Kyoto, Japan -- Online platforms promise connection, yet the social comparison, digital surveillance, and public criticism they foster can also heighten emotional instability. Recently, these platforms have even intensified global challenges by fueling misinformation-driven unrest and deepening emotional divides. These dynamics have been linked to rising levels of distress, fear, and trauma, often shaped by collective outrage and transient narratives.

While current psychiatry offers various approaches to address individual distress, the field remains relatively under-equipped to understand the networked nature of digital mental health. Buddhist philosophy, on the other hand, envisions reality as a fluid web of interdependent relationships: a view closely aligned with digital interconnectedness.

This realization inspired a team of researchers at Kyoto University to explore a perspective which has received limited attention in clinical psychology. They imagined it could serve as a meaningful bridge between therapeutic care and the shared complexities of virtual life.

In a pioneering study that combines economic and social analysis with environmental insights, researchers are examining the determinants of carbon emissions in West Java, Indonesia. The study, titled "Assessing Economic and Social Determinants of Carbon Emissions Towards Sustainable Development in West Java, Indonesia," is led by Prof. Robert Kurniawan from the Department of Statistical Computing at Polytechnic Statistics STIS and the Department of Population and Environmental Education at the Faculty of Post-Graduate, State University of Jakarta, Indonesia. This research offers a detailed examination of how economic and social factors influence carbon emissions, providing valuable insights for sustainable development.

Cybersecurity training programs as implemented today by most large companies do little to reduce the risk that employees will fall for phishing scams–the practice of sending malicious emails posing as legitimate to get victims to share personal information, such as their social security numbers. 

That’s the conclusion of a study evaluating the effectiveness of two different types of cybersecurity training during an eight-month, randomized controlled experiment. The experiment involved 10 different phishing email campaigns developed by the research team and sent to more than 19,500 employees at UC San Diego Health.

Several genetic variants associated with social behavior in honey bees are located within genes that have previously been linked to social behavior in humans, Ian Traniello at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and colleagues report on September 16^th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The results hint at ancient roots to social behavior that have been conserved across species.

Researchers at Lehigh University have received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore how biological computation could make artificial intelligence (AI) more energy-efficient and powerful. The team, led by Yevgeny Berdichevsky, associate professor of bioengineering and electrical and computer engineering, will study neurons within engineered brain organoids—three-dimensional structures grown from adult stem cells that resemble developing brain tissue. By arranging and stimulating neurons in controlled ways, the researchers aim to replicate how the brain processes dynamic information, such as moving images. The interdisciplinary project combines neuroscience, bioengineering, electrical engineering, and computer science to create a proof of concept for biological computation and to inspire new AI algorithms. The researchers will also assess the ethical, social, and legal considerations of using brain organoids in computation.

As modern communication and sensing systems demand ever higher speeds and efficiencies, integrated photonics has emerged as a critical enabling technology.