Thursday, May 21, 2026

Climate warming: a paleoclimatic perspective

New research shows, for the first time, an unprecedented and significant warming of equatorial Atlantic upper intermediate waters during the mid- to late Holocene

Geological Society of America

Boulder, Colo., USA: Against the backdrop of a rapidly warming climate, the need to better understand the mechanisms governing excess heat uptake and transfer into the deep ocean has become critically important. Between 1970 and 2020, approximately 89% of the excess heat arising from the accelerated increase in greenhouse gas emissions was absorbed by the oceans. Instrumental records and climate simulations indicate that subtropical and extratropical wind-driven ocean circulation plays a critical role in the uptake and transfer of excess heat into the ocean interior. However, evaluating the statistical significance of these observations is hindered by the short duration of instrumental records and the influence of natural climate variability.

Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate, provides an important perspective for understanding long-term climate response and ocean dynamics that cannot be gleaned from short term observations. Using a marine sediment sequence from the equatorial Atlantic, Syee Weldeab of the University of California Santa Barbara reconstructed the temperature history of intermediate waters at a depth of 800 m over the last 11,000 years. The temperature record reveals a previously unrecognized, abrupt 5°C warming that began approximately 5,700 years ago and reached a peak warming 2,500 years ago. Remarkably, this outstanding warming at 800 m depth is not mirrored by changes in the overlying tropical sea surface temperatures, indicating an extratropical origin of the warming.

The timing of the subsurface warming coincides with major ocean–atmosphere circulation changes in the Southern Hemisphere. These changes were likely driven by increased solar insolation during the austral summer and include a poleward shift and intensification of the Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds.

One important physical consequence of this wind strengthening is enhanced subduction of relatively warm surface waters equatorward of the zone of maximum wind stress, allowing these waters to descend into subsurface depths and propagate toward the tropical ocean interior. Weldeab proposes that the pronounced warming observed in the equatorial Atlantic intermediate waters is linked to these Southern Hemisphere ocean–atmosphere circulation changes, highlighting a mechanism by which high-latitude climate forcing can influence tropical subsurface ocean temperatures on centennial-to-millennial time scales.

The amount and persistence of equatorial warming at intermediate depth indicate a robust heat-transfer mechanism and underscore the capacity of the ocean to absorb and store large amounts of heat. The findings of this study provide an important paleoclimatic perspective on ongoing global warming, as the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds continue to shift poleward and strengthen, with important implications for future ocean heat uptake and interior-ocean warming.

CITATION: Weldeab, S., 2026, Large mid to late Holocene warming of equatorial Atlantic intermediate waters: The role of the southern branch of the Meridional Overturning Circulation: Geology, v. 54, no. 6, p. 733–736, https://doi.org/10.1130/G54520.1

About the Geological Society of America

The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a global professional society with more than 18,000 members across over 100 countries. As a leading voice for the geosciences, GSA advances the understanding of Earth's dynamic processes and fosters collaboration among scientists, educators, and policymakers. GSA publishes Geology, the top-ranked “geology” journal, along with a diverse portfolio of scholarly journals, books, and conference proceedings—several of which rank among Amazon’s top 100 best-selling geology titles.

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Journal

Geology

DOI

10.1130/G54520.1

Article Title

Large mid- to late Holocene warming of equatorial Atlantic intermediate waters: The role of the southern branch of the Meridional Overturning Circulation

Article Publication Date

8-May-2026

Nearly 60% of college students with a psychosis diagnosis are not receiving the recommended mental health treatment

Although the majority of college students sought and received therapy or counseling in the past 12 months, less than 40 percent received the recommended combination of therapy/counseling and antipsychotic medication.

Boston University School of Public Health

Despite a low overall prevalence of psychosis in the United States, affecting three percent of the population, this condition is a serious public health concern because people often delay seeking care for an average of 74 weeks from the time symptoms begin. As psychosis tends to emerge in early adulthood, it’s important to understand the reasons why young adults who experience psychosis seek—or do not seek—mental health treatment.

A new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researcher examined the perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes that influenced college students’ with a diagnosis of psychosis to seek help for their mental health and found that while a majority of these students believed they needed mental health treatment, 60 percent of students did not meet current recommended guidelines for combined antipsychotic medication and therapy.

Published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, the study found that nearly 8 in 10 surveyed college students with psychosis reported needing mental health support. While 8 in 10 students did seek therapy or counseling within the past 12 months, only 4 in 10 students reported taking antipsychotic medication.

“This high identified need for help but low utilization of services indicates potential barriers to accessing this care,” says study lead and corresponding author Clara Godoy-Henderson, a PhD student in health services and policy research at BUSPH. “Early intervention and access to services such as therapy and medication in this population are important because it improves outcomes related to overall quality of life, school involvement, employment, symptom severity, and relapse rate.”

The study is among the largest to assess the use of antipsychotic medication, therapy/counseling, and informal support among college students with psychosis. As the average age of onset of psychosis is about 20 years old, understanding college students’ perceptions and behaviors around treating this condition can help identify opportunities for earlier interventions that could improve psychosis outcomes.

For the study, Godoy-Henderson and colleagues at BUSPH and the University of Minnesota analyzed national survey data from the Healthy Minds Study, the nation’s largest survey of student mental health, conducted by the Healthy Minds Network. The researchers examined responses from 2,819 college students with a diagnosis of psychosis, provided between 2015-2024, about their 12-month history with therapy/counseling and antipsychotic medication, as well as whether informal support from various groups around them (friends, loved ones, roommates, campus staff, religious counselors, or support groups) motivated them to seek or utilize these services.

Overall, the majority of students—nearly 60 percent—believed that they needed help for their psychosis condition. Students who did not believe they needed mental health help—or who believed that therapy/counseling and medication would not be helpful in treating their condition—were less likely to seek and receive these services. Still, the high identified need for help, but low utilization of antipsychotic medication, may indicate that students are encountering barriers to care, such as stigma—an issue that is also the focus of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Month, an awareness campaign held each May by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

The findings also suggested that college students who believed they needed mental health treatment were more likely to have received informal support from health professionals or friends, and were more likely to take antipsychotic medication and/or receive therapy/counseling if they were encouraged—versus being pressured or forced to seek help, as is often the case when patients can be institutionalized for their mental health.

"Support systems play a crucial role in identifying early psychosis symptoms and help navigate mental health services, which may be an important factor in treatment initiation,” says Godoy-Henderson. “However, future research should examine the long-term outcomes of individuals who are encouraged by their support systems to seek help for their mental health versus being mandated to treatment.”

Future research should also aim “to better understand the barriers to antipsychotic medication to improve poor outcomes, such as delayed care, and high relapse rates in individuals with psychosis,” she says.

The study’s senior author is Dr. Sarah Lipson, associate professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH and a principal investigator of the Healthy Minds Network.

About Boston University School of Public Health

Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top ten ranked schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.

Journal

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

DOI

10.1007/s00127-026-03102-7#Sec13

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Mental health help-seeking by US college students with a diagnosis of psychosis

Healthcare utilization disruptions continue in post-COVID China

Researchers identify trends in healthcare access and use that should inform future pandemic policies

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

SEATTLE – May 20, 2026 – A PLOS Medicine analysis led by Fred Hutch Cancer Center researchers quantified the enduring impact that China’s health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic had on overall healthcare utilization. As the first country to report COVID-19 cases and implement infection control measures, and among the last to lift such policies, China’s experience presented a unique opportunity to study the relationship between public health measures and healthcare access.

Based on publicly available aggregate data from all hospitals in China, the researchers discovered substantial, long-term declines in outpatient clinic visits (7%, or 1.2 billion) and hospitalizations (13%, or 141 million) compared to expected levels from 2020 to 2024 in China. Although China’s stringent public health policy, Dynamic Zero-Covid, was lifted in late 2022, the study found that as of April 2024, outpatient clinic visits did not rebound to expected levels in 65% of China’s regions and hospitalizations remained below expected levels in 74% of the country’s regions.

“This study is part of a broader line of research that examines how COVID-19 pandemic measures affected many aspects of health, from access to cancer clinical trials in the U.S. to access to cancer healthcare and excess all-cause mortality in China,” said Hong Xiao, PhD, staff scientist in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutch and first author of the study. “Understanding the extent to which COVID-19 policies have shaped health, collectively, provides importance guidance on how to improve health systems.”

Regional disparities in access

Xiao and collaborators observed regional disparities in healthcare utilization, with the most significant and long-term impact observed in China’s rural and less-developed regions. Although urban areas such as Shanghai and Beijing experienced the largest absolute reductions in healthcare utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest relative reductions in access were found in less developed regions.

“Similar to the U.S., rural communities in China experienced a disproportionate lack of access to healthcare associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, especially reduced access to higher-quality and specialized care due to the need to travel long distances,” noted Joseph Unger, PhD, a health services researcher and biostatistician at Fred Hutch and study senior author. “This analysis helps to further clarify the durable impact the COVID-19 pandemic had across countries.”

The researchers pointed out that the healthcare data used in this study was available at the aggregate level and did not include demographic data. Therefore, this study doesn’t provide information about potential disparities across socioeconomic groups or based on social determinants of health.

Policy lessons for the next pandemic

Healthcare utilization following pandemics and outbreaks has varied globally. After the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, healthcare utilization in Liberia rebounded to expected levels within a year, while in Guinea, recovery was slower. Similarly, after the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, inpatient volumes in Japan recovered more slowly than was observed in California, and in South Korea, healthcare use rebounded quickly to pre-pandemic levels.

Based on the study findings, the researchers recommended that future preparedness efforts should include surge capacity planning, alternative care delivery models like telemedicine and targeted public communication. Additionally, specific policies should be developed to improve healthcare access and utilization in regions and local health systems that already experience disparities.

“As we rebuild health systems to be more resilient in the face of future challenges, we clearly need to focus on regions where we already see that healthcare infrastructure is underdeveloped and healthcare access is inequitable,” said Xaio. “While this study focused on China’s experience, the lessons are invaluable to health policymakers globally: we must thoughtfully balance public health interventions with essential healthcare services.”

About the study

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Public Health Sciences Division of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center (to JMU) and “2022 Zhejiang Province High-Level Talent Training Program - Medical Rising Star Fund Support” (to YC). The funders had no other role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Media Contact:
Claire Hudson
crhudson@fredhutch.org
206-667-2210

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center unites individualized care and advanced research to provide the latest cancer treatment options while accelerating discoveries that prevent, treat and cure cancer and infectious diseases worldwide.

Based in Seattle, Fred Hutch is an independent, nonprofit organization and the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in Washington. We have earned a global reputation for our track record of discoveries in cancer, infectious disease and basic research, including important advances in bone marrow transplantation, immunotherapy, HIV/AIDS prevention and COVID-19 vaccines. Fred Hutch operates eight clinical care sites that provide medical oncology, infusion, radiation, proton therapy and related services. Fred Hutch also serves as UW Medicine’s cancer program.

Journal

PLOS Medicine

DOI

10.1371/journal.pmed.1004672

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Policy stringency during the COVID-19 pandemic and healthcare services utilization in China: An interrupted time-series analysis

Cows recognize a familiar human face

Cows stared longer at new faces, and could match a familiar person’s voice with their image

PLOS

Cows visually discriminate and cross-modally recognise familiar and unfamiliar human faces in videos — image:
Experimental setup for visual preference and cross-modal tests. The cow was positioned centrally between two screens. Each screen showed a video of a person’s face: one familiar and one unfamiliar to the cow. During cross-modal tests, a speaker placed between the screens played the voice of one of the two individuals. Cameras recorded the cow’s behavioral responses throughout the test.
view more
Credit: Amichaud et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Cows show visual preference for new human faces over a familiar one and can match a known handler’s voice to their face, according to a study published May 20, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Océane Amichaud of INRAE in Nouzilly, France, and colleagues.

Domestic species such as cows (Bos taurus taurus) live in close contact with humans, and are also highly social animals. To better understand whether cows could discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar faces, the authors of the study collected data from 32 Prim’ Holstein cows. They played the cows muted videos of familiar and unfamiliar male faces, and measured how long the animals gazed at them. They looked for cross-modal recognition, playing videos of familiar and unfamiliar faces while broadcasting audio corresponding to one of the two men, with each man saying an identical sentence. They also measured the animals’ heart rates as they watched the videos to see if the cows responded emotionally.

The bovines were uncowed by silent videos, and stared longer at videos of unfamiliar people, showing that they could distinguish between a known and unknown face. When the videos were paired with sound, the animals spent more time staring at the video when the voice matched the face, showing the cows could pair a face with the voice they herd. But based on their heart rates, none of the familiar or unfamiliar faces or voices seemed to affect the cows’ emotional response.

While the authors note that a video and sound recording are not a full interaction with a human, the results suggest that cows can tell the difference between familiar and unfamiliar people, and that they can identify people by face and voice. The authors suggest that more studies should example how cows interact with specific people, to better understand the animals and provide for their welfare.

The authors add: “In this study, using visual preference and cross-modal tests, we showed that cows are able to process human faces presented in 2D on videos and to associate familiar and unfamiliar faces with the corresponding voices by integrating multiple sensory modalities.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4u3dWLw

Citation: Amichaud O, Lemarchand J, Cornilleau F, Jardat P, Ferreira VHB, Calandreau L, et al. (2026) Cows visually discriminate and cross-modally recognise familiar and unfamiliar human faces in videos. PLoS One 21(5): e0329529. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329529

Author countries: France.

Funding: This study was funded by the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0329529

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Cows visually discriminate and cross-modally recognise familiar and unfamiliar human faces in videos

Article Publication Date

20-May-2026

Thousands of beekeepers submit honey to benefit environmental science in the UK

National Honey Monitoring Scheme provides a massive archive of bee-derived data

PLOS

Using honeybees for national scale long-term eDNA biomonitoring — image:
Honeybees storing honey on a comb within their hive.
view more
Credit: Ben Woodcock, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Beekeepers and their honeybees can be invaluable participants in environmental surveys, according to a study published May 20, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Jennifer Shelton of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and colleagues.

Honeybees can be extremely useful collectors of environmental data, since they gather plant materials from a wide area and amass it in a convenient central location. However, traditional methods of collecting these data are costly and time-consuming and have only been successful at relatively small scales.

In this study, Shelton and colleagues present the results of the UK National Honey Monitoring Scheme (NHMS), which enlisted the volunteer assistance of over 3,500 beekeepers across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland between 2018 and 2025. These citizen scientists submitted 5,789 samples of honey from their hives, and researchers extracted DNA from pollen grains within the honey to identify which plants the bees were visiting. These analyses identified over 800 species of plants utilized by honeybees and pinpointed the most commonly visited species, including cultivated canola, clovers, and invasive Himalayan balsam.

This study serves as a proof-of-concept of the effectiveness of honeybees for gathering environmental data, and as a model of how to establish and maintain an engaged community of citizen scientists. Beekeepers were involved in the project design, kept up to date through newsletters, and provided with the DNA results from their honey samples.

The current NHMS data includes biases both geographically, with most samples coming from the South of England, and temporally, with most samples being collected in early or late summer. But as the archive grows, these data could be used to track pollinator activity, the spread of invasive plants, or the environmental impacts of pollutants and diseases.

The authors add: “Monitoring environmental change has always been hard at national scales, with the sheer size of nations making the resources to do this of huge costs. Working with beekeepers across the UK, we show the potential of the National Honey Monitoring Scheme and its use of environmental DNA approaches to monitor changes in the wild plants, as well as its role as a resource for understanding new risks from pesticides, and disease risks that these critical pollinators are exposed to.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4dblW61

Citation: Shelton JMG, Woodcock BA, Newbold L, Oliver A, Savage J, Grove E, et al. (2026) Using honeybees for national scale long-term eDNA biomonitoring. PLoS One 21(5): e0347485. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347485

Author countries: UK

Funding: This research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) joint research programs NE/N018125/1 LTS-M ASSIST—Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems (www.assist.ceh.ac.uk) and NE/W005050/1 AgZero+: Towards sustainable, climate-neutral farming.