If you open a banking app, play a mobile game or scroll through a news feed every day while riding the bus, your commuting routine is probably bolstering your smartphone habit, according to new research that shows phone tendencies are stronger in locations chosen automatically.

University Hospitals CEO, Cliff Megerian, MD, FACS, was honored to receive the Sam Miller Goodness Award by the Values-in-Action Foundation on Dec. 8, joining an inspiring lineup of honorees who shine their light throughout Northeast Ohio and contribute to making the community a better place to live. Each year, the Values-in-Action Foundation honors individuals who represent goodness, caring and respect beyond the norm.

Our times are dominated by crises as well as social polarization and fragmentation. When it comes to strengthening cohesion, leaders play a special role: this is the fundamental thinking behind the interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences approved today by the DFG. The “Goethe Leadership Centre”, whose foundations lie in psychology and economics, will conduct research on this topic for an initial four years. In addition, the DFG announced that funding for the research unit QUAST, which focuses on predicting the properties of quantum materials, has been extended.

The Kinsey Institute announced two competitive funding opportunities for proposals to conduct research in the Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections at Indiana University Bloomington. The awards will support in-person research leveraging the Kinsey Institute's world-renowned archives, with applicants across a wide range of disciplines encouraged to apply by February 13, 2026.  

Lithium is a strategically very important mineral in the present decade. Latin American countries, with their abundant resources, have taken divergent paths in terms of governance strategies. In a recent study, a researcher from Jeonbuk National University has proposed a two-stage decision-making framework to explain this trend, providing a useful starting point for examining how states navigate the interplay between external pressures and domestic structural constraints in governing lithium industries.