Ceasefires are agreements by which one or more parties to a conflict agree to stop hostilities. Although they usually do not solve the problems underlying a conflict, they are always an important step towards ending civil wars.

But why do parties to a conflict decide to lay down their arms in the first place? And when are they more likely to do so? To answer these questions, researchers from the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zürich, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway and Uppsala University in Sweden have created the external pagefirst comprehensive dataset on ceasefires in all civil wars between 1989 and 2020call_made. They examined 2,202 agreements concluded during 109 civil conflicts across 66 countries.

Their study, published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, shows that the reasons for ceasefires in civil wars are more multifaceted than previously thought and that there are a number of conditions that favour them. The authors focus on intra-​, rather than inter-​state wars, as the later were the exception during the period under review.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221128300

Microplastics are not just tiny particles that can be ingested, they can also carry viruses, a University of Queensland study has revealed.

The study, led by Associate Prof Jianhua Guo and Dr Ji Lu from UQ’s Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB), investigated if microplastics have the ability to harbour viruses, including the one found inside E. coli bacteria.

“We often hear about the human and environmental harm caused by microplastics in water, but there is little known about whether the tiny microplastic particles can carry viruses,” Dr Guo said.

“What we found is that viruses can hitchhike on microplastics and prolong their infectivity, which means there could be an increased risk of virus transmission throughout waterways and the environment.”

Dr Lu said they used the E. coli bacteriophage in the study, which is a virus that infects and replicates within the bacteria itself and is not harmful to humans.

“By testing polystyrene particles of varying sizes, we found that more than 98 per cent of the virus we used was found on the microplastic, and over half of the viruses could still be detected 10 days later – much longer than if the virus particles were free-floating in the water,” Dr Lu said.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135422010612?via%3Dihub

New research from the University of Vermont finds the most viewed content on TikTok relating to food, nutrition and weight perpetuates a toxic diet culture among teens and young adults and that expert voices are largely missing from the conversation.

Published today in PLOS One, the study found weight-normative messaging, the idea that weight is the most important measure of a person’s health, largely predominates on TikTok with the most popular videos glorifying weight loss and positioning food as a means to achieve health and thinness. The findings are particularly concerning given existing research indicating social media usage in adolescents and young adults is associated with disordered eating and negative body image.

“Each day, millions of teens and young adults are being fed content on TikTok that paints a very unrealistic and inaccurate picture of food, nutrition and health,” said senior researcher Lizzy Pope, associate professor and director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics at UVM. “Getting stuck in weight loss TikTok can be a really tough environment, especially for the main users of the platform, which are young people."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267997

For millennia, communities throughout North America have adapted to the ebb and flow of waterways. Water infrastructure provides reservoirs for times of drought and flood control for instances of deluge.

Drought is a way of life in some parts of the United States, said Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “What you worry about is whether you’re picking up a trend.” Long-term shifts in streamflow could signal a fundamental change in climate that scientists believe the country’s infrastructure is not designed to endure.

Unfortunately, such a trend is emerging. In the first comprehensive picture of streamflow in the United States, scientists reported that streams in the South and West have gotten drier in the past 70 years. Though unsurprising to many, the result is worrisome. The finding was published in the journal Water Resources Research.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022WR031930

“The results indicate that accumulating vigorous activity in short bouts across the week can help us live longer,” said study author Dr. Matthew N. Ahmadi of the University of Sydney, Australia. “Given that lack of time is the most commonly reported barrier to regular physical activity, accruing small amounts sporadically during the day may be a particularly attractive option for busy people.”

A second study, also published today in EHJ, found that for a given amount of physical activity, increasing the intensity was associated with a reduced likelihood of cardiovascular disease.2 “Our study shows that it’s not just the amount of activity, but also the intensity, that is important for cardiovascular health,” said study author Dr. Paddy C. Dempsey of the University of Leicester and University of Cambridge, UK, and the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia.

Both studies included adults aged 40 to 69 years from the UK Biobank. Participants wore an activity tracker on their wrist for seven consecutive days. This is an objective way to measure motion, and particularly sporadic activity of different intensities during the day.

The first study enrolled 71,893 adults without cardiovascular disease or cancer. The median age was 62.5 years and 56% were women. The investigators measured the total amount of weekly vigorous activity and the frequency of bouts lasting two minutes or less. Participants were followed for an average of 6.9 years. The investigators analysed the associations of volume and frequency of vigorous activity with death (all-cause, cardiovascular disease and cancer) and incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer after excluding events occurring in the first year

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/969038#:~:text=Sophia%20Antipolis%2C%2028%20October%202022,Society%20of%20Cardiology%20(ESC).

A recently released set of topography maps provides new evidence for an ancient northern ocean on Mars. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today.

“What immediately comes to mind as one the most significant points here is that the existence of an ocean of this size means a higher potential for life,” said Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State and lead author on the study recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. “It also tells us about the ancient climate and its evolution. Based on these findings, we know there had to have been a period when it was warm enough and the atmosphere was thick enough to support this much liquid water at one time.”

There has long been debate in the scientific community about whether Mars had an ocean in its low-elevation northern hemisphere, Cardenas explained. Using topography data, the research team was able to show definitive evidence of a roughly 3.5-billion-year-old shoreline with substantial sedimentary accumulation, at least 900 meters thick, that covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometers.

“The big, novel thing that we did in this paper was think about Mars in terms of its stratigraphy and its sedimentary record,” Cardenas said. “On Earth, we chart the history of waterways by looking at sediment that is deposited over time. We call that stratigraphy, the idea that water transports sediment and you can measure the changes on Earth by understanding the way that sediment piles up. That’s what we’ve done here — but it’s Mars.”

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2022JE007390

An international coalition of researchers says in a report published today that the Earth’s vital signs have worsened to the point that “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”

The report, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022,” published in the journal BioScience, notes that 16 of 35 planetary vital signs the authors use to track climate change are at record extremes.

The report’s authors share new data illustrating increasing frequency of extreme heat events, rising global tree cover loss because of fires, and a greater prevalence of the mosquito-borne dengue virus.

They also note large increases in fossil fuel energy consumption following COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns – despite an upswing in commitments for fossil fuel divestment – and a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 418 parts per million, the highest on record.

William Ripple, a distinguished professor in the OSU College of Forestry, and postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf are the lead authors of the report, and 10 other U.S. and global scientists are co-authors. The report follows by five years the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice” published by Ripple in in BioScience and co-signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biac083/6764747

It’s the vitamin that we get from the sun, yet despite its ample availability, one in three Australian adults still suffer from mild, moderate or severe vitamin D deficiency.

Now, new research from the University of South Australia gives strong evidence that vitamin D deficiency is associated with premature death, prompting calls for people to follow healthy vitamin D level guidelines.

Published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the study found that the more severe the vitamin D deficiency, the greater the risk of mortality.

Vitamin D is an important nutrient that helps maintain good health and keep our bones and muscles strong and healthy.

First author and UniSA PhD candidate, Josh Sutherland, says while vitamin D has been connected with mortality, it has been challenging to establish causal effects.

“While severe vitamin D deficiency is rarer in Australia than elsewhere in the world, it can still affect those who have health vulnerabilities, the elderly, and those who do not acquire enough vitamin D from healthy sun exposure and dietary sources,” Sutherland says

https://www.newswise.com/articles/vitamin-d-deficiency-linked-to-premature-death