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In order to improve the ethical and legal compliance of automated decision systems, it is crucial to inspect the full life cycle of the data being used: from the moment the data are being collected to the moment the data are fed into a machine learning system. This is the thesis that UvA assistant professor Sebastian Schelter and four international colleagues have been arguing for in a recent article in the Communications of the ACM.

Sustainability is an important theme for the UvA. In addition to conducting research and teaching about sustainability, we work on a daily basis to make the university itself more sustainable. Our goal is to reduce our environmental impact by 25% over the next five years, and we wish to have achieved the goals of the Paris Agreement by 2040.

We need to take a different approach to the problem. We must not only see symptoms such as tiredness and anxiety as signs of a disorder but also make them part of a bigger picture, of a network. That way, we can discover how these symptoms are interlinked and sustain mental health problems. Together with his team, Denny Borsboom has developed the techniques that are needed to create a network.

Yearly we produce 110 million tons of textile waste, that is 13 kg per person globally. How can we motivate consumers to buy recycled goods and pay a higher price for these? But next to waste, we should look at how we wash our textile goods. Washing textiles is a major route for microplastics entering the environment.

Amsterdam physicists build an atom laser that can stay on forever Imagining our everyday life without lasers is difficult. We use lasers in printers, CD players, pointers, measuring devices, and so on. What makes lasers so special is that they use coherent waves of light: all the light inside a laser vibrates completely in sync.

64 million km2 - 44% of Earth's land area - requires conservation to safeguard biodiversity. This is revealed in a new study led by biologists of the University of Amsterdam, that was published on 3 June 2022 in the prestigious journal Science. The international research team used advanced geospatial algorithms to map the optimal areas for conserving terrestrial species and ecosystems across the world.

Clouds of ultralight particles can form around rotating black holes. A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University now show that these clouds would leave a characteristic imprint on the gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes. Black holes are generally thought to swallow all forms of matter and energy surrounding them.

What psychological factors make us act green? Classic scientific models identified the psychological predictors of pro-environment behaviour, like our attitudes and personal norms. A new study now questions the link between these predictors and actual environmental impact for clothing. The study exposes a strong gap between our motivation to act green and the impact of our clothing consumption.

Every moment of our awake lives, images fall onto our eyes and go through a series of processing steps in the brain to inform us about what is going on in the world. A team of researchers led by the University of Amsterdam's Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences finds that the time the brain needs to make a visual decision not only depends on the properties of the images being processed, but also on whether there are also relevant sounds or touches.

Social norms dictate when we can express our emotions and to whom. These norms are much stronger for negative emotions than for positive ones. Does this mean that we can always express positive emotions, and to everyone? No, state psychology researchers from the University of Amsterdam who mapped expression norms for eight positive emotions.

More than twenty years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the fight against terrorism continues unabated. In this 'War on Terror', combating the financing of terrorist groups plays a central role. Political scientist Tasniem Anwar investigated how this fight is put into practice in court. What is being prosecuted as the financing of terrorism? 'A diverse group of citizens has become involved in the legislation.

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. Among the team are several UvA scientists. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies.

New study has important implications for climate change mitigation strategies 5 May 2022 Sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere into tropical vegetation has been suggested as a mitigating factor of anthropogenically elevated atmospheric CO2 levels. A new study, led by Dr William Gosling from the University of Amsterdam, now shows that over the long-term there is actually a stronger role for moisture change than for atmospheric CO2 in determining tropical woody vegetation change.

More than 11 million people have fled their homes in Ukraine since the war began. Five million of them looked for safety and shelter in the EU. Political scientist Polly Pallister-Wilkins discusses fundamental differences we witness in this crisis. 'To the Ukrainian refugees we see a completely different response that relates to the EU visa regime.

A team of astronomers, including the UvA's Nathalie Degenaar have observed a new type of stellar explosion - a micronova, with the help of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT). These outbursts happen on the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza of stellar material in only a few hours.

We like some foods, and dislike others. Of course, the way food tastes is important, but mouthfeel, and even the sound that food makes when we bite it, also determine whether we enjoy the eating experience. Is it possible to design edible materials that optimize this enjoyment? Physicists and food researchers show that indeed it is.

With many human-made chemicals, problems regarding public health and the environment become apparent only years after their widespread use. A team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University now propose a way to change that. In an article in the journal 'Chemosphere' they present a method for (re)designing safe and sustainable chemicals.

We are constantly making decisions in our lives, from picking an entrance gate at the station to choosing a place to live. Our expectations about the outcome drive these choices. But what if we become uncertain about a situation or are surprised by an outcome and our expectations are no longer correct? Thomas Meindertsma examined how the brain deals with uncertainty and surprise when making decisions.

IoP and QuSoft physicists use a single trapped ion to detect ultracold molecules When we think of ions, we usually think of single atoms that have lost or gained some electrons, but entire molecules can also become ions. In a new publication that was highlighted as an Editor's Suggestion in Physical Review Letters this week, physicists from the University of Amsterdam, QuSoft and Stony Brook University, show that cold molecular ions can be created using a new method, and that they are a very useful tool for detecting small amounts of other, regular molecules.

In popular programmes like Squid Game and South Park, aggression is heavily featured, sometimes accompanied by a strong dose of humour. There are concerns that teenagers see too much aggression in their favourite programmes and become more aggressive as a result, especially when the aggression portrayed is combined with humour.