“Although past evidence showing causal links between modelling and getting rewarded for violence had an immediate impact on aggressive behavior in 4-year-old children, few studies have investigated long-term risks with antisocial behavior. We studied such risks in mid-adolescence, explained Pagani, who is also a researcher at the Centre de recherche Azrieli du CHU Sainte-Justine. It was ideal to study this question with typically developing middle-class children because, as a population, they have the lowest chances of engaging in aggression and behavior harmful to others.”

Close to 2,000 children

In all, Pagani and her team looked at 963 girls and 982 boys born between the springs of 1997 and 1998 who were enrolled in the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. Parents reported the frequency of their child’s exposure to violent television content at ages 3.5 and 4.5 years old. Boys and girls then self-reported on several aspects of antisocial behavior at age 15.

The study defines screen violence as anything “characterized by physical aggression, verbal aggression, and relational aggression […] depicting situations that intentionally attempt or cause harm to others.” Children, the study says “are attracted to fast-paced, stimulating violent content, which often features appealing characters like superheroes who commit and are rewarded for aggressive acts, thus increasing the likelihood of exposure.”

The researchers then conducted analyses to examine whether exposure to violent television content at ages 3.5 and 4.5 years predicted later antisocial behavior eleven years later.

The researcher added, “We statistically took into account alternative child and family factors that could have explained our results, to be as close as possible to the truth in the relationships we were looking at.”

Boys stand out

At age 15, for boys only, preschool violent televiewing predicted increases in antisocial behavior. Being exposed to violent content in early childhood predicted later aggressive behaviors such as hitting or beating another person, with the intention of obtaining something, stealing, with or without any apparent reason.

Risks also included threats, insults, and gang fight involvement. The use of weapons is also among the behavioral outcomes predicted by exposure to childhood television violence in this study. No effects were found for girls, which was not surprising given that boys are generally more exposed to such content.

Pagani concluded, “Our study provides compelling evidence that early childhood exposure to media violence can have serious, long-lasting consequences, particularly for boys. This underscore the urgent need for public health initiatives that targets campaigns to inform parents and communities about the long-term risks and empower them to make informed choices about young children’s screen content exposure.”

The entire team of students from Université de Montréal and researchers from the United States and Italy established that, “Parents and communities can play a crucial role in limiting future problems by carefully avoiding young children’s exposure to violent media content.”

Psoriasis is a hereditary, chronic skin condition that can also result in inflammation of the joints. In Sweden, almost 300,000 people live with some form of the condition. Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), especially Crohn’s disease, are more common in patients with psoriasis than in the rest of the population.

“Previous research has also shown that people with psoriasis have more gastrointestinal problems than the general population. However we didn’t know much about why this is the case. With our study, we can now show that people with psoriasis often have invisible inflammation in their small intestines, with an increased risk of what’s called leaky gut,” says Maria Lampinen, researcher at Uppsala University.

Pro-inflammatory activity in the gut

The study involved 18 patients with psoriasis and 15 healthy controls as subjects. None of the participants had been diagnosed with gastrointestinal diseases. Samples were taken from both their small and large bowel. The researchers then studied different types of immune cells in the mucous membrane.

“It turned out that psoriasis sufferers had higher numbers of certain types of immune cells in their small intestine, and the cells showed signs of pro-inflammatory activity. Interestingly, we found the same type of immune cells in skin flare-ups from psoriasis patients, suggesting that the inflammation of the skin may have an impact on the gut, or vice versa.

Increased propensity for leaky gut

Normally, the intestinal mucosa act as a protective barrier that also allows nutrients and water to pass through it. In some autoimmune diseases, the intestinal barrier may function poorly. This is called having a leaky gut, and leads to bacteria and harmful substances leaking through the intestinal barrier and causing inflammation. This can also cause more widespread inflammation when these substances are spread via the bloodstream.

Half of the psoriasis patients in the study had increased intestinal barrier permeability or leaky gut. These same patients also reported more gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain and bloating than patients with a normal intestinal barrier. They also had elevated levels of inflammatory substances in their intestines.

“Given that the psoriasis patients in our study had relatively mild skin disease and showed no visible intestinal inflammation in a gastroscopy, they had surprisingly clear changes in their small intestine compared to healthy controls. These changes could explain why psoriasis sufferers often have gastrointestinal problems, and an increased risk of developing Crohn’s disease.

Important research for these patients

The Psoriasisförbundet (the Swedish Psoriasis Association) member magazine published an article about this study. Following its publication, Maria Lampinen received many e-mails from people who recognised this phenomenon.

“They wanted to know more about the link between the gut and the skin because they recognised that symptoms from their gut and skin were often linked. So it feels like this research is needed and is important for the patients themselves. A greater understanding of gastrointestinal problems in psoriasis patients can help the healthcare system to pay more attention to the link between the gut and the skin in patients with psoriasis, and in the long term it could also lead to better treatment of these problems.

The study was funded by the Psoriasis Association’s managed funds and Hudfonden (the Skin Foundation), among others.

Trust in scientists is at a moderately high level worldwide, according to a new study. This is the conclusion of an international team of 241 researchers led by Viktoria Cologna of ETH Zurich and Niels G. Mede of the University of Zurich (UZH). “Our results show that most people in most countries have a relatively high level of trust in scientists,” says principal investigator Viktoria Cologna, “and want them to play an active role in society and politics.” The study found no evidence for the oft-repeated claim of a crisis of trust in science.

The study is the result of the TISP Many Labs study, a collaborative effort that allowed the authors to survey 71,922 people in 68 countries, including many under-researched countries in the Global South. For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, the study provides global, representative survey data on the populations and regions of the world in which researchers are perceived to be most trustworthy, the extent to which they should engage with the public, and whether science is prioritizing important research issues.

No crisis of trust in science

Across 68 countries, the study finds that the majority of the public has a relatively high level of trust in scientists (mean trust level = 3.62, on a scale of 1 = very low trust to 5 = very high trust). The majority of respondents also perceive scientists as qualified (78%), honest (57%) and concerned about people’s well-being (56%).

However, the results also reveal some areas of concern. Globally, less than half of respondents (42%) believe that scientists pay attention to the views of others. “Our results also show that many people in many countries feel that the priorities of science are not always well aligned with their own priorities,” says co-author Niels G. Mede. “We recommend that scientists take these results seriously and find ways to be more receptive to feedback and open to dialogue with the public.”

Polarization of population groups and differences between countries

The findings confirm the results of previous studies that show significant differences between countries and population groups. In particular, people with right-wing political views in Western countries tend to have less trust in scientists than those with left-wing views. This suggests that attitudes toward science tend to polarize along political lines. In most countries, however, political orientation and trust in scientists were not related.

Call for active engagement of scientists

A majority of respondents want science to play an active role in society and policy-making. Globally, 83% of respondents believe that scientists should communicate with the public about science, providing an impetus for increased science communication efforts. Only a minority (23%) believe that scientists should not actively advocate for specific policies. 52% believe that scientists should be more involved in the policy-making process.

Participants gave high priority to research to improve public health, solve energy problems, and reduce poverty. On the other hand, research to develop defense and military technology was given a lower priority. In fact, participants explicitly believe that science is prioritizing the development of defense and military technology more than they would like, highlighting a potential misalignment between public and scientific priorities.

Their study highlights how the Tiger Grouper-Giant Grouper hybrid (TGGG), also known as the Sabah grouper, disrupts local marine ecosystems by exploiting unique ecological niches and potentially becoming a dominant predator. This research, the first to use advanced DNA metabarcoding to analyse the diet of this hybrid species, underscores the urgent need for public education and conservation measures to mitigate unintended ecological impacts. The findings have been published in the journal Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.

Hybrid Groupers: A Popular Market Species with Hidden Ecological Threats

The TGGG is a hybrid species bred through aquaculture by crossing the Tiger Grouper (Epinephelus fuscoguttatus) with the Giant Grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus). Valued for its large size and rapid growth, it is a common sight in Hong Kong’s fish markets. Its affordability and impressive size have also made it a popular choice for local mercy release practices, where animals are released into the wild as an act of spiritual merit. However, this seemingly benevolent act has significant ecological consequences.

To explore the potential ecological effects of releasing hybrid groupers into Hong Kong’s coastal waters, our research team utilised DNA metabarcoding to analyse the diet of TGGG. Becoming the first to apply this method to study the dietary habits of this hybrid species, the team extracted and sequenced DNA from the hybrid’s stomach contents, allowing them to identify its prey, even when the prey was fully digested or fragmented. This innovative approach provides a detailed and accurate picture of the hybrid’s dietary habits and its interactions with local marine ecosystems.

Innovative DNA Analysis Highlights the Threat

The study found that the TGGG is a formidable predator with a distinctive diet, feeding on various prey species not typically consumed by native species — including fish, crustaceans, and cephalopods. By exploiting broader ecological niches and gaps in the ecosystem where resources or habitats are underused, the TGGG disrupts local food webs and is highly likely to thrive and establish itself as a dominant predator.

‘Our findings show that the TGGG is not just another introduced species, it has the potential to significantly disrupt trophic dynamics and reshape coastal ecosystems,’ said Professor Celia SCHUNTER of HKU SBS and SWIMS, the study’s lead investigator.

The researchers warn that the rapid growth, large size, and absence of natural predators in Hong Kong’s waters make it an exceptionally competitive species. These traits, combined with the availability of vacant ecological niches, pose a serious threat to the balance of marine biodiversity in Hong Kong’s coastal ecosystems.

The study also draws attention to the role of mercy release practices in introducing non-native species like the TGGG into local waters. Dr Arthur CHUNG, the postdoctoral fellow of HKU SBS and SWIMS and co-author of the study, emphasised the importance of addressing these risks, ‘This study underscores the need for careful monitoring and management to mitigate the unintended impacts of human activities on biodiversity.’

The researchers stressed that public education and stricter conservation measures are essential to minimising the ecological damage caused by mercy release and other human activities. These efforts are critical for preserving the health of Hong Kong’s marine ecosystems.

A century ago, Edwin Hubble first established that this so-called “spiral nebula” was actually very far outside our own Milky Way galaxy — at a distance of approximately 2.5 million light-years or roughly 25 Milky Way diameters. Prior to that, astronomers had long thought that the Milky way encompassed the entire universe. Overnight, Hubble’s discovery turned cosmology upside down by unveiling an infinitely grander universe.

Now, a century later, the space telescope named for Hubble has accomplished the most comprehensive survey of this enticing empire of stars. The Hubble telescope is yielding new clues to the evolutionary history of Andromeda, and it looks markedly different from the Milky Way’s history.

Without Andromeda as a proxy for spiral galaxies in the universe at large, astronomers would know much less about the structure and evolution of our own Milky Way. That’s because we are embedded inside the Milky Way. This is like trying to understand the layout of New York City by standing in the middle of Central Park.

“With Hubble we can get into enormous detail about what’s happening on a holistic scale across the entire disk of the galaxy. You can’t do that with any other large galaxy,” said principal investigator Ben Williams of the University of Washington. Hubble’s sharp imaging capabilities can resolve more than 200 million stars in the Andromeda galaxy, detecting only stars brighter than our Sun. They look like grains of sand across the beach. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Andromeda’s total population is estimated to be 1 trillion stars, with many less massive stars falling below Hubble’s sensitivity limit.

Photographing Andromeda was a herculean task because the galaxy is a much bigger target on the sky than the galaxies Hubble routinely observes, which are often billions of light-years away. The full mosaic was carried out under two Hubble programs. In total, it required over 1,000 Hubble orbits, spanning more than a decade.

This panorama started with the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) program about a decade ago. Images were obtained at near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 aboard Hubble to photograph the northern half of Andromeda.

This program was followed up by the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Southern Treasury (PHAST), recently published in The Astrophysical Journal and led by Zhuo Chen at the University of Washington, which added images of approximately 100 million stars in the southern half of Andromeda. This region is structurally unique and more sensitive to the galaxy’s merger history than the northern disk mapped by the PHAT survey.

The combined programs collectively cover the entire disk of Andromeda, which is seen almost edge-on — tilted by 77 degrees relative to Earth’s view. The galaxy is so large that the mosaic is assembled from approximately 600 separate fields of view. The mosaic image is made up of at least 2.5 billion pixels.

The complementary Hubble survey programs provide information about the age, heavy-element abundance, and stellar masses inside Andromeda. This will allow astronomers to distinguish between competing scenarios where Andromeda merged with one or more galaxies. Hubble’s detailed measurements constrain models of Andromeda’s merger history and disk evolution.

A Galactic ‘Train Wreck’

Though the Milky Way and Andromeda formed presumably around the same time many billions of years ago, observational evidence shows that they have very different evolutionary histories, despite growing up in the same cosmological neighborhood. Andromeda seems to be more highly populated with younger stars and unusual features like coherent streams of stars, say researchers. This implies it has a more active recent star-formation and interaction history than the Milky Way.

“Andromeda’s a train wreck. It looks like it has been through some kind of event that caused it to form a lot of stars and then just shut down,” said Daniel Weisz at the University of California, Berkeley. “This was probably due to a collision with another galaxy in the neighborhood.”

A possible culprit is the compact satellite galaxy Messier 32, which resembles the stripped-down core of a once-spiral galaxy that may have interacted with Andromeda in the past. Computer simulations suggest that when a close encounter with another galaxy uses up all the available interstellar gas, star formation subsides.

“Andromeda looks like a transitional type of galaxy that’s between a star-forming spiral and a sort of elliptical galaxy dominated by aging red stars,” said Weisz. “We can tell it’s got this big central bulge of older stars and a star-forming disk that’s not as active as you might expect given the galaxy’s mass.”

“This detailed look at the resolved stars will help us to piece together the galaxy’s past merger and interaction history,” added Williams.

Hubble’s new findings will support future observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Essentially a wide-angle version of Hubble (with the same sized mirror), Roman will capture the equivalent of at least 100 high-resolution Hubble images in a single exposure. These observations will complement and extend Hubble’s huge dataset.

One recent proposal seeks to infuse the atmosphere with hydrogen peroxide, insisting that it would both oxidize methane (CH₄), an extremely potent greenhouse gas while improving air quality.

Too good to be true?

University of Utah atmospheric scientists Alfred Mayhew and Jessica Haskins were skeptical, so they set out to test the claims behind this proposal. Their results, published on Jan. 3, confirm their doubts and offer a reality check to agencies considering such proposals as a way to stave off climate change.

“Our work showed that the efficiency of the proposed technology was quite low, meaning widespread adoption of the technology would be required to make any meaningful impact on atmospheric CH₄,” said Mayhew, a postdoctoral researcher with the university’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. “Then, our results indicate that if this technology is adopted at scale, then we start to see some negative air-quality side effects, particularly for wintertime particulate matter air pollution.”

To conduct the study, the Utah scientists modeled what would happen if you deployed the technology patented by a Canadian company, which is proposing to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, or H₂O₂, into the atmosphere during daylight hours from 600-meter towers. These towers would approach the height of the world’s tallest radio towers.

“When that hydrogen peroxide is in the presence of sunlight, it’s going to make a really powerful oxidant, the hydroxyl radical OH,” said Haskins, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences. “That’s a natural scrubber in the atmosphere, and it’s going to help speed up the conversion of methane to CO₂.”

Methane is a single-bonded molecule combination of carbon and hydrogen, as opposed to the double-bonded compounds that are far more common in the atmosphere. Hydroxyls are more likely to oxidize those double-bonded molecules, such as the isoprene coming off trees or volatile organic compounds, so OH is just not that efficient for breaking down methane, according to Haskins.

“OH doesn’t react fast with methane,” Haskins said. “It’s reacting with so many other things.”

Methane’s outsized impact on the climate

While carbon dioxide from fossil fuels gets much of the blame for climate change, methane is also a big contributor. Eventually, methane breaks down into carbon dioxide and water.

The primary ingredient in the natural gas burned in home appliances and power plants, methane, or CH₄, packs 76 times more climate-warming punch than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timeframe. Methane persists in the atmosphere for only 12 years, but the gas is blamed for nearly a third of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, according to the International Energy Agency.

Anthropogenic sources, primarily oil, gas and coal operations and landfills, account for 60% of global methane emissions.

Artificially speeding up methane oxidation could slow climate change, but such geoengineering projects could carry adverse environmental impacts, which Haskins’s lab seeks to characterize. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences concluded the unintended consequences of atmospheric methane removal technologies are likely significant but poorly understood. Haskins’ study is heeding the report’s call to scrutinize these technologies, such as the one that would release vast amounts of hydrogen peroxide.

“We could buy ourselves about 50 years and avoid some of the immediate impacts of climate change if we did this, but no one had actually previously done any side-effects studies to see what was going to happen,” Haskins said. “This is very first paper to assess any air quality side effects of such geoengineering solutions.”

Geoengineering’s potential side effects

Manipulating a system as complex as Earth’s atmosphere is an inherently dangerous action, potentially resulting in unforeseen problems.

“There’s so many feedbacks that can go on in the climate. Atmospheric chemistry is just one example. You change one thing and you think it’s going to do this, but it actually may do the opposite in one place versus the other,” Haskins said. “You have to be really careful and do these sorts of assessments. Is this a responsible thing to do? What’s the impact going to be?”

By way of example, Haskins raised the troubling history of humanmade gasses called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which ate into the protective layer of ozone that shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

“We started using CFCs in industry as propellants and refrigerants, and suddenly we cause the ozone hole,” she said. “And we’ve been dealing with the consequences of that for 40 years. And we still won’t have a fully resolved no-ozone-hole year until probably 2060, so we have to be careful of what we’re doing.”

Mayhew and Haskins used a global chemical-transport model, called GEOS-Chem, to simulate the proposal to release hydrogen peroxide from towers. The goal was to estimate how much methane would be oxidized under three different emission scenarios, from light to extreme.

Their simulation envisioned the use of 50 towers spread around North America. Replicating the company’s proposal, the medium-release scenario called for each tower to spray 612 grams, or 1.35 pounds, per second for 10 hours a day for a year.

“This proposed solution just won’t remove any meaningful amount of methane from the atmosphere. It’s not going to solve global warming. At most, we found 50 towers could reduce 0.01% of annual anthropogenic methane emissions,” Haskins said. “You’d need about 352,000 of them to remove 50% of anthropogenic methane. It’s an insane number. And if you did 50 high-emission towers, you’d still need about 43,000.”

In the meantime, places with poor wintertime air quality could see particulate pollution get much worse.

“There’s potential that future research could show that the air quality impacts of placing these towers close to methane point sources is minimal if they’re activated at certain times of the year, and far from large population centers,” Mayhew said. “If that’s the case, then this technology (or similar approaches) could play a very small role in combating warming, but it’s clear from our work that the air-quality side effects should be placed as a central consideration for any proposed real-world implementation of technology like this.”

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines this novel approach. Presenting a mathematical model, SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Kaleda Denton with colleagues at Stanford University — former SFI Post-baccalaureate Fellow Elisa Heinrich Mora, SFI External Professor Marcus Feldman, and Michael Palmer — expand on previous research to offer a more realistic representation of how conformist and anti-conformist biases shape the transmission of cultural traits through a population.

“The idea behind this research was to come up with a better way to mathematically represent how individuals make decisions in the real world,” says Denton. “If we can do that, we can then scale things up to see what would happen in a population of 10,000 people over the long run.”

Traditional models of conformity often assume individuals gravitate toward the average or “mean” trait in a population. This concept works well if the most popular traits are near this mean, which may be the case for, say, working hours or food portion sizes. However, the mean is a poor indicator of popularity in other cases; for example, if most people fall on either the far left or far right of a political spectrum, but the mean lies in the center.

To address this gap, the authors designed a model that incorporates trait clustering. In this model, individuals conform by adopting traits that are more clustered together (e.g., variations of a far-left political belief) rather than the mean trait in the population (e.g., the centrist view). Anti-conformists, on the other hand, deliberately distance themselves from the traits of their peers, creating polarization.

Using computer simulations, the team analyzed how traits spread across populations over multiple generations. Conformity often led to groups clustering around specific traits, but not necessarily the average. Anti-conformity created a starkly different pattern: a U-shaped distribution, with individuals clustering at the extremes and leaving the middle sparsely populated.

One significant finding was that populations rarely converge to a single trait unless the unrealistic assumption of perfect behavioral copying is imposed. Instead, even small variations in how individuals interpret or adopt traits result in persistent diversity.

“These outcomes align with what we observe in the real world, where cultural practices and ideologies don’t simply average out but instead maintain significant variation,” Denton says.

The research also challenges the notion that conformity always leads to homogeneity. The model shows that under certain conditions, conformity can sustain diversity, while anti-conformity amplifies polarization.

Denton sees broad implications for the study. “This framework could help explain voting behavior, social media trends, or even how people estimate values in group settings,” she says. “It offers a way to understand how individual decisions aggregate into societal patterns, whether that’s consensus-building or polarization.” This model can be tested on real-world data in future studies.

“We’re excited to see if this framework works in different scenarios,” Denton said. “The ultimate goal is to understand how individual choices influence entire populations over time.