An international team, led by Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment Director Bruce Logan, has developed a new reactor design that efficiently converts carbon dioxide and renewable electricity into methane — the primary component of natural gas — while scaling the system up by roughly an order of magnitude without sacrificing performance. They detailed their findings in a paper published in Water Research.

Food noise, defined as persistent, intrusive thoughts about food that are disruptive to daily life and make healthy behaviors difficult, has gained attention with the introduction of GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs) for the treatment of obesity. Based on anecdotal reports, GLP-1 RAs may produce significant changes in food noise. There is no empirical evidence, however, testing if GLP-1 RAs reduce food noise more than behavioral treatments alone. This study examined short-term changes in food noise in a digital behavioral weight management program with and without GLP-1 RAs.

A new method could enable physicists to spot signs of dark matter in gravitational waves that are detected on Earth. This could occur if two colliding black holes spiral through a dense region of dark matter and merge, leaving an imprint in gravitational waves that are rippling across space and time.

It has been assumed that warming temperatures under climate change will boost agricultural pests. But a new study by UC Davis researchers based on field data from California and Spain suggests the effects will be more nuanced, depending on species, crop and location as well as temperature.

A Boise State University electrical engineering professor and a local technology company have jointly developed a portable, affordable device capable of detecting per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals”, in water samples in real time and at trace levels meeting current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.

Large language models may be able to make moderation of social media and online communities more effective, but they are expensive to run at scale, especially when asked to provide explanations for each piece of content they flag. Yuan Zhao will present research on creating an interpretable and low-cost method for evaluating LLMs’ hate speech classification as part of 190th ASA Meeting. His framework relies on the Rational Inattention model, an economic idea developed to explain human behavior.

A study led by Qiujie “Angie” Zheng from the University of Maine found that consumers are willing to pay an average of $3.42 more for a lobster roll made with lobster harvested using ropeless fishing technology designed to reduce whale entanglement risks when presented with information on animal welfare. Researchers tested how information about whale conservation, animal welfare and Maine’s lobster industry shaped consumer willingness to pay more for lobster harvested using ropeless technology. Messaging focused on whale welfare and entanglement impacts proved most effective at increasing support for ropeless technology, with consumers willing to pay more.