It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 20, 2025
L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award for Claudia Felser
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
She is honored for her pioneering work on topological quantum materials and novel magnetic compounds, which have promising applications in green energy and data technologies. Her research bridges fundamental science and practical innovation, and has led to the emergence of the field of “topological quantum chemistry.”
“Science has always been a driving force for progress. It can help protect our societies, strengthen democracy, and ensure a livable future for generations.” — Claudia Felser
A passionate advocate for diversity in science, Professor Felser is Vice President of the Max Planck Society and founder of the NAT School Lab initiative, which fosters scientific curiosity in young students, especially girls. Her commitment to education and equity continues to inspire a new generation of scientists.
Cancer burden in neighborhoods with greater racial diversity and environmental burden
JAMA Network Open
About The Study:
This cohort study found that cancer incidence rates were associated with environmental burden and with racial and ethnic composition, suggesting the need for sustained community interventions in minoritized census regions with high environmental burden.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jennifer Cullen, PhD, MPH, email jcullen@houstonmethodist.org.
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.
Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article T
Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder
When it comes to social influence, knowing how people are connected matters more than simply knowing lots of people, found researchers from Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Climbing the social ladder isn’t simply a matter of popularity. Rather, people in positions of influence are particularly adept at forming “maps” of their social connections, which they navigate to become prominent in their social network, new research shows.
It’s like having a “social superpower,” according to study author Oriel FeldmanHall, an associate professor of cognitive and psychological sciences at Brown University who is affiliated with the University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science.
“People vary considerably in how accurately they understand the structure of their communities,” FeldmanHall said. “Our research establishes for the first time that people who excel at mapping out their social network — determining who belongs to which communities and cliques — are the ones who will go on to become the most influential in the social network.”
The National Science Foundation-funded study was published in Science Advances.
Contrary to popular belief, being influential isn’t determined by the number of friends a person has, according to the research team.
“What matters are your connections to other well-connected peers,” said study author Isabella Aslarus, who conducted the research as a manager in FeldmanHall’s lab. “These more powerful social ties give you a number of benefits that together add up to what we call influence.”
Those benefits can range from being perceived more positively to influencing positive outcomes for others, according to Aslarus, who is now a Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University.
“Influential individuals hold sway over others’ actions and are better at spreading information through their networks — a power that’s been harnessed by interventions to reduce bullying and promote public health,” Aslarus said.
Measuring influence
To understand how people ascend to influential positions, the researchers focused on a real-world, complex and evolving social network: first-year undergraduate students at Brown University.
“When students arrive on campus, they have no friends,” FeldmanHall said. “But by winter break, they have a rich social world where many friendships have been created and other ties have dissolved.By studying members of the Class of 2026 living in three first-year dorms, my team was able to observe a brand-new social network as it developed.”
Over the course of the academic year, the team conducted six assessments with approximately 200 participants who opted to join the study. At each check-in, they gave the students a “friendship survey” where each identified their friends within the study group. To track the evolving social network, the researchers created graphs of these developing connections.
People in the center of the graphs had the largest number of connections to other well-connected peers. At the edges of the graphs were those with fewer friends who also had fewer ties. By the end of the academic year, the researchers found that the students in the “influential” center spots were different from those who had held those positions in the beginning of the year.
How did those individuals move into positions of influence? The answer has to do with how they conceptualized their network, researchers found.
The research team gave students a second survey called a “network knowledge task.” Participants were shown pairs of photos of fellow students and asked to identify whether they were friends. The responses helped the researchers measure the participants’ knowledge about other friendships in the network, including those far removed from their own inner circles.
The researchers found that those who were “influential” by the end of the academic year had demonstrated the strongest knowledge of the network’s evolving structure. They had a bird’s-eye view of the communities and cliques within the network, above and beyond their knowledge of individual friendships.
“Participants often told us that it felt like they were just guessing who is friends with whom,” Aslarus said. “But in reality, some individuals are remarkably perceptive of the structure of their social world, and over time, this knowledge enables them to end up at its center.”
By Gretchen Schrafft, Science Communications Specialist, Carney Institute for Brain Science
Early insight into social network structure predicts climbing the social ladder
Article Publication Date
20-Jun-2025
Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder
When it comes to social influence, knowing how people are connected matters more than simply knowing lots of people, found researchers from Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Climbing the social ladder isn’t simply a matter of popularity. Rather, people in positions of influence are particularly adept at forming “maps” of their social connections, which they navigate to become prominent in their social network, new research shows.
It’s like having a “social superpower,” according to study author Oriel FeldmanHall, an associate professor of cognitive and psychological sciences at Brown University who is affiliated with the University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science.
“People vary considerably in how accurately they understand the structure of their communities,” FeldmanHall said. “Our research establishes for the first time that people who excel at mapping out their social network — determining who belongs to which communities and cliques — are the ones who will go on to become the most influential in the social network.”
The National Science Foundation-funded study was published in Science Advances.
Contrary to popular belief, being influential isn’t determined by the number of friends a person has, according to the research team.
“What matters are your connections to other well-connected peers,” said study author Isabella Aslarus, who conducted the research as a manager in FeldmanHall’s lab. “These more powerful social ties give you a number of benefits that together add up to what we call influence.”
Those benefits can range from being perceived more positively to influencing positive outcomes for others, according to Aslarus, who is now a Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University.
“Influential individuals hold sway over others’ actions and are better at spreading information through their networks — a power that’s been harnessed by interventions to reduce bullying and promote public health,” Aslarus said.
Measuring influence
To understand how people ascend to influential positions, the researchers focused on a real-world, complex and evolving social network: first-year undergraduate students at Brown University.
“When students arrive on campus, they have no friends,” FeldmanHall said. “But by winter break, they have a rich social world where many friendships have been created and other ties have dissolved.By studying members of the Class of 2026 living in three first-year dorms, my team was able to observe a brand-new social network as it developed.”
Over the course of the academic year, the team conducted six assessments with approximately 200 participants who opted to join the study. At each check-in, they gave the students a “friendship survey” where each identified their friends within the study group. To track the evolving social network, the researchers created graphs of these developing connections.
People in the center of the graphs had the largest number of connections to other well-connected peers. At the edges of the graphs were those with fewer friends who also had fewer ties. By the end of the academic year, the researchers found that the students in the “influential” center spots were different from those who had held those positions in the beginning of the year.
How did those individuals move into positions of influence? The answer has to do with how they conceptualized their network, researchers found.
The research team gave students a second survey called a “network knowledge task.” Participants were shown pairs of photos of fellow students and asked to identify whether they were friends. The responses helped the researchers measure the participants’ knowledge about other friendships in the network, including those far removed from their own inner circles.
The researchers found that those who were “influential” by the end of the academic year had demonstrated the strongest knowledge of the network’s evolving structure. They had a bird’s-eye view of the communities and cliques within the network, above and beyond their knowledge of individual friendships.
“Participants often told us that it felt like they were just guessing who is friends with whom,” Aslarus said. “But in reality, some individuals are remarkably perceptive of the structure of their social world, and over time, this knowledge enables them to end up at its center.”
By Gretchen Schrafft, Science Communications Specialist, Carney Institute for Brain Science
Pictured is a shallow reef flat channel on the atoll of Tetiaroa, located north of Tahiti in the Society Islands. MIT researchers have found evidence that island rivers may carve out paths in surrounding reefs over time, helping to maintain their health over millions of years.
Volcanic islands, such as the islands of Hawaii and the Caribbean, are surrounded by coral reefs that encircle an island in a labyrinthine, living ring. A coral reef is punctured at points by reef passes — wide channels that cut through the coral and serve as conduits for ocean water and nutrients to filter in and out. These watery passageways provide circulation throughout a reef, helping to maintain the health of corals by flushing out freshwater and transporting key nutrients.
Now, MIT scientists have found that reef passes are shaped by island rivers. In a study appearing today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the team shows that the locations of reef passes along coral reefs line up with where rivers funnel out from an island’s coast.
Their findings provide the first quantitative evidence of rivers forming reef passes. Scientists and explorers had speculated that this may be the case: Where a river on a volcanic island meets the coast, the freshwater and sediment it carries flows toward the reef, where a strong enough flow can tunnel into the surrounding coral. This idea has been proposed from time to time but never quantitatively tested, until now.
“The results of this study help us to understand how the health of coral reefs depends on the islands they surround,” says study author Taylor Perron, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.
“A lot of discussion around rivers and their impact on reefs today has been negative because of human impact and the effects of agricultural practices,” adds lead author Megan Gillen, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography. “This study shows the potential long-term benefits rivers can have on reefs, which I hope reshapes the paradigm and highlights the natural state of rivers interacting with reefs.”
The study’s other co-author is Andrew Ashton of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Drawing the lines
The new study is based on the team’s analysis of the Society Islands, a chain of islands in the South Pacific Ocean that includes Tahiti and Bora Bora. Gillen, who joined the MIT-WHOI program in 2020, was interested in exploring connections between coral reefs and the islands they surround. With limited options for on-site work during the Covid-19 pandemic, she and Perron looked to see what they could learn through satellite images and maps of island topography. They did a quick search using Google Earth and zeroed in on the Society Islands for their uniquely visible reef and island features.
“The islands in this chain have these iconic, beautiful reefs, and we kept noticing these reef passes that seemed to align with deeply embayed portions of the coastline,” Gillen says. “We started asking ourselves, is there a correlation here?”
Viewed from above, the coral reefs that circle some islands bear what look to be notches, like cracks that run straight through a ring. These breaks in the coral are reef passes — large channels that run tens of meters deep and can be wide enough for some boats to pass through. On first look, Gillen noticed that the most obvious reef passes seemed to line up with flooded river valleys — depressions in the coastline that have been eroded over time by island rivers that flow toward the ocean. She wondered whether and to what extent island rivers might shape reef passes.
“People have examined the flow through reef passes to understand how ocean waves and seawater circulate in and out of lagoons, but there have been no claims of how these passes are formed,” Gillen says. “Reef pass formation has been mentioned infrequently in the literature, and people haven’t explored it in depth.”
Reefs unraveled
To get a detailed view of the topography in and around the Society Islands, the team used data from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission — two radar antennae that flew aboard the space shuttle in 1999 and measured the topography across 80 percent of the Earth’s surface.
The researchers used the mission’s topographic data in the Society Islands to create a map of every drainage basin along the coast of each island, to get an idea of where major rivers flow or once flowed. They also marked the locations of every reef pass in the surrounding coral reefs. They then essentially “unraveled” each island’s coastline and reef into a straight line, and compared the locations of basins versus reef passes.
“Looking at the unwrapped shorelines, we find a significant correlation in the spatial relationship between these big river basins and where the passes line up,” Gillen says. “So we can say that statistically, the alignment of reef passes and large rivers does not seem random. The big rivers have a role in forming passes.”
As for how rivers shape the coral conduits, the team has two ideas, which they call, respectively, reef incision and reef encroachment. In reef incision, they propose that reef passes can form in times when the sea level is relatively low, such that the reef is exposed above the sea surface and a river can flow directly over the reef. The water and sediment carried by the river can then erode the coral, progressively carving a path through the reef.
When sea level is relatively higher, the team suspects a reef pass can still form, through reef encroachment. Coral reefs naturally live close to the water surface, where there is light and opportunity for photosynthesis. When sea levels rise, corals naturally grow upward and inward toward an island, to try to “catch up” to the water line.
“Reefs migrate toward the islands as sea levels rise, trying to keep pace with changing average sea level,” Gillen says.
However, part of the encroaching reef can end up in old river channels that were previously carved out by large rivers and that are lower than the rest of the island coastline. The corals in these river beds end up deeper than light can extend into the water column, and inevitably drown, leaving a gap in the form of a reef pass.
“We don’t think it’s an either/or situation,” Gillen says. “Reef incision occurs when sea levels fall, and reef encroachment happens when sea levels rise. Both mechanisms, occurring over dozens of cycles of sea-level rise and island evolution, are likely responsible for the formation and maintenance of reef passes over time.”
The team also looked to see whether there were differences in reef passes in older versus younger islands. They observed that younger islands were surrounded by more reef passes that were spaced closer together, versus older islands that had fewer reef passes that were farther apart.
As islands age, they subside, or sink, into the ocean, which reduces the amount of land that funnels rainwater into rivers. Eventually, rivers are too weak to keep the reef passes open, at which point, the ocean likely takes over, and incoming waves could act to close up some passes.
Gillen is exploring ideas for how rivers, or river-like flow, can be engineered to create paths through coral reefs in ways that would promote circulation and benefit reef health.
“Part of me wonders: If you had a more persistent flow, in places where you don’t naturally have rivers interacting with the reef, could that potentially be a way to increase health, by incorporating that river component back into the reef system?” Gillen says. “That’s something we’re thinking about.”
This research was supported, in part, by the WHOI Watson and Von Damm fellowships.
###
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News
Paper: “Rivers influence reef pass formation in the Society Islands”
“Rivers influence reef pass formation in the Society Islands”
Stable cooling fostered life, rapid warming brought death: scientists use high-resolution fusuline data reveal evolutionary responses to cooling and warming
Nanjing University School of Earth Sciences and Engineering
Fig. 2 The Late Paleozoic Ice Age, major volcanic events and fusuline diversity changes from early Visean to end-Permian showing correspondence (Zhang et al., 2025)
Credit: The Late Paleozoic Ice Age, major volcanic events and fusuline diversity changes from early Visean to end-Permian showing correspondence (Zhang et al., 2025)
The Earth is rapidly warming — but did you know? Similar climate upheavals over 300 million years ago once triggered massive fluctuations in marine life.
Recently, a research team led by Prof. Shuzhong Shen of Nanjing University published a major finding in Science Advances, revealing for the first time — through high-precision big data — that during the Late Paleozoic (approximately 340 to 250 million years ago), global cooling promoted rapid evolution and diversification of marine life, while abrupt warming, especially that induced by volcanic eruptions, led to mass extinctions.
The focus of the study is an ancient group of single-celled marine organisms called fusuline foraminifera. Though small in size, they were extraordinarily abundant (Fig. 1), once dominating seafloor ecosystems and earning the nickname “carbonate rock factories.” The team found that fusuline underwent two major diversification bursts and four extinction crises over a span of more than 91.8 million years (Fig. 2). Notably, after the large-scale volcanic eruptions by the large Emeishan Igneous Province around 260 million years ago, large fusuline nearly disappeared. Later, during the end-Permian supervolcanic event about 252 million years ago, this vast lineage came to a complete evolutionary halt.
Alarmingly, the current rate of global warming caused by human activities far exceeds the warming rates associated with both the Emeishan basalts and the end-Permian volcanic events. Today’s marine ecosystems may be facing a similar test of survival as once experienced by the fusuline.
One of the highlights of this study is the construction of the world’s first high-resolution (<45,000 years) diversity curve for fusuline foraminifera, made possible by the integration of supercomputing and AI algorithms. The analysis combined data from 299 stratigraphic sections and over 2,000 species, applying the quantitative stratigraphic CONOP supercomputing algorithm to achieve an unprecedentedly detailed reconstruction of this key fossil group. Cyclicity stratigraphic method has also been carried out to disclose the changing trend of the diversity curve.
This research not only unveils the critical role of climate change in driving biological evolution but also offers vital scientific insights for understanding biodiversity changes under today’s global warming. Prof. Shen emphasizes: “Mitigating climate change and protecting ecosystems is an urgent task of our time.”
The paper titled “Global cooling drove diversification and warming caused extinction among Carboniferous-Permian fusuline foraminifera” was published in Science Advances on June 20. The study’s co-first authors are Zhang Shuhan and Zhao Yingying, both PhD students at Nanjing University. Professors Shi Yukun and Shuzhong Shen are corresponding authors. The research was supported by a Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Big Science Program, and a major science and technology open collaboration platform project from Jiangsu Province.
Fig. 1 Fusuline limestone from the Pennsylvanian (Late Carboniferous) in Kansas, USA
(By James St. John, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35683145)
Credit
Journal
Science Advances
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Global cooling drove diversification and warming caused extinction among Carboniferous-Permian fusuline foraminifera
Article Publication Date
20-Jun-2025
New research casts doubt on ancient drying of northern Africa’s climate
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A study led by researchers from Brown University finds that rainfall patterns across northern Africa remained largely stable between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago — a pivotal period in Earth’s climate history when the Northern Hemisphere cooled, and places like Greenland became permanently glaciated.
The new findings, published in Science Advances, challenge long-held interpretations of the climate history of northern Africa, which had suggested that the region dried out considerably during this period. The timing coincides with the appearance of the first known member of the genus Homo in the fossil record, leading to speculation that this drying may have played a significant evolutionary role near the dawn of the human lineage.
But compared to previous studies, this new study analyzed a more direct proxy for rainfall — leaf waxes produced by terrestrial vegetation — and came to a new conclusion.
“Plants produce these waxes during the summer growing season, so they provide a direct signal of summer rainfall over time,” said Bryce Mitsunaga, who led the research while completing his Ph.D. in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard. “We found that precipitation cycles didn’t change much even as all these larger changes in temperature and glaciation were happening.”
Prior evidence for drying across northern Africa came from dust deposits found in ocean sediment cores taken off the West African coast. Ocean sediments preserve fossil microorganisms, plant matter and other markers that help scientists to track climate through deep time. Researchers had found that the amount of continental dust found in the samples increased dramatically in samples dated to between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago, a period known as Pliocene-Pleistocene transition. That increase in dust was interpreted as an expansion of the Saraha Desert brought on by decreasing summer monsoons.
For this new study, the researchers meticulously analyzed leaf waxes in the same cores in which the dust evidence was found. Leaf waxes preserve the isotopic signature of the water plants absorb as they grow, and that signature varies with the amount of rain that falls. Rainwater generally contains two forms of hydrogen: light hydrogen with no neutrons and a heavier form with one neutron. Rainwater with heavier hydrogen falls first. So leaf waxes with a higher ratio of light hydrogen are indicative of more sustained rains.
The leaf wax analysis revealed no significant drying trend at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary. Patterns of summer rainfall remained largely stable on either side of the boundary, indicating that African rainfall patterns were largely unaffected by changes in global climate — decreasing temperature in increasing Northern Hemisphere glaciation — that were occurring at the time.
The research suggests that the dust found in prior studies is attributable to something other than changes in rainfall — perhaps changes in wind patterns or intensity.
The findings have a range of implications for understanding both past and future climate, the researchers say.
Carbon dioxide levels at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary are thought to be similar to where they are today, although heading in opposite directions (increasing today and decreasing then).
“If we can see how global climate influenced what the water cycle is doing at that point in history, it could inform predictions of the future rainfall in this already water-stressed region,” Mitsunaga said.
Jim Russell, a professor in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and senior author of the study, said the results raise new questions about the climate history of northern Africa and its implications for human evolution. The timing of the supposed African drying event coincides with the appearance in the fossil record of early hominid ancestors including homo habilis and Paranthropus, leading to speculation that dryer conditions may have driven adaptations for upright walking in a new foraging environment. But the lack of a drying trend at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary complicates that story.
“This calls for new research to determine when and why African climate and environments transitioned to a drier state and new theories to understand our ancestry,” Russell said.
Additional co-authors of the research were Amy Jewell, Anya J. Crocker and Paul Wilson from the University of Southampton, Solana Buchanan from Rice University, and Timothy Herbert from Brown. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (1322017, 1338553, 1826938, DGE-1144087), the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/X000869/1 and SPITFIRE DTP studentship), a Royal Society Challenge grant (CHG\R1\170054) and a Wolfson Merit Award (WM140011).
