientist for which she also co-wrote the introduction, “The Tools of Autocracy Worldwide: Authoritarian Networks, the Façade of Democracy, and Neo-Repression, with UCLA alumna and USC assistant professor of sociology Deisy Del Real, breaks down how dictators have deftly shepherded societies and political systems into autocracies worldwide.

By exploring the use of fear, the deliberate spread of misinformation, deceptive use of democratic systems, corruption of the legal system and the harnessing of hate groups, the co-editors hope to shed light on the fragility of democracy and sharpen our critical eye to the insidious threat of autocracy.

We sat down with Menjívar, the Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Professor at UCLA, to learn more about the tools and tactics used by aspiring and actual autocratic leaders.

How do politicians use fear to justify authoritarian rule?

Fear is an efficient and malleable tactic that serves several purposes. First, it allows politicians to create enemies out of anyone, whether scientists, intellectuals, immigrants, academics, reporters or, of course, the opposition.

A sweeping “us” versus “them” binary proves quite useful in politics. It creates a doom-and-gloom scenario of a country where anything and anyone can be identified as a threat. Once people are fearful of their co-workers, neighbors, friends or anyone with a different opinion, they become highly receptive to the idea that the problems of a given society are too big and only someone powerful can eradicate them. The autocrat who talks constantly about apocalyptic threats thus becomes the only savior of the nation.

How and why do aspiring and actual authoritarians manipulate information in mass media?

Manipulating the media, especially social media, is one of the most powerful tools autocrats use today. Social media platforms instantaneously transmit and retransmit politicians’ messages, potentially reaching everyone who owns a smartphone anywhere in the world.

Aspiring and actual autocrats use social media to spread (mis)information about supposed enemies and purported existential threats to the nation, neighborhoods and families. It’s how they reach the hearts and minds of the public, who are constantly exposed to messages laced with misinformation and distortions.

Receiving posts from a powerful leader daily on your phone has a huge psychological impact: It shows that the leader cares and is personally involved in protecting her or his followers. All of which bolsters the claim that she or he is the only one who can save you.

Many people are confused by the idea that candidates and politicians in a democratic system can openly pursue authoritarian goals. How does this work?

Research has clearly established that the demarcation between democracy and autocracy is not as clear-cut as we might assume. As more leaders around the world resort to autocratic means to attain and retain power (think of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and China’s Xi Jinping, to name a few), this line is increasingly blurred. We see this trend in established and nascent democracies, in governments on the left and right and in wealthy and poor countries.

Politicians in a democratic system can and do pursue autocratic goals. The interesting twist is that aspiring (and established) autocrats do not seek to destroy democracy completely because it is precisely the tools of democracy that allow them to attain power. At the same time, they consciously seek to dismantle essential pillars of democracy and its institutions, such as the rule of law and checks and balances in government, once they are in power.

After attaining power through free and democratic elections, they corrupt the legal system, the courts and the very election process to enable them to remain in power indefinitely, with no chance of a serious contender.

How do authoritarian candidates use to their advantage civil society movements and groups that espouse hate and violence?

Leaders with autocratic goals do not act alone; they need supporters, especially civil society groups who work to gain followers. This is important in a democratic context, where dynamic civic engagement is the norm. It helps autocrats maintain a façade of democracy.

Civil society groups are critically important for amplifying and spreading a leader’s messages on the ground, as those messages become more powerful when people share them with conviction with friends, family and people they work, pray or play with. Autocrats effectively mobilize these groups to attack anyone a leader categorizes as the “enemy.”

These groups include a range of followers, including hate groups and trolls, who use a variety of strategies to confront enemies identified by a leader, including psychological and physical threats to these individuals and their families. Those tactics work to coerce people to be less vocal in their criticism. Because autocrats signal hate groups and trolls to work on their behalf, these groups feel powerful and personally connected to the leader.

What role do these tactics play in Project 2025, the detailed plan for conservative policies prepared by the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president?

We are used to thinking of autocrats as individuals—(mostly) men acting alone—because those are the images we see. But behind these individuals are vast networks of influential people. Just as they need civil society groups to advance their goals, autocratic politicians also rely on a wide range of interconnected powerful networks of experts, political strategists, legal specialists and authors who help spread their message and construct a positive image to legitimize the autocrats. This group, however, mostly works behind the scenes.

These are networks of like-minded individuals who see personal benefit in establishing an autocratic government. The Conservative Promise (commonly known as Project 2025), for example, is a blueprint for consolidating power and doing away with most institutions we associate with U.S. democracy.

The 34 organizations and hundreds of contributors organized by The Heritage Foundation to author this 922-page document include experts across different fields. The advisory board includes The American Principles Project, Center for Immigration Studies, Claremont Institute, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, James Madison Institute, Liberty University and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, among others—revealing the powerful networks behind the individual we see on camera.

What role do these tactics play in the ongoing U.S. immigration policy debate?

The purported threat of immigrants and immigration is perhaps one of the best examples of autocrats’ strategy of creating an “us” versus “them” dynamic that keeps followers fearful and receptive to hostile policies, a tactic that also precludes discussion of sensible policy choices.

This is part of an autocratic “toolbox” of tactics that reinforce each other: The autocrat spews hateful rhetoric at the same time that he makes the public believe that he’s the only one who can save them from that threat, which goes to the root of autocratic power—the concentration of power in one individual who will hold absolute power to corrupt institutions, undermine the rule of law, etc. This is quite different from other inhumane treatment of immigrants.

I do think that there’s a lot in common across recent administrations and historically, too. I’m reading a book about the unspeakable violence that Chinese immigrants experienced in the years surrounding the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. There was definitely an “us” versus “them” rhetoric that incited violence against these immigrants, not too different from the rhetoric about Springfield, Ohio, in the past few weeks.

Given the long history of hostility toward certain immigrant groups in the United States, these narratives make sense to an already fearful public and provide justification for the inhumane treatment of immigrants, as we have witnessed in the case of immigrant detention and child separation practices of current and previous administrations.

Researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Twente, led by Georgios Katsoukis, have discovered how the chemical environment around copper electrodes can dramatically influence the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into formate. This discovery can help improve the selectivity in CO₂ reduction reactions, offering new insights into how to control these processes more effectively.

One of the ways to create a more sustainable and circular economy is to capture CO₂ emissions and transform them into useful resources. But to do so, these CO₂ reduction technologies need to be optimized and far more efficient.

In this study, published in ACS Catalysis, the research team investigated how CO₂ reacts at the surface of copper electrodes in an aqueous environment. By altering the pH near the electrode, the team discovered that the local chemical environment is crucial in determining how quickly and efficiently CO₂ can be converted into formate, a useful chemical with many industrial applications.

Selectivity in CO₂ reduction reactions has been a longstanding challenge, as multiple products can form depending on the reaction conditions. This finding challenges the traditional focus on catalyst material alone and emphasizes the importance of optimizing the surrounding chemical conditions.

This research highlights the importance of controlling the chemical environment in CO₂ reduction processes to improve selectivity and efficiency. By fine-tuning the condition around the copper electrode, it may be possible to enhance the selectivity toward desired products such as formate.

At the same time, it could also extend the life of the electrode. These advancements could play a crucial role in developing more efficient carbon dioxide conversion systems.

The findings from this study provide a blueprint for future research and the development of CO₂ reduction technologies. By focusing on the optimization of the chemical environment, in addition to the catalyst, scientists can work towards creating more selective and efficient systems.

This approach brings us closer to practical solutions for transforming CO₂ emissions into useful resources, fostering a more sustainable and circular economy.

A novel study from the Center for Britain and Europe (CBE) highlights a significant shift in the political landscape of Europe, revealing that populist radical right (PRR) politics is moving from the fringes to the heart of mainstream political discourse.

This collaborative research, co-authored by Professor Daniele Albertazzi and visiting postgraduate researcher Mirko Crulli, has been published in the open-access West European Politics journal.

Professor Albertazzi, Co-Director of CBE, asserts that the findings challenge the prevailing belief that PRR parties can be overlooked as peripheral entities in European politics. “The radical right is no longer the outsider; it’s shaping the core of political debate and is already increasingly taking part in government coalitions across the continent,” he stated.

The study emphasizes that while nativist and authoritarian values may not have become mainstream yet, the rise of populism has undeniably altered our understanding of what mainstream politics entails. “Populism has become a defining feature of contemporary politics, influencing party strategies and ideologies across Europe,” Professor Albertazzi explained.

This research not only underscores the evolving nature of political norms in Europe but also showcases the CBE’s commitment to fostering opportunities for junior scholars. Mirko Crulli’s contribution and collaboration as a visiting postgraduate researcher in 2022 exemplifies the CBE’s role in supporting emerging voices in political research.

As PRR ideologies continue to integrate into mainstream parties, the implications for democracy in Europe are profound. The study calls for a reassessment of how political entities engage with the public and each other in this rapidly changing environment.

In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet’s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections—explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun—with Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the sun spits out during turbulent storms.

But what might happen to humans beyond the safety of Earth’s protection? This question is essential as NASA plans to send humans to the moon and on to Mars. During the May storm, the small spacecraft BioSentinel was collecting data to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.

“We wanted to take advantage of the unique stage of the solar cycle we’re in—the solar maximum, when the sun is at its most active—so that we can continue to monitor the space radiation environment,” said Sergio Santa Maria, principal investigator for BioSentinel’s spaceflight mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

“These data are relevant not just to the heliophysics community but also to understand the radiation environment for future crewed missions into deep space.”

BioSentinel—a small satellite about the size of a cereal box—is currently more than 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting the sun, where it weathered May’s coronal mass ejection without protection from a planetary magnetic field.

Preliminary analysis of the data collected indicates that even though this was an extreme geomagnetic storm, that is, a storm that disturbs Earth’s magnetic field, it was considered just a moderate solar radiation storm, meaning it did not produce a great increase in hazardous solar particles. Therefore, such a storm did not pose any major issue to terrestrial lifeforms, even if they were unprotected as BioSentinel was.

These measurements provide useful information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects—and potential impacts on life beyond Earth—are most intense.

The original mission of BioSentinel was to study samples of yeast in deep space. Though these yeast samples are no longer alive, BioSentinel has adapted and continues to be a novel platform for studying the potential impacts of deep space conditions on life beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The spacecraft’s biosensor instrument collects data about the radiation in deep space. Over a year and a half after its launch in Nov. 2022, BioSentinel retreats farther away from Earth, providing data of increasing value to scientists.

“Even though the biological part of the BioSentinel mission was completed a few months after launch, we believe that there is significant scientific value in continuing with the mission,” said Santa Maria.

“The fact that the CubeSat continues to operate and that we can communicate with it, highlights the potential use of the spacecraft and many of its subsystems and components for future long-term missions beyond low Earth orbit.”

When we see auroras in the sky, they can serve as a stunning reminder of all the forces we cannot see that govern our cosmic neighborhood. As NASA and its partners seek to understand more about space environments, platforms like BioSentinel are essential to learn more about the risks of surviving beyond Earth’s sphere of protection.

A newly published study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst estimates that it can cost small and mid-sized food producers tens of thousands of dollars to meet new food safety standards that prescribe proactive measures to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply. The research is the first to assign an estimated dollar amount to compliance.

The Preventive Controls for Human Food Rule (PCHF), the first phases of which took effect starting in 2016, lays out the steps that large producers must take to comply with requirements related to everything from sanitation and food-allergen controls to recordkeeping and hazard identification. Smaller producers are exempt from some requirements but not others.

This ambiguity has left producers that are too small to have a dedicated compliance unit with little information about costs associated with PCHF, and in some cases, even about the requirements themselves.

Working with 81 small and mid-sized food producers in the Northeast, the research team modified existing food safety training materials to include supplemental information about planning, implementation and management costs associated with adopting the new standards.

The study found that initial costs averaged $21,932 per business, followed by ongoing costs of nearly $8,000 per year, and that even modest efforts to fill the content gap can reduce cost barriers for businesses seeking to follow the new rules. The paper is published in PLOS ONE.

“Small food manufacturers are passionate about what they do and want to have the safest products possible, but the complexity of these new standards has bogged some of them down,” says Jill Ann Fitzsimmons, research assistant professor in the Department of Resource Economics at UMass Amherst, who co-authored the study.

Food safety is not a one-size-fits-all decision for businesses, adds co-author Amanda Kinchla, extension professor at UMass Amherst. “My hope is that this research motivates processors to take the thoughtful investment of time and effort in identifying the true risks associated with their food and implement a management plan to address them.”

In response to the significant growth in local and regional food systems, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently decided to invest in Food Business Centers across the country to support small food businesses. The centers will use the latest research to help small food businesses be successful.

Fitzsimmons and Kinchla say their work illustrates that the centers can play a key role in helping small businesses understand food safety costs, particularly considering that businesses seeking to grow may wish to comply with standards imposed by supermarkets and other outlets for their products, even if they are exempt from parts of PCHF.

“If you want to scale up and sell to Whole Foods or a regional supermarket chain, they have their own sets of standards and you’re probably going to have to implement these same rules—not for the federal government, but to get your products on retailers’ shelves,” Fitzsimmons adds.

“Demystifying the costs associated with the rule empowers producers to embrace food safety as part of their business culture,” says Kate Minifie, food entrepreneurship program manager with the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center, which participated in the study. The nonprofit food business incubator works with 50–60 clients annually to bring their products to market, ranging from organic produce to hot fudge.

Training materials from the study are now posted online to help businesses navigate the new standards.

Within teams, organizations, markets and online communities, ideas from a larger group can help to solve complex problems. Large language models (LLMs) are emerging as powerful tools to unlock even greater potential. Picture an online forum where thousands of voices contribute to a solution, and an LLM synthesizes these diverse insights into a cohesive, actionable plan.

A new paper highlights how LLMs can reshape collective intelligence, which is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making; offering enhanced capabilities and potential risks. This paper, co-authored by researchers at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and several other institutions, articulates the impact of LLMs on group decision making and problem-solving.

Published in Nature Human Behavior, the research highlights the dual nature of LLMs as tools and products of collective intelligence, emphasizing their role in information aggregation and communication.

“LLMs provide unique opportunities for enhancing group collaboration and decision making, but their use requires careful consideration to maintain diversity and avoid potential pitfalls,” said Anita Williams Woolley, a co-author on the paper and professor of organizational behavior at the Tepper School.

Woolley and her co-authors considered how LLMs process and create text, particularly their impact on collective intelligence. For example, LLMs can make it easier for people from different backgrounds and languages to communicate, which means groups can collaborate more effectively. This technology helps share ideas and information smoothly, leading to more inclusive and productive online interactions.

While LLMs offer many benefits, they also present challenges, such as ensuring that all voices are heard equally.

“Because LLMs learn from available online information, they can sometimes overlook minority perspectives or emphasize the most common opinions, which can create a false sense of agreement,” said Jason Burton, an assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School.

Another issue is that LLMs can spread incorrect information if not properly managed because they learn from the vast and varied content available online, which often includes false or misleading data.

Without careful oversight and regular updates to ensure data accuracy, LLMs can perpetuate and even amplify misinformation, making it crucial to manage these tools responsibly to avoid misleading outcomes in collective decision-making processes.

The article emphasizes the importance of further exploring the ethical and practical implications of LLMs, especially in policymaking and public discussions. The researchers advocate for the development of guidelines for using LLMs responsibly, supporting group intelligence while maintaining individual diversity and expression.