Displaced girls and young women in informal urban settlements in Kampala, Uganda, whose first sexual experience was nonconsensual often become trapped in cycles of sexual and physical violence, a study led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign social work professor Moses Okumu found.

Concordia researchers proposed a solar-powered “15-minute city” model that blends renewable energy, urban farming, and EV transport to reduce emissions by 98%. Their scalable framework uses rooftop gardens, local markets, and solar-charged vehicles to build resilient, low-carbon neighbourhoods within walking distance.

Humans can “catch” fear from robots, new research has shown. The findings – by a team of psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University of British Columbia – shed new light on how emotions can spread through touch, with implications for human relationships, mental health, and future technologies such as virtual reality and wearable devices. The research was published in the journal Emotion.

The social and humanitarian impacts of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s aspirational goal of a 1.5 degrees Celsius rise in global mean temperature remain largely unknown, despite robust knowledge of physical climate impacts. Andrew Kruczkiewicz and colleagues outline five factors that policymakers and planners should take into account when considering the human impacts of climate overshoot.

Thinking requires energy: a new study shows how our brain metabolism sets the limits of thinking. Researchers explain why cognitive models remain incomplete without considering biological resources.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo developed an experimental method to induce a strong physiological response linked to psychological pressure by making participants aim for a streak of success in a task. Their findings suggest this approach reproduces pressurelike conditions in a laboratory setting more effectively than traditional methods, affording easier access to the study of this state. That in turn could open up research into how pressure influences human performance in physical and intellectual tasks.