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Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 1-May-2026 19:15 ET (1-May-2026 23:15 GMT/UTC)

WVU researchers take youth substance use prevention into rural communities

West Virginia University
Grant and Award Announcement

West Virginia University public health researchers are working collaboratively with local partners, like county health departments, to stop drug use in youth before it starts, driving federal grant money to some of the state’s poorest counties and developing approaches tailored to individual communities.

Funder: National Institute on Drug Abuse

Digital divide narrows but gaps remain for Australians as GenAI use surges

RMIT University
Reports and Proceedings

The Australian Digital Inclusion Index has found almost half of Australians recently used generative AI tools, raising new opportunities and challenges for digital inclusion.

Funder: Australian Research Council, Telstra

Seeing persuasion in the brain

PNAS Nexus
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An analysis of brain scans from 572 people reveals that activity in brain regions linked to reward and social processing can predict how effective messages will be.

Journal: PNAS Nexus

A sequence of human rights violations precedes mass atrocities, new research shows

Binghamton University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Based on human rights data from four decades, new research from political scientists at Binghamton University, State University of New York reveals that human rights violations escalate in predictable patterns, which can potentially culminate in atrocities.

Journal: Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis Research and Practice

Can a politician’s tweeting strategy betray their ambitions?

Stevens Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using tools from network science, researchers built a statistical model that observed how senators and congresspeople interacted with one another on X, formerly known as Twitter, which deduced their positions and potential ambitions.

Journal: Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics

2.75-million-year-old stone tools may mark a turning point in human evolution

George Washington University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Imagine early humans meticulously crafting stone tools for nearly 300,000 years, all while contending with recurring wildfires, droughts, and dramatic environmental shifts. A recent study, published in Nature Communications, brought to light remarkable evidence of enduring technological tradition from Kenya’s Turkana Basin.

Journal: Nature Communications

Childhood blindness: Leopoldina discussion paper recommends realignment of prevention and medical treatment in development cooperation

Leopoldina
Reports and Proceedings

International health policy and German development cooperation focus primarily on preventive measures. This is evident, for example, in diseases such as childhood blindness, which can be prevented through vaccinations or vitamin A supplements. However, eye diseases such as cataracts and glaucoma cannot be prevented. Only early diagnosis and surgery can protect affected children from going blind. In a discussion paper published today by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the authors therefore recommend that German development cooperation should focus on both strengthening treatment and maintaining a strong emphasis on prevention; an approach they refer to as “Global Clinical Care”. The paper “Focus on childhood blindness – Rethinking prevention and treatment” illustrates these proposals with practical examples from southern Africa.