To understand how professional networks contribute to persistent gender disparities in corporate leadership, researchers analyzed data from more than 19,000 corporate employees over 20 years. Publishing March 12 in the Cell Press journal Patterns, their results show that educational, employment, and social networks matter for both men and women, but women rely on more complex social networks to reach director-level positions than men. Women with professional ties to other female leaders were also more likely to be promoted.  

Seeing a Swedish flag, even if it is only shown subtly, can cause people in Sweden to feel less dislike for their political adversaries. This is shown in an experimental study in which certain participants were exposed to a picture of the Swedish flag before answering questions about national identity.

Study fiinds AI agents can autonomously coordinate propaganda campaigns without human direction.Traditional bot campaigns are tightly scripted to follow fixed instructions: always retweet this account, reply with this hashtag, post this prewritten message. The content is repetitive and the patterns predictable, making them possible to uncover.The new AI-powered model works differently. A hostile government, political operative, or bad actor sets a goal and designates a network of AI agents as a team. From there, the agents take over, writing their own posts, learning what works, copying their so-called teammates’ successful approaches, and echoing each other’s content. Because every post is slightly different and the coordination latent, these conversations or discussions seem genuine.

New research from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) shows why widely used algorithms for measuring economic complexity produce trustworthy results and how these tools may benefit diverse areas such as ecology, social science, and agentic AI.

Informing people about sustainability is more important than ever, but it is only effective if done honestly, according to a study led by the UOC