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Health-And-Medicine Articles; Social-Science Articles | How can we manage Hendra virus in Australia | Bats are very important for the environment, but they can virus management, since the underlying cause of Hendra transmit several dangerous viruses, including not only the virus emergence seems to be habitat loss. To find out what dreaded Ebola but also Hendra virus. Hendra virus affects Australian citizens think about it, we asked three community both horses and people and can be lethal. The measures juries whether they think such a strategy is appropriate. Even Australia (where the virus is present) has so far taken include though they all agree the government should implement horse vaccination and safer practice promotion among ecological approaches to manage Hendra, the juries prioritize horse owners. Additional ecological approaches such as increasing resources for the current measures: horse bat habitat protection and creation could enhance Hendra vaccination and safer practices among horse owners. | Background Hendra virus (HeV) infection is endemic in Australian flying-fox populations. Habitat loss has increased the peri-urban presence of flying-foxes, increasing the risk of contact and therefore viral spillovers into horse and human populations. An equine vaccine is available and horse-husbandry practices that minimize HeV exposure are encouraged, but their adoption is suboptimal. Ecological approachessuch as habitat creation and conservationcould complement vaccination and behavioural strategies by reducing spillover risks, but these are controversial. Methods We convened three community juries (two regional; one metropolitan) to elicit the views of well-informed citizens on the acceptability of adding ecological approaches to current interventions for HeV risk. Thirty-one participants of diverse backgrounds, mixed genders and ages were recruited using random-digit-dialling. Each jury was presented with balanced factual evidence, given time to ask questions of expert presenters and, after deliberation, come to well-reasoned conclusions. Results All juries voted unanimously that ecological strategies should be included in HeV risk management strategies but concluded that current interventionsincluding vaccination and changing horse-husbandry practicesmust remain the priority. The key reasons given for adopting ecological approaches were: (i) they address underlying drivers of disease emergence, (ii) the potential to prevent spillover of other bat-borne pathogens, and (iii) there would be broader community benefits. Juries differed regarding the best mechanism to create/conserve flying-fox habitat: participants in regional centres favoured direct government action, whereas the metropolitan jury preferred to place the burden on landholders. Conclusions Informed citizens acknowledge the value of addressing the drivers of bat-borne infectious risks but differ substantially as to the best implementation strategies. Ecological approaches to securing bat habitat could find broad social support in Australia, but disagreement about how best to achieve them indicates the need for negotiation with affected communities to co-develop fair, effective and locally appropriate policies. | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209798 | Lower high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How can we predict bone loss in astronauts | Have you ever dreamed of being an astronaut? Exploring way to predict bone loss in astronauts before spaceflight. outer space sounds exciting, and astronauts get to do that. We analyzed the leg and arm bones of astronauts before However, going into space can lead to health problems. The and after a space mission. We also looked for markers of lack of gravity has a negative impact on bones, called bone bone change in their blood and urine. loss. We found out that bone loss happens quickly in space. The Astronauts try to compensate for bone loss with a lot of longer the space mission, the bigger the problem. More exercise both in space and on Earth. But even exercising exercise before spaceflight predicted greater bone loss! doesnt prevent bone loss in some cases. We wanted to find Elevated markers of bone metabolism before flight also out what factors affect bone loss. We also wanted to find a predicted greater bone loss. | Objectives Bone loss remains a primary health concern for astronauts, despite in-flight exercise. We examined changes in bone microarchitecture, density and strength before and after long-duration spaceflight in relation to biochemical markers of bone turnover and exercise. Methods Seventeen astronauts had their distal tibiae and radii imaged before and after space missions to the International Space Station using high-resolution peripheral quantitative CT. We estimated bone strength using finite element analysis and acquired blood and urine biochemical markers of bone turnover before, during and after spaceflight. Pre-flight exercise history and in-flight exercise logs were obtained. Mixed effects models examined changes in bone and biochemical variables and their relationship with mission duration and exercise. Results At the distal tibia, median cumulative losses after spaceflight were ?2.9% to ?4.3% for bone strength and total volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD) and ?0.8% to ?2.6% for trabecular vBMD, bone volume fraction, thickness and cortical vBMD. Mission duration (range 3.57 months) significantly predicted bone loss and crewmembers with higher concentrations of biomarkers of bone turnover before spaceflight experienced greater losses in tibia bone strength and density. Lower body resistance training volume (repetitions per week) increased 36 times in-flight compared with pre-spaceflight. Increases in training volume predicted preservation of tibia bone strength and trabecular vBMD and thickness. Conclusions Findings highlight the fundamental relationship between mission duration and bone loss. Pre-flight markers of bone turnover and exercise history may identify crewmembers at greatest risk of bone loss due to unloading and may focus preventative measures. | https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/56/4/196 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How can we prevent cervical cancer in Mongolia | Have you ever heard of cervical cancer? Its one of the most common forms of cancer among women. Most of the cases occur in countries with lower incomes and fewer resources. The leading cause of cervical cancer is human papillomavirus (HPV). There are several effective vaccines against HPV. But introducing them in the vaccination calendar could cost a lot. Would it be worth it? We used a mathematical model to see if HPV vaccination would be cost effective in Mongolia. It helped us estimate the benefits and costs of introducing an HPV vaccine there. We found out that it would cost between $2.4 and $3.1 million (USD) but could save nearly 4,000 lives! We believe that introducing HPV vaccines in Mongolia would be cost effective. | Abstract Introduction Cervical cancer is a leading cause of cancer among women in Mongolia with an age-standardized incidence rate of 23.5 per 100,000. HPV vaccination has not been introduced nationally and Gavi co-financing support is not available in Mongolia. Extended Gavi pricing for HPV vaccine may be available from vaccine manufacturers for a number of years. To inform introduction decision-making, we evaluated the potential cost-effectiveness of HPV vaccination among girls and young women in Mongolia. Methods We used UNIVAC (version 1.4), a static decision model, to evaluate the health and economic outcomes of single-cohort vaccination among females from the government perspective compared to no vaccination. We modeled vaccine introduction over 10 birth cohorts starting in 2022 comparing quadrivalent or bivalent vaccine selection and vaccine pricing variations. We used locally-specific data for cancer incidence, mortality, treatment and costs. Model outcomes included cancer cases, hospitalizations, deaths, disability-adjusted life years (DALY), and costs presented in 2018 USD. Incremental costs and health outcomes were discounted at 3% and aggregated into an Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER). Results The base-case scenario of HPV vaccination among 9 year-old girls was projected to avert 5,692 cervical cancer cases, 3,240 deaths, and 11,886 DALYs and incur $2.43.1M more costs compared to no vaccination. At prices of ($4.50-$4.60/dose), we estimated an ICER of $166-$265/DALY averted among 9-year-olds. When price per dose was increased to reported mean vaccine purchase price for non-Gavi LMICs ($14.17/dose), the ICER ranged from $556820/DALY averted. Conclusion HPV vaccination among girls is highly likely to be a cost-effective investment in Mongolia compared to no vaccination with projected ICERs less than 20% of the 2018 GDP per capita of $3,735. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590136222000213 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How can we relax COVID-19 restrictions | COVID-19 has changed everyones lives. At one time or another, most of us have had to stay at home and socially distance ourselves from others. But in some countries, people are starting to get out of lockdowns. The last lockdown in England started in January 2021. Relaxing the restrictions afterwards happened gradually. It depended mainly on the number of immune people. Was this a good strategy? We created a mathematical model to see if lifting the restrictions was well timed. The strategy was successful at first. But the emergence of the Delta variant changed things. Our model shows that vaccination alone may not be enough to stop another peak of hospitalisations and deaths. | Background England's COVID-19 roadmap out of lockdown policy set out the timeline and conditions for the stepwise lifting of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as vaccination roll-out continued, with step one starting on March 8, 2021. In this study, we assess the roadmap, the impact of the delta (B.1.617.2) variant of SARS-CoV-2, and potential future epidemic trajectories. Methods This mathematical modelling study was done to assess the UK Government's four-step process to easing lockdown restrictions in England, UK. We extended a previously described model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to incorporate vaccination and multi-strain dynamics to explicitly capture the emergence of the delta variant. We calibrated the model to English surveillance data, including hospital admissions, hospital occupancy, seroprevalence data, and population-level PCR testing data using a Bayesian evidence synthesis framework, then modelled the potential trajectory of the epidemic for a range of different schedules for relaxing NPIs. We estimated the resulting number of daily infections and hospital admissions, and daily and cumulative deaths. Three scenarios spanning a range of optimistic to pessimistic vaccine effectiveness, waning natural immunity, and cross-protection from previous infections were investigated. We also considered three levels of mixing after the lifting of restrictions. Findings The roadmap policy was successful in offsetting the increased transmission resulting from lifting NPIs starting on March 8, 2021, with increasing population immunity through vaccination. However, because of the emergence of the delta variant, with an estimated transmission advantage of 76% (95% credible interval [95% CrI] 6983) over alpha, fully lifting NPIs on June 21, 2021, as originally planned might have led to 3900 (95% CrI 15005700) peak daily hospital admissions under our central parameter scenario. Delaying until July 19, 2021, reduced peak hospital admissions by three fold to 1400 (95% CrI 7001700) per day. There was substantial uncertainty in the epidemic trajectory, with particular sensitivity to the transmissibility of delta, level of mixing, and estimates of vaccine effectiveness. Interpretation Our findings show that the risk of a large wave of COVID-19 hospital admissions resulting from lifting NPIs can be substantially mitigated if the timing of NPI relaxation is carefully balanced against vaccination coverage. However, with the delta variant, it might not be possible to fully lift NPIs without a third wave of hospital admissions and deaths, even if vaccination coverage is high. Variants of concern, their transmissibility, vaccine uptake, and vaccine effectiveness must be carefully monitored as countries relax pandemic control measures. Funding National Institute for Health Research, UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, and UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02276-5 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How common are superbugs in US hospitals | Do your parents and teachers bug you about washing your severe infections that can kill. In fact, MRSA is the leading cause hands? They probably have, and its good advice because of death due to antibiotic-resistant infections in the US. We cleaning your hands is a great way to prevent infection with wanted to see how the number of hospitalizations due to this bacteria and viruses. One of the bacteria that can live on superbug changed over time. We analyzed records of patients in the skin, called Staphylococcus aureus, can cause infections the hospital with this infection in the US from to , and in healthy people. When this bacteria becomes resistant to found out that hospitalization rates decreased for mild infections common antibiotics, it is called methicillin-resistant S. aureus caused by MRSA, while rates for more severe MRSA infections (MRSA). MRSA can cause minor skin infections but also more remained constant. | Data from the National Inpatient Sample show that the decrease in hospitalizations related to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections between 2010 and 2014 primarily reflected declines in skin and soft tissue infections. Hospitalizations related to invasive MRSA remained largely unchanged. | https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/cix640 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How deadly is Ebola | Have you ever heard of Ebola? Of course you have. Its one to know what factors helped some of the patients survive. of the scariest diseases out there. And one of the deadliest. We found that age is a really important factor determining It kills between and percent of the people it infects. if the patient survived or not. That is because young adults Why is there such a big range? What makes some Ebola are more likely to survive than others. We also analyzed the infections deadlier than others? To answer these questions, proportion of patients who survived by district and by hospital we analyzed thousands of Ebola cases reported during and found that these proportions did not always match our the - Ebola outbreak in West Africa. We wanted expectations: they were either a lot higher or a lot lower. | The 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest on record with 28 616 confirmed, probable and suspected cases and 11 310 deaths officially recorded by 10 June 2016, the true burden probably considerably higher. The case fatality ratio (CFR: proportion of cases that are fatal) is a key indicator of disease severity useful for gauging the appropriate public health response and for evaluating treatment benefits, if estimated accurately. We analysed individual-level clinical outcome data from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone officially reported to the World Health Organization. The overall mean CFR was 62.9% (95% CI: 61.9% to 64.0%) among confirmed cases with recorded clinical outcomes. Age was the most important modifier of survival probabilities, but country, stage of the epidemic and whether patients were hospitalized also played roles. We developed a statistical analysis to detect outliers in CFR between districts of residence and treatment centres (TCs), adjusting for known factors influencing survival and identified eight districts and three TCs with a CFR significantly different from the average. From the current dataset, we cannot determine whether the observed variation in CFR seen by district or treatment centre reflects real differences in survival, related to the quality of care or other factors or was caused by differences in reporting practices or case ascertainment. | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0308 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Pollution Articles | How did COVID lockdowns affect air pollution | Air pollution harms peoples health. During the first few months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, many countries went into lockdown. Many adults worked from home, children went to school online, and families limited their trips outside of the home. Fewer trips outside meant fewer cars on the road and planes in the air. We wanted to know whether the change in peoples driving and flying habits resulted in better air quality. Using satellites, weather stations, and traffic data, we found out that it did! | The lockdown response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused an unprecedented reduction in global economic and transport activity. We test the hypothesis that this has reduced tropospheric and ground-level air pollution concentrations, using satellite data and a network of >10,000 air quality stations. After accounting for the effects of meteorological variability, we find declines in the population-weighted concentration of ground-level nitrogen dioxide (NO2: 60% with 95% CI 48 to 72%), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5: 31%; 95% CI: 17 to 45%), with marginal increases in ozone (O3: 4%; 95% CI: ?2 to 10%) in 34 countries during lockdown dates up until 15 May. Except for ozone, satellite measurements of the troposphere indicate much smaller reductions, highlighting the spatial variability of pollutant anomalies attributable to complex NOx chemistry and long-distance transport of fine particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 m (PM2.5). By leveraging Google and Apple mobility data, we find empirical evidence for a link between global vehicle transportation declines and the reduction of ambient NO2 exposure. While the state of global lockdown is not sustainable, these findings allude to the potential for mitigating public health risk by reducing business as usual air pollutant emissions from economic activities. | https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/18984 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Pollution Articles; Social-Science Articles | How is asthma related to the neighborhood you live in | Do you have asthma? In the US, asthma is more common We found that asthma emergencies are more common in in communities of color. But why is that? People of color are those neighborhoods that were once labeled low grade. So more likely to live in neighborhoods with worse air quality was air pollution, the percentage of people living in poverty, and more poverty. But this is only the start of the answer. and the percentage of people of color. A discriminatory plan Why are those neighborhoods like that? from many years ago may be one of the underlying causes of asthma emergencies among people of color today. A discriminatory system from years ago labeled Black and Hispanic neighborhoods as worse ("lower grade") than white To fight asthma, we need to uplift all communities, especially neighborhoods. This meant these neighborhoods received those harmed by the low grade label. We also need to ensure less investment (money) than white neighborhoods. We that outlawed and outdated policies are not still harming wanted to find out if this grading system from the past might people living in these places. relate to asthma rates in these neighborhoods today. | Summary Background Asthma disproportionately affects communities of colour in the USA, but the underlying factors for this remain poorly understood. In this study, we assess the role of historical redlining as outlined in security maps created by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), the discriminatory practice of categorising neighbourhoods on the basis of perceived mortgage investment risk, on the burden of asthma in these neighbourhoods. Methods We did an ecological study of HOLC risk grades and asthma exacerbations in California using the security maps available for the following eight cities: Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, and Stockton. Each census tract was categorised into one of four risk levels (A, B, C, or D) on the basis of the location of population-weighted centroids on security maps, with the worst risk level (D) indicating historical redlining. We obtained census tract-level rates of emergency department visits due to asthma from CalEnviroScreen 3.0. We assessed the relationship between risk grade and log-transformed asthma visit rates between 2011 and 2013 using ordinary least squares regression. We included potential confounding variables from the 2010 Census and CalEnviroScreen 3.0: diesel exhaust particle emissions, PM25, and percent of the population living below 2 times the federal poverty level. We also built random intercept and slope models to assess city-level variation in the relationship between redlining and asthma. Findings In the 1431 census tracts assessed (64 [45%] grade A, 241 [168%] grade B, 719 [502%] grade C, and 407 [284%] grade D), the proportion of the population that was non-Hispanic black and Hispanic, the percentage of the population living in poverty, and diesel exhaust particle emissions all significantly increased as security map risk grade worsened (p<00001). The median age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits due to asthma were 24 times higher in census tracts that were previously redlined (median 635 [IQR 343] visits per 10?000 residents per year [201113]) than in tracts at the lowest risk level (265 [184]). In adjusted models, redlined census tracts were associated with a relative risk of 139 (95% CI 121157) in rates of emergency department visits due to asthma compared with that of lowest-risk census tracts. Interpretation Historically redlined census tracts have significantly higher rates of emergency department visits due to asthma, suggesting that this discriminatory practice might be contributing to racial and ethnic asthma health disparities. | https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30241-4 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How is heart disease different for women and men | Did you know that your sex can change the way your body they did. We think this could be because a higher percentage responds to disease? We wanted to know how the female of female patients had the most serious condition, heart body responds to serious heart problems. To do this, we failure, after a heart attack. Heart failure means your heart looked through previous studies on heart disease. We isnt pumping enough blood. However, we dont understand tracked how many people died in the days after we exactly why theres a difference between the sexes. If we knew their heart wasnt working well. Did female patients can work this out, then doctors may be able to provide die more than male patients? Unfortunately, we found that better treatment for their patients. | The association between sex and outcomes after myocardial infarction has been extensively studied1; however, the reasons for these disparities are still not completely understood.2 Previous studies yielded mixed results.1,3-7 Some reports have suggested that older age and lower rate of coronary interventions in women might explain the disparity in outcomes. Others have shown that differences may be due to the pathophysiology of coronary heart disease in women.7 Some studies have shown that the higher mortality in women is restricted to patients with persistent ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), with no sex differences in patients with non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS).4,6-8 Finally, acute heart failure (HF), a common complication of ACS, can result in a several-fold increase in mortality and this may explain sex differences in mortality8-11; prior studies did not control for acute HF on hospital admission, and specifically lacked information on HF phenotyping. Left ventricular (LV) function is a strong predictor of mortality and is known to differ between men and women. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze a large European cohort to assess sex differences in the acute HF presentation complicating ACS and 30-day mortality using propensity score-based analytic methods in groups of patients with comparable severity of disease and therapeutic targets, specifically with STEMI and NSTE-ACS. | https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacadv.2023.100294 | Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How many lives do vaccines save | Ever since their creation, vaccines have saved countless lives diseases. We wanted to measure the benefits of vaccination for all over the world! Still, people in many countries suffer from them. Using mathematical models, we found that vaccination diseases that could be prevented by vaccination. We looked saved million lives between and ! We project at countries where a lot of people are infected with such that it could save million more by 2030. | Background The past two decades have seen expansion of childhood vaccination programmes in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We quantify the health impact of these programmes by estimating the deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) averted by vaccination against ten pathogens in 98 LMICs between 2000 and 2030. Methods 16 independent research groups provided model-based disease burden estimates under a range of vaccination coverage scenarios for ten pathogens: hepatitis B virus, Haemophilus influenzae type B, human papillomavirus, Japanese encephalitis, measles, Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A, Streptococcus pneumoniae, rotavirus, rubella, and yellow fever. Using standardised demographic data and vaccine coverage, the impact of vaccination programmes was determined by comparing model estimates from a no-vaccination counterfactual scenario with those from a reported and projected vaccination scenario. We present deaths and DALYs averted between 2000 and 2030 by calendar year and by annual birth cohort. Findings We estimate that vaccination of the ten selected pathogens will have averted 69 million (95% credible interval 5288) deaths between 2000 and 2030, of which 37 million (3048) were averted between 2000 and 2019. From 2000 to 2019, this represents a 45% (3658) reduction in deaths compared with the counterfactual scenario of no vaccination. Most of this impact is concentrated in a reduction in mortality among children younger than 5 years (57% reduction [5266]), most notably from measles. Over the lifetime of birth cohorts born between 2000 and 2030, we predict that 120 million (93150) deaths will be averted by vaccination, of which 58 million (3976) are due to measles vaccination and 38 million (2552) are due to hepatitis B vaccination. We estimate that increases in vaccine coverage and introductions of additional vaccines will result in a 72% (5981) reduction in lifetime mortality in the 2019 birth cohort. Interpretation Increases in vaccine coverage and the introduction of new vaccines into LMICs have had a major impact in reducing mortality. These public health gains are predicted to increase in coming decades if progress in increasing coverage is sustained. | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32657-X | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How skilled are skilled birth attendants around the world | Despite medical improvements, hundreds of thousands of women and millions of newborns die each year from childbirth-related complications. The United Nations has set goals to reduce the number of these deaths by the year 2030. The chances of survival go up when skilled medical helpers are there to assist with pregnancy and childbirth care, but what does it mean to be skilled? We decided to review the scientific literature to see if there was a clear definition of a skilled birth attendant (SBA) in low-and-middle-income countries. We discovered that there are a lot of differences between and within countries on the definition of skilled birth attendants, including requirements for education and training and the tasks they are qualified or able to perform. | Introduction The percentage of births attended by a skilled birth attendant" (SBA) is an indicator that has been adopted by several global monitoring frameworks, including the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda for regular monitoring as part of target 3.1 for reducing maternal mortality by 2030. However, accurate and consistent measurement is challenged by contextual differences between and within countries on the definition of SBA, including the education, training, competencies, and functions they are qualified to perform. This scoping review identifies and maps the health personnel considered SBA in low-to-middle-income-countries (LMIC). Methods and analysis A search was conducted inclusive to the years 2000 to 2015 in PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL Complete, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, POPLINE and the World Health Organization Global Index Medicus. Original primary source research conducted in LMIC that evaluated the skilled health personnel providing interventions during labour and childbirth were considered for inclusion. All studies reported disaggregated data of SBA cadres and were disaggregated by country. Results The search of electronic databases identified a total of 23,743 articles. Overall, 70 articles were included in the narrative synthesis. A total of 102 unique cadres names were identified from 36 LMIC countries. Of the cadres included, 16% represented doctors, 16% were nurses, and 15% were midwives. We found substantial heterogeneity between and within countries on the reported definition of SBA and the education, training, skills and competencies that they were able to perform. Conclusion The uncertainty and diversity of reported qualifications and competency of SBA within and between countries requires attention in order to better ascertain strategic priorities for future health system planning, including training and education. These results can inform recommendations around improved coverage measurement and monitoring of SBA moving forward, allowing for more accurate, consistent, and timely data able to guide decisions and action around planning and implementation of maternal and newborn health programmes. | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211576 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How to prevent rabies in India | Do you know any people who got infected with rabies? If In this study we focus on the vaccination of dogs in India. We you live in North America or Europe, the answer most likely created a computer model which showed that by vaccinating is no. However many countries in Asia and Africa are still dogs against rabies, we can control the disease in both struggling to prevent this deadly disease. Rabies usually gets dogs and humans. We also found that spending money transmitted to humans when they are bitten by a rabid dog. on vaccinating dogs is a worthwhile way to control rabies Therefore, controlling rabies in dogs would make it easier to compared to the ways it is currently prevented and treated. prevent humans from getting sick. | Over 20,000 rabies deaths occur annually in India, representing one-third of global human rabies. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu has pioneered a One Health committee to address the challenge of rabies in dogs and humans. Currently, rabies control in Tamil Nadu involves postexposure vaccination of humans after dog bites, whereas potential supplemental approaches include canine vaccination and sterilization. We developed a data-driven rabies transmission model fit to human rabies autopsy data and human rabies surveillance data from Tamil Nadu. Integrating local estimates for canine demography and costs, we predicted the impact of canine vaccination and sterilization on human health outcomes and evaluated cost-effectiveness according to the WHO criteria for India, which correspond to thresholds of $1,582 and $4,746 per disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for very cost-effective and cost-effective strategies, respectively. We found that highly feasible strategies focused on stray dogs, vaccinating as few as 7% of dogs annually, could very cost-effectively reduce human rabies deaths by 70% within 5 y, and a modest expansion to vaccinating 13% of stray dogs could cost-effectively reduce human rabies by almost 90%. Through integration over parameter uncertainty, we find that, for a cost-effectiveness threshold above $1,400 per DALY, canine interventions are at least 95% likely to be optimal. If owners are willing to bring dogs to central point campaigns at double the rate that campaign teams can capture strays, expanded annual targets become cost-effective. This case study of cost-effective canine interventions in Tamil Nadu may have applicability to other settings in India and beyond. | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1604975113 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | How well do masks protect against COVID-19 | COVID-19 has changed our lives. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many countries have introduced various restrictions. Most of us had to stay at home, distance ourselves from others, and wear face masks in public spaces for some period of time. Two years in, COVID-19 is still affecting us. Many people still have to keep their physical distance and wear masks. So are these measures effective? We tested what would happen if a sick person and a healthy one got together and talked for some time. We found out that social distancing alone isnt effective. There is a 90% chance that a healthy person 3m (10ft) away will get infected in less than 5 minutes. However, if both wear a protective mask, this risk goes down considerably even if they are standing quite close together! | There is ample evidence that masking and social distancing are effective in reducing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. However, due to the complexity of airborne disease transmission, it is difficult to quantify their effectiveness, especially in the case of one-to-one exposure. Here, we introduce the concept of an upper bound for one-to-one exposure to infectious human respiratory particles and apply it to SARS-CoV-2. To calculate exposure and infection risk, we use a comprehensive database on respiratory particle size distribution; exhalation flow physics; leakage from face masks of various types and fits measured on human subjects; consideration of ambient particle shrinkage due to evaporation; and rehydration, inhalability, and deposition in the susceptible airways. We find, for a typical SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectious dose, that social distancing alone, even at 3.0 m between two speaking individuals, leads to an upper bound of 90% for risk of infection after a few minutes. If only the susceptible wears a face mask with infectious speaking at a distance of 1.5 m, the upper bound drops very significantly; that is, with a surgical mask, the upper bound reaches 90% after 30 min, and, with an FFP2 mask, it remains at about 20% even after 1 h. When both wear a surgical mask, while the infectious is speaking, the very conservative upper bound remains below 30% after 1 h, but, when both wear a well-fitting FFP2 mask, it is 0.4%. We conclude that wearing appropriate masks in the community provides excellent protection for others and oneself, and makes social distancing less important. | https://www.pnas.org/content/118/49/e2110117118 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Social-Science Articles | More vitamins for moms are they worth it | Deficiencies in some vital nutrients during pregnancy are To find the answer, we created a mathematical model, which very common in women in low-income countries and can helped us estimate the benefits and costs of replacing iron lead to birth complications such as preterm births, low birth and folic acid tablets with multiple micronutrient tablets in weight, and infant mortality. This is why governments provide two countries Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Our results pregnant women with two important micronutrients iron showed that such a switch could cost-effectively reduce birth and folic acid. But there are other vital micronutrients as well. complications and life-long disabilities and save more than If pregnant women consume not only iron and folic acid but , lives in Bangladesh and more than , lives in also other micronutrients in a supplement, it would improve Burkina Faso each year if all pregnant women were to take womens health and birth outcomes. But these tablets cost the recommended number of tablets. more, so are they worth it? | Consumption of multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS) during pregnancy offers additional benefits compared with iron?folic acid (IFA) supplementation, but the tablets are more expensive. We estimated the effects, costs, and cost?effectiveness of hypothetically replacing IFA supplements with MMS for 1 year in Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Using baseline demographic characteristics from LiST and effect sizes from a meta?analysis, we estimated the marginal effects of replacing IFA with MMS on mortality, adverse birth outcomes, and disability?adjusted life years (DALYs) averted. We calculated the marginal tablet costs of completely replacing MMS with IFA (assuming 180 tablets per covered pregnancy). Replacing IFA with MMS could avert over 15,000 deaths and 30,000 cases of preterm birth annually in Bangladesh and over 5000 deaths and 5000 cases of preterm birth in Burkina Faso, assuming 100% coverage and adherence. We estimated the cost per death averted to be US$175185 in Bangladesh and $112125 in Burkina Faso. Cost per DALY averted ranged from $3 to $15, depending on the country and consideration of subgroup effects. Our estimates suggest that this policy change would cost?effectively save lives and reduce life?long disabilities. Improvements in program delivery and supplement adherence would be expected to improve the cost?effectiveness of replacing IFA with MMS. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6771790/ | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | Routine vaccinations during a pandemic benefit or risk | Did you have your routine vaccinations as a kid? Vaccines usual vaccinations? To find out, we used a mathematical help prevent millions of deaths each year. But now that the model. We worked out the risks and benefits if health new coronavirus is here, some countries may stop their systems in Africa continue with their vaccination programs vaccination programs for a while. The idea is to reduce as usual. We found that if African countries give vaccinations the risk of spreading the SARS-CoV- coronavirus, which as usual, they will prevent many children from dying. The causes the COVID- disease. But which is better: fewer benefits are far greater than the risk of extra deaths due to coronavirus infections or making sure children get all their COVID-. | Background National immunisation programmes globally are at risk of suspension due to the severe health system constraints and physical distancing measures in place to mitigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to compare the health benefits of sustaining routine childhood immunisation in Africa with the risk of acquiring severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection through visiting routine vaccination service delivery points. Methods We considered a high-impact scenario and a low-impact scenario to approximate the child deaths that could be caused by immunisation coverage reductions during COVID-19 outbreaks. In the high-impact scenario, we used previously reported country-specific child mortality impact estimates of childhood immunisation for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, Streptococcus pneumoniae, rotavirus, measles, meningitis A, rubella, and yellow fever to approximate the future deaths averted before 5 years of age by routine childhood vaccination during a 6-month COVID-19 risk period without catch-up campaigns. In the low-impact scenario, we approximated the health benefits of sustaining routine childhood immunisation on only the child deaths averted from measles outbreaks during the COVID-19 risk period. We assumed that contact-reducing interventions flattened the outbreak curve during the COVID-19 risk period, that 60% of the population will have been infected by the end of that period, that children can be infected by either vaccinators or during transport, and that upon child infection the whole household will be infected. Country-specific household age structure estimates and age-dependent infection-fatality rates were applied to calculate the number of deaths attributable to the vaccination clinic visits. We present benefitrisk ratios for routine childhood immunisation, with 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) from a probabilistic sensitivity analysis. Findings In the high-impact scenario, for every one excess COVID-19 death attributable to SARS-CoV-2 infections acquired during routine vaccination clinic visits, 84 (95% UI 14267) deaths in children could be prevented by sustaining routine childhood immunisation in Africa. The benefitrisk ratio for the vaccinated children is 85 000 (4900546 000), for their siblings (<20 years) is 75 000 (4400483 000), for their parents or adult carers (aged 2060 years) is 769 (1482700), and for older adults (>60 years) is 96 (14307). In the low-impact scenario that approximates the health benefits to only the child deaths averted from measles outbreaks, the benefitrisk ratio to the households of vaccinated children is 3 (0510); if the risk to only the vaccinated children is considered, the benefitrisk ratio is 3000 (18221 000). Interpretation The deaths prevented by sustaining routine childhood immunisation in Africa outweigh the excess risk of COVID-19 deaths associated with vaccination clinic visits, especially for the vaccinated children. Routine childhood immunisation should be sustained in Africa as much as possible, while considering other factors such as logistical constraints, staff shortages, and reallocation of resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. | https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30308-9 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | Should you worry about mosquitoes on planes | Imagine you are traveling home from a holiday in the tropics but mosquitoes really pose to us humans? We made some calculations a mosquito sneaks onto your plane... Could it spread some nasty to find out. Prepare to be surprised: Human travelers are much more disease, or even start an epidemic in your home country? Airplanes likely to spread certain diseases than the occasional hitchhiking are routinely sprayed with insecticides (insect poison) to kill these mosquito (about times more likely for malaria and times pesky invaders, but how much of a health risk do these sneaky more likely for dengue fever). | Mosquito-borne diseases are increasingly being recognized as global threats, with increased air travel accelerating their occurrence in travelers and their spread to new locations. Since the early days of aviation, concern over the possible transportation of infected mosquitoes has led to recommendations to disinsect aircraft. Despite rare reports of mosquitoes, most likely transported on aircraft, infecting people far from endemics areas, it is unclear how important the role of incidentally transported mosquitoes is compared to the role of traveling humans. We used data for Plasmodium falciparum and dengue viruses to estimate the probability of introduction of these pathogens by mosquitoes and by humans via aircraft under ideal conditions. The probability of introduction of either pathogen by mosquitoes is low due to few mosquitoes being found on aircraft, low infection prevalence among mosquitoes, and high mortality. Even without disinsection, introduction via infected human travelers was far more likely than introduction by infected mosquitoes; more than 1000 times more likely for P. falciparum and more than 200 times more likely for dengue viruses. Even in the absence of disinsection and under the most favorable conditions, introduction of mosquito-borne pathogens via air travel is far more likely to occur as a result of an infected human travelling rather than the incidental transportation of infected mosquitoes. Thus, while disinsection may serve a role in preventing the spread of vector species and other invasive insects, it is unlikely to impact the spread of mosquito-borne pathogens. | http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0005683 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Pollution Articles | What can trees tell us about the air we breathe at home | The air in houses can be affected by bad stuff, called contaminants. Sometimes harmful chemicals enter the air in buildings from nearby contaminated soil and groundwater through cracks or gaps in the foundation a process known as vapor intrusion. This poses some risk to our health because we spend so much of our time indoors. Currently, its difficult and expensive to figure out if vapor intrusion is happening. Thats why we wanted to see if trees can serve as indicators for vapor intrusion. We collected samples from 109 trees in a contaminated area in a Nebraska town and analyzed them for tetrachloroethene (PCE), a chemical used mostly as a cleaner and to make other chemicals. When comparing our results with the data the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had collected, we found that trees are good indicators of vapor intrusion. | Human exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) via vapor intrusion (VI) is an emerging public health concern with notable detrimental impacts on public health. Phytoforensics, plant sampling to semi-quantitatively delineate subsurface contamination, provides a potential non-invasive screening approach to detect VI potential, and plant sampling is effective and also time- and cost-efficient. Existing VI assessment methods are time- and resource-intensive, invasive, and require access into residential and commercial buildings to drill holes through basement slabs to install sampling ports or require substantial equipment to install groundwater or soil vapor sampling outside the home. Tree-core samples collected in 2 days at the PCE Southeast Contamination Site in York, Nebraska were analyzed for tetrachloroethene (PCE) and results demonstrated positive correlations with groundwater, soil, soil-gas, sub-slab, and indoor-air samples collected over a 2-year period. Because tree-core samples were not collocated with other samples, interpolated surfaces of PCE concentrations were estimated so that comparisons could be made between pairs of data. Results indicate moderate to high correlation with average indoor-air and sub-slab PCE concentrations over long periods of time (months to years) to an interpolated tree-core PCE concentration surface, with Spearmans correlation coefficients () ranging from 0.31 to 0.53 that are comparable to the pairwise correlation between sub-slab and indoor-air PCE concentrations ( = 0.55, n = 89). Strong correlations between soil-gas, sub-slab, and indoor-air PCE concentrations and an interpolated tree-core PCE concentration surface indicate that trees are valid indicators of potential VI and human exposure to subsurface environment pollutants. The rapid and non-invasive nature of tree sampling are notable advantages: even with less than 60 trees in the vicinity of the source area, roughly 12 hours of tree-core sampling with minimal equipment at the PCE Southeast Contamination Site was sufficient to delineate vapor intrusion potential in the study area and offered comparable delineation to traditional sub-slab sampling performed at 140 properties over a period of approximately 2 years. | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193247 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Social-Science Articles | What difference do cleaner burning cookstoves make | In Malawi, a country in sub-Saharan Africa, pneumonia is one of the main causes of death in children under 5 years of age. Pneumonia is a lung infection, which makes it hard for you to get enough oxygen into your bloodstream (i.e. you have low oxygen saturation).Pneumonia in kids has been linked to exposure to smoke from open fires as their mothers cook family meals on them. We predicted that replacing open fires with cleaner-burning cookstoves would reduce the number of cases of pneumonia in young children. To find out if this was true, we ran a two-year trial in Malawi, comparing the effects of using a cleaner-burning cookstove with continuation of open-fire cooking on childhood pneumonia rates. After two years, we found no evidence that using cleaner-burning cookstoves reduced the risk of pneumonia in young children. But the improved cookstoves were beneficial for other important reasons (e.g. avoiding cooking-related injuries such as burns). | Summary Background WHO estimates exposure to air pollution from cooking with solid fuels is associated with over 4 million premature deaths worldwide every year including half a million children under the age of 5 years from pneumonia. We hypothesised that replacing open fires with cleaner burning biomass-fuelled cookstoves would reduce pneumonia incidence in young children. Methods We did a community-level open cluster randomised controlled trial to compare the effects of a cleaner burning biomass-fuelled cookstove intervention to continuation of open fire cooking on pneumonia in children living in two rural districts, Chikhwawa and Karonga, of Malawi. Clusters were randomly allocated to intervention and control groups using a computer-generated randomisation schedule with stratification by site, distance from health centre, and size of cluster. Within clusters, households with a child under the age of 45 years were eligible. Intervention households received two biomass-fuelled cookstoves and a solar panel. The primary outcome was WHO Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI)-defined pneumonia episodes in children under 5 years of age. Efficacy and safety analyses were by intention to treat. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, number ISRCTN59448623. Findings We enrolled 10?750 children from 8626 households across 150 clusters between Dec 9, 2013, and Feb 28, 2016. 10?543 children from 8470 households contributed 15?991 child-years of follow-up data to the intention-to-treat analysis. The IMCI pneumonia incidence rate in the intervention group was 1576 (95% CI 14891663) per 100 child-years and in the control group 1558 (95% CI 14721645) per 100 child-years, with an intervention versus control incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 101 (95% CI 091113; p=080). Cooking-related serious adverse events (burns) were seen in 19 children; nine in the intervention and ten (one death) in the control group (IRR 091 [95% CI 037223]; p=083). Interpretation We found no evidence that an intervention comprising cleaner burning biomass-fuelled cookstoves reduced the risk of pneumonia in young children in rural Malawi. Effective strategies to reduce the adverse health effects of household air pollution are needed. | http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32507-7/abstract | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | What does war have to do with malaria | Malaria has been a big problem in Pakistan for a long time now, especially near the border with Afghanistan, where many refugees come from. Because of nearby war, its really hard to collect any data regarding this problem. We managed to examine blood samples from febrile patients from this area (these are people who showed up at the hospital with fever). Through genetic analysis, we found out that 86% of the blood samples were infected with Plasmodium vivax and 12% with P. falciparum the parasites which cause malaria. Public health in this region is worse than in any other area in the country. Many of the cases of malaria are severe. Mostly, children get sick. This study is hopefully the first step in taking control of the situation in the area. | Background Military conflict has been a major challenge in the detection and control of emerging infectious diseases such as malaria. It poses issues associated with enhancing emergence and transmission of infectious diseases by destroying infrastructure and collapsing healthcare systems. The Orakzai agency in Pakistan has witnessed a series of intense violence and destruction. Military conflicts and instability in Afghanistan have resulted in the migration of refugees into the area and possible introduction of many infectious disease epidemics. Due to the ongoing violence and Talibanization, it has been a challenge to conduct an epidemiological study. Methodology/Principal Findings All patients were sampled within the transmission season. After a detailed clinical investigation of patients, data were recorded. Baseline venous blood samples were taken for microscopy and nested polymerase chain reaction (nPCR) analysis. Plasmodium species were detected using nested PCR (nPCR) and amplification of the small subunit ribosomal ribonucleic acid (ssrRNA) genes using the primer pairs. We report a clinical assessment of the epidemic situation of malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax (86.5%) and Plasmodium falciparum (11.79%) infections with analysis of complications in patients such as decompensated shock (41%), anemia (8.98%), hypoglycaemia (7.3%), multiple convulsions (6.7%), hyperpyrexia (6.17%), jaundice (5%), and hyperparasitaemia (4.49%). Conclusions/Significance This overlooked distribution of P. vivax should be considered by malaria control strategy makers in the world and by the Government of Pakistan. In our study, children were the most susceptible population to malaria infection while they were the least expected to use satisfactory prevention strategies in such a war-torn deprived region. Local health authorities should initiate malaria awareness programs in schools and malaria-related education should be further promoted at the local level reaching out to both children and parents. | http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0004399# | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Social-Science Articles | What if women didnt have to pay for giving birth | What do you think was one of the most dangerous moments survival, the Kenyan government got rid of the fee for giving in your mothers life? Most likely when she gave birth to births at public health facilities in . We conducted a you! This is shockingly true even in some rich and developed survey of women of childbearing ages in five cities in Kenya nations, but especially so for countries in the developing before and after the fee stopped being charged. Among world, such as Kenya, where many women are poor and lack poor women we found that they were more likely to deliver access to adequate medical facilities. These women often their baby at a public facility than at home after the delivery give birth at home, where no trained medical staff is on fee was removed, but we did not have the same findings hand when complications occur. To improve their chances at among all women. | Objectives In 2013, Kenya removed delivery fees at public health facilities in an effort to promote equity in access to health services and address high maternal mortality. This study determines the effect of the policy to remove user fees on institutional delivery in a population-based sample of women from urban Kenya. Methods Longitudinal data were collected from a representative sample of 8500 women from five cities in Kenya in 2010 with a follow-up interview in 2014 (response rate 58.9%). Respondents were asked about their most recent birth since 2008 at baseline and 2012 at endline, including the delivery location. Multinomial logistic regression is used, controlling for the temporal time trend and background characteristics, to determine if births which occurred after the national policy change were more likely to occur at a public facility than at home or a private facility. Results Multivariate findings show that women were significantly more likely to deliver at a public facility as compared to a private facility after the policy. Among the poor, the results show that poor women were significantly more likely to deliver in a public facility compared to home or a private facility after policy change. Conclusions for Practice These findings show Kenyas progress towards achieving universal access to delivery services and meeting its national development targets. The removal of delivery fees in the public sector is leading to increased use of facilities for delivery among the urban poor; this is an important first step in reducing maternal death. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5845052/ | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | What if you share a drink with a bat | Bats transmit several different viruses, including the Nipah We found that eight of them drank fermented palm sap - virus, which scientists discovered recently. (See the fascinating the local palm wine. We believe that drinking this liquor is story of its discovery in References!) We studied cases of a potential way to get infected with Nipah virus. Palm wine people in Bangladesh who got sick with the virus between producers should probably take measures to prevent contact and . The source of their infection was unknown. between bats and the sap. | Nipah virus (NiV) is a paramyxovirus, and Pteropus spp. bats are the natural reservoir. From December 2010 through March 2014, hospital-based encephalitis surveillance in Bangladesh identified 18 clusters of NiV infection. The source of infection for case-patients in 3 clusters in 2 districts was unknown. A team of epidemiologists and anthropologists investigated these 3 clusters comprising 14 case-patients, 8 of whom died. Among the 14 case-patients, 8 drank fermented date palm sap (tari) regularly before their illness, and 6 provided care to a person infected with NiV. The process of preparing date palm trees for tari production was similar to the process of collecting date palm sap for fresh consumption. Bat excreta was reportedly found inside pots used to make tari. These findings suggest that drinking tari is a potential pathway of NiV transmission. Interventions that prevent bat access to date palm sap might prevent tariassociated NiV infection. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806957/pdf/15-1747.pdf | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Social-Science Articles | What is the connection between Zika virus and microcephaly | Zika is a mosquito-borne virus which usually causes no why we gathered information on every birth in Brazil since symptoms. Yet for some time now, scientists have believed the beginning of the Zika outbreak. Using statistics we then Zika infection during pregnancy can lead to birth defects in tested different hypotheses about the cause of the increased the babies. One reason is that the Zika outbreak in Brazil rate of microcephaly cases. We found a strong connection coincided with a microcephaly outbreak. We wanted to see between Zika infection early in the pregnancy and this birth whether there really is a connection between the virus and defect. The risk is highest during the first two trimesters this and other birth defects or whether there were other of the pregnancy. Although Zika virus turned out to cause factors responsible for the microcephaly outbreak. That is other birth defects as well, they are a lot rarer as outcomes. | Background In 2015, high rates of microcephaly were reported in Northeast Brazil following the first South American Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak. Reported microcephaly rates in other Zika-affected areas were significantly lower, suggesting alternate causes or the involvement of arboviral cofactors in exacerbating microcephaly rates. Methods and findings We merged data from multiple national reporting databases in Brazil to estimate exposure to 9 known or hypothesized causes of microcephaly for every pregnancy nationwide since the beginning of the ZIKV outbreak; this generated between 3.6 and 5.4 million cases (depending on analysis) over the time period 1 January 201523 May 2017. The association between ZIKV and microcephaly was statistically tested against models with alternative causes or with effect modifiers. We found no evidence for alternative non-ZIKV causes of the 20152017 microcephaly outbreak, nor that concurrent exposure to arbovirus infection or vaccination modified risk. We estimate an absolute risk of microcephaly of 40.8 (95% CI 34.249.3) per 10,000 births and a relative risk of 16.8 (95% CI 3.2369.1) given ZIKV infection in the first or second trimester of pregnancy; however, because ZIKV infection rates were highly variable, most pregnant women in Brazil during the ZIKV outbreak will have been subject to lower risk levels. Statistically significant associations of ZIKV with other birth defects were also detected, but at lower relative risks than that of microcephaly (relative risk < 1.5). Our analysis was limited by missing data prior to the establishment of nationwide ZIKV surveillance, and its findings may be affected by unmeasured confounding causes of microcephaly not available in routinely collected surveillance data. Conclusions This study strengthens the evidence that congenital ZIKV infection, particularly in the first 2 trimesters of pregnancy, is associated with microcephaly and less frequently with other birth defects. The finding of no alternative causes for geographic differences in microcephaly rate leads us to hypothesize that the Northeast region was disproportionately affected by this Zika outbreak, with 94% of an estimated 8.5 million total cases occurring in this region, suggesting a need for seroprevalence surveys to determine the underlying reason. | https://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1002755 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | What is the impact of COVID-19 on other diseases | The new coronavirus has spread almost everywhere on our We created mathematical models to estimate how the planet. Governments have taken various measures to try and measures against COVID- are impacting people with control the disease many of us are in lockdown, and lots of these other diseases. Unfortunately, we found that deaths schools and businesses are closed. Some people have lost could increase by % for HIV, % for TB and % for their jobs. These (and other) measures have consequences malaria. for other diseases as well. We wanted to assess what impact Our results show that governments should continue with the the coronavirus epidemic would have on three other current most important actions that help prevent and treat these epidemics: HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. These three three diseases. diseases are a major threat, especially in poorer countries. | Background COVID-19 has the potential to cause substantial disruptions to health services, due to cases overburdening the health system or response measures limiting usual programmatic activities. We aimed to quantify the extent to which disruptions to services for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria in low-income and middle-income countries with high burdens of these diseases could lead to additional loss of life over the next 5 years. Methods Assuming a basic reproduction number of 30, we constructed four scenarios for possible responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: no action, mitigation for 6 months, suppression for 2 months, or suppression for 1 year. We used established transmission models of HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria to estimate the additional impact on health that could be caused in selected settings, either due to COVID-19 interventions limiting activities, or due to the high demand on the health system due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings In high-burden settings, deaths due to HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria over 5 years could increase by up to 10%, 20%, and 36%, respectively, compared with if there was no COVID-19 pandemic. The greatest impact on HIV was estimated to be from interruption to antiretroviral therapy, which could occur during a period of high health system demand. For tuberculosis, the greatest impact would be from reductions in timely diagnosis and treatment of new cases, which could result from any prolonged period of COVID-19 suppression interventions. The greatest impact on malaria burden could be as a result of interruption of planned net campaigns. These disruptions could lead to a loss of life-years over 5 years that is of the same order of magnitude as the direct impact from COVID-19 in places with a high burden of malaria and large HIV and tuberculosis epidemics. Interpretation Maintaining the most critical prevention activities and health-care services for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria could substantially reduce the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. | https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30288-6 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | What role do rodents have in human snail fever | Schistosomiasis, or snail fever, is a parasitic disease, caused by We trapped small mammals in Senegal, West Africa schistosomes, which leads to long-term ill-health and affects and tested them for the presence of the parasite. We found millions of people, predominantly across Africa and Asia. In that mice and rats were carrying two separate species of order to reduce the impact of this disease, we have to better Schistosoma, as well as a hybrid form - the offspring of understand the complicated life cycle of the parasite and all the different types of schistosomes, some affecting humans and creatures that carry and transmit it. This is why we wanted to some affecting animals. Our data suggest that rodents play see whether small small mammals (like rats, mice, and shrews) an important role in spreading schistosomes in West Africa. spread the form of schistosomiasis that affects humans. | The complex multi-host disease dynamics of schistosomiasis and Schistosoma spp., including the emergence of zoonotic parasite hybrids, remain largely unexplored in West Africa. We elucidated the role of wild small mammals as reservoir for zoonotic Schistosoma species and hybrids in endemic areas of Senegal. We identified Schistosoma mansoni, Schistosoma bovis, and a Schistosoma haematobium/S. bovis hybrid, with local prevalence in wild rodents ranging from 1.9% to 28.6%. Our findings indicate that rodents may be an important local reservoir for zoonotic schistosomiasis in endemic areas of West Africa, amplifying transmission to humans and acting as natural definitive hosts of schistosome hybrids. | https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/218/3/429/4819098 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | What was the impact of a delayed second COVID-19 vaccine | Do you remember the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic? It got quite scary at times. There were many unknowns and governments had to make hard decisions. At first, there were lockdowns. Then, less than a year later, scientists developed vaccines. The UK was the first country to start national vaccination. A full vaccination course required 2 doses for each person. But some evidence suggested that even one dose could provide decent protection for some time. So the UK government decided to delay the second dose and have more people receive the first dose as fast as possible. What was the impact of this decision? We used a mathematical model to find out. It turned out that delaying the second dose prevented around 58,000 hospitalizations. It has saved more than 10,000 lives! | Summary Background The UK was the first country to start national COVID-19 vaccination programmes, initially administering doses 3 weeks apart. However, early evidence of high vaccine effectiveness after the first dose and the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 alpha variant prompted the UK to extend the interval between doses to 12 weeks. In this study, we aimed to quantify the effect of delaying the second vaccine dose in England. Methods We used a previously described model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, calibrated to COVID-19 surveillance data from England, including hospital admissions, hospital occupancy, seroprevalence data, and population-level PCR testing data, using a Bayesian evidence-synthesis framework. We modelled and compared the epidemic trajectory in the counterfactual scenario in which vaccine doses were administered 3 weeks apart against the real reported vaccine roll-out schedule of 12 weeks. We estimated and compared the resulting numbers of daily infections, hospital admissions, and deaths. In sensitivity analyses, we investigated scenarios spanning a range of vaccine effectiveness and waning assumptions. Findings In the period from Dec 8, 2020, to Sept 13, 2021, the number of individuals who received a first vaccine dose was higher under the 12-week strategy than the 3-week strategy. For this period, we estimated that delaying the interval between the first and second COVID-19 vaccine doses from 3 to 12 weeks averted a median (calculated as the median of the posterior sample) of 58?000 COVID-19 hospital admissions (291?000 cumulative hospitalisations [95% credible interval 275?000319?000] under the 3-week strategy vs 233?000 [229?000238?000] under the 12-week strategy) and 10?100 deaths (64?800 deaths [60?20068?900] vs 54?700 [52?80055?600]). Similarly, we estimated that the 3-week strategy would have resulted in more infections compared with the 12-week strategy. Across all sensitivity analyses the 3-week strategy resulted in a greater number of hospital admissions. In results by age group, the 12-week strategy led to more hospitalisations and deaths in older people in spring 2021, but fewer following the emergence of the delta variant during summer 2021. Interpretation England's delayed-second-dose vaccination strategy was informed by early real-world data on vaccine effectiveness in the context of limited vaccine supplies in a growing epidemic. Our study shows that rapidly providing partial (single-dose) vaccine-induced protection to a larger proportion of the population was successful in reducing the burden of COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths overall. | https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00337-1/fulltext | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | Where does malaria lurk in Bangladesh | Malaria is the deadliest parasitic and mosquito-borne infection on the planet. Its a big public health problem in many tropical and subtropical countries. In Bangladesh, over 17 million people are at risk of malaria. Data on its distribution in the country, however, are limited. We wanted to track malaria hotspots through both space and time. To find these hotspots we used data on malaria cases, collected from non-governmental organizations in Bangladesh. We generated maps of these regions for four years and analyzed their stability through time. We mapped several stable hotspots, most of them located in the southeast, and found out that only a small proportion of the population accounted for most malaria cases. Moreover, stable hotspots from one year can be used to predict future hotspots. This may help locate the best areas to target for elimination efforts. | Malaria claims hundreds of thousands of lives each year, most of them children. A malaria-free world is the World Health Organizations vision, but elimination from the southeast Asian Region is hampered by factors including anti-malarial resistance and systematic underreporting. Malaria is a significant public health problem in Bangladesh and while there have been recent gains in control, there is large spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the disease burden. This study aims to determine the pattern and stability of malaria hotspots in Bangladesh with the end goal of informing intervention planning for elimination. | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-018-2405-3 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | Who is at risk for cholera in Africa | Can you believe that one of the oldest infectious diseases is We wanted to figure out where most cases of cholera occurred still one of the deadliest? People have tried for a very long in sub-Saharan Africa, to see where people were at the highest time to get rid of cholera, a dangerous bacterial infection, but risk. We saw that the disease does not affect people equally it always manages to return somewhere. Even though it has in all countries; instead, cholera epidemics occur most often been largely eliminated in more developed countries, it still in limited areas. If we focus our efforts on these high-risk threatens millions (and kills hundreds of thousands) of people areas, we could prevent cholera much more efficiently. In fact, each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. we could get rid of half of all cholera cases by targeting only % of the population! | Summary Background Cholera remains a persistent health problem in sub-Saharan Africa and worldwide. Cholera can be controlled through appropriate water and sanitation, or by oral cholera vaccination, which provides transient (?3 years) protection, although vaccine supplies remain scarce. We aimed to map cholera burden in sub-Saharan Africa and assess how geographical targeting could lead to more efficient interventions. Methods We combined information on cholera incidence in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding Djibouti and Eritrea) from 2010 to 2016 from datasets from WHO, M?decins Sans Fronti?res, ProMED, ReliefWeb, ministries of health, and the scientific literature. We divided the study region into 20 km???20 km grid cells and modelled annual cholera incidence in each grid cell assuming a Poisson process adjusted for covariates and spatially correlated random effects. We combined these findings with data on population distribution to estimate the number of people living in areas of high cholera incidence (>1 case per 1000 people per year). We further estimated the reduction in cholera incidence that could be achieved by targeting cholera prevention and control interventions at areas of high cholera incidence. Findings We included 279 datasets covering 2283 locations in our analyses. In sub-Saharan Africa (excluding Djibouti and Eritrea), a mean of 141?918 cholera cases (95% credible interval [CrI] 141?538146?505) were reported per year. 40% (95% CrI 17168) of districts, home to 872 million people (95% CrI 603 million to 1189 million), have high cholera incidence. By focusing on the highest incidence districts first, effective targeted interventions could eliminate 50% of the region's cholera by covering 353 million people (95% CrI 263 million to 620 million), which is less than 4% of the total population. Interpretation Although cholera occurs throughout sub-Saharan Africa, its highest incidence is concentrated in a small proportion of the continent. Prioritising high-risk areas could substantially increase the efficiency of cholera control programmes. | https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)33050-7/fulltext | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | Why are people more likely to get sick when it is cold | Did you know that your nose protects you from germs? The nose makes small sacs called extracellular vesicles. These sacs prevent bacteria from causing infections. In this study, we investigated how the nose uses extracellular vesicles to fight viruses. We hypothesized that cold weather decreases the noses ability to prevent viruses from infecting cells. Our findings confirmed that the nose does make extracellular vesicles when exposed to a virus. They contain molecules that attach to and kill the viruses. But the amount of extracellular vesicles decreases in colder weather. Furthermore, when its cold, the extracellular vesicles do not contain as many molecules that can kill the virus. That means that we are more likely to get sick when it is chilly outside! | Background The human upper respiratory tract is the first site of contact for inhaled respiratory viruses and elaborates an array of innate immune responses. Seasonal variation in respiratory viral infections and the importance of ambient temperature in modulating immune responses to infections have been well recognized; however, the underlying biological mechanisms remain understudied. Objective We investigated the role of nasal epithelium-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) in innate Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3)-dependent antiviral immunity. Methods We evaluated the secretion and composition of nasal epithelial EVs after TLR3 stimulation in human autologous cells and fresh human nasal mucosal surgical specimens. We also explored the antiviral activity and mechanisms of TLR3-stimulated EVs against respiratory viruses as well as the effect of cool ambient temperature on TLR3-dependent antiviral immunity. Results We found that polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid, aka poly(I:C), exposure induced a swarm-like increase in the secretion of nasal epithelial EVs via the TLR3 signaling. EVs participated in TLR3-dependent antiviral immunity, protecting the host from viral infections through both EV-mediated functional delivery of miR-17 and direct virion neutralization after binding to virus ligands via surface receptors, including LDLR and ICAM-1. These potent antiviral immune defense functions mediated by TLR3-stimulated EVs were impaired by cold exposure via a decrease in total EV secretion as well as diminished microRNA packaging and antiviral binding affinity of individual EV. Conclusion TLR3-dependent nasal epithelial EVs exhibit multiple innate antiviral mechanisms to suppress respiratory viral infections. Furthermore, our study provides a direct quantitative mechanistic explanation for seasonal variation in upper respiratory tract infection prevalence. | https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(22)01423-3/fulltext | Elementary school; Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles | Why do measles survivors get sicker | Measles is one of the major causes of death among children, even though there is a safe and effective vaccine against it. In fact, because fewer people have been getting vaccinated, the number of people dying from measles is increasing. Even if those who catch it survive, they tend to get sick more often than those who have never had the virus. Why is that? We wanted to find out about the long-term effects of measles on the immune system perhaps they would hold the answer. We collected blood samples from 77 unvaccinated children before and after they got infected with the virus during an outbreak in the Netherlands. We tracked the changes in antibodies (the particles that fight off pathogens) in the childrens bloodstream. We found that measles wipes out up to 73% of these antibodies, leaving the children unprotected against other diseases for months, and sometimes years. These findings further show the importance of vaccination. | Measles virus is directly responsible for more than 100,000 deaths yearly. Epidemiological studies have associated measles with increased morbidity and mortality for years after infection, but the reasons why are poorly understood. Measles virus infects immune cells, causing acute immune suppression. To identify and quantify long-term effects of measles on the immune system, we used VirScan, an assay that tracks antibodies to thousands of pathogen epitopes in blood. We studied 77 unvaccinated children before and 2 months after natural measles virus infection. Measles caused elimination of 11 to 73% of the antibody repertoire across individuals. Recovery of antibodies was detected after natural reexposure to pathogens. Notably, these immune system effects were not observed in infants vaccinated against MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), but were confirmed in measles-infected macaques. The reduction in humoral immune memory after measles infection generates potential vulnerability to future infections, underscoring the need for widespread vaccination. | https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/599 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Health-And-Medicine Articles; Social-Science Articles | Why get vaccinated when the flu vaccine doesnt work well | Have you ever had the flu? Most people recover from it We wanted to study the impact of less effective vaccines in pretty fast. However, the flu still kills thousands of children preventing flu-related infections, hospitalizations and deaths. and adults each year. This makes it a big health problem We found that even when the flu vaccines dont work well, across the world. The best way we can prevent flu infection they prevent a large number of people from getting infected is by getting vaccinated. The problem with the flu vaccine or hospitalized and save thousands of lives. We also learned is that in some years it doesnt work as well as others. For that when vaccines are less effective, it is most important example, in - the flu vaccine was less effective in for school-age children, young adults, and the elderly to be preventing infection among vaccinated people compared to vaccinated. previous years. | The efficacy of influenza vaccines varies from one year to the next, with efficacy during the 20172018 season anticipated to be lower than usual. However, the impact of low-efficacy vaccines at the population level and their optimal age-specific distribution have yet to be ascertained. Applying an optimization algorithm to a mathematical model of influenza transmission and vaccination in the United States, we determined the optimal age-specific uptake of low-efficacy vaccine that would minimize incidence, hospitalization, mortality, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), respectively. We found that even relatively low-efficacy influenza vaccines can be highly impactful, particularly when vaccine uptake is optimally distributed across age groups. As vaccine efficacy declines, the optimal distribution of vaccine uptake shifts toward the elderly to minimize mortality and DALYs. Health practitioner encouragement and concerted recruitment efforts are required to achieve optimal coverage among target age groups, thereby minimizing influenza morbidity and mortality for the population overall. | http://www.pnas.org/content/115/20/5151.short | Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | How can we know about dinosaurs social lives | Fossils tell us a lot about how dinosaur shapes changed over time. But learning how dinosaur behavior changed over time is a lot harder to do! Thats why we were so excited to find a treasure trove of Mussaurus patagonicus fossils in Patagonia in southern Argentina. We found fossils of eggs, hatchlings, juveniles, and adults. Mussaurus lived in the early Jurassic, about 193 million years ago. It is an early cousin of the giant sauropods like Diplodocus. Clues from our fossil find tell us about Mussaurus social lives. They lived in herds, nested in colonies, and spent time in age-separated groups. This is the oldest fossil evidence of dinosaur social behavior ever found! | Sauropodomorph dinosaurs dominated the herbivorous niches during the first 40 million years of dinosaur history (Late TriassicEarly Jurassic), yet palaeobiological factors that influenced their evolutionary success are not fully understood. For instance, knowledge on their behaviour is limited, although herding in sauropodomorphs has been well documented in derived sauropods from the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous. Here we report an exceptional fossil occurrence from Patagonia that includes over 100 eggs and skeletal specimens of 80 individuals of the early sauropodomorphMussaurus patagonicus, ranging from embryos to fully-grown adults, with an Early Jurassic age as determined by high-precision UPb zircon geochronology. Most specimens were found in a restricted area and stratigraphic interval, with some articulated skeletons grouped in clusters of individuals of approximately the same age. Our new discoveries indicate the presence of social cohesion throughout life and age-segregation within a herd structure, in addition to colonial nesting behaviour. These findings provide the earliest evidence of complex social behaviour in Dinosauria, predating previous records by at least 40 My. The presence of sociality in different sauropodomorph lineages suggests a possible Triassic origin of this behaviour, which may have influenced their early success as large terrestrial herbivores. | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99176-1 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | How did the warrah cross the ocean to the Falkland Islands | When Charles Darwin visited the Falkland Islands, he was puzzled to find only one species of land-dwelling mammal a fox-like animal called the warrah [WAH-rah]. How could the warrah have reached the Falkland Islands? Until now, scientists have assumed humans werent responsible for bringing the warrah to the islands. However, we showed that it is very likely that Indigenous people from the Tierra del Fuego visited the islands centuries before the first European explorers arrived. The Yaghan people are traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers and often traveled with domesticated foxes. We believe that the Yaghan people probably brought the warrah to the islands centuries ago. | When Darwin visited the Falkland Islands in 1833, he noted the puzzling occurrence of the islands sole terrestrial mammal, Dusicyon australis (or warrah). The warrahs origins have been debated, and prehistoric human transport was previously rejected because of a lack of evidence of pre-European human activity in the Falkland Islands. We report several lines of evidence indicating that humans were present in the Falkland Islands centuries before Europeans, including (i) an abrupt increase in fire activity, (ii) deposits of mixed marine vertebrates that predate European exploration by centuries, and (iii) a surface-find projectile point made of local quartzite. Dietary evidence from D. australis remains further supports a potential mutualism with humans. The findings from our study are consistent with the culture of the Yaghan (Y?mana) people from Tierra del Fuego. If people reached the Falkland Islands centuries before European colonization, this reopens the possibility of human introduction of the warrah. | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abh3803 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | What can fossils tell us about the nervous systems evolution | What can we learn from fossils? We can estimate the shape and size of an extinct animal. Anything else? Well, if soft tissues (like the brain or muscles) fossilize, it could tell us how the animal functioned or behaved. Unfortunately, soft tissue decomposes quickly after an animal dies. They arent preserved as fossils very often. Thats why we felt really lucky when we came across a fossil of an extinct horseshoe crab with a preserved central nervous system (CNS). We discovered that the organization of the CNS in our fossil is the same as in horseshoe crabs living today. It hasnt changed in over 300 million years! We also figured out how our unique fossil might have formed. This could help others discover similar fossils in the future. | The central nervous system (CNS) presents unique insight into the behaviors and ecology of extant and extinct animal groups. However, neurological tissues are delicate and prone to rapid decay, and thus their occurrence as fossils is mostly confined to Cambrian Burgess Shaletype deposits and Cenozoic amber inclusions. We describe an exceptionally preserved CNS in the horseshoe crab Euproops danae from the late Carboniferous (Moscovian) Mazon Creek Konservat-Lagerst?tte in Illinois, USA. The E. danae CNS demonstrates that the general prosomal synganglion organization has remained essentially unchanged in horseshoe crabs for >300 m.y., despite substantial morphological and ecological diversification in that time. Furthermore, it reveals that the euarthropod CNS can be preserved by molding in siderite and suggests that further examples may be present in the Mazon Creek fauna. This discovery fills a significant temporal gap in the fossil record of euarthropod CNSs and expands the taphonomic scope for preservation of detailed paleoneuroanatomical data in the Paleozoic to siderite concretion Lagerst?tten of marginal marine deposits. | https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/49/11/1381/606398/Central-nervous-system-of-a-310-m-y-old-horseshoe | Lower high school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles; Social-Science Articles | What can graves tell us about gender identity | How do we find out about people who lived hundreds could be the grave of a powerful woman a woman and even thousands of years ago? Often we look at with a sword! their graves. What were they buried with? What does This is surprising because usually swords are associated this tell us about who they were? with men. But its not so straightforward. We wanted to An early medieval grave in Finland has been puzzling find out who the person really was. We looked carefully archaeologists for a while. The person was buried with at what they were buried with, and worked out their a sword, but also jewelry and other objects thought of biological sex using ancient DNA. The results made us as feminine. So, for a long time weve thought that it think that maybe medieval society had different ideas about sex and gender than what we thought. | Abstract In 1968, a weapon grave with brooches was found at Suontaka Vesitorninm?ki, Hattula, Finland. Since then, the grave has been interpreted as evidence of powerful women, even female warriors and leaders in early medieval Finland. Others have denied the possibility of a woman buried with a sword and tried to explain it as a double burial. We present the first modern analysis of the grave, including an examination of its context, a soil sample analysis for microremains, and an aDNA analysis. Based on these analyses, we suggest a new interpretation: the Suontaka grave possibly belonged to an individual with sex-chromosomal aneuploidy XXY. The overall context of the grave indicates that it was a respected person whose gender identity may well have been non-binary. Une s?pulture contenant des fibules et des armes fut d?couverte en 1968 ? Suontaka Vesitorninm?ki, Hattula, en Finlande. Depuis, on l'a interpr?t?e comme preuve qu'il existait des femmes au pouvoir, voire des femmes-guerri?res, au d?but du Moyen ?ge en Finlande. D'autres ont ni? la possibilit? d'une s?pulture de femme accompagn?e d'une ?p?e et ont tent? d'attribuer la pr?sence d'armes ? une s?pulture double. Les auteurs de cet article pr?sentent la premi?re ?tude moderne qui examin?t le contexte de cette s?pulture, les micro-restes conserv?s dans le sol et l'ADN ancien (aDNA) du squelette. Ces analyses sugg?rent une nouvelle interpr?tation : la s?pulture de Suontaka aurait pu appartenir ? un individu ? chromosomes sexuels XXY aneuplo?des. Le contexte de la s?pulture indique qu'il s'agissait d'une personne respect?e de genre non-binaire. Translation by Madeleine Hummler In 1968 wurde ein Waffengrab mit Fibeln in Suontaka Vesitorninm?ki in Hattula (Finnland) entdeckt. Seitdem hat man das Grab als Beweis angesehen, dass es Frauen, die Macht aus?bten, oder sogar Kriegerinnen im fr?hmittelalterlichen Finnland gab. Andere haben es ausgeschlossen, dass man eine Frau mit einem Schwert bestattet h?tte, und haben versucht, den Befund als Doppelbestattung zu erkl?ren. Die Autoren dieses Artikels legen die erste moderne Untersuchung des Befundes vor, in welcher sie den Kontext der Bestattung in Betracht ziehen und Micro-Resten im Boden und die aDNA des Skeletts analysieren. Diese Untersuchungen lassen eine neue Deutung zu: Bei der Bestattung von Suontaka handelte es sich vielleicht um ein Individuum mit chromosomaler Aneuploidie XXY. Der allgemeine Kontext des Grabes weist auf eine angesehene Person nicht-bin?ren Geschlechtes hin. Translation by Madeleine Hummler | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology/article/woman-with-a-sword-weapon-grave-at-suontaka-vesitorninmaki-finland/33A89DB1D7E4900F017833D87C997D3D | Elementary school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | What can we learn about dinosaur skin using a laser | Have you ever wondered how we know what dinosaurs looked like millions of years ago? We analyze fossils! When you think about dinosaur fossils, you might think about bones and footprints. But sometimes fossils contain pieces of skin. One example is the Psittacosaurus fossil located in a German museum. Many scientists examined the scaly skin of this specimen. We then re-examined this fossil using a technique called laser-stimulated fluorescence. This technique helped us gather information that was not visible under normal light. We found that the shape and size of the scales of the Psittacosaurus are not the same everywhere. We also learned that there are patterns in the scales. These patterns are unique to the family of dinosaurs to which the Psittacosaurus belongs. | The Frankfurt specimen of the early-branching ceratopsian dinosaurPsittacosaurusis remarkable for the exquisite preservation of squamous (scaly) skin and other soft tissues that cover almost its entire body. New observations under Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence (LSF) reveal the complexity of the squamous skin ofPsittacosaurus, including several unique features and details of newly detected and previously-described integumentary structures. Variations in the scaly skin are found to be strongly regionalized inPsittacosaurus. For example, feature scales consist of truncated cone-shaped scales on the shoulder, but form a longitudinal row of quadrangular scales on the tail. Re-examined through LSF, the cloaca ofPsittacosaurushas a longitudinal opening, or vent; a condition that it shares only with crocodylians. This implies that the cloaca may have had crocodylian-like internal anatomy, including a single, ventrally-positioned copulatory organ. Combined with these new integumentary data, a comprehensive review of integument in ceratopsian dinosaurs reveals that scalation was generally conservative in ceratopsians and typically consisted of large subcircular-to-polygonal feature scales surrounded by a network of smaller non-overlapping polygonal basement scales. This study highlights the importance of combining exceptional specimens with modern imaging techniques, which are helping to redefine the perceived complexity of squamation in ceratopsians and other dinosaurs. | https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03749-3 | Lower high school |
Paleoscience Articles | What kinds of foods did Neanderthals eat | Have you ever wondered what people in the Stone Age had for dinner? Food back then was very different from today! People gathered wild foods and hunted animals to eat. Scientists want to know what people ate long ago because it helps explain how people survived in difficult conditions. In the Stone Age, Neanderthals and modern humans (our species!) both lived in Europe. We dont know why Neanderthals went extinct and why modern humans survived. Learning about what Neanderthals ate can help us answer this question. We tested a new method where we measured isotope ratios in tooth enamel. We learned that meat was a big part of Neanderthals diet! | The characterization of Neandertals diets has mostly relied on nitrogen isotope analyses of bone and tooth collagen. However, few nitrogen isotope data have been recovered from bones or teeth from Iberia due to poor collagen preservation at Paleolithic sites in the region. Zinc isotopes have been shown to be a reliable method for reconstructing trophic levels in the absence of organic matter preservation. Here, we present the results of zinc (Zn), strontium (Sr), carbon (C), and oxygen (O) isotope and trace element ratio analysis measured in dental enamel on a Pleistocene food web in Gabasa, Spain, to characterize the diet and ecology of a Middle Paleolithic Neandertal individual. Based on the extremely low 66Zn value observed in the Neandertals tooth enamel, our results support the interpretation of Neandertals as carnivores as already suggested by 15N isotope values of specimens from other regions. Further work could help identify if such isotopic peculiarities (lowest 66Zn and highest 15N of the food web) are due to a metabolic and/or dietary specificity of the Neandertals. | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2109315119 | Lower high school |
Paleoscience Articles | What made woolly mammoths Ice Age icons | What does it take to survive an ice age? Woolly and looked for unique mutations in woolly mammoth mammoths are extinct today, but they thrived during genes. We found that woolly mammoths had changes the Late Pleistocene era. But what genetic adaptations in genes linked to hair growth and fat storage. These separate woolly mammoths from their modern-day may have helped the woolly mammoth survive in its elephant relatives? To discover this, we analyzed cold environment. The earliest woolly mammoths the genomes of woolly mammoths. This included already had thick fur coats and large fat deposits. But one of the oldest woolly mammoth specimens ever these and other traits, like small ears, continued to discovered , years old! We compared these evolve over time. to the genomes of living Asian and African elephants | Ancient genomes provide a tool to investigate the genetic basis of adaptations in extinct organisms. However, the identification of species-specific fixed genetic variants requires the analysis of genomes from multiple individuals. Moreover, the long-term scale of adaptive evolution coupled with the short-term nature of traditional time series data has made it difficult to assess when different adaptations evolved. Here, we analyze 23 woolly mammoth genomes, including one of the oldest known specimens at 700,000 years old, to identify fixed derived non-synonymous mutations unique to the species and to obtain estimates of when these mutations evolved. We find that at the time of its origin, the woolly mammoth had already acquired a broad spectrum of positively selected genes, including ones associated with hair and skin development, fat storage and metabolism, and immune system function. Our results also suggest that these phenotypes continued to evolve during the last 700,000 years, but through positive selection on different sets of genes. Finally, we also identify additional genes that underwent comparatively recent positive selection, including multiple genes related to skeletal morphology and body size, as well as one gene that may have contributed to the small ear size in Late Quaternary woolly mammoths. | https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00404-9 | Lower high school |
Paleoscience Articles | What was life like in medieval England | We looked for signs of parasitic worm infection in people and better toilets. Surprisingly, the friars had a higher worm who lived in Cambridge, England during the Middle Ages. infection rate! We think the reason might be that the friars We compared two groups of people who had very different used human poop to fertilize their vegetable gardens. lifestyles: Augustinian friars and common laborers. The friars had better food and lived longer than the common people. They also were more likely to have access to running water | Abstract Objective To investigate how lifestyle may have impacted the risk of contracting intestinal parasites in medieval England . Regular clergy (such as those living in monasteries) and the lay population form interesting groups for comparison as diet and lifestyle varied significantly. Monasteries were built with latrine blocks and hand washing facilities, unlike houses of the poor. Materials Sediment samples from the pelvis, along with control samples from feet and skull, of 19 burials of Augustinian Friars (13th-16th century), and 25 burials from All Saints by the Castle parish cemetery (10th-14th century), Cambridge. Methods We analysed the sediment using micro-sieving and digital light microscopy to identify the eggs of intestinal parasites. Results Parasite prevalence (roundworm and whipworm) in the Augustinian friars was 58%, and in the All Saints by the Castle parishioners just 32% (Barnards Test score statistic 1.7176, p-value 0.092). Conclusions It is interesting that the friars had nearly double the infection rate of parasites spread by poor hygiene, compared with the general population. We consider options that might explain this difference, and discuss descriptions and treatment of intestinal worms in medical texts circulating in Cambridge during the medieval period. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879981722000316 | Elementary school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | When and where did humans domesticate wolves | Scientists recently discovered an 18,000-year-old preserved canine puppy. Could this incredible discovery be the earliest dog ever uncovered? And could he help us understand more about the origins of dogs and wolves? We studied 70 ancient wolf specimens and found some possible answers. Dogs appear to have come from two separate ancient wolf populations. We believe that there are two possibilities for how this could have happened. By analyzing the DNA of ancient wolves, we can better understand wolves and dogs who live today! | The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was the first species to give rise to a domestic population, and theyremained widespread throughout the last Ice Age when many other large mammal species went extinct. Little is known, however, about the history and possible extinction of past wolf populations or when and where the wolf progenitors of the present-day dog lineage (Canis familiaris) lived1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Here we analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning the last 100,000 years from Europe, Siberia and North America. We found that wolf populations were highly connected throughout the Late Pleistocene, with levels of differentiation an order of magnitude lower than they are today. This population connectivity allowed us to detect natural selection across the time series, including rapid fixation of mutations in the geneIFT8840,00030,000 years ago. We show that dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from western Eurasia, suggesting a domestication process in the east. However, we also found that dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves, reflecting either an independent domestication process or admixture from local wolves. None of the analysed ancient wolf genomes is a direct match for either of these dog ancestries, meaning that the exact progenitor populations remain to be located. | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04824-9 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | When did bison arrive in North America | Did you know that the North American bison (aka American could use their DNA to reveal the evolutionary history of buffalo) was once an immigrant? Its ancestors migrated bison in North America. from Asia. But when? We recovered and dated new fossils Our study suggests that the first bison arrived in North and extracted their ancient DNA to find out. America - thousand years ago over a land bridge We analyzed ancient DNA from the two oldest bison fossils between Asia and Alaska. They quickly spread and evolved known in North America: a foot bone about , years (changed) into different forms to adapt to their new old that we found in northern Canada and an arm bone environments. Their invasion was so successful that they about , years old from Colorado. We also analyzed became the dominant mammal herbivore in North America younger bison fossils from Alaska and northern Canada. and even changed entire ecosystems. Millions of these large, We compared their DNA, which showed they were closely powerful mammals lived in many parts of North America related and had a common ancestor. This meant that we until their near extinction in the late 1800s. | The arrival of bison in North America marks one of the most successful large-mammal dispersals from Asia within the last million years, yet the timing and nature of this event remain poorly determined. Here, we used a combined paleontological and paleogenomic approach to provide a robust timeline for the entry and subsequent evolution of bison within North America. We characterized two fossil-rich localities in Canadas Yukon and identified the oldest well-constrained bison fossil in North America, a 130,000-y-old steppe bison, Bison cf. priscus. We extracted and sequenced mitochondrial genomes from both this bison and from the remains of a recently discovered, ?120,000-y-old giant longhorned bison, Bison latifrons, from Snowmass, Colorado. We analyzed these and 44 other bison mitogenomes with ages that span the Late Pleistocene, and identified two waves of bison dispersal into North America from Asia, the earliest of which occurred ?195 135 thousand y ago and preceded the morphological diversification of North American bison, and the second of which occurred during the Late Pleistocene, ?4521 thousand y ago. This chronological arc establishes that bison first entered North America during the sea level lowstand accompanying marine isotope stage 6, rejecting earlier records of bison in North America. After their invasion, bison rapidly colonized North America during the last interglaciation, spreading from Alaska through continental North America; they have been continuously resident since then. | http://www.pnas.org/content/114/13/3457.full.pdf | Lower high school; Middle school |
Paleoscience Articles | Where did South American wild canids come from | South America has the most diverse group of wild canids species evolved from a single ancestor that came from North in the world. There are different species! But where did America using the newly formed Panama land bridge around they come from? And how did they become so diverse? Also, . million years ago. As the ancestor spread through South why are some species really different from the others? We America, it evolved into different species. This only took took DNA from canids and sequenced their genomes. million years a blink of an eye for evolution! We were also We also downloaded the genomes of other wild canids excited to find the genes responsible for some of the wild that were already sequenced. Using computer software, we canids unique adaptations. then looked through their genes. We discovered that all | The remarkable radiation of South American (SA) canids produced 10 extant species distributed across diverse habitats, including disparate forms such as the short-legged, hypercarnivorous bush dog and the long-legged, largely frugivorous maned wolf. Despite considerable research spanning nearly two centuries, many aspects of their evolutionary history remain unknown. Here, we analyzed 31 whole genomes encompassing all extant SA canid species to assess phylogenetic relationships, interspecific hybridization, historical demography, current genetic diversity, and the molecular bases of adaptations in the bush dog and maned wolf. We found that SA canids originated from a single ancestor that colonized South America 3.9 to 3.5 Mya, followed by diversification east of the Andes and then a single colonization event and radiation of Lycalopex species west of the Andes. We detected extensive historical gene flow between recently diverged lineages and observed distinct patterns of genomic diversity and demographic history in SA canids, likely induced by past climatic cycles compounded by human-induced population declines. Genome-wide scans of selection showed that disparate limb proportions in the bush dog and maned wolf may derive from mutations in genes regulating chondrocyte proliferation and enlargement. Further, frugivory in the maned wolf may have been enabled by variants in genes associated with energy intake from short-chain fatty acids. In contrast, unique genetic variants detected in the bush dog may underlie interdigital webbing and dental adaptations for hypercarnivory. Our analyses shed light on the evolution of a unique carnivoran radiation and how it was shaped by South American topography and climate change. | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2205986119 | Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Technology Articles | Can computers help us recycle more plastic | Plastic pollution is a big environmental challenge facing us today. We use a huge amount of plastic in our daily lives but recycle very little. In fact, the average person living in North America consumes around 230lbs (104kg) of plastic each year! When a problem is this big, it can sometimes feel overwhelming. But if everybody makes small changes, it soon adds up to something big! Recycling old plastic helps to reduce the amount of new plastic we make. However, it is difficult to identify and separate all the different types of plastic by simply looking at them. We wanted to find a solution to this. Our study shows that computers with cameras can learn to recognize 12 types of plastic. They can then use this knowledge to identify plastics as they move along a conveyor belt. Our findings could revolutionize plastic recycling and bring us one step closer to solving the global plastic challenge. | An increase in the quality of recycled plastic is paramount to address the global plastic challenge and applicability of recycled plastics. A potent approach is mechanical plastic sorting but sufficient analytical techniques are needed. This study applies unsupervised machine learning on short wave infrared hyperspectral data to build a model for classification of plastics. The model can successfully distinguish between twelve plastics (PE, PP, PET, PS, PVC, PVDF, POM, PEEK, ABS, PMMA, PC, and PA12) and the utility is further proven by recognizing three unknown samples (PS, PMMA, PC). The experimental setup is constructed similar to an in-line industrial setup, and the machine learning is optimized for minimal data processing. This ensures the industrial relevance and is a stepping-stone to solve the global plastic challenge. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924203121001247 | Lower high school |
Pollution Articles; Water-Resources Articles | Heavy metal pollution How can we make water safe to drink | When you think of a glass of water, what words come to Copper is a contaminant that makes water unsafe to drink. mind? Clean? Safe? Refreshing? Unfortunately, those words We created a new material ZIOS that can take copper dont describe most of the drinking water in the world. out of the water and use it in other industries. We tested According to the World Health Organization, in people ZIOS to see how much it reduced copper levels in water. We on Earth dont have access to safe drinking water. Children also tested how quickly it does that, and if it would work in in some parts of Africa, for example, may need to walk for acidic environments. Our data support that ZIOS is a good miles to get access to a bottle of drinking water. No matter solution to cleaning up copper pollution. where you live, people need clean water. Think about it. We need water for drinking, cooking, bathing, handwashing, and growing food. We need water to survive. | Herein, we present a scalable approach for the synthesis of a hydrogen-bonded organicinorganic framework via coordination-driven supramolecular chemistry, for efficient remediation of trace heavy metal ions from water. In particular, using copper as our model ion of interest and inspired by natures use of histidine residues within the active sites of various copper binding proteins, we design a framework featuring pendant imidazole rings and copper-chelating salicylaldoxime, known as zinc imidazole salicylaldoxime supramolecule. This material is water-stable and exhibits unprecedented adsorption kinetics, up to 50 times faster than state-of-the-art materials for selective copper ion capture from water. Furthermore, selective copper removal is achieved using this material in a pH range that was proven ineffective with previously reported metalorganic frameworks. Molecular dynamics simulations show that this supramolecule can reversibly breathe water through lattice expansion and contraction, and that water is initially transported into the lattice through hopping between hydrogen-bond sites. | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17757-6 | Upper high school |
Pollution Articles; Technology Articles; Water-Resources Articles | How can poop be cleaned and reused | Everybody poops. Its the natural cycle of digestion. We dine, we digest, and we defecate. But what happens to our poop after we flush? Does it sit there in the pipes and rot? The process is actually very complex. We have sanitation facilities to thank for that. In cities of developed countries, its pretty normal for toilets to be hooked up to the sewage treatment facilities nearby. These facilities work to slurp up any essential nutrients from the wastewater and break down any harmful chemicals. When we remove things like nitrogen and phosphorus from the waste, we can help clean the water to return it to our rivers. Miniature versions of these facilities can also be found in suburban or rural areas in developed countries. However, in developing countries (and even some rural areas in the United States) toilets may not be connected to sewage treatment facilities because of cost, social, or environmental reasons. That means that about 2.5 billion people worldwide dont have access to proper sanitation facilities. We wanted to find out if we could build a low-cost treatment option using only materials found locally to help solve this problem. | There is a great need for simple methods for digestate management for potential household sanitation systems based on anaerobic digestion of minimally diluted fecal waste in countries that lack safe sanitation. Herein, a full-scale three-stage filter for nitrogen and phosphorus removal from anaerobic digester effluent was implemented in Madagascar. It included a trickling filter with crushed charcoal (for aerobic nitrification), a submerged anaerobic filter with bamboo chips (for denitrification), and a submerged filter with scrap iron (for phosphorus removal). All filter materials were sourced locally. Three parallel replicate systems were operated in two sequential 8-week phases for a total of 16 continuous weeks. Though the influent feed was not as expected, with much of nitrogen in the feed coming in as organic N and not as NH3N, the filters still removed 3849% of total incoming nitrogen. The filters achieved high rates of nitrogen transformation along with removing solids (7382% turbidity removal), chemical oxygen demand (6775% removal), and phosphorus (3150% removal). Overall, the reaction rates from this full-scale study were in line with previous lab-scale investigations with scaled-down systems, supporting their application in real-world scenarios. Based on this study, simple effluent filters can support nutrient removal for small-scale and onsite fecal sludge treatment systems. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653520314120 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Water-Resources Articles | How can we clean up plastic in the ocean | Trillions of pieces of plastic currently pollute the ocean, harm- Once in the ocean, plastic items dont disappear. Instead, the ing sea life, contaminating ecosystems and making a mess on action of the wind, waves, and sun slowly shred them into beaches. Its important to clean up the plastic in the ocean, but smaller and smaller pieces. The resulting tiny pieces of plas- nobody knows how best to do so yet. tic, called microplastics, float along the surface and are car- ried by ocean currents to massive swirling gyres out in the Some people suggest deploying giant plastic-removing devic- middle of each ocean basin. There are five gyres in total, and es to clean up the plastic mess. We set out to find where in the the ones with the most plastic are in the North Pacific be- ocean would be the most effective places to put these devices. tween Hawaii and California, and in the North Atlantic just To do so, we made a computerized simulation of plastics en- off Bermuda. tering the ocean, ocean currents, and hypothetical plastic-re- moving devices to take the litter out of the water. We found that if we take plastic out of the ocean very close to the shore, particularly off the coast of East Asia, it would remove the most plastic and be most beneficial for ocean creatures. | Marine plastic pollution is an ever-increasing problem that demands immediate mitigation and reduction plans. Here, a model based on satellite-tracked buoy observations and scaled to a large data set of observations on microplastic from surface trawls was used to simulate the transport of plastics floating on the ocean surface from 2015 to 2025, with the goal to assess the optimal marine microplastic removal locations for two scenarios: removing the most surface microplastic and reducing the impact on ecosystems, using plankton growth as a proxy. The simulations show that the optimal removal locations are primarily located off the coast of China and in the Indonesian Archipelago for both scenarios. Our estimates show that 31% of the modeled microplastic mass can be removed by 2025 using 29 plastic collectors operating at a 45% capture efficiency from these locations, compared to only 17% when the 29 plastic collectors are moored in the North Pacific garbage patch, between Hawaii and California. The overlap of ocean surface microplastics and phytoplankton growth can be reduced by 46% at our proposed locations, while sinks in the North Pacific can only reduce the overlap by 14%. These results are an indication that oceanic plastic removal might be more effective in removing a greater microplastic mass and in reducing potential harm to marine life when closer to shore than inside the plastic accumulation zones in the centers of the gyres. | http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/014006 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Water-Resources Articles | How do estuaries improve water quality | Estuaries are very special. They act like a natural filter that brackish water. We analyzed them for several nutrients. We helps clean the water before it enters the ocean. But we wanted to check how the concentration of nutrients changes dont fully understand how this works and how the processes in different seasons. Thankfully, our results show that the change throughout the year. So, for a whole year we took Western Scheldt estuary is healthy! We discovered that each samples from various sites along the Western Scheldt section of water works differently as a filter. We also found estuary. Its a restored estuary that used to be very polluted. out that temperature is a very important factor in how they The samples were taken from freshwater, marine water, and work. | Estuarine intertidal sediments are important centres for organic matter remineralization and nutrients recycling. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding regarding how these processes occur along the salinity gradient and their seasonality. Here, we report on the seasonal biogeochemical cycles from three types of intertidal sedimentary habitats (freshwater, brackish and marine) located in the Western Scheldt estuary (The Netherlands and Belgium). A full year of solute fluxes, porewater nutrient and sediment pigment concentrations at a monthly resolution revealed clear differences in the biogeochemistry of the three sites, indicating that environmental conditions determined the local nutrient dynamics. Temperature controlled sediment oxygen consumption rates and nutrient fluxes, but also affected pore water nutrient concentrations up to 14 cm deep. Fresh and brackish sediments had a net influx of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) (?1.62 mmol m?2 d?1 and -2.84 mmol m?2 d?1, respectively), while only the freshwater sediments showed a net influx of phosphate (?0.07 mmol m?2 d?1). We estimated that intertidal sediments remineralized a total of 10,000 t C y?1, with 97% of mineralization occurring in the brackish and marine parts. Overall, sediments removed 11% (1500 t N y?1) and 15% (?200 t P y?1) of the total nitrogen and phosphorus entering the estuary from riverine input. Moreover, observations revealed the historical improvement of water quality resulting from water treatment policies. This spatiotemporal study of OM remineralization and early diagenesis in estuarine systems highlights the importance of intertidal sediments for estuarine systems. Our observations can be used in models to predict estuarine biogeochemistry or assess climate change scenarios. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272771423000173 | Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Social-Science Articles | How does air pollution affect people differently | Bad air quality is a problem all over the world. In the U.S., air quality is often worse in places where people of color live. There are many different sources of air pollution, like fireplaces, factories, cars, and power plants. We wanted to know how much different pollution sources added to inequality. We found out that people of color are exposed to more air pollution from almost every type of pollution source. | Racial-ethnic minorities in the United States are exposed to disproportionately high levels of ambient fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5), the largest environmental cause of human mortality. However, it is unknown which emission sources drive this disparity and whether differences exist by emission sector, geography, or demographics. Quantifying the PM2.5 exposure caused by each emitter type, we show that nearly all major emission categoriesconsistently across states, urban and rural areas, income levels, and exposure levelscontribute to the systemic PM2.5 exposure disparity experienced by people of color. We identify the most inequitable emission source types by state and city, thereby highlighting potential opportunities for addressing this persistent environmental inequity. | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf4491 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Water-Resources Articles | How much plastic from the pandemic ends up in the ocean | Have you ever noticed facemasks littering the streets? enters the ocean, and where it eventually ends up. Theyve become a part of day-to-day life, but where do they We used data from lots of different sources to work out how end up? Its estimated that around . billion facemasks much extra plastic has been made for the pandemic. We entered the oceans in ! And its not just masks. During then used scientific models to work out how much of this the COVID- pandemic, we have made a lot more plastic plastic ended up in rivers and then the ocean. We found out for different uses. that over million tons of extra plastic waste has been made We wanted to find out how much extra plastic waste there is globally due to the pandemic. Over , tons of this has due to the pandemic. We also wanted to find out how much entered the ocean, where it can harm marine wildlife. | The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastics that intensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem. While it is suspected to be large, the magnitude and fate of this pandemic-associated mismanaged plastic waste are unknown. Here, we use our MITgcm ocean plastic model to quantify the impact of the pandemic on plastic discharge. We show that 8.4 1.4 million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste have been generated from 193 countries as of August 23, 2021, with 25.9 3.8 thousand tons released into the global ocean representing 1.5 0.2% of the global total riverine plastic discharge. The model projects that the spatial distribution of the discharge changes rapidly in the global ocean within 3 y, with a significant portion of plastic debris landing on the beach and seabed later and a circumpolar plastic accumulation zone will be formed in the Arctic. We find hospital waste represents the bulk of the global discharge (73%), and most of the global discharge is from Asia (72%), which calls for better management of medical waste in developing countries. | https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118 | Elementary school; Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Water-Resources Articles | Medicine in our waters so what | Drugs that we take for common diseases might have more Betta fish) is exposed to a very common drug named metformin side effects than doctors realize. And not just for us for the in its water. This drug is commonly given to people with diabetes environment, too! Because the medicine we take is not completely and is also used for many other illnesses. And it did have an effect used up in our bodies, it ultimately ends up in sewage systems. on our fish. We found that even low levels of the drug (as they are From there, it enters rivers and oceans, where it might impact fish currently found in nature) change the behavior of the Betta fish: and other living things. We set out to examine what happens when it makes males less aggressive, which can impact their chances of a certain type of fish (the Siamese fighting fish, also called the reproducing. | Metformin, the medicine most commonly prescribed for treatment of Type II diabetes, is among the most abundant pharmaceuticals being introduced into the environment. Pharmaceuticals are increasingly found in wastewater and surface waters around the world, often due to incomplete metabolism in humans and subsequent excretion in human waste. Risk analyses and exposure studies have raised concerns about potential negative impacts of pharmaceuticals at current environmental levels. Results of the present study indicate that metformin at concentrations in the range of what has been documented in freshwater systems and waste-water effluent (40 g/L) affects aggressive behavior in adult male Betta splendens. Subjects exhibited less aggression toward a male dummy stimulus after four weeks exposure to metformin-treated water when compared to behavior measured immediately prior to their exposure, and in comparison to a separate cohort of un-exposed control fish. This effect persisted after 20 weeks exposure as well. Subjects exposed to metformin at a concentration twice that currently observed in nature (80 g/L) exhibited an even more substantial reduction in aggressive behaviors compared to controls and pre-exposure measurements than those observed in the low-dose treatment group. Such changes in behavior have the potential to affect male fitness and possibly impact the health of natural populations of aquatic organisms exposed to the drug. | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197259 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Pollution Articles | What happens to plastic in the soil | Can you think of life without plastic? Plastic is currently one of the most common materials. Its used for most containers and its even in your clothes! But what happens to this plastic? Some gets recycled but a lot of it gets thrown away. That means it often ends up in the environment where it can break down and change. We wanted to see what happens to different types of plastic when we exposed them to different types of soil. We put small disks of plastic in different environments for 32 days. We then compared the plastics exposed to soil to plastic that was not exposed to soil to see how the surface and other properties changed. We also wanted to see whether any bacteria grew on the plastic. Our data proved that all plastics change when exposed to soil. But they experience different changes because they have different properties. | There is concern about the buildup of plastic waste in soil, their degradation into microplastics, and their potential to interfere with the natural processing of soil organic carbon and other nutrient cycling processes. Here we used scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and 13C isotope ratio mass spectrometry to determine if precut consumer plastics comprised of either high density polyethylene (HDPE), a blend of linear low density polyethylene and low density polyethylene (L/LDPE), or polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) would degrade or transform during a short-term, 32 day, exposure to soil or sludge in laboratory microcosms. SEM confirmed morphological changes occurred to all plastics, but the attachment of biofilm and presence of microorganisms mostly favored PETE and HDPE surfaces. These observations support the idea that abiotic and/or biotic processes may degrade plastics in soil; however distinguishable and significant changes in mean stable isotopic values (13C) of ~0.20.7 were only observed for exposed PETE and HDPE. This indicates that each plastic's degradation in soil may be dependent on their physical and chemical properties, with L/LDPE being more resistant and less prone to degradation compared to the others, and less dependent on the environmental conditions or properties of the soil or sludge. Our experiments were short-term and while the mechanisms of degradation are not clear, the results provide strong motivation for further studies of plastic fate and processing in soil systems. Direct mechanistic studies using stable isotopic approaches in combination with other characterizations and techniques are clearly warranted and may lead to a significant enhancement in our present understanding of the interactions and dynamics of plastics in the soil environment. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969722004673?via%3Dihub | Lower high school; Middle school |
Pollution Articles; Water-Resources Articles | Where did my plastic go | Try to spend a day not touching plastic and you find that plastic is everywhere: in cups, plates, packaging, toys, computers, phones, clothes, cars, bikes the list goes on and on. So where does the plastic go when we are done with it? Some gets recycled, some goes to dumps, and some, unfortunately, ends up as litter on land and in the ocean. How much plastic trash is in the ocean? The short answer is: a lot. Tons, in fact. But there are very few scientific estimates of plastic waste. Further, not every piece of plastic is the same: some pieces are big and some are too small to see. It is important to determine the different kinds of plastic, as they can have very different impacts on wildlife and ocean health. | Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here we report an estimate of the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world's oceans from 24 expeditions (20072013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows (N?=?680) and visual survey transects of large plastic debris (N?=?891). Using an oceanographic model of floating debris dispersal calibrated by our data, and correcting for wind-driven vertical mixing, we estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons. When comparing between four size classes, two microplastic <4.75 mm and meso- and macroplastic >4.75 mm, a tremendous loss of microplastics is observed from the sea surface compared to expected rates of fragmentation, suggesting there are mechanisms at play that remove <4.75 mm plastic particles from the ocean surface. | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913 | Lower high school |
Social-Science Articles | Can peer pressure help teens make safer decisions | Most people act differently with their friends than they do when they are alone. Teens who see their friends make risky choices are more likely to make risky decisions themselves. We wanted to learn how the brain processes information about other peoples actions. In our experiment, teens played a game where they chose between a safe gamble and a risky gamble. We separated teens into two groups based on whether they had ever used alcohol, tobacco or other drugs. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in some participants. We found that teens who had never used drugs had a stronger response to seeing their peers choose safe gambles. This result shows that positive peer influence can make a difference! | Social influences on decision-making are particularly pronounced during adolescence and have both protective and detrimental effects. To evaluate how responsiveness to social signals may be linked to substance use in adolescents, we used functional neuroimaging and a gambling task in which adolescents who have and have not used substances (substance-exposed and substancena?ve, respectively) made choices alone and after observing peers decisions. Using quantitative model-based analyses, we identify behavioral and neural evidence that observing others safe choices increases the subjective value and selection of safe options for substance-na?ve relative to substance-exposed adolescents. Moreover, the effects of observing others risky choices do not vary by substance exposure. These results provide neurobehavioral evidence for a role of positive peers (here, those who make safer choices) in guiding adolescent real-world risky decision-making. | https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/11/25/1919111117.full.pdf | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles; Water-Resources Articles | Can science and business work together to save the ocean | Do you like to eat fish? Our ocean provides the growing human population with valuable food. Seafood like fish and shellfish is an important business for some companies. A healthy ocean is essential if we are to keep eating seafood - and if companies are to keep making money from marine ecosystems. However, our ocean is in danger. Overfishing and unsustainable fish farming (known as aquaculture) pose threats to the long-term health of the ocean and the creatures in it. We wanted to explore how scientists and big companies could work together to benefit ocean life and the seafood trade. We shared our scientific knowledge with powerful companies and they then acted to protect the ocean. This approach allowed us to challenge the threats facing our ocean on an international level. We think that our science-business partnership could be a useful example of how to protect the environment where businesses operate. Figure : Previously at SJK, we have referred to several oceans. However, One Ocean. there has been a recent push towards recognizing the ocean as a singular entity: the one ocean that unites us all (Figure ). UNESCOs Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission has embraced it with their One Planet, One Ocean tagline. | The ocean represents a fundamental source of micronutrients and protein for a growing world population. Seafood is a highly traded and sought after commodity on international markets, and is critically dependent on healthy marine ecosystems. A global trend of wild stocks being overfished and in decline, as well as multiple sustainability challenges associated with a rapid growth of aquaculture, represent key concerns in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Existing efforts aimed to improve the sustainability of seafood production have generated important progress, primarily at the local and national levels, but have yet to effectively address the global challenges associated with the ocean. This study highlights the importance of transnational corporations in enabling transformative change, and thereby contributes to advancing the limited understanding of large-scale private actors within the sustainability science literature. We describe how we engaged with large seafood producers to coproduce a global sciencebusiness initiative for ocean stewardship. We suggest that this initiative is improving the prospects for transformative change by providing novel links between science and business, between wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture, and across geographical space. We argue that scientists can play an important role in facilitating change by connecting knowledge to action among global actors, while recognizing risks associated with such engagement. The methods developed through this case study contribute to identifying key competences in sustainability science and hold promises for other sectors as well. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5576798/ | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | Can you help stop online racism | Imagine you read a comment on a school social media site We wanted to find out more about the impacts of online that made a negative statement about your race. How would racism. We also wanted to discover what makes students that make you feel? Angry? Frustrated? Now imagine that more likely to stand up to online racism, and if this helps to nobody stood up to the person that made the comment. reduce its negative impact. Our study showed that online Would that make you feel worse? You might think other racism negatively affects how Black students feel. But when people agree with them, or you may feel disconnected from they see White students standing up to the post, they feel the school. Unfortunately, this is how many Black students better. We found that White students are more likely to feel because of the online racism they face today. stand up to online racism if they understand how it impacts Black students, and if they know what to say. | Black college students attending historically and predominantly White institutions are increasingly encountering online racial discrimination. This exposure may increase psychological distress and undermine academic performance. Although White bystanders may be well-positioned to challenge racist posts, limited research has examined interventions to increase White students willingness to confront online racial discrimination. The present study used multiple methodologies to characterize the nature and frequency of online racial discrimination college students face, understand its impact on Black students, and increase challenges to online discrimination among White bystanders. Study data include content scraped from campus-related social media platforms over a 3-month period, transcripts from 8 focus groups conducted separately with Black (n = 35) and White (n = 33) college students, and data from an online experiment with 402 White college students. Taken together, study findings indicated that Black students encounter online racial discrimination with nontrivial frequency and are harmed by this exposure. Black students noted, however, that harm is mitigated when online racial discrimination is challenged by their White peers. Further, findings indicated that White students may be more likely to publicly confront racist posts if they (a) are aware of the harm it causes their Black peers; (b) perceive social norms that support confronting discrimination; and (c) receive guidance on what to say. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) | https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-58178-001 | Lower high school; Middle school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles | Do fathers treat sons and daughters differently | Have you ever wondered why little boys seem to like trucks and daughters were more likely to sing to them, to respond to them little girls seem to like dolls? It may have to do with the way if they cried out, and to talk with them about sad feelings and they are at birth. However, it may also have to do with how their about the body. Dads with sons were more likely to do rough- parents treat them. To see if fathers interact differently with and-tumble play and to talk about achievements. We also found their sons than with their daughters, we recorded and studied that the brains of men with sons and the brains of men with the way dads spoke to and played with their kids. We also looked daughters reacted differently when looking at pictures of their at how fathers reacted to their childs different facial expressions children making different emotional facial expressions. Our by studying their brains in a scanner called a functional magnetic findings are important because the ways parents interact with resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. We found that dads with their children can have lifelong effects. | Multiple lines of research indicate that fathers often treat boys and girls differently in ways that impact child outcomes. The complex picture that has emerged, however, is obscured by methodological challenges inherent to the study of parental caregiving, and no studies to date have examined the possibility that gender differences in observed real-world paternal behavior are related to differential paternal brain responses to male and female children. Here we compare fathers of daughters and fathers of sons in terms of naturalistically observed everyday caregiving behavior and neural responses to child picture stimuli. Compared with fathers of sons, fathers of daughters were more attentively engaged with their daughters, sang more to their daughters, used more analytical language and language related to sadness and the body with their daughters, and had a stronger neural response to their daughters happy facial expressions in areas of the brain important for reward and emotion regulation (medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex [OFC]). In contrast, fathers of sons engaged in more rough and tumble play (RTP), used more achievement language with their sons, and had a stronger neural response to their sons neutral facial expressions in the medial OFC (mOFC). Whereas the mOFC response to happy faces was negatively related to RTP, the mOFC response to neutral faces was positively related to RTP, specifically for fathers of boys. These results indicate that real-world paternal behavior and brain function differ as a function of child gender. | https://doi.org/10.1037/bne0000199 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles | How can caring grown-ups help children overcome adversities | Many children live in homes where they dont have what We did a study on the lives of hundreds of children who they need to do well in life. These children who face a lot grew up in Brazil and South Africa in the 1990s and 2000s. of difficult things might not grow up to be all that they We found that when children had parents or caregivers who could be. Studies show that a hard life can slow down brain listened and talked with them in a loving way and helped development. We wanted to know how parents and other them learn things when they were years old or younger, caregivers could protect childrens brain development, even they grew up to be smarter teenagers and able to care for in tough conditions. themselves. | Background Millions of children globally are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential because of early adversities. We hypothesised that responsive caregiving and learning opportunities, components of nurturing care, at pre-school ages might mitigate the effects of adversities. Methods We analysed longitudinal birth cohort data from Brazil (1993 Pelotas Birth Cohort, n=632) and South Africa (Birth to Twenty Plus [Bt20+] Birth Cohort, n=1130) to assess whether responsive caregiving and learning opportunities at pre-school ages (24 years) modified associations between cumulative early adversities and adolescent human capital. The cumulative adversities score (range 09) included household wealth and crowding; mothers' schooling, height, age, and mental health; and children's birthweight, gestational age, and length at age 12 months. We extracted data on responsive caregiving and learning opportunities from the Early Childhood Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment inventory, assessed at age 4 years (1993 Pelotas cohort) and 2 years (Bt20+ cohort). We examined three human capital indicators: intelligence quotient (IQ) assessed at age 18 years (1993 Pelotas cohort) and 16 years (Bt20+ cohort); psychosocial adjustment assessed at age 15 years and 14 years, respectively; and height assessed at age 18 years and 16 years, respectively. We used linear models with interaction terms between cumulative adversities, and responsive caregiving and learning opportunities, to predict adolescent human capital. Findings For each additional Z score of total cumulative adversity, adolescent IQ decreased by 589 (95% CI ?729 to ?450) points in the 1993 Pelotas cohort (p<00001) and 269 (452 to ?086) points in the Bt20+ cohort (p=00039). After adjusting for total cumulative adversities, adolescent IQ points increased by 547 (95% CI 420 to 674) with each additional Z score of learning opportunities and by 226 (093 to 359) with each additional Z score of responsive caregiving in the 1993 Pelotas cohort, but not in the Bt20+ cohort (086 [012 to 183] and 065 [032 to 161], respectively). Associations between early adversities and IQ were modified by learning opportunities in the 1993 Pelotas cohort (beta coefficient for interaction 174, 95% CI 043 to 304; p=00092) and by responsive caregiving in the Bt20+ cohort (224, 094 to 354; p=00075). High nurturing environment attenuated the negative effects of early cumulative adversities on IQ. Interpretation Early nurturing home environments protect young children against effects of early adversities on adolescent IQ, with long-term positive associations on adolescent cognition in two middle-income countries. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. | https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(20)30309-6 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | How can gratitude help healthcare workers | Have you ever felt stressed? Its not very pleasant. Most healthcare workers feel stress every day. Often that prolonged stress leads to emotional exhaustion. There are different ways to deal with this, but they can take too long or are expensive. What if there was a simpler way to reduce emotional exhaustion? Many studies show that gratitude can increase happiness. We asked healthcare workers to write a letter of gratitude. We assessed their levels of emotional exhaustion before and after this assignment. After using our method, healthcare workers had lower levels of emotional exhaustion. They also said they were happier. | Background Emotional exhaustion (EE) in health care workers is common and consequentially linked to lower quality of care. Effective interventions to address EE are urgently needed. Objective This randomized single-exposure trial examined the efficacy of a gratitude letterwriting intervention for improving health care workers well-being. Methods A total of 1575 health care workers were randomly assigned to one of two gratitude letterwriting prompts (self- vs other focused) to assess differential efficacy. Assessments of EE, subjective happiness, work-life balance, and tool engagement were collected at baseline and 1-week post intervention. Participants received their EE score at baseline and quartile benchmarking scores. Paired-samples t tests, independent t tests, and correlations explored the efficacy of the intervention. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software assessed the linguistic content of the gratitude letters and associations with well-being. Results Participants in both conditions showed significant improvements in EE, happiness, and work-life balance between the intervention and 1-week follow-up (P<.001). The self-focused (vs other) instruction conditions did not differentially predict improvement in any of the measures (P=.91). Tool engagement was high, and participants reporting higher motivation to improve their EE had higher EE at baseline (P<.001) and were more likely to improve EE a week later (P=.03). Linguistic analyses revealed that participants high on EE at baseline used more negative emotion words in their letters (P=.005). Reduction in EE at the 1-week follow-up was predicted at the level of a trend by using fewer first-person (P=.06) and positive emotion words (P=.09). No baseline differences were found between those who completed the follow-up assessment and those who did not (Ps>.05). Conclusions This single-exposure gratitude letterwriting intervention appears to be a promising low-cost, brief, and meaningful tool to improve the well-being of health care workers. | https://www.jmir.org/2020/5/e15562 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | How can philosophy help kids mental health | Just as its important for you to have a healthy body, its also important to have a healthy mind. For a healthy body, you need to eat healthy food and do some exercise. But how do you keep your mind healthy? Perhaps exploring the meaning of things around us and thinking about how we should act in the world might help. Thats called philosophy! We wanted to know if doing philosophy with children had a positive impact on their mental health. We conducted a 5-week experiment two elementary school classes took part in philosophy activities for children and we compared the results to another class which didnt. We found out that philosophy increases kids sense of autonomy (the ability to choose things for yourself) and decreases their anxiety. It didnt make them feel more capable or give them a greater sense of belonging, though. | Philosophy for children (P4C) was initially developed in the 1970s, and served as an educational program to promote critical thinking, caring and creative reasoning and inquiry in the educational environment. Quasi-experimental research on P4C, a school-based approach that aims to develop childrens capacity to think by and for themselves, has suggested it could be an interesting intervention to foster greater basic psychological need satisfaction in children in school settings. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the impact of P4C on basic psychological need satisfaction and mental health in elementary school students. To do so, a randomized cluster trial with a wait-list control group was implemented. Students from grades one to three (N?=?57) took part in this study and completed pre- and post-intervention questionnaires. ANCOVAs revealed a significant effect of group condition on levels of autonomy and anxiety, after controlling for baseline levels. Participants in the experimental group showed higher scores in autonomy, when compared to participants in the control group, whereas for anxiety, participants in the experimental group showed lower scores in anxiety, when compared to participants in the control group. Overall, results from this study show that P4C may be a promising intervention to foster greater autonomy in elementary school children, while also improving mental health. | https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-44367/v1 | Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | How can super-recognizers help police investigations | Did you know that some people are really good at remembering and matching faces? They are called super-recognizers. Police want to use super-recognizers to help with their cases. They could sort through camera recordings of crimes and identify criminals. But their abilities have never been tested using real police material. First we used tests to identify super-recognizers. Then we used real police material to see if super-recognizers could identify criminals. We found that the tests could indeed identify super-recognizers. Super-recognizers did a good job at finding criminals. Much better than regular people! We can use this information to help solve crimes and keep people safe. | About a decade ago, Super-Recognizers (SRs) were first described as individuals with exceptional face identity processing abilities. Since then, various tests have been developed or adapted to assess individuals abilities and identify SRs. The extant literature suggests that SRs may be beneficial in police tasks requiring individual identification. However, in reality, the performance of SRs has never been examined using authentic forensic material. This not only limits the external validity of test procedures used to identify SRs, but also claims concerning their deployment in policing. Here, we report the first-ever investigation of SRs ability to identify perpetrators using authentic case material. We report the data of 73 SRs and 45 control participants. These include (a) performance on three challenging tests of face identity processing recommended by Ramon (2021) for SR identification; (b) performance for perpetrator identification using four CCTV sequences depicting five perpetrators and police line-ups created for criminal investigation purposes. Our findings demonstrate that the face identity processing tests used here are valid in measuring such abilities and identifying SRs. Moreover, SRs excel at perpetrator identification relative to control participants, with more correct perpetrator identifications, the better their performance across lab tests. These results provide external validity for the recently proposed diagnostic framework and its tests used for SR identification (Ramon, 2021). This study provides the first empirical evidence that SRs identified using these measures can be beneficial for forensic perpetrator identification. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for law enforcement, whose procedures can be improved via a human-centric approach centered around individuals with superior abilities. | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2220580120 | Lower high school |
Social-Science Articles | How can we empower girls to end poverty | Not having enough money to buy everything we want can be disappointing. But true poverty is not having enough money for basic human needs like food, clothing, or a place to live. Governments and organizations are looking for effective ways to help people escape poverty. Some programs give people cash unconditionally meaning it is given with no strings attached. Others give them conditional cash for example, only if their children attend school. So which approach is more effective? We compared the impacts of unconditional and conditional cash for schoolgirls in Malawi, Africa. Unconditional cash improved girls wellbeing and reduced teen marriage and pregnancy rates. But the positive effects disappeared when the money stopped. Conditional cash led to the girls achieving more at school. Each approach has its unique benefits. We think implementing them together would be a more effective tool to fight poverty than either approach alone. | This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment, conducted from 2008 to the end of 2009 in Malawi. The study observed the impact of conditionality in cash transfer programs with two distinct interventions: unconditional transfers (UCT arm) and transfers conditional on school attendance (CCT arm) targeted at adolescent girls in Malawi on individual level. Dropout rates declined in both treatment arms, however the UCT arm is 43 percent as large as the CCT arm. The fraction of days attended in the CCT arm is significantly higher than the UCT. Cognitive ability, math and English scores significantly improve for the CCT but not for the UCT. Probability of pregnancy and marriage were much lower in the UCT arm. The delays in marriage and fertility in the UCT arm are found entirely among adolescent girls who dropped out of school after the start of the intervention. Improvements in human capital for the recipients of the CCT are achieved at the cost of worse outcomes for people who drop out of school. Funding for the study derived from the Global Development Network, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Africa Project, World Bank Research Support Budget Grant, World Bank Knowledge for Change Trust Fund, World Development Report 2007 Small Grants Fund, Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, and Gender Action Plan Trust Fund. | https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjr032 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles | How can we help extremely poor people earn more money | How much money do you think youd need to cover the essentials for one day? It is difficult to imagine how a family lives on less than $1.25 a day, but one-fifth of the worlds population does exactly that. How does your daily living cost compare? Its likely to be a lot more than $1.25! We conducted a study in six different countries to find out if providing extremely poor people with livelihoods (sources of income), training and food support could enable them to escape extreme poverty. We tested if such an intervention had made sustainable (longlasting) improvements in the lives of these people by collecting results after the support had ended and comparing their results to others who did not receive the intervention. We found that on average households had indeed improved. This shows that giving the poorest of the poor a way to make a living, as well as the support to keep that going, is an effective way to reduce extreme poverty. | INTRODUCTION: Working in six countries with an international consortium, we investigate whether a multifaceted Graduation program can help the extreme poor establish sustainable self-employment activities and generate lasting improvements in their well-being. The program targets the poorest members in a village and provides a productive asset grant, training and support, life skills coaching, temporary cash consumption support, and typically access to savings accounts and health information or services. In each country, the program was adjusted to suit different contexts and cultures, while staying true to the same overall principles. This multipronged approach is relatively expensive, but the theory of change is that the combination of these activities is necessary and sufficient to obtain a persistent impact. We do not test whether each of the program dimensions is individually necessary. | http://deankarlan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/science-2015-banerjee-.pdf | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles | How can we make mountain disasters less disastrous | Have you ever considered what makes a natural event, like an mountain management methods one that focuses on the earthquake, become a disaster? Earthquakes dont always cause ecosystem, and one that focuses on the community of people problems. But when they happen in areas where many people living near mountains. We used the Nepal earthquakes as live (if they arent prepared), or in vulnerable environments (like an example. mountains), they can cause disasters. We came up with different principles (guidelines) that Through a system of mountain management, scientists and combine varying forms of mountain management. These can governments aim to reduce the costs of disasters, such as be used to address the challenges facing mountains and make loss of life or ecosystem destruction. However, not everyone them a safer place to live. We can prevent natural events like agrees on the best way to do this. We investigated two different earthquakes from becoming disasters. | The devastating 2015 earthquakes in Nepal highlighted the need for effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) in mountains, which are inherently subject to hazards and increasingly vulnerable to extreme events. As multiple UN policy frameworks stress, DRR is crucial to mitigate the mounting environmental and socioeconomic costs of disasters globally. However, specialized DRR guidelines are needed for biodiverse, multi-hazard regions like mountains. Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) emphasizes ecosystem conservation, restoration, and sustainable management as key elements for DRR. We propose that integrating the emerging field of Eco-DRR with community-based DRR (CB-DRR) will help address the increasing vulnerabilities of mountain people and ecosystems. Drawing on a global mountain synthesis, we present paradoxes that create challenges for DRR in mountains and examine these paradoxes through examples from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. We propose four principles for integrated CB- and Eco-DRR that address these challenges: (1) governance and institutional arrangements that fit local needs; (2) empowerment and capacity-building to strengthen community resilience; (3) discovery and sharing of constructive practices that combine local and scientific knowledge; and (4) approaches focused on well-being and equity. We illustrate the reinforcing relationship between integrated CB- and Eco-DRR principles with examples from other mountain systems worldwide. Coordinated community and ecosystem-based actions offer a potential path to achieve DRR, climate adaptation, sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation for vulnerable ecosystems and communities worldwide. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901118311602 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles | How do bed bugs affect landlords and tenants | Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) are annoying pests whose bites cause various medical and economic problems. In recent decades they have reappeared in the US and worldwide. In some states, this has led to the implementation of control measures such as disclosure policies in which landlords must notify potential tenants of current or past bed bug infestations in their property. It may seem that this would be detrimental to landlords, but is this really the case? To find out we developed a mathematical model to estimate the financial impact of bed bug disclosure policies on landlords over time. We determined that the cost of disclosure is high at first, but after a few years, landlords experience savings, as the prevalence of bed bugs decreases. | Bed bugs have reemerged in the United States and worldwide over recent decades, presenting a major challenge to both public health practitioners and housing authorities. A number of municipalities have proposed or initiated policies to stem the bed bug epidemic, but little guidance is available to evaluate them. One contentious policy is disclosure, whereby landlords are obligated to notify potential tenants of current or prior bed bug infestations. Aimed to protect tenants from leasing an infested rental unit, disclosure also creates a kind of quarantine, partially and temporarily removing infested units from the market. Here, we develop a mathematical model for the spread of bed bugs in a generalized rental market, calibrate it to parameters of bed bug dispersion and housing turnover, and use it to evaluate the costs and benefits of disclosure policies to landlords. We find disclosure to be an effective control policy to curb infestation prevalence. Over the short term (within 5 years), disclosure policies result in modest increases in cost to landlords, while over the long term, reductions of infestation prevalence lead, on average, to savings. These results are insensitive to different assumptions regarding the prevalence of infestation, rate of introduction of bed bugs from other municipalities, and the strength of the quarantine effect created by disclosure. Beyond its application to bed bugs, our model offers a framework to evaluate policies to curtail the spread of household pests and is appropriate for systems in which spillover effects result in highly nonlinear costbenefit relationships. | https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/6473 | Lower high school; Upper high school |
Social-Science Articles | How do gender stereotypes impact girls interest in science | Has anyone ever said that you couldnt or shouldnt do something because of one of your traits? If so, youve probably been the victim of a stereotype. A stereotype is a set of shared beliefs based on a trait or the identity of a group. A common stereotype is that women are not as good at or interested in science as men. This can result in fewer women participating in the sciences.We wanted to know if and when these gender stereotypes about science affect children and adolescents. We also wanted to know if stereotypes cause girls to be less interested in and take part less in these fields. To find out, we conducted surveys and laboratory experiments.We found that very young students believed these gender stereotypes. Girls were less interested in participating in computer science and engineering if they believed the stereotypes. So, teachers and schools should try to generate interest in these fields at an early age. | Societal stereotypes depict girls as less interested than boys in computer science and engineering. We demonstrate the existence of these stereotypes among children and adolescents from first to 12th grade and their potential negative consequences for girls subsequent participation in these fields. Studies 1 and 2 (n = 2,277; one preregistered) reveal that children as young as age six (first grade) and adolescents across multiple racial/ethnic and gender intersections (Black, Latinx, Asian, and White girls and boys) endorse stereotypes that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering. The more that individual girls endorse gender-interest stereotypes favoring boys in computer science and engineering, the lower their own interest and sense of belonging in these fields. These gender-interest stereotypes are endorsed even more strongly than gender stereotypes about computer science and engineering abilities. Studies 3 and 4 (n = 172; both preregistered) experimentally demonstrate that 8- to 9-y-old girls are significantly less interested in an activity marked with a gender stereotype (girls are less interested in this activity than boys) compared to an activity with no such stereotype (girls and boys are equally interested in this activity). Taken together, both ecologically valid real-world studies (Studies 1 and 2) and controlled preregistered laboratory experiments (Studies 3 and 4) reveal that stereotypes that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering emerge early and may contribute to gender disparities. | https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2100030118 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | How do school shootings affect students mental health | Over the past two decades, there have been more than 250 school shootings in the United States. Sadly, many students and teachers have died in these tragic events. Although the number of shootings seems high, a school shooting is actually a very low-probability event. But how do school shootings affect those who survived? We wanted to see the effects of school shootings on students mental health. We examined the effects of 44 school shootings on an important measure of youth mental health: the number of prescriptions for antidepressants. We found out that school shootings lead to a significant increase in antidepressant use among children. Moreover, the effects on mental health can be long term. However, the effects on mental health are smaller in areas where there are more psychologists and social workers. | While over 240,000 American students experienced a school shooting in the last two decades, little is known about the impacts of these events on the mental health of surviving youth. Using large-scale prescription data from 2006 to 2015, we examine the effects of 44 school shootings on youth antidepressant use. Our empirical strategy compares the number of antidepressant prescriptions written by providers practicing 0 to 5 miles from a school that experienced a shooting (treatment areas) to the number of prescriptions written by providers practicing 10 to 15 miles away (reference areas), both before and after the shooting. We include month-by-year and school-by-area fixed effects in all specifications, thereby controlling for overall trends in antidepressant use and all time-invariant differences across locations. We find that local exposure to fatal school shootings increases youth antidepressant use by 21.4% in the following 2 y. These effects are smaller in areas with a higher density of mental health providers who focus on behavioral, rather than pharmacological, interventions. | https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/jr000248c.pdf | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | How do smartphones affect our sleep | Do you own a smartphone? They are very useful and often To find out, we asked , students to complete two we cant imagine life without them. But they could be questionnaires. This helped us determine how many of harmful as well. For example, people can get addicted to the students suffer from smartphone addiction. It also smartphones. As with any other addiction, this can lead to showed how many suffer from poor sleep. We found out various problems. So does it affect our sleep? that smartphone addiction is pretty common among young students. We also found a strong connection between smartphone addiction and poor sleep. | Background: In a large UK study we investigated the relationship between smartphone addiction and sleep quality in a young adult population. Methods: We undertook a large UK cross-sectional observational study of 1,043 participants aged 18 to 30 between January 21st and February 30th 2019. Participants completed the Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Version, an adapted Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Score Index and reported smartphone use reduction strategies using both in-person (n = 968) and online (n = 75) questionnaires. A crude and adjusted logistic regression was fitted to assess risk factors for smartphone addiction, and the association between smartphone addiction and poor sleep. Results: One thousand seventy one questionnaires were returned, of which 1,043 participants were included, with median age 21.1 [interquartile range (IQR) 1922]. Seven hundred and sixty three (73.2%) were female, and 406 reported smartphone addiction (38.9%). A large proportion of participants disclosed poor sleep (61.6%), and in those with smartphone addiction, 68.7% had poor sleep quality, compared to 57.1% of those without. Smartphone addiction was associated with poor sleep (aOR = 1.41, 95%CI: 1.061.87, p = 0.018). Conclusions: Using a validated instrument, 39% young adults reported smartphone addiction. Smartphone addiction was associated with poor sleep, independent of duration of usage, indicating that length of time should not be used as a proxy for harmful usage. | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.629407 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | How does your address affect your chances of being evicted | The idea of losing your home is scary. If a renter struggles to their probability of receiving a default judgment? We studied pay their landlord, the landlord may start the legal process , eviction cases across fifteen years in Philadelphia, of eviction. The renter has the opportunity to present their PA. We found that renters with longer travel times to the case in court, but they typically must show up in person courthouse are more likely to receive a default judgment and on time. And if they dont? In some places, the landlord in favor of their landlord. But this effect was not present will receive a default judgment. This allows them to move during the COVID- pandemic. This is because renters forward with the eviction. could attend their court hearing virtually, via video call. Our findings show that the location and accessibility of a We wondered about renters traveling to the courthouse courthouse can affect the outcomes of individual cases. using public transportation. Does their travel time affect their probability of receiving a default judgment? We studied 200,000 eviction cases across fifteen years in Philadelphia, PA. We found that renters with longer travel times to the courthouse are more likely to receive a default judgment in favor of their landlord. But this effect was not present during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because renters could attend their court hearing virtually, via video call. Our findings show that the location and accessibility of a courthouse can affect the outcomes of individual cases. | Studying ?200,000 evictions filed against ?300,000 Philadelphians from 2005 to 2021, we focus on the role of transit to court in preventing tenants from asserting their rights. In this period, nearly 40% of tenants facing eviction were ordered to leave their residences because they did not show up to contest cases against them and received a default judgment. Controlling for a variety of potential confounds at the tenant and landlord level, we find that residents of private tenancies with longer transit travel time to the courthouse were more likely to default. A 1-h increase in estimated travel time increases the probability of default by between 3.8% and 8.6% points across different model specifications. The effect holds after adjusting for direct distance to the court, unobserved landlord characteristics, and even baseline weekend travel time. However, it is absent in public housing evictions, where timing rules are significantly laxer, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, when tenants had the opportunity to be present virtually. We estimate that had all tenants been equally able to get to the court in 10 min, there would have been 4,000 to 9,000 fewer default evictions over the sample period. We replicate this commuting effect in another dataset of over 800,000 evictions from Harris County, Texas. These results open up a new way to study the physical determinants of access to justice, illustrating that the location and accessibility of a courthouse can affect individual case outcomes. We suggest that increased use of video technology in court may reduce barriers to justice. | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210467120 | Lower high school |
Social-Science Articles | To be vaccinated or not how does the Internet influence a pregnant womans decision | Do you go online for your health-related questions? You are cough (pertussis), and the flu (influenza). The majority of not alone! More and more people are using the Internet to the articles supported both vaccines. Most pertussis articles gather medical information. Lately, there has been debate used real-life cases and focused on protecting the baby. about the safety of vaccines in online media. Vaccines protect The influenza articles focused on protecting the mother, or us from infectious diseases and save millions of lives every both the mother and the baby. Then, we surveyed pregnant year. Vaccination during pregnancy protects newborn babies women and health care providers. Their opinions were as well. But how does online media influence a pregnant similar to those expressed in the articles. Our results may womans opinion about vaccination? Here, we examined the explain why more women are receiving pertussis vaccine online media about two maternal vaccinations: whooping compared to influenza. | Introduction Online media may influence womens decision to undergo vaccination during pregnancy. The aims of this mixed-methods study were to: (1) examine the portrayal of maternal vaccination in online media and (2) establish the perceived target of vaccine protection as viewed by pregnant women and maternity healthcare professionals (HCPs). Methods Online media articles on maternal vaccination (published July-December 2012 or November 2015-April 2016) were identified through the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicines Vaccine Confidence Database and thematically analysed. Questionnaires for pregnant women and HCPs were distributed within four English hospitals (July 2017-January 2018). Results Of 203 articles identified, 60% related to pertussis vaccination, 33% to influenza and 6% both. The majority positively portrayed vaccination in pregnancy (97%), but inaccurate, negative articles persist which criticize pertussis vaccinations safety and efficacy. Positively-worded articles about pertussis tended to focus on infant protection and highlight examples of recent cases, whereas positively-worded articles about influenza focused on maternal protection. These themes were reflected in questionnaire responses from 314 pregnant women and 204 HCPs, who perceived pertussis vaccination as protecting the baby, and influenza vaccination as protecting the mother, or mother and baby equally. A minority of the pregnant women surveyed intended to decline influenza (22%) or pertussis (8%) vaccination. Conclusions The majority of online articles support pertussis and influenza vaccination during pregnancy. The portrayal of pertussis vaccination as primarily benefiting the child, using real-examples, may influence its higher uptake compared with influenza. This approach should be considered by HCPs when recommending vaccination. HCPs should be prepared to provide advice to women hesitant about vaccination, including addressing any negative media, and consider educational strategies to counteract inaccurate information. Future studies should directly assess the influence of media on vaccine decision-making and establish which media platforms are typically used by pregnant women to gather information. | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.10.092 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | What can school anti-bullying programs do | Do you feel safe at school? Schools should be a safe place Many schools run anti-bullying programs. We wanted to where you can learn, grow, and have fun. Yet bullying is find out how effective these interventions are and what a common problem that happens in schools all across the impact they have on students. We found that anti-bullying world. Being bullied can make you feel alone and scared. It interventions not only reduce bullying but also improve is a tough situation to go through, and it can affect your self- mental health problems! Our results show that interventions esteem and increase your risk of developing mental health help in a very important way to reduce bullying and its issues. So what can be done to reduce bullying in schools? negative consequences. | Importance: Bullying is a prevalent and modifiable risk factor for mental health disorders. Although previous studies have supported the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs; their population impact and the association of specific moderators with outcomes are still unclear. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of school anti-bullying interventions, their population impact, and the association between moderator variables and outcomes. Data sources: A search of Ovid MEDLINE, ERIC, and PsycInfo databases was conducted using 3 sets of search terms to identify randomized clinical trials (RCTs) assessing anti-bullying interventions published from database inception through February 2020. A manual search of reference lists of articles included in previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses was also performed. Study selection: The initial literature search yielded 34 798 studies. Included in the study were articles that (1) assessed bullying at school; (2) assessed the effectiveness of an anti-bullying program; (3) had an RCT design; (4) reported results; and (5) were published in English. Of 16 707 studies identified, 371 met the criteria for review of full-text articles; 77 RCTs were identified that reported data allowing calculation of effect sizes (ESs). Of these, 69 independent trials were included in the final meta-analysis database. Data extraction and synthesis: Random-effects and meta-regression models were used to derive Cohen d values with pooled 95% CIs as estimates of ES and to test associations between moderator variables and ES estimates. Population impact number (PIN), defined as the number of children in the total population for whom 1 event may be prevented by an intervention, was used as an estimate of the population impact of universal interventions targeting all students, regardless of individual risk. Main outcomes and measures: The main outcomes are the effectiveness (measured by ES) and the population impact (measured by the PIN) of anti-bullying interventions on the following 8 variable categories: overall bullying, bullying perpetration, bullying exposure, cyberbullying, attitudes that discourage bullying, attitudes that encourage bullying, mental health problems (eg, anxiety and depression), and school climate as well as the assessment of potential assocations between trial or intervention characteristics and outcomes. Results: This study included 77 samples from 69 RCTs (111 659 participants [56 511 in the intervention group and 55 148 in the control group]). The weighted mean (range) age of participants in the intervention group was 11.1 (4-17) years and 10.8 (4-17) years in the control group. The weighted mean (range) proportion of female participants in the intervention group was 49.9% (0%-100%) and 50.5% (0%-100%) in the control group. Anti-bullying interventions were efficacious in reducing bullying (ES, -0.150; 95% CI, -0.191 to -0.109) and improving mental health problems (ES, -0.205; 95% CI, -0.277 to -0.133) at study end point, with PINs for universal interventions that target the total student population of 147 (95% CI, 113-213) and 107 (95% CI, 73-173), respectively. Duration of intervention was not statistically significantly associated with intervention effectiveness (mean [range] duration of interventions, 29.4 [1 to 144] weeks). The effectiveness of anti-bullying programs did not diminish over time during follow-up (mean [range] follow-up, 30.9 [2-104] weeks). Conclusions and relevance: Despite the small ESs and some regional differences in effectiveness, the population impact of school anti-bullying interventions appeared to be substantial. Better designed trials that assess optimal intervention timing and duration are warranted. | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33136156/ | Lower high school |
Social-Science Articles | Whats the connection between poverty and race in US schools | Have your parents ever told you that you should especially likely to go to very poor schools which offer be glad you can go to school that kids in some lower quality education than richer schools. These other countries are not so lucky? Well, this is true, students often achieve less during their school years but it leaves out the fact that even in the U.S. not than their peers in richer schools, without it being all children have the same opportunities in the their fault. educational system. Black and Hispanic students are especially likely to go to very poor schools which offer lower quality education than richer schools. These students often achieve less during their school years than their peers in richer schools, without it being their fault. | Research over the past decade suggests that racial segregation appears to have the largest implications for students achievement when linked to racial differences in exposure to school poverty. This paper provides a summary and update to prior literature describing patterns and trends of racial differences in school poverty rates from the 19981999 through 20152016 school years. We describe black-white and Hispanic-white differences in school poverty rates within U.S. school districts, metropolitan areas, states, and the nation over this nearly 20-year period. We find that while exposure to poverty in schools has risen dramatically, racial differences in exposure to school povertyhave been relatively stable during this time. These average trends, however, belie meaningful variabilityamong places. Places serving large proportions of minority students have larger but declining averageracial differences in exposure to school poverty. Large school districts also have larger average racial differences in exposure and have been experiencing increases in this measure over time. | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12552-019-09277-w | Lower high school |
Social-Science Articles | Which type of people tend to help others | Have you ever helped a friend find a lost item? Or donated behaviors. We also found a relationship between positive old clothes or toys to a charity? When you help someone, emotions and prosocial behaviors. We learned that negative you are taking part in prosocial behaviors. In our study, we emotions are more difficult to use as a predictor for prosocial analyzed data to determine which factors relate to prosocial behaviors. Negative emotions often relate to less prosocial behavior. We explored life satisfaction, positive emotions, behaviors. But the relationship between negative emotions and negative emotions. We found that people who are and prosocial behavior was less consistent. more satisfied with their life take part in more prosocial . But the relationship between negative emotions and prosocial behavior was less consistent. | Subjective well-being (SWB) is positively related to prosocial giving and helping others, but so far, research has not explored the association of individual aspects of well-being with prosocial behavior across the world. We used a representative sample from the Gallup World Poll across 163 countries from 2006 to 2017 to explore the relationship between each aspect of well-being and prosocial behavior (N = 1,797,630). We found that different aspects of SWB are not equally associated with prosocial behavior: While life satisfaction and positive affect consistently predicted being more prosocial across the globe, negative affect did not consistently predict being more or less prosocial. We further explore economic and cultural moderators of these relationships. Our findings underline the importance of studying the effects of the different components of SWB separately, indicating that life satisfaction and positive emotionsmore so than negative emotionsconsistently predict being more prosocial across the globe. | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19485506211043379 | Lower high school |
Social-Science Articles | Why do some women deny gender discrimination | Women face discrimination across the world. They have We carried out three studies, involving , participants fewer rights and opportunities (like education) than men, all from countries altogether. We tested the hypothesis that because of their gender. And the COVID- pandemic has denial of gender discrimination is related to better well- made this worse. being in women. But despite this, many people (including women) deny We found this to be true across the United States and that gender discrimination exists. Even people who have worldwide. In fact, in countries where gender discrimination experienced it personally! We wanted to find out why this is. is worse, women were even more likely to deny it! Denial of We thought that perhaps its because denying discrimination discrimination helps women to cope, but it makes gender makes the world seem fairer. This makes women happier. inequality worse. | Despite the fact that women face socially and politically sanctioned disadvantages every day, a large percentage of women and men report that gender discrimination is no longer a problem. Across three studies, which together include over 20,000 participants from 23 countries, we test the hypothesis that denial (vs. acknowledgement) of gender discrimination is associated with higher subjective well-being among women (Studies 13), and this is because denying gender discrimination promotes the view that the system is fair (Study 1). We further show that this happens above and beyond personal experiences with sexism (Study 1) and that the association is stronger in countries where sexism is relatively high (vs. low; Study 3). We argue that denial of discrimination is an individual-level coping mechanism and that, like other self-group distancing strategies, it may perpetuate gender inequality. | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2702 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Social-Science Articles | Your house is cold so what | Have you ever felt cold at home? Shivered in your room? for example, how many rooms they use in the house. We knew New Zealand had a big problem with cold housing New Zealands government is looking for ways to solve the but we wanted evidence especially on youth experiences. problem of energy poverty. We wanted to present ideas We surveyed - year old students in multiple schools for solutions from youth. Therefore, young people were in different climate zones around the country. Overall we involved at all stages of this research: from questionnaire found % felt cold in their homes during the winter at design to research reporting. some point. This resulted in many restrictions in their lives, for example, how many rooms they use in the house. | Abstract Background Living in cold housing conditions and risk of fuel poverty presents a range of physiological and psychosocial health risks. Limited research has specifically investigated the effects of fuel poverty on children and young people, and even less has been conducted with youth input into the research process. Methods The Cool? Study used mixed methods, participatory action research carried out with youth researchers involved at all stages through questionnaire design, analysis, qualitative design, e-interviewing and dissemination of results. This article reports on results of an online survey of 656 adolescents aged 1416 years completed at 17 schools in New Zealand. Sampling was based on selecting schools for invitation, with the probability of selection weighted proportional to school size, within strata defined by climate zone. Results from a small e-mail interview study of survey respondents who consented to follow-up are also reported. Results The study found that almost half of the survey respondents (47%) felt their home was sometimes cold during the winter; a further 40% felt their home was often or always cold. More than two thirds of respondents (70%) had shivered inside at least once during winter. Respondents were more likely to report key indicators of fuel poverty depending on their self-reported ethnicity, with M?ori at increased risk. Living in private rental housing or state-owned housing also increased risk of fuel poverty compared to those in owner-occupied dwellings. Participants of email interviews expressed concern about the widespread problem of cold housing for youth and a desire for Government intervention. Conclusion The integrated results confirm that cold housing and risk of fuel poverty are important problems for young people in New Zealand. Results contribute to the evidence-base for policy targeting of schemes such as the Government-sponsored retrofitting of insulation to households with dependent children. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827316301720 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Technology Articles | Can a robotic arm be controlled by the brain | Pick up a nearby object. Easy, right? Not for many people set of implants. We placed them in the part of the brain that with tetraplegia. They have an injury that prevents their senses touch from the hand. That meant the person could brain from communicating with their hands. That means they feel when the arm touched an object. cannot move or feel objects. We found that this touch information improved a persons We want to make a robotic arm that people with tetraplegia ability to complete a set of tasks with the robotic arm. It can control with their brain. In a previous study, we put small cut the time it took to complete these tasks in half! This is implants in a persons brain. They used their sense of sight because the study participant could grasp the object faster to guide the arm to an object. Then they picked it up and using both senses. placed it in a new location. In this study, we added a second set of implants. We placed them in the part of the brain that senses touch from the hand. That meant the person could feel when the arm touched an object. We found that this touch information improved a persons ability to complete a set of tasks with the robotic arm. It cut the time it took to complete these tasks in half! This is because the study participant could grasp the object faster using both senses. | Prosthetic arms controlled by a brain-computer interface can enable people with tetraplegia to perform functional movements. However, vision provides limited feedback because information about grasping objects is best relayed through tactile feedback. We supplemented vision with tactile percepts evoked using a bidirectional brain-computer interface that records neural activity from the motor cortex and generates tactile sensations through intracortical microstimulation of the somatosensory cortex. This enabled a person with tetraplegia to substantially improve performance with a robotic limb; trial times on a clinical upper-limb assessment were reduced by half, from a median time of 20.9 to 10.2 seconds. Faster times were primarily due to less time spent attempting to grasp objects, revealing that mimicking known biological control principles results in task performance that is closer to able-bodied human abilities. | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd0380 | Elementary school; Lower high school; Middle school |
Technology Articles | Can we use bacteria to make renewable rocket fuel | NASAs space shuttle has to go really fast to reach outer change. It would be nice if we could make high-energy space. In fact, it has to go about times faster than fuels more sustainable. a car going mph ( km/h)! Rockets need fuel with Some bacteria make molecules that have lots of energy. lots of energy to go that fast. We call these high-energy We wanted to know if we could use these molecules to fuels. Airplanes and cargo ships use the same type of make more sustainable high-energy fuels. We looked at fuel. DNA from bacteria. We also used some clever chemistry. Right now, these high-energy fuels are made using And we made a new biofuel. It seems to have even more fossil fuels. When we burn fossil fuels, it causes climate energy than the high-energy fossil fuels we have now! | Cyclopropane-functionalized hydrocarbons are excellent fuels due their high energy density. However, the organic synthesis of these molecules is challenging. In this work, we produced polycyclopropanated fatty acids in bacteria. These molecules can be converted into renewable fuels for energy-demanding applications such as shipping, long-haul transport, aviation, and rocketry. We explored the chemical diversity encoded in thousands of bacterial genomes to identify and repurpose naturally occurring cyclopropanated molecules. We identified a set of candidate iterative polyketide synthases (iPKSs) predicted to produce polycyclopropanated fatty acids (POP-FAs), expressed them in Streptomyces coelicolor, and produced POP-FAs. We determined the structure of the molecules and increased their production 22-fold. Finally, we produced polycyclopropanated fatty acid methyl esters (POP-FAMEs). Our POP fuel candidates can have net heating values of more than 50 MJ/L. Our research shows that the POP-FAMEs and other POPs have the energetic properties for energy-demanding applications for which sustainable alternatives are scarce. | https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00238-0 | Elementary school; Lower high school; Middle school |
Technology Articles; Water-Resources Articles | How can rescuers quickly find people lost at sea | Every year the U.S. Coast Guard spends over , hours on objects towards them. These attractors can be identified in search and rescue at sea, saving thousands and thousands of real time and turned into maps. We used manikins and buoys lives. Both planes and boats are used to look for lost people. to test how well these maps could predict where objects will But what is the best way to predict where people might be? drift. We came up with a new method of using information about We found that our new method could quickly and accurately the ocean to help rescuers find missing people. We found help to find people lost at sea! regions of the sea that act like attracting magnets, pulling objects towards them. These attractors can be identified in real time and turned into maps. We used manikins and buoys to test how well these maps could predict where objects will drift. We found that our new method could quickly and accurately help to find people lost at sea! | Every year, hundreds of people die at sea because of vessel and airplane accidents. A key challenge in reducing the number of these fatalities is to make Search and Rescue (SAR) algorithms more efficient. Here, we address this challenge by uncovering hidden TRansient Attracting Profiles (TRAPs) in ocean-surface velocity data. Computable from a single velocity-field snapshot, TRAPs act as short-term attractors for all floating objects. In three different ocean field experiments, we show that TRAPs computed from measured as well as modeled velocities attract deployed drifters and manikins emulating people fallen in the water. TRAPs, which remain hidden to prior flow diagnostics, thus provide critical information for hazard responses, such as SAR and oil spill containment, and hence have the potential to save lives and limit environmental disasters. | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16281-x | Middle school |
Technology Articles | How can virtual reality help construction engineers | With virtual reality (VR), you can look and move around dimensions (3D). We found out that VR goggles made in a digital world. We wanted to know if VR could help it easier for engineers to spot problems in construction construction engineers plan their projects. To find out, plans. VR also helped engineers work out the order we set up an experiment where expert and novice in which a project should be built. But VR has some engineers used either VR goggles or a normal desktop limitations and should only be used for appropriate computer to review engineering designs in three tasks and scenarios. | Head-mounted display (HMD)based virtual reality (VR) applications can potentially facilitate various visualization-intensive tasks in the construction industry, such as design and constructability review. However, the lack of quantitative validation on the theoretical benefits of VR has impeded its industry implementation. This paper designed four construction design review-related tasks and performed user tests with 24 construction engineering novices and 24 industry experts. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, performing four tasks via HMD-based VR or desktop-based VR, respectively. Experimental results and statistical analysis show that users performance was significantly enhanced by the HMD in detecting design errors and planning for construction sequence. The scale of performance improvement varied from 18.22% to 59.01%. The implementation of HMD-based VR applications should be intentional because its benefits are only significant in specific use cases. The intellectual contribution of this paper includes quantifying the impact of HMD to the tested VR applications and developing the technology assessment framework. Meanwhile, the findings from this paper can facilitate the implementation of effective VR applications in the construction industry. | https://rb.gy/coautc | Lower high school; Middle school |
Technology Articles | How can we work with quantum computers today | Quantum computers are a new, promising technology still very complex if it were easy, we would not need a quantum in its infancy. Our conventional computers are already quite computer in the first place. Here we propose a method that powerful. But this new technology could speed things up a tackles this complexity using so-called decision diagrams. We lot! Because of this, many computer companies have already tested our method by attempting several different quantum started building quantum computers. Unfortunately, they are computations. Then we compared it to the other existing still rather small compared to what we expect in the future. simulators. Our approach outperforms the other solutions So how can we prepare programmers and users for this in many cases. This allows everyone to simulate quantum new technology? One way to do so: simulate the quantum computations today even before the really powerful computer on our conventional machines. Of course, this is quantum computers are available. | Quantum computation is a promising emerging technology which, compared to conventional computation, allows for substantial speed-ups, e.g., for integer factorization or database search. However, since physical realizations of quantum computers are in their infancy, a significant amount of research in this domain still relies on simulations of quantum computations on conventional machines. This causes a significant complexity which current state-of-the-art simulators try to tackle with a rather straight forward array-based representation and by applying massive hardware power. There also exist solutions based on decision diagrams (i.e., graph-based approaches) that try to tackle the exponential complexity by exploiting redundancies in quantum states and operations. However, these existing approaches do not fully exploit redundancies that are actually present. In this paper, we revisit the basics of quantum computation, investigate how corresponding quantum states and quantum operations can be represented even more compactly, and, eventually, simulated in a more efficient fashion. This leads to a new graph-based simulation approach which outperforms state-of-the-art simulators (array-based as well as graph-based). Experimental evaluations show that the proposed solution is capable of simulating quantum computations for more qubits than before, and in significantly less run-time (several magnitudes faster compared to previously proposed simulators). An implementation of the proposed simulator is publicly available online at http://iic.jku.at/eda/research/quantum_simulation. | https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2018.2834427 | Upper high school |
Technology Articles; Water-Resources Articles | How can your smartphone make water safe to drink | Clean drinking water is essential for our health. Water we developed a small device and an app which can containing bacteria or viruses can make us very sick. be used with a smartphone to kill harmful bacteria in Unfortunately, not everybody has access to clean water. It could mean that people without a clean water water from centralized water plants. However, nearly supply can easily disinfect their drinking water and everybody nowadays has a smartphone! Thats why avoid getting sick. | Clean water free of bacteria is a precious resource in areas where no centralized water facilities are available. Conventional chlorine disinfection is limited by chemical transportation, storage, and the production of carcinogenic by-products. Here, a smartphone-powered disinfection system is developed for point-of-use (POU) bacterial inactivation. The integrated system uses the smartphone battery as a power source, and a customized on-the-go (OTG) hardware connected to the phone to realize the desired electrical output. Through a downloadable mobile application, the electrical output, either constant current (201000?A) or voltage (0.72.1?V), can be configured easily through a user-friendly graphical interface on the screen. The disinfection device, a coaxial-electrode copper ionization cell (CECIC), inactivates bacteria by low levels of electrochemically generated copper with low energy consumption. The strategy of constant current control is applied in this study to solve the problem of uncontrollable copper release by previous constant voltage control. With the current control, a high inactivation efficiency ofE. coli(~6 logs) is achieved with a low level of effluent Cu (~200?g?L?1) in the water samples within a range of salt concentration (0.21?mmol?L?1). The smartphone-based power workstation provides a versatile and accurate electrical output with a simple graphical user interface. The disinfection device is robust, highly efficient, and does not require complex equipment. As smartphones are pervasive in modern life, the smartphone-powered CECIC system could provide an alternative decentralized water disinfection approach like rural areas and outdoor activities. | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-020-00089-9 | Elementary school; Middle school |
Technology Articles | How well can a computer think | What do chatbots, voice assistants, and predictive text have in common? They all use computer programs called language models. Large language models are new kinds of models that can only be built using supercomputers. They work so well that it can be hard to tell if something was written by a person or by a computer! We wanted to understand how a large language model called GPT-3 worked. But we wanted to know more than whether GPT-3 could answer questions correctly. We wanted to know how and why. We treated GPT-3 like a participant in a psychology experiment. Our results showed that GPT-3 gets a lot of questions right. But we also learned that GPT-3 gets confused very easily. And it doesnt search for new information as well as people do. Knowing how and why large language models come up with wrong answers helps us figure out how to make even better versions in the future | We study GPT-3, a recent large language model, using tools from cognitive psychology. More specifically, we assess GPT-3s decision-making, information search, deliberation, and causal reasoning abilities on a battery of canonical experiments from the literature. We find that much of GPT-3s behavior is impressive: It solves vignette-based tasks similarly or better than human subjects, is able to make decent decisions from descriptions, outperforms humans in a multiarmed bandit task, and shows signatures of model-based reinforcement learning. Yet, we also find that small perturbations to vignette-based tasks can lead GPT-3 vastly astray, that it shows no signatures of directed exploration, and that it fails miserably in a causal reasoning task. Taken together, these results enrich our understanding of current large language models and pave the way for future investigations using tools from cognitive psychology to study increasingly capable and opaque artificial agents. | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2218523120 | Middle school |
Technology Articles | What can termites teach us about better building materials | There is a global need for more sustainable and environmentally friendly construction materials. The large, stable mounds that termites build for their homes are inspirational! Termite mounds form when the termites mix soil with their saliva. This mixture contains simple sugars that act like glue and give it stability. Cassava is a starchy root vegetable that also contains simple sugars. To mimic termite mounds, we mixed soil with hot paste made from cassava flour. Then, we made bricks containing different amounts of cassava flour paste, from 0% to 6%. We tested the physical properties of these different bricks. Our aim was to see how suitable they would be in building construction. Bricks made with 1.5% cassava flour paste performed best in tests of strength, durability, shrinkage, and water absorption. They were even better than traditional clay bricks with no cassava flour! Our termite mound-inspired bricks provide an inexpensive, accessible, and safe alternative to current building materials. | As the world is witnessing vast pollution during material production, construction and demolition processes of buildings there is a need to seek for alternative materials that will reduce the environmental impact. The present study borrows inspirations from termites technique to create a material for constructing a naturally cemented mound structure. The studied termite mound was built from a mix of soil particles and termites saliva containing mucopolysaccharides and cellulase enzyme that digests cellulose into beta-glucose or shorter polysaccharides and oligosaccharides. These polysaccharides are found to be a source of soil stabilization and gluing property. In the process to mimic termites activities clay bricks were produced from a mix of clay soil and cassava flour in a form of hot cassava paste as a source of polysaccharides at 1.5%, 3%, 4.5% and 6% weight of soil. Brick samples created presented an optimal value at 1.5% cassava flour with compressive strength higher than that of burnt clay bricks at 4.28 MPa. | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509522001097 | Lower high school; Middle school |
Technology Articles | Why are flights getting bumpier | Have you ever ridden on an airplane? If so, was there a increased over the past years. We analyzed data from moment when it suddenly started to shake? That unpleasant to and found a big increase over the midlatitudes. and sometimes scary shaking is called turbulence. If there The skies that most planes fly through are bumpier now than is no storm, or even clouds, it can seem to come out of four decades ago. In fact, over the North Atlantic, severe nowhere! turbulence increased by %. Our findings are important because they show that we are already seeing the impacts We wanted to find out whether clear-air turbulence has of climate change in unexpected ways. | Clear-air turbulence (CAT) is hazardous to aircraft and is projected to intensify in response to future climate change. However, our understanding of past CAT trends is currently limited, being derived largely from outdated reanalysis data. Here we analyze CAT trends globally during 19792020 in a modern reanalysis data set using 21 diagnostics. We find clear evidence of large increases around the midlatitudes at aircraft cruising altitudes. For example, at an average point over the North Atlantic, the total annual duration of light-or-greater CAT increased by 17% from 466.5 hr in 1979 to 546.8 hr in 2020, with even larger relative changes for moderate-or greater CAT (increasing by 37% from 70.0 to 96.1 hr) and severe-or-greater CAT (increasing by 55% from 17.7 to 27.4 hr). Similar increases are also found over the continental USA. Our study represents the best evidence yet that CAT has increased over the past four decades.Not Found | https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL103814 | Lower high school |
Water-Resources Articles | How do fish like their water | Fishermen on the east coast of the United States depend on catching black sea bass in the Atlantic Ocean, but first, they have to find them! We set out to understand why these fish migrate with changes in the seasons and where they hang out at different times of the year. Do the conditions in the ocean, like how cold or salty it is, determine where the fish go? Do the younger fish and adult fish go to the same places? To answer these questions, we sent research boats out to catch black sea bass and measure water temperature and salt levels in different parts of the ocean off the eastern coast of North America. This information can help us understand what environmental conditions lead to young black sea bass survival, and estimate how many of these fish are in the ocean each year. | Black sea bass (Centropristis striata) migrations are believed to play a role in overwinter survival and connectivity between juvenile and adult populations. This study investigated oceanographic drivers of winter habitat choice and regional differences between populations of juvenile and adult black sea bass. Trends in cohort strength, as a result of juvenile survival, were also identified. Oceanographic and fisheries survey data were analyzed using generalized additive models. Among the oceanographic variables investigated, salinity was the main driver in habitat selection with an optimal range of 3335 practical salinity units (PSU) for both juveniles and adults. Preferred temperature ranges varied between juveniles and adults, but held a similar minimum preference of >8C. Salinity and temperature ranges also differed by regions north and south of Hudson Canyon. Shelf water volume had less of an effect than temperature or salinity, but showed an overall negative relationship with survey catch. The effect of winter conditions on juvenile abundance was also observed across state and federal survey index trends. A lack of correlation observed among surveys in the fall paired with a strong correlation in the spring identifies the winter period as a factor determining year-class strength of new recruits to the population. A rank order analysis of spring indices identified three of the largest year classes occurring during years with reduced shelf water volumes, warmer winter shelf waters, and a 34 PSU isohaline aligned farther inshore. While greater catches of black sea bass in the northwest Atlantic Ocean remain south of Hudson Canyon, the species range has expanded north in recent years. | http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147627 | Lower high school |
Water-Resources Articles | How much do we really know about river flooding | Have you ever experienced rain where it rained so hard or map flood prone areas. Decision makers use the results for so long that you feared you may soon be up to your from those computer models to plan for future flooding eyeballs in water? Sadly, many people in the world have events to limit destruction and save lives. But are they witnessed this firsthand, and this is likely to increase due accurate enough considering human lives may depend on to climate change unless we do something to prepare for them? To answer this question we compared the results flooding disasters. Some areas are more prone to floods from six computer models which simulate flood risk in than others, and the people living there are more at risk. Africa. The models agreed in less than % of the cases about where exactly it would flood and how much damage Scientists have developed computer models in an effort to there might be. | Quantifying flood hazard is an essential component of resilience planning, emergency response, and mitigation, including insurance. Traditionally undertaken at catchment and national scales, recently, efforts have intensified to estimate flood risk globally to better allow consistent and equitable decision making. Global flood hazard models are now a practical reality, thanks to improvements in numerical algorithms, global datasets, computing power, and coupled modelling frameworks. Outputs of these models are vital for consistent quantification of global flood risk and in projecting the impacts of climate change. However, the urgency of these tasks means that outputs are being used as soon as they are made available and before such methods have been adequately tested. To address this, we compare multi-probability flood hazard maps for Africa from six global models and show wide variation in their flood hazard, economic loss and exposed population estimates, which has serious implications for model credibility. While there is around 30%40% agreement in flood extent, our results show that even at continental scales, there are significant differences in hazard magnitude and spatial pattern between models, notably in deltas, arid/semi-arid zones and wetlands. This study is an important step towards a better understanding of modelling global flood hazard, which is urgently required for both current risk and climate change projections.An error occurred: EOF marker not found | http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/2015/en/gar-pdf/GAR2015_EN.pdf | Lower high school; Upper high school |