Tree-planting projects are sprouting up worldwide in an effort to sequester carbon. Acres of saplings are quick to plant but don’t necessarily have staying power: many die or are cut down before the trees grow to maturity. A recent study … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
Category Archives: Political Science
Model captures how polarization emerges on social media during political campaigns
In recent years, social media platforms have become hotbeds of political discourse—as well as rancorous division. In a recent paper in Physical Review X, researchers unveil a new mathematical model that demonstrates how a combination of campaign information and peer … Continue reading
Categories: Applied Physical Sciences | Journal Club | Political Science
Tagged agent-based modeling, echo chamber, polarization, social media, twitter
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Future choices may be guided by our memories of past ones
When it comes to making choices, past decisions may play a surprisingly large role. The traditional view of decision-making is that our choices are guided by what we remember about the outcomes of previous choices we’ve made. But in recent … Continue reading
Categories: Economic sciences | Journal Club | Neuroscience | Political Science | Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Tagged choice, decision-making, fMRI, hippocampus, learning
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Trends in conservation funding track popular narratives about the illegal wildlife trade
Trends in conservation funding are changing, according to a recent study in World Development. “We see a shift toward funding conservation work that’s increasingly about combatting wildlife trafficking,” says coauthor Jared Margulies, a human-environment geographer at the University of Alabama … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Journal Club | Political Science | Social Sciences
Tagged conservation, COVID-19, illegal wildlife trade, novel coronavirus, wildlife
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Judging others based on the rewards they receive correlates with political leanings
Which employee deserves the highest salary? Should a professor receive tenure? Did my spouse do their fair share of the household chores? These types of questions all require people to pass judgment on the effort expended by others. According to … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Neuroscience | Political Science | Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Tagged decision-making, politics, rewards
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When to launch a cyber attack
The evolution of malicious software (“malware”) has proceeded so rapidly since the invention of the first computer virus three decades ago that the question is not whether but when a computer system will face a cyber attack. Such attacks were … Continue reading
Categories: Computer sciences | Political Science
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