Transition to electric vehicles in Brazil and Mexico has been driven by domestic politics and global pressures, a new study says.

The use of digital tools and better coordination between different organisations can help the UK significantly optimise its first line of defence against ecological degradation, new research shows.

The U.S. tax code treats mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) very differently. As a result, investors often pay significantly more taxes on mutual funds than on ETFs. A new Brookings Institution report argues that this disparity is unfair, and examines strategies to level the playing field.

From a young age most people are told to be rational: weigh costs and benefits, pick the option that pays off best. But a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Marta C. Couto, Fernando P. Santos (Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems group at the University of Amsterdam), and Christian Hilbe at the Interdisciplinary Transformation University in Linz suggests that in social situations, people who are a bit less precise – a bit more ‘noisy’ – can sometimes come out ahead.

Bans on teenagers’ social media use are gathering pace worldwide. Their proponents claim that social media bans will improve young people’s mental health, but what evidence supports these claims? In their new Frontiers in Developmental Psychology article, Dr Monika Neff Lind and her co-authors argue that there is no solid scientific evidence behind these bans, and reason to believe they could backfire. In this guest editorial, Neff Lind explains why she and her colleagues doubt that social media bans will work, and how bans should be evaluated to determine whether they have any positive effects.

Officials in Oakland sharply increased the number of homeless encampments they cleared in the months after the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision made it easier for municipalities nationwide to do so, new research from UC Berkeley shows. Many sites have been closed repeatedly, the analysis found — one was swept 18 times in a four-year period. More recently, efforts to close camps have shifted into census tracts that have higher poverty rates and larger shares of Hispanic residents.