A new kind of predictive network model could help determine which people will change their minds about contentious scientific issues when presented with evidence-based information.
Social Sciences
Aug 20, 2022
17
421
In 1972, the report Limits to Growth showed that business as usual on a planet with limited resources and a rapidly expanding human population can only end up in unsustainable growth and collapse. The report was inspired ...
Environment
Aug 2, 2022
0
26
Every biological process depends critically on temperature. It's true of the very small, the very large, and every scale in between, from molecules to ecosystems and across every environment.
Ecology
Jul 19, 2022
0
397
The world is rife with rankings and orderings. They show up in tennis—as in the French Open, which ends with a final ranking of champion players. They show up in pandemics—as when public health officials can record new ...
General Physics
Jun 6, 2022
0
30
From hunter-gatherer encampments to modern cities, permanent human settlements tend to densify as the population grows, while mobile human settlements do the opposite.
Social Sciences
Apr 14, 2022
0
65
In the 1970s, a handkerchief peeking from a man's back pocket was a useful way of signaling his gayness to other gay men—while keeping his sexual identity secret from everyone else, who were unlikely to know the hanky's ...
Social Sciences
Mar 4, 2022
4
133
The only references we have for "life" are the forms we know on Earth. Astrobiologists suspect that the search for alien life, and even for the origins of life on Earth, may require a broader scope. A NASA-funded team of ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Feb 28, 2022
1
1088
We typically think of plants strutting their best stuff aboveground: showy flowers, fragrant blossoms, and unique shapes abound. But their development belowground is equally magical.
Ecology
Feb 14, 2022
0
66
The laws of physics underlying everyday life are, at one level of description, completely known, and can be summarized in a single elegant—if quite complex—equation. That's the claim physicist Sean Carroll, an SFI Fractal ...
Quantum Physics
Jan 17, 2022
18
1501
We can't understand polarization unless we analyze it as a complex system, argue SFI External Professor Scott Page (University of Michigan) and co-author Delia Baldassarri in a commentary for a special feature on the dynamics ...
Political science
Dec 16, 2021
0
2
