Risk theory: From perception to cognition

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

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Risk response decision-making process.

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Credit: Duojia Lu

The concept of risk plays a central role in modern society, evident from its wide application in daily life. A quick internet search for “risk” yields millions of results, and the term has become part of everyday speech, used casually in informal conversations and extensively in formal contexts.

Institutions publish annual “Top Ten Risks” lists, and universities offer numerous courses on risk management. Entire journals, professional groups, and academic forums are devoted to the topic. The term also appears frequently in laws, regulations, and policy guidelines, with common expressions such as “guard against financial risks,” “control security risks,” and “make decisions based on estimated risks.”

In a new study published in the KeAi’s journal Risk Sciences, sole author Duojia Lu proposed a unified, quantitative framework for understanding risk as a product of human cognition. “Risk is information produced by human thinking,” says Lu. “More precisely, risk is the product of a specific human cognitive process.”

At its core is a descriptive model that connects two stages—risk perception (often spontaneous and intuitive) and risk cognition (conscious and analytical)—through the disparity between target value expectations and realistic value expectations.

“This risk model can be used to describe most risks seen in real life with a unified underlying logic,” explains Lu. “It specifies necessary and sufficient conditions for risk perception and emphasizes that the evaluation of risk involves both global and local assessments of value disparity.”

Additionally, it highlights the role of stakeholders: only self-aware stakeholders who sense the impact of risk on their own values can transform perception into cognition and make rational response decisions.

“This work of mine is based on quantitative, grounding elements “from risk perception to risk cognition” in formal logic and probability, which makes many questions computational,” says Lu. “It also points to implementation pathways: LLMs alone are not proper for the implementation, but they can be combined with other AI technologies such as probabilistic knowledge graphs to provide more dynamic estimates of probability distributions.”

In sum, the framework clarifies definitions and misconceptions across domains, including finance, environmental eesources management and security, and aligns with decision science to open doors to AI-enabled risk management.

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Contact the author: Duojia Lu, Beijing First Huida Risk Management Corp, China

Email: lud@firsthuida.com

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

 

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Journal

Risk Sciences

DOI

10.1016/j.risk.2025.100015 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Risk theory: From perception to cognition.

 

Interactive effects of weather and air pollutants factors on influenza in Huaian, China

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

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 Three-dimensional map of the interaction effect of temperature, PM2.5(Fine Particulate Matter) and O3(Ozone) with temperature on influenza in Huaian, China during 2019–2022. (A) Interaction effect of PM2.5 with temperature. (B) Interaction effect of O3 with temperature.

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Credit: Yongli Cai, et al

Influenza, or the flu, is an infection that affects the respiratory system. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that flu is common around the world, affecting about 5%–10% of adults and 20%–30% of children each year. Seasonal outbreaks can be serious, leading to 3–5 million cases of severe illness and an estimated 290,000 to 650,000 deaths worldwide each year.

Generally, influenza is highly contagious and exhibits strong seasonality, with outbreaks typically peaking during the autumn and winter months. This has prompted researchers to investigate the potential impacts of meteorological factors and air pollution on the transmission of influenza.

A study published in Infectious Disease Modelling used Huaian, China, as a case study to examine the interactive effects of meteorological factors (including temperature, humidity, wind speed, and air pressure) and air pollutants (including AQI, PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2, O3, and CO) on influenza cases from 2019 to 2022. “Our findings revealed that these relationships are far from being simple linear associations,” shares the study's corresponding author Daihai He. “Huaian, located in the transitional zone between the southern warm temperate and northern subtropical regions, has a population of 45.62 million. During the study period, 9,205 influenza cases were reported.”

The researchers performed descriptive statistics for all collected continuous variables and established a distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) to quantify the impact of each factor. “The main findings showed that increasing PM2.5 levels were associated with a decreased risk of influenza at low concentrations (<32 μg/m³, AF = -16.24%), but with an increased risk at high concentrations (>32 μg/m³, AF = 15.90%),” adds He.

Within a certain temperature range, the risk of influenza increased as temperature decreased (AF = 30.91%). Subsequent interaction analysis showed that high temperatures could mitigate the promoting effect of PM2.5. Additionally, low humidity (<40%) during cooler months increases the survival and airborne transmission of viral droplets, while rainfall events may lead to indoor crowding and amplify contact-based transmission.

“Quantifying these lagged relationships can help local public health authorities use humidity and rainfall trends as early warning signals to predict influenza outbreaks in advance, enabling proactive measures such as targeted vaccination campaigns or hospital resource allocation. In addition, outdoor exposure time should be minimized during periods of low temperature and high PM2.5,” says He.

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Contact the author: Yongli Cai. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Nantong University, Nantong, 226019, P.R. China, yonglicai@ntu.edu.cn

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

 

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Journal

Infectious Disease Modelling

DOI

10.1016/j.idm.2025.07.010 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

 

More than echolocation: Bats use both sight and sound to hunt more efficiently in light

Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW)

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Common noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula)

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Credit: Jon A. Juarez/Leibniz-IZW

Bats are nocturnal hunters and use echolocation to orientate themselves by emitting high-frequency ultrasonic sounds in rapid succession and evaluating the calls’ reflections. Yet, they have retained a functional vision for light in the spectrum visible to humans. Scientists have now used miniature light, ultrasound and motion sensors to show that common noctule bats emit fewer echolocation calls when hunting insects in lit environments, but at the same time catch their prey 50 percent faster than in dark surroundings. This suggests that bats combine acoustic and visual information to catch escaping prey during split-second interactions when, the team elaborates in the scientific journal PNAS.

In the brief report article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the team led by Laura Stidsholt from Aarhus University and Christian Voigt from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) describes the experiment in which they equipped 21 common noctules (Nyctalus noctule) with high-tech miniature sensors. The sensors recorded high-resolution data on the light conditions, and the ultrasonic calls and movements of the bats. This enabled the scientists to analyse how the bats’ behaviour varies under different light conditions and between different behaviours (commuting and foraging). To do this, they analysed the brightness of the environment, intervals and pitch of the ultrasonic calls, the frequency and strength of the wing beats and the flight speed of the bats.

Common noctules reduce echolocation when hunting in brighter surroundings

While the analyses show that the bats did not change their echolocation and flight behaviour under changing ambient brightness when commuting between two locations, the scientists found strong differences in foraging flights between lit and dark environments. In brighter environments, the common noctules reduced the rate of their echolocation calls by half compared to dark environments. At the same time, these calls were up to 7 decibels louder. “We show that the bats reduce the acoustic tracking of their prey when enough light is available as complementary sensory information”, says first author Laura Stidsholt, formerly a postdoc in the Leibniz-IZW Department of Evolutionary Ecology and now an assistant professor at Aarhus University. “At the same time, we were able to reveal that this happens not at the expense of hunting efficiency, because the bats flapped their wings more vigorously in light environments and approached at the insects significantly faster than in dark environments.” In the dark, the average foraging speed was 5.2 metres per second, whereas under lit conditions it was 7.9 metres per second.

According to the scientists, half as many echolocation calls at more than 50 percent higher flight speeds imply that additional information may be used for hunting under lit conditions. “We observe that insectivorous bats are very active in the early hours of the night, i.e. at dusk, and can presumably use the combination of echolocation and vision most efficiently then”, concludes Christian Voigt, head of the Leibniz-IZW Department of Evolutionary Ecology. These findings challenge previous assumptions from experts that bats’ vision, especially at dusk, is too limited for precise prey tracking. “Our study provides the first direct evidence that bats rely on multisensory information when foraging, highlighting the remarkable flexibility of their sensory systems”, Voigt concludes. With this investigation, the team scientifically documents the first example of bats combining sensory information to catch escaping prey during split-second interactions.

Common noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula)

Credit

Viktoria Pezzei/Leibniz-IZW

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2515087122 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Wild bats hunt insects faster under lit conditions by integrating acoustic and visual information

Article Publication Date

8-Sep-2025

 

Electric car sharing and smart charging

The path to sustainable mobility

Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa)

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More electric drives systems and fewer cars – this is how emissions from traffic can be significantly reduced. Electric vehicles offer particularly great potential with car sharing. However, not all electricity is created equal: Depending on the time of day, both the energy mix (and thus the resulting CO₂ emissions) and the price for electricity vary. Using data from around 1.5 million users of the car-sharing provider Mobility, Empa researchers analyzed the emission-dependent charging of electric cars. Their result: Low electricity prices – i.e. cost-savings – and low emissions can rarely be achieved simultaneously. Those who look for the cheapest tariff over the course of the year can save an average of 27% of the costs. On the other hand, those who charge in the most climate-friendly way can reduce their emissions by up to 82 percent. “A key challenge is to combine cost and emission targets,” says study author Sven Eggimann. “Ideally, it should also pay off financially to charge electric vehicles in a climate-friendly way.”

Real-time tariff models in high demand

The study's calculations are based on hourly electricity price fluctuations. However, if only rough tariff models with day-night differences are offered, smart charging becomes tricky. “Most people in Switzerland don't know what the actual electricity price or CO₂ emissions are at the moment of charging,” says Empa researcher Elliot Romano. In order to enable charging strategies that protect the environment or reduce costs, users need real-time information – ideally via smart electricity meters. “In countries such as Denmark, users can see the current electricity price via an app and can consciously choose their charging times,” adds Eggimann. “It works – but no one wants to do it manually in the long term.” Thus, what is needed are automated systems that can be adjusted to individual preferences.

Appropriate incentive systems – such as a CO₂ price or corresponding electricity tariffs – are also needed to make charging during low-emission periods worthwhile. Simulations by the Empa team show that with a CO₂ price of around 30 cents per kilogram of CO₂ equivalent, climate-friendly and price-optimized charging can indeed be combined – but only with dynamic tariffs that reflect the real emissions of electricity consumption. “Ideally, charging should be based on voluntary measures supported by incentives,” says Romano. “These include, for example, cheaper electricity tariffs or reserved parking spaces during low-emission periods.” Otherwise, charging access could be restricted or inflexible charging behavior could be subject to additional fees.

Driven more frequently during the day, yet still environmentally friendly

Shared vehicles are on the road more frequently and more often during the day – and therefore need to be charged more overnight, when the electricity mix tends to be less climate-friendly. Nevertheless, according to Eggimann, the total emissions and costs differ only slightly compared to private vehicles. “Although shared cars are used more intensively, short charging breaks and increasingly available fast-charging infrastructure leave enough leeway for low-emission charging.”

Car sharing promises to significantly reduce the number of vehicles on the road. With 25 percent fewer cars in Swiss cities, the strain on the electricity supply in winter could be noticeably reduced. “Car sharing requires less energy overall because there are fewer vehicles on the road,” explains Romano. “Even if the number of kilometers driven annually remains similar to that of privately used cars, other means of transport are increasingly being used in addition to shared vehicles. This relieves the burden on the system as a whole.”

The crux of the matter: wintertime

For a sustainable transport revolution, electric vehicles should therefore not be viewed in isolation from optimized electric charging. “This requires further developments at the regulatory and technical level,” says Eggimann. “In the long term, however, the goal is clear: a charging infrastructure that automatically guides its users to low-emission and cost-effective charging times – without them having to constantly make decisions themselves.”

If Switzerland is to focus more on electric cars in the future, the energy system will have to be adapted accordingly. Even with optimized charging times and a reduced vehicle fleet due to car sharing, the additional electricity demand resulting from the electrification of private mobility remains considerable – with a simulated winter deficit of around one terawatt hour per month in 2050. “This seasonal supply deficit cannot easily be remedied with additional batteries or shifting charging times,” explains Romano. “Electrification is therefore only part of the solution. If you really want to do something for the climate, you should rely on car sharing, public transport – and drive less overall.”

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.4c13270 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Emission-Responsive Charging of Electric Cars and Carsharing to Improve the Security of Electricity Supply for Switzerland

Association of exposure to primary aromatic amines with health risks in China

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

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URINARY CONCENTRATIONS OF PRIMARY AROMATIC AMINES ACROSS CHINA.

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Credit: Yao, Y., Xue, J., Wang, Y., Kannan, K., Zhang, T.

Primary aromatic amines (PAAs) are a group of chemicals widely used in industrial processes, including the production of rubber, foams, dyes, plastics, and food packaging. Although some PAAs are known carcinogens, data on PAA exposure among the Chinese general population are scarce.

To that end, in a study published in the KeAi journal Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, a group of researchers from China reported a nationwide biomonitoring study they have conducted. It is the first comprehensive assessment of human exposure to primary aromatic amines (PAAs) across multiple cities in China, providing critical insights into potential health risks associated with PAA exposure.

In the study, the team of researchers analyzed 457 urine samples collected from residents across 16 cities in China, using ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS).

“We detected 25 PAAs with aniline (ANI), meta-toluidine(m-TD), ortho-toluidine (o-TD), para-toluidine (p-TD), 4-ethoxyaniline (4-EA), and 3,4-diaminoanisole (3,4-DAAS) that are most frequently found,” shares corresponding author  Tao Zhang. “The sum median concentrations of all PAAs ranged from 0.93 to 3.8 ng/mL across the cities.”

Notably, urinary PAA levels significantly varied depending on demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic factors, with higher concentrations observed among smokers, non-adults, and residents from industrialized or ethnically distinct cities.

“The urinary concentrations of ΣPAAs were also significantly correlated with gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita of select Chinese cities,” adds Zhang.

One surprising finding was that although the overall exposure levels for all PAAs appearing low, with hazard quotients remaining below 1, several compounds including 4-EA, m-TD, o-TD and p-TD, showed significant associations with the oxidative DNA damage biomarker 8-OHdG.

“These associations were most evident among non-smokers, suggesting that chronic low-level exposure may still trigger oxidative stress and elevate long-term cancer risks in the general population,” says Zhang. “While our results indicate that the current exposure levels are not immediately alarming, the positive correlations with oxidative stress marker 8-OHdG cannot be ignored.

First author Yanan Yao adds, “Our work provides the first baseline data of PAA exposure for the Chinese general population and highlights that even low concentrations may contribute to DNA damage over time. This points the need to strengthen monitoring and implement targeted public health interventions, particularly for vulnerable groups such as non-adults and non-smokers.”

In sum, this study not only fills a critical knowledge gap but also lays the groundwork for future environmental health policies in China. By highlighting subtle but measurable biological effects, it offers new perspectives on the importance of routine biomonitoring and the potential risks of everyday chemical exposure.

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Contact the author: Tao Zhang, Professor, School of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China, zhangt47@mail.sysu.edu.cn

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

 

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Journal

Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology

DOI

10.1016/j.enceco.2025.07.007 

Article Title

Exposure to carcinogenic primary aromatic amines and associated health risks among the Chinese general population: A nationwide biomonitoring study

COI Statement

Kurunthachalam Kannan served as the editor-in-chief, Tao Zhang as the associate editor, and Jingchuan Xue as a member of editorial board of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology. None of them were involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. All authors declare that there have no competing interests.