Almost all the rise in US polarisation over political issues since the eighties occurred from 2008 onwards, a new study suggests. Far more Americans now adopt party and ideological labels in line with their opinions than did in the late 1980s.

Young men are being encouraged to undergo testosterone testing and start hormone therapy through Instagram and TikTok content that promotes unproven health claims while downplaying medical risks, a new international study has found.  

Plastic pollution is causing severe problems worldwide. However, negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva last August did not result in the expected global plastics treaty. On 7 February 2026, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution will reconvene in Geneva to elect a new chairperson. In order to secure an agreement, the new chairperson must urgently reform INC procedures, argue Paul Einhäupl, Linda Del Savio (Research Institute for Sustainability), Melanie Bergmann (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research) and Annika Jahnke (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research) in a recent Nature Comment.

University of Texas at Arlington Professor Dana Litt contributed to a study led by Alex Russell, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, that found many parents turn to online peer advice when facing concerns about substance use among their children.

A new study published in the Strategic Management Journal challenges long-standing assumptions about managerial specialization by examining when organizations perform better by having leaders collectively pursue multiple objectives rather than dividing responsibilities among them. Addressing the growing complexity of modern organizations—where financial, social, environmental, and technological goals increasingly coexist—the research introduces what the authors call the “common purpose advantage.”