Armed conflict in Africa may hamper girls’ educational attainment nearby

Child deaths indirectly caused by impacts on female education may be on a par with child deaths directly due to conflict

PLOS

 

image: 

Armed conflict in Africa may hamper girls’ educational attainment nearby.

view more 

Credit: Dario Fernandez Ruz, Pexels, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

Across 28 countries in Africa, armed conflict within 25 kilometers of a female primary school student’s household is associated with a reduction in schooling of 0.38 years by the time she reaches adolescence – while male students do not experience a similar effect. Xiao Hui Tai of the University of California, Davis, U.S., presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 15, 2025.

Female education has well-known and wide-ranging social and economic benefits, such as lower child mortality and better labor-market outcomes. Armed conflict disrupts education, but studies that examine gender-specific effects tend to focus on specific conflicts or apply a low-resolution approach.

To gain a broader view with high spatial resolution, Tai combined household survey data from the international Demographic and Health Surveys Program with data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. These data are publicly available and include geo-coordinates of households and conflict events, enabling measurement of local-scale conflict exposure. The dataset consisted of 31,973 violent events alongside responses from 1,938,424 people surveyed from 1986 to 2022.

Exposure to armed conflict up to 50 kilometers away was associated with reduced female education, with bigger impacts at closer distances and at ages 6 and 11. Girls within 25 kilometers of at least one conflict event experienced a reduction of 0.38 years (4 ½ months) of schooling by the time they reached adolescence, while boys did not experience this effect. Further analysis suggested that households near armed conflict may keep girls home from school due to safety concerns and may reallocate resources to boys.

Negative female education effects occurred even with low-intensity conflict. However, girls exposed to consecutive years of nearby conflict appeared to experience later boosts in education that partially made up for earlier reductions, suggesting habituation. 

Prior research has firmly established a link between female education and child mortality. The new study suggests that the number of child deaths indirectly caused by reduction in female education from nearby conflict is similar in magnitude to the estimated thousands of yearly child deaths directly caused by armed conflict in Africa.

While further research is needed, this study could inform efforts to reduce conflict and mitigate its effects on education.

The authors add: "We link granular data on conflict events to georeferenced survey data on educational attainment from 28 countries in Africa, finding that armed conflict significantly reduces girls' years of schooling by adolescence. This highlights the widespread and often overlooked toll of conflict on civilian populations."

 

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0314106

Citation: Tai XH (2025) Nearby armed conflict affects girls’ education in Africa. PLoS ONE 20(1): e0314106. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314106

Author country: U.S.

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

---

Journal

PLOS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0314106 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Nearby armed conflict affects girls’ education in Africa

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025

 

Baleen whales in the northwest Atlantic are particularly vulnerable to boat injuries in densely inhabited regions, shipping routes, and fishing grounds

According to a spatiotemporal vulnerability analysis conducted under current and climate change conditions

PLOS

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Major risks to baleen whales. Examples of NA right whales killed by (a) ship strikes (b) Entanglement in fishing gear. Image credits: (a) Marine Animal Response Society, collected under federal SARA permit issued to MARS. (b) NEFSC taken under SARA Permit DFO-MAR-2016-02 (Amendment 1) and NMFS Permit 17355.

view more 

Credit: Solway et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Baleen whales in the northwest Atlantic are particularly vulnerable to boat injuries in densely inhabited regions, shipping routes, and fishing grounds, according to a spatiotemporal vulnerability analysis conducted under current and climate change conditions

 

 

Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0315909

Article title: Assessing changing baleen whale distributions and reported incidents relative to vessel activity in the Northwest Atlantic

Author countries: Canada

Funding: This study was funded as part of a Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant to the Ocean Frontier Institute, with additional support by the Jarislowsky Foundation (DPT) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant RGPIN-2020-06873 (DPT) and RGPIN 2017-05118 (BW). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

---

Journal

PLOS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0315909 

Article Title

Assessing changing baleen whale distributions and reported incidents relative to vessel activity in the Northwest Atlantic

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025

COI Statement

 

In small preliminary study, fearful pet dogs exhibited significantly different microbiomes and metabolic molecules to non-fearful dogs, suggesting the gut-brain axis might be involved in fear behaviors

PLOS

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

In small preliminary study, fearful pet dogs exhibited significantly different microbiomes and metabolic molecules to non-fearful dogs.

view more 

Credit: Daniel Lincoln, Unsplash, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

In small preliminary study, fearful pet dogs exhibited significantly different microbiomes and metabolic molecules to non-fearful dogs, suggesting the gut-brain axis might be involved in fear behaviors

 

 

Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0315374

Article title: Altered microbiome and metabolome profiling in fearful companion dogs: An exploratory study 

Author countries: Italy

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

---

Journal

PLOS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0315374 

Article Title

Altered microbiome and metabolome profiling in fearful companion dogs: An exploratory study

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025

 INDUSTRY LOBBYIST LIMIT

Most microplastics in French bottled and tap water are smaller than 20 µm - fine enough to pass into blood and organs, but below the EU-recommended detection limit

PLOS

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Image Caption: Researchers find that 98% of microplastics in bottled water measure less than 20 µm in diameter

view more 

Credit: Image Credit: Microplastic Solution, available under CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Most microplastics in French bottled and tap water are smaller than 20 µm - fine enough to pass into blood and organs, but below the EU-recommended detection limit for water quality assessments. 

####

Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/water/article?id=10.1371/journal.pwat.0000250

Article Title: Majority of potable water microplastics are smaller than the 20 μm EU methodology limit for consumable water quality

Author Countries: Denmark, France

Funding: This work and the PhD fellowship of O.H. is funded by an 80Prime CNRS grant «4DμPlast» (G.L.R, J.E.S.). This publication was supported by ANR-20-CE34-0014 ATMO-PLASTIC (G.L.R, J.E.S.) and the Plasticopyr project within the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra program (G.L.R) as well as observatoire Homme-Milieu Pyrénées Haut Vicdessos - LABEX DRIIHM ANR-11-LABX0010 (G.L.R).

 

---

Journal

PLOS Water

DOI

10.1371/journal.pwat.0000250 

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025

A tangled web: Fossil fuel energy, plastics, and agrichemicals discourse on X/Twitter

PLOS

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

An analysis of the nine top players in the U.S. fossil fuel-derived hydrocarbon industries (oil/gas, plastics, and agrichemicals) shows tight linkages across the three different sectors, with news media, other petrochemical industry players, and politicians also frequently tagged, according to a study published January 15, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Alaina Kinol from Northeastern University, United States, and colleagues.

Previous research on connections between the fossil fuel and plastics sectors and fossil fuel and agriculture sectors has revealed strategy lobbying coordination to resist government regulation in the United States. Here, Kinol and colleagues examine how nine key players in the US fossil energy/plastics/agrichemical industries used X/Twitter (henceforth referred to as “Twitter,” the name of the platform for the period this research covers) to interact.

The authors analysed over 125,300 unique tweets posted from 2008-2023 by the main Twitter accounts of nine key players in the US fossil energy/plastics/agrichemical trade: the top two largest U.S. fossil fuel oil/gas companies and their national trade association (ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute), the top two largest plastics producers and their national trade association (Dow, Dupont de Nemours, Inc, and the American Chemistry Council), and the top two largest agrichemical producers and their national trade association (Corteva Agriscience, FMC Corp, and the American Farm Bureau). The assessment examined themes, connections, and relationships among these nine central Twitter accounts.

The organizations posted 47 percent of the assessed tweets; plastics, 35 percent; and agribusiness, 18 percent. All nine of the organizations of interest in this study were mentioned by at least four other organizations of interest, reflecting substantial connections between the three sectors. The strongest inter-sector connections were between fossil fuel and plastics organizations. In terms of other types of Twitter accounts mentioned, news media accounts were most frequently tagged (112 unique handles), followed by other organizations dealing with hydrocarbons/petrochemicals (63 handles) and politicians (43). The top five phrases mentioned were “economy” (3,140 tweets), “sustainable/sustainability” (3,012), “pipeline” (2,862), “water” (2,350), and “EPA” (591).

The findings suggest more investigation is warranted into how these organizations may use social media to amplify one another’s messages and shape public discourse around their industries and the climate crisis. 

Co-author Jennie C Stephens summarizes: “Our study suggests that climate obstruction in different industries is more coordinated than is generally recognized...these different companies in different sectors are using the same strategic messaging to promote a distorted image of their environmental responsibility.” 

####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Climate: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000370

Citation: Kinol A, Si Y, Kinol J, Stephens JC (2025) Networks of climate obstruction: Discourses of denial and delay in US fossil energy, plastic, and agrichemical industries. PLOS Clim 4(1): e0000370. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000370

Author Countries: Ireland, United States

Funding: AK and JCS received a 2021 grant from CSSN: https://cssn.org/grants/grantees/. This grant funded AK and YS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

---

Journal

PLOS Climate

DOI

10.1371/journal.pclm.0000370 

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025

This fast and agile robotic insect could someday aid in mechanical pollination

With a new design, the bug-sized bot was able to fly 100 times longer than prior versions.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

CAMBRIDGE, MA — With a more efficient method for artificial pollination, farmers in the future could grow fruits and vegetables inside multilevel warehouses, boosting yields while mitigating some of agriculture’s harmful impacts on the environment.

To help make this idea a reality, MIT researchers are developing robotic insects that could someday swarm out of mechanical hives to rapidly perform precise pollination. However, even the best bug-sized robots are no match for natural pollinators like bees when it comes to endurance, speed, and maneuverability.

Now, inspired by the anatomy of these natural pollinators, the researchers have overhauled their design to produce tiny, aerial robots that are far more agile and durable than prior versions.

The new bots can hover for about 1,000 seconds, which is more than 100 times longer than previously demonstrated. The robotic insect, which weighs less than a paperclip, can fly significantly faster than similar bots while completing acrobatic maneuvers like double aerial flips.

The revamped robot is designed to boost flight precision and agility while minimizing the mechanical stress on its artificial wing flexures, which enables faster maneuvers, increased endurance, and a longer lifespan.

The new design also has enough free space that the robot could carry tiny batteries or sensors, which could enable it to fly on its own outside the lab.

“The amount of flight we demonstrated in this paper is probably longer than the entire amount of flight our field has been able to accumulate with these robotic insects. With the improved lifespan and precision of this robot, we are getting closer to some very exciting applications, like assisted pollination,” says Kevin Chen, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory within the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of an open-access paper on the new design.

Chen is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Suhan Kim and Yi-Hsuan Hsiao, who are EECS graduate students; as well as EECS graduate student Zhijian Ren and summer visiting student Jiashu Huang. The research appears today in Science Robotics.

Boosting performance

Prior versions of the robotic insect were composed of four identical units, each with two wings, combined into a rectangular device about the size of a microcassette.  

“But there is no insect that has eight wings. In our old design, the performance of each individual unit was always better than the assembled robot,” Chen says.

This performance drop was partly caused by the arrangement of the wings, which would blow air into each other when flapping, reducing the lift forces they could generate.

The new design chops the robot in half. Each of the four identical units now has one flapping wing pointing away from the robot’s center, stabilizing the wings and boosting their lift forces. With half as many wings, this design also frees up space so the robot could carry electronics.

In addition, the researchers created more complex transmissions that connect the wings to the actuators, or artificial muscles, that flap them. These durable transmissions, which required the design of longer wing hinges, reduce the mechanical strain that limited the endurance of past versions.

“Compared to the old robot, we can now generate control torque three times larger than before, which is why we can do very sophisticated and very accurate path-finding flights,” Chen says.

Yet even with these design innovations, there is still a gap between the best robotic insects and the real thing. For instance, a bee has only two wings, yet it can perform rapid and highly controlled motions.

“The wings of bees are finely controlled by a very sophisticated set of muscles. That level of fine-tuning is something that truly intrigues us, but we have not yet been able to replicate,” he says.

Less strain, more force

The motion of the robot’s wings is driven by artificial muscles. These tiny, soft actuators are made from layers of elastomer sandwiched between two very thin carbon nanotube electrodes and then rolled into a squishy cylinder. The actuators rapidly compress and elongate, generating mechanical force that flaps the wings.

In previous designs, when the actuator’s movements reach the extremely high frequencies needed for flight, the devices often start buckling. That reduces the power and efficiency of the robot. The new transmissions inhibit this bending-buckling motion, which reduces the strain on the artificial muscles and enables them to apply more force to flap the wings.

Another new design involves a long wing hinge that reduces torsional stress experienced during the flapping-wing motion. Fabricating the hinge, which is about 2 centimeters long but just 200 microns in diameter, was among their greatest challenges.

“If you have even a tiny alignment issue during the fabrication process, the wing hinge will be slanted instead of rectangular, which affects the wing kinematics,” Chen says.

After many attempts, the researchers perfected a multistep laser-cutting process that enabled them to precisely fabricate each wing hinge.

With all four units in place, the new robotic insect can hover for more than 1,000 seconds, which equates to almost 17 minutes, without showing any degradation of flight precision.

“When my student Nemo was performing that flight, he said it was the slowest 1,000 seconds he had spent in his entire life. The experiment was extremely nerve-racking,” Chen says.

The new robot also reached an average speed of 35 centimeters per second, the fastest flight researchers have reported, while performing body rolls and double flips. It can even precisely track a trajectory that spells M-I-T.

“At the end of the day, we’ve shown flight that is 100 times longer than anyone else in the field has been able to do, so this is an extremely exciting result,” he says.

From here, Chen and his students want to see how far they can push this new design, with the goal of achieving flight for longer than 10,000 seconds.

They also want to improve the precision of the robots so they could land and take off from the center of a flower. In the long run, the researchers hope to install tiny batteries and sensors onto the aerial robots so they could fly and navigate outside the lab.

“This new robot platform is a major result from our group and leads to many exciting directions. For example, incorporating sensors, batteries, and computing capabilities on this robot will be a central focus in the next three to five years,” Chen says.

### 

This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation and a Mathworks Fellowship.

---

Journal

Science Robotics

DOI

10.1126/scirobotics.adp4256 

Article Title

Acrobatics at the insect-scale: a durable, precise, and agile micro-aerial-robot

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025