New Research Details ‘Human and Economic Toll’ of US Abortion Bans

“Abortion bans don’t stay in exam rooms,” said the Center for Reproductive Rights president. “They reshape communities, workplaces, and state economies.”


Abortion rights protestors demonstrate outside the US Supreme Court as oral arguments are delivered in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic on April 2, 2025 in Washington DC.
(Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Mar 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With attention directed at President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants across the United States and various international conflicts, including the assault on Iran, there hasn’t been much prominent news coverage in recent weeks about a key issue of the 2024 campaign—GOP abortion bans—but people nationwide continue to endure the impacts of such policies, as revealed in a Monday report from the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Price of Safety: Stories of Abortions Denied, Careers Disrupted, and States Left Behind features various profiles demonstrating “the human and economic toll” of abortion bans, which right-wing policymakers have enacted or intensified since the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.

The anthology uses stories from patients, doctors, business leaders, and others to “show the real-world consequences of laws that criminalize standard medical care,” said Nancy Northup, the center’s president, in a statement. “Abortion bans don’t stay in exam rooms. They reshape communities, workplaces, and state economies. As long as politicians keep restricting care, families will keep moving, clinicians will keep leaving, and states will keep watching their competitive edge slip away.”

“Our daughter’s spine was severely abnormal, her brain hadn’t formed correctly, and she only had one kidney... I did everything by the book medically, but the experience still made me feel like a criminal for seeking evidence-based care for a lethal fetal diagnosis.”

Dani Mathisen, “a Fort Worth native from a family of physicians,” discovered during a routine anatomy scan with her OB-GYN, who is also her aunt, that she needed an abortion, 18 weeks into a planned pregnancy. As she explained, “Our daughter’s spine was severely abnormal, her brain hadn’t formed correctly, and she only had one kidney.”

Texas had banned abortions after six weeks and allowed private citizens to sue anyone who helped a pregnant person access care. According to Mathisen: “My mom, also a doctor, stepped in anyway. She found a clinic in New Mexico, booked the flights and hotel, called the staff, and handed us an envelope of cash. We paid for the abortion with cash out of fear of leaving a paper trail tying Texas credit cards to out-of-state abortion care. I did everything by the book medically, but the experience still made me feel like a criminal for seeking evidence-based care for a lethal fetal diagnosis.”

“I had always imagined building my career in Texas,” she added. “After this, I chose an OB-GYN residency in Hawaii because I needed full-spectrum training—including abortion care—and I couldn’t get that in Texas.”

Mathisen wasn’t alone in fleeing that state. Amanda Ducach, CEO and co-founder of an artificial intelligence startup focused on women’s health, shared how she “built Ema in Houston, and Texas shaped our earliest users and our mission,” but when Roe fell, she “was seven and a half months into a high-risk pregnancy.”

“Suddenly, even if I were to face a life-threatening emergency, I wasn’t sure I’d receive timely care. My doctors weren’t sure either,” Ducach detailed. “It also changed how I thought about my company, and our responsibility to the people who rely on us through our partner platforms.”

“After months of legal review and deep conversations with my team, I decided to relocate both my family and Ema’s headquarters to Massachusetts where abortion access is protected under state law,” she continued. “I also gave employees the option to work from any location, which brought immediate relief.”

“Suddenly, even if I were to face a life-threatening emergency, I wasn’t sure I’d receive timely care. My doctors weren’t sure either.”

Elizabeth Weller also left Texas. She said that “the decision cost us $25,000+ in income, distanced us from our community, and upended the future we had envisioned. But after the pregnancy complications I faced, it was painfully clear: Texas no longer provided the basic medical care necessary to have a child.”

So did Dr. Judy Levison, who spent over two decades practicing and teaching obstetrics and gynecology in the state. After “watching abortion bans turn routine medical care into a legal minefield,” she retired, moved to Colorado, and “began volunteering with an abortion support group.”

It’s not just Texas. Kayla Smith said that she left Idaho—“where I’d lived for 13 years, gone to college, met my husband, built our careers, and wanted to grow our family”—for Washington state. She explained that just 48 hours after Idaho’s ban took effect and “19 weeks into my pregnancy with my second child, we discovered that our baby had a severe, inoperable heart defect.”

Tracy Young, “a first-generation American, a mother of four, and the co-founder of two technology companies,” highlighted how abortion bans also outlaw proper treatment for people experiencing miscarriages. While she is based in San Francisco, California, Young began “losing a pregnancy I had deeply wanted” while traveling for work in Louisiana.

“Back home in California, my doctors told me that my body had not completed the miscarriage naturally. They prescribed misoprostol, and when that wasn’t enough, performed a surgical procedure to prevent infection and complications,” she said. “Today, abortion bans have made that same care illegal or heavily restricted in many states, including Louisiana where I miscarried.”

Another business leader, Chris Webb, CEO and co-founder of ChowNow—an online ordering platform with offices in California and Missouri—publicly supported abortion access in 2019 by signing on to a coalition’s “Don’t Ban Equality” letter. After Roe‘s reversal, he sent out a company-wide email disclosing a girlfriend’s abortion and offering to personally cover the travel costs of any employee who needed such care.

“Leaders owe employees honesty about where they stand—and action when basic rights are on the line,” he said. “Abortion policies aren’t just about healthcare. They’re good for employers and good for people. When more companies speak up, there is safety in numbers. And in the long run, protecting your team protects your business—and is just the right thing to do.”

“Reproductive rights are so crucial that Americans are uprooting their lives to ensure they have access to care.”

The report’s release coincided with the publication of a paper adapted from one prepared for the center by researchers who estimated “the market value of reproductive rights as capitalized into US housing markets.”

The paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that “total abortion bans reduced rents by an average of 2.2% from July 2022 through June 2025, with the effect reaching 4.0% in the most recent year. Over the same horizon, bans increased rental vacancy rates by an average of 1.1 percentage points, with the effect reaching 1.8 percentage points in the most recent year. Estimates for home values and homeowner vacancy rates are similar in magnitude but less precise.”

The center’s senior director, Julia Taylor Kennedy, said that “the economic data and the firsthand accounts are telling the same story... Reproductive rights are so crucial that Americans are uprooting their lives to ensure they have access to care. That means that, for employers and policymakers, abortion bans carry measurable workforce and competitiveness implications.”

Despite such findings, Republican state and federal policymakers continue to restrict reproductive freedom. In recent months, the Trump administration quietly imposed an abortion ban at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and expanded the global gag rule.

Meanwhile, at the state level last month, Tennessee Republicans introduced legislation to make abortion a capital offense, and a sheriff’s office in South Carolina launched an investigation into a fetus, estimated to be just 13-15 weeks, found at a water treatment plant, highlighting the rising criminalization of pregnancy loss.

Last week, the Marion County Superior Court granted a permanent injunction preventing enforcement of Indiana’s near-total abortion ban, and Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita swiftly appealed.

DEI

World Bank says women’s economic rights often exist only on paper while enforcement lags

/ StockSnap via Pixabay

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By Clare Nuttall in Glasgow March 8, 2026

Laws designed to give women equal economic opportunities are only partly enforced worldwide, leaving billions unable to fully participate in the global economy and costing countries as much as a fifth of their potential output, the World Bank said in a report.

The lender’s latest ‘Women, Business and the Law’ report found that although many governments have adopted legislation supporting gender equality, the reality on the ground is markedly different. On average, countries score 67 out of 100 for the strength of laws promoting women’s economic equality, but enforcement drops that score to 53, while the systems needed to implement those rights score just 47.

“On paper, most countries are doing reasonably well,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s chief economist and senior vice president for development economics, quoted in a press release from the development bank. “But when it comes to enforcing the laws, the average score drops to 53. And when the systems needed to implement those rights are assessed, the adequacy score is just 47.”

Only about 4% of women worldwide live in economies where legal frameworks offer nearly full equality with men, the report found.

Lost opportunities 

Gill said the gap between legal commitments and implementation represented a huge lost opportunity for growth, particularly in developing economies.

“A paper that the Yale-World Bank team produced last year finds that treating women worse than men — through lousy laws, incompetent implementation and poor support services — can cost a country between 15% and 20% of its economic output,” he told a webinar to launch the report.

“Imagine if you take 15% to 20% of a country’s GDP and just dump the money in the ocean. That is pretty much what these countries are doing today.”

The findings highlight the economic consequences of barriers that limit women’s participation in the labour market or prevent them from entering higher-skilled, better-paid jobs.

“It is not just because you keep women out of the labour force,” Gill said. “It is also because you keep talented and skilled women out of demanding, and hence well-paid jobs… you’re really leaving a lot of skills and talent on the sidelines.”

“Equality begins with safety”

The report measures women’s economic participation across 10 areas including safety, employment, entrepreneurship, asset ownership and retirement security.

One of the most significant gaps identified is protection from violence. Norman Loayza, director of the World Bank’s Policy Indicators Group, said weak legal frameworks and enforcement undermine women’s ability to work consistently.

“True equality begins with safety,” Loayza said. “Whether at home, at work, or in public, women deserve protection to thrive.”

“Globally, we’re falling short. We have only a third of the safety laws we need, and even then, enforcement is failing 80% of the time.”

Childcare policies were also identified as a major barrier to women’s participation in the workforce. Less than half of the 190 economies analysed offer financial or tax support to help families afford childcare, while in low-income countries just 1% of the support mechanisms needed are in place.

Reliable childcare is often one of the strongest factors determining whether mothers can remain in employment or move into higher-productivity jobs.

Demographic shift

The report comes as developing economies prepare for a major demographic shift.

Tea Trumbic, manager of the Women, Business and the Law project and lead author of the report, said the coming decade would bring an unprecedented influx of young workers.

“Over the next decade, 1.2bn young people — half of them girls — will enter the workforce,” she told the webinar.

“Many will come of age in regions where women face the biggest barriers, and where the GDP boost that would result from their participation is most needed.”

Ensuring equal opportunities for women entering the labour market is therefore both a social and economic priority, Trumbic added.

“Ensuring equal opportunity for women here - and everywhere - benefits societies as a whole, not just women. It’s an economic must-have, in short, not just a nice-to-have.”

The report’s broader analysis suggests that removing barriers to women’s economic participation could increase national GDP by 15% to 20% in many countries.

“No economy can unlock its full potential while billions of women remain legally barred from equal economic opportunity,” Trumbic said.

Progress but uneven reforms

Despite persistent gaps, the report notes some progress. Over the past two years, 68 economies introduced 113 reforms aimed at expanding women’s economic opportunities, particularly in areas such as entrepreneurship and safety.

Sub-Saharan Africa recorded the largest number of reforms, with 33 changes enacted.

Several countries in the Middle East and North Africa also made advances. Egypt was identified as the world’s top reformer over the period, increasing its legal equality score by nearly 10 points through measures including extending paid parental leave and mandating equal pay.

Egypt, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Oman and Somalia were among the countries implementing reforms to improve women’s economic participation. 

"In Jordan, we believe that advancing women’s economic rights is a direct driver for economic growth and job creation," said Jordan's Minister of Social Development, Wafa Bani Mustafa. "The political will has enabled us to draw a clear reform plan to enhance women’s status in Jordan and facilitate their entry into the labor force. 

Still, progress remains uneven across regions. “The gaps are the biggest in the parts of the world where the needs are the most urgent,” Gill said, pointing to North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where populations are expanding and millions of young people are expected to enter the labour market.

Untapped talent

World Bank officials said the global economy is missing out on a vast reservoir of talent because women remain underrepresented in many sectors and leadership roles.

“We face now in the world this sort of a dual problem,” Loayza said. “For advanced economies, we have a shrinking workforce. For young economies, developing economies, we have an expanding labour force.”

In that context, increasing women’s participation is essential for growth. “Women don’t just fill roles,” he said. “They actually create jobs… through their entrepreneurial spirit and their leadership ability.”

With roughly 3.9bn women worldwide, Loayza said their economic potential remained largely untapped. “We have this massive pool of talent that we are not tapping sufficiently,” he said. “These are 3.9bn women whose power could be leveraged to increase the economy massively.”

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Thousands march for women's rights and against Mideast war

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in cities across the world Sunday to mark International Women's Day and, in some cases, denounce the war in the Middle East.


Issued on: 08/03/2026 - RFI

'Hysterical: woman with an opinion,' read one sign as thousands marched for women's rights Sunday © Alex MARTIN / AFP
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From Rio in Brazil to cities across France, Spain and other European countries, demonstrators marched to demand women's rights across a range of issues.

In France, rape survivor Gisele Pelicot led a women's rights march in Paris, one of several demonstrations in French cities.

In Spain thousands of people came out in cities across the country to denounce violence against women © Thomas COEX / AFP


Thousands also marched in cities across Spain to protest gender-based violence and call for an end to the war in the Middle East.

The Paris march was one of some 150 demonstrations held to mark International Women's Day in France, with events taking place in other cities including Bordeaux, Lille, and Marseille.

"We won't give up," Pelicot, 73, told the crowd as she joined thousands in the French capital marching for women's rights, economic equality, and an end to sexual violence.

'

It's not an isolated case, it's the patriarchy': protesters marched in Madrid © Thomas COEX / AFP


Pelicot became a global symbol in the fight against sexual violence after she waived her right to anonymity during the 2024 trial of her ex-husband and dozens of strangers who raped her while she was unconscious.

Last week, she received the Order of Civil Merit from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid.

'No to war'

Spanish protesters were denouncing both violence against women and the war in the Middle East sparked by last weekend's US-Israeli strikes.

Demonstrations took place in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Granada, Bilbao, and San Sebastian, among other cities.

Women marched in the Chilean capital © RODRIGO ARANGUA / AFP


Madrid hosted two demonstrations in the centre of the Spanish capital, one for transgender rights and the other for the legalisation and regulation of prostitution.

Slogans written on placards at the protests included "No to war" and "Anti-fascist feminists against imperialist war".

Alexa Rubio, a 30-year-old Mexican living in Spain, cited pay and harassment as some of the most urgent issues.

Thousands marched in Rio, Brazil © Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP


"And in my country, gender-based violence, because women are being killed for being women," she told AFP.

Yolanda Diaz, Spain's second deputy prime minister, spoke out against the war in the Middle East at a Madrid rally.

"It is within our power to stop the war, to stop the barbarity, and to win rights," she said.

"We proclaim ourselves in defence of peace, in defence of the Iranian people, in defence of Iranian women," she added, referring to the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Sanchez, Spain's socialist prime minister, has drawn the ire of the US administration for refusing the use of Spain's military bases for strikes against Iran.

In Latin America, women marched in cities in Brazil, Chile and Mexico and other countries.

"When one woman advances, we all advance," said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in a speech.

(AFP)

Pelicot joins Paris march as rallies across world mark International Women's Day

IN PICTURES


Gisèle Pelicot joined tens of thousands of protesters in the French capital on Sunday as women across the world marked International Women's Day with rallies for equal rights, female empowerment and an end to gender-based discrimination. Many events also denounced the war in the Middle East sparked by US-Israeli strikes.


Issued on: 08/03/2026
By: FRANCE 24

Women dance during a demonstration marking International Women's Day in Madrid on March 8, 2026. © Thomas Coex, AFP

Officially recognised by the United Nations in 1977, International Women’s Day is commemorated in different ways and to varying degrees in places around the world. Protests are usually political, rooted in women’s efforts to improve their rights as workers

.

South Korean activists gathered a day ahead of International Women's Day in Seoul, on March 7, with banners reading "Complete the revolution of light". © Ahn Young-joon, AP

2026 marks the 115th year of International Women's Day. This years' theme is “Give to Gain”, with a focus on fundraising for organisations focused on women's issues and less tangible forms of giving such as teaching peers, celebrating women and “challenging discrimination”.

Women's rights activists on Sunday rallied in Karachi, Pakistan and shouted slogans during a protest in Istanbul, Turkey. In China and Russia, vendors sold flowers wrapped in pink and local workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, lifted fists and umbrellas as they celebrated.

Local workers take part in International Women's Day celebrations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. © Heng Sinith, AP

International Women’s Day is a global celebration – and a call to action – marked by demonstrations, mostly of women, around the world, ranging from combative protests to charity runs. Some celebrate the economic, social and political achievements of women, while others urge governments to guarantee equal pay, access to health care, justice for victims of gender-based violence and education for girls.

It is an official holiday in more than 20 countries, including Burkina Faso, Ukraine, Russia and Cuba, the only one in the Americas. In the United States, March is celebrated as Women’s History Month.

Women's right activists rally in Karachi, Pakistan. © Ali Raza, AP


As in other aspects of life, social media plays an important role during International Women’s Day, particularly by amplifying attention to demonstrations held in countries with repressive governments toward women and dissent in general.

Roughly 20,000 people attended a march for International Women’s Day in Berlin. German news agency dpa reported Sunday that the crowd was double the amount police had expected. Speakers at the event decried violence against women in Germany, as well as gender discrimination.

Protesters march in Berlin under the motto "feminist, in solidarity, unionised". © Christian Mang, Reuters


In Brazil, Sunday’s marches for International Women’s Day served as a rallying cry against gender-based violence, fuelled by the latest case to outrage the country involving the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Copacabana.

The case in Rio de Janeiro’s famed, beachside neighbourhood took place in January, but gained national traction this week when four suspects handed themselves over to authorities.

READ MORETackling domestic violence: ‘If you ask the right questions at the right time, you will save lives’

At least 15 protests were planned across the country, with organisers calling for the defense of women’s lives and an end to femicide.

Women on stilts, from the collective Gigantes na Luta, hold plastic sunflowers in the air during a march in Rio de Janeiro. © Pilar Olivares, Reuters


Globally, a woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes by a family member or partner, according to UN figures, and the number of women being exposed to conflict has significantly jumped over the past decade.

A woman holds a banner reading "Feminists against imperialist war" at a protest in Chile's Santiago, echoing condemnation of the Middle East conflict at rallies around the world. © Rodrigo Arangua, AFP


Some say commemorating International Women’s Day is now more important than ever, as women have lost gains made in the last century, among them the 2022 decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn a nationwide right to abortion, which ended constitutional protections that had been in place nearly 50 years.

The US decision on abortion has reverberated across Europe’s political landscape, forcing the issue back into public debate in some countries at a time when far-right nationalist parties are gaining influence.

Members of the feminist group "Les Rosies" hold their fist in the air at a rally in Paris

. © Kenzo Tribouillard, AFP


In Paris, more than a hundred thousands people joined a rally attended by Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband was jailed last year for drugging and raping her and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious over nearly a decade.

Pelicot became an international symbol of resilience after waiving her anonymity and declaring that shame belonged with her abusers, not with her.

Gisèle Pelicot (centre) pictured at the Paris march marking International Women's Day. © Thibault Camus, AP


(FRANCE 24 with AP)

SOCIALIST ORIGINS OF IWD

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2024/03/clara-zetkin-socialist-origins-of.html

UK Women for Palestine!

MARCH 4, 2026

Kathryn Johnson previews an important meeting next week.

As war spreads, the Starmer leadership weakens and the assaults on our own democracy grow, we must reach out to a wider audience in the UK and do more to stand firm with the Palestinians. 

While most Britons express horror at the impact of the conflict on civilians, far fewer know about the century-old responsibility and ongoing complicity of British Governments in the occupation and destruction of Palestine.  Most were concerned that the Israeli hostages were returned but few know of the almost 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails – more than double pre-October 2023 – of the 4,000 held with no charge, and no trial, and that at least 400 are children.  Many are concerned about rising tensions resulting in this country but few know of the strength of the Israeli lobby in our political system. 

Awareness of the history and current role of Britain in Palestine has spread through our magnificent national marches and persistent local action, but too many still feel confident to say that Palestine has nothing to do with us.  The mass movement standing with Palestinians is the biggest and longest lasting this country has seen, but too many are ready to complain that the marches are disrupting town centres.  Despite our festivals celebrating democratic rights in this country and the remembering of those who gave their lives to achieve them, far too few understand the tightening of restrictions on those rights.

So, we need to do more.  We need to find new and more creative ways of reaching out to new audiences, of linking our own struggles over the cost of living and underfunded, crumbling public services with the unimaginable suffering of the Palestinians fighting for their lives, their homes and their land.

Labour and Palestine have an amazing group of women speaking on Monday 9th March about the ongoing struggle for a Free Palestine as part of International Women’s Week activities.  Please join them at 6.30 pm here.

Kathryn Johnson is an activist with Labour and Palestine.

UK

‘Ministers have vowed to protect women, but aid cuts will abandon them’

Jack McConnell 8th March, 2026

Photo: House of Commons

International Women’s Day always brings strong pledges from ministers to protect, support, and empower women and girls, particularly in conflict affected countries or those where girls are excluded from school due to poverty or banned altogether. Yet, this year, within weeks, the government will implement drastic cuts that will impact that work – cuts to development funding proportionally heavier than those imposed by Trump in the USA.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has recognised violence against women and girls in conflict as an “international emergency” and expressed her determination to force the promises to eliminate it up the global agenda for action. She told the BBC recently: “In the Foreign Office, I am making it now a priority to us in our foreign policy.”

But the sad truth is that her efforts will be fatally undermined if the UK goes ahead with disastrous funding cuts to aid and development that will close down the projects that are so badly needed to stem this emergency – cuts to be confirmed in the next few weeks, unless ministers can be persuaded to pull back.

I recently returned from my regular engagement with the Bangsamoro Peace Process in the Philippines. Twelve years after their Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, a sustained peace, supported by the UK, is changing lives.

That agreement was the first in the world to be signed by a female chief negotiator, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer. Women have been central to the progress made since and the government of the Philippines has now created the Women, Peace and Security Centre of Excellence for Asia/Pacific. The UK supports this because we know peace agreements that include women are 35 percent more likely to last for a generation.

It is a rare example of successful peacebuilding in our world today. But this is not the norm.

Across the world, conflicts are killing women and girls in record numbers and inflicting sexual violence on a terrifying scale, leaving survivors without care after rape and pushing girls into the misery of forced marriage. From Myanmar to Sudan, Nigeria to Haiti, Ukraine to the Middle East, conflict is the brutal reality of life for one in every 17 people on the planet. And, as always, women suffer the most.

Yet, a grave setback is unfolding as the UK, which for so long championed international efforts to address the horrors of conflict for women, pulls the rug away when help is needed more than ever. The cuts that will strip 40 percent from the UK’s international development budget risk abandoning women raped in conflict, women denied access to sexual and reproductive health services, and girls left languishing in refugee camps when they should be in school. Already, the UK has cancelled funding for up to 50 women peacebuilding organisations it intended to support.

The UK Integrated Security Fund will no longer fund Women, Peace and Security programmes and may even stop funding specific gender advisers. Funding has run out for the much-admired initiative launched by William Hague and Angelina Jolie to prevent sexual violence in conflict zones, the UK’s flagship programme to end female genital mutilation is facing the axe, and the list goes on. The chasm between rhetoric and the grim reality grows wider.

The Prime Minister should think again before this becomes the first Labour government ever to spend less on international development than the Tories.  And whether the government decides to reverse these cuts or not, it must be clear within any budget that investing in women and girls, especially in conflict zones, is a clear priority for the UK again.

Jack McConnell

Lord McConnell, Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale, was First Minister of Scotland between 2001 and 2007 and is a Labour peer in the House of Lords. He is the Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women Peace and Security and the former UK Special Representative on Peacebuilding.

View all articles by Jack McConnell

 

Scientists unveil universal aging mechanism in glassy materials

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

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"Glass" has a unique and distinct meaning in physics—one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and continues to change extremely slowly over time. Examples include window glass, plastics, metallic glasses, spin glasses (i.e., magnetic systems), and even some biological and computational systems.

When a liquid is cooled very quickly—a process called quenching—it doesn't have time to organize into a crystal but becomes stuck in a disordered state far from equilibrium. Its properties—like stiffness and structure—slowly evolve through a process called "aging."

Now, a research team from the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a new theoretical framework for understanding the universal aging behavior of glassy materials.

The study reveals a fundamental mechanism that governs how glasses—from simple spin systems to complex network glasses such as amorphous silica—slowly evolve over time.

To understand the aging process, the researchers developed a generalized trap model (GTM) grounded in the material's energy landscape: a multidimensional map of all possible configurations and the energy barriers that separate them. According to the GTM, aging is driven by activated hopping across these energy barriers. A universal distribution of barrier heights, incorporating crucial finite-size corrections, governs the system's slow, nonequilibrium dynamics.

The theory predicts that during nonequilibrium aging, the system undergoes "weak ergodicity breaking" at a temperature higher than the conventional glass transition temperature. In statistical physics, "ergodic" refers to a system that explores all possible configurations consistent with its energy. In contrast, the term "ergodicity breaking" refers to an equilibrium system becoming trapped in a subset of possible states, unable to explore all configurations. Weak ergodicity breaking occurs in nonequilibrium systems and describes a system that continues to evolve but remains correlated with its initial configuration even after prolonged aging.

By applying the GTM to four distinct models, including the random energy model (a spin glass), the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen model (a simple atomic glass), and amorphous silica (a network glass), the researchers demonstrated that glass aging behavior follows universal mathematical laws. A key finding is that the logarithmic decay of the two-time correlation function, a hallmark of aging, is directly linked to the finite size of "activation clusters," or groups of particles that rearrange together during the aging process.

In the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen model, this insight allowed the researchers to extract a static length scale from the nonequilibrium dynamics, extending its observable growth range from a mere factor of two to three to a full order of magnitude. This provides strong supporting evidence for the random first-order transition (RFOT) theory, a leading theory of the glass transition.

This work provides a unified phase diagram that describes both ergodic and weakly non-ergodic phases in spin and structural glasses, offering a powerful tool for understanding these ubiquitous yet complex materials. These findings have implications not only for materials science but also for other complex systems, such as protein dynamics and even the training of deep learning algorithms, where similar slow relaxation processes are observed.

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aec4416 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Universal activated aging and weak ergodicity breaking in spin and structural glasses

Forest Damage In Europe To Rise By Around 20% By 2100 Even If Warming Is Limited To 2°C

 March 8, 2026  

By Eurasia Review

Forest damage in Europe caused by wildfires, storms and bark beetle outbreaks is projected to increase compared to recent decades under all analysed climate scenarios, according to a new international study, published in the scientific journal Science, with contributions from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). 

Even in a scenario with warming limited to roughly 2°C, annually disturbed forest area could rise from about 180,000 to roughly 216,000 hectares per year by the end of the century, compared to the already unprecedented levels of disturbances from 1986 to 2020. In a scenario in which fossil fuel use continues to increase, annually disturbed forest area could double, reaching nearly 370,000 hectares per year by the end of the century.

“In the future, Europe’s forests are likely to absorb less carbon,” says Christopher Reyer, scientist at PIK and co-author of the study. “If forests take up less carbon, or potentially even release more than they absorb, this increases pressure on other sectors such as transport and agriculture to reduce their emissions more rapidly. At the same time, forest management needs to focus more strongly on building resilient forests.”

According to the study, forests in Southern and Western Europe will be particularly affected and will undergo the strongest changes in forest disturbance. Northern Europe is expected to be less severely impacted overall, though hotspots of future forest damage are also likely to emerge there. The study was led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).