Standing naked in the storm– European citizens’ trust in social media, users, information

We have surveyed users in 7 European countries about the factors that underwrite their trust in and on Facebook. We identified three trust pillars: (1) self-confidence to recognize and hedge platform related risks; (2) trust in the platform’s ability and willingness to protect users against online harms; and (3) national and European platform regulation, and measured their role in shaping users' trusting attitudes towards the platform and the users and information they encounter on the platform.Our finding suggests serious deficiencies in how trust in such a critical societal infrastructure is structured. First, we found that trust in and on the platform is mostly defined by generic, rather than platform-specific trust attitudes and expectations. Second, our data suggests that the two most important platform-specific trust pillars are rather shaky. On the one hand, users trust the platform to protect them, while there is ample evidence of Facebook and its parent company, Meta to not act in the best interest of their users. On the other hand, users base their trust on their perceived ability to protect themselves, while our data shows that they do not seem to use the even the very limited set of tools the platform provides them for such self-protection.Lastly, while governments seem to be best positioned to reign in global digital service providers, and in recent years the EU spent enormous amounts of resources to regulate online platforms, users don’t seem to expect regulation to make platforms and the information herein trustworthy. Such lack of expectations towards the only agents in this ecosystem who can provide any effective trustworthiness safeguards vis-à-vis platforms is somewhat disturbing

Anion emission from water molecules colliding with positive ions: Identification of binary and many-body processes

It is shown that negative ions are ejected from gas-phase water molecules when bombarded with positive ions at keV energies typical of solar-wind velocities. This finding is relevant for studies of planetary and cometary atmospheres, as well as for radiolysis and radiobiology. Emission of both H- and heavier (O- and OH-) anions, with a larger yield for H-, was observed in 6.6-keV 16O+ + H2O collisions. The ex-perimental setup allowed separate identification of anions formed in collisions with many-body dynamics from those created in hard, binary collisions. Most of the ani-ons are emitted with low kinetic energy due to many-body processes. Model calcu-lations show that both nucleus-nucleus interactions and electronic excitations con-tribute to the observed large anion emission yield.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Meat production and maintaining biodiversity: Grazing by traditional breeds and crossbred beef cattle in marshes and grasslands

Questions: Sustainable rangeland utilization considering traditions and economic reasons is compulsory for harmonising the needs of the agricultural and nature conservation sectors. For proper rangeland management it is crucial to compare the grazing effects of traditional breeds and crossbred animals of the same species that might have different effects on the rangelands. To fill this knowledge gap, in a grazing experiment, we investigated the effect of cattle breeds on the vegetation to test the effects on nature conservation value and agricultural production value. We hypothesized that the effects of cattle grazing on habitat conservation values and forage quality depend on the grazing breed, because breeds differ in selectivity, body size and trampling effect. Location: Marshes and alkaline wet grasslands in Hortobágy National Park, Hungary. Methods: We recorded the percentage cover of vascular plants in three consecutive years in a total of 60 plots in 12 areas grazed by traditional (0.61 AU/ha) and largesized crossbred beef cattle (0.68 AU/ha). Results: We found that the effect of cattle breed on the habitat conservation values and forage quality is dependent on the habitat type. The traditional breed maintained a significantly higher species number and Shannon diversity in marshes than the crossbred beef cattle. Grazing of crossbred cattle led to decreasing moisture indicator values in marsh habitats. Conclusions: Our findings revealed that traditional breeds should be prioritized in the management of wet alkaline grasslands and marshes. Crossbred beef cattle might be a substitute but only in case traditional breeds are not available for the management of alkaline wet grasslands. In marshes, however, we recommend prioritizing the traditional breeds as they maintain higher diversity compared to crossbred beef cattle