Please join us this Sunday for the conversation!

During shocks and disasters, what factors help us survive and thrive? In my PrepTalk for @fema I argue that #socialcapital - the ties that bind us - is critical www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7A8...

Gender gap in education : 47% of women ages 25 to 34 hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 37% of men. The share of women with college degrees has climbed steadily for four decades, while men’s progress has slowed insightintoacademia.com/the-enrollme...

Trump lacks a comprehensive, detailed plan to bring relief to citizens who lack health care, who can’t afford the plans they have or who know that the loss of a job could leave them without any coverage at www.cnn.com/2025/11/11/p...

Resilience: new Kennan Institute is smaller but organized to make itself less susceptible to government whims, restructured into an independent nonprofit and relying on its endowment rather than federal funds www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/u...

When insurance prices rise, the overall cost of homeownership goes up, limiting the pool of potential buyers able to afford the monthly expense. That puts pressure on sellers to lower their asking price to be more competitive. www.npr.org/2025/11/12/n...

Never a good sign when media are lining up at your terminal

Since January, 56 clean energy manufacturing projects worth more than $45.9 billion and involving more than 51,000 jobs have been slowed or paused. Investment in renewable energy is down 36 percent compared to the second half of last year. thehill.com/opinion/ener...

New #article from Song-Chase et al: Longitudinal association bt social capital and incidence of psychiatric disorders TL;DR: higher personal trust at baseline was associated with reduced rates of non-affective psychotic disorder and bipolar disorder www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Hidden AI recession: history suggests that when work becomes scarce, societies ration opportunity, and women often pay the price www.yahoo.com/news/article...

US’s data center buildout could generate up to an extra 44 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year—more than entire countries like Hungary, Portugal, and New Zealand each generated in 2022 www.wired.com/story/heres-...

The game was the Bull's to lose, and they managed to do so in the last five minutes

New #article from Gaspar et al: Beyond soil and yields: a systematic review of social capital’s role in regenerative agriculture TL;DR: social capital shapes regenerative transitions and provides a transferable basis for guiding future research link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Chicago

Electrification would allow us to meet rising energy demands in a zero carbon fashion while cutting energy input by a quarter. www.ft.com/content/7258...

Public libraries rely on state and federal funding to supplement local money and offerings, and they increasingly provide basic social services such as food banks, internet access and places for people experiencing homelessness to stay before shelters open www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/u...

Marriage equality retained, at least temporarily : the Supreme Court turned away an appeal filed by Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who was sued after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...

My book Building Resilience argues that #socialcapital - the ties that bind us together - is critical for surviving and thriving during shocks and disasters www.amazon.com/Building-Res...

New #chapter from Simelyte: Social Resilience in the Baltic States and Crisis Management: Lessons Learned and Future Prospects TL;DR: key aspect of social resilience is social capital: networks, relationships, and norms that facilitate collective action. link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

New #chapter from Gul et al: Gender-Focused Social Capital and Community Actions to Mitigate Flood Risks in Pakistan TL;DR: importance of gender perspectives in climate resilience and disaster mitigation link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Solar panels prevented about 178 million tons of harmful air pollution from dirty fuels during the examined timeframe, preventing thousands of premature deaths www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Prestige rules: The top 20% of political science departments produced 75% of all faculty and the bottom 50% accounted for less than 5% of all TT faculty members at a research university www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Fung-wong’s death toll of two was significantly lower than that of Kalmaegi, which killed more than 200 people earlier this month. Still, about 1,000 homes had been damaged by Fung-wong www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/w...

Japanese automotive giants are rapidly building production capacity in India, marking one of the most significant strategic pivots in the global auto industry. www.autoblog.com/news/japans-...

House without a bathroom: DOE has no permanent disposal facility for nuclear waste, leaving taxpayers on the hook for payments of up to $800 million every year in damages, a bill that has reached $11.1 billion since 1998, and could grow to $44.5 billion www.cnbc.com/2025/11/09/n...

Kill switch: Norway transport firm steps up controls after tests show Chinese-made buses can be halted remotely share.google/pmJ6uklZKmZZ...

Controversies at selective institutions attract headlines and energy, but they have little to do with the concerns of most students: whether tuition is affordable, childcare is available, credits transfer without friction, and programs lead to real jobs fortune.com/2025/11/08/g...

Breaking: tsunami warning with wave expected to come ashore with a maximum height of about three feet after a 6.7-magnitude quake struck off Japan’s coast early Sunday evening www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/w...

Excited about our new #article with Card et al: Public Health Guidelines for Social Connection: An International Delphi Study TL;DR: raise awareness of connection, support social-emotional development, and prioritize social health in policy www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Those who will be hit the hardest by soaring premiums include lower-income, older and middle class enrollees. www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/p...

New #article from Camacho et al: Assessing the relationship between community resilience and health outcomes: an observational local-authority level study in England TL;DR: Community resilience is associated with health outcomes in England jech.bmj.com/content/earl...

New #article from Huang et al: Human mobility under disasters: a systematic review and framework for equitable and resilient mobility governance TL;DR: identify predictable dynamics in human mobility responses driven by behaviors and psychological factors www.nature.com/articles/s44...

New #article + framework from Bell et al: Earth AI: Unlocking Geospatial Insights with Foundation Models and Cross-Modal Reasoning TL;DR: agent bridges the gap between geospatial data and actionable understanding arxiv.org/html/2510.18...

Climate change is threatening the future of luxury crops that make coffee, chocolate and wine by disrupting the delicate environmental conditions they need to thrive www.earth.com/news/study-a...

Over the past decade, there has been a rush of scholars — many with some family connection to China — moving across the Pacific, drawn by Beijing’s drive to become a superpower. But Donald Trump’s return to the White House has turbocharged this effort www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

New #article from Jeong et al: Disability Acceptance as a Mediator Between Social Network Size and Disaster Capacity in Adults With Disabilities in S Korea TL;DR: Social network size positively influenced disability acceptance and disaster capacity onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New #article from Seri et al: Contribution of Local Knowledge to Adapting to Water Shortages in Rural Areas: A Case Study in Côte d’Ivoire TL;DR: traditional water practices help communities manage shortages while effectively meeting their water needs. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Very excited that with Resilient Ready we have put out a framework for mapping #socialcapital - the ties that bind us together - and #socialinfrastructure - the places and spaces where we build those ties and trust www.researchgate.net/publication/...

If an earthquake happened, that ground underneath us would liquefy and the building would potentially collapse. If we happen to remain upright and a tsunami comes our way, maybe we get 20 to 30 minutes of notice to evacuate people up the hill. www.npr.org/2025/11/05/n...

While Beijing built gigafactories, the United States debated tax credits. China saw electric vehicles as an industrial strategy — we saw them as climate policy. Now, China commands 60% of EV sales and dominates the battery supply chain. The US? Barely 16% thehill.com/opinion/tech...

Australian government is floating a scheme that would share the benefits of solar power with everyone on the grid, offering totally free electricity to ratepayers in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining the strongest electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...

Acton project repurposes a contaminated Superfund site for productive use, preserves farmland and open space, and creates nearly 40 local jobs during construction. It provides clean energy through a community solar model paired with battery storage cleantechnica.com/2025/11/04/a...

New #article from Ke: A Computer Vision–Based Proxy for Political Polarization in Religious Countries: A Türkiye Case Study TL;DR: strong correlations between intergroup distances and electoral polarization arxiv.org/html/2511.03...

New #article from Tiwari et al: Exploring the role of social capital in creation and growth of women-owned enterprises TL;DR: bridging social capital plays a more important role in the growth of enterprise. www.emerald.com/jec/article/...

President Biden invested heavily in distributed generation: solar and battery arrays across Puerto Rico. But Trump has rolled back those commitments, redirecting funds toward hardening the grid and shoring up centralized and fossil-fueled production. www.canarymedia.com/articles/dis...

What truck me, while conducting this exercise, was how much of the conventional PhD process could now be driven and accelerated by AI www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Industrial policy or Golden Ticket ? With Trump push for nuclear, Westinghouse could spin out into an independent, publicly traded company under the deal, with the U.S. government as a shareholder. www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/w...

New #article from Mankei TAM: Horizoning work in a (de-)contaminated village in Fukushima: how are these Japanese urbanites living a normal life there? TL;DR: these new migrants have epitomized an ordinary livelihood that is “contaminated but safe.” link.springer.com/article/10.1...