Multitasking makes you more likely to fall for phishing emails

Research show how organizations can rethink training to detect malicious messages

Binghamton University

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Picture this: You’re on a Zoom call, Slack is buzzing, three spreadsheets are open and your inbox pings. In that moment of divided attention, you miss the tiny red flag in an email. That’s how phishing sneaks through, and with 3.4 billion malicious emails sent daily, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

A new study involving faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York's School of Management shows that multitasking makes phishing detection significantly worse: When people are overloaded with information, their ability to notice suspicious cues drops. But the study also points to a surprisingly simple solution: timely, lightweight nudges that can redirect attention when it matters most.

“When working with multiple screens, your attention will never be fully focused on one screen or one particular email, especially when handling urgent tasks. If you want to reply to that email quickly, ignoring those red flags in a phishing email is easy,” said SOM Associate Professor Jinglu Jiang, who co-authored the study. “We designed a plan for a very simple notification system to nudge people about the risk factors, so hopefully phishing messages don’t get lost in the shuffle and people can more efficiently detect them.”

The experiments, conducted with 977 participants, simulated common multitasking scenarios. Participants memorized work-related details or numbers (their “primary task”) while being asked to spot phishing messages (a “secondary task”).

Researchers found that phishing detection accuracy plummeted when working memory load was high. However, when researchers introduced brief reminders, participants’ detection performance improved even under heavy multitasking.

These reminders don’t require overhauling workflows. For example, while juggling multiple spreadsheets or messaging apps, an email client might display a colored warning banner at the top of a suspicious message.

During calendar notifications or task switching, a small system nudge such as “this message may be fraudulent — take a second look” could redirect attention. By using these cues at moments when workers are distracted or overloaded, organizations can help employees refocus on phishing detection precisely when they are most vulnerable.

The study also found that not all phishing messages are equal. “Goal activation” cues (like reminders) are especially helpful for gain-framed messages that promise rewards, such as “claim your gift card now.” In contrast, loss-framed messages (“Your account will be locked in 24 hours”) often trigger vigilance on their own, reducing the benefit of an extra reminder.

This insight suggests organizations should avoid blanket reminder strategies that risk overwhelming employees, according to the study. Instead, organizations can design content-aware notifications, like nudges that adapt to the type of phishing attempt.

As phishing grows more sophisticated, Jiang said, organizations that adapt with just-in-time, content-aware interventions will be far better positioned to protect their people and data.

“The techniques used by these phishers become more sophisticated every day; they’re using fake accounts and, in many instances, masking the sender’s identity,” Jiang said. “Our study shows that phishing detection can sometimes plummet under multitasking, and then those threat-based, loss-based messages are hardest to detect, no matter what you do. But those little reminders, nudging methods, can actually be very helpful.”

For employers, IT managers and security trainers, the study offers recommendations:

• Embed nudges into daily tools, from Outlook banners to Slack or Teams integrations.
• Customize by content: Deliver more reminders for tempting, reward-based scams.
• Train for reality: Most phishing training assumes undistracted users, but real-world employees always multitask, so training should reflect that.

The study, “Phishing detection in multitasking contexts: the impact of working memory load, goal activation, and message framing cue on detection performance,” was published in the European Journal of Information Systems. It was co-authored by Xuecong Lu from the University at Albany, and Milena Head and Junyi Yand from McMaster University in Canada.

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Journal

European Journal of Information Systems

DOI

10.1080/0960085X.2025.2548543 

Article Title

Phishing detection in multitasking contexts: the impact of working memory load, goal activation, and message framing cue on detection performance

 

Researchers solve model that can improve sustainable design, groundwater management, nuclear waste storage, and more

Stanford University

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In an approach reminiscent of the classic board game Battleship, Stanford researchers have discovered a way to characterize the microscopic structure of everyday materials such as sand and concrete with high precision.

Heterogeneous, or mixed, materials have components in random locations. For example, concrete – the most abundant human-made material – is composed of cement, water, sand, and coarse stone. Predicting where a particular component appears in a jumbled mosaic of concrete or in Earth’s subsurface can help researchers understand how to design stronger materials, evaluate the long-term viability of potential sites for underground storage of carbon dioxide or nuclear waste, and answer other critical questions about the behavior of complex systems. But previous modeling efforts have fallen short.

In an Oct. 9 study in Physical Review Letters, researchers show a new mathematical approach to unlocking information about the composition of a material based on knowledge of any other random point – like taking a shot in Battleship. The approach is based on a common statistical method known as a Poisson model.

“With this study, we’ve solved the famous Poisson model for heterogenous materials,” said lead study author Alec Shelley, a PhD student in applied physics in Daniel Tartakovsky’s lab at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “Our result could have a broad impact on several areas of science, because heterogenous materials are common and their models almost never have exact solutions.”

Because a vast range of useful properties stem from microstructural arrangements like those in concrete, the new findings could enable the design of better, stronger, cheaper materials.

“What Alec has succeeded in doing in this study is quite remarkable,” said Tartakovsky, a professor of energy science and engineering. “Using his approach, you could design a composite material to your specifications and obtain certain properties based on the proper mixture of components.”

Abundant applications

Looking ahead, Shelley and Tartakovsky are interested in applying the mathematical solution to predict the compositions of several materials. The model reveals “a huge list” of properties tied to microstructure, Shelley said, including hardness, elasticity, tensile strength, electrical and heat conductivity, how quickly a substance moves through another substance, magnetic susceptibility, light transmittance, and more.

With concrete, the approach could guide engineers toward optimizing microstructure. Concrete is full of little air-pocket voids that if well-modeled could be filled with supplementary materials, such as fly ash, slag, or biochar, thereby reducing the overall cement content. That, in turn, would lower carbon dioxide emissions related to cement manufacturing and overall boost the concrete’s strength while lowering costs.

Additional applications include modeling fractured and porous media, a central challenge in groundwater management, as well as in nuclear waste disposal, geothermal energy, and carbon sequestration. “These systems are complex and difficult to model,” said Tartakovsky. “However, the Poisson model’s multipoint functions that we solve in this study offer a new tool for understanding and predicting their behavior.”

Predictions via Poisson

The Poisson model is named after Siméon-Denis Poisson, a French mathematician and physicist from the 1800s. He developed what became known as Poisson statistics, which describe independent events, such as snowflakes landing on one’s tongue or radioactive clicks from a Geiger counter. The Poisson model follows these statistics in describing a space that is broken up into a pattern of shapes with perfectly straight borders, where the borders are rendered independently of each other.

In this way, as a microstructural model, the Poisson model can accurately simulate a wide range of heterogenous materials, including everything from the appearance and distribution of ice fragments on a frozen lake to the marbling in a juicy steak.

Shelley described a simple way to create a realization of a Poisson model from scratch, which he did often as part of his work for the new study: Take a piece of paper and draw random lines across it to create disjointed regions separated by the lines as borders, then color those regions arbitrarily to get a mosaic.

The new research proceeds from that setup by then metaphorically placing a piece of paper over the colorful mosaic. Poking a single hole in that top paper reveals a certain color of the mosaic beneath. That information, in turn, can be mathematically leveraged through multipoint correlations to predict the mosaic pattern with increasing accuracy, based on knowing some context of the mosaic and poking more holes, what colors subsequent holes would likely reveal – as one would for a heterogenous material. “It’s like we’ve created the perfect Battleship player for guessing colors in this model,” Shelley said.

In real life, predicting where certain colors will appear equates to credibly knowing where components are in a heterogenous material’s microstructure. “If you can predict that microstructure and know where stuff is located microscopically, you can intentionally control macroscopic properties related to it,” said Shelley. “That’s what this paper contributes.”

To arrive at the mathematical solution for the Poisson model’s multipoint correlations, Shelley drew upon tools in the field of stochastic geometry, which concerns random point patterns. Initially, Shelley relied on just pen and paper, sketching points, lines, and formulas in a notebook with a four-color pen. To evaluate his solution for two points that have known colors, he added eight different numbers and variables by hand. For three points, though, the number-crunching extended to 128 different terms, and for four points, he turned to computer simulations, lest he spend weeks or months on end doing manual calculations.

According to Shelley, the seemingly painstaking work was anything but. “I love math, and I was a math double major in undergrad, so I had the knowledge to go in and try this problem out,” he said.

Shelley is a doctoral student in the School of Humanities and Sciences. The research was supported by an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Fellowship and Sandia National Laboratories.

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Journal

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/325k-g4dr 

Article Title

Multipoint Correlations in Poisson Media

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2025

 

Biochar helps composting go greener by cutting greenhouse gas emissions

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Biochar amendments mitigate trace gas emissions in organic waste composting: a meta-analysis

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Credit: Jingfan Xu, Zhengqin Xiong

A global study has found that adding biochar to organic waste composting can significantly reduce emissions of potent greenhouse gases, offering a promising pathway for sustainable waste recycling and climate change mitigation.

Researchers from Nanjing Agricultural University and Sichuan University of Arts and Science analyzed data from 123 published studies covering more than 1,000 composting experiments worldwide. Their meta-analysis revealed that biochar reduced methane emissions by an average of 54 percent, nitrous oxide by 50 percent, and ammonia by 36 percent, while showing no significant effect on carbon dioxide release.

“Biochar acts like a sponge that improves aeration, absorbs harmful gases, and stabilizes nutrients,” said lead author Jingfan Xu. “This not only helps the environment but also produces higher-quality compost.”

Biochar is a carbon-rich material created by heating organic matter such as crop residues or wood in limited oxygen. When mixed into compost, it can alter microbial activity, enhance oxygen flow, and adsorb reactive nitrogen compounds that would otherwise be lost as ammonia or nitrous oxide. The new study is the first to quantitatively compare how different composting conditions and biochar characteristics influence these gas emissions.

The researchers found that the amount of biochar added is critical. Using 10 to 20 percent biochar by dry weight achieved the strongest reductions in methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia. However, too little or too much biochar reduced the benefits. The compost’s physical and chemical properties also played a role: neutral to slightly alkaline pH (7.5–8.5), moderate moisture (55–65 percent), and low electrical conductivity favored optimal performance.

“By fine-tuning composting conditions, we can make organic waste recycling much more climate-friendly,” said senior author Professor Zhengqin Xiong. “Our analysis provides practical guidelines for farmers and waste managers to maximize the environmental benefits of biochar.”

Beyond emission reductions, biochar-enriched compost conserved nitrogen, improved pH balance, and helped stabilize carbon in the final product. These findings suggest that integrating biochar into composting systems could support both waste management and agricultural sustainability.

 

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Journal Reference: Xu J, Xiong Z. 2025. Biochar amendments mitigate trace gas emissions in organic waste composting: a meta-analysis. Nitrogen Cycling 1: e005  https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/nc-0025-0003  

 

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About Nitrogen Cycling:
Nitrogen Cycling is a multidisciplinary platform for communicating advances in fundamental and applied research on the nitrogen cycle. It is dedicated to serving as an innovative, efficient, and professional platform for researchers in the field of nitrogen cycling worldwide to deliver findings from this rapidly expanding field of science.

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DOI

10.48130/nc-0025-0003 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Biochar amendments mitigate trace gas emissions in organic waste composting: a meta-analysis

The dose-dependent effects of dissolved biochar on C. elegans: Insights into the physiological and transcriptomic responses

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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image: 

The dose-dependent effects of dissolved biochar on C. elegans: insights into the physiological and transcriptomic responses

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Credit: Xinrui Wang, Jie Li, Lan Luo, Gang Li, Yan Xu, Weibin Ruan & Guilong Zhang

Researchers have uncovered how dissolved biochar—tiny carbon particles derived from burning plant material—affects soil nematodes, shedding light on both benefits and risks to these important ecosystem players. The study focused on the common laboratory worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, revealing that the impact of dissolved biochar strongly depends on the amount present in the environment.

The team found that when nematodes were exposed to low concentrations of dissolved biochar, their growth and physical activity increased. These smaller doses likely functioned as extra nutrients or provided mild stimulation that encouraged development. However, higher levels of biochar led to a slowdown in growth and triggered signs of metabolic stress, as demonstrated by changes in both the worms' physiology and gene activity.

To understand how these effects occur, scientists tracked the worms' movement, growth, and reproductive patterns, and carried out RNA sequencing to analyze thousands of genes. They observed a "hormetic effect": lower doses helped nematodes thrive, while higher doses disrupted normal metabolic and cellular functions, including pathways involved in stress resistance and even cell death. Importantly, key genes related to growth, stress response, and movement were sensitive to biochar concentration, emphasizing the complexity of the molecular response.

The findings serve as a timely warning to agricultural decision-makers. While biochar is widely promoted for its profits in soil health and carbon sequestration, its dissolved fraction can travel through soils and interact directly with living organisms—sometimes in ways that may harm non-target species. This work highlights the need for careful dosing and oversight when deploying biochar in real-world agricultural systems to ensure safe, sustainable practices.

Researchers recommend further exploration of biochar's long-term impacts on soil nematodes and other wildlife to better understand how best to balance soil restoration with ecological safety. The study illustrates the growing importance of molecular biology tools in environmental risk assessment and sustainable agriculture innovation.

 

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Journal Reference:  Wang, X., Li, J., Luo, L. et al. The dose-dependent effects of dissolved biochar on C. elegans: insights into the physiological and transcriptomic responses. Biochar 7, 100 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-025-00493-9  

 

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About Biochar

Biochar is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field. 

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Journal

Biochar

DOI

10.1007/s42773-025-00493-9 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The dose-dependent effects of dissolved biochar on C. elegans: insights into the physiological and transcriptomic responses