Sustaining attention over long periods affects everything from routine tasks to high-stakes decisions. Whether it is an umpire making a split-second call or a driver glancing at a navigation system, even small lapses in focus can have meaningful consequences. New research from Texas A&M University is shedding light on how people allocate their attention and why it fluctuates in ways that can lead to both errors and improved performance.

Since the early 1970s, when the Nixon administration launched the "war on drugs," Gallup has been asking Americans how they feel about problems surrounding illicit drugs. But the war has not gone well and Gallup's surveys reflect the public's opinion on a drug crisis that has worsened over time.

Would you trust a large language model to help plan your financial future? Many Americans already do. In a 2025 survey, more than half said they'd asked AI for financial advice. By comparison, about 40% have worked with a human financial adviser, suggesting that when generative AI talks money, people listen.

Americans are dissatisfied with the state of leadership in the United States across several sectors—business, education, government and health care—a Harris poll showed in 2025. The survey raised a foundational question about developing the next generation of leaders: How can today's young people be encouraged to become CEOs, principals, directors and even presidents?

When I tell people that I am a proud Boarisch-Schwob—Bavarian-Swabian—Indigenous person, I am often met with disbelief. I am white. I am European. I come from Bavaria, one of Europe's wealthiest regions. For some people, those facts settle the question before I have explained anything else.

When the Marshall Fire tore through suburban Colorado in late 2021, residents had only hours to decide where to go. Some fled to nearby towns. Others stayed farther away for weeks or months. Now, a recent study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications suggests those decisions were shaped not only by distance or danger but also by something more human: the pull of familiar communities and social ties.

One of the most intractable, contentious and niche issues in U.S. politics has come back into the spotlight. This week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to make daylight saving time permanent in the United States.

Hotels have long encouraged guests to reuse towels, limit linen changes and conserve energy. Yet tourism remains a significant source of carbon emissions, and voluntary sustainability programs often struggle to achieve lasting behavior change. New research suggests a different approach may be more effective: connecting the environmental impact of a stay directly to what travelers pay.

Amrit Kaur Purba and colleagues argue that social media restrictions operate within a wider system of adolescents, families, schools, governments and commercial actors—and therefore should be treated as complex systems interventions rather than isolated behavioral policies.

Schools in the U.S. are often segregated by income as well as race, a reality frequently attributed to residential segregation. Students assigned to K-12 schools based on where they live will, by extension, typically experience that same degree of segregation in their classrooms.

Studies published in prestigious academic journals receive more attention from scholars and media outlets, shaping public discourse and potentially accelerating academic careers. While the path to publication is often murky, a new analysis of more than 110,000 papers submitted to Science and Science Advances—two leading journals published by the world's largest general science association—reveals that Western scientists, larger teams, top-ranked universities and select regions have slight advantages in acceptance rates.

For decades, researchers have debated the subsistence strategies of precolonial societies in the Brazilian Cerrado (tropical savanna): Were they hunter-gatherers or intensive maize farmers, and in either case, how did they organize themselves and interact with the land they inhabited?

Scientists from prestigious universities and large research groups are significantly more likely to have their research published in general-interest, top-tier scientific journals. Meanwhile, authors based in China and those studying politics, economics, gender or other social issues face a significant disadvantage.

China has become one of Africa's largest development financiers. Since 2000, Chinese and other state-backed institutions have committed more than US$180 billion in loans to African countries. The money has been used to finance roads, railways, power stations, ports, water infrastructure and industrial projects. Agriculture has also become part of this expanding partnership. Food systems specialist Adrino Mazenda analyzed Chinese loans to African countries between 2000 and 2024 to find out about China's agricultural spending.

In science, researchers often focus their entire careers on the pursuit of one primary field.

On a summer day in Nashville, one person escapes the heat in an air-conditioned office while another delivers packages in a metal truck that absorbs heat or labors outdoors for hours under the sun.

A new study finds that companies are increasingly disclosing climate data—yet coverage of value chains and social factors remains patchy. Using an AI-powered method, a team from LMU Munich and the University of Cologne analyzed 2.9 million sustainability indicators from 10 years of annual reports. They found that companies are increasingly disclosing information about their carbon performance. But when it comes to environmental impacts along the value chain and social indicators, the picture is more mixed.

Archaeological work conducted at the Coves del Fem (Ulldemolins, Priorat)—located within the Serra de Montsant Natural Park—between May 30 and June 28, 2026, has yielded important new evidence for understanding the prehistory of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. The campaign was conducted by a team of researchers from the Department of Prehistory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC-IMF).

Every day, billions of people travel from their homes to work, schools, health care facilities, restaurants, public venues and other destinations. The complex patterns that shape how people move between these different locations are broadly referred to as "human mobility."

It's the final week of the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup. Over the last month, there have been plenty of highs and lows both on and off the pitch, from the overnight popularity of Cape Verde's goalkeeper Vozinha and the Norwegian row to the questionable use of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) and inconsistent enforcement of fouls by referees, leading concerns about match fixing.