Managing stress could be the key to helping highly impulsive people act rashly when bored

Sometimes we all just need to mentally switch off and do nothing, but some people find the experience more stressful than relaxing according to new research from the University of Portsmouth in England.

University of Portsmouth

Research at the University of Portsmouth has explored the relationship between high impulsivity and boredom, in an effort to find out what drives rash and sometimes unhealthy decisions.

Impulsivity is the tendency to act quickly, and without thinking things through. It is linked to several psychiatric disorders, including ADHD, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Substance Use Disorders.

While it is well-known there is a strong link between boredom and impulsiveness, two new studies have shed light on the role stress plays in this relationship. 

The results, published in Physiology & Behavior, found participants with high trait impulsivity reported greater levels of boredom following a dull task. While this finding was expected, the new discovery was that these individuals experienced a greater physiological reaction by releasing more of the stress hormone cortisol.

Dr James Clay, lead author and researcher at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and Dalhousie University said: "Our findings shed light on the biological underpinnings of why some individuals, particularly those with high impulsivity, find boredom more stressful than others. By identifying how their stress response is triggered, and that cortisol is a key mediator, we can begin to better understand why this happens and to explore targeted interventions that help manage these reactions. 

“This opens up new avenues for developing personalised approaches to reduce stress and improve mental health, especially for those who struggle with impulse control and the negative consequences of boredom.”

Boredom is a form of psychological stress for most people, because it is a state of restless dissatisfaction and often leads an individual to seek out stimulation.  However, more impulsive people’s inherent response to stressful events could be the reason why they are more triggered by boring situations.

Senior author, Dr Matt Parker is a neuroscientist specialising in the study of stress, who now works at the University of Surrey. He said: “We know highly impulsive people are more likely to develop addictions over a lifespan. There has always been a connection between impulsiveness and boredom, but the mechanisms behind this relationship aren’t fully understood.

“For instance, early theories suggested people with ADHD struggle with boredom because they don’t like to wait, and because of this they tend to act rashly. But what makes them impatient, and how can we mitigate this feeling so that they are more comfortable with being bored?

“That’s where stress comes in. Our research supports the hypothesis that high-impulsive people experience greater physiological responses to boredom. If we can find ways to mitigate these stress symptoms it might prevent them from seeking unhealthy stress reliefs, like drugs or gambling.”

In the first study, 80 participants completed a boring task and reported on how it made them feel. The results supported existing evidence that impulsive individuals are more prone to boredom than others.

The second monitored 20 people’s physiological response to boredom, by testing samples of their saliva for cortisol, both pre and post-task. It found the system that manages the body's stress response - known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis - increased the levels of the stress hormone in the body during the task.

“Knowing that the stress response links boredom with impulsivity brings us a step closer to developing potential solutions to break the cycle”, explained co-author Juan Badariotti from the University of Portsmouth’s School of Psychology, Sport and Health Sciences. 

“We hope this discovery will inspire future research into potential interventions at breaking this feedback loop of boredom, stress, and impulsiveness, and eventually develop more effective coping mechanisms for psychiatric disorders.”

The paper’s authors recommend future research should replicate the second study with a larger sample of participants, and measure how prone they are to boredom as well as impulsiveness.

ENDS

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Journal

Physiology & Behavior

DOI

10.1016/j.physbeh.2024.114637 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

HPA activity mediates the link between trait impulsivity and boredom

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2024

 

Small accounts, big decisions: How multiple savings impact retirement payout choices

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

New study shows that retirees are more likely to cash out smaller retirement accounts instead of turning them into steady income streams, even though they might do the opposite with larger accounts. This choice can hurt their long-term financial security, leaving them with less stable income in retirement. For financial companies, this behavior has implications in their ability to manage assets liabilities risks (ALM).

A new study by Dr. Abigail Hurwitz and Prof. Orly Sade from Hebrew University, forthcoming in Management Science, sheds light on how retirees manage their savings across multiple accounts and its impact on their payout decisions at retirement. Titled Is One Plus One Always Two? Insuring Longevity Risk While Having Multiple Savings Accounts, the research explores how individuals with more than one retirement savings account choose between annuitization—insuring themselves against longevity risk—and cashing out their savings in a lump sum.

Drawing on proprietary data from a leading Israeli insurance company, accompanied by a laboratory experiment and an online experimental survey, the study highlights a critical trend: smaller accounts are much more likely to be cashed out than larger ones. The researchers use occupation as a proxy for wealth and find that individuals with higher expected wages are more likely to annuitize their savings but less likely to annuitize smaller accounts. This behavior, according to Hurwitz and Sade, is not merely about income but also the diversification of savings across multiple accounts.

“We discovered that the composition of multiple accounts influences annuitization decisions, especially for smaller versus larger accounts,” said Dr. Abigail Hurwitz. “This can have significant implications for retirees, particularly regarding their long-term financial security.”

The study uses both administrative data and a series of experiments to analyze this phenomenon. An online survey and a laboratory experiment revealed that retirees are less likely to annuitize small accounts due to mental accounting, a concept that leads individuals to treat money differently depending on how it is categorized or allocated. A supplementary survey conducted with financial experts indicated that these professionals were less influenced by the distribution of funds across accounts and were more inclined to consider the entire portfolio.

The study's findings are far-reaching, particularly for financial institutions managing pension funds. “Our results suggest that financial institutions should consider the size distribution of accounts when forecasting annuitization behavior and longevity risk,” said co-author Prof. Orly Sade. “It is vital for asset and liability management strategies, especially as these decisions directly impact the future reserves required for annuity providers.”

This research provides crucial insights into how retirees manage their savings and make annuitization decisions, highlighting significant implications for both financial institutions and policymakers.

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Journal

Management Science

DOI

10.1287/mnsc.2022.02489 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Is One Plus One Always Two? Insuring Longevity Risk While Having Multiple Savings Accounts

 

Gender equity paradox: sex differences in reading and science as academic strengths are largest in gender-equal countries

University of Turku

A new study reveals that sex differences in academic strengths are found throughout the world and girls’ relative advantage in reading and boys’ in science is largest in gender-equal countries. 

Gender equality often draws attention especially in fields where women are underrepresented, such as high-status, high-paying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers. Academic strengths, or a student’s best subject, strongly influence their field of study. Students with strengths in mathematics or science gravitate toward STEM fields, while those with a strength in reading gravitate toward other fields (e.g., journalism). 

The research team analysed data from nearly 2.5 million adolescents in 85 countries over 12 years or in five waves (2006-2018) from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Their findings confirmed that girls’ strength is typically reading, while boys’ is typically mathematics or science. These patterns are found both across countries and time. 

Most notably, sex differences in reading and science as academic strengths are more pronounced in countries with greater gender equality, such as Finland. Sex differences in mathematics, on the other hand, remained stable regardless of country-level gender equality.

"These results suggest that in more gender-equal societies, women may be choosing fields other than STEM based on their strength in reading. Increasing the share of women in STEM will require more than just boosting girls' math and science skills or advancing gender equality," says Doctoral Researcher Marco Balducci from the INVEST Research Flagship at the University of Turku, Finland.

The finding that sex differences in academic strength in reading and science are larger in gender-equal Scandinavian countries than in more traditional Middle Eastern countries –known as the Gender Equality Paradox – challenges the popular belief that sex differences are mainly driven by socialisation pressure. 

"The common assumption is that as gender equality improves, traditional gender roles should fade, leading to smaller sex differences. But that is not what we found. Instead, our results align with recent research showing that sex differences either stay the same or even increase with more gender equality," says Balducci.

Professor David Geary from the University of Missouri notes that “Gender-equal, wealthy, and liberal countries offer more opportunities and allow greater freedom of choice. In these contexts, men and women make different decisions, leading to larger sex differences in various areas of life, including STEM fields.”

The research team encourages policymakers to prioritise mentorship opportunities for talented girls, as these may increase their likelihood of enrolling in a STEM degree programme. However,  Balducci adds that “our study highlights that achieving parity between boys and girls could be challenging as broader factors, like sex differences in academic strengths, play a key role in determining sex disparities in STEM."

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Journal

Psychological Science

DOI

10.1177/09567976241271330 

Article Title

The Gender-Equality Paradox in Intraindividual Academic Strengths: A Cross-Temporal Analysis

 

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of the grape family

A new ancestor of the grape family

University of Barcelona

 

image: 

Nekemias mucronata fossil lateral leaflets from the collection of the Natural Science Museum of Barcelona.

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Credit: Natural Science Museum of Barcelona

Until now, it was believed that plants of the grape family arrived at the European continent less than 23 million years ago. A study on fossil plants draws a new scenario on the dispersal of the ancestors of grape plants and reveals that these species were already on the territory of Europe some 41 million years ago. The paper describes a new fossil species of the same family, Nekemias mucronata, which allows us to better understand the evolutionary history of this plant group, which inhabited Europe between 40 and 23 million years ago.

This study, published in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE), is led by researcher Aixa Tosal, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona. The article is also signed by Alba Vicente, from the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) and the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP), and Thomas Denk, from the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Stockholm).

A new ancestor of the grape family

The grape family (Vitaceae) is made up of some 950 species, and is divided into five tribes (in botany, this is an intermediate taxonomic classification between the family and the genus). One of these tribes is the Viteae, made up of 200 species, including the grape vine plant (Vitis vinifera), which is of great global economic interest. The new paper published in the JSE focuses on studying the tribe Ampelopsideae, made up of 47 species.

“Our study changes the paradigms accepted until now and shows that the Ampelopsis and Nekemias lineages of the Ampelopsideae tribe were already present in Europe and Central Asia during the middle Eocene (between 47 and 37 million years ago). This indicates that this dispersal was approximately 20 million years earlier than previously estimated”, says Aixa Tosal, first author of the study and member of the UB’s Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics.

“In particular, we show that a lineage now restricted to North America already existed in Europe and Central Asia, thanks to the discovery of the fossil species Nekemias mucronata, which is very similar to the present-day North American Nekemias arborea. Nekemias mucronata cohabited with Ampelopsis hibschii, the closest relative of today’s Ampelopsis orientalis”, explains Tosal. In contrast, the latter has had a different dispersal from N. mucronata, as this lineage is now endemic to the eastern Mediterranean. “This study helps us to better understand the evolution of the Ampelopsideae tribe during the second dispersal pulse, especially in Europe and Central Asia, which took place during the Palaeogene”, says Tosal.

Nekemias mucronata lived from the late Eocene to the late Oligocene (37-23 million years ago). It seems that it was able to grow in a broad range of climates, from regions with low winter temperatures (-4.6 °C in cold periods) — such as those found in Kazakhstan during the Oligocene (33-23) million years ago — to regions with warm mean annual temperatures — such as those of the Oligocene in the Iberian Peninsula — or even in climates with intermediate temperatures such as those recorded in the centre of the European continent.

“N. mucronata was also not overly demanding in terms of rainfall. It could grow in areas with abundant rainfall and low rainfall seasonality; for example, in Central Europe during the Oligocene, or the Iberian Peninsula or Greece during the same time”, says ICP researcher Alba Vicente. “This fossil species had a compound leaf, a peculiarity shared with some species of the vine family. Although it is difficult to confirm the number of leaflets of the compound leaf, it would have consisted of at least three. We have been able to recognize common patterns between the apical and lateral leaflets, which allows us to distinguish them from other fossil species of the vine family in Eurasia”, he adds. “What makes Nekemias mucronata unique is the presence of a mucro at the tip of the leaflet teeth, which gives the species its name. The straight shape of the base of the apical leaflet is also quite distinctive, as all other Eurasian fossil species are buckled (with an invagination near the petiole)”, says Vicente.

Dispersal of Ampelopsideae across the Atlantic bridge or the Bering Strait

To date, the oldest record of the grape family has been found in the Upper Cretaceous deposits of India (75-65 Ma). The earliest record of the plant lineage in the Americas is from the Upper Eocene, around 39.4 million years ago, and at about the same time in Europe and Central Asia the Ampelopsis and Nekemias lineages are already found.

How did these species disperse in the past? These tribes diverged between the Upper Cretaceous and the Upper Eocene and, although there are still many unknowns, it seems that they dispersed and evolved quite rapidly. According to current data, which are consistent with the molecular clock technique, “the Ampelopsideae could have followed two cluster routes or a mixture of both. The first proposed route follows the North Atlantic isthmus. That is, the family appeared in India, then moved on to central Asia and Europe during the middle Eocene (between 47 and 37 million years ago), and finally moved on to the Americas via Greenland”, says Thomas Denk. “Another possible route suggests that, once the Vitaceae family appeared in India, the Ampelopsideae tribe dispersed eastward from Asia during the middle Eocene (47-37 million years ago) and quickly moved to the Americas via the Bering Strait, and from there to Europe along the North Atlantic isthmus”, Denk says.

Although the dispersal of these two species does not seem to be linked to climate, it is possible that the increase in aridity during the Oligocene in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Europe explains the extinction (27-23 million years ago) of the last population of N. mucronata found in the Iberian Peninsula. In parallel, Ampelopsis hibschii was restricted to the Balkan area and finally became extinct about 15 million years ago.

“However, there are still many unanswered questions about the early dispersal phases (from the Late Cretaceous to the Palaeogene). For this reason, we would like to continue studying this family, and perhaps we will be able to unravel what happened during their early cluster phases, which occurred between 66 and 41 million years ago”, the team concludes.

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Journal

Journal of Systematics and Evolution

DOI

10.1111/jse.13126. 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jse.13126

 

When the levee breaks

University of Pittsburgh

With flooding becoming more frequent and severe as a result of climate change, the stakes are rising. Recent estimates place global flood-related damage at over $50 billion annually, and experts predict an increase in damage to U.S. communities by the end of the century without new interventions.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt University received more than $729,307, with $317,811 coming to Pitt from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a three-year project to address one of the most critical threats to flood protection infrastructure: backward erosion piping (BEP). This phenomenon, a major cause of levee and dam failures, occurs when water seeps through and erodes sand beneath flood barriers, potentially leading to catastrophic failures.

Alessandro Fascetti, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and Roberta Luxbacher Faculty Fellow at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, and Caglar Oskay, professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt, are developing a novel computational, artificial intelligence-driven model designed to predict BEP and help mitigate risks. Their project aims to revolutionize how flood protection systems are designed, maintained and monitored.

“Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in the U.S., and BEP is one of the least understood threats to levees and dams,” Fascetti said. “By developing a model that simulates BEP progression, we can provide engineers with the tools to predict when and where failures might occur, enabling them to take preventative action.”

The research will use Dual Random Lattice Modeling (DRLM) to capture the complex, three-dimensional behavior of BEP as it evolves beneath levees and other protective structures. This model is capable of describing the unique characteristics of soil and hydraulic conditions, allowing for more accurate predictions of when and how BEP will lead to system failure. The model will also be validated through experiments and real-world data from past flood events.

The Researchers’ Three Key Objectives: 

• Understanding the relationship between water pressure, soil conditions, and BEP initiation
• Developing a novel computational framework for predicting BEP-related failures
• Quantifying the risk of levee failure over time due to BEP progression

The project also includes a public outreach and education component. The team will engage with K-12 students and the public through interactive demonstrations, including an Augmented Reality Sandbox that simulates flood scenarios and demonstrates the importance of infrastructure in flood protection.

“We want to not only advance scientific knowledge but also raise awareness about flood risks and encourage the next generation of engineers,” Fascetti said.

 

 

Online microaggressions linked to poor sleep quality for black women

North Carolina State University

A new study finds that microaggressions aimed at Black women online appear to harm the health of other Black women who see those microaggressions – even though the microaggressions are not aimed at them personally. Specifically, researchers found that encountering vicarious microaggressions was associated with worse sleep quality for young Black women.

“A lot of people falsely treat microaggressions as a kind of joke, but they are serious and have serious consequences,” says Vanessa Volpe, first author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University.

Microaggressions are often subtle instances of mistreatment or insulting behavior that usually revolve around negative stereotypes. But while microaggressions are often subtle, they also accrue over time.

“And because people – including Black women – often face a consistent stream of these microaggressions, there’s a tremendous amount of evidence showing that these microaggressions can have a serious impact on people’s health and well-being,” Volpe says.

“We launched this study to learn more about the extent to which Black women encounter microaggressions online and offline, as well as how these microaggressions may relate to sleep quality. We focused on sleep quality because it is a health outcome in itself – and is also well-established as a behavior that can be affected by stress.”

For this study, researchers recruited 478 Black women between the ages of 18 and 35 who live in the United States. Study participants completed a detailed survey designed to capture how often they experienced microaggressions related to their race and gender both via in-person interactions and online. For online microaggressions, the survey distinguished between microaggressions aimed at the study participant and vicarious microaggressions, in which the study participant observed microaggressions that weren’t aimed specifically at them. The survey also included a range of questions focused on understanding each study participant’s sleep quality.

Online microaggressions directed at the study participant were the least commonly reported, which researchers believe may be related to the ability of social media users to curate their online experience – choosing which accounts to follow, blocking accounts they don’t want to see, and so on.

“To be clear, the Black women in our study still experienced direct online microaggressions, they just experienced these microaggressions less frequently than other microaggressions,” Volpe says.

In-person microaggressions were the second-most common, with vicarious online microaggressions being by far the most commonly experienced.

In-person microaggressions were associated with lower sleep quality scores, but only the vicarious online microaggressions were uniquely associated with greater likelihood of clinically-relevant poor sleep quality.

“Study participants were asked how frequently they were exposed to vicarious online microaggressions, and they answered on a 0-5 scale,” Volpe explains. “We found that for each unit you go up on that 0-5 scale, the likelihood of clinically-relevant poor sleep quality goes up by 33%.

“The fact that vicarious online microaggressions can adversely impact Black women seems particularly relevant in this election year, with the first Black woman serving as the presidential nominee of a major political party.”

The findings have ramifications for both health practitioners and researchers.

“One takeaway message is that health professionals who are working with people experiencing sleep problems need to ask about stress experiences that may be specific to sex and race – including stress related to their online experiences,” Volpe says. “They should work with their patients to find stress management plans and solutions that take these unique experiences and their patients’ online engagement into consideration.

“What’s more, it’s a little surprising that vicarious microaggressions seem to have a bigger impact on sleep quality than in-person microaggressions that are aimed directly at you. That suggests that the research community needs to take a closer look at vicarious microaggressions.”

The paper, “Online and Offline Gendered Racial Microaggressions and Sleep Quality for Black Women,” is published the journal Health Psychology. The paper was co-authored by Abbey Collins, a Ph.D. student at NC State; Eric Zhou of Harvard Medical School; Donte Bernard, of the University of Missouri; and Naila Smith of the University of Virginia.

This work was done with support from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

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Journal

Health Psychology

DOI

10.1037/hea0001408 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Online and Offline Gendered Racial Microaggressions and Sleep Quality for Black Women

Article Publication Date

23-Sep-2024

Study reveals sources of opioid poisoning among children

Rutgers University

A dog's pain medication, a grandparent's pill organizer, even a discarded tissue: Rutgers Health research reveals they’re all potential sources of opioid poisoning for young children.

Researchers at the New Jersey Poison Control Center examined 230 cases of opioid exposure in children ages 1 month to 6 years over a five-year period. Their findings in the Journal of Pediatrics show how children access these dangerous drugs.

"We're seeing this in our clinical practice," said Diane Calello, the medical director of the poison control center and senior author of the study. "I've seen too many kids in my practice at University Hospital who have gotten severely poisoned because they got opioids in their house."

An overwhelming majority of exposures (97 percent) were unintentional. More than 91 percent occurred in the child's home, and 84.3 percent resulted in the child being admitted to a health care facility.

While many cases involved a child accessing a parent's medication, the study uncovered several unexpected sources of exposure. Grandparents' medications were implicated in 17.4 percent of cases, highlighting what the researchers described as an often-overlooked risk factor: exposure to older adults who may not be as vigilant as parents about securing their medications.

Another significant risk came from pet medications, which were involved in 4.3 percent of cases. Children sometimes accessed these opioids directly and sometimes accessed pet medication that had been mixed with food, such as peanut butter, and then left out.

Children ages 2 and under accounted for 80 percent of all exposures. Kids in this age group face particularly high risk because of their exploratory behavior and inability to distinguish between safe and dangerous substances.

The study drew data from reports to the New Jersey Poison Control Center between January 2018 and December 2022. Researchers manually extracted and analyzed information from the center's database, focusing on single opioid exposures in young children.

While prescription opioid pills were the most common source of danger, the study uncovered other scenarios. Children accessed used fentanyl patches, illicit drug paraphernalia and even opioid residue left on discarded items such as tissue paper and cotton balls.

The study highlights the importance of proper medication storage and disposal, Calello said.

"One opioid pill could actually kill a 2-year-old," she said. "And yet, a parent who may take that opioid pill every day may not realize that even though it's very familiar to them, it is deadly."

The study authors said there is a need for more comprehensive education about the dangers of opioids in the home. Calello suggested it should include grandparents and anyone who might bring medications into a home where children are present.

One potential solution is increasing access for parents and caregivers to naloxone, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses, Calello said.

"I've seen several cases of young children where I thought that if this mom or dad had naloxone with them, they could have given it, and this child may have had a better outcome," she said.

Looking forward, the study team is preparing to publish data on how children nationwide are exposed to opioids. Those figures show more pediatric exposures to illicit opioids and medications for treating opioid addiction.

Calello added that she hopes to study the effects of distributing naloxone more widely to parents.

"That would be a good next step," she said. "It could make a big difference."

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Journal

The Journal of Pediatrics

DOI

10.1016/j.jpeds.2024.114236 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Preventing Pediatric Opioid Poisoning: Unusual Sources and Scenarios

AMERIKA

Growing divide: Rural men are living shorter, less healthy lives than their urban counterparts

The urban-rural gap in life expectancy and health quality for men nearing retirement age has widened over two decades

University of Southern California

 

image: 

Source: Authors' analysis of data from the Health and Retirement Study and life-course projections using the Future Elderly Model.

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Credit: USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics

Rural men are dying earlier than their urban counterparts, and they’re spending fewer of their later years in good health, according to new research from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics.

Higher rates of smoking, obesity and cardiovascular conditions among rural men are helping fuel a rural-urban divide in illness, and this gap has grown over time, according to the study published this week in the Journal of Rural Health. The findings suggest that by the time rural men reach age 60, there are limited opportunities to fully address this disparity, and earlier interventions may be needed to prevent it from widening further.

The findings also point to a rising demand for care in rural areas, which will particularly challenge these communities. Rural areas are more likely than urban ones to have shortages of healthcare providers and are aging faster as younger residents move to cities, which further shrinks the supply of potential caregivers.

"Rural populations face a higher prevalence of chronic diseases, which has serious implications for healthy aging," said lead author Jack Chapel, a postdoctoral scholar at the Schaeffer Center. "With an aging population and fewer physicians available, the burden on rural communities is set to grow, leading to significant challenges in providing care for those who will face more health issues in the future."

Researchers used data from the Health and Retirement Survey and a microsimulation known as the Future Elderly Model to estimate future life expectancy for rural and urban Americans after age 60. They also assessed their likely quality of health in those years – a measure known as heath-quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE). They estimated health trajectories for a cohort of Americans who were 60 years old between 2014-2020 and compared it with a similarly aged cohort from 1994-2000.

They found 60-year-old rural men can now expect to live two years less than their urban counterparts – a gap that’s nearly tripled from two decades ago. Rural men can also expect to live 1.8 fewer years in quality health than urban men, with this disparity more than doubling over the same period. For women, the urban-rural gap in life expectancy and health quality is much smaller and grew more slowly over time.

Nearly a decade after a landmark study found that people with lower levels of education are more likely to die from so-called “deaths of despair” – such as drug overdose or suicide – this new study finds that while education was an important factor in determining health quality, it cannot fully explain the gap between urban and rural populations. After adjusting rural education levels to match those of urban areas, the gap in healthy life expectancy was cut nearly in half. However, disparities existed even within each educational group, suggesting important geographic factors beyond education contribute to differences in healthy life expectancy.

Researchers found that interventions to reduce smoking, manage obesity, and treat and control widespread heart disease would benefit older rural residents more than urban ones. However, most interventions researchers tested were not able to completely bridge the urban-rural divide in healthy life expectancy.

“While education matters, so does smoking, prevalent obesity, cardiovascular conditions – and simply living in a rural area – which leads not only to more deaths but more illness among rural American men,” said co-author Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and a senior scholar at the USC Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service.

“Closing the gap in healthy life expectancy between urban and rural areas for older adults would require encouraging health behavior changes earlier in life and making broader social and economic improvements in rural areas,” said co-author Bryan Tysinger, director of health policy simulation at the Schaeffer Center.

This work was supported by funding from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award P30AG024968.

About the USC Schaeffer Center

The USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics is a joint enterprise between the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The Schaeffer Center is one of two flagship programs at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service, formed in 2024 to develop evidence-based solutions to policy issues and educate future generations of public service leaders.

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Journal

The Journal of Rural Health

DOI

10.1111/jrh.12875 

Article Title

The urban–rural gap in older Americans’ healthy life expectancy

 

Research shows Asia — not Africa — played cradle to snake superfamily that includes cobras, mambas and many common pet species

University of Kansas

LAWRENCE — New research from the University of Kansas represents a scientific revision in the assumed origins of a group of snakes that include terrifying and highly venomous species as well as species widely popular as pets.

Based on the fossil record, it’s been assumed that elapoid snakes, found worldwide, had their origins in Africa. But the new KU study appearing in Royal Society Open Science — which depends on broad genetic sampling as well as fossils — points instead to Asian origins for these snakes. 

Further, the investigation pushes back the origins of the snakes by 10 million years, giving evidence of Elapoidea as far back as 35 million years ago.

Lead author Jeff Weinell performed the research as part of his doctoral dissertation at the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

“There was debate about the origins of these snakes,” he said. “There was an 'Out-of-Africa' theory for Elapoidea. This was largely due to the lack of a good phylogenetic estimate, meaning there wasn't a solid ‘tree of life’ for this group.”

Weinell and his co-authors changed that by conducting a broad analysis of snake biodiversity from around the world, with special attention on biogeography in the Philippines and the Asian region in general. He compared genetic data from museum specimens in KU’s world-renowned herpetology collection and other collections with the known fossil record.

“There were two main goals,” said Weinell, who today serves as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History. “One of them was to infer the tree of life for this group of snakes called Elapoidea, which is essentially about the evolutionary relationships among these different species in this group. We wanted to use this tree-of-life estimate, as well as information about where these different species occur geographically, to infer where the ancestor of this whole group originated and the timing of that. This was interesting to us because it tells us about how ecosystems change over time based on where different species occur.”

While the new findings on Elapoidea apply to a lot of snakes that people have as pets, they also could inform the natural history of its sister lineage Colubroidea, which includes many other common pet species like corn snakes, according to Weinell.

“People are curious about the origins of their pets,” he said. “The answer to that, in a way, is Asia for the whole group we analyzed. These are the snakes that people would recognize.”

Weinell’s co-authors were Frank Burbrink of the American Museum of Natural History, Sunandan Das of the University of Helsinki and Rafe Brown, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at KU and curator-in-charge of the herpetology division at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. Brown also served as Weinell’s dissertation adviser.

“This work includes analysis of the endemic, archipelago-wide Philippine family of snakes that Jeff discovered while at KU, the Asian region in general, and with a global impact in the form of repercussions involving the evolution of the scariest, and maybe the most medically important, snakes in the world — cobras, coral snakes, venomous sea snakes and their allies,” Brown said. “In this case, we rejected an old idea, the ‘Out-of-Africa’ hypothesis, for the origins of cobras and allies, which is not entirely surprising — but still, it’s a classic biogeographical scenario, relating to lots of the earth’s biodiversity, including, of course, diversity of modern humans.”

Much analysis depended on a broad genetic sampling of specimens collected around the world and stored at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum and similar institutional collections globally.

“It’s important to be able to infer the ancestral distributions, and for that, you need good sampling of the existing species,” Weinell said. “We collected samples from almost every genus of snake, especially within the Elapoidea and Colubroidea groups. It was a very comprehensive study, not just at a taxonomic scale but geographically as well. Samples were from museums globally, but heavily from KU. I’d say the majority of the sampling came from KU’s collection."

According to Weinell, his study also reveals evidence that the origins of Elapoidea are much older than assumed previously.

“The timing of events can often be challenging to estimate,” he said. “However, this group of snakes was pushed further back in time. Initially spreading out of Asia, they reached Africa around 30 million years ago, Australia around 25 million years ago and the Americas around 15 million years ago. Since then, they have become a global group of snakes, having dispersed from their origins in Asia.”

Weinell said the work highlighted the value of museum collections in pushing forward our grasp of evolution and relationships between species, as well as showed off the strength of KU’s herpetology collection and academic training.

"I’d definitely like to plug KU and the Biodiversity Institute,” he said. “Museums like that are essential, and their collections are extremely important. Rafe has also done a fantastic job mentoring students, especially on biogeography projects. Overall, it was a great experience. I had the opportunity to do fieldwork and collect some of these samples myself in the Philippines and Solomon Islands. The Philippine samples were crucial for naming a new species, and a new genus, and for recognizing a new family of snakes — all of which are known exclusively from that archipelago and country."

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DOI

10.1098/rsos.240064