Sina Sajjadi, Pourya Toranj Simin, Mehrzad Shadmangohar, Basak Taraktas, Ulya Bayram, Maria V. Ruiz-Blondet & Fariba Karimi
Scientific Reports volume 15, Article number: 9082 (2025)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world witnessed a disproportionate infection rate among marginalized and low-income groups. Despite empirical evidence suggesting that structural inequalities in society contribute to health disparities, there has been little attempt to offer a computational and theoretical explanation to establish its plausibility and quantitative impact. Here, we focus on two aspects of structural inequalities: wealth inequality and social segregation. Our computational model demonstrates that (a) due to the inequality in self-quarantine ability, the infection gap widens between the low-income and high-income groups, and the overall infected cases increase, (b) social segregation between different socioeconomic status (SES) groups intensifies the disease spreading rates, and (c) the second wave of infection can emerge due to a false sense of safety among the medium and high SES groups. By performing two data-driven analyses, one on the empirical network and economic data of 404 metropolitan areas of the United States and one on the daily Covid-19 data of the City of Chicago, we verify that higher segregation leads to an increase in the overall infection cases and higher infection inequality across different ethnic/socioeconomic groups. These findings together demonstrate that reducing structural inequalities not only helps decrease health disparities but also reduces the spread of infectious diseases overall.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

Alex Gomez-Marin & Anil K. Seth 
Nature Neuroscience (2025)

The scientific study of consciousness was sanctioned as an orthodox field of study only three decades ago. Since then, a variety of prominent theories have flourished, including integrated information theory, which has been recently accused of being pseudoscience by more than 100 academics. Here we critically assess this charge and offer thoughts to elevate the clash into positive lessons for our field.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

Jaume Ojer, Michele Starnini, and Romualdo Pastor-Satorras

Phys. Rev. Research 7, 013207

Understanding the mechanisms to mitigate opinion polarization in our society is crucial to minimizing social division and ultimately strengthening democracy. Due to the challenge of collecting long-term reliable empirical data, researchers have been mostly focused on a theoretical understanding of the process of opinion depolarization. To this aim, realistic yet simple models prove valuable, especially when multiple topics are discussed at the same time, which may result in entangled opinion dynamics. In this paper, we propose the multidimensional social compass model, based on two competing key ingredients: DeGroot learning, driven by the social influence exerted across multiple topics, and the preference of individuals to maintain their initial opinions. The interplay between these two mechanisms triggers a phase transition from polarization to consensus, determined by a threshold value of social influence. We analytically study the nature of the depolarization transition and its threshold, depending on the number of topics discussed, the possible correlations between initial opinions, the topology of the underlying social networks, and the correlations between the initial opinion distribution and the network’s structure. Theoretical predictions are validated by running numerical simulations on both synthetic and real social networks. We rely on several simplifying assumptions to explore different scenarios, such as a mean-field approximation for high dimension or orthogonal initial orientations. We uncover an upper critical dimension (𝐷𝑐=5 topics) for uncorrelated initial opinions, distinguishing between discontinuous and continuous phase transitions. For the simplest 𝐷=2 case and correlated initial opinions, we found that the depolarization threshold can vanish if the underlying connectivity is heterogeneous, as predicted by perturbation theory. Such an effect is due to the presence of hubs, which promote consensus in the population. We test this hypothesis by designing a rewiring algorithm that increases the structural heterogeneity of the underlying network, showing that the depolarization threshold decreases. Finally, we demonstrate that if hubs share the same initial opinion, the depolarization dynamics is significantly hindered. Our findings contribute to understanding the mechanisms to mitigate polarization in real-world scenarios, suggesting which settings can promote the depolarization process. The presence of very popular individuals on online social networks and the alignment of their opinions, in particular, may play a pivotal role in the multidimensional depolarization dynamics.

Read the full article at: link.aps.org

Alberto García-Rodríguez, Matias Núñez, Miguel Robles Pérez, Tzipe Govezensky, Rafael A Barrio, Carlos Gershenson, Kimmo K Kaski, Julia Tagüeña

PLoS ONE 20(3): e0317412.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations outlines 17 goals for countries of the world to address global challenges in their development. However, the progress of countries towards these goal has been slower than expected and, consequently, there is a need to investigate the reasons behind this fact. In this study, we have used a novel data-driven methodology to analyze time-series data for over 20 years (2000–2022) from 107 countries using unsupervised machine learning (ML) techniques. Our analysis reveals strong positive and negative correlations between certain SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). Our findings show that progress toward the SDGs is heavily influenced by geographical, cultural and socioeconomic factors, with no country on track to achieve all the goals by 2030. This highlights the need for a region-specific, systemic approach to sustainable development that acknowledges the complex interdependencies between the goals and the variable capacities of countries to reach them. For this our machine learning based approach provides a robust framework for developing efficient and data-informed strategies to promote cooperative and targeted initiatives for sustainable progress.

Read the full article at: journals.plos.org

Five years ago this week, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic, and the world has never been the same. What began in December 2019 as a cluster of patients in Wuhan, China, with a mysterious pneumonia-like illness exploded into an existential threat that has killed more than 7 million people. Life changed for everyone, practically overnight. Millions of workers lost their jobs as businesses shuttered, and those who were fortunate enough to work remotely had to adjust quickly to digitalization. Supply chains were disrupted, and economies were in turmoil. Health care professionals faced unprecedented challenges caring for the sick while trying to protect themselves amid a shortage of equipment. The real estate market, particularly in the United States, transformed dramatically as prices rose along with interest rates. No country, no industry, no individual was left unaffected by the pandemic, in ways both large and small.

We asked several Wharton professors to reflect on these profound changes and how they continue to shape the world. Keep reading for their responses.

Read the full article at: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu