Whose voices shape pollution policy?

New analysis finds economic concerns received more attention than climate and health

Northwestern University

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When it comes to regulating pollution from heavy-duty trucks, economic concerns may carry more weight than climate and public health benefits, according to a Northwestern University study.

In new research, Northwestern engineers used artificial intelligence (AI) and other computational tools to analyze nearly 5 million words from public comments submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the development of emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles.

Their analysis revealed a striking pattern. The EPA was more likely to acknowledge comments about costs and implementation timelines as well as comments from the trucking industry than concerns around public health and climate change.

These findings raise questions about whether the regulatory process itself could slow progress toward cleaner transportation. The study also provides a powerful example of how emerging AI tools can help researchers better understand the complex processes that shape government policy.

The study was published on Nov. 1 in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society.

“Heavy-duty trucks make up 5% of vehicles on the road, but they produce 28% of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Northwestern’s Amanda Stathopoulos, the study’s senior author. “Because heavy-duty vehicles make a disproportionate impact, we’ve been trying to understand why the transition from diesel to electric isn’t happening. We decided to look into how the EPA weighs opinions from many different stakeholders. 

“We found the EPA gives more attention to stakeholders from the heavy-duty vehicle industry regardless of how substantive their public comments were. And, ultimately, the EPA finalized requirements that were softer than originally proposed.”

Stathopoulos is the William Patterson Junior Professor and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, where she leads the Mobility and Behavior Lab. Deirdre Edward, a former Ph.D. student in Stathopoulos’ research group, is the study’s first author.

Competing comments

Before finalizing major environmental regulations, federal agencies solicit public comments from manufacturers, industry leaders, environmental organizations, public health advocates and other stakeholders.

“The barrier to entry to submit a comment is basically zero,” Stathopoulos said. “The process is open to essentially anyone who wants to weigh in on proposed regulations. The idea is the EPA will look at those comments to see if they made an error or missed anything. Based on that feedback, they might revise their plans and make a final ruling that becomes official.”

Although diverse opinions help the regulatory process, these groups often have competing priorities. Some emphasize the environmental and health benefits of stricter standards, while others raise concerns about costs, technological feasibility and whether manufacturers have enough time to comply. Understanding how agencies respond to thousands of pages of feedback is a massive challenge.

Analyzing millions of words

To understand the impact of these comments, the Northwestern team examined the EPA’s Phase 3 greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles. Proposed in April 2023 and finalized in March 2024, the Biden-era regulations sought to establish increasingly stringent emissions limits for new trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles. Although the EPA repealed the standards in February 2026, under the Trump administration, the public comments and regulatory responses still provided a valuable case study for how competing interests shape environmental policy.

With thousands of pages of public feedback, the researchers had plenty of material to examine. Stathopoulos’ team analyzed 1,171 unique public comments containing approximately 4.74 million words, along with the EPA’s official written responses.

“The EPA acknowledges some of the comments with written responses,” Stathopoulos said. “But responses are only legally required if the comment is substantive. Otherwise, they are not obligated to answer.”

Rather than manually sorting through the enormous collection of comments and responses, the team developed a computational framework that combined AI with traditional text-analysis techniques.

“If you were to read all of these words, it would take you months,” Stathopoulos said. “We really needed a computational approach to make sense of all the text.”

Mapping different themes

First, the researchers used computational methods to identify recurring themes in the comments, such as environmental benefits, economic costs and implementation challenges. Then, they used an AI language model to analyze the sentiment expressed in the comments. They also used generative AI to evaluate the substantiveness of each comment, distinguishing between general statements and more detailed arguments.

The team then categorized commenters by stakeholder type and compared their submissions with the EPA’s official responses. By examining both sides of the exchange — what stakeholders said and how regulators responded — the researchers were able to identify patterns.

“We could map out the breakdown of different themes,” Stathopoulos said. “That allowed us to visually plot out the discourse and pinpoint agreement or disagreement.”

Not all arguments receive equal attention

The Northwestern team’s analysis revealed significant differences in the issues raised by different stakeholder groups as well as how the EPA addressed those issues. Most notably, the EPA acknowledged comments focused on costs and implementation timelines more frequently than those advocating for climate and public health.

“This pattern persisted even after we accounted for the substance of the comments,” Stathopoulos said. “We could see really strong trends there. Basically, it didn’t matter what heavy-duty vehicle stakeholders talked about. They always got a response.”

Stathopoulos emphasized that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the EPA agreed with those arguments or changed its policies in response. Instead, the findings reveal differences in regulatory attention, raising questions about how agencies balance competing priorities. And those differences could have implications for cities working to reduce freight-related pollution.

“One explanation is that regulators are particularly attentive to stakeholders with greater legal resources, who may be more likely to challenge a regulation if their concerns aren’t addressed,” Stathopoulos said. “Smaller nonprofits and individual citizens don’t necessarily have the same expertise to frame legal arguments. Our approach could help agencies recognize meaningful concerns that otherwise might get overlooked simply because they weren’t expressed with the right legal language.”

The study, “What shapes heavy-duty regulations? A computational case study of stakeholder participation, agency responsiveness and urban freight decarbonization,” was supported by RFQ 24-1 of the Health Effects Institute, an organization jointly funded by the EPA and certain motor vehicle and engine manufacturers.

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Journal

Sustainable Cities and Society

DOI

10.1016/j.scs.2026.108031

Article Title

What shapes heavy-duty vehicle regulations? A computational case study of stakeholder participation, agency responsiveness, and urban freight decarbonization

Article Publication Date

11-Nov-2026

Losing genes helped whales, naked mole-rats, and hummingbirds adapt

Gene loss through pseudogenization shaped immunity, senses, diet, and metabolism in vertebrates; in humans, pseudogene transcripts both protect against and drive disease

Innovation Press

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Pseudogenes are now recognized as dynamic contributors to vertebrate adaptation and human disease.

Recurrent pseudogenization events shape immune, sensory, and metabolic adaptation in vertebrates.

In humans, pseudogenes play protective or pathogenic roles in cancer, hematopoiesis, and metabolic disorders.

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Credit: Jin Z., Meng X., Zhao L., et al. (2026). Beyond junk DNA: Adaptive evolution of pseudogenes in vertebrates. The Innovation Life 4:100240. https://doi.org/10.59717/j.xinn-life.2026.100240

"Junk DNA" has long been the label pinned on pseudogenes—gene copies inactivated by mutation. A review published in The Innovation Life argues that this "junk" has been quietly shaping how vertebrates conquer new environments—and how humans fall ill.

The human genome alone carries roughly 14,000 pseudogenes, and their distribution is anything but random. Identification strategies now compare across species, screening homologous genes for loss-of-function mutations to separate genuine gene-loss events from assembly errors. What has emerged is a recurring pattern: when a lineage enters a new habitat, genes that once mattered become dispensable—and their inactivation can be adaptive.

The review assembles cases across four phenotypes. In immunity, whales and other marine mammals face bacterial communities unlike those on land; the pattern-recognition receptor TLR5, which detects bacterial flagellin, was pseudogenized in cetaceans, and functional work shows its loss dampens damaging inflammation and improves survival after infection. In sensory adaptation, the naked mole-rat's underground life relaxed selection on vision: multiple phototransduction and retinal-integrity genes accumulated inactivating mutations, producing a highly degenerate eye—a pattern repeated in other subterranean mammals. In metabolism, hummingbirds rely on nectar to power hovering flight; pseudogenization of the muscle-specific gluconeogenic enzyme gene FBP2 enhances glycolytic flux, mitochondrial biogenesis, and respiratory capacity, sharpening carbohydrate use for extreme energy demands. In diet, the giant panda's shift from omnivore to near-exclusive bamboo eater coincided with loss of DUOX2, weakening thyroid-hormone synthesis and lowering basal metabolic rate—an economy suited to low-energy food—while loss of the umami receptor T1R1 may have accompanied the same dietary turn.

Pseudogenes also act in human disease, mostly through duplicated copies that remain transcribed. PTENP1, a pseudogene of the tumor suppressor PTEN, sponges microRNAs and lifts repression on PTEN, curbing cancer-cell proliferation; HBBP1 modulates TAL1 and eases beta-thalassemia; other pseudogene transcripts, such as TDGF1P3, drive tumor progression. Some pseudogenes encode truncated peptides or function as cis-regulatory DNA. In disease networks, the same class of elements can be protective or pathogenic.

The authors flag an asymmetry: pseudogene-derived regulatory RNAs are well documented in human disease but untested in adaptive evolution—largely because adaptation research has centered on unitary pseudogenes, and non-model species resist functional experiments. Long-read RNA sequencing and CRISPR/Cas9 base editing, which can introduce or revert stop codons directly, offer a way to test causal roles. Convergent pseudogenization in distant species facing similar pressures, they add, makes a useful model for the predictability of evolutionary trajectories.

The message: pseudogenes are not passive relics but active participants in gene-expression networks. Losing a gene, in the right lineage at the right time, can be a strategy.

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Journal

The Innovation Life

DOI

10.59717/j.xinn-life.2026.100240

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Beyond junk DNA: Adaptive evolution of pseudogenes in vertebrates

 News Release 11-Nov-2026

 

Monkey foot and palm prints differ between individuals, as they do in humans

Owl monkeys, squirrel monkeys and capuchins have distinct patterns of ridges on their feet and palms

PLOS

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Plantar impressions of non-human primates and magnification of dermatoglyphic patterns.

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Credit: Juliana Vieira Flores Sales, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

In three species of monkey, the complex pattern of ridges on the feet and palms vary between individuals, similar to human fingerprints, according to a study publishing November 11, 2026, in the open access journal PLOS One by Juliana Vieira Flores Sales at Universidade de Brasília and colleagues.

The tiny ridges on the surface of our hands and feet help us to grip slippery surfaces, and the unique patterns they form on our fingertips have become an important forensic tool. These friction ridges are also present in other species of primate, and preliminary research has found evidence for variation between individuals that might be useful for identification.

To investigate this phenomenon further, researchers collected foot- and palm-prints from captive owl monkeys (Aotus infulatus) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri collinsi) at the National Primate Center in Pará, Brazil, as well as from capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) that were either permanently housed at the Universidade de Brasília Primate Center or had been admitted to the University of Brasília’s Veterinary Hospital. They analysed the pattern of ridges on each palm- and foot-print, identifying arches, loops and whorls, as well as minute details.

They found that none of the 116 individual monkeys had identical foot- or palm-prints. There were also consistent differences between species, which may reflect the species’ different ecologies. For example, owl monkeys, which are nocturnal, had more deltas and whorls and showed less variety in their ridge patterns compared to squirrel monkeys and capuchins, which are diurnal.

The study adds further evidence that palm- and foot-prints vary between individuals in non-human primates, as they do in humans. This variation could prove useful for conservationists, scientists and wildlife forensic investigators, the authors say. However, more research is needed to determine whether non-human primates have unique prints that could be used to reliably identify individuals.

Juliana Vieira Flores Sales adds: “Our findings show that palm and foot ridge patterns vary among non-human primates and reveal differences that may be associated with their ecological characteristics. Beyond their potential applications in individual identification, these patterns offer an opportunity to explore how dermatoglyphic traits develop and vary across primate species. Further research will help us understand their biological significance and potential applications in conservation.”

 

Author interview: https://plos.io/4AaRfrc

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4jOMijb

Citation: Sales JVF, de Barros RM, de Castro PHG, Souza AR, Hirano LQL (2026) Taxon-related variation in palmar and plantar friction ridge patterns among Aotus infulatus, Saimiri collinsi and Sapajus spp.: Individual-level variation and implications for identification. PLoS One 21(11): e0360621. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360621

Author countries: Brazil

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0360621

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Taxon-related variation in palmar and plantar friction ridge patterns among Aotus infulatus, Saimiri collinsi and Sapajus spp.: Individual-level variation and implications for identification

Article Publication Date

11-Nov-2026

Collection of plantar impressions from a non-human primate.

Credit

Juliana Vieira Flores Sales, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Macrophotograph of the right plantar surface of Aotus infulatus. Note the hyperkeratinization in the calcaneal region (arrow).  

Credit

Sales et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

1. 

   Project Gutenberg

   https://www.gutenberg.org › ebooks

   The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs | Project Gutenberg

   Apr 1, 2004 · The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs. Free eBook digitized and proofread by volunteers.

   • Author: Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark), 1863-1943

   • Illustrator:

 

Spring in Chinese cities is pulling away from spring in the countryside — and warmth alone does not explain it

Across 354 Chinese cities, urban green-up advanced faster than rural green-up in four of five cases; a study in The Innovation traces the gap to a faster decline in the heat plants must accumulate

Innovation Press

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Graphical abstract. On the left, rural vegetation: green-up advances slowly because the heat requirement — the accumulated warmth a plant must absorb before it breaks dormancy — changes little, and the spring phenology timeline is long. On the right, urban vegetation: the heat requirement falls further, so the same warming delivers leaf-out sooner and the timeline is short. Insets show green-up date against year for urban and rural vegetation and the magnitude of heat-requirement change for each. Graphical abstract of the published article, distributed by the journal with the pape.

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Credit: He C., Wang X., Peñuelas J., et al., (2026). Heat requirement, not warming, governs the urban-rural disparity in spring phenology advancement. The Innovation 7(9), 101343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2026.101343

Spring reaches a Chinese city before it reaches the fields around it, and the head start is growing. A study in The Innovation tracked the spring green-up date across 354 Chinese cities from 2001 to 2020 and found urban vegetation advancing faster than rural vegetation in 80.4% of them. Where the gap was significant, cities pulled ahead by about 0.37 days a year — a week over the record.

The obvious answer is heat. Cities run warmer than the land around them, and earlier work credited a stronger temperature response. The authors tested that three ways — ridge regression, ordinary least squares and a log-log model — against five definitions of the rural buffer. Urban and rural sensitivity to temperature, rainfall and radiation came out statistically indistinguishable.

Green-up dates came from NASA's MCD12Q2 product at 500 m, and the analysis was repeated on 30-m Landsat imagery for Beijing, Shenyang and Changchun, where urban vegetation advanced 3.00 ± 1.28 days a year against 2.64 ± 1.41 in farmland. The team then ran 11 chilling models and five heat-requirement models, fed 17 environmental variables into an XGBoost model read through SHAP values, and used convergent cross mapping to test which way causation runs.

Heat requirement won. Its partial correlation with green-up reached 0.86 ± 0.03 in cities against 0.81 ± 0.04 in the countryside, while chilling sat at 0.69 on both sides and matched observed trends in only 4 of 11 models where spring was delaying. At 30 m the heat signal held (r = 0.91 urban, 0.90 rural) as chilling fell to 0.70. Vegetation structure then tunes the response: species richness is the strongest spatial predictor in cities, tree density in farmland, where canopy shade and evaporative cooling buffer the local climate.

Four standard models — growing degree day, spring warming, sequential and parallel — were asked to reproduce the record. Observed urban trends ran at −0.94 ± 0.08 days a year against −0.83 ± 0.07 in rural areas; the models produced −0.62 to −0.42, and only the parallel model separated the two (p = 0.004). Pixel by pixel the gap widened further: 36.1% of urban pixels carried significant trends, against fewer than 7% under any model.

The result is a hierarchy rather than a single cause. Urbanisation sets the stage, vegetation structure tunes the answer, and the heat threshold does the work — which matters for what gets planted. Richer urban greenspace tracks climate more closely but swings more between years; denser rural woodland is steadier and slower to adapt.

A spring that moves a week in 20 years also moves everything timed to it: the pollinators that arrive with the first flowers, the migrants that land for the flush of insects, the shade that decides how hot a street gets in June.

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Journal

The Innovation

DOI

10.1016/j.xinn.2026.101343

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Heat requirement, not warming, governs the urban-rural disparity in spring phenology advancement