Foundation For Statistical Computing News Today

Author summary Why was this study done? Tropical cyclones (TCs), among the most destructive and costliest climate extreme events, are expected to be more intense due to climate change. Despite the widely acknowledged hazards, a consistent and quantitative assessment of the mortality risks of TC across countries is lacking. Such quantitative and comparable evidence across countries is urgently required to better understand the health effects and respond to the potentially increasing hazards. No...

Judith Leblanc and co-workers report a cluster-randomized trial evaluating intensive screening for SARS-CoV-2 infection in emergency departments.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D), a major cause of worldwide morbidity and mortality, is characterized by dysfunction of insulin-producing pancreatic islet β cells1,2. T2D genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified hundreds of signals in non-coding and β cell regulatory genomic regions, but deciphering their biological mechanisms remains challenging3–5. Here, to identify early disease-driving events, we performed traditional and multiplexed pancreatic tissue imaging, so...

Leveraging data from 1715 children in the MAL-ED birth cohort study, Stephanie A Brennhofer and colleagues model the expected reduction in diarrhea episodes, antibiotic use, and bystander pathogen exposure to antibiotics through the administration of Shigella vaccines.

Deliberate control of the breath (breathwork) has recently received an unprecedented surge in public interest and breathing techniques have therapeutic potential to improve mental health. Our meta-analysis primarily aimed to evaluate the efficacy of breathwork through examining whether, and to what extent, breathwork interventions were associated with lower levels of self-reported/subjective stress compared to non-breathwork controls. We searched PsycInfo, PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, Web of Scienc...

In Ethiopia, pesticides are widely used in vegetable production. However, if used incorrectly they may harm consumers of vegetables contaminated with pesticide residues, as well as producers handling the pesticides and lead to ecological damage. We performed a cross-sectional survey to assess pesticide residues level in vegetables produced in central and eastern Ethiopia. A total of 232 vegetable samples (91 tomatoes, 106 cabbages and 35 Swiss chard) were collected from fields and retail markets...

The activity of marine microorganisms depends on community composition, yet, in some oceans, little is known about the environmental and ecological processes that structure their distribution. The objective of this study was to test the effect of geographic distance and environmental parameters on prokaryotic community structure in the Southern Ocean (SO). We described the total (16S rRNA gene) and the active fraction (16S rRNA-based) of surface microbial communities over a ~6.500 km longitudina...

Food security and livelihoods among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are often constrained by limited farm resource endowment. It can be difficult to improve resource endowment given barriers such as low land availability and the unaffordability of agricultural inputs, so here we ask whether farmers can gain a better return on their resources through optimising their farm strategy in terms of the composition and/or diversity of crop and livestock species raised. Our survey of 1133 small...

In this article, statistician Bruno Wiesend reports on a scientific controversy about a study on the "Influence of intelligence and practice on the development of skills". The author considers the results of the study to be wrong due to methodological errors. | Photo: Pixabay

SARS-CoV-2 variants with multiple spike mutations enable increased transmission and antibody resistance. Here, we combine cryo-EM, binding and computational analyses to study variant spikes, including one that was involved in transmission between minks and humans, and others that originated and spread in human populations. All variants showed increased ACE2 receptor binding and increased propensity for RBD up states. While adaptation to mink resulted in spike destabilization, the B.1.1.7 (UK) sp...