Our estimates of current vaccine coverage and forecasts to 2030 suggest that achieving IA2030 targets, such as halving zero-dose children compared with 2019 levels and reaching 90% global coverage for life-course vaccines DTP3, PCV3, and MCV2, will require accelerated progress. Substantial increases in coverage are necessary in many countries and territories, with those in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia facing the greatest challenges. Recent declines will need to be reversed to restore previous coverage levels in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially for DTP1, DTP3, and Pol3.

Coronavirus disease (COVID) vaccine hesitancy is a reflection of psychology that might also contribute to traffic safety. We tested whether COVID vaccination was associated with the risks of a traffic crash.

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis

pThe emInterdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies/em (IJPS) shares scholarship and creates connections for cultural transformation to build a world in which all relationships, institutions, policies and organizations are based on principles of partnership./p pView our a href="https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/ijps/readers"Global Readers/a./p pstrongA Partnership Between:/strong/p ul lia title="Center for Partnership Systems" href="http://centerforpartnership.org/"Center for Partnership Systems/a/li lia title="UMN School of Nursing" href="http://www.nursing.umn.edu/"UMN School of Nursing/a/li lia title="UMN Libraries" href="https://www.lib.umn.edu/"UMN Libraries/a/li /ul

npj Climate Action - Geopolitical conflict impedes climate change mitigation

npj Climate and Atmospheric Science - The futures of climate modeling

Rats successfully distinguished between two varieties of white wine, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc, in a study led by researchers from the University of Trento, the University of Lincoln, the University ...

Constructing artificial intelligence that aligns with human values is a crucial challenge, with political values playing a distinctive role among various human value systems. In this study, we adapted the Political Compass Test and combined it with rigorous bootstrapping techniques to create a standardized method for testing political values in AI. This approach was applied to multiple versions of ChatGPT, utilizing a dataset of over 3000 tests to ensure robustness. Our findings reveal that while newer versions of ChatGPT consistently maintain values within the libertarian-left quadrant, there is a statistically significant rightward shift in political values over time, a phenomenon we term a ‘value shift’ in large language models. This shift is particularly noteworthy given the widespread use of LLMs and their potential influence on societal values. Importantly, our study controlled for factors such as user interaction and language, and the observed shifts were not directly linked to changes in training datasets. While this research provides valuable insights into the dynamic nature of value alignment in AI, it also underscores limitations, including the challenge of isolating all external variables that may contribute to these shifts. These findings suggest a need for continuous monitoring of AI systems to ensure ethical value alignment, particularly as they increasingly integrate into human decision-making and knowledge systems.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has transformed numerous aspects of daily life, yet its impact on critical thinking remains underexplored. This study investigates the relationship between AI tool usage and critical thinking skills, focusing on cognitive offloading as a mediating factor. Utilising a mixed-method approach, we conducted surveys and in-depth interviews with 666 participants across diverse age groups and educational backgrounds. Quantitative data were analysed using ANOVA and correlation analysis, while qualitative insights were obtained through thematic analysis of interview transcripts. The findings revealed a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading. Younger participants exhibited higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older participants. Furthermore, higher educational attainment was associated with better critical thinking skills, regardless of AI usage. These results highlight the potential cognitive costs of AI tool reliance, emphasising the need for educational strategies that promote critical engagement with AI technologies. This study contributes to the growing discourse on AI’s cognitive implications, offering practical recommendations for mitigating its adverse effects on critical thinking. The findings underscore the importance of fostering critical thinking in an AI-driven world, making this research essential reading for educators, policymakers, and technologists.

(January 2025) - We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism—the world's largest carbon offset program. Using newly constructed data on the locations and characteristics of over 1,000 wind farms in India, we estimate that at least 52 percent of approved carbon offsets were allocated to projects that would very likely have been built anyway. We estimate that the sale of these offsets to regulated polluters resulted in substantially higher global carbon dioxide emissions.

Avec un matériau empirique très riche recueilli dans la Silicon Valley (sept ans d’enquête, d’observations et de collecte des données) et dans un langage très accessible, Olivier Alexandre, sociolo...

Johan Galtung, Violence, Peace, and Peace Research, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1969), pp. 167-191

PDF | Questioning the next evolutionary level of organizations and society means to turn to transformation and anticipation. Transformation Design (TD)... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

PDF | Speculative design is an emerging form of critical material engagement with possible futures. Designers working speculatively call attention to... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

This article challenges the belief in high-tech solutions to solve socio-environmental crises, proposing a political vision beyond "green growth" and …

Irrational rice planting–breeding modes may result in serious ecological and environmental issues and unsustainable agriculture. In this study, econom…

Climate change is causing widespread distress among US youth and affecting their beliefs and plans for the future. These effects may intensify, across the political spectrum, as exposure to climate-related severe weather events increases.

This study explores the potential of the reduced demand for land and increase in biogenic CO2 storage for incorporating crop-based products in wooden …

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a concept that has been a subfield of computer science since the 1950s. In recent years, with its growing development power, AI technologies have made significant progress and are now being used in many fields. Like in ...

Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind itself. The connection between man and his search for drugs in nature dates from the far past, of which there is ample evidence from various sources: written documents, preserved monuments, and even original ...

One hundred methanolic plant extracts, 96 of which had documented medicinal uses by British Columbian native peoples, were screened for antibiotic act…

Microplastic (MP) is a pervasive pollutant in nature that is colonised by diverse groups of microbes, including potentially pathogenic species. Fungi have been largely neglected in this context, despite their affinity for plastics and their impact as ...

Plastic polymers are non-degradable solid wastes that have become a great threat to the whole world and degradation of these plastics would take a few decades. Compared with other degradation processes, the biodegradation process is the most effective and best way for plastic degradation due to its non-polluting mechanism, eco-friendly nature, and cost-effectiveness. Biodegradation of synthetic plastics is a very slow process that also involves environmental factors and the action of wild microbial species. In this plastic biodegradation, fungi play a pivotal role, it acts on plastics by secreting some degrading enzymes, i.e., cutinase`, lipase, and proteases, lignocellulolytic enzymes, and also the presence of some pro-oxidant ions can cause effective degradation. The oxidation or hydrolysis by the enzyme creates functional groups that improve the hydrophilicity of polymers, and consequently degrade the high molecular weight polymer into low molecular weight. This leads to the degradation of plastics within a few days. Some well-known species which show effective degradation on plastics are Aspergillus nidulans, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus glaucus, Aspergillus oryzae, Aspergillus nomius, Penicillium griseofulvum, Bjerkandera adusta, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, Cladosporium cladosporioides, etc., and some other saprotrophic fungi, such as Pleurotus abalones, Pleurotus ostreatus, Agaricus bisporus and Pleurotus eryngii which also helps in degradation of plastics by growing on them. Some studies say that the degradation of plastics was more effective when photodegradation and thermo-oxidative mechanisms involved with the biodegradation simultaneously can make the degradation faster and easier. This present review gives current knowledge regarding different species of fungi that are involved in the degradation of plastics by their different enzymatic mechanisms to degrade different forms of plastic polymers.