Education gap linked to differences in biological aging

Americans with less education are aging faster than their peers with more schooling -- and the gap has grown over the last 30 years

University of Southern California

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A new study by USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology researchers shows that Americans with less education are aging faster than their peers with more schooling, and the gap has grown over the last 30 years.

The study examined “biological aging,” which goes deeper than simply counting birthdays. Biological aging measures how the body is changing over time, including how well organs and systems are working. For example, two people who are both 65 may look very different inside: one may have the biological profile of someone younger, while another may show signs of aging earlier.

“Biological age gives us a clearer picture of health than chronological age,” said USC University Professor Eileen Crimmins, the study’s senior author. “It helps us understand who is likely to stay healthy longer and who may be at higher risk for disease and disability.”

A Widening Divide

Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the team looked at adults ages 50 to 79 across two periods: 1988–1994 and 2015–2018. They found that while biological aging slowed for everyone, the benefits were significantly greater for people with more education.

For example, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the difference in biological aging between adults with less than a high school education and those with a college degree was about one year. By 2015–2018, the gap had nearly doubled to two years.

“This means that people with more education have slower biological aging than everyone else,” said Mateo Farina, assistant professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, former USC Leonard Davis School postdoctoral researcher, and first author of the study. “The improvements we see in population health are not being shared equally.”

Increasing inequality in health based on education has been a public health concern since the 1990s. The authors noted that this new study is among the first to evaluate whether the increased educational inequalities in physical health are linked to widening differences in biological age.

Why Education Matters

Education influences many aspects of life that affect health: the kinds of jobs people can get, how much money they make, where they live, and the health care they can access. More education also tends to correlate with healthier behaviors, such as smoking less and exercising more.

The study tested whether changes in smoking, obesity, or medication use explained the growing gap in aging. But the results showed that these factors did not account for the widening inequality; instead, differences tied directly to education itself appear to play the biggest role.

“Education shapes opportunities and risks throughout life,” Crimmins explained. “It’s a powerful social determinant of health, and it is leaving a mark on how fast or slow our bodies age.”

The findings suggest that educational inequality could have major consequences for future generations of older adults. People with less education may not only die younger but may also spend more years in poor health, posing challenges to families, communities, and health systems.

“This isn’t just a matter of individual choice; it’s a social issue,” Farina said. “If we want to reduce health disparities, we need to think about education as a public health investment.”

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Journal

Demography

DOI

10.1215/00703370-12175545 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Increasing Educational Inequality in Biological Aging Among U.S. Adults Aged 50–79 From 1988–1994 to 2015–2018

 

Hidden impacts of spraying: new study explores effects of fungicide use on corn health and microbiome

American Phytopathological Society

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Corn is one of the most valuable cash crops globally, with annual grain production in the United States alone valued at nearly $80 billion. Fungicides are widely used to protect crops and promote yield, but new research published in Phytobiomes Journal suggests we may be overlooking a hidden cost: the loss of beneficial fungi essential to plant health.

A research team led by Briana Whitaker, a research microbiologist, and Joseph Opoku, a research plant pathologist, with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, in collaboration with Nathan Kleczewski (Syngenta Biologicals), investigated how foliar fungicides influence the foliar fungal endophyte community—the fungi that live within corn leaf tissue without causing disease.

The study, conducted at two agricultural research sites in the midwestern United States, used culture-based techniques to identify and quantify the fungi living within corn leaves. Researchers applied a systemic, multi-mode-of-action fungicide to assess its impact. The results? While the overall presence of culturable fungi didn’t change significantly, the composition of the fungal community did—especially in terms of diversity and abundance of specific fungal species. Interestingly, these effects varied by location, emphasizing the influence of environmental conditions on microbiome responses.

“This research presents an opportunity to reassess our crop management strategies—shifting the emphasis from just managing disease to also promoting the beneficial components of the plant microbiome,” Whitaker said. “Ultimately, the potential to implement more sustainable agricultural practices that not only safeguard crops but also enhance resilience is highly promising.”

This research is among the first to investigate how foliar fungicides affect the corn fungal microbiome—an area that has been largely overlooked despite the crop’s global importance. The findings could have broad implications for plant pathology, agronomy, ecology, and integrated pest management, encouraging a shift toward crop strategies that both protect against pathogens and support beneficial microbes.

As agriculture faces increasing pressure from climate variability, emerging pathogens, and the need for resilient cropping systems, the corn microbiome may represent an untapped resource. “This work could lead to a transformative approach in agriculture,” Whitaker added, “where the synergy between plants and their microbiomes is acknowledged and utilized for long-term success.” With continued research, these beneficial fungal communities could play a central role in the next generation of precision agriculture.

To learn more, read “Foliar Fungicide Application Alters the Culturable Foliar Fungal Endophyte Community in Corn”—available open access in Phytobiomes Journal.

About Phytobiomes Journal:

Phytobiomes Journal, published by The American Phyopathological Society, is a transdisciplinary journal of original research on organisms and communities interacting with plants in any ecosystem. It includes the fundamental to translational work of scientists in the areas of microbiology, virology, nutrient cycling, climate change, ecology, agronomy, entomology, computational biology, nematology, plant pathology, and more.

 

Follow the authors on social media:

X:

Briana Whitaker: @bri_k_w

Nathan Kleczewski: @ELplantdoc

Joseph Opoku: @ojmalove
 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briana-whitaker-phd-a53062167/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-kleczewski-ph-d-56894382/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-opoku-ph-d-2117773b

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Journal

Phytobiomes Journal

DOI

10.1094/PBIOMES-09-24-0089-R 

Article Title

Foliar Fungicide Application Alters the Culturable Foliar Fungal Endophyte Community in Corn

 

Going viral: how ideas, beliefs, and innovations spread in the digital age

Why do some ideas catch fire? An interdisciplinary team of researchers offers a new theory

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Santa Fe Institute

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Giulio Burgio, Postdoctoral Associate, reviews paper findings with Lovato lab students at the University of Vermont.

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Credit: Vince Franke, Peregrine Productions, courtesy of the University of Vermont

It might start as a joke, a belief, or a rumor. At first, it’s easy to dismiss. But then it gains a twist, builds momentum, and spreads like wildfire. What causes some ideas to die out while others take over the internet?

A new study published in Physical Review Letters offers a fresh explanation. Led by researchers from the University of Vermont and the Santa Fe Institute, the work introduces a mathematical model for “self-reinforcing cascades,” processes where the thing being spread, whether a belief, joke, or virus, evolves in real time and gains strength as it spreads.

Traditionally, scientists have used simple branching models to explain how things like ideas or diseases spread. One person gets infected or hears a rumor, they pass it to two more, each of those passes it to two more, and so on. It’s a tree-like pattern in which the thing spreading (virus, belief, meme) stays the same. But this new research takes into account the fact that things don’t just spread — they change as they spread, and that change actually helps them spread further.

“We were inspired in part by forest fires,” says SFI Professor Sid Redner, a co-author on the paper. “Fires can grow stronger when burning through dense forest, and weaker when crossing open gaps. That same principle applies to information, jokes, or diseases. They can intensify or weaken depending on the conditions.”

The model is simple in theory: each time an idea spreads, it has a chance of increasing or decreasing in intensity. If it weakens too much or finds no receptive audience, it dies out. But if it improves, even slightly, it can keep going, triggering large-scale cascades under a wide range of conditions.

This simple mechanism led to surprisingly complex results. Unlike classical models that require fine-tuned conditions to produce real-world-like patterns, the researchers’ self-reinforcing cascade model naturally yielded “fat-tailed” distributions, statistical signatures often seen in viral social media posts and outbreaks. These include the observation that most posts or cases fizzle out quickly, but a few become massive, unpredictable hits.

“This kind of variability — where some things go viral while most don’t — has often been explained by assuming the world is always near some critical tipping point,” says lead author Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, a computer scientist at the University of Vermont and SFI External Professor. “But our model shows that if the quality of what’s spreading can change as it spreads, you don’t need to assume a special critical state. The variability just emerges naturally.”

The implications extend far beyond theory. Juniper Lovato, study co-author and computer scientist at the University of Vermont, said the work could help researchers better understand belief formation, misinformation, and social contagion.

“This gives us a theoretical foundation for exploring how stories and narratives evolve and spread through networks,” she says. Lovato and Peter Dodds, a professor of computer science at UVM, Director of the Vermont Complex Systems Institute, and SFI External Professor, will explore this topic in more depth at a December working group at SFI. 

The work aligns with a large project Lovato and Dodds co-lead, funded by the National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR): Harnessing the Data Revolution for Vermont: The Science of Online Corpora, Knowledge, and Stories (SOCKS). The $20M, five-year project revolves around stories as an essential part of how people comprehend, explain, predict, and seek to navigate the world; a groundbreaking data science effort to better understand and harness the power of stories. The SOCKS project is intended to enable or enhance the study of any large-scale temporal phenomena where people matter, including culture, politics, economics, linguistics, public health, conflict, climate change, and data journalism.

Next, the team plans to validate the model with real-world data from platforms like Bluesky, which allow researchers to distinguish between pure reposts and modified ones. The work may even circle back to its fiery origin.

“I’m excited to return to the forest fire model,” Redner says. “What we’ve learned here gives us new tools to tackle that problem—and maybe others.”

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Journal

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/5mph-sws5 

Article Title

Self-reinforcing cascades: A spreading model for beliefs or products of varying intensity or quality

Article Publication Date

21-Aug-2025

 

Study suggests no link between antibiotic exposure and autoimmune diseases in children

Korean children with early life exposure to antibiotics were not diagnosed with autoimmune diseases at higher rates

PLOS

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Researchers find that Korean children with early life exposure to antibiotics were not diagnosed with autoimmune diseases at higher rates.

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Credit: neildodhia, Pixabay (CC0, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

The global incidence of autoimmune diseases among children has increased over the past few decades. A study published August 21st in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Ju-Young Shin at Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea, and colleagues suggests that early life antibiotic exposure is not associated with an increased risk of autoimmune diseases in children.

Previous research has suggested that exposure to antibiotics as a fetus or infant may contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases among children. However, confounding variables limit the validity of prior studies and the association of antibiotics to autoimmune disease remains poorly understood.

In order to investigate whether antibiotics may increase risk of autoimmune diseases, researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study comprised of over 4 million children born in the Republic of Korea between April 1, 2009, and December 31, 2020. They accessed a mother-child linked insurance claims database from the South Korea National Health Insurance Service-National Health Insurance Database (NHIS-NHID) to identify children whose mothers had received antibiotic prescriptions during pregnancy or while breastfeeding their infant. The researchers then retrospectively analyzed the health outcomes of each cohort for a period of over 7 years, tracking all diagnoses of Type 1 diabetes, Juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease), Systemic lupus erythematosus, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

The researchers found no relationship between antibiotic exposure during pregnancy or early infancy and the overall incidence of autoimmune diseases in children. Future research is needed, however, to replicate the outcomes in other populations and to further investigate potential effects on subgroups.

According to the authors, “Our findings suggest no association between antibiotic exposure during the prenatal period or early infancy and the development of autoimmune diseases in children. This observation contrasts with several previous studies reporting increased risks and underscores the importance of carefully considering the underlying indications for antibiotic use and genetic susceptibility when interpreting such associations. While the potential benefits of antibiotic treatment in managing infections during pregnancy or early infancy likely outweigh the minimal risk of autoimmune outcomes, our findings also highlight the need for cautious and clinically appropriate use of antibiotics during these critical developmental periods in specific subgroups.”

The authors note, “Exposure to antibiotics during pregnancy or early infancy was not associated with an increased risk of autoimmune diseases in children. Nevertheless, the importance of follow-up studies to confirm and extend these findings cannot be overstated.”

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://plos.io/44AXojI

Citation: Choi E-Y, Bea S, Lee H, Choi A, Han JY, Kang EH, et al. (2025) Exposure to antibiotics during pregnancy or early infancy and the risk of autoimmune disease in children: A nationwide cohort study in Korea. PLoS Med 22(8): e1004677. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004677 

Author countries: South Korea, United States

Funding: see manuscript

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Journal

PLOS Medicine

DOI

10.1371/journal.pmed.1004677 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

COI Statement

Competing interests: see manuscript

 

Light pollution makes birds across the world sing for longer each day

Summary author: Becky Ham

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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Light pollution is causing birds around the world to sing for longer each day, prolonging their vocalizations on average by 50 minutes, according to a new study by Brent Pease and Neil Gilbert. In their analysis of more than 500 diurnal bird species, they also note that birds that are more exposed to light – whether through large eyes or open nests – are the most affected by light pollution in this manner. Scientists know that light pollution, which impacts 23% of the planet, is influencing activity patterns governed by the circadian light-dark cycle in individual species. The new study is first to document this phenomenon in birds across species and space and seasons. It’s unclear whether these impacts are positive, negative, or neutral for the birds’ fitness, but “documenting these fitness effects and curbing light pollution are challenges for 21st-century conservation,” the authors write. Pease and Gilbert analyzed 2.6 million observations of onset (morning) bird vocalization and 1.8 million observations of cessation (evening) bird calls. The data come from the BirdWeather project, which includes volunteer scientist recordings, automated biodiversity monitoring and machine learning. The researchers found limited evidence for the effects of habitat density, latitude and specific richness on light pollution’s interaction with vocalizations, but they note that their database remains too incomplete for some regions and species to definitively measure these effects.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adv9472 

Article Title

Light pollution prolongs avian activity

Article Publication Date

21-Aug-2025

SIU research finds birds in light polluted areas stay up late

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

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Brent Pease, assistant professor in Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s School of Forestry and Horticulture, displays a BirdWeather PUC, a weatherproof device with microphones, Wi-Fi, GPS, environmental sensors and AI.

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Credit: Southern Illinois University Carbondale photo by Russell Bailey

By Kim Rendfeld

CARBONDALE, Ill. – Birds that are active during the day sing later into the night in places with significant light pollution, according to research by a Southern Illinois University Carbondale professor and his colleague.

Brent Pease, an assistant professor in SIU’s School of Forestry and Horticulture, and Neil Gilbert, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Oklahoma State University, analyzed data gathered from around the world, comparing more than 180 million bird vocalizations in a single year with global satellite imagery.

“We were shocked by our findings: Under the brightest night skies, a bird’s day is extended by nearly an hour,” Pease said.

Pease and Gilbert’s paper, “Light pollution prolongs avian activity,” was published today (Aug. 21) in Science magazine.

The project came about in his effort to excite undergraduates about birds. Two years ago, Pease installed a computer with an attached microphone at Touch of Nature Outdoor Education Center to broadcast birdsong in the main campus’ Agriculture Building eight miles north, where his department and others are housed. 

What resulted was a basic data dashboard on the Ag Buildings’ monitors. 

Then, Pease employed BirdWeather, which makes sophisticated recording devices with Wi-Fi, GPS and sensors connected to the BirdNET database and its machine learning from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Chemnitz University of Technology. BirdWeather’s dashboard provided a better visualization of what bird species were in the area.

“We started seeing — in real time — which birds were at Touch of Nature, right in our Agriculture Building,” he said. “I realized that I stumbled upon something really important for wildlife research. All of a sudden, we not only know where species are but how they are behaving 24/7. 

“For decades, we have been steadily improving our ability to predict where species are and how many individuals there are. But BirdWeather unlocked behavioral research at large geographic and time scales. We could start to learn — at a scale never before — how birds were responding behaviorally to human forces.”

As trail cameras had revealed around-the-clock mammal behavior about 25 years ago, BirdWeather, along with BirdNET, could now do for birds.

“We are just now entering the golden age of avian conservation, all through machine learning and participatory science,” said Pease, who has led several citizen-science projects to assess wildlife on the SIU campus and to record sounds of nature during the April 8, 2024, eclipse.

With BirdNET, Pease and Gilbert used machine learning to convert bird vocalizations to visualizations called spectrograms, with a distinct visual pattern for each bird species. BirdNET then cross-checked the pattern with spectrograms of more than 6,000 species in its database.

“The machine learning algorithm makes it possible to analyze 24/7 audio recordings, which would otherwise take lifetimes to listen to,” Pease said. “Neil and I are the first, to our knowledge, to apply and analyze the BirdWeather data in this way. We have many research options, but first we focused on how birds are responding to global light pollution, which is a growing concern for humans and wildlife alike.”

Pease noted that birds staying up an hour past their normal bedtimes was an average. Actual times varied by species. 

“The next question was: why?” Pease said. “What is driving this response by birds? We had the idea that maybe it was a species’ photoreceptor sensitivity – their eyesight. And this turned out to be a key factor. Species with large eyes relative to their body size had a disproportionately stronger response to artificial light at night. They were more sensitive to light at night than species with small eyes.”

The final question – is the impact positive, negative or neutral – will require further study. Birds might have more time to forage for food and to mate, but an hour less sleep could be detrimental to their health.

“This is citizen-science at its best,” Pease said. “A technology designed for people to check out the species in their own backyards has acquired an unprecedented amount of data since 2021 – over 1.4 billion vocalizations from more than 11,000 locations across the globe. Neil and I are determined to continue to apply the technology for wildlife conservation.”

Tim Crosby contributed to this story.
 

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adv9472 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Light pollution prolongs avian activity

Article Publication Date

21-Aug-2025

Graphic provided by Brent Pease




Brent Pease, assistant professor in Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s School of Forestry and Horticulture, displays a BirdWeather PUC, a weatherproof device with microphones, Wi-Fi, GPS, environmental sensors and AI.

Credit
Southern Illinois University Carbondale photo by Russell Bailey