John F. Kennedy University

This study investigates the relationship between press freedom and bank default risk across countries, with particular attention to the role of institutional quality, financial development, and information transmission mechanisms. Using an unbalanced panel of 128 countries over the period 2000–2022, the paper applies dynamic panel data techniques to examine how press freedom affects banking stability, measured by the banking Z-score. To account for cross-country heterogeneity, countries are grouped by income level, geographic region, and resource dependence. In addition, a panel Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition is employed to identify the factors driving differences in average bank default risk across country groups, while a Threshold ARCH (TARCH) model is used to assess asymmetric responses of bank risk to positive and negative news. The results show that press freedom alone is not a consistent predictor of bank default risk across countries. Instead, its impact depends on the broader informational and institutional environment. In countries with higher education levels and greater internet penetration, increased press freedom is associated with higher bank default risk, indicating that more informed and digitally connected populations may react more strongly to financial news, amplifying herding behavior and bank fragility. Evidence from the TARCH model further suggests that bank default risk responds asymmetrically to news shocks, with negative news exerting a stronger effect than positive news. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of institutional context when evaluating the role of press freedom in financial stability.

Research shows if and when markets can help limit the harms from climate change.

Antidepressants are among the most prescribed medications in the USA, yet challenges in access to mental health treatment persist. To assess current and lifetime antidepressant and psychotherapy use among American adults, and examine attitudes towards potential federal restrictions on antidepressant prescribing. We conducted a cross-sectional survey study using data from a national non-probability internet-based panel weighted to approximate national demographics (age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, US census region, and urbanicity) based on 2020 US Census data. Data were collected between 10 April and 27 May 2025 from 30 810 adults residing in the USA. The primary outcomes were self-reported current and past antidepressant and psychotherapy use, and support for or opposition to potential federal restrictions on antidepressant prescribing. Logistic regression models estimated demographic and treatment-related features associated with these outcomes. Among 30 115 respondents with complete antidepressant data, 16.6% reported current antidepressant use, and of 30 098 respondents with psychotherapy data, 10.4% reported current psychotherapy. Use of both treatments was significantly greater among White respondents compared with all other racial groups. When asked about potential federal restrictions on doctors prescribing antidepressants, 16.4% of respondents supported and 48.0% opposed such regulation, with lesser opposition among those of male gender (OR 0.69, 95% CI 0.65 to 0.73), and greater opposition among those with lifetime antidepressant treatment (OR 2.37, 95% CI 2.21 to 2.54). Antidepressant and psychotherapy use remains unevenly distributed across demographic groups. A significant proportion of adults in every US state oppose efforts to restrict access to antidepressant prescribing, reflecting broad public support for maintaining access to treatment. Findings from this study suggest that restrictive policies on antidepressant prescribing are unlikely to align with public sentiment and may risk exacerbating existing inequities in care.

Chemical imaging was used to examine the morphology, composition, and mixing state of stratospheric particles. The results showed evidence of wildfire-derived black carbon and organic material reaching the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.

Digital financial platforms rely heavily on session-based authentication mechanisms that verify user identity only at discrete checkpoints, leaving systems vulnerable to post-login account takeover attacks. Continuous authentication based on behavioral biometrics has emerged as a promising solution for maintaining persistent identity assurance throughout active sessions. This work proposes a real-time behavioral biometric framework for continuous authentication using keystroke dynamics and sequential monitoring of interaction patterns. The proposed method models user-specific behavioral structure through reconstruction consistency in a low-dimensional subspace learned from enrollment data. Incoming interaction events are evaluated in real time using reconstruction error, and a sliding temporal window aggregates behavioral deviation to support stable decision making. User-specific thresholds derived from enrollment statistics enable adaptive sensitivity control, while takeover detection latency is explicitly quantified to assess operational security effectiveness. Experiments were conducted using the CMU Keystroke Dynamics benchmark under simulated session takeover scenarios. Performance was evaluated using verification metrics including false acceptance rate, false rejection rate, equal error rate, and temporal detection delay. Results demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves reliable identity discrimination while enabling rapid detection of behavioral takeover events with low latency and stable threshold behavior. The findings confirm that continuous behavioral monitoring can significantly reduce the exposure window of compromised sessions, even under unimodal biometric sensing. The proposed framework provides a computationally efficient and deployment-ready approach for strengthening real-time security in financial transaction ecosystems.

Gender-affirming care (GAC) improves the mental health and well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people. In January 2025, the Trump administration announced major National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant terminations, specifically aimed at defunding research related to transgender populations. To examine the scope, timing, and financial impact of NIH GAC grant terminations. This was a cross-sectional study of terminated and active federal research grants administered by the NIH, identified through the Grant Witness and NIH RePORTER databases. Inclusion criteria required that grants involve GAC outcomes or research related to its access or provision. Data were collected on May 12, 2025, and included funding status, dates of termination, and grant characteristics. Termination of NIH grants related to GAC. Primary outcomes included the number and proportion of terminated grants, total funding lost, date of termination, and study focus. Of 64 identified NIH grants related to GAC, 41 (64.1%) were terminated within a 3-week span ranging from March 3 to March 21, 2025. Among these terminated grants, 46.9% of their combined funding remained unspent at the time of cancellation, amounting to nearly $22 million lost in research dollars. Of the research topics that were terminated, the largest proportion focused on the interaction of GAC with physical health conditions (eg, breast cancer, HIV, cardiovascular outcomes). Findings of this study illustrate the scope and depth of a targeted disruption to a vital area of scientific inquiry and health equity, emphasizing the need for insulated funding streams to preserve ongoing GAC research.

Despite the rise of digital media, Americans are five times more likely to consume news via television than through online platforms. However, due in large part to technical hurdles, it remains unclear what content appears on broadcast news and how the mixture of content has changed over time. We consider these questions by applying a novel LLM-based approach to an understudied corpus of expert-generated summaries of virtually all news segments aired on the “big three” broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—between 1969 and 2024. Results based on nearly one million news segments show that “information density”—the amount of time dedicated to political issues—has declined substantially over the last 50 years. Today, broadcast news spends roughly twice as much time on commercials and “soft” news and half as much on issue-based political coverage compared to a few decades ago. Since the early 1990s, the news has also shifted inward, focusing more on domestic stories and less on international affairs. These changes suggest a transformation in the informative role of broadcast news, raising questions about its impact on voter knowledge and political engagement.

Mental health care has long been a leading domain for the application of clinical virtual reality (VR) technologies. The recent proliferation of affordable all-in-one VR devices has significantly increased accessibility and created new opportunities for innovative mental health therapies. As immersive technologies become more integrated into daily life, scientific evidence and clinical insights can be synthesized into actionable recommendations. The American Medical Extended Reality Association, in collaboration with the Mental Health Virtual Reality International Coalition, presents these comprehensive recommendations for the use of VR in clinical mental health care. This work summarizes the current state of the field, examines the supporting scientific literature, outlines ethical considerations and their practical applications, and offers research-based and experience-informed recommendations. Additionally, it identifies key collaborative directions to advance the responsible and effective use of VR in mental health care. These recommendations may serve as a foundational resource for clinicians, researchers, developers, and policymakers for the integration of VR in mental health practice.

Abstract We present the discovery of 30 transiting giant planets that were initially detected using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission. These new planets orbit relatively bright ( G ≤ 12.5) FGK host stars with orbital periods between 1.6 and 8.2 days, and have radii between 0.9 and 1.7 Jupiter radii. We performed follow-up ground-based photometry, high angular resolution imaging, high-resolution spectroscopy, and radial velocity monitoring for each of these objects to confirm that they are planets and determine their masses and other system parameters. The planets’ masses span more than an order of magnitude (0.17 M J &lt; M p &lt; 3.3 M J ). For two planets, TOI-3593 b and TOI-4961 b, we measured significant nonzero eccentricities of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>0.1</mml:mn> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.03</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.05</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>0.1</mml:mn> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>8</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.05</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.04</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> , respectively, while for the other planets, the data typically provide a 1 σ upper bound of 0.15 on the eccentricity. These discoveries represent a major step toward assembling a complete, magnitude-limited sample of transiting hot Jupiters around FGK stars.