Changes in face-specific neural processes explain reduced cuteness and approachability of infants with cleft lip

The current study investigated whether changes in the neural processing of faces of infants with a facial abnormality – a cleft lip – mediate effects of the cleft lip on judgments of infant cuteness and approachability. Event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to pictures of faces of healthy infants and infants with a cleft lip, and ratings of cuteness and approachability of these infant faces, were obtained from 30 females. Infants with a cleft lip were rated as less attractive (less cute and approachable) than healthy infants, and both the N170 and P2 components of the ERP were of reduced amplitude in response to pictures of infants with a cleft lip. Importantly, decreased configural processing of infant faces with a cleft lip, as evidenced by reduced N170 amplitudes, mediated the reduced attractiveness ratings for infants with a cleft lip compared to healthy infants. Our findings help elucidate the mechanisms behind the less favorable responses to infants with a cleft lip, highlighting the role of face-specific rather than domain-general neural processes

Do agronomic approaches aligned to regenerative agriculture improve the micronutrient concentrations of edible portions of crops? A scoping review of evidence

Regenerative Agriculture (RA) is used to describe nature-based agronomic approaches that aim to build soil health and crop resilience, minimize negative environmental outcomes, and improve farmer livelihoods. A benefit that is increasingly attributed to crops grown under RA practices is improved nutritional content. However, we do not know the extent to which RA influences crop nutritional quality and under what management approaches and context, can such effects be realized. A scoping review of recent literature (Web of Science, 2000-2021) was carried out to assess the evidence that RA approaches improve crop micronutrient quality. Papers included combinations of agronomic approaches that could be defined as Regenerative: "Organic Inputs" including composts and manures, cover crops, crop rotations, crop residues and biochars; "Reduced Tillage", "Intercropping", "Biostimulants" e.g. arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; plant growth promoting bacteria, and "Irrigation", typically deficit-irrigation and alternate wetting and drying. The crop types reviewed were predetermined covering common sources of food and included: Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), Rice (Oryza sativa L.), Maize (Zea mays L.), Pulses (Fabaceae), Alliums (Allium spp.), and "other" crop types (30 types). This scoping review supports a potential role for RA approaches in increasing the concentrations of micronutrients in the edible portions of several crop types under specific practices, although this was context specific. For example, rice grown under increased organic inputs showed significant increases in grain zinc (Zn) concentration in 15 out of 16 studies. The vitamin C concentration of tomato fruit increased in similar to 50% of studies when plants were grown under increased organic inputs, and in 76% of studies when plants were grown under deficit irrigation. Overall, the magnitude and reproducibility of the effects of RA practices on most crop nutritional profiles were difficult to assess due to the diversity of RA approaches, geographical conditions, and the limited number of studies for most crops in each of these categories. Future research with appropriate designs, improved on-farm surveillance and nutritional diagnostics are needed for better understanding the potential role of RA in improving the quality of food, human nutrition, and health

A globally applicable framework for compound flood hazard modeling

Coastal river deltas are susceptible to flooding from pluvial, fluvial, and coastal flood drivers. Compound floods, which result from the co-occurrence of two or more of these drivers, typically exacerbate impacts compared to floods from a single driver. While several global flood models have been developed, these do not account for compound flooding. Local-scale compound flood models provide state-of-the-art analyses but are hard to scale to other regions as these typically are based on local datasets. Hence, there is a need for globally applicable compound flood hazard modeling. We develop, validate, and apply a framework for compound flood hazard modeling that accounts for interactions between all drivers. It consists of the high-resolution 2D hydrodynamic Super-Fast INundation of CoastS (SFINCS) model, which is automatically set up from global datasets and coupled with a global hydrodynamic river routing model and a global surge and tide model. To test the framework, we simulate two historical compound flood events, Tropical Cyclone Idai and Tropical Cyclone Eloise in the Sofala province of Mozambique, and compare the simulated flood extents to satellite-derived extents on multiple days for both events. Compared to the global CaMa-Flood model, the globally applicable model generally performs better in terms of the critical success index (−0.01–0.09) and hit rate (0.11–0.22) but worse in terms of the false-alarm ratio (0.04–0.14). Furthermore, the simulated flood depth maps are more realistic due to better floodplain connectivity and provide a more comprehensive picture as direct coastal flooding and pluvial flooding are simulated. Using the new framework, we determine the dominant flood drivers and transition zones between flood drivers. These vary significantly between both events because of differences in the magnitude of and time lag between the flood drivers. We argue that a wide range of plausible events should be investigated to obtain a robust understanding of compound flood interactions, which is important to understand for flood adaptation, preparedness, and response. As the model setup and coupling is automated, reproducible, and globally applicable, the presented framework is a promising step forward towards large-scale compound flood hazard modeling.</p

What do parents expect in the 21st century?: a qualitative analysis of integrated youth care

New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio

Twitter Flood Mapping Scripts: First Release

The increasing number and severity of floods, driven by phenomena such as urbanization, deforestation, subsidence and climate change, create a growing need for accurate and timely flood maps. In this paper we present and evaluate a method to create deterministic and probabilistic flood maps from Twitter messages that mention locations of flooding. A deterministic flood map created for the December 2015 flood in the city of York (UK) showed good performance (F(2) =  0.69; a statistic ranging from 0 to 1, with 1 expressing a perfect fit with validation data). The probabilistic flood maps we created showed that, in the York case study, the uncertainty in flood extent was mainly induced by errors in the precise locations of flood observations as derived from Twitter data. Errors in the terrain elevation data or in the parameters of the applied algorithm contributed less to flood extent uncertainty. Although these maps tended to overestimate the actual probability of flooding, they gave a reasonable representation of flood extent uncertainty in the area. This study illustrates that inherently uncertain data from social media can be used to derive information about flooding

The potential of global coastal flood risk reduction using various DRR measures

Coastal flood risk is a serious global challenge facing current and future generations. Several disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures have been posited as ways to reduce the deleterious impacts of coastal flooding. On a global scale, however, efforts to model the future effects of DRR measures (beyond structural) are limited. In this paper, we use a global-scale flood risk model to estimate the risk of coastal flooding and to assess and compare the efficacy and economic performance of various DRR measures, namely dykes and coastal levees, dry-proofing of urban assets, zoning restrictions in flood-prone areas, and management of foreshore vegetation. To assess the efficacy of each DRR measure, we determine the extent to which it can limit future flood risk as a percentage of regional GDP to the same proportional value as today (a “relative risk constant” objective). To assess their economic performance, we estimate the economic benefits and costs of implementing each measure. If no DRR measures are implemented to mitigate future coastal flood risk, we estimate expected annual damages to exceed USD 1.3 trillion by 2080, directly affecting an estimated 11.5 million people on an annual basis. Low- and high-end scenarios reveal large ranges of impact uncertainty, especially in lower-income regions. On a global scale, we find the efficacy of dykes and coastal levees in achieving the relative risk constant objective to be 98 %, of dry-proofing to be 49 %, of zoning restrictions to be 11 %, and of foreshore vegetation to be 6 %. In terms of direct costs, the overall figure is largest for dry-proofing (USD 151 billion) and dykes and coastal levees (USD 86 billion), much more than those of zoning restrictions (USD 27 million) and foreshore vegetation (USD 366 million). These two more expensive DRR measures also exhibit the largest potential range of direct costs. While zoning restrictions and foreshore vegetation achieve the highest global benefit–cost ratios (BCRs), they also provide the smallest magnitude of overall benefit. We show that there are large regional patterns in both the efficacy and economic performance of modelled DRR measures that display much potential for flood risk reduction, especially in regions of the world that are projected to experience large amounts of population growth. Over 90 % of sub-national regions in the world can achieve their relative risk constant targets if at least one of the investigated DRR measures is employed. While future research could assess the indirect costs and benefits of these four and other DRR measures, as well as their subsequent hybridization, here we demonstrate to global and regional decision makers the case for investing in DRR now to mitigate future coastal flood risk.</p

Impacts of metal mining on river systems: a global assessment

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Association for the Advancement of Science via the DOI in this record Data and materials availability: The Water and Planetary Health Analytics (WAPHA) global metal mines database is divided into four components. Publicly available data on (i) active and (ii) inactive metal mines are available from the US Geological Survey Mineral Resources Data System [https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ (31)], the BritPits database of the British Geological Survey [https://www.bgs.ac.uk/datasets/britpits/ (32)], and the S&P Global Market Intelligence database [https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/metals-mining (33)]. In addition, data for ~100,000 additional active and inactive mines obtained from academic and gray literature are stored in the WAPHA database [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xmg (29)]. Publicly available data relating to (iii) TSFs and (iv) TDFs are available from ICOLD/UNEP [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8W0hAQAAIAAJ (34)], the World Information Service on Energy [https://wise-uranium.org/mdaf.html (35)], the World Mine Tailings Failures and Global Tailings Portal databases [https://tailing.grida.no/ (36)]. Additional TSF/TDF data obtained from academic and gray literature are stored in the WAPHA database [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xmg (29)]. Modeling was implemented procedurally in MATLAB v9.9.0 (R2020b) (37) with the open source TopoToolbox MATLAB program for the analysis of digital elevation models (https://topotoolbox.wordpress.com). The modeling workflow is presented in fig. S8 with example code available in the WAPHA database [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xmg (29)]An estimated 23 million people live on floodplains affected by potentially dangerous concentrations of toxic waste derived from past and present metal mining activity. We analyzed the global dimensions of this hazard, particularly in regard to lead, zinc, copper, and arsenic, using a georeferenced global database detailing all known metal mining sites and intact and failed tailings storage facilities. We then used process-based and empirically tested modeling to produce a global assessment of metal mining contamination in river systems and the numbers of human populations and livestock exposed. Worldwide, metal mines affect 479,200 kilometers of river channels and 164,000 square kilometers of floodplains. The number of people exposed to contamination sourced from long-term discharge of mining waste into rivers is almost 50 times greater than the number directly affected by tailings dam failures.University of Lincol

Zinc intake, status and indices of cognitive function in adults and children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

In developing countries, deficiencies of micronutrients are thought to have a major impact on child development; however, a consensus on the specific relationship between dietary zinc intake and cognitive function remains elusive. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the relationship between zinc intake, status and indices of cognitive function in children and adults. A systematic literature search was conducted using EMBASE, MEDLINE and Cochrane Library databases from inception to March 2014. Included studies were those that supplied zinc as supplements or measured dietary zinc intake. A meta-analysis of the extracted data was performed where sufficient data were available. Of all of the potentially relevant papers, 18 studies met the inclusion criteria, 12 of which were randomised controlled trials (RCTs; 11 in children and 1 in adults) and 6 were observational studies (2 in children and 4 in adults). Nine of the 18 studies reported a positive association between zinc intake or status with one or more measure of cognitive function. Meta-analysis of data from the adult’s studies was not possible because of limited number of studies. A meta-analysis of data from the six RCTs conducted in children revealed that there was no significant overall effect of zinc intake on any indices of cognitive function: intelligence, standard mean difference of <0.001 (95% confidence interval (CI) –0.12, 0.13) P=0.95; executive function, standard mean difference of 0.08 (95% CI, –0.06, 022) P=0.26; and motor skills standard mean difference of 0.11 (95% CI –0.17, 0.39) P=0.43. Heterogeneity in the study designs was a major limitation, hence only a small number (n=6) of studies could be included in the meta-analyses. Meta-analysis failed to show a significant effect of zinc supplementation on cognitive functioning in children though, taken as a whole, there were some small indicators of improvement on aspects of executive function and motor development following supplementation but high-quality RCTs are necessary to investigate this further

Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid synthesis in fish: Comparative analysis of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) and Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) Delta 6 fatty acyl desaturase gene promoters

Fish vary in ability to biosynthesise n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA), with marine fish such as cod being inefficient in comparison to freshwater and salmonid fish. We investigated differences in the gene promoters of Δ6 fatty acyl desaturase (Δ6 FAD), a critical enzyme in LC-PUFA biosynthesis, in cod and salmon. Progressive deletions and targeted mutations of the promoters were tested for activity in a transfected fish cell line under low or high LC-PUFA treatment, and regions sufficient to direct transcription were identified. Comparison of these regions with sequences of corresponding regions of Δ6 FAD genes from mammals, amphibians and fish indicated a remarkable conservation of binding sites for SREBPs and NF-Y. In addition to these sites, a site was identified in salmon with similarity to that recognised by Sp1 transcription factor, and which was required for full expression of the salmon Δ6 FAD gene. The cod promoter was less active and lacked the Sp1 site. Eicosapentaenoic acid suppressed LC-PUFA synthesis in AS cells and also suppressed activity of the salmon Δ6 FAD promoter although this activity was likely mediated through sites other than Sp1, possibly similar to those recognised by NF-Y and SREBP transcription factors