Risk of crime rises when darkness falls

In U.K. study, the risk of certain types of crime, but not others, increased after dark

PLOS

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) boundaries in South Yorkshire.

view more 

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

A U.K. study of data on more than 30,000 crimes sheds new light on crime after dark, suggesting that the overall risk of crime rises when darkness falls, but that risk varies depending on type of crime and geographical area. Jim Uttley of the University of Sheffield, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on June 25, 2025.

Prior research has shown that darkness reduces people’s feelings of safety, and that improved street lighting can help people feel safer being out after dark. However, research on whether the risk of crime is actually higher after dark has produced inconclusive results.

To help clarify the potential influence of darkness on crime risk, Uttley and colleagues analyzed data on 34,618 crimes that occurred from 2010 through 2019 in the South Yorkshire region of the U.K. Some of these crimes were committed at times of the day that, because of seasonal changes, occur during daylight for part of the year but after dark for the rest of the year. This enabled the researchers to test whether crime risk at such times of day is greater during daylight hours or after dark. The researchers also statistically accounted for other potentially influential factors, such as weather and vacation periods.

The analysis showed that, overall, crimes were more likely to occur after dark than during daylight. However, out of fourteen kinds of crime analyzed, only five appeared to be significantly more likely to occur after dark: burglary, criminal damage, personal robbery, bicycle theft, and vehicle offences. Other offences, including sexual offences, arson and shoplifting, did not show this association.

The analysis also showed that the change in crime risk between daylight and darkness isn’t uniform across all areas in South Yorkshire, with the risk of crime after dark varying by neighborhood.

The researchers conclude that these findings strongly suggest darkness affects risk of crime. Information from this study could be used to help optimize the potential crime-reduction effects of streetlights and other artificial lighting. However, this study did not account for the presence or absence of street lighting. Future research could assess how such artificial lighting and its characteristics, such as brightness, influence crime risk.

The authors add: "There is an assumption that street lighting helps reduce crime. Evidence in support of this assumption is unclear though. In our research we took a step back and asked whether darkness itself increases crime risk. If it doesn't, the presence or absence of street lighting is unlikely to matter. We worked with analysts in South Yorkshire Police to assess changes in the risk of crime taking place in daylight and after dark, using 10 years of crime data. Our findings suggest darkness does increase the risk of certain crimes, including burglary, robbery and criminal damage. We also found the risk of crime after dark varied by neighborhood. We are now working to understand whether street lighting can reduce the risk of crime after dark, and if it can, how we can maximize the crime reduction benefits of street lighting."

 

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4mZNKON

Citation: Uttley J, Canwell R, Smith J, Falconer S, Mao Y, Fotios S (2025) Does darkness increase the risk of certain types of crime? A registered report article. PLoS One 20(6): e0324134. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324134

Author countries: U.K.

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

---

Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0324134 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Does darkness increase the risk of certain types of crime? A registered report article

Article Publication Date

25-Jun-2025

 

Data from Poland, Indonesia and Nepal indicate that affectionate behavior is associated with higher relationship satisfaction - though cultural differences impact how affection is displayed and perceived

PLOS

Facebook

XMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Main effects of country in ANOVA analyses. Arrows indicate effects significant at p < .05 in Bonferroni-Holm post-hoc tests.  

view more 

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

Data from Poland, Indonesia and Nepal indicate that affectionate behavior is associated with higher relationship satisfaction - though cultural differences impact how affection is displayed and perceived

Article URL: https://plos.io/3FLkDOt

Article title: To hug or not to hug? Public and private displays of affection and relationship satisfaction among people from Indonesia, Nepal, and Poland

Author countries: Poland, Nepal, Indonesia

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

---

Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0326115 

Article Title

To hug or not to hug? Public and private displays of affection and relationship satisfaction among people from Indonesia, Nepal, and Poland

Article Publication Date

25-Jun-2025

 

"Boomerang" made from mammoth tusk is likely one of the oldest known in Europe at around 40,000 years old, per analysis of this artifact from a Polish Upper Paleolithic cave

PLOS

Facebook

WhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Prof. Sahra Talamo in the center, with Prof. Paweł Valde-Nowak is on her left, and Prof. Adam Nadachowski on her right.

view more 

Credit: Talamo et al., CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Article URL: https://plos.io/43ScZex

Article title: Boomerang and bones: Refining the chronology of the Early Upper Paleolithic at Obłazowa Cave, Poland

Author countries: Italy, Canada, Switzerland, Poland, U.K., Germany.

Funding: This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement No. 803147 RESOLUTION, awarded to Sahra Talamo). A.P. collaborates in the Italian grant PRIN20209LLK8S_001 DYNASTY: “Neanderthals dynamic pathway and resilience in central Europe through the chronometric sustainability” funded by the Ministry of University and Research (awarded to Sahra Talamo). The contribution of S.B., A.V. and M.R., was funded by the European Union - Next Generation EU PRIN 2022 TRACE project (awarded to Stefano Benazzi and Adriana Moroni) and by CHANGES, SPOKE 5 “Science and Technologies for Sustainable Diagnostics of Cultural Heritage,” PE 0000020, CUP B53C22003890006, NRP M4C2 Investment 1.3, funded by the European Union—NextGenerationEU. The work of C.F. is supported by the European’s Union Horizon Europe research and innovation program - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF (grant agreement: n.101108385 – RISEN). P.V.N.'s participation in preparing this work was supported and financed by the National Science Center, project no. 2021/41/B/HS3/03217: “The Stone Age Man in the Caves of the Tatra Mountains”. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

The Boomerang made of mammoth tusk of Obłazowa Cave from layer VIII.

A. Geographical location of Obłazowa Cave in the Podhale basin, western Carpathians (base map from GeoMappApp: www.geomapapp.org); B. View of the western entrance and main entrance of Obłazowa Cave (photos by PV-N and AN); C. Sedimentary section of Obłazowa Cave and distribution of the archaeological horizons, A – Aurignacian, S – Szeletian, M – Mousterian (stratigraphic section redrawn by PV-N).

Credit

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

---

Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0324911 

Article Title

Boomerang and bones: Refining the chronology of the Early Upper Paleolithic at Obłazowa Cave, Poland

Article Publication Date

25-Jun-2025

 

Nitrate in drinking water linked to preterm birth rates

18 years of birth records from Iowa were studied alongside county-level water quality data to study the impact of prenatal nitrate exposure

PLOS

Facebook

XMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Map of Nitrate Measures in Public Water: Iowa (1970-1988). Figure 2 reports the median nitrate level in each month-year of all reported public water measures in Iowa (1970-1988). Each blue point is a nitrate measure (mg/L) <=10 mg/L (the maximum contaminant level set by the EPA). Each red point is a nitrate measure >10 mg/L. Points are shaded by nitrate measure on a continuous scale.

view more 

Credit: Semprini, 2025, PLOS Water, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Even low levels of nitrate—a common agricultural runoff and drinking water contaminant—are associated with increased risks of preterm birth and low birthweight babies, according to a new study published June 25 in PLOS Water by Jason Semprini of Des Moines University College of Health Sciences, US.

Nitrate is a naturally occurring compound increasingly found in inorganic fertilizers and, through runoff, in groundwater. When consumed by humans, nitrates can interfere with the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen. Since 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a maximum contaminant level for water-based nitrate at 10mg/L.

To evaluate possible reproductive risks, Semprini analyzed 357,741 birth records from Iowa spanning 1970 to 1988, linking each birth to county-level nitrate measurements taken within 30 days of conception. During the study period, nitrate levels rose an average of 8% per year, with a mean exposure of 4.2 mg/L.

After controlling for maternal and paternal characteristics as well as seasonal variation, the study found that early prenatal exposure to greater than 0.1mg/L nitrate—just 1% of the current EPA limit—was associated with an increase in preterm birth (Est.=+0.66%-points; C.I.=0.31, 1.01) and early prenatal exposure to greater than 5mg/L nitrate was associated with an increased risk of low birth weight babies (Est.=+0.33%-points; C.I.=0.03, 0.63). There were no additional risks conferred by exposure to elevated levels of nitrate, above 10 mg/L.

The author points out that the data is limited in scope, focusing only on one state. More recent data, as well as data from additional states and sources, such as private well water, could improve the strength of the association. 

“Our work adds to the evidence base that the current regulatory threshold (> 10mg/L) may be insufficient for protecting the in utero transmission of water-based nitrate during the first trimester of pregnancy,” Semprini says. He concludes that current standards, unchanged since 1992, may need to be revisited as nitrate levels in groundwater continue to rise across the U.S.

He adds: "There is no safe level of prenatal nitrate exposure,” and goes on to state: "[t]he estimated impact from prenatal exposure to nitrates reflects 15% of the harm from prenatal exposure to smoking cigarettes. I do not want to diminish the importance of efforts to prevent smoking during pregnancy...but, I must ask, do we give nitrates 15% of the attention we give to smoking?”

Semprini also notes: "The regulatory threshold for nitrates in public water does not consider prenatal exposure and has not been updated since established in 1992. Ignoring the potential harm from lower levels of prenatal nitrate exposure, the current regulatory standards are not adequately protecting America's mothers or children."

###

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Water: https://plos.io/3FTtAFx

 

Citation: Semprini J (2025) Early prenatal nitrate exposure and birth outcomes: A study of Iowa’s public drinking water (1970–1988). PLOS Water 4(6): e0000329. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000329

Author Countries: United States

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

---

Journal

PLOS Water

DOI

10.1371/journal.pwat.0000329 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Publication Date

25-Jun-2025

COI Statement

Competing Interests: The author have declared that no competing interests exist.

 

Baby talk – a human superpower?

University of Zurich

X
BlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

An almost universal phenomenon in humans is the use of child-directed speech, where caregivers communicate with children often involving a particular speech style also termed “baby-talk”. Numerous studies have linked the amount of child-directed speech children hear to better learning outcomes (e.g. vocabulary size or literacy skills). This practice seems to facilitate the acquisition of language. But how did this trait evolve?

To explore this, researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) and the University of Neuchâtel (UNINE), members of the NCCR Evolving Language, and colleagues from universities in France, Germany and the US, have now investigated whether this trait is shared by other great apes.

Experts in baby-talk

In their study, which is on the cover of the journal Science Advances, biologists and linguists observed the use of “infant-directed vocal communication” among five species of great apes: humans, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. For this, they meticulously recorded the vocalizations the infants of great apes were exposed to in the wild.

Their results show that, by far, humans are the most frequent “baby-talk” users. “We were surprised by how little of this type of communication we actually observed in our closest living relatives,” explains Franziska Wegdell, UZH postdoc and one of the three first authors of the study.

But how would non-human great ape infants pick up any learned part of their communication system?

Learning by other means

Indeed, even in humans, there are other ways for infants to learn language. “We know that human infants are able to learn new words from overhearing surrounding speech from adults and from other children around them,” says Johanna Schick, UZH postdoc and co-first author. When comparing infant-surrounding communication among the five great ape species, the researchers found that all were exposed to similar levels, except for orangutans. It may be that, like humans, great apes also acquire aspects of their communication system socially but stemming from surrounding communication.

Furthermore, in their study, the researchers only focused on the amount of infant-directed vocal communication, and not on similar phenomena in other forms. “Since speech is a primary modality of language, we chose to begin our research by focusing on the vocal domain,” says Caroline Fryns from UNINE, the third co-first author. “But we know that non-human great apes direct gestures at their infants, and that some of these gestures even exhibit features also found in human infant-directed communication.”

Studying the evolution of child-directed speech

To unravel the evolution of language, an ideal approach would be to examine the language capacities of early humans. However, since language does not fossilize, we have no traces of these capacities in extinct hominin species. “For this reason, we turned our attention to our closest living relatives – non-human great apes – investigating their infant-directed vocal communication,” explains Franziska Wegdell.

The results of the study seem to indicate that the tendency to direct vocalizations at infants has been massively expanded in the human lineage.

Although only found in low levels in our great ape relatives, other species – including some monkeys, bats, cats or dolphins – have been shown to also direct vocalizations at their young. “To shed further light on the evolution of infant-directed communication, future work could compare how the characteristics and functions of this type of communication varies across species and why,” the researchers propose.

 

Link to pictures

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oQMwlzJim9nLVrTs-iASPmfxwAz0NNK_?usp=share_link

More information

NCCR Evolving Language : https://evolvinglanguage.ch

 

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adt7718 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

infant-directed vocal communication

Article Publication Date

25-Jun-2025

 

Research news from the Ecological Society of America’s journals

\

Ecological Society of America

Facebook

X
BlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

New research in Ecological Monographs uses 30 years of data on a South African population of meerkats to understand how these small mongooses cope with extreme conditions.

view more 

Credit: Jack Thorley

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) presents a roundup of five research articles recently published across its esteemed journals. Widely recognized for fostering innovation and advancing ecological knowledge, ESA’s journals consistently feature illuminating and impactful studies. This compilation of papers explores the challenges environmental changes pose to meerkats, a pathway to protected area management alongside Tribal Nations, the effects of marine heatwaves on marine fish, increased methane emissions in drylands, and the inadequacy of current frameworks for predicting animals’ adaptability to climate change.

 

From Ecological Monographs:

How meerkats take the heat (and drought)
Author contact: Jack Thorley (jbt27@cam.ac.uk)

Environmental changes in their Kalahari Desert homeland are putting meerkats to the ultimate test. In a setting where hot and dry conditions vary from season to season and year to year, literally making the difference between life and death, researchers have tracked a population of meerkats for nearly three decades to understand how these desert specialists handle environmental change. They found that wetter summer conditions led to a profusion of plants and insects; with so many more bugs, roots and tubers to gorge on, meerkat body size and overall condition improved. On the other hand, heat is a real challenge for these small mammals, and they struggled to find enough food when temperatures climbed above 37°C (98.6°F). Luckily for the meerkats, over the course of the study the hottest days tended to occur when the summer rains left the desert at its greenest peak, giving the meerkats an opportunity to recover as soon as temperatures dipped. Though safe for the moment, meerkats face significant challenges if expected shifts in climate patterns play out. A better understanding of the impacts that changes in rainfall and temperature will have is needed to ensure a future for this little African mongoose and other desert species.

Read the article: Linking climate variability to demography in cooperatively breeding meerkats

 

From Earth Stewardship:

A pathway to true co-management with Tribal Nations   
Author contact: Lara A. Jacobs (LaraAJacobs@gmail.com)

Despite recent progress toward greater inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge, management of U.S. parks and protected areas remains firmly entrenched within Western views of conservation and land use. Building on a model based on studies of power dynamics, the authors of this study first identify the barriers that continue to impede incorporation of traditional knowledge in park management. From there, they construct a framework for shifting oversight of protected areas from conventional approaches to strategies that emerge from more equitable collaboration between Western and Native perspectives, with a gradual shift toward Indigenous-led administration. Rooting management of the nation’s public natural areas in Indigenous values, knowledge systems and leadership would both enhance conservation efforts and deepen recognition of Tribal Nations sovereignty and self-determination. 

Read the article: U.S. parks and protected area power structures: From historic policies to Indigenous futurities

 

From Ecological Applications:

Failure to launch: Rockfish delay adulthood during marine heatwaves
Author contact: R. Claire Rosemond (claire.rosemond@noaa.gov)

Marine fish will grow at a faster rate and mature earlier as ocean temperatures warm — or so goes the prevailing theory. But the results of a recent survey of black rockfish in the coastal waters of the U.S. Pacific Northwest may upend this tidy premise. Measurements of young female rockfish caught during strong marine heatwaves — periods when expanses of ocean water are considerably hotter than normal — revealed that juveniles did indeed grow faster, as was predicted. Contrary to expectations, however, females took longer to mature during heatwaves than under cooler conditions. This delayed onset of adulthood suggests that current frameworks fail to capture the full complexity of the relationship between water temperature and fish development, muddling efforts to predict how fish will respond to the warmer oceans and more frequent marine heatwaves looming on the horizon.

Read the article: Elevated fish growth yet postponed maturation during intense marine heatwaves

 

From Ecosphere:

Wetting of drylands increases methane emissions
Author contact: Uthara Vengrai (uthara.vengrai@yale.edu)

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and scientists have long assumed that dryland ecosystems like deserts and arid grasslands and shrublands soak up more methane than they emit. But new research shows that the introduction of irrigation and artificial wetlands for agriculture is altering this equation. Though covering a mere 1% of the landscape, constructed wetlands in Wyoming were found to release more methane into the atmosphere than is removed by surrounding ecosystems (primarily sagebrush), due to changes in soil characteristics, soil microbial communities and a host of other factors. This large effect of irrigation on methane absorption and release can effectively transform dryland ecosystems into net producers of methane, with considerable implications for future warming and subsequent climate change.

Read the article: Land use change converts temperate dryland landscape into a net methane source

 

From Ecology:

Animal heat–cold tolerance depends on scale   
Author contact: Miguel Tejedo (tejedo@ebd.csic.es)

New evidence suggests that how animals cope with extreme heat and cold depends on the scale of study. Using data extracted from other studies on hundreds of species, the researchers found that across large geographic expanses, the heat tolerance of many amphibians, insects and reptiles remained constant, while their cold tolerance varied much more from place to place — a pattern consistent with the results of previous research. Yet at smaller scales that better reflect where these animals live (an outcrop of rocks, say, or a stand of trees), the opposite was observed, with heat tolerance fluctuating more than the animals’ abilities to cope with cold. This reversal at local levels is cause for hope, as even a little bit of additional thermal headroom could increase a species’ chance for survival in a rapidly warming world. Moreover, the findings serve as a warning that overreliance on global and regional patterns while ignoring the role of local-scale patterns may lead us to underestimate an animal’s true resilience to changing environmental conditions.

Read the article: High thermal variation in maximum temperatures invert Brett’s heat-invariant rule at fine spatial scales

 

###

 

Learn more about the upcoming ESA Annual Meeting, August 10–15, on the meeting website.
ESA invites press and institutional public information officers to attend for free. To register, please contact ESA Public Affairs Manager Mayda Nathan directly at mayda@esa.org.

The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 8,000 member Society publishes six journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org

 

Follow ESA on social media:
Twitter/X – @esa_org
Bluesky – @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social
Instagram – @ecologicalsociety
Facebook – @esa.org