When a powerful EF-4 tornado tore through Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on March 24, 2023, social media became a critical tool for sharing weather warnings, damage reports and recovery information. But a new study from University of Nebraska–Lincoln media scholar Cory Armstrong found that the same disaster also exposed persistent communication gaps facing rural and underserved communities.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Penn’s Linguistic Data Consortium have received a two-year, $4 million grant from the Wellcome Trust to develop STELLAR, an AI-powered platform for training mental health clinicians through controllable virtual patient simulations. The project will create “digital twin” patients whose psychiatric symptoms can be adjusted, allowing trainees to practice clinical interviews that better reflect the complexity of real mental health care.

A new study by a team of psychology and health researchers finds that racial and ethnic minority youth reported paying more attention to influencers who looked like them and shared their racial identity. Moreover, this heightened visual interest was associated with stronger engagement with social media posts and a stronger preference for unhealthy foods.

A UOC study based on data from nearly 5,000 manufacturing firms concludes that robotization improves efficiency, especially that of smaller and less innovative companies

An analysis in Contemporary Economic Policy has found that foreign direct investment raises employment but has no significant effect on income in rural US counties.

A new mathematical model suggests that social norms may be just as important as economics in determining how the world responds to climate change. The research shows that efforts to reduce emissions in one region can unintentionally influence climate action elsewhere, with consequences that could either strengthen or weaken global progress.