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Can we infer someone's cultural group from their laugher, even when we do not know what they are laughing at? And what kind of laughter do we find most positive? A new study by researchers from the University of Amsterdam with international colleagues shows that our laughter gives us away. The study included Dutch and Japanese producers of laughter and listeners.

Alarming news about climate change dominates in news media. And we need to be alarmed, but does negative news alone have the desired effect on people and get them engaged? Or might we also need more of a different form of journalism, one that describes the solutions that are being developed? Communication scientist Andreas Schuck studies the effects of different forms of climate communication and the potential benefit of solutions journalism.

In the past everyone used to read the same news (one size fits all), but now we get our own made-to-measure news portions. News is selected based on our taste and online behaviour. Does it matter that we no longer see and read the same things? 'The divide between citizens who choose political news and citizens who choose entertainment seems to be growing in the digital society,' says communication scientist Susan Vermeer, who studied our news consumption.

Sometimes plant cells don't have just one large central cavity, or vacuole, but several. These can even have different functions. How is that possible? A team led by UvA biologists Ronald Koes and Francesca Quattrocchio took another step towards solving this fundamental biological riddle. Their discovery has been published in the leading scientific journal Cell Reports.

Stress has become an integral part of our society. Research shows that the negative impact of stress is a major risk factor for the development of physical and mental health problems. It follows that we try to protect ourselves against daily and persistent stress in many different ways. Music interventions appear to be an effective and cost-efficient tool.

Witness first-hand how your mountain of waste plastic expands over the years and what impact your food has on the rainforests. Virtual reality gives you a front-row seat to the impact of unsustainable behaviour. Communication scientists Marijn Meijers and Hande Sungur have developed highly effective virtual worlds that give people an up close and personal experience of how sustainable and unsustainable conduct make a substantial difference.

The scientific evidence that human behaviour leads to climate change is overwhelming. Yet, there is still a small group of people who do not believe climate change is real or bad for us. How to explain this denial of climate science and how can we best deal with this? Social psychologist Bastiaan Rutjens and communication researcher Robin Tschötschel both study people's reaction to climate science.

How a new neural network can predict and understand molecules in a more efficient way A research paper from Victor Garcia Satorras, Emiel Hoogeboom and Max Welling, from the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam, recently got accepted to the ICML congress, the leading conference on machine learning.

A new study by astronomers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) in Garching, Germany shows that massive stars produce twice as much carbon when they have a binary partner. The scientists base this on new state-of-the-art computer simulations. Their findings are a small but important step towards better understanding the cosmic origin of the elements we are made of.

Politics around the world has in recent decades entered an era of political polarization, in which politics appears like a struggle between warring tribes. An interdisciplinary team of sociologists and physicists developed a computational model to analyse this rise in political temperature. They used their model to examine the potential link between social media and polarization and suggest the existence of polarization tipping-points, which can lead to run-away polarization.

Through analysis of satellite imagery, researchers of the University of Amsterdam found a substantial loss of green space in the cities of Amsterdam and Brussels, 15.7% per capita in Amsterdam and 26.5% in Brussels. This loss can be directly linked to urban densification processes. 'Additions of green space were insufficient to compensate for the loss of green space through new development projects.' The authors call for integrative policy measures to overcome this conflict between densification and greening of cities.

The European Union's laws, regulations and policies regarding access to medicines are having unintended consequences in lowand middle-income countries, according to new research from the UvA's Law Centre for Health and Life, published today in the journal Lancet Regional Health - Europe. The research team, led by Dr Katrina Perehudoff, found that EU policy makers were adopting measures that were influencing access to medicines in developing countries while not always intending these global 'side effects'.

The Covid-19 pandemic showed how difficult it can be to change people's behaviour. Indeed, there is an increasing awareness stemming from psychology that our behaviour is determined by a complex interplay of different factors. There is not one button we can press to change human behaviour. At the University of Amsterdam, psychologists are developing a method to visualise this complex interplay and better understand behaviour.

The Amsterdam Business School (ABS) is collaborating with various universities, scientific institutes and businesses to improve machine learning and optimisation techniques. Dick den Hertog, Professor of Operations Research, wants to use such techniques and apply them to new areas as a way of contributing to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

The laws of quantum mechanics allow for the existence of 'quasi-particles': excitations in materials that behave exactly like ordinary particles. A major advantage of quasi-particles over ordinary particles is that their properties can be engineered. In a Nature Materials News & Views article this week, IoP physicist Erik van Heumen describes recent experiments where even the interactions between quasi-particles can be tuned.

'It has to happen in the city. This is where a relatively large number of people feel the effects of climate warming and where greening has a potentially large impact.' That's the view of urban planner Mendel Giezen on making cities sustainable by bringing back nature.

A revolutionary method to make crops more resilient to climate change and other threats is one step closer to becoming reality. A team of universities and companies has been given the green light by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to further develop a plan for this. With a budget of 50 million euros, the team aims connect specialists in plant sciences, data sciences, artificial intelligence (AI) and breeding companies over the next ten years on a method to develop agricultural crops that can be grown in climate-proof and sustainable manner.

Laboratory and real world observations of risk-taking behaviour among children and adolescents show conflicting results. In the real world adolescents take more risks than children, but in lab settings they engage in equal levels of risks. Ivy Defoe is developing a new psychological model that can explain these differences.

When a pathogen such as a bacteria invades our body, the immune system sends white blood cells to the site of the infection to clear the invader. These white blood cells first travel through our blood vessels, but at some point must pass through its wall to get into the infected tissue. How does this work? A team led by Jaap van Buul, professor by special appointment at the University of Amsterdam and research leader at Sanquin, has unraveled a molecular mechanism that regulates this.

What does a quantum theory of gravity have in common with electrons in a 'strange' metal? At first sight: not much, but this week in Nature a Dutch NWO consortium, including researchers Jake Ayres, Maarten Berben and Nigel Hussey (Radboud University), Jan Zaanen (Leiden University) and Erik van Heumen (University of Amsterdam) reports on new experimental findings that may point towards such a link after all.