Friday, January 17, 2025

Mussel bed surveyed before World War II still thriving

Old manuscript leads researchers to biodiverse mussel bed and 101-year-old scientist

University of California - Davis

Emily Longman and Sarah Merolla sample mussel bed — image:
Lab technician Sarah Merolla (left) and Emily Longman (right) sampling the mussel bed at Dillon Beach, California in 2019.
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Credit: Eric Sanford, UC Davis

A mussel bed along Northern California’s Dillon Beach is as healthy and biodiverse as it was about 80 years ago, when two young students surveyed it shortly before Pearl Harbor was attacked and one was sent to fight in World War II.

Their unpublished, typewritten manuscript sat in the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory’s library for years until UC Davis scientists found it and decided to resurvey the exact same mussel bed with the old paper’s meticulous photos and maps directing their way.

The new findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, document a thriving mussel bed community that nonetheless shows the mark of climate change. Ninety species of invertebrates were found to live within the mussel bed — slightly more than those found in 1941. Among them were warm-adapted species more typically found in southern waters, such as the California horsemussel Modiolus carpenteri and the chiton Mopalia lionota.

“We anticipated finding dramatic losses of species,” said lead author Emily Longman, who conducted the study as a UC Davis graduate student and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vermont. “We predicted we’d have a big decline in biodiversity. Shockingly, we didn’t find that. If anything, we found more species. This mussel bed community is really healthy.”

Living author

Adding to their excitement, the researchers learned after completing their survey that one of the old manuscript’s authors, Milton Hildebrand, was not only still alive at age 101, but living in nearby Davis as a retired UC Davis zoology professor. Longman and Sanford got to meet with the WWII veteran in 2019 before his death the following year.

“Transferring scientific knowledge across generations like this is more than just the numbers and data — it’s a very human endeavor,” said senior author Eric Sanford, a professor with Bodega Marine Laboratory in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology. “Watching Emily Longman, a graduate student, interact with this 101-year-old scientist who initiated this research project 80 years earlier, was wonderful.”

The paper’s other author, Harvey I. Fisher, died in 1994 after a distinguished career in zoology. Fisher and Hildebrand were UC Berkeley graduate students taking a field course when they conducted their survey, before Bodega Marine Laboratory existed.

“Milton thought the results we had were fascinating,” Longman said. “He was charming.”

Stretched mussels

Habitat-forming species, like mussels, kelp and coral, are foundational to marine ecosystems because they provide critical “housing” for other species. The authors of both papers counted and recorded every invertebrate species they found within the Dillon Beach mussel bed.

“I think of them as the Motel 6 for rocky shores,” Sanford said. “Crabs, snails, worms, limpets, sea cucumbers — all of these species find lodging down in these three-dimensional beds.”

Previous research documented a nearly 60% decline in species diversity among mussel beds in Southern California. Yet, little data was available to understand how Northern California mussel beds were faring. One mussel bed cannot represent the entire coast of Northern California, but the Dillon Beach study provides an encouraging outlook amid a sea of recent bad news for oceans.

“Anecdotally, having worked at Bodega Marine Laboratory for over 20 years, the types of mussel beds at Dillon Beach are what we see in Sonoma and Mendocino counties,” Sanford said. “In general, they appear to be quite healthy.”

The resampling effort showed no biodiversity loss compared with what Hildebrand and Fisher saw in 1941, but it did reveal a signal of climate change: The relative abundance of species had shifted.

Cool-adapted species with a northern distribution ranging from California to British Columbia and Alaska, had decreased. Meanwhile, warm-adapted species with a southern distribution ranging down to Baja California, Mexico were becoming more abundant. The authors said such a shift was expected given that ocean temperatures recorded in Bodega Bay have been increasing since the 1950s.

Mussel memories

Longman and Sanford said their study highlights the value of sources and data sets considered “nontraditional” by science — such as an old, unpublished paper by students completing a field course.

“Untraditional resources, like maps from long ago, Indigenous knowledge, and old photos, are treasure troves,” Longman said. “They’re the only window into the past for a lot of these places.”

The study was funded by the Bilinski Educational Foundation, the Rafe Sagarin Fund for Innovative Ecology, and the National Science Foundation. The researchers acknowledge Bodega Marine Laboratory’s librarian Molly Engelbrecht for her commitment to archiving and digitizing student papers so they can serve as historical resources for the future.

The authors also thank Hildebrand and Fisher, who wrote in their 1941 report: “We hope our paper may serve as a basis for an ecological study of the area by ourselves or others at a later date.”

From left, Eric Sanford, Milton Hildebrand and Emily Longman meet in Davis in 2019. Hildebrand, a retired UC Davis zoologist whose mussel bed manuscript inspired Longman to resample the bed about 80 years later, died in 2020 at age 102.

Credit

Rick Grosberg, UC Davis

Before and after. At left, Fisher and Hildebrand's image of a rock and its mussel bed community they sampled at Dillon Beach in 1941. At right, the exact same rock sampled by Longman in 2018.

Credit

Harvey I. Fisher and Milton Hildebrand, UC Berkeley; Jacqueline Sones, UC Davis

A mussel bed in the Bodega Bay region of northern California creates three-dimensional habitat for crabs, snails, worms, sea cucumbers, and many other marine species.

Dense mussel beds grow on rocky intertidal surfaces along the shores of Dillon Beach in Northern California.

Credit

Jacqueline Sones, UC Davis

A diversity of invertebrates live within the mussel bed at Dillon Beach, California. Top row from left: isopod (Pentidotea wosnesenskii), dogwhelk (Nucella canaliculata), sea spider (Anoplodactylus viridintestinalis), ribbon worm (Amphiporus imparispinosus). Second row: polychaete worm (syllidae), isopod (Cirolana harfordi), sea slug (Runcina macfarlandi), chiton (Mopalia lionota), Bottom row: chiton (Cyanoplax dentiens), rock borer clam (Hiatella arctica), polychaete worm (Eulalia quadrioculata), shore crab (Hemigrapsus oregonensis).

Credit

Photos by Emily Longman and Eric Sanford, UC Davis

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-025-86105-9

Method of Research

Observational study

Article Title

Evaluating historical changes in a mussel bed community in northern California

Article Publication Date

14-Jan-2025

Seedling shuffle: Climate warming reshapes plant communities by changing the order of seed germination

New study finds climate warming can reshape plant communities by changing the order of seed germination

Holden Forests & Gardens

Not Your Average Potted Plants: Experimental Mesocosms for Plant Community Research — image:
A closer look at the "mesocosms" — mini-environments used to conduct experiments — used in this study. The team assembled plant communities in garden pots, and, at the end of the experiment, clipped and weighed each plant species to understand how the amount of each species changed with different assembly orders.
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Credit: Katie Stuble, Holden Forests & Gardens

Kirtland, OH — Our world is warming, and how exactly that will affect our ecosystems is a critical question. As the climate shifts, plants and animals are already responding in some obvious ways—like your daffodils blooming a bit earlier each spring—but the finer details are still unfolding. This timing of natural events, known as phenology, is changing across species and ecosystems as the climate warms, with potentially important consequences.

For instance, the timing of when seeds germinate and seedlings emerge in spring can affect not only individual species but entire communities. Some species may be responsive to warmer spring temperatures, germinating earlier in the year, while other species may not be as flexible. A new study from Holden Forests & Gardens reveals that these shifts in germination timing can give the more responsive plants an advantage, ultimately altering plant communities and the ecosystems that depend on them.

Published in the journal Ecology, the new research explores how warming-induced changes in germination timing alters the order in which plant species establish themselves, and how that, in turn, affects how big they can grow (a common measure in ecology of how well plants are faring against their competitors). This shift in “assembly order” could have a lasting impact on plant community composition, with important implications for ecosystem function. Research specialist Emma Dawson-Glass, in the Stuble lab at Holden, led the work. Dawson-Glass is now at the University of Michigan studying for her doctorate.

The team tested how different assembly orders affect plant communities in a controlled environment by simulating “ambient” (current) and “warmed” (+3°C) conditions for 15 species common in old-field ecosystems in the region. They used a growth chamber to test which species would germinate earlier, and how much earlier, under warming. Then, they replicated their newfound “arrival order” by sequentially planting seedlings into pots in the greenhouse. They found that the species more adept at advancing their germination under warming tended to dominate, significantly altering the balance among species.

These patterns differed species by species. For instance, certain species such as curly dock (Rumex crispus), wrinkleleaf goldenrod (Solidago rugosa), and tall ironweed (Vernonia gigantea) produced significantly more biomass (grew bigger) after they established in their warmed assembly order. Conversely, other species, including spotted St. John’s wort (Hypericum punctatum), bristly buttercup (Ranunculus pensylvanicus), and Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), performed better in the ambient (not warmed) assembly order. Meanwhile, a number of species showed no significant difference in biomass production at all, underscoring that responses to warming can vary widely across species.

"This work illustrates that warming can change the order of species arrivals, ultimately reshaping community composition,” explains Dawson-Glass. “The implications are especially important as we consider how to manage or restore plant communities in a warming world.”

In addition to identifying species with strong responses to warming, this study highlights the importance of understanding phenological sensitivity—the degree to which species adjust to seasonal changes. “Our results provide a new perspective on how climate change is already shaping ecosystems in ways we’re only beginning to understand,” adds Stuble. The findings also support the need for ecologists and land managers to consider germination timing when forecasting how plant communities might adapt or change in the future.

This research is part of an ongoing effort by Holden Forests & Gardens to advance ecological understanding of how climate change impacts native ecosystems.

—

Citation: Dawson-Glass, E., R. Schiafo, S.E. Kuebbing, and K.L. Stuble. 2024. Warming-induced changes in seasonal priority effects drive shifts in community composition. Ecology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4504

About Holden Forests & Gardens: Holden Forests & Gardens is made up of two of Northeast Ohio’s most important environmental and cultural institutions—the Holden Arboretum and Cleveland Botanical Garden—whose mission is to connect people with the wonder, beauty, and value of trees and plants, to inspire action for healthy communities. One of the largest public gardens in the country, Holden Forests & Gardens has 21,000 member households and an annual attendance of nearly 350,000 for whom we strive to provide inspirational and educational visitor experiences. For more information, visit holdenfg.org.

Journal

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.4504

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Warming-induced changes in seasonal priority effects drive shifts in community composition

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2025

COI Statement

K. Stuble is a subject-matter editor for Ecology but did not participate in the handling of this manuscript. The authors otherwise declare no conflicts of interest.

Reducing teens’ psychological stress could save billions for US budget, study suggests

THE BOTTOM LINE, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

Findings could be applied in government budget analyses to aid policymaking

PLOS

Reducing teens’ psychological stress could save billions for US budget, study suggests — image:
Federal policy impact analyses do not incorporate the potential economic benefits of adolescent mental health policies.
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Credit: cottonbro studio, Pexels (CC0, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

A new study suggests that boosting adolescent mental health is linked with long-term economic benefits. In contrast to similar findings from prior studies, these estimated relationships could be readily incorporated into standard government budgeting analyses for assessing potential policy impacts. Nathaniel Counts of The Kennedy Forum, US, and colleagues present this work in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine on January 16th.

A growing body of research shows that improving adolescent mental health holds the potential to yield a variety of long-term benefits, such as greater labor force participation and lower usage of public assistance. However, government budget analysts rarely include these effects when assessing potential new policies because most studies on the topic do not present parameters that are comprehensive enough to be compatible with analysts’ typical approaches for modeling policy outcomes.

To help address that gap, Counts and colleagues analyzed data on 3,343 participants in an ongoing study known as the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, which regularly captures information through interviews. Using data from the year 2000, when participants were aged 15 to 17, and again from 2010, the researchers examined relationships between the participants’ mental health as adolescents and later economic outcomes.

They found that clinically significant psychological distress in adolescence was associated with lower annual participation in the labor force 10 years later, as well as a reduction of $5,658 in annual wages per person. These estimated relationships could be applied by government budget analysts as parameters in existing economic models in order to evaluate the potential benefits of policies for improving adolescent mental health.

To demonstrate how the estimated parameters could be applied, the researchers used them to model the impact of a hypothetical policy that would expand access to preventive mental health care, reaching 10 percent of adolescents who otherwise would have developed psychological distress. They found that, from labor supply impacts alone, such a policy could offer $52 billion dollars in U.S. budget savings over 10 years.

This study’s estimated parameters could be applied to help guide real-world policymaking in the U.S. The researchers also outline potential directions for future research to further refine the parameters.

Counts adds, “As the U.S. faces a crisis in adolescent mental health, the need for greater investment has never been more urgent. Previous studies found that investing in mental health early could save money down the line. Our new research finds that, at the scale of the United States economy, improvements in adolescent mental health may bring many billions of dollars of federal budget benefits over ten years, potentially offsetting the costs of policy change that could cover critical services for young people such as integrated care.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004506

Citation: Counts NZ, Kreif N, Creedon TB, Bloom DE (2025) Psychological distress in adolescence and later economic and health outcomes in the United States population: A retrospective and modeling study. PLoS Med 22(1): e1004506. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004506

Author countries: United States

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

Journal

PLOS Medicine

DOI

10.1371/journal.pmed.1004506

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

AMERIKA

Schools need to boost entry-level salaries to better compete for novice teachers, study says

Schools not strategically adjusting their pay scales for early career teachers to help attract new faculty members

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

bruno_paul220128-lbs-13-m — image:
Despite the challenges that school districts are currently having recruiting novice teachers, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of education policy, organization and leadership Paul Bruno found in a recent study that California schools are not adjusting their pay scales strategically to better compete with neighboring school districts.
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Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Despite concerns about teacher shortages in certain school districts and subject areas, a recent study found that schools are not adjusting their salary scales strategically so they can better attract novice teachers.

Paul Bruno, a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found little evidence that schools frontload salary scales — boost the pay for entry-level and early career teachers — to aggressively compete with nearby school districts for qualified teachers.

In the study, published in the Labor Studies Journal, Bruno found that when teacher salaries in districts increased by 1%, adjacent districts increased their own pay scales by just .15% to .25%. And the ratios of increases were no bigger for novice teachers’ salaries than for more experienced educators.

“I don’t find much evidence that school districts are raising their salaries when neighboring districts are in order to compete strategically as they could or should, with all of the current concerns we have about teacher shortages,” Bruno said. “That’s particularly concerning if we want school districts to be thinking carefully about how to get the best teachers into the classrooms that need them.”

Salary schedules for teachers are often heavily “backloaded”— meaning that salary increases are deferred to relatively late in teachers’ careers — and it is unclear whether this promotes recruitment and retention, Bruno said.

“Some previous research suggested that it might be more advantageous if school districts increased the salaries for novice and early-career teachers to be more competitive with neighboring districts and that’s what motivated this analysis,” Bruno said.

In recent years, there has been growing concern about a nationwide shortage of teachers in the U.S. and that primary and secondary schools may be putting underqualified instructors in classrooms.

In a 2024 study, Bruno and first author Tuan D. Nguyen of the University of Missouri and Chanh B. Lam of Kansas State University examined data across all U.S. states and estimated that there are at least 39,700 unfilled teaching positions and at least 288,000 positions currently held by underqualified teachers.

Published online in the journal American Educational Research Association Open, the findings also were cited in the recently released 2025 Economic Report of the President, prepared by U.S. President Joseph Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. The findings were mentioned in an analysis of the challenges that primary and secondary schools are experiencing with teacher recruitment and retention in the labor market.

In the current study, Bruno explored whether the structures of teacher salary schedules are shaped by competition with adjacent school districts and whether they are influenced by teachers’ unions.

The study sample contained the salary and benefit schedules for 498 California school districts’ collective bargaining units that were submitted to the California Department of Education. Bruno restricted the sample to those schools with complete information for every school year from 2009-2010 through 2018-2019, and he compared the pay at contiguous school districts for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and an additional 60 units of educational credits.

He included several control variables for school characteristics that might influence teacher compensation, such as school districts’ proportions of minority students and students eligible for free or reduced lunches, whether districts had a trend of declining enrollment and the number of service days for returning teachers.

On average, schools’ pay increases were very modest and most beneficial to mid-career teachers. For example, a 1% increase at Step 1 of the pay scale — i.e., the starting pay for entry-level teachers — was about $554, while the same proportion of increase amounted to $898 for experienced teachers at Step 30. By comparison, when a district’s neighbors increased their salaries by that much, that predicted a district would increase its own salaries for novice and experienced teachers by just $97 and $130, respectively. That did not indicate a strongly competitive response for attracting teachers, Bruno said.

Bruno explored whether the small spillover effects on salaries at adjacent school districts might be due to their serving differing grade levels and therefore not competing for the same pool of teachers. However, he said there was little evidence that was the case.

“My results suggest that even if schools are somewhat sensitive to neighboring districts’ teacher salaries, they do not respond in optimally strategic ways,” Bruno said. “Even where unions are increasing teacher salaries, they don’t seem to be increasing the pay for brand new teachers because the raises are disproportionately benefitting experienced teachers.”

Bruno said that the larger pay raises for veteran teachers were plausibly consistent with labor union involvement because these members tend to be more influential in their unions than their less experienced colleagues.

Therefore, it might be advantageous for unions to better engage early-career teachers so that their interests are similarly represented and salary levels are prioritized when contracts are negotiated at the bargaining table, he said.

Journal

Labor Studies Journal

DOI

10.1177/0160449X241301758

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Spatial explanations for deferred teacher compensation: Unions and competition for teachers

Sustainable reusable theatre caps made from plant-based material created for NHS Scotland

Heriot-Watt University

Theatre staff wearing the new sustainable theatre caps — image:
Around 800,000 single-use disposable theatre caps are consumed every year in Scottish hospitals. The new caps are made from cellulosic fibre which is derived from plant-based material. They offer a sustainable alternative to traditional disposable options.
At the end of their lifecycle, the new reusable theatre caps will be biodegradable, reducing the environmental impact of medical waste. Some existing single use theatre caps contain materials that can take up to 300 years to decompose entirely.
Beyond their eco-friendly credentials, the theatre caps serve multiple practical purposes. They aim to relieve anxiety among patients, through the use of fabric colours and patterns and help staff to more easily identify each other in busy clinical environments, which is beneficial for patient care. Current headwear doesn't differentiate between different roles in hospitals.
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Credit: Marsaili Mainz

The Golden Jubilee University National Hospital has become the first hospital to co-design friendly and reusable theatre caps made from sustainable plant-based material as part of a research project being led by the University of Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt University.

The project aims to reduce waste created by single-use disposable theatre cap products used by NHS Scotland while alleviating patient anxiety and improving the identification of theatre staff roles.

Around 800,000 single-use disposable theatre caps are consumed every year in Scottish hospitals. The new caps are made from cellulosic fibre which is derived from plant-based material. They offer a sustainable alternative to traditional disposable options.

At the end of their lifecycle, the new reusable theatre caps will be biodegradable, reducing the environmental impact of medical waste. Some existing single use theatre caps contain materials that can take up to 300 years to decompose entirely.

Beyond their eco-friendly credentials, the theatre caps serve multiple practical purposes. They aim to relieve anxiety among patients, through the use of fabric colours and patterns and help staff to more easily identify each other in busy clinical environments, which is beneficial for patient care. Current headwear doesn't differentiate between different roles in hospitals.

The theatre caps have been carefully designed with input from NHS Golden Jubilee theatre staff to ensure they meet practical needs while maintaining sustainability goals. Staff will now test and feedback on the innovative caps to assess their potential for wider adoption across NHS Scotland.

The theatre cap project is part of the broader Design HOPES project (Healthy Organisations in a Place-based Ecosystem, Scotland) which is led by Professor Paul Rodgers at the University of Strathclyde and Professor Mel Woods at the University of Dundee. Design HOPES was recently awarded more than £4.6M by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as one of four Green Transition Ecosystem (GTE) Hubs in the UK, which aim to address distinct challenges posed by the climate crisis including, but not limited to, realising net zero goals.

Dr Euan Winton, Assistant Professor of Design at Heriot-Watt University, commented on the urgent need for innovations like the new theatre caps: "NHS Scotland faces massive resource-driven issues, with millions of single-use disposable theatre caps going to incineration in Scotland annually. The new sustainable theatre caps represent a crucial step in addressing this significant wastage and demonstrating the power of design in tackling environmental challenges in healthcare.

“Our specialist School of Textiles and Design in the Scottish Borders is proud to be part of the Design HOPES GTE Hub tackling a broad range of global challenges, using our expertise to find new and innovative solutions to sustainability. Along with Professor Paul Rodgers of the University of Strathclyde, we are working closely with user groups to create new products that are fit for purpose. We’ve worked closely with theatre staff on the design of the new caps and feedback has shown they will have other benefits like reducing anxiety among patients.

Carole Anderson, Director of Transformation, Strategy, Planning and Performance at NHS Golden Jubilee, expressed enthusiasm for the project: "NHS Golden Jubilee is proud to be at the forefront of this sustainable innovation in healthcare. These new theatre caps align with our commitment to reducing our environmental impact and also enhance our ability to provide safe and high quality patient care. By improving staff identification and potentially easing patient anxiety, these caps offer multiple benefits beyond their eco-friendly design."

Professor Paul Rodgers from the University of Strathclyde's Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management, said: “Working closely with our NHS Scotland partners, we will continue to support them on their green transition journey, developing collaboratively design-led solutions that will create positive change. This project showcases the power of collaboration between universities, healthcare providers, and design researchers. By bringing together expertise from various fields, we've been able to create a solution that is both practical and sustainable. Moreover, this project has potential for creating new green jobs across Scotland that will have socio-economic as well as environmental impact.

“The success of this project opens the door for further design-led innovations in health and social care. As we continue to face the realities of climate change, it's crucial that we find creative ways to reduce our environmental footprint while maintaining and improving the quality of care. The new reusable theatre caps are a significant step in that direction."

Dr Lisa Macintyre, Associate Professor in Textile Technology at Heriot-Watt’s School of Textiles and Design added: "The caps have been carefully developed at our facilities to establish the most sustainable and comfortable materials and most efficient printing methods. We will be ensuring they meet the high standards required for medical use while maintaining their eco-friendly properties."

Design HOPES forms part of the wider Future Observatory programme, which fosters collaboration, research, and innovation within the design field. Funded by AHRC in partnership with Future Observatory at the Design Museum, the £25m multimodal investment aims to bring design researchers, universities, and businesses together to catalyse the transition to net zero and a green economy.

Design HOPES will present a new work-in-progress display, running at the V&A Dundee from 6 December 2024 to 17 February 2025. This display marks an exciting milestone in the first year of Design HOPES, giving an insight on the people, processes and progress of this transformational initiative, and asks ‘How can design help us live healthier lives, for people and planet?’

Ends

For more information, please contact Annie Pugh, 07939 153 649 a.pugh@hw.ac.uk

Image: Staff from The Golden Jubilee University National Hospital wearing the new co-designed sustainable theatre caps. Credit: Marsaili Mainz

Notes to editors

Heriot-Watt University is a global research-led university based in the UK, with five campuses in Edinburgh, the Scottish Borders, Orkney, Dubai and Malaysia. Around 27,000 students from 154 countries are currently studying with us. We have 166,000 alumni in more than 190 countries.

We are specialists in business, engineering, design and the physical, social, sports, environmental and life sciences subjects which make a real impact on the world and society.

Heriot-Watt was founded in Edinburgh in 1821 as the world’s first mechanics institute. In 1966, it became a university by Royal Charter. The university is named after 18th century Scottish engineer and inventor James Watt and 16th century Scottish philanthropist and goldsmith George Heriot.

86.8% of Heriot-Watt's research is classed as world-leading and internationally excellent in the Research Excellence Framework 2021 – the UK’s system for assessing the excellence of research in UK higher education providers. The university runs 113 undergraduate programmes and 170 postgraduate programmes across six academic schools and Edinburgh Business School.

Our six academic schools are:

Edinburgh Business School is one of the world's largest providers of postgraduate business education, with 49,000 alumni across 158 countries.

Website: https://www.hw.ac.uk/

Nine in ten Afghans struggle with diminished quality of life

PLOS

A survey of more than 800 people living in Afghanistan carried out since the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, shows high rates of stress, food insecurity, and limited healthcare access.
A new paper published this week in PLOS Mental Health by Jessi Hanson-DeFusco of Lawrence Technical University, USA, and colleagues has found that approximately nine in ten Afghans included in the study currently face diminished quality of life correlates related to higher psychosocial stress. They also report that nearly three-quarters face food insecurity, and more than 7 in 10 have poor access to healthcare.
After the August 2021 withdrawal of U.S. military forces, the Taliban reestablished control over Afghanistan, leading to international sanctions, growing issues of economic hardship, and changes to daily life.
As part of their study, researchers collected digital survey data in 2023 from 873 respondents, aged 18 through 65, living in Afghanistan. 94.2% were men, and more than half were aged 18-29. The survey included multiple choice questions related to psychosocial stress, demographics and quality of life, as well as additional open-ended questions where participants could elaborate.
Overall, 88.38% of participants reported suffering some level of food insecurity; 88.78% had limited or no healthcare access; 83.59% had infrequent contact with family and friends; 84.82% experienced threats of violence, and 71.97% lost at least one or more family members (killed or displaced) since the American withdrawal. In addition, reported psychosocial stress levels were moderately high, with anxiety, poor sleep, and anger being the most prominent stressors. Comments from participants highlighted a lack of humanitarian aid access, lack of freedom of speech and women’s rights, struggles with malnutrition and high rates of job loss and unemployment.
“The bleak conditions in the country have worsened in such a way that nearly everyone irrespective of their background appears to be negatively affected,” the authors say. “This research validates many of the concerns of the humanitarian crisis on the ground, as well as provides insight into how political shifts have resulted in socio-economic hardships affecting Afghans who remained in country after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal.”
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Mental Health: https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000118
Citation: Hanson-DeFusco J, Sobolov A, Stanekzai S, McMaster A, Popalzai H, Shah H, et al. (2025) The association of diminished quality of life of Afghan adults’ psychosocial wellbeing, in the era of the Taliban 2.0 government. PLOS Ment Health 2(1): e0000118. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmen.0000118
Author Countries: Afghanistan, United States
Funding: NK and HS received the 2023 Hobson Wildenthal Honors College Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP) grant to serve as co-researchers on this project, from the University of Texas at Dallas (https://honors.utdallas.edu/research/undergraduate-research-apprenticeship-program/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No other authors received specific funding for this work.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.