Feeling safe, being heard and staying connected are important to children receiving end-of-life care

University of Eastern Finland

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A systematic review conducted by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland brings together studies from mainland China and Taiwan. The review highlights the importance of emotional security, family relationships and culturally sensitive support for children receiving end-of-life care.

The needs of children approaching the end of life extend beyond pain relief and the management of physical symptoms. Children may worry about losing loved ones, wish to stay in touch with friends and seek reassurance that they will be remembered.

The systematic review, published in Palliative Medicine, analysed 16 studies conducted in mainland China and Taiwan and published between 2000 and 2025. The researchers examined the psychosocial and spiritual needs of children and their families, as well as how these needs were identified and addressed.

The findings highlight children’s need for emotional security, meaningful relationships, connection with others and opportunities to express their feelings and thoughts. Children’s spiritual concerns do not necessarily take a religious form. They may emerge through stories and imagination, or through questions about the meaning of life.

Family relationships play an important role in how children’s needs are addressed. Parents sometimes try to protect their child by avoiding conversations about death. Although well-intentioned, this may also limit children’s opportunities to express their fears, wishes and preferences.

The review also identified gaps in the support provided by professionals. Psychosocial and spiritual support was sometimes fragmented, while culturally informed guidance on communication and support for coping with grief were not consistently available.

“A child approaching the end of life needs more than physical care. Children should have opportunities to express their feelings, maintain their relationships and have their voices heard. Addressing these needs requires close collaboration between healthcare professionals, children and their families,” says Doctoral Researcher Xiao Liu of the University of Eastern Finland.

The researchers emphasise that the findings do not necessarily suggest that children’s needs in mainland China and Taiwan differ from those elsewhere. Rather, cultural expectations, family relationships and healthcare structures shape how needs are expressed and addressed.

The findings support integrating psychosocial support into paediatric end-of-life care. As members of multidisciplinary teams, social workers can support communication between children and their families, help identify psychosocial needs and connect families with appropriate services. Coordination between health and social care professionals and providers of psychosocial support should also be strengthened.

Relatively few of the studies included in the review explored children’s experiences directly through their own accounts. Children’s and families’ needs were more often described from the perspectives of parents and professionals.

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Journal

Palliative Medicine

DOI

10.1177/02692163261498541

Article Title

Psychosocial and spiritual needs of children at the end of life and their families in Chinese societies: A systematic review

Article Publication Date

6-Nov-2026

 

Wildfire smoke during pregnancy linked to asthma in young children

New research finds the later months of pregnancy may be an especially sensitive time

American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology

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ACAAI 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting

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Credit: American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology

PHOENIX, Ariz. (Nov. 12, 2026) – Babies whose mothers breathed in wildfire smoke and other air pollution during the middle and later months of pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma as young children. That’s according to a new study being presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting.

Devastating large wildfires burned across Northern California from 2017 to 2020, spreading smoke over areas where millions of people live. Pregnant women and young children are among those most at risk from any smoke exposure, including wildfire. A baby’s lungs are still growing in the womb, so researchers wanted to know whether wildfire smoke during pregnancy could affect a child’s breathing and lung health in later years.

“A baby’s lung development begins before birth, and our study suggests that certain stages of pregnancy maybe be especially vulnerable to the effects of wildfire smoke,” said Anh Nguyen, MD, lead author of the study and ACAAI member. “As wildfires become more frequent and affect larger population, knowing when the exposure poses the greatest risk can help families, healthcare providers, and public health officials to take steps to protect both mothers and babies.”

The researchers studied 1,097 children who were born full-term in Northern California. 108 children were born from mothers who were pregnant during the 2017 – 2020 Northern California wildfires and were recruited from B-SAFE (Bio-Specimen Assessment of Fire Effects) study. 989 children who were born at UC Davis Medical center between 2017-2019 and from areas affected by the recent Northern California wildfires were also included through chart review.

The researchers estimated how much polluted air each mother breathed every day during pregnancy and after the baby was born. They looked at two things:

• Fine particulate matter (PM2.5): Tiny bits of pollution in the air, many times smaller than the width of a human hair. They can come from smoke, cars, and factories, and they can travel deep into the lungs.
• Wildfire pollution: Pollution that came from the wildfire smoke itself.

The researchers accounted for other things that can affect asthma development, such as the child’s age and sex, how far along the pregnancy was at birth, family history of asthma and whether the mother was around cigarette smoke while pregnant. Then they found:

• More fine-particle pollution during the second trimester (months 4 to 6 of pregnancy) was linked to asthma in early childhood.
• More wildfire pollution during the third trimester (months 7 to 9) and around the time of birth was also linked to asthma in early childhood.

The study shows a link between wildfire smoke and asthma. It does not prove that smoke causes asthma. Still, knowing which months of pregnancy may matter most could help doctors offer pregnant women clearer advice during wildfire season. It could also help health leaders plan ways to protect pregnant women when the air is affected by smoke.

“Pregnant women can’t control when a wildfire happens, but there are things they can do on smoky days,” said Dr. Nguyen. “Staying indoors, keeping windows closed, and using an air purifier can help lower how much smoke they breathe in.”

Abstract Title: Effect of Prenatal Wildfire Exposure on Asthma Development

Presenter: Anh Nguyen, MD

If your child’s asthma is not well controlled, talk with a board-certified allergist about treatment options. To find an allergist near you, visit AllergyandAsthmaRelief.org. The ACAAI Annual Scientific Meeting is Nov. 12-16. For more news and research from the ACAAI Scientific Meeting, go to our newsroom and follow the conversation on X/Twitter #ACAAI26.

About ACAAI

The American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI) is a professional medical organization of more than 6,500 allergists-immunologists and allied health professionals, headquartered in Arlington Heights, Ill. Founded in 1942, the College fosters a culture of collaboration and congeniality in which its members work together and with others toward the common goals of patient care, education, advocacy, and research. ACAAI allergists are board-certified physicians trained to diagnose allergies and asthma, administer immunotherapy, and provide patients with the best treatment outcomes. For more information and to find relief, visit AllergyandAsthmaRelief.org. Join us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X.

EFFECT OF PRENATAL WILDFIRE EXPOSURE ON ASTHMA DEVELOPMENT

R141
A. Nguyen*, A. Goodrich, Y. Ren, K. Kim, R. Schmidt, Sacramento, CA.

Introduction: In the past few years, multiple wildfires caused devastating destruction in Northern California, affecting millions, especially pregnant women and children who are particularly vulnerable. Our study aims to investigate the impact of wildfire smoke on developing fetal lung. 

Methods: Analyses included 1097 full term (≥ 37 gestation weeks) children. 108 children were born from mothers who were pregnant during the 2017 – 2020 Northern California wildfires and were recruited from B-SAFE (Bio-Specimen Assessment of Fire Effects) study. 989 children who were born at UC Davis Medical center between 2017-2019 and from areas affected by the recent Northern California wildfires were also included through chart review. Daily air pollution exposures were estimated using a hybrid modeling approach that captured estimate PM2.5 exposure for each subject. A Cox proportional hazards model combined with distributed lag nonlinear model was used to evaluate the associations of asthma and wheezing with PM2.5 exposure and wildfire (WF)-specific pollutant during pregnancy and infancy.

Results: Distributed lag models adjusting for child age, sex, gestational age, and secondhand smoking during pregnancy showed that increased PM2.5 exposure levels during second trimester and increased WF-specific pollutant during third trimester and at birth were significantly associated with early childhood asthma development.

Conclusion: Prenatal exposures to PM2.5 and WF-specific pollutants, especially during second and third trimester, were associated with later development of asthma. In identifying sensitive window of gestation exposure to wildfire smoke, this can help shape preventive strategies that mitigate maternal exposure and ultimately protect children’s health. 

 

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Journal

Annals of Allergy Asthma & Immunology

Method of Research

Content analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

EFFECT OF PRENATAL WILDFIRE EXPOSURE ON ASTHMA DEVELOPMENT

Article Publication Date

12-Nov-2026

 

Wildfire in a wood stove: on the trail of the nitrogen oxide mystery

Paul Scherrer Institute

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Markus Ammann and Fengxia Bao have elucidated how brown carbon produced by wildfires accelerates the conversion of nitrate to nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere. 

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Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Markus Fischer

In laboratory experiments, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have discovered how brown carbon from wildfires promotes the formation of harmful nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere. This could improve prediction of the effects wildfires have on air quality and climate. The results have now been published in the journal Science Advances.

Wildfires bring to mind a blazing sea of flames. But what happens to the smoke? Anyone observing a wildfire from a safe distance notices mainly the enormous clouds that tower above the fire. These rise several kilometres and then embark on journeys that can extend across continents and oceans. Pollutants from wildfires in Canada can still be detected, for example, at the Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps.

These pollutants – which include particulate matter, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen oxides – have diverse and well-documented effects on air quality and climate. Among other things, they lead to respiratory illnesses and accelerate climate change through the greenhouse effect. Now researchers led by Markus Ammann at the PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences have investigated the formation of these pollutants in more detail, and they found an explanation for why elevated nitrogen oxide concentrations are still present even at great distances from wildfires.

The path of nitrogen oxides

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) – compounds consisting of one nitrogen atom and one or two oxygen atoms – are produced during combustion processes. Wildfires and lightning are natural sources. However, due to the burning of fossil fuels, current nitrogen oxide levels in urban areas are many times higher than in pre-industrial times.

In the lower atmosphere, nitrogen oxides are responsible for the formation of ozone, a greenhouse gas and irritant. Furthermore, nitrogen oxides oxidise to nitric acid (HNO3) in the atmosphere. This dissolves as nitrate in tiny aerosol particles, which act as nuclei for cloud droplets. Rain carries the nitrate back to earth, where it is deposited in the soil.

This continuous conversion of nitrogen oxides to nitrate should ultimately result in a much lower amount of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere than is actually present.

There is also a known reverse pathway in the atmosphere: triggered by sunlight, nitrate can be converted back into nitrogen oxide. This process is called photolysis. “However, this process is far too slow to account for the observed amounts of nitrogen oxide,” Ammann says.

One hypothesis in aerosol chemistry was, therefore, that in addition to this known, slow photolysis, there must be another, faster photolysis process – and that other substances released during wildfires could play a role in this.

Simulated wildfire in a wood-burning stove

Wildfires differ from other sources of nitrogen oxide in that they also produce a large amount of particulate matter from organic compounds, including some soot. The cause of this is incomplete combustion of wood and other biomass. This organic particulate matter is responsible for the greyish-white colour of the smoke. Some of the organic compounds absorb light in the visible spectrum. These are collectively referred to as brown carbon.

To investigate the influence of brown carbon on photolysis, researchers at PSI conducted a laboratory experiment: in a wood-burning stove, they first simulated a wildfire by reducing the air supply to produce more smoke – and thus more brown carbon. This was collected using filters, then dissolved in water, and finally placed in a temperature-stabilised glass tube.

The researchers then exposed nitrate to the light of various UV lamps that simulated sunlight under different conditions – once without the added brown carbon and once with it. In each case, they measured the concentration of nitrogen oxides produced.

Nitrogen oxides were always produced with light containing a particularly high-energy ultraviolet component, that is, hard UV light. The photolysis of nitrate under hard UV light is known. However, the amount of nitrogen oxide was significantly higher in the samples that also contained brown carbon.

“When we then used lamps without a hard UV component, we could only detect nitrogen oxides in the presence of brown carbon,” says Fengxia Bao, a researcher in Markus Ammann’s group and first author of the study.

Since direct photolysis with the remaining soft UV light is not possible, the researchers concluded that the path to nitrogen oxide in this case is indirect: the organic substances in the brown carbon absorb the soft UV light. This causes them to enter an excited state and donate an electron to the nitrate. That’s how the nitrate is converted into nitrogen oxide. In this way, nitrogen oxide production is accelerated tenfold compared to the known process with hard UV light.

A powerful effect

“This is a clear, powerful result,” Ammann says. “We were able to demonstrate experimentally what up to now had only been vaguely suspected. Our study will enable better predictions about the effects of wildfires on air quality and climate.”

Further research will be needed to clarify additional pathways for the formation of nitrogen oxides, Ammann continues: “Our result can explain a larger proportion of the nitrogen oxides present in the atmosphere – but not yet all of them.”

In the future, he would like to make his research, which was funded by the ETH Board’s ReCLEAN project, even more realistic. For example, the simulation chamber at PSI could use all of the burned material, not just the components filtered out and dissolved in water.

Text: Oliver Morsch

 

About PSI

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI is the largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. It is the central location of Switzerland’s large research facilities, available to both the scientific community and industry. Its research spans future technologies, energy and climate, health innovation and fundamentals of nature. The annual budget is CHF 450 million. PSI employs 2300 people; around a quarter of these are postdoctoral researchers, PhD students or apprentices. PSI is part of the ETH Domain, which also includes ETH Zurich and ETH Lausanne, as well as the other federal research institutes Empa, Eawag and WSL. 

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeg9077

Article Title

Brown carbon in biomass burning aerosol enhances HONO production

Article Publication Date

11-Nov-2026

The wood stove at PSI that the researchers use to simulate a wildfire. 

Credit

Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Markus Fischer

 

Ebola resource equips healthcare workers, policymakers and researchers with evidence-based interventions

Curated collection provides free access to the latest medical and social science research

Taylor & Francis Group

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Leading knowledge publisher Taylor & Francis has announced a new collection of key books and journal articles, supporting the global response to the current Ebola outbreak. Curated by expert editors, the featured content is free for everyone to access, making trusted research available to all frontline workers, researchers and policymakers.

Drawing on the breadth of the Taylor & Francis publishing program across disciplines, the collection features not only critical medical and health research but also humanities and social science contributions, essential for addressing the societal, ethical, and policy impacts of the disease.

Across seven sections, the resource brings together articles and book chapters covering transmission and diagnosis; vaccine strategy; treatment; health communication; and international relations. Context for the latest outbreak is provided by resources examining the origins and history of the disease.

Leon Heward-Mills, Managing Director Academic and Chief Content Officer at Taylor & Francis, said: “Publishers play a key role in putting the latest peer-reviewed research into the hands of those who can apply it on the ground and that’s especially critical during health crises. The new Ebola resource features some of the most important contributions from experts across diverse disciplines, offering valuable knowledge to those tackling this devastating disease.”

The Ebola resource is available on the Taylor & Francis website.

 

Brain-inspired memristors open new pathways to energy-efficient artificial intelligence

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Journal Center

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• Task-oriented perspective on neuromorphic memristors for artificial intelligence computing.
• From material systems and device structures to applications, flexibility, and system integration.
• A critical roadmap toward scalable, manufacturable, and practical neuromorphic hardware.

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Credit: Jianhui Wang, Qingxin Chen, Jinhao Zhang, Jialin Meng*, Tianyu Wang*.

As artificial intelligence continues to advance, conventional computing architectures face growing challenges in energy consumption, data-transfer latency, and hardware scalability. The separation of memory and processing units in traditional von Neumann systems creates a significant bottleneck, particularly for data-intensive AI applications. Neuromorphic computing, inspired by the parallel and energy-efficient information processing of the human brain, offers a promising alternative. In a comprehensive review, researchers from Shandong University, Fudan University, and collaborating institutions examine the development of neuromorphic memristors, highlighting how materials, device architectures, and system integration can be tailored to meet the demands of next-generation artificial intelligence.

Why Neuromorphic Memristors Matter

Biological neurons and synapses process information through electrical signals and dynamically adjustable connections. Neuromorphic memristors mimic these functions by regulating and retaining electrical conductance states, enabling artificial synaptic plasticity and neuron-like behavior. Their compact structures, nonvolatile memory characteristics, and potential for dense integration make them attractive for in-memory computing, where data storage and processing can occur within the same hardware. By reducing data movement between separate memory and processing units, these devices offer opportunities to improve computational efficiency and reduce power consumption.

Innovative Design and Mechanism

The review systematically examines representative memristor platforms, including oxide-based materials, ferroelectric systems, polymers, and two-dimensional materials. It also explores different device architectures and switching mechanisms, such as conductive filament formation, ionic migration, polarization modulation, phase transitions, and charge storage. Importantly, the authors emphasize that device optimization should be guided by the intended computational task rather than conventional switching performance alone. Different platforms offer distinct advantages: ferroelectric oxides provide opportunities for CMOS-compatible integration, polymer systems support flexible electronics, and layered materials enable ion-controlled neuromorphic functions. Reconfigurable devices capable of switching between volatile and nonvolatile operating modes further expand the range of possible computing applications.

Outstanding Performance

Recent demonstrations highlighted in the review illustrate the practical potential of these technologies. A multifunctional memristive synapse achieves approximately two orders of magnitude lower energy consumption than a GPU-based computing solution. Memristor arrays have also enabled epilepsy-related neural signal analysis with 93.46% accuracy and nearly 400-fold higher power efficiency than state-of-the-art CMOS systems. Other examples include artificial neurons operating at voltages as low as 80 mV, flexible three-dimensional memristor arrays, and wearable textile networks capable of combining sensing and neuromorphic processing. Together, these advances demonstrate the potential of memristors for efficient, adaptive, and mechanically flexible intelligent hardware.

Applications and Future Outlook

The review connects neuromorphic memristor technologies with a broad range of AI applications, including medical signal recognition, image reconstruction, artificial vision, intelligent sensing, and gesture-based human–machine interaction. Nevertheless, challenges remain in manufacturing reproducibility, device variability, standardized performance evaluation, scalable fabrication, and system-level integration. The authors highlight the need to coordinate materials engineering, CMOS-compatible architectures, peripheral circuits, and software–hardware co-design. Ultimately, integrating sensing, memory, computing, and interaction into compact hardware platforms could bring energy-efficient neuromorphic intelligence closer to practical applications in wearable electronics, edge AI, and intelligent human–machine interfaces.

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Journal

Nano-Micro Letters

DOI

10.1007/s40820-026-02322-5

Method of Research

News article

Article Title

Analysis and Applications of Neuromorphic Memristors in Artificial Intelligence Computing