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| Open AccessPlacing engineering in the earthquake response and the survival chain
This Perspective provides insightful discussion in how engineers can aid human health and safety during earthquake disasters. From search and rescue, helping mobilize patients, and securing medical facilities and treatment engineering can work towards bettering earthquake response.
- Luis Ceferino
- , Yvonne Merino
- & Baturalp Ozturk
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Article
| Open AccessAbsolute dating of the European Neolithic using the 5259 BC rapid 14C excursion
The Neolithic site of Dispilio, Northern Greece, is a pile-dwelling site with 900+ piles excavated. Here, the authors use the 5259 BC Miyake event to date the juniper tree-ring chronology constructed from these piles to 5140 BC, making it the first Neolithic site in the region to be absolutely calendar dated.
- Andrej Maczkowski
- , Charlotte Pearson
- & Albert Hafner
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Article
| Open AccessSystematic review and meta-analysis of ex-post evaluations on the effectiveness of carbon pricing
Carbon pricing policies are adopted in many countries around the world to mitigate climate change. This systematic review shows that significant emission reductions of between 5 and 21% are achieved by at least 17 out of 21 reviewed policy schemes.
- Niklas Döbbeling-Hildebrandt
- , Klaas Miersch
- & Jan C. Minx
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Article
| Open AccessImportance of social inequalities to contact patterns, vaccine uptake, and epidemic dynamics
Contact patterns influence the spread of infectious diseases, but mathematical models of epidemics typically only account for age differences in contacts. Here, the authors investigate the importance of other sociodemographic characteristics in shaping contact patterns and vaccine uptake using survey data from Hungary.
- Adriana Manna
- , Júlia Koltai
- & Márton Karsai
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Article
| Open AccessEnabling 3D CT-scanning of cultural heritage objects using only in-house 2D X-ray equipment in museums
Visualising the structure of museum objects is a crucial step in understanding the origin, state, and composition of cultural heritage artifacts. Here the authors present an approach for creating computed tomography reconstructions using only standard 2D radiography equipment already available in most larger museums.
- Francien G. Bossema
- , Willem Jan Palenstijn
- & K. Joost Batenburg
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Article
| Open AccessFinancial markets value skillful forecasts of seasonal climate
Traders of financial options bet that firms’ stock prices will be affected by forecasts of seasonal climate produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Firms are exposed throughout the economy, and traders spend more to hedge the news from more skillful forecasts
- Derek Lemoine
- & Sarah Kapnick
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories
Human groups preserve cultural history in songs passed between generations. Here the authors show that musical histories are largely independent of the history preserved in genes and languages.
- Sam Passmore
- , Anna L. C. Wood
- & Patrick E. Savage
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Article
| Open AccessHigh-resolution impact-based early warning system for riverine flooding
A hindcast experiment of the 2021 summer flood in West Germany unveils a 17-hour lead time for preparedness and advisable action, holding promise for impact-based forecasting of inundated roads, railways and building footprint in real-time.
- Husain Najafi
- , Pallav Kumar Shrestha
- & Luis Samaniego
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Article
| Open AccessLoneliness trajectories over three decades are associated with conspiracist worldviews in midlife
Here, the authors show that elevated loneliness in adolescence and increasing loneliness over three decades is associated with heightened conspiracy beliefs in midlife.
- Kinga Bierwiaczonek
- , Sam Fluit
- & Jonas R. Kunst
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Article
| Open AccessPublic perceptions on carbon removal from focus groups in 22 countries
Global public expectations for carbon removal governance are: engagement beyond acceptance research; regulating industry beyond incentivizing innovation; systemic coordination; and prioritizing underlying and interrelated causes of unsustainability.
- Sean Low
- , Livia Fritz
- & Benjamin K. Sovacool
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Article
| Open AccessPatrilineal segmentary systems provide a peaceful explanation for the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck
Prior work has identified a male-only effective population size bottleneck 3-5000 years ago. While violent competition has been proposed as a cause, the authors here show that a segmentary patrilineal system with lineal fission provides a peaceful alternative explanation.
- Léa Guyon
- , Jérémy Guez
- & Raphaëlle Chaix
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Article
| Open AccessInequality in economic shock exposures across the global firm-level supply network
Thurner and colleagues explore how economic shocks spread risk through the globalized economy. They find that rich countries expose poor countries stronger to systemic risk than vice-versa. The risk is highly concentrated, however higher risk levels are not compensated with a risk premium in GDP levels, nor higher GDP growth. The findings put the often-praised benefits for developing countries from globalized production in a new light, by relating them to risks involved in the production processes
- Abhijit Chakraborty
- , Tobias Reisch
- & Stefan Thurner
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Article
| Open AccessIntegrating social vulnerability into high-resolution global flood risk mapping
The study introduces a method of integrating gridded estimates of social vulnerability into high-resolution global flood risk maps demonstrating new insights into the geography of flood risk within and between countries.
- Sean Fox
- , Felix Agyemang
- & Jeffrey Neal
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Article
| Open AccessDynamics of collective cooperation under personalised strategy updates
Collective cooperation is found across many social and biological systems. Here, the authors find that infrequent hub updates promote the emergence of collective cooperation and develop an algorithm that optimises collective cooperation with update rates.
- Yao Meng
- , Sean P. Cornelius
- & Aming Li
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Article
| Open AccessWorldwide divergence of values
The authors test whether social values have become converged or diverged across national cultures over the last 40 years using a 76-country analysis of the World Values Survey. They show that values have diverged, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world.
- Joshua Conrad Jackson
- & Danila Medvedev
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Article
| Open AccessAttribute latencies causally shape intertemporal decisions
People have different latencies in processing amount and time attributes when making intertemporal choices. Here, the authors test the causal effect of these latencies on choice by altering the onset of amount and time information, which alters people’s patience.
- Fadong Chen
- , Jiehui Zheng
- & Ian Krajbich
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Article
| Open AccessArchaeological and molecular evidence for ancient chickens in Central Asia
The origin and dispersal of the chicken across Eurasia is unclear. Here, the authors examine eggshell fragments from southern Central Asia with paleoproteomics to identify chicken eggshells, suggesting that chickens may have been an important dietary component as early as 400BCE.
- Carli Peters
- , Kristine K. Richter
- & Robert N. Spengler III
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Article
| Open AccessGenetic similarity between relatives provides evidence on the presence and history of assortative mating
Non-random mating can complicate genetic studies, but implications hinge on its history in prior generations. Here, the authors use genetic similarity between relatives to investigate which traits show evidence of recent changes in mating behavior.
- Hans Fredrik Sunde
- , Nikolai Haahjem Eftedal
- & Fartein Ask Torvik
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Article
| Open AccessAn analysis of the accuracy of retrospective birth location recall using sibling data
Many surveys ask participants to retrospectively record their location of birth. Here, the authors find misreporting in retrospective birth location data in UK Biobank using data from siblings, which can lead to bias in estimates of the impact of location-based exposures.
- Stephanie von Hinke
- & Nicolai Vitt
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Article
| Open AccessFace and context integration in emotion inference is limited and variable across categories and individuals
People infer emotions using faces and situations, yet little is known about how these are integrated. Here, the authors show that situations are often sufficient to infer emotions, with variability in integration across categories and individuals.
- Srishti Goel
- , Julian Jara-Ettinger
- & Maria Gendron
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Article
| Open AccessProjecting the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. population structure
The COVID-19 pandemic affected mortality, fertility, and migration. Using the cohort component projection method, the authors find that if the pandemic had not occurred, the expected population of the U.S. would have been 2.1 million more people in 2025 and 1.7 million more people in 2060.
- Andrea M. Tilstra
- , Antonino Polizzi
- & Evelina T. Akimova
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Article
| Open AccessEffect of mobile food environments on fast food visits
Using large-scale mobility data, the authors examine how the quality of food in mobile environments away from home affects food choice.
- Bernardo García Bulle Bueno
- , Abigail L. Horn
- & Esteban Moro
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Article
| Open AccessThe atlas of unburnable oil for supply-side climate policies
The global atlas of unburnable oil shows that the most socio-environmentally sensitive areas, such as protected areas or biodiversity hotspots, need to be kept entirely off-limits to oil extraction in order to keep global warming under 1.5 °C.
- Lorenzo Pellegrini
- , Murat Arsel
- & Martí Orta-Martínez
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Article
| Open AccessPolicy and market forces delay real estate price declines on the US coast
Subsidies for coastal management and tax advantages for high-income property owners dampen the negative effects of climate risks on coastal property values. Without subsidies or tax advantages market prices better reflect climate risks, but coastal gentrification could accelerate.
- Dylan E. McNamara
- , Martin D. Smith
- & Craig E. Landry
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Article
| Open AccessPublic perceptions and support of climate intervention technologies across the Global North and Global South
This article establishes a global baseline of public perceptions of climate-intervention technologies. Publics across the global South are more favorable and supportive but concerned about impacts on mitigation and unequal burdens of risks on poor countries.
- Chad M. Baum
- , Livia Fritz
- & Benjamin K. Sovacool
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Article
| Open AccessInequalities in healthcare use during the COVID-19 pandemic
An indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was a decline in healthcare utilisation for other conditions. Here, the authors quantify this decline in the Netherlands and show that impacts were greater for individuals with lower household income, females, older people, and those with a migrant background.
- Arun Frey
- , Andrea M. Tilstra
- & Mark D. Verhagen
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Article
| Open AccessExploring the variances of climate change opinions in Germany at a fine-grained local scale
Mewes and colleagues show substantial and systematic differences in public climate change opinions across Germany that manifest between urban vs. rural and prospering vs. declining areas. Besides these geographic features, more complex historical and cultural differences between places play an important role.
- Lars Mewes
- , Leonie Tuitjer
- & Peter Dirksmeier
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Article
| Open AccessPeople quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat
According to the rice theory, the demands of rice farming might make cultures more collectivistic. Here the authors provide evidence in support of this theory by showing that Chinese farmers who were quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice score higher on measures related to collectivism than those assigned to farm wheat.
- Thomas Talhelm
- & Xiawei Dong
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Comment
| Open AccessThe bioethics of skeletal anatomy collections from India
Millions of skeletal remains from South Asia were exported in red markets (the underground economy of human tissues/organs) to educational institutions globally for over a century. It is time to recognize the personhood of the people who were systematically made into anatomical objects and acknowledge the scientific racism in creating and continuing to use them.
- Sabrina C. Agarwal
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Article
| Open AccessPsychological well-being in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the global economy, environment, and political order. Here, the authors show that it also coincided with a temporary decline in psychological well-being across Europe.
- Julian Scharbert
- , Sarah Humberg
- & Mitja D. Back
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Article
| Open AccessLeisure engagement in older age is related to objective and subjective experiences of aging
The benefits of different leisure activities for different aspects of aging remain unclear. Here, authors show that performing physical or creative activities is associated with important aging metrics and could help to prevent age-related decline.
- Jessica K. Bone
- , Feifei Bu
- & Daisy Fancourt
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Article
| Open AccessChanges in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries
Tightness-looseness theory predicts that social norms strengthen following threat. Here the authors test this and find that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased, but no evidence was observed for a robust change in most other norms.
- Giulia Andrighetto
- , Aron Szekely
- & Kimmo Eriksson
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Article
| Open AccessEffect of trade on global aquatic food consumption patterns
Xu and colleagues find that the average trophic level of aquatic food items in the human diet is declining (from 3.42 to 3.18) because of the considerable increase in low-trophic level aquaculture species output relative to that of capture fisheries since 1976. Additionally they find that trade has contributed to increasing the availability and trophic level of aquatic foods in >60% of the world’s countries.
- Kangshun Zhao
- , Steven D. Gaines
- & Jun Xu
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Article
| Open AccessSequential stacking link prediction algorithms for temporal networks
Link prediction in temporal networks is relevant for many real-world systems, however, current approaches are usually characterized by high computational costs. The authors propose a temporal link prediction framework based on the sequential stacking of static network features, for improved computational speed, appropriate for temporal networks with completely unobserved or partially observed target layers.
- Xie He
- , Amir Ghasemian
- & Peter J. Mucha
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Article
| Open AccessIncome determines the impact of cash transfers on HIV/AIDS: cohort study of 22.7 million Brazilians
Brazil has operated a conditional cash transfer program to support families living in precarious conditions since 2004. Here, the authors use linked administrative and health data to investigate the impacts of the program on HIV/AIDS-related outcomes, demonstrating strong positive associations.
- Andréa F. Silva
- , Inês Dourado
- & Davide Rasella
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Article
| Open AccessDelayed increase in stone tool cutting-edge productivity at the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in southern Jordan
Lithic cutting-edge productivity is a way of quantifying prehistoric human technological evolution. Here, the authors examine the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition across eight assemblages in the eastern Mediterranean, finding the transition to be later than expected and associated with bladelet technology development.
- Seiji Kadowaki
- , Joe Yuichiro Wakano
- & Sate Massadeh
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Article
| Open AccessImplicit racial biases are lower in more populous more diverse and less segregated US cities
Implicit biases are influenced by social contexts which, in cities, are shaped by the constraints of urban infrastructure networks. Here the authors show that more populous, more diverse, and less segregated cities are less biased and that this is predicted by a complex systems model.
- Andrew J. Stier
- , Sina Sajjadi
- & Marc G. Berman
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Article
| Open AccessStringent sustainability regulations for global supply chains are supported across middle-income democracies
Citizens in middle-income countries (Brazil, India, Indonesia) support aligning local sustainability rules with new laws originating in OECD nations. People favor stricter regulations, driven by optimistic expectations of the benefits outweighing potential costs.
- E. Keith Smith
- , Dennis Kolcava
- & Thomas Bernauer
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Comment
| Open AccessAfrican leadership is critical in responding to public health threats
The African continent demonstrated decisive leadership throughout its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging lessons learned from previous outbreaks and acting quickly to limit the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We propose a framework to build on these successes that calls for greater collaboration between African leaders, and greater inclusion of African voices in the global health ecosystem.
- Nicaise Ndembi
- , Aggrey Aluso
- & Jean Kaseya
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Article
| Open AccessAcoustic and language-specific sources for phonemic abstraction from speech
How speech sounds come to be understood as language remains unclear. Here, the authors find that brain responses to speech in part reflect abstraction of phonological units specific to the language being spoken, mediated through relationships between acoustic features.
- Anna Mai
- , Stephanie Riès
- & Timothy Q. Gentner
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Article
| Open AccessModelling six sustainable development transformations in Australia and their accelerators, impediments, enablers, and interlinkages
Global research has identified six critical transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Here, Allen et al model all six transformations in a national context and discuss implications for accelerating progress on the goals.
- Cameron Allen
- , Annabel Biddulph
- & Shirin Malekpour
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Article
| Open AccessA randomized trial looking at planning prompts to reduce opioid prescribing
A personalized letter from the Medical Examiner-Coroner in Los Angeles County has proven effective at reducing opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing. Here the authors show that the introduction of if/when-then planning prompts in to the letter further reduced opioid prescribing by 12.85% and benzodiazepine prescribing by 8.32%; they were most effective for clinicians with multiple patient deaths due to accidental opioid-related overdose.
- Jason N. Doctor
- , Marcella A. Kelley
- & Emily P. Stewart
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Article
| Open AccessOnline legal driving behavior monitoring for self-driving vehicles
Ambiguity in human-oriented traffic laws poses a significant challenge to the regulation of self-driving vehicles. Here, the authors present a trigger-based hierarchical online compliance monitor for self-assessment of self-driving vehicles using ambiguous compliance threshold selection principles.
- Wenhao Yu
- , Chengxiang Zhao
- & Ding Zhao
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Article
| Open AccessDynamic predictors of COVID-19 vaccination uptake and their interconnections over two years in Hong Kong
Understanding factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine uptake in an evolving pandemic context is important for future vaccine campaigns. Here, the authors investigate the main drivers of vaccine hesitancy in Hong Kong at different stages of the pandemic, where uptake was initially low despite high availability.
- Jiehu Yuan
- , Yucan Xu
- & Qiuyan Liao
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Article
| Open AccessBehavioral consequences of second-person pronouns in written communications between authors and reviewers of scientific papers
Second-person pronouns, such as “you” and “yours”, are common in human communication. Here, the authors show that in peer review, authors who address reviewers with second person pronouns receive fewer questions, shorter responses, and more positive feedback.
- Zhuanlan Sun
- , C. Clark Cao
- & Chao Ma
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Article
| Open AccessInferring language dispersal patterns with velocity field estimation
Reconstructing language dispersal patterns is important for understanding cultural spread and demic diffusion. Here, the authors use a computational approach based on velocity field estimation to infer the dispersal patterns of Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Bantu, and Arawak language families.
- Sizhe Yang
- , Xiaoru Sun
- & Menghan Zhang
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Article
| Open AccessIntegrating climate change induced flood risk into future population projections
Using historical data across the U.S., the authors find that population declines are associated with flood exposure. Projecting this relationship to 2053, the authors find that flood risk may result in 7% lower growth than otherwise expected.
- Evelyn G. Shu
- , Jeremy R. Porter
- & Edward Kearns
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Article
| Open AccessCalifornia’s zero-emission vehicle adoption brings air quality benefits yet equity gaps persist
Zero-emission vehicle adoption brings near-roadway air quality benefits to all communities in California, yet equity gaps persist in disadvantaged communities, calling for targeted policies.
- Qiao Yu
- , Brian Yueshuai He
- & Yifang Zhu
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Article
| Open AccessThe alignment of companies' sustainability behavior and emissions with global climate targets
The emissions pathways of most publicly traded companies in high-emitting sectors are not aligned with the climate targets of the Paris Agreement. An extensive analysis of companies’ sustainability behaviour offers insights into why this is the case.
- Simone Cenci
- , Matteo Burato
- & Maurizio Zollo