ScienceDaily: Science & Society News

Rapid hydroelectric dam expansion in the Amazon poses a serious threat to Earth's largest and most biodiverse river basin. There are 158 dams in the Amazon River basin, with another 351 proposed; these projects are typically assessed individually, with little coordinated planning. A new study provides a computational approach for evaluating basin-level tradeoffs between hydropower and ecosystem services, with the goal of guiding sustainable dam siting.

Measurements of London's atmosphere show the city is releasing more of the potent greenhouse gas methane, primarily from natural gas leaks.

The time a person spends on different smartphone apps is enough to identify them from a larger group in more than one in three cases say researchers, who warn of the implications for security and privacy. They fed 4,680 days of app usage data into statistical models. Each of these days was paired with one of the 780 users, such that the models learnt people's daily app use patterns. The researchers then tested whether models could identify an individual when provided with only a single day of smartphone activity that was anonymous and not yet paired with a user. Software granted access to a smartphone's standard activity logging could render a reasonable prediction about a user's identity even when they were logged out of their account. An identification is possible with no monitoring of conversations or behaviors within apps themselves.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the largest marine oil spill in United States history. The disaster was caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, taking 11 lives and releasing nearly 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Twelve years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, scientists are still working to understand where all this oil ended up, a concept known as environmental fate.

Public perceptions of climate change, the future cost and effectiveness of climate mitigation and technologies, and how political institutions respond to public pressure are all important determinants of the degree to which the climate will change over the 21st century, according to a new study.

Researchers have developed a vision for Germany in 2050 that illustrates ways to achieve a carbon dioxide-neutral life and economy. In their study they look back from a fictitious future to the present day.

A new study shows that an increase in hot, dry nights in recent decades has resulted in nighttime wildfires becoming more intense and more frequent. Researchers found there are 11 more flammable nights every year in the U.S. West compared to 1979 -- a 45% increase over the past four decades. Nighttime warming is only expected to increase with climate change, intensifying wildfires' size and speed, causing more firefighters to work around the clock.

A new study found that children from less resourced neighborhoods were at increased odds of presenting with complicated appendicitis, an indicator of delayed access to surgical care. This is the first pediatric study to link many neighborhood-level factors that influence health -- such as quality of schools, housing, safety, and economic opportunity -- to timely surgical care access.

A new study among young Danish men confirms the assumption that risk-tolerant, impatient and self-centered people are more likely to commit crimes than risk averse, patient and altruistic people are.

A framework for identifying the most vulnerable marine species will boost global conservation and policy efforts against anthropogenic climate change.

A new analysis of the River Ganges in West Bengal, India, highlights how wastewater flowing into the river impacts its water quality, and how that influence shifts with seasons and tides.

A combined analysis of results from 149 earlier studies finds that treatment rates for major depressive disorder remain low worldwide, particularly for people living in low and lower-middle income countries.

New studies emerge daily on the effect of the human microbiome on human health: colon cancer, ulcers, and cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer's disease have been associated with the communities of microbes that live in our bodies. However, global research into the human microbiome is heavily biased in favor of wealthy countries such as the United States and United Kingdom, according to a new study.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic hit hardest in deprived areas of England and Wales, with excess years of life lost more than three times as high in the North West than the South West of England. The research also finds 11 times as many excess deaths in 15-44 year olds in the most deprived areas compared to the most affluent ones.

African children and adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 experience much higher mortality rates than Europeans or North Americans of the same age, according to a new study.

Researchers surveyed and compared early- and late-stage breast and colorectal cancer diagnoses in patients in pre-pandemic 2019 and in 2020, the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, discovering fewer of the former and more of the latter as patients delayed care.

Receiving at least one vaccine dose was associated with statistically significant declines in multiple psychological distress factors, researchers report in a new study.

This is a story about vultures, feral dogs, rabies -- and piles of rotting animal carcasses. Buckle up. But in the end, it's about the power of conservation to keep ecosystems, even urban ecosystems, in balance, benefiting the people who live there.