In these dark days, science brings a glimmer of hope: even in a world that rewards selfishness, cooperation can emerge and ultimately prevail. That world happens to be a computer simulation, but I'll ...

Sociodiversity—the diversity of human opinions, ideas, and behaviors—is a driving force behind many positive developments. "When different people come together, given they have no bad intentions, new ...

The rapidly progressing digital revolution is now touching the foundations of the governance of societal structures. Humans are on the verge of evolving from consumers to prosumers, and old, ...

Ever wish you could turn back the clock and try a day, week, or year over again? Plans afoot in Switzerland to build a more detailed simulation of the globe’s environment, societies, and economies ...

The increasing interdependencies between the world's technological, socio-economic, and environmental systems have the potential to create global catastrophic risks. We may have to redesign global ...

Traffic flow accounts for as much as one-third of global energy consumption. However, unconventional changes in managing traffic flow could significantly reduce harmful CO2 emissions. ETH Zurich ...

The ETH socio-physicist Dirk Helbing has examined why the Love Parade in Duisburg, two years ago, ended in disaster. The conclusion of his study: Many factors contributed to the disaster, but ...

Discover how the University of Stuttgart pedestrian paths are shaped by self-organizing systems to create optimal routes for users. Like pedestrians everywhere, students at the University of Stuttgart ...

"The rich-get-richer effect" is famous not only in sociology. It applies to the success of innovators as well. But if attention is paid only to people who are already at the top, how are scientific ...

Societies around the globe are now at a crossroads and have to decide between top-down control and a 'participatory market society,' or shorter: 'digital democracy,' explain researchers in a new ...

A panicking crowd can be a prelude to death, as recent rock-concert and soccer-stadium casualties attest. But it needn't be, says engineer and physicist Dirk Helbing of Dresden University of ...