Respiratory related ER visits decreased 20 percent after coal-processing plant closure

The new study shows link between improved respiratory health among residents and the shutdown of the Shenango plant near Pittsburgh.

American Thoracic Society

NEW YORK, NY – July 21, 2025 – A new study by NYU Langone Health researchers found that the shutdown of a significant fossil fuel pollution source near Pittsburgh, PA, resulted in immediate improvements in respiratory health. The study is available online starting July 22 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a journal of the American Thoracic Society.

Assessing data from nearby local and federal air quality monitors, the researchers tracked the air pollution health effects on residents near the Shenango plant before and after its closure in 2016.

Results showed that within the first few weeks after the plant’s closure in January 2016, respiratory related emergency visits decreased by about 20 percent. In the first month of the closure, pediatric asthma visits declined by 41 percent, and continued to fall by 4 percent each month through the end of the study period.

These findings indicate that reductions in fossil-fuel related air pollution are linked to both short and long-term lung health benefits, the researchers say.

“The adverse reductions in respiratory health effects were much greater than expected, based on past studies of general air pollution in the U.S., indicating that emissions from such fossil fuel related sources are especially toxic,” said study senior author George Thurston, ScD. Dr. Thurston is a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a member of the American Thoracic Society.

“This study provides rare, in-the-field evidence that the closure of a major industrial pollution source can lead to immediate and lasting improvements in the lung health of the those who live nearby,” added the article’s first author, Wuyue Yu, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “By tracking health outcomes before and after the coke plant closure, we were able to isolate the effects of reduced air pollution and observe that cleaner air translates into fewer respiratory emergency visits and hospitalizations.”

The American Thoracic Society continues to advocate for patients and families by pushing for environmental protections. Hear from ATS members on the impact of EPA rollbacks on the ATS Breathe Easy Podcast.

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Journal

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

Subject of Research

People

 

New-age and old school shark bite prevention strategies put to the test on Australian beaches

Flinders University

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Amid growing concerns about shark bites on Australian beaches, researchers have developed a new framework to compare and assess the broad range of prevention measures available to help identify which are most suitable to dynamic conditions on Australian beaches.

Flinders University researchers, in collaboration with The University of Queensland and state government agencies, developed 12 comprehensive but adaptable criteria encompassing mitigation efficiency, but also socio-economic and environmental factors.

Published in the scientific journal People and Nature, the research used this new framework to compare 15 different mitigation measures that could be used on the Gold Coast - including cutting-edge technology and traditional strategies - and reveals that a combination of strategies is most effective at reducing the likelihood of shark bites.

“Our analysis includes lethal options like traditional nets and drumlines, and non-lethal real-time shark alerts with SMART drumlines, drones, and early warning systems alongside personal electronic deterrents, listening stations, amid many other measures says, Southern Shark Ecology Group Research Leader at Flinders University and study co-author, Professor Charlie Huveneers.

“It’s designed to be adaptable across various coastal environments, including murky, enclosed bays to clear, dynamic surf beaches and can accommodate new technologies or changing needs over time.

“Importantly, this approach recognises that no single solution is universally effective; instead, a combination of approaches—such as public education, and behavioural changes— equally shared between state governments and growing numbers of surfers and beachgoers is likely to be most successful in reducing shark-bite risk.”

Shark-bite prevention measures strengths and weaknesses:

• Physical Barriers: Effective in calm waters but impractical in surf zones like the Gold Coast.
• Drones: Widely supported for shark detection; cost-effective and efficient for beach monitoring.
• Personal electric Deterrents: Public education needed to improve acceptance.
• SMART Drumlines: Non-lethal but concerns about bait attraction and response times.
• Tagging: Requires sharks to be tagged and network of acoustic receivers but provide early warnings of shark presence
• Sonar: Low effectiveness due to limited coverage and detection accuracy; better suited for future use with tech improvements.
• Behavioural Interventions: Highly supported; focuses on education, personal responsibility, and safer ocean practices for people, instead of focusing on sharks.

Michelle Henriksen, lead author of the study, says public sentiment is shifting towards the deployment of non-lethal strategies, so experts want to gain knowledge about their effectiveness.

“Results reiterated the societal shift towards non-lethal measures and highlighted which mitigation measures or performance criteria lacked information, helping to identify knowledge gaps and research needs.”

“By assessing the effectiveness of non-lethal mitigation, we’ve reflected community sentiment on the importance of introducing new methods that protect both sharks and beachgoers,” Ms Henriksen says.

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Journal

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.70054 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

 

Japanese drinkers’ response to alcohol can be divided into three distinct clusters

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Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan and collaborators have used genetic analysis and experiments to discover that the subjective responses of Japanese people to alcohol can be divided into three clear clusters. This research, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, could help identify people at risk for alcohol-related disorders.

It is well known that East Asian populations, including Japanese, have certain genetic variations that influence their response to alcohol. These involve two major genes that affect how we metabolize it—ADH1B, which is involved in the changing of alcohol into a toxic chemical known as acetaldehyde, the chemical mainly responsibility for the discomfort of a hangover—and ALDH2, which is involved in transforming acetaldehyde into a non-toxic compound, acetate. A large number of Japanese people harbor a gene variation that allows a more rapid transformation of alcohol into acetaldehyde, but in addition, many also have a variation in the ALDH2 gene that makes it more difficult for them to change the acetaldehyde into acetate, and this is responsible for the so-called “Asian flush.”

Though this is known, how these variations affect people’s subjective reactions to alcohol are not well understood. To address this, the group, led by Chikashi Terao at RIKEN IMS, did experiments on a cohort of 429 healthy young people who consumed alcohol, recognizing that this inclusion criterium would naturally exclude a minority of Japanese who have a genetic variation that makes it virtually impossible to consume alcohol. They sequenced the genomes of the participants, and had them undergo an experiment in which they received alcohol intravenously over several hours to maintain a given blood-alcohol level and were asked to fill out reports every 30 minutes describing feelings such as being high, being sleepy, or being uncoordinated, which are typical of drunkenness.

The findings were surprising and instructive. The researchers discovered that the participants could be clustered into three groups—people who quickly felt the effects of the alcohol, those who gradually felt the effects grow over time, and others who were relatively intolerant to the effects. Further, these clusters were associated with certain combinations of variations in several genes, including the two major ones, meaning that genetic testing could give a prediction of the subjective response people would have to alcohol.

According to Keiko Hikino of RIKEN IMS, the first author of the paper, “Although it was previously thought that various combinations of risk alleles in ALDH2 and ADH1B produced a wide range of alcohol sensitivities, we discovered, unexpectedly, that they can be simplified into just three patterns. The current study focused on healthy young adults, but in the future, we aim to extend our research toward identifying risk factors for alcohol dependence.”

According to Terao, “Alcohol is a common part of daily life, but it’s responsible for many deaths, and its effects on health are of interest to many people. Our finding that alcohol response in the Japanese population can be classified into three distinct types should make it easier to identify and intervene with individuals at higher risk of alcohol-related health problems.”

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Journal

Neuropsychopharmacology

DOI

10.1038/s41386-025-02147-7 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Unraveling time-dependent genetic components underlying alcohol response

 

Data from 1,000 farms over 13 years prove that agricultural survival depends on being flexible without losing stability

A study by UCO's Department of Agricultural Economics, Finance and Accounting identifies stability and flexibility as the two components of farms' economic resilience and underscores the need for more targeted agricultural policies to ensure their effectiveness. 

University of Córdoba

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The researchers at the University of Cordoba Antonio Menor Campos, Jaime Martín García y José A. Gómez Limón

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Credit: The researchers at the University of Cordoba Antonio Menor Campos, Jaime Martín García y José A. Gómez Limón

In the current scenario of climate change and economic instability, agricultural policies are increasingly focusing on improving the adaptive capacity and resilience of farms, and not only on promoting their sustainability. This capacity, known as resilience, is actually highly heterogeneous. Thus, if public policies are to be effective, they need to be more specific and focus on their two components: stability and flexibility. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by the Department of Agricultural Economics, Finance and Accounting at the University of Cordoba and published in the journal Environmental and Sustainability Indicators.

Through a novel theoretical framework, the team formed by researchers Jaime Martín García, José A. Gómez Limón, and Antonio Menor Campos found that farms have two components of economic resilience that are, to a degree, opposites. Some farms are more stable over time and have difficulty adapting in the long term, while others find it easier to transform in the face of external disturbances, but are not as stable in the short term.

Given that, based on the two components of resilience identified, farms can respond to external changes in two ways, remain unchanged, or apply changes in the short term (for example, modifying the crop mix from one year to the next) or the long term (moving from rain-fed to irrigated or from conventional agriculture to organic), the key to better design public policies is for them to be more specific and take into account the wide variety of factors that, in a positive or negative way, influence the two components of farm resilience. Thus, taking into account the circumstances of each sector and/or region, policies should be aimed at promoting farms' stability or focusing on further developing their flexibility.

Spanish arable crops as a case study

To test the theoretical framework proposed for assessing the resilience of farms, the researchers relied on data from Spanish farms dedicated to arable crops. These crops, which include cereals and legumes, represent more than 30% of the useful agricultural area in Spain, being fundamental for society, as they are essential producers of food for both people and animals.

Using a database of 947 farms in this agricultural sector, the team analyzed factors ranging from the size of the company, the farms' workforces and the ages of their farmers, to the organic production regime, fertilizers and payments under the Common Agricultural Policy. With this data, collected over 13 years by the National Agrarian Accounting Network (an instrument belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), the team verified that Spanish arable crops featured partial resistance, as they showed good stability, but low flexibility.

Thus, factors such as payments decoupled from the Common Agricultural Policy, land ownership, and summer cereal crops were more related to stability. Ecological conversion ensured better flexibility, while farm size, land value, farmers' ages and the proportion of household labor negatively affected the flexibility needed to cope with external shocks over time.

The study shows that not all public policies are equally effective in improving the economic resilience of farms, requiring instruments that are designed to measure and duly adapted. Policymaking must take into account the complexity of this multidimensional concept. According to the results, boosting stability (static resilience) could impair flexibility (dynamic resilience), and vice versa. Therefore, adapted and specific policy instruments are needed that take into account both components of resilience.

Given that the ultimate objective of the study is to encourage farms to continue producing and maintaining their functions over time, policies that consider the complexity of the concept of resilience would result in benefits for society. Jaime Martín García, a researcher at the UCO's WEARE group and author of a thesis that, focused on the ecological transition of agriculture, includes this study on resilience, explains that the benefits would include "more stable food production, lower environmental impact by the agricultural sector, and greater rural development, helping to anchor populations in rural areas that often suffer depopulation."

The study was funded by the TRANSECOag projects (ProyExcel_00459, Research projects aimed at the challenges of Andalusian society, 2021 call) and FARMPERFORM (PID2022-136239OB-I00, Knowledge Generation Projects, 2022 call).

Reference:

Jaime Martín-García, José A. Gómez-Limón, Antonio Menor-Campos, “Farms’ economic resilience: assessment, drivers and policymaking”, Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, Volume 27, 2025, 100740, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2025.100740.

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Journal

Environmental and Sustainability Indicators

DOI

10.1016/j.indic.2025.100740 

Article Title

Farms’ economic resilience: assessment, drivers and policy-making

DEI

Gender-fair job titles don’t shift teen career aspirations in healthcare, study finds

French-language study suggests adolescents’ interest and sense of belonging in nursing, surgery and psychology reflect gender stereotypes and occupational prestige, regardless of linguistic framing

De Gruyter

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A new study published in Open Psychology finds that changing how healthcare professions are labeled — whether through gender-fair pair forms (e.g., “female and male nurses”), the traditional masculine generic, or omitting the title entirely — does not significantly influence adolescents’ reported career interest or their anticipated sense of belonging in these roles.

Researchers from the University of Fribourg, with collaborators in Norway and the UK, surveyed 222 French-speaking adolescents in Switzerland (ages 12–19). Participants read descriptions of three occupations: nurse (stereotypically feminine), surgeon (stereotypically masculine), and clinical psychologist (considered gender-neutral). Each description was randomly paired with one of three title presentations: a masculine job title, a gender-fair pair form, or no job title at all.

Despite prior adult studies suggesting that gender-fair language can reduce bias, adolescents’ responses in this study were unaffected by title format: neither their self-reported interest (how much they wanted to pursue the occupation) nor their anticipated sense of belonging (how much they felt they would fit in) differed across linguistic conditions.

Instead, results mirrored prevailing gender stereotypes and, to some extent, perceptions of occupational prestige:

• Girls showed higher interest and anticipated belonging in the nursing (feminine) and clinical psychology (neutral) roles.
• Boys reported a significantly stronger sense of belonging to the surgeon role (stereotypically masculine) than girls did, although interest in surgery did not differ by gender.

Notably, clinical psychology — rated highest in perceived prestige — attracted the strongest interest overall, suggesting that status may interact with gender norms to shape early career aspirations.

These findings indicate that simply revising job titles is insufficient to counter deeply rooted gendered expectations in adolescence. The researchers argue that more comprehensive strategies are needed, such as enhancing the visibility and social status of undervalued yet vital professions like nursing.

The study highlights adolescence as a critical period for career identity formation, during which both gender norms and perceptions of occupational prestige continue to guide young people’s vocational aspirations.

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Journal

Open Psychology

DOI

10.1515/psych-2025-0006 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Influencing Adolescents’ Gendered Aspirations for Nursing and Surgery

When the city comes to you, get flexible; when you go to the city, be persistent

Researchers find that foraging behavior breadth, persistence, and variability of flexibility could facilitate a rapid geographic range expansion

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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A male boat-tailed grackle on a roof at a cattle ranch in Lake Placid, Florida.

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Credit: © Corina J. Logan

To the point

• Grackles trained to be more flexible were better at foraging afterward: They ate more foods and used more foraging techniques. Investigating their cognitive abilities in the wild shows how flexibility impacts their ability to adapt to human-modified environments.
• Behavioral flexibility is not the primary facilitator of a range expansion: Although high levels of flexibility were found in two successful urban bird species, only one is rapidly expanding is range. This suggests that flexibility alone does not drive rapid geographic expansions.
• The role of cognition in bird adaptation illuminated: Behavioral flexibility enables birds to adapt to human-modified habitats, but plays a smaller role in expanding into new geographic areas

Flexibility through foraging behavior breadth impacts their ability to adapt to human-modified environments

Behavioral flexibility, as expressed through foraging behaviors, habitat use, and social behaviors, is thought to play an important role in a species’ ability to adapt to human-modified environments. However, it is rare to find evidence that links flexibility to the foraging, habitat use, and social behaviors in species that are successful in human-modified environments. Researchers gathered this evidence in two populations of great-tailed grackles, a bird species that primarily lives in human-modified environments.

The researchers found that grackles who were trained to be more flexible used a wider variety of foods and foraging techniques, but had similar habitat use patterns and social behavior as non-trained grackles. Given that this species is rapidly expanding its geographic range and shifting more toward urban and arid environments in recent years, our finding could suggest that foraging breadth, the number of different food types an individual eats, is a factor in adapting to human-modified environments.

“We may laugh at the birds in parking lots eating the leftover french fries, but actually not all birds are able to change their behavior to take advantage of these human-provided resources. So, it’s interesting to find that this ability to eat many different foods is also related to the cognitive trait, behavioral flexibility,” says Dr Kelsey McCune who was at the University of California Santa Barbara when she helped run the grackle research (currently at Auburn University).

Discovered a new measure of flexibility

The research team determined how flexible each grackle was using an behavioral choice test in the aviaries called reversal learning. This is a widely used test of flexibility where an individual learns to prefer a color because the food is always in that colored tube, and then their color preference is reversed to a different colored tube, which now always has the food.

After the grackles did the aviary test, they were released back to the wild and their foraging and social behavior in the wild was observed from a distance. The researchers discovered that the grackles that were more flexible in the reversal learning test also switched between eating different food types more often in the wild.

“This is such a great discovery because it is really difficult to bring birds into aviaries to measure their flexibility. Now we have the ability to measure their flexibility just by watching them in the wild,” says Dr. Corina Logan at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and lead researcher. This new way of measuring flexibility will make it much more accessible to a wide range of researchers because, apart from needing to be able to tell the individuals apart, all that is needed is a pair of binoculars.

Boat-tailed grackles are not rapidly expanding, but are as flexible

Behavioral flexibility is thought to be a primary facilitator for expanding into new areas. Researchers tested this by examining flexibility in two closely related species: the great-tailed grackle, which is rapidly expanding its geographic range, and the boat-tailed grackle, which is not. The idea was that if the great-tailed grackles needed flexibility to expand their range, then the boat-tailed grackles should be less flexible.

The researchers found that both species are highly flexible, which indicates that flexibility is not the primary facilitator of a rapid range expansion. “These species are similar in many ways: they eat the same kinds of foods, live in the same kinds of places, and they even look the same. That they are also similar in their levels of flexibility was surprising given their differences in how fast they are expanding, or not, their ranges” says Dr. Logan.

These results placed in the context of the group’s previous findings on these species lend further support to the idea that persistence and variability in flexibility are involved in expanding the range of the great-tailed grackle. It is likely that, historically, both species needed flexibility to adapt to human-modified environments that encroached on their habitat. Perhaps they continue to rely on flexibility to interact in these human-modified environments, which is now their primary habitat.

These findings provide an insight into what needs to be measured to predict how successful a species might be in a new environment, which could be a useful tool for conservation managers.

A male great-tailed grackle eating fast food cheese sauce in Sacramento, California.

Credit
© Corina J. Logan




Boat-tailed grackle female in a gas station parking lot in Venus, Florida.

Credit
© Dieter Lukas




A juvenile great-tailed grackle eating a pretzel in Tempe, Arizona.


Credit
© Corina J. Logan

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Journal

Peer Community Journal

DOI

10.24072/pcjournal.573 

Article Title

Behavioral flexibility is related to foraging, but not social or habitat use behaviors, in a species that is rapidly expanding its range

Article Publication Date

22-Jul-2025