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• 26 Mar 2024
• Research & Ideas

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

Could artificial intelligence systems eventually perform surgeries or fly planes? First, AI will have to learn to navigate shifting conditions as well as people do. Julian De Freitas and colleagues pit humans against machines in a video game to study AI's current limits and mine insights for the real world.

• 12 Mar 2024

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

Universities tend to evaluate professors based on their research output, but does that measure reflect the realities of higher ed? A study of 4,300 professors by Kyle Myers, Karim Lakhani, and colleagues probes the time demands, risk appetite, and compensation of faculty.

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

Aggressive cost cutting and rocky leadership changes have eroded the culture at Boeing, a company once admired for its engineering rigor, says Bill George. What will it take to repair the reputational damage wrought by years of crises involving its 737 MAX?

• 19 Sep 2023

What Chandrayaan-3 Says About India's Entrepreneurial Approach to Space

India reached an unexplored part of the moon despite its limited R&D funding compared with NASA and SpaceX. Tarun Khanna discusses the significance of the landing, and the country's advancements in data and digital technology.

• 28 Mar 2023

The FDA’s Speedy Drug Approvals Are Safe: A Win-Win for Patients and Pharma Innovation

Expediting so-called breakthrough therapies has saved millions of dollars in research time without compromising drug safety or efficacy, says research by Ariel Stern, Amitabh Chandra, and colleagues. Could policymakers harness the approach to bring life-saving treatments to the market faster?

• 16 Mar 2023

Why Business Travel Still Matters in a Zoom World

Meeting in person can make all the difference for colleagues from different time zones or cultural backgrounds. A study by Prithwiraj Choudhury traces flight patterns among 5,000 airports around the world to show how business travel propels innovation.

• 13 Apr 2021
• Working Paper Summaries

Population Interference in Panel Experiments

In panel experiments, units are exposed to different interventions over time. This article introduces a unifying framework for studying panel experiments with population interference, in which a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit's outcome. Findings have implications for fields as diverse as education, economics, and public health.

• 22 Feb 2021

Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics

Research and development (R&D) by pharmaceutical firms focuses disproportionately on medical conditions afflicting the elderly. The proportion of R&D spending targeting older age groups is increasing over time. Even though these investments in R&D prolong life expectancy and improve quality of life, they have little effect on measured productivity and output growth.

• 15 Dec 2020

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

The approach used by most economists to check academic research results is flawed for policymaking and evaluation. The authors propose an alternative method for designing economic policy analyses that might be applied to a wide range of economic policies.

• 30 Nov 2020

Short-Termism, Shareholder Payouts, and Investment in the EU

Shareholder-driven “short-termism,” as evidenced by increasing payouts to shareholders, is said to impede long-term investment in EU public firms. But a deep dive into the data reveals a different story.

• 22 Oct 2020

Estimating Causal Effects in the Presence of Partial Interference Using Multivariate Bayesian Structural Time Series Models

A case study of an Italian supermarket introducing a new pricing policy—in which it reduced prices on some brands—offers managers a new approach to reduce uncertainty. The approach is flexible and can be applied to different business problems.

• 06 Oct 2020

Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments

This paper presents a framework for managers to design and run switchback experiments.

• 28 Sep 2020

What Can Economics Say About Alzheimer's Disease?

This essay discusses the role of market frictions and "missing medicines" in drug innovation and highlights how frameworks and toolkits of economists can help our understanding of the determinants and effects of Alzheimer's disease on health.

• 24 Aug 2020

When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects

Evaluators of early-stage scientific proposals tend to systematically focus on the weaknesses of proposed work rather than its strengths, according to evidence from two field experiments.

• 10 Aug 2020

COVID's Surprising Toll on Careers of Women Scientists

Women scientists and those with young children are paying a steep career price in the pandemic, according to new research by Karim Lakhani, Kyle Myers, and colleagues. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 02 Aug 2020
• What Do You Think?

Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?

SUMMING UP: Digital experimentation is gaining momentum as an everyday habit in many organizations, especially those in high tech, say James Heskett's readers. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 27 Jul 2020

Gender Inequality in Research Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Analysis of data from the largest open-access repositories for social science in the world finds that female researchers’ productivity significantly dropped relative to that of male researchers as a result of the lockdown in the United States.

• 08 Jul 2020

Inventing the Endless Frontier: The Effects of the World War II Research Effort on Post-War Innovation

Investments made in World War II by the United States Office of Scientific Research and Development powered decades of subsequent innovation and the take-off of regional technology hubs around the country.

• 06 Apr 2020

A General Theory of Identification

Statistical inference teaches us how to learn from data, whereas identification analysis explains what we can learn from it. This paper proposes a simple unifying theory of identification, encouraging practitioners to spend more time thinking about what they can estimate from the data and assumptions before trying to estimate it.

• 23 Mar 2020

The Effects of Hierarchy on Learning and Performance in Business Experimentation

Do senior managers help or hurt business experiments? Analyzing a dataset of more than 6,300 experiments on the A/B/n testing platform Optimizely, this study suggests that involving senior executives in experimentation teams can have surprising consequences.

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Page 1 of 498

Understanding facilitators and barriers to COVID-19 vaccination in the Zimbabwean population: a qualitative analysis

Vaccines are effective biological interventions that reduce health burdens. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were concerns about varying levels of COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the Zimbabwean po...

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Covid-19 hotlines, helplines and call centers: a systematic review of characteristics, challenges and lessons learned

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a number of hotlines/helplines/call centers was implemented to provide remote services and support public health. The objective of this study was to investigate the characteristic...

Supportive and non-supportive social experiences following suicide loss: a qualitative study

Suicide bereavement entails profound social stressors, including stigma and communication barriers, which can impair social support for suicide loss survivors (SLS). Despite recognized benefits of empathetic i...

Vitamin A supplementation coverage and associated factors for children aged 6 to 59 months in integrated and campaign-based delivery systems in four sub-Saharan African countries

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a leading contributor to the poor health and nutrition of young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Funding constraints are compelling many countries to shift from longstanding campai...

Mortality burden of cardiovascular disease attributable to ambient PM 2.5 exposure in Portugal, 2011 to 2021

Exposure to high levels of environmental air pollution causes several health outcomes and has been associated with increased mortality, premature mortality, and morbidity. Ambient exposure to PM 2.5 is currently c...

Thriving from work questionnaire: Spanish translation and validation

Thriving from Work is a construct that has been highlighted as an important integrative positive worker well-being indicator that can be used in both research and practice. Recent public discourse emphasizes t...

Relative and absolute inequalities in cerebrovascular disease mortality rates: exploring the influence of socioeconomic status and urbanization levels in Taiwan

Limited evidence exists regarding the socioeconomic inequalities in cerebrovascular disease (CBD) mortality at different urbanization levels. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess the socioeconomic ine...

Trends in HIV prevalence and risk factors among men who have sex with men in Mozambique: implications for targeted interventions and public health strategies

Men who have sex with Men (MSM) are known to contribute to increased HIV prevalence as an integral part of key populations with high vulnerability to HIV/AIDS due to their sexual behaviours. Mozambique conduct...

The effect of retirement on physical and mental health in China: a nonparametric fuzzy regression discontinuity study

With the rapid aging of the domestic population, China has a strong incentive to increase the statutory retirement age. How retirement affects the health of the elderly is crucial to this policymaking. The hea...

Randomised pilot and feasibility trial of a group intervention for men who perpetrate intimate partner violence against women

There is a need for robust evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of domestic abuse perpetrator programmes in reducing abusive behaviour and improving wellbeing for victim/survivors. While any ra...

Does health literacy mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and health related outcomes in the Belgian adult population?

Health literacy (HL) has been put forward as a potential mediator through which socioeconomic status (SES) affects health. This study explores whether HL mediates the relation between SES and a selection of he...

Risk factors for low back pain in the Chinese population: a systematic review and meta-analysis

In China, the world’s largest developing country, low back pain (LBP) is a common public health issue affecting workability. This meta-analysis aimed to systematically assess the risk factors of LBP in the Chi...

The risk of contact between visitors and Borrelia burgdorferi -infected ticks is associated with fine-scale landscape features in a southeastern Canadian nature park

Infectious diseases are emerging across temperate regions of the world, and, for some, links have been made between landscapes and emergence dynamics. For tick-borne diseases, public parks may be important exp...

The prevalence of preterm and low birth weight infants among migrant women in the Pearl River Delta region, China: a population-based birth cohort study

The existing literature evaluating the association between neonatal morbidity and migrant status presents contradictory results. The purpose of this study was to compare the risk of preterm birth (PTB) and low...

Health and health behaviours in adolescence as predictors of education and socioeconomic status in adulthood – a longitudinal study

The positive association of health with education level and socioeconomic status (SES) is well-established. Two theoretical frameworks have been delineated to understand main mechanisms leading to socioeconomi...

Asbestos ban policies and mesothelioma mortality in Greece

Malignant mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that mostly affects the pleura and has a strong link to asbestos exposure. Greece banned the use of asbestos in 2005, however, the public was already aware of th...

Examining the association between perceived stigma, its correlates, and restrictions in participation among persons with disabilities in Nepal: a cross-sectional study

Disability stigma in low- and middle-income countries is one of the most persistent and complex barriers limiting persons with disabilities (PwDs) from enjoying their rights and opportunities. Perceived stigma...

A new neonatal BCG vaccination pathway in England: a mixed methods evaluation of its implementation

The introduction of a national evaluation of newborn screening for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) in England triggered a change to the selective Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination programme de...

Using propensity score matching analysis to compare between cardiometabolic risk factors and physical activity type in Korean adults: findings from a nationwide population-based survey

We aimed to assess the effects of different exercise modalities on cardiometabolic risk factors within a comprehensive, representative sample of the Korean population.

Changes in adolescents’ daily-life solitary experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic: an experience sampling study

Adolescent solitude was drastically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As solitude is crucial for adolescent development through its association with both positive and negative developmental outcomes, it is cr...

The impact of quality-adjusted life years on evaluating COVID-19 mitigation strategies: lessons from age-specific vaccination roll-out and variants of concern in Belgium (2020-2022)

When formulating and evaluating COVID-19 vaccination strategies, an emphasis has been placed on preventing severe disease that overburdens healthcare systems and leads to mortality. However, more conventional ...

Association between movement behavior patterns and cardiovascular risk among Chinese adults aged 40–75: a sex-specific latent class analysis

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major global health threat, particularly in China, contributing to over 40% of deaths. While sleep behaviors, sedentary behaviors, and physical activities are recognized as in...

Impact of home quarantine on physical fitness of school-aged children in Xi’an during COVID-19 lockdown: a cross-sectional study

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked unprecedented global challenges. This study intends to investigate changes in the physical fitness of students aged 6–22 during the COVID-19 pandemic and to a...

Uncovering the extent of dementia prevalence in Iran: a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis

Dementia is one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people worldwide. The formation of an aging population in Iran can be associated with societal problems, including age-related disor...

The good, the bad and the ugly – a Swedish qualitative interview study about the landscape of meaning-imbued, exercise-related physical pain, as experienced by ‘normal’ gym-users

The gym is a well-known place for health promoting or rehabilitating exercise whose availability to all is regarded significant for people’s personal health work and the public’s health. In this context, physi...

Prevalence of and factors associated with suboptimal glycemic control among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus attending public hospitals in the Greater Male’ Region, Maldives: a hospital-based cross-sectional study

Suboptimal glycemic control of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) which is defined as having HbA1c greater than 7% is a major public health problem in several countries, including the Maldives. The study aimed to...

Risk factors for smoking in adolescence: evidence from a cross-sectional survey in Switzerland

Cigarette smoking during adolescence is a major public health concern with far-reaching health implications. Adolescents who smoke are at an increased risk of developing long-term health problems and are more ...

Financial scarcity, psychological well-being and perceptions: an evaluation of the Nigerian currency redesign policy outcomes

The relationship between insufficient financial resources and psychological health has been extensively studied and established in various contexts. However, there remains uncertainty regarding the potential i...

The relationship between COVID-19 stress and test anxiety in art students: the chain mediating roles of intolerance of uncertainty and sleep quality

The global spread of COVID-19 has brought immense physiological and psychological distress to students, such as test anxiety and poor sleep quality. This study aims to explore the relationship between COVID-19...

The dynamic risk factors of cardiovascular disease among people living with HIV: a real-world data study

This study aims to investigate the incidence and dynamic risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) among people living with HIV (PLWH).

A machine learning screening model for identifying the risk of high-frequency hearing impairment in a general population

Hearing impairment (HI) has become a major public health issue in China. Currently, due to the limitations of primary health care, the gold standard for HI diagnosis (pure-tone hearing test) is not suitable fo...

Involuntary displacement and self-reported health in a cross-sectional survey of people experiencing homelessness in Denver, Colorado, 2018–2019

The number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the U.S. is increasing. Municipalities have responded with punitive responses such as involuntary displacement (i.e., encampment sweeps, move along...

The association between waist circumference and adult asthma attack using nationally representative samples

This study aims to explore the relationship between waist circumference and asthma attack in adults.

Socio-economic inequities in mental health problems and wellbeing among women working in the apparel and floriculture sectors: testing the mediating role of psychological capital, social support and tangible assets

It is still unknown whether the mechanisms proposed by the Reserve Capacity Model (RCM) explaining socio-economic health and wellbeing inequities in high income countries can be applied to low-income countries...

A scoping review of academic and grey literature on migrant health research conducted in Scotland

Migration to Scotland has increased since 2002 with an increase in European residents and participation in the Asylum dispersal scheme. Scotland has become more ethnically diverse, and 10% of the current popul...

Food diversity: its relation to children’s health and consequent economic burden

This study investigates the impact of low food diversity on the health status of children using the Dietary Diversity Score (DDS) and Dietary Serving Score (DSS) in a sub-district with the highest percentage o...

Is economic growth enough to propel rehabilitation expenditures? An empirical analysis of country panel data and policy implications

Rehabilitation is a set of services designed to increase functioning and improve wellbeing across the life course. Despite being a core part of Universal Health Coverage, rehabilitation services often receive ...

Social determinants of health and emergency department visits among older adults with multimorbidity: insight from 2010 to 2018 National Health Interview Survey

Multimorbidity is prevalent among older adults and is associated with adverse health outcomes, including high emergency department (ED) utilization. Social determinants of health (SDoH) are associated with man...

Development and validation of Malaysian one stop crisis center service quality instrument (OSCC-Qual) for domestic violence management

One Stop Crisis Center (OSCC) is a multi-sectorial center aimed to provide medical, social, legal, police and shelter services to survivors of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, sodomy and child abuse. A...

Comparing PrEP initiation rates by service delivery models among high risk adolescent boys and young men in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: findings from a population-based prospective study

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an HIV prevention strategy that can reduce the risk of HIV acquisition by more than 90% if taken consistently. Although South Africa has been implementing PrEP since 2016, in...

Assessment of the integrated disease surveillance and response system implementation in health zones at risk for viral hemorrhagic fever outbreaks in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, following a major Ebola outbreak, 2021

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) experienced its largest Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in 2018–2020. As a result of the outbreak, significant funding and international support were provided to Eastern...

Anthropometric failures and its predictors among under five children in Ethiopia: multilevel logistic regression model using 2019 Ethiopian demographic and health survey data

Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF) combines all three forms of anthropometric failures to assess undernutrition status of children. There is no study on CIAF to identify the real and severe form ...

1 plus 1 is more than 2: mental health problems, financial difficulties, and social exclusion in a cross-sectional study of 28,047 general-population adults

Mental health problems and financial difficulties each increase the risk of social exclusion. However, few large studies representing a broad age range have investigated the combined social effect of having bo...

Access to family planning services and associated factors among young people in Lira city northern Uganda

Access to family planning services among young people is crucial for reproductive health. This study explores the access and associated factors among young people in Lira City, Northern Uganda.

Exploring the practice of Iranian adolescent females during menstruation and related beliefs: a qualitative study

Menstruation is a natural occurrence that women experience during their reproductive years and may encounter many years throughout their lifespan. Many adolescent females lack accurate knowledge about menstrua...

Acceptability of Tele-mental Health Services Among Users: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Mental disorders are currently a global public health concern, particularly after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Mental health services gradually transitioned to teleservices, employing vari...

A large, multi-center survey assessing health, social support, literacy, and self-management resources in patients with heart failure

Most patients with heart failure (HF) have multimorbidity which may cause difficulties with self-management. Understanding the resources patients draw upon to effectively manage their health is fundamental to ...

Exploring information needs among family caregivers of children with intellectual disability in a rural area of South Africa: a qualitative study

Globally, families experience challenges caring for and raising children with intellectual disability (ID). Family caregivers in rural states are mostly known for lacking support resources, including informati...

Housing and health for people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds: findings from an Australian qualitative longitudinal study

For people from asylum-seeking and refugee backgrounds, housing and the re-establishment of home are key social determinants of health. Research highlights the inequities faced by asylum seekers and refugees i...

Living with type 1 diabetes and schooling among young people in Ghana: a truism of health selection, inadequate support, or artefactual explanation of educational inequalities?

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is mostly diagnosed among young people. Despite the evidence that T1DM is disruptive, and affects individuals’ health and cognitive ability, there is dearth of knowledge on the ...

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Yellowstone’s Wolves: A Debate Over Their Role in the Park’s Ecosystem

New research questions the long-held theory that reintroduction of such a predator caused a trophic cascade, spawning renewal of vegetation and spurring biodiversity.

Yellowstone’s ecological transformation through the reintroduction of wolves has become a case study for how to correct out-of-balance ecosystems. But new research challenges that notion. Credit... Elizabeth Boehm/Danita Delimont, via Alamy

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By Jim Robbins

• April 23, 2024

In 1995, 14 wolves were delivered by truck and sled to the heart of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where the animal had long been absent. Others followed.

Since then, a story has grown up, based on early research, that as the wolves increased in number, they hunted the park’s elk herds, significantly reducing them by about half from 17,000.

The wolves’ return and predatory dominance was believed to have had a widespread effect known as a trophic cascade, by decreasing grazing and restoring and expanding forests, grasses and other wildlife. It supposedly even changed the course of rivers as streamside vegetation returned.

Yellowstone’s dramatic transformation through the reintroduction of wolves has become a global parable for how to correct out-of-balance ecosystems.

In recent years, however, new research has walked that story back. Yes, stands of aspen and willows are thriving again — in some places. But decades of damage from elk herds’ grazing and trampling so thoroughly changed the landscape that large areas remain scarred and may not recover for a long time, if ever.

Wolf packs, in other words, are not magic bullets for restoring ecosystems.

“I would say it’s exaggerated, greatly exaggerated,” said Thomas Hobbs, a professor of natural resource ecology at Colorado State University and the lead author of a long-term study that adds new fuel to the debate over whether Yellowstone experienced a trophic cascade.

“You could argue a trophic trickle maybe,” said Daniel Stahler, the park’s lead wolf biologist who has studied the phenomenon. “Not a trophic cascade.”

Not only is the park’s recovery far less robust than first thought, but the story as it has been told is more complex, Dr. Hobbs said.

But the legend of the wolves’ influence on the park persists.

“How in the world does this lovely story — and it is a beautiful story — come to be seen as fact?” Dr. Hobbs wondered. A chapter of a book tried to answer that, concluding that a video called “ How Wolves Change Rivers ,” which has received tens of millions of views, contributed mightily to the tale.

The ecological record is complicated by the fact that, as elk declined, the number of bison increased substantially, continuing some of the same patterns, like heavy grazing in some places. Moreover, Yellowstone is growing warmer and drier with climate change.

Large numbers of elk in the north of the park had caused significant ecological changes — vegetation disappeared, trampled streams led to extensive erosion, and invasive plant species took hold. Riparian vegetation, or the grasses, the trees and the shrubs along riverbanks and streams, provides a critical habitat for birds, insects and other species to flourish and to maintain biodiversity in the park.

Once elk numbers dwindled, willows and aspens returned along rivers and streams and flourished. The beaver, an engineer of ecosystems, reappeared, using the dense new growth of willows for both food and construction materials. Colonies built new dams, creating ponds that enhanced stream habitats for birds, fish, grizzlies and other bears as well as promoting the growth of more willows and spring vegetation.

But wolves were only one piece of a larger picture, argue Dr. Hobbs and other skeptics of a full-blown trophic cascade at Yellowstone. Grizzly bears and humans played a role, too. For eight years after wolves re-entered the park, hunters killed more elk than the wolves did.

“The other members of the predator guild increased, and human harvest outside of the park has been clearly shown to be responsible for the decline in elk numbers the first 10 years after the wolves were introduced,” Dr. Hobbs said.

The changes attributed to the presence of stalking wolves, some research showed, weren’t only the result of fewer elk, but of a change in elk behavior called “the ecology of fear.” Scientists suggested that the big ungulates could no longer safely hang out along river or stream banks and eat everything in sight. They became extremely cautious, hiding in places where they could be vigilant. That allowed a return of vegetation in those places.

Dr. Hobbs and others contend that subsequent research has not borne that theory out.

Another overlooked factor is that around the same time wolves were returning, 129 beavers were reintroduced by the U.S. Forest Service onto streams north of the park. So it wasn’t just wolf predation on elk and the subsequent return of wolves that enabled an increase in beavers, experts say.

Some researchers say the so-called trophic cascade and rebirth of streamside ecosystems would have been far more robust if it weren’t for the park’s growing bison herd. The bison population is at an all-time high — the most recent count last summer found nearly 5,000 animals. Much larger than elk, bison are less likely to be vulnerable to wolves, which numbered 124 this winter.

The park’s bison, some researchers say, are overgrazing and otherwise seriously damaging the ecosystems — allowing the spread of invasive species and trampling and destroying native plants.

The heavily grazed landscape is why, critics say, some 4,000 bison, also a record, left Yellowstone for Montana in the winter of 2023-24, when an unusually heavy snow buried forage. Because some bison harbor a disease, called brucellosis, that state officials say could infect cattle, they are not welcome outside the park’s borders. (There are no documented cases of transmission between bison and cattle.)

Montana officials say killing animals that may carry disease as they leave the park is the only way to stem the flow. During a hunt that began in the winter of 2023, Native Americans from tribes around the region took part. All told, hunters killed about 1,085 bison; 88 more were shipped to slaughter and 282 were transferred to tribes. This year, just a few animals have left the park.

The Park Service is expected to release a bison management plan in the coming months. It is considering three options: to allow for 3,500 to 5,000 animals, 3,500 to 6,000, or a more natural population that could reach 7,000.

Richard Keigley, who was a research ecologist for the federal Geological Survey in the 1990s, has become an outspoken critic of the park’s bison management.

“They have created this juggernaut where we’ve got thousands of bison and the public believes this is the way things always were,” he said. “The bison that are there now have destroyed and degraded their primary ranges. People have to realize there’s something wrong in Yellowstone.”

Dr. Keigley said the bison population in the park fluctuated in the early years of the park, with about 229 animals in 1967. It has grown steadily since and peaked last year at 5,900.

“There is a hyperabundant bison population in our first national park,” said Robert Beschta, a professor emeritus of forest ecosystems at Oregon State University who has studied Yellowstone riparian areas for 20 years. He pointed to deteriorating conditions along the Lamar River from bison overgrazing.

“They are hammering it,” Mr. Beschta said. “The Lamar ranks right up there with the worst cattle allotments I’ve seen in the American West. Willows can’t grow. Cottonwoods can’t grow.”

A warmer and drier climate, he said, is making matters worse.

Such opinions, however, are not settled science. Some park experts believe that the presence of thousands of bison enhances park habitats because of something called the Green Wave Hypothesis.

Chris Geremia, a park biologist, is an author of a paper that makes the case that a large numbers of bison can stimulate plant growth by grazing grasses to the length of a suburban lawn. “By creating these grazing lawns bison and other herbivores — grasshoppers, elk — these lawns are sustaining more nutritious food for these animals,” he said.

Dr. Geremia contends that a tiny portion — perhaps one-tenth of one percent — of the park may be devoid of some plants. “The other 99.9 percent of those habitats exists in all different levels of willow, aspen and cottonwood,” he said.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a conservation organization, favors a bison population of 4,000 to 6,000 animals. Shana Drimal, who heads the group’s bison conservation program, said that park officials needed to monitor closely changing conditions like climate, drought and bison movement to ensure the ecosystems wouldn’t become further degraded.

Several scientists propose allowing the bison to migrate to the buffer zones beyond the park’s borders, where they are naturally inclined to travel. But it remains controversial because of the threat of disease.

“The only solution is to provide suitable winter range outside the park where they should be tolerated,” said Robert Crabtree, a chief scientist for the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, a nonprofit. “When they migrate outside the park now it’s to habitat they evolved to prefer — and instead we kill them and ship them away.”

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A Review of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19)

Tanu singhal.

Department of Pediatrics and Infectious Disease, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Institute, Mumbai, India

There is a new public health crises threatening the world with the emergence and spread of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) or the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus originated in bats and was transmitted to humans through yet unknown intermediary animals in Wuhan, Hubei province, China in December 2019. There have been around 96,000 reported cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019) and 3300 reported deaths to date (05/03/2020). The disease is transmitted by inhalation or contact with infected droplets and the incubation period ranges from 2 to 14 d. The symptoms are usually fever, cough, sore throat, breathlessness, fatigue, malaise among others. The disease is mild in most people; in some (usually the elderly and those with comorbidities), it may progress to pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and multi organ dysfunction. Many people are asymptomatic. The case fatality rate is estimated to range from 2 to 3%. Diagnosis is by demonstration of the virus in respiratory secretions by special molecular tests. Common laboratory findings include normal/ low white cell counts with elevated C-reactive protein (CRP). The computerized tomographic chest scan is usually abnormal even in those with no symptoms or mild disease. Treatment is essentially supportive; role of antiviral agents is yet to be established. Prevention entails home isolation of suspected cases and those with mild illnesses and strict infection control measures at hospitals that include contact and droplet precautions. The virus spreads faster than its two ancestors the SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), but has lower fatality. The global impact of this new epidemic is yet uncertain.

Introduction

The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) or the severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as it is now called, is rapidly spreading from its origin in Wuhan City of Hubei Province of China to the rest of the world [ 1 ]. Till 05/03/2020 around 96,000 cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and 3300 deaths have been reported [ 2 ]. India has reported 29 cases till date. Fortunately so far, children have been infrequently affected with no deaths. But the future course of this virus is unknown. This article gives a bird’s eye view about this new virus. Since knowledge about this virus is rapidly evolving, readers are urged to update themselves regularly.

Coronaviruses are enveloped positive sense RNA viruses ranging from 60 nm to 140 nm in diameter with spike like projections on its surface giving it a crown like appearance under the electron microscope; hence the name coronavirus [ 3 ]. Four corona viruses namely HKU1, NL63, 229E and OC43 have been in circulation in humans, and generally cause mild respiratory disease.

There have been two events in the past two decades wherein crossover of animal betacorona viruses to humans has resulted in severe disease. The first such instance was in 2002–2003 when a new coronavirus of the β genera and with origin in bats crossed over to humans via the intermediary host of palm civet cats in the Guangdong province of China. This virus, designated as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus affected 8422 people mostly in China and Hong Kong and caused 916 deaths (mortality rate 11%) before being contained [ 4 ]. Almost a decade later in 2012, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), also of bat origin, emerged in Saudi Arabia with dromedary camels as the intermediate host and affected 2494 people and caused 858 deaths (fatality rate 34%) [ 5 ].

Origin and Spread of COVID-19 [ 1 , 2 , 6 ]

In December 2019, adults in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei province and a major transportation hub of China started presenting to local hospitals with severe pneumonia of unknown cause. Many of the initial cases had a common exposure to the Huanan wholesale seafood market that also traded live animals. The surveillance system (put into place after the SARS outbreak) was activated and respiratory samples of patients were sent to reference labs for etiologic investigations. On December 31st 2019, China notified the outbreak to the World Health Organization and on 1st January the Huanan sea food market was closed. On 7th January the virus was identified as a coronavirus that had >95% homology with the bat coronavirus and > 70% similarity with the SARS- CoV. Environmental samples from the Huanan sea food market also tested positive, signifying that the virus originated from there [ 7 ]. The number of cases started increasing exponentially, some of which did not have exposure to the live animal market, suggestive of the fact that human-to-human transmission was occurring [ 8 ]. The first fatal case was reported on 11th Jan 2020. The massive migration of Chinese during the Chinese New Year fuelled the epidemic. Cases in other provinces of China, other countries (Thailand, Japan and South Korea in quick succession) were reported in people who were returning from Wuhan. Transmission to healthcare workers caring for patients was described on 20th Jan, 2020. By 23rd January, the 11 million population of Wuhan was placed under lock down with restrictions of entry and exit from the region. Soon this lock down was extended to other cities of Hubei province. Cases of COVID-19 in countries outside China were reported in those with no history of travel to China suggesting that local human-to-human transmission was occurring in these countries [ 9 ]. Airports in different countries including India put in screening mechanisms to detect symptomatic people returning from China and placed them in isolation and testing them for COVID-19. Soon it was apparent that the infection could be transmitted from asymptomatic people and also before onset of symptoms. Therefore, countries including India who evacuated their citizens from Wuhan through special flights or had travellers returning from China, placed all people symptomatic or otherwise in isolation for 14 d and tested them for the virus.

Cases continued to increase exponentially and modelling studies reported an epidemic doubling time of 1.8 d [ 10 ]. In fact on the 12th of February, China changed its definition of confirmed cases to include patients with negative/ pending molecular tests but with clinical, radiologic and epidemiologic features of COVID-19 leading to an increase in cases by 15,000 in a single day [ 6 ]. As of 05/03/2020 96,000 cases worldwide (80,000 in China) and 87 other countries and 1 international conveyance (696, in the cruise ship Diamond Princess parked off the coast of Japan) have been reported [ 2 ]. It is important to note that while the number of new cases has reduced in China lately, they have increased exponentially in other countries including South Korea, Italy and Iran. Of those infected, 20% are in critical condition, 25% have recovered, and 3310 (3013 in China and 297 in other countries) have died [ 2 ]. India, which had reported only 3 cases till 2/3/2020, has also seen a sudden spurt in cases. By 5/3/2020, 29 cases had been reported; mostly in Delhi, Jaipur and Agra in Italian tourists and their contacts. One case was reported in an Indian who traveled back from Vienna and exposed a large number of school children in a birthday party at a city hotel. Many of the contacts of these cases have been quarantined.

These numbers are possibly an underestimate of the infected and dead due to limitations of surveillance and testing. Though the SARS-CoV-2 originated from bats, the intermediary animal through which it crossed over to humans is uncertain. Pangolins and snakes are the current suspects.

Epidemiology and Pathogenesis [ 10 , 11 ]

All ages are susceptible. Infection is transmitted through large droplets generated during coughing and sneezing by symptomatic patients but can also occur from asymptomatic people and before onset of symptoms [ 9 ]. Studies have shown higher viral loads in the nasal cavity as compared to the throat with no difference in viral burden between symptomatic and asymptomatic people [ 12 ]. Patients can be infectious for as long as the symptoms last and even on clinical recovery. Some people may act as super spreaders; a UK citizen who attended a conference in Singapore infected 11 other people while staying in a resort in the French Alps and upon return to the UK [ 6 ]. These infected droplets can spread 1–2 m and deposit on surfaces. The virus can remain viable on surfaces for days in favourable atmospheric conditions but are destroyed in less than a minute by common disinfectants like sodium hypochlorite, hydrogen peroxide etc. [ 13 ]. Infection is acquired either by inhalation of these droplets or touching surfaces contaminated by them and then touching the nose, mouth and eyes. The virus is also present in the stool and contamination of the water supply and subsequent transmission via aerosolization/feco oral route is also hypothesized [ 6 ]. As per current information, transplacental transmission from pregnant women to their fetus has not been described [ 14 ]. However, neonatal disease due to post natal transmission is described [ 14 ]. The incubation period varies from 2 to 14 d [median 5 d]. Studies have identified angiotensin receptor 2 (ACE 2 ) as the receptor through which the virus enters the respiratory mucosa [ 11 ].

The basic case reproduction rate (BCR) is estimated to range from 2 to 6.47 in various modelling studies [ 11 ]. In comparison, the BCR of SARS was 2 and 1.3 for pandemic flu H1N1 2009 [ 2 ].

Clinical Features [ 8 , 15 – 18 ]

The clinical features of COVID-19 are varied, ranging from asymptomatic state to acute respiratory distress syndrome and multi organ dysfunction. The common clinical features include fever (not in all), cough, sore throat, headache, fatigue, headache, myalgia and breathlessness. Conjunctivitis has also been described. Thus, they are indistinguishable from other respiratory infections. In a subset of patients, by the end of the first week the disease can progress to pneumonia, respiratory failure and death. This progression is associated with extreme rise in inflammatory cytokines including IL2, IL7, IL10, GCSF, IP10, MCP1, MIP1A, and TNFα [ 15 ]. The median time from onset of symptoms to dyspnea was 5 d, hospitalization 7 d and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) 8 d. The need for intensive care admission was in 25–30% of affected patients in published series. Complications witnessed included acute lung injury, ARDS, shock and acute kidney injury. Recovery started in the 2nd or 3rd wk. The median duration of hospital stay in those who recovered was 10 d. Adverse outcomes and death are more common in the elderly and those with underlying co-morbidities (50–75% of fatal cases). Fatality rate in hospitalized adult patients ranged from 4 to 11%. The overall case fatality rate is estimated to range between 2 and 3% [ 2 ].

Interestingly, disease in patients outside Hubei province has been reported to be milder than those from Wuhan [ 17 ]. Similarly, the severity and case fatality rate in patients outside China has been reported to be milder [ 6 ]. This may either be due to selection bias wherein the cases reporting from Wuhan included only the severe cases or due to predisposition of the Asian population to the virus due to higher expression of ACE 2 receptors on the respiratory mucosa [ 11 ].

Disease in neonates, infants and children has been also reported to be significantly milder than their adult counterparts. In a series of 34 children admitted to a hospital in Shenzhen, China between January 19th and February 7th, there were 14 males and 20 females. The median age was 8 y 11 mo and in 28 children the infection was linked to a family member and 26 children had history of travel/residence to Hubei province in China. All the patients were either asymptomatic (9%) or had mild disease. No severe or critical cases were seen. The most common symptoms were fever (50%) and cough (38%). All patients recovered with symptomatic therapy and there were no deaths. One case of severe pneumonia and multiorgan dysfunction in a child has also been reported [ 19 ]. Similarly the neonatal cases that have been reported have been mild [ 20 ].

Diagnosis [ 21 ]

A suspect case is defined as one with fever, sore throat and cough who has history of travel to China or other areas of persistent local transmission or contact with patients with similar travel history or those with confirmed COVID-19 infection. However cases may be asymptomatic or even without fever. A confirmed case is a suspect case with a positive molecular test.

Specific diagnosis is by specific molecular tests on respiratory samples (throat swab/ nasopharyngeal swab/ sputum/ endotracheal aspirates and bronchoalveolar lavage). Virus may also be detected in the stool and in severe cases, the blood. It must be remembered that the multiplex PCR panels currently available do not include the COVID-19. Commercial tests are also not available at present. In a suspect case in India, the appropriate sample has to be sent to designated reference labs in India or the National Institute of Virology in Pune. As the epidemic progresses, commercial tests will become available.

Other laboratory investigations are usually non specific. The white cell count is usually normal or low. There may be lymphopenia; a lymphocyte count <1000 has been associated with severe disease. The platelet count is usually normal or mildly low. The CRP and ESR are generally elevated but procalcitonin levels are usually normal. A high procalcitonin level may indicate a bacterial co-infection. The ALT/AST, prothrombin time, creatinine, D-dimer, CPK and LDH may be elevated and high levels are associated with severe disease.

The chest X-ray (CXR) usually shows bilateral infiltrates but may be normal in early disease. The CT is more sensitive and specific. CT imaging generally shows infiltrates, ground glass opacities and sub segmental consolidation. It is also abnormal in asymptomatic patients/ patients with no clinical evidence of lower respiratory tract involvement. In fact, abnormal CT scans have been used to diagnose COVID-19 in suspect cases with negative molecular diagnosis; many of these patients had positive molecular tests on repeat testing [ 22 ].

Differential Diagnosis [ 21 ]

The differential diagnosis includes all types of respiratory viral infections [influenza, parainfluenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, non COVID-19 coronavirus], atypical organisms (mycoplasma, chlamydia) and bacterial infections. It is not possible to differentiate COVID-19 from these infections clinically or through routine lab tests. Therefore travel history becomes important. However, as the epidemic spreads, the travel history will become irrelevant.

Treatment [ 21 , 23 ]

Treatment is essentially supportive and symptomatic.

The first step is to ensure adequate isolation (discussed later) to prevent transmission to other contacts, patients and healthcare workers. Mild illness should be managed at home with counseling about danger signs. The usual principles are maintaining hydration and nutrition and controlling fever and cough. Routine use of antibiotics and antivirals such as oseltamivir should be avoided in confirmed cases. In hypoxic patients, provision of oxygen through nasal prongs, face mask, high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) or non-invasive ventilation is indicated. Mechanical ventilation and even extra corporeal membrane oxygen support may be needed. Renal replacement therapy may be needed in some. Antibiotics and antifungals are required if co-infections are suspected or proven. The role of corticosteroids is unproven; while current international consensus and WHO advocate against their use, Chinese guidelines do recommend short term therapy with low-to-moderate dose corticosteroids in COVID-19 ARDS [ 24 , 25 ]. Detailed guidelines for critical care management for COVID-19 have been published by the WHO [ 26 ]. There is, as of now, no approved treatment for COVID-19. Antiviral drugs such as ribavirin, lopinavir-ritonavir have been used based on the experience with SARS and MERS. In a historical control study in patients with SARS, patients treated with lopinavir-ritonavir with ribavirin had better outcomes as compared to those given ribavirin alone [ 15 ].

In the case series of 99 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection from Wuhan, oxygen was given to 76%, non-invasive ventilation in 13%, mechanical ventilation in 4%, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in 3%, continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) in 9%, antibiotics in 71%, antifungals in 15%, glucocorticoids in 19% and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy in 27% [ 15 ]. Antiviral therapy consisting of oseltamivir, ganciclovir and lopinavir-ritonavir was given to 75% of the patients. The duration of non-invasive ventilation was 4–22 d [median 9 d] and mechanical ventilation for 3–20 d [median 17 d]. In the case series of children discussed earlier, all children recovered with basic treatment and did not need intensive care [ 17 ].

There is anecdotal experience with use of remdeswir, a broad spectrum anti RNA drug developed for Ebola in management of COVID-19 [ 27 ]. More evidence is needed before these drugs are recommended. Other drugs proposed for therapy are arbidol (an antiviral drug available in Russia and China), intravenous immunoglobulin, interferons, chloroquine and plasma of patients recovered from COVID-19 [ 21 , 28 , 29 ]. Additionally, recommendations about using traditional Chinese herbs find place in the Chinese guidelines [ 21 ].

Prevention [ 21 , 30 ]

Since at this time there are no approved treatments for this infection, prevention is crucial. Several properties of this virus make prevention difficult namely, non-specific features of the disease, the infectivity even before onset of symptoms in the incubation period, transmission from asymptomatic people, long incubation period, tropism for mucosal surfaces such as the conjunctiva, prolonged duration of the illness and transmission even after clinical recovery.

Isolation of confirmed or suspected cases with mild illness at home is recommended. The ventilation at home should be good with sunlight to allow for destruction of virus. Patients should be asked to wear a simple surgical mask and practice cough hygiene. Caregivers should be asked to wear a surgical mask when in the same room as patient and use hand hygiene every 15–20 min.

The greatest risk in COVID-19 is transmission to healthcare workers. In the SARS outbreak of 2002, 21% of those affected were healthcare workers [ 31 ]. Till date, almost 1500 healthcare workers in China have been infected with 6 deaths. The doctor who first warned about the virus has died too. It is important to protect healthcare workers to ensure continuity of care and to prevent transmission of infection to other patients. While COVID-19 transmits as a droplet pathogen and is placed in Category B of infectious agents (highly pathogenic H5N1 and SARS), by the China National Health Commission, infection control measures recommended are those for category A agents (cholera, plague). Patients should be placed in separate rooms or cohorted together. Negative pressure rooms are not generally needed. The rooms and surfaces and equipment should undergo regular decontamination preferably with sodium hypochlorite. Healthcare workers should be provided with fit tested N95 respirators and protective suits and goggles. Airborne transmission precautions should be taken during aerosol generating procedures such as intubation, suction and tracheostomies. All contacts including healthcare workers should be monitored for development of symptoms of COVID-19. Patients can be discharged from isolation once they are afebrile for atleast 3 d and have two consecutive negative molecular tests at 1 d sampling interval. This recommendation is different from pandemic flu where patients were asked to resume work/school once afebrile for 24 h or by day 7 of illness. Negative molecular tests were not a prerequisite for discharge.

At the community level, people should be asked to avoid crowded areas and postpone non-essential travel to places with ongoing transmission. They should be asked to practice cough hygiene by coughing in sleeve/ tissue rather than hands and practice hand hygiene frequently every 15–20 min. Patients with respiratory symptoms should be asked to use surgical masks. The use of mask by healthy people in public places has not shown to protect against respiratory viral infections and is currently not recommended by WHO. However, in China, the public has been asked to wear masks in public and especially in crowded places and large scale gatherings are prohibited (entertainment parks etc). China is also considering introducing legislation to prohibit selling and trading of wild animals [ 32 ].

The international response has been dramatic. Initially, there were massive travel restrictions to China and people returning from China/ evacuated from China are being evaluated for clinical symptoms, isolated and tested for COVID-19 for 2 wks even if asymptomatic. However, now with rapid world wide spread of the virus these travel restrictions have extended to other countries. Whether these efforts will lead to slowing of viral spread is not known.

A candidate vaccine is under development.

Practice Points from an Indian Perspective

At the time of writing this article, the risk of coronavirus in India is extremely low. But that may change in the next few weeks. Hence the following is recommended:

• Healthcare providers should take travel history of all patients with respiratory symptoms, and any international travel in the past 2 wks as well as contact with sick people who have travelled internationally.
• They should set up a system of triage of patients with respiratory illness in the outpatient department and give them a simple surgical mask to wear. They should use surgical masks themselves while examining such patients and practice hand hygiene frequently.
• Suspected cases should be referred to government designated centres for isolation and testing (in Mumbai, at this time, it is Kasturba hospital). Commercial kits for testing are not yet available in India.
• Patients admitted with severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome should be evaluated for travel history and placed under contact and droplet isolation. Regular decontamination of surfaces should be done. They should be tested for etiology using multiplex PCR panels if logistics permit and if no pathogen is identified, refer the samples for testing for SARS-CoV-2.
• All clinicians should keep themselves updated about recent developments including global spread of the disease.
• Non-essential international travel should be avoided at this time.
• People should stop spreading myths and false information about the disease and try to allay panic and anxiety of the public.

Conclusions

This new virus outbreak has challenged the economic, medical and public health infrastructure of China and to some extent, of other countries especially, its neighbours. Time alone will tell how the virus will impact our lives here in India. More so, future outbreaks of viruses and pathogens of zoonotic origin are likely to continue. Therefore, apart from curbing this outbreak, efforts should be made to devise comprehensive measures to prevent future outbreaks of zoonotic origin.

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What Is Research, and Why Do People Do It?

• Open Access
• First Online: 03 December 2022

Cite this chapter

You have full access to this open access chapter

• James Hiebert 6 ,
• Jinfa Cai 7 ,
• Stephen Hwang 7 ,
• Anne K Morris 6 &
• Charles Hohensee 6  

Part of the book series: Research in Mathematics Education ((RME))

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Abstractspiepr Abs1

Every day people do research as they gather information to learn about something of interest. In the scientific world, however, research means something different than simply gathering information. Scientific research is characterized by its careful planning and observing, by its relentless efforts to understand and explain, and by its commitment to learn from everyone else seriously engaged in research. We call this kind of research scientific inquiry and define it as “formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses.” By “hypotheses” we do not mean the hypotheses you encounter in statistics courses. We mean predictions about what you expect to find and rationales for why you made these predictions. Throughout this and the remaining chapters we make clear that the process of scientific inquiry applies to all kinds of research studies and data, both qualitative and quantitative.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Part I. What Is Research?

Have you ever studied something carefully because you wanted to know more about it? Maybe you wanted to know more about your grandmother’s life when she was younger so you asked her to tell you stories from her childhood, or maybe you wanted to know more about a fertilizer you were about to use in your garden so you read the ingredients on the package and looked them up online. According to the dictionary definition, you were doing research.

Recall your high school assignments asking you to “research” a topic. The assignment likely included consulting a variety of sources that discussed the topic, perhaps including some “original” sources. Often, the teacher referred to your product as a “research paper.”

Were you conducting research when you interviewed your grandmother or wrote high school papers reviewing a particular topic? Our view is that you were engaged in part of the research process, but only a small part. In this book, we reserve the word “research” for what it means in the scientific world, that is, for scientific research or, more pointedly, for scientific inquiry .

Exercise 1.1

Before you read any further, write a definition of what you think scientific inquiry is. Keep it short—Two to three sentences. You will periodically update this definition as you read this chapter and the remainder of the book.

This book is about scientific inquiry—what it is and how to do it. For starters, scientific inquiry is a process, a particular way of finding out about something that involves a number of phases. Each phase of the process constitutes one aspect of scientific inquiry. You are doing scientific inquiry as you engage in each phase, but you have not done scientific inquiry until you complete the full process. Each phase is necessary but not sufficient.

In this chapter, we set the stage by defining scientific inquiry—describing what it is and what it is not—and by discussing what it is good for and why people do it. The remaining chapters build directly on the ideas presented in this chapter.

A first thing to know is that scientific inquiry is not all or nothing. “Scientificness” is a continuum. Inquiries can be more scientific or less scientific. What makes an inquiry more scientific? You might be surprised there is no universally agreed upon answer to this question. None of the descriptors we know of are sufficient by themselves to define scientific inquiry. But all of them give you a way of thinking about some aspects of the process of scientific inquiry. Each one gives you different insights.

Exercise 1.2

As you read about each descriptor below, think about what would make an inquiry more or less scientific. If you think a descriptor is important, use it to revise your definition of scientific inquiry.

Creating an Image of Scientific Inquiry

We will present three descriptors of scientific inquiry. Each provides a different perspective and emphasizes a different aspect of scientific inquiry. We will draw on all three descriptors to compose our definition of scientific inquiry.

Descriptor 1. Experience Carefully Planned in Advance

Sir Ronald Fisher, often called the father of modern statistical design, once referred to research as “experience carefully planned in advance” (1935, p. 8). He said that humans are always learning from experience, from interacting with the world around them. Usually, this learning is haphazard rather than the result of a deliberate process carried out over an extended period of time. Research, Fisher said, was learning from experience, but experience carefully planned in advance.

This phrase can be fully appreciated by looking at each word. The fact that scientific inquiry is based on experience means that it is based on interacting with the world. These interactions could be thought of as the stuff of scientific inquiry. In addition, it is not just any experience that counts. The experience must be carefully planned . The interactions with the world must be conducted with an explicit, describable purpose, and steps must be taken to make the intended learning as likely as possible. This planning is an integral part of scientific inquiry; it is not just a preparation phase. It is one of the things that distinguishes scientific inquiry from many everyday learning experiences. Finally, these steps must be taken beforehand and the purpose of the inquiry must be articulated in advance of the experience. Clearly, scientific inquiry does not happen by accident, by just stumbling into something. Stumbling into something unexpected and interesting can happen while engaged in scientific inquiry, but learning does not depend on it and serendipity does not make the inquiry scientific.

Descriptor 2. Observing Something and Trying to Explain Why It Is the Way It Is

When we were writing this chapter and googled “scientific inquiry,” the first entry was: “Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work.” The emphasis is on studying, or observing, and then explaining . This descriptor takes the image of scientific inquiry beyond carefully planned experience and includes explaining what was experienced.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “explain” means “(a) to make known, (b) to make plain or understandable, (c) to give the reason or cause of, and (d) to show the logical development or relations of” (Merriam-Webster, n.d. ). We will use all these definitions. Taken together, they suggest that to explain an observation means to understand it by finding reasons (or causes) for why it is as it is. In this sense of scientific inquiry, the following are synonyms: explaining why, understanding why, and reasoning about causes and effects. Our image of scientific inquiry now includes planning, observing, and explaining why.

We need to add a final note about this descriptor. We have phrased it in a way that suggests “observing something” means you are observing something in real time—observing the way things are or the way things are changing. This is often true. But, observing could mean observing data that already have been collected, maybe by someone else making the original observations (e.g., secondary analysis of NAEP data or analysis of existing video recordings of classroom instruction). We will address secondary analyses more fully in Chap. 4 . For now, what is important is that the process requires explaining why the data look like they do.

We must note that for us, the term “data” is not limited to numerical or quantitative data such as test scores. Data can also take many nonquantitative forms, including written survey responses, interview transcripts, journal entries, video recordings of students, teachers, and classrooms, text messages, and so forth.

Exercise 1.3

What are the implications of the statement that just “observing” is not enough to count as scientific inquiry? Does this mean that a detailed description of a phenomenon is not scientific inquiry?

Find sources that define research in education that differ with our position, that say description alone, without explanation, counts as scientific research. Identify the precise points where the opinions differ. What are the best arguments for each of the positions? Which do you prefer? Why?

Descriptor 3. Updating Everyone’s Thinking in Response to More and Better Information

This descriptor focuses on a third aspect of scientific inquiry: updating and advancing the field’s understanding of phenomena that are investigated. This descriptor foregrounds a powerful characteristic of scientific inquiry: the reliability (or trustworthiness) of what is learned and the ultimate inevitability of this learning to advance human understanding of phenomena. Humans might choose not to learn from scientific inquiry, but history suggests that scientific inquiry always has the potential to advance understanding and that, eventually, humans take advantage of these new understandings.

Before exploring these bold claims a bit further, note that this descriptor uses “information” in the same way the previous two descriptors used “experience” and “observations.” These are the stuff of scientific inquiry and we will use them often, sometimes interchangeably. Frequently, we will use the term “data” to stand for all these terms.

An overriding goal of scientific inquiry is for everyone to learn from what one scientist does. Much of this book is about the methods you need to use so others have faith in what you report and can learn the same things you learned. This aspect of scientific inquiry has many implications.

One implication is that scientific inquiry is not a private practice. It is a public practice available for others to see and learn from. Notice how different this is from everyday learning. When you happen to learn something from your everyday experience, often only you gain from the experience. The fact that research is a public practice means it is also a social one. It is best conducted by interacting with others along the way: soliciting feedback at each phase, taking opportunities to present work-in-progress, and benefitting from the advice of others.

A second implication is that you, as the researcher, must be committed to sharing what you are doing and what you are learning in an open and transparent way. This allows all phases of your work to be scrutinized and critiqued. This is what gives your work credibility. The reliability or trustworthiness of your findings depends on your colleagues recognizing that you have used all appropriate methods to maximize the chances that your claims are justified by the data.

A third implication of viewing scientific inquiry as a collective enterprise is the reverse of the second—you must be committed to receiving comments from others. You must treat your colleagues as fair and honest critics even though it might sometimes feel otherwise. You must appreciate their job, which is to remain skeptical while scrutinizing what you have done in considerable detail. To provide the best help to you, they must remain skeptical about your conclusions (when, for example, the data are difficult for them to interpret) until you offer a convincing logical argument based on the information you share. A rather harsh but good-to-remember statement of the role of your friendly critics was voiced by Karl Popper, a well-known twentieth century philosopher of science: “. . . if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can” (Popper, 1968, p. 27).

A final implication of this third descriptor is that, as someone engaged in scientific inquiry, you have no choice but to update your thinking when the data support a different conclusion. This applies to your own data as well as to those of others. When data clearly point to a specific claim, even one that is quite different than you expected, you must reconsider your position. If the outcome is replicated multiple times, you need to adjust your thinking accordingly. Scientific inquiry does not let you pick and choose which data to believe; it mandates that everyone update their thinking when the data warrant an update.

Doing Scientific Inquiry

We define scientific inquiry in an operational sense—what does it mean to do scientific inquiry? What kind of process would satisfy all three descriptors: carefully planning an experience in advance; observing and trying to explain what you see; and, contributing to updating everyone’s thinking about an important phenomenon?

We define scientific inquiry as formulating , testing , and revising hypotheses about phenomena of interest.

Of course, we are not the only ones who define it in this way. The definition for the scientific method posted by the editors of Britannica is: “a researcher develops a hypothesis, tests it through various means, and then modifies the hypothesis on the basis of the outcome of the tests and experiments” (Britannica, n.d. ).

Notice how defining scientific inquiry this way satisfies each of the descriptors. “Carefully planning an experience in advance” is exactly what happens when formulating a hypothesis about a phenomenon of interest and thinking about how to test it. “ Observing a phenomenon” occurs when testing a hypothesis, and “ explaining ” what is found is required when revising a hypothesis based on the data. Finally, “updating everyone’s thinking” comes from comparing publicly the original with the revised hypothesis.

Doing scientific inquiry, as we have defined it, underscores the value of accumulating knowledge rather than generating random bits of knowledge. Formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses is an ongoing process, with each revised hypothesis begging for another test, whether by the same researcher or by new researchers. The editors of Britannica signaled this cyclic process by adding the following phrase to their definition of the scientific method: “The modified hypothesis is then retested, further modified, and tested again.” Scientific inquiry creates a process that encourages each study to build on the studies that have gone before. Through collective engagement in this process of building study on top of study, the scientific community works together to update its thinking.

Before exploring more fully the meaning of “formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses,” we need to acknowledge that this is not the only way researchers define research. Some researchers prefer a less formal definition, one that includes more serendipity, less planning, less explanation. You might have come across more open definitions such as “research is finding out about something.” We prefer the tighter hypothesis formulation, testing, and revision definition because we believe it provides a single, coherent map for conducting research that addresses many of the thorny problems educational researchers encounter. We believe it is the most useful orientation toward research and the most helpful to learn as a beginning researcher.

A final clarification of our definition is that it applies equally to qualitative and quantitative research. This is a familiar distinction in education that has generated much discussion. You might think our definition favors quantitative methods over qualitative methods because the language of hypothesis formulation and testing is often associated with quantitative methods. In fact, we do not favor one method over another. In Chap. 4 , we will illustrate how our definition fits research using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Exercise 1.4

Look for ways to extend what the field knows in an area that has already received attention by other researchers. Specifically, you can search for a program of research carried out by more experienced researchers that has some revised hypotheses that remain untested. Identify a revised hypothesis that you might like to test.

Unpacking the Terms Formulating, Testing, and Revising Hypotheses

To get a full sense of the definition of scientific inquiry we will use throughout this book, it is helpful to spend a little time with each of the key terms.

We first want to make clear that we use the term “hypothesis” as it is defined in most dictionaries and as it used in many scientific fields rather than as it is usually defined in educational statistics courses. By “hypothesis,” we do not mean a null hypothesis that is accepted or rejected by statistical analysis. Rather, we use “hypothesis” in the sense conveyed by the following definitions: “An idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved” (Cambridge University Press, n.d. ), and “An unproved theory, proposition, or supposition, tentatively accepted to explain certain facts and to provide a basis for further investigation or argument” (Agnes & Guralnik, 2008 ).

We distinguish two parts to “hypotheses.” Hypotheses consist of predictions and rationales . Predictions are statements about what you expect to find when you inquire about something. Rationales are explanations for why you made the predictions you did, why you believe your predictions are correct. So, for us “formulating hypotheses” means making explicit predictions and developing rationales for the predictions.

“Testing hypotheses” means making observations that allow you to assess in what ways your predictions were correct and in what ways they were incorrect. In education research, it is rarely useful to think of your predictions as either right or wrong. Because of the complexity of most issues you will investigate, most predictions will be right in some ways and wrong in others.

By studying the observations you make (data you collect) to test your hypotheses, you can revise your hypotheses to better align with the observations. This means revising your predictions plus revising your rationales to justify your adjusted predictions. Even though you might not run another test, formulating revised hypotheses is an essential part of conducting a research study. Comparing your original and revised hypotheses informs everyone of what you learned by conducting your study. In addition, a revised hypothesis sets the stage for you or someone else to extend your study and accumulate more knowledge of the phenomenon.

We should note that not everyone makes a clear distinction between predictions and rationales as two aspects of hypotheses. In fact, common, non-scientific uses of the word “hypothesis” may limit it to only a prediction or only an explanation (or rationale). We choose to explicitly include both prediction and rationale in our definition of hypothesis, not because we assert this should be the universal definition, but because we want to foreground the importance of both parts acting in concert. Using “hypothesis” to represent both prediction and rationale could hide the two aspects, but we make them explicit because they provide different kinds of information. It is usually easier to make predictions than develop rationales because predictions can be guesses, hunches, or gut feelings about which you have little confidence. Developing a compelling rationale requires careful thought plus reading what other researchers have found plus talking with your colleagues. Often, while you are developing your rationale you will find good reasons to change your predictions. Developing good rationales is the engine that drives scientific inquiry. Rationales are essentially descriptions of how much you know about the phenomenon you are studying. Throughout this guide, we will elaborate on how developing good rationales drives scientific inquiry. For now, we simply note that it can sharpen your predictions and help you to interpret your data as you test your hypotheses.

Hypotheses in education research take a variety of forms or types. This is because there are a variety of phenomena that can be investigated. Investigating educational phenomena is sometimes best done using qualitative methods, sometimes using quantitative methods, and most often using mixed methods (e.g., Hay, 2016 ; Weis et al. 2019a ; Weisner, 2005 ). This means that, given our definition, hypotheses are equally applicable to qualitative and quantitative investigations.

Hypotheses take different forms when they are used to investigate different kinds of phenomena. Two very different activities in education could be labeled conducting experiments and descriptions. In an experiment, a hypothesis makes a prediction about anticipated changes, say the changes that occur when a treatment or intervention is applied. You might investigate how students’ thinking changes during a particular kind of instruction.

A second type of hypothesis, relevant for descriptive research, makes a prediction about what you will find when you investigate and describe the nature of a situation. The goal is to understand a situation as it exists rather than to understand a change from one situation to another. In this case, your prediction is what you expect to observe. Your rationale is the set of reasons for making this prediction; it is your current explanation for why the situation will look like it does.

You will probably read, if you have not already, that some researchers say you do not need a prediction to conduct a descriptive study. We will discuss this point of view in Chap. 2 . For now, we simply claim that scientific inquiry, as we have defined it, applies to all kinds of research studies. Descriptive studies, like others, not only benefit from formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses, but also need hypothesis formulating, testing, and revising.

One reason we define research as formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses is that if you think of research in this way you are less likely to go wrong. It is a useful guide for the entire process, as we will describe in detail in the chapters ahead. For example, as you build the rationale for your predictions, you are constructing the theoretical framework for your study (Chap. 3 ). As you work out the methods you will use to test your hypothesis, every decision you make will be based on asking, “Will this help me formulate or test or revise my hypothesis?” (Chap. 4 ). As you interpret the results of testing your predictions, you will compare them to what you predicted and examine the differences, focusing on how you must revise your hypotheses (Chap. 5 ). By anchoring the process to formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses, you will make smart decisions that yield a coherent and well-designed study.

Exercise 1.5

Compare the concept of formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses with the descriptions of scientific inquiry contained in Scientific Research in Education (NRC, 2002 ). How are they similar or different?

Exercise 1.6

Provide an example to illustrate and emphasize the differences between everyday learning/thinking and scientific inquiry.

Learning from Doing Scientific Inquiry

We noted earlier that a measure of what you have learned by conducting a research study is found in the differences between your original hypothesis and your revised hypothesis based on the data you collected to test your hypothesis. We will elaborate this statement in later chapters, but we preview our argument here.

Even before collecting data, scientific inquiry requires cycles of making a prediction, developing a rationale, refining your predictions, reading and studying more to strengthen your rationale, refining your predictions again, and so forth. And, even if you have run through several such cycles, you still will likely find that when you test your prediction you will be partly right and partly wrong. The results will support some parts of your predictions but not others, or the results will “kind of” support your predictions. A critical part of scientific inquiry is making sense of your results by interpreting them against your predictions. Carefully describing what aspects of your data supported your predictions, what aspects did not, and what data fell outside of any predictions is not an easy task, but you cannot learn from your study without doing this analysis.

Analyzing the matches and mismatches between your predictions and your data allows you to formulate different rationales that would have accounted for more of the data. The best revised rationale is the one that accounts for the most data. Once you have revised your rationales, you can think about the predictions they best justify or explain. It is by comparing your original rationales to your new rationales that you can sort out what you learned from your study.

Suppose your study was an experiment. Maybe you were investigating the effects of a new instructional intervention on students’ learning. Your original rationale was your explanation for why the intervention would change the learning outcomes in a particular way. Your revised rationale explained why the changes that you observed occurred like they did and why your revised predictions are better. Maybe your original rationale focused on the potential of the activities if they were implemented in ideal ways and your revised rationale included the factors that are likely to affect how teachers implement them. By comparing the before and after rationales, you are describing what you learned—what you can explain now that you could not before. Another way of saying this is that you are describing how much more you understand now than before you conducted your study.

Revised predictions based on carefully planned and collected data usually exhibit some of the following features compared with the originals: more precision, more completeness, and broader scope. Revised rationales have more explanatory power and become more complete, more aligned with the new predictions, sharper, and overall more convincing.

Part II. Why Do Educators Do Research?

Doing scientific inquiry is a lot of work. Each phase of the process takes time, and you will often cycle back to improve earlier phases as you engage in later phases. Because of the significant effort required, you should make sure your study is worth it. So, from the beginning, you should think about the purpose of your study. Why do you want to do it? And, because research is a social practice, you should also think about whether the results of your study are likely to be important and significant to the education community.

If you are doing research in the way we have described—as scientific inquiry—then one purpose of your study is to understand , not just to describe or evaluate or report. As we noted earlier, when you formulate hypotheses, you are developing rationales that explain why things might be like they are. In our view, trying to understand and explain is what separates research from other kinds of activities, like evaluating or describing.

One reason understanding is so important is that it allows researchers to see how or why something works like it does. When you see how something works, you are better able to predict how it might work in other contexts, under other conditions. And, because conditions, or contextual factors, matter a lot in education, gaining insights into applying your findings to other contexts increases the contributions of your work and its importance to the broader education community.

Consequently, the purposes of research studies in education often include the more specific aim of identifying and understanding the conditions under which the phenomena being studied work like the observations suggest. A classic example of this kind of study in mathematics education was reported by William Brownell and Harold Moser in 1949 . They were trying to establish which method of subtracting whole numbers could be taught most effectively—the regrouping method or the equal additions method. However, they realized that effectiveness might depend on the conditions under which the methods were taught—“meaningfully” versus “mechanically.” So, they designed a study that crossed the two instructional approaches with the two different methods (regrouping and equal additions). Among other results, they found that these conditions did matter. The regrouping method was more effective under the meaningful condition than the mechanical condition, but the same was not true for the equal additions algorithm.

What do education researchers want to understand? In our view, the ultimate goal of education is to offer all students the best possible learning opportunities. So, we believe the ultimate purpose of scientific inquiry in education is to develop understanding that supports the improvement of learning opportunities for all students. We say “ultimate” because there are lots of issues that must be understood to improve learning opportunities for all students. Hypotheses about many aspects of education are connected, ultimately, to students’ learning. For example, formulating and testing a hypothesis that preservice teachers need to engage in particular kinds of activities in their coursework in order to teach particular topics well is, ultimately, connected to improving students’ learning opportunities. So is hypothesizing that school districts often devote relatively few resources to instructional leadership training or hypothesizing that positioning mathematics as a tool students can use to combat social injustice can help students see the relevance of mathematics to their lives.

We do not exclude the importance of research on educational issues more removed from improving students’ learning opportunities, but we do think the argument for their importance will be more difficult to make. If there is no way to imagine a connection between your hypothesis and improving learning opportunities for students, even a distant connection, we recommend you reconsider whether it is an important hypothesis within the education community.

Notice that we said the ultimate goal of education is to offer all students the best possible learning opportunities. For too long, educators have been satisfied with a goal of offering rich learning opportunities for lots of students, sometimes even for just the majority of students, but not necessarily for all students. Evaluations of success often are based on outcomes that show high averages. In other words, if many students have learned something, or even a smaller number have learned a lot, educators may have been satisfied. The problem is that there is usually a pattern in the groups of students who receive lower quality opportunities—students of color and students who live in poor areas, urban and rural. This is not acceptable. Consequently, we emphasize the premise that the purpose of education research is to offer rich learning opportunities to all students.

One way to make sure you will be able to convince others of the importance of your study is to consider investigating some aspect of teachers’ shared instructional problems. Historically, researchers in education have set their own research agendas, regardless of the problems teachers are facing in schools. It is increasingly recognized that teachers have had trouble applying to their own classrooms what researchers find. To address this problem, a researcher could partner with a teacher—better yet, a small group of teachers—and talk with them about instructional problems they all share. These discussions can create a rich pool of problems researchers can consider. If researchers pursued one of these problems (preferably alongside teachers), the connection to improving learning opportunities for all students could be direct and immediate. “Grounding a research question in instructional problems that are experienced across multiple teachers’ classrooms helps to ensure that the answer to the question will be of sufficient scope to be relevant and significant beyond the local context” (Cai et al., 2019b , p. 115).

As a beginning researcher, determining the relevance and importance of a research problem is especially challenging. We recommend talking with advisors, other experienced researchers, and peers to test the educational importance of possible research problems and topics of study. You will also learn much more about the issue of research importance when you read Chap. 5 .

Exercise 1.7

Identify a problem in education that is closely connected to improving learning opportunities and a problem that has a less close connection. For each problem, write a brief argument (like a logical sequence of if-then statements) that connects the problem to all students’ learning opportunities.

Part III. Conducting Research as a Practice of Failing Productively

Scientific inquiry involves formulating hypotheses about phenomena that are not fully understood—by you or anyone else. Even if you are able to inform your hypotheses with lots of knowledge that has already been accumulated, you are likely to find that your prediction is not entirely accurate. This is normal. Remember, scientific inquiry is a process of constantly updating your thinking. More and better information means revising your thinking, again, and again, and again. Because you never fully understand a complicated phenomenon and your hypotheses never produce completely accurate predictions, it is easy to believe you are somehow failing.

The trick is to fail upward, to fail to predict accurately in ways that inform your next hypothesis so you can make a better prediction. Some of the best-known researchers in education have been open and honest about the many times their predictions were wrong and, based on the results of their studies and those of others, they continuously updated their thinking and changed their hypotheses.

A striking example of publicly revising (actually reversing) hypotheses due to incorrect predictions is found in the work of Lee J. Cronbach, one of the most distinguished educational psychologists of the twentieth century. In 1955, Cronbach delivered his presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Titling it “Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology,” Cronbach proposed a rapprochement between two research approaches—correlational studies that focused on individual differences and experimental studies that focused on instructional treatments controlling for individual differences. (We will examine different research approaches in Chap. 4 ). If these approaches could be brought together, reasoned Cronbach ( 1957 ), researchers could find interactions between individual characteristics and treatments (aptitude-treatment interactions or ATIs), fitting the best treatments to different individuals.

In 1975, after years of research by many researchers looking for ATIs, Cronbach acknowledged the evidence for simple, useful ATIs had not been found. Even when trying to find interactions between a few variables that could provide instructional guidance, the analysis, said Cronbach, creates “a hall of mirrors that extends to infinity, tormenting even the boldest investigators and defeating even ambitious designs” (Cronbach, 1975 , p. 119).

As he was reflecting back on his work, Cronbach ( 1986 ) recommended moving away from documenting instructional effects through statistical inference (an approach he had championed for much of his career) and toward approaches that probe the reasons for these effects, approaches that provide a “full account of events in a time, place, and context” (Cronbach, 1986 , p. 104). This is a remarkable change in hypotheses, a change based on data and made fully transparent. Cronbach understood the value of failing productively.

Closer to home, in a less dramatic example, one of us began a line of scientific inquiry into how to prepare elementary preservice teachers to teach early algebra. Teaching early algebra meant engaging elementary students in early forms of algebraic reasoning. Such reasoning should help them transition from arithmetic to algebra. To begin this line of inquiry, a set of activities for preservice teachers were developed. Even though the activities were based on well-supported hypotheses, they largely failed to engage preservice teachers as predicted because of unanticipated challenges the preservice teachers faced. To capitalize on this failure, follow-up studies were conducted, first to better understand elementary preservice teachers’ challenges with preparing to teach early algebra, and then to better support preservice teachers in navigating these challenges. In this example, the initial failure was a necessary step in the researchers’ scientific inquiry and furthered the researchers’ understanding of this issue.

We present another example of failing productively in Chap. 2 . That example emerges from recounting the history of a well-known research program in mathematics education.

Making mistakes is an inherent part of doing scientific research. Conducting a study is rarely a smooth path from beginning to end. We recommend that you keep the following things in mind as you begin a career of conducting research in education.

First, do not get discouraged when you make mistakes; do not fall into the trap of feeling like you are not capable of doing research because you make too many errors.

Second, learn from your mistakes. Do not ignore your mistakes or treat them as errors that you simply need to forget and move past. Mistakes are rich sites for learning—in research just as in other fields of study.

Third, by reflecting on your mistakes, you can learn to make better mistakes, mistakes that inform you about a productive next step. You will not be able to eliminate your mistakes, but you can set a goal of making better and better mistakes.

Exercise 1.8

How does scientific inquiry differ from everyday learning in giving you the tools to fail upward? You may find helpful perspectives on this question in other resources on science and scientific inquiry (e.g., Failure: Why Science is So Successful by Firestein, 2015).

Exercise 1.9

Use what you have learned in this chapter to write a new definition of scientific inquiry. Compare this definition with the one you wrote before reading this chapter. If you are reading this book as part of a course, compare your definition with your colleagues’ definitions. Develop a consensus definition with everyone in the course.

Part IV. Preview of Chap. 2

Now that you have a good idea of what research is, at least of what we believe research is, the next step is to think about how to actually begin doing research. This means how to begin formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses. As for all phases of scientific inquiry, there are lots of things to think about. Because it is critical to start well, we devote Chap. 2 to getting started with formulating hypotheses.

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Hiebert, J., Cai, J., Hwang, S., Morris, A.K., Hohensee, C. (2023). What Is Research, and Why Do People Do It?. In: Doing Research: A New Researcher’s Guide. Research in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19078-0_1

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Research: Why People Really Buy Upcycled Products

• Sara Caprioli,
• Christoph Fuchs,
• Bram Van den Bergh

Creativity is more of a selling point than sustainability.

Researchers who analyzed consumer feedback from Etsy discovered that what consumers value most about upcycled products is not their sustainability but their creativity. Their findings offer some guidelines for companies who hope to design and successfully market upcycled products: 1) Designers should consider using components from other industries to enhance the appeal of their products and encourage cross-industry collaboration; 2) Product designers and managers should identify new uses for product components; 3) Marketers should emphasize creativity, as well as sustainability, in their messaging about upcycled products; and 4) Companies can boost the appeal of new products by emphasizing design elements that remind consumers of upcycled products.

Upcycling — the creation of new products by reusing one or more components from ones — is having a moment.

• SC Sara Caprioli is a postdoctoral researcher at the TUM School of Management in Germany. Her work focuses on the effects of creativity and artificial intelligence on human behavior.
• CF Christoph Fuchs is a professor of marketing at the University of Vienna in Austria. His research is situated at the interface of marketing, technology, and human behavior.
• BB Bram Van den Bergh is professor of marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on decision making and persuasion.

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Helping women get better sleep by calming the relentless 'to-do lists' in their heads

Yuki Noguchi

Katie Krimitsos is among the majority of American women who have trouble getting healthy sleep, according to a new Gallup survey. Krimitsos launched a podcast called Sleep Meditation for Women to offer some help. Natalie Champa Jennings/Natalie Jennings, courtesy of Katie Krimitsos hide caption

Katie Krimitsos is among the majority of American women who have trouble getting healthy sleep, according to a new Gallup survey. Krimitsos launched a podcast called Sleep Meditation for Women to offer some help.

When Katie Krimitsos lies awake watching sleepless hours tick by, it's almost always because her mind is wrestling with a mental checklist of things she has to do. In high school, that was made up of homework, tests or a big upcoming sports game.

"I would be wide awake, just my brain completely spinning in chaos until two in the morning," says Krimitsos.

There were periods in adulthood, too, when sleep wouldn't come easily, like when she started a podcasting company in Tampa, or nursed her first daughter eight years ago. "I was already very used to the grainy eyes," she says.

Now 43, Krimitsos says in recent years she found that mounting worries brought those sleepless spells more often. Her mind would spin through "a million, gazillion" details of running a company and a family: paying the electric bill, making dinner and dentist appointments, monitoring the pets' food supply or her parents' health checkups. This checklist never, ever shrank, despite her best efforts, and perpetually chased away her sleep.

"So we feel like there are these enormous boulders that we are carrying on our shoulders that we walk into the bedroom with," she says. "And that's what we're laying down with."

By "we," Krimitsos means herself and the many other women she talks to or works with who complain of fatigue.

Women are one of the most sleep-troubled demographics, according to a recent Gallup survey that found sleep patterns of Americans deteriorating rapidly over the past decade.

"When you look in particular at adult women under the age of 50, that's the group where we're seeing the most steep movement in terms of their rate of sleeping less or feeling less satisfied with their sleep and also their rate of stress," says Gallup senior researcher Sarah Fioroni.

Overall, Americans' sleep is at an all time low, in terms of both quantity and quality.

A majority – 57% – now say they could use more sleep, which is a big jump from a decade ago. It's an acceleration of an ongoing trend, according to the survey. In 1942, 59% of Americans said that they slept 8 hours or more; today, that applies to only 26% of Americans. One in five people, also an all-time high, now sleep fewer than 5 hours a day.

Popular myths about sleep, debunked

"If you have poor sleep, then it's all things bad," says Gina Marie Mathew, a post-doctoral sleep researcher at Stony Brook Medicine in New York. The Gallup survey did not cite reasons for the rapid decline, but Mathew says her research shows that smartphones keep us — and especially teenagers — up later.

She says sleep, as well as diet and exercise, is considered one of the three pillars of health. Yet American culture devalues rest.

"In terms of structural and policy change, we need to recognize that a lot of these systems that are in place are not conducive to women in particular getting enough sleep or getting the sleep that they need," she says, arguing things like paid family leave and flexible work hours might help women sleep more, and better.

No one person can change a culture that discourages sleep. But when faced with her own sleeplessness, Tampa mom Katie Krimitsos started a podcast called Sleep Meditation for Women , a soothing series of episodes in which she acknowledges and tries to calm the stresses typical of many women.

Shots - Health News

Many grouchy, error-prone workers just need more sleep.

That podcast alone averages about a million unique listeners a month, and is one of 20 podcasts produced by Krimitsos's firm, Women's Meditation Network.

"Seven of those 20 podcasts are dedicated to sleep in some way, and they make up for 50% of my listenership," Krimitsos notes. "So yeah, it's the biggest pain point."

Krimitsos says she thinks women bear the burdens of a pace of life that keeps accelerating. "Our interpretation of how fast life should be and what we should 'accomplish' or have or do has exponentially increased," she says.

She only started sleeping better, she says, when she deliberately cut back on activities and commitments, both for herself and her two kids. "I feel more satisfied at the end of the day. I feel more fulfilled and I feel more willing to allow things that are not complete to let go."

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In Tight Presidential Race, Voters Are Broadly Critical of Both Biden and Trump

3. feelings about the 2024 race for president, table of contents.

• The state of the 2024 presidential race
• Other findings: Biden’s job approval ticks up, Trump’s election-related criminal charges
• Educational differences in candidate support
• What are 2020 voters’ preferences today?
• How Biden’s supporters view his personal traits
• How Trump’s supporters view his personal traits
• Views of Biden’s presidency and retrospective evaluations of Trump’s time in office
• Attention to the candidates
• Does it matter who wins?
• What if voters could change the presidential ballot?
• How important is it for the losing candidate to publicly acknowledge the winner?
• 4. Joe Biden’s approval ratings
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology
• Validated voters

• About half of voters (49%) say they have given a lot of thought to the candidates who are running in the 2024 presidential election – nearly identical to the share saying this at a similar point four years ago (51%).
• But the share who say “it really matters who wins” in November is 5 percentage points lower than it was in April 2020.
• And most voters say that if it were up to them, they would replace at least one of the two likely nominees (Joe Biden and Donald Trump). About half say they’d replace both Biden and Trump on the ballot.

Today, Trump and Biden supporters are about equally likely to say they’ve given a lot of thought to the presidential candidates. About half of Trump’s and Biden’s supporters say they have given a lot of thought to their options.

In April 2020, about half of voters said they had given “a lot” of thought to the candidates. But Biden’s supporters – fresh off the heels of a competitive primary – were more likely than Trump’s supporters to say they had thought a lot about the candidates (58% vs. 48%).

Today, 69% of voters say “it really matters who wins” the presidential election. Just 8% say it doesn’t really matter who wins, and roughly a third fall somewhere in between. However, the share of voters who say it really matters is 5 points lower than it was in April 2020, when 74% of voters said it really mattered. Both Trump and Biden supporters are lower on this measure today than four years ago.

Though both Biden and Trump have received enough delegates in the 2024 presidential primaries to secure their respective party’s nominations for president , most voters say they would like to replace at least one of them on the ballot.

• 49% of voters say that, if they had the ability to decide the major party candidates for the 2024 presidential election, they would replace both Trump and Biden with different candidates.
• 16% say they would keep Biden but replace Trump with a different Republican.
• A similar share (18%) say they would keep Trump but replace Biden with a different Democrat.
• Another 15% of voters say they would keep the contest as is.

Demographic and political differences

There are demographic differences in desired changes to the ballot. To some extent, these are associated with voting preferences.

Biden supporters are much more likely than Trump supporters to say they’d replace both candidates if they could (62% of Biden’s supporters say this, compared with 35% of Trump’s). In contrast, Trump’s voters are much more likely than Biden’s to say they’d keep both(27% of Trump supporters vs. 4% of Biden supporters). Roughly similar shares (about a third each) of each candidate’s supporters say they would keep only their candidate and replace the other.

Younger voters are more likely than older voters to desire ballot changes. Roughly two-thirds of voters under 30 say they would replace both Biden and Trump on the 2024 ballot. This compares with a narrower majority of those ages 30 to 49 (54%) and smaller shares of those 50 to 64 (46%) and those 65 and older (40%).

The gap between younger and older voters is far wider among Biden’s backers:

• Nearly three-quarters of Biden supporters under 50 (73%) say they would replace both candidates. Among Biden supporters ages 50 and older, about half say they would replace both Biden and Trump (53%). In both age groups, most of those who do not want to replace both candidates say they would keep only Biden.
• Among Trump supporters, 38% of those under 50 would replace both, compared with 33% of those 50 and older. Older Trump supporters are roughly twice as likely as younger Trump supporters to say they’d keep both candidates on the ballot (32% vs. 18%). Older Trump backers are more likely than younger ones to say they’d keep Trump but replace Biden (41% vs. 33%).

Among each candidate’s supporters, those with a four-year college degree are more likely than those with less education to say they would replace both candidates if they could.

Most voters continue to say it is at least somewhat important for the losing candidate to publicly acknowledge the winner as the legitimate president of the country.

Over the past eight years, a majority of voters – regardless of who they supported for president – have said it was at least somewhat important that the losing candidate in a presidential race acknowledge the winner.

But the degree to which Trump’s supporters have said this is important has shifted over the past eight years.  As the 2016 presidential election neared, Trump’s supporters became less likely to say it was important for the losing candidate to concede than they were earlier in the fall: The share who said it was very important for the loser to acknowledge the winner as the legitimate president declined by 20 percentage points between October 2016 and the eve of the November 2016 election.

In the spring of 2020, as Trump ran for reelection, 66% said this was very important.

Today, 44% of Trump’s supporters say it is very important for the losing candidate to concede. This compares with 77% of Biden’s supporters.

While there have been shifts among Clinton and Biden supporters during the same period, these changes have been much more modest. Majorities have said it is very important for the losing candidate to acknowledge the winner.

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Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation

About 1 in 4 americans have unfavorable views of both biden and trump, 2024 presidential primary season was one of the shortest in the modern political era, americans more upbeat on the economy; biden’s job rating remains very low, key facts about hispanic eligible voters in 2024, most popular, report materials.

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Collection  12 March 2020

Top 50 Life and Biological Sciences Articles

We are pleased to share with you the 50 most read Nature Communications  articles* in life and biological sciences published in 2019. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.

Browse all Top 50 subject area collections here .

*Based on data from Google Analytics, covering January-December 2019 (data has been normalised to account for articles published later in the year)

Genome-wide analysis identifies molecular systems and 149 genetic loci associated with income

Household income is used as a marker of socioeconomic position, a trait that is associated with better physical and mental health. Here, Hill et al. report a genome-wide association study for household income in the UK and explore its relationship with intelligence in post-GWAS analyses including Mendelian randomization.

• W. David Hill
• Neil M. Davies
• Ian J. Deary

A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch

Birch pitch is thought to have been used in prehistoric times as hafting material or antiseptic and tooth imprints suggest that it was chewed. Here, the authors report a 5,700 year-old piece of chewed birch pitch from Denmark from which they successfully recovered a complete ancient human genome and oral microbiome DNA.

• Theis Z. T. Jensen
• Jonas Niemann
• Hannes Schroeder

A short translational ramp determines the efficiency of protein synthesis

Several factors contribute to the efficiency of protein expression. Here the authors show that the identity of amino acids encoded by codons at position 3–5 significantly impact translation efficiency and protein expression levels.

• Manasvi Verma
• Junhong Choi
• Sergej Djuranovic

Early coauthorship with top scientists predicts success in academic careers

By examining publication records of scientists from four disciplines, the authors show that coauthoring a paper with a top-cited scientist early in one's career predicts lasting increases in career success, especially for researchers affiliated with less prestigious institutions.

• Tomaso Aste
• Giacomo Livan

Ancient DNA from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake reveals Mediterranean migrants in India

Remains of several hundred humans are scattered around Roopkund Lake, situated over 5,000 meters above sea level in the Himalayan Mountains. Here the authors analyze genome-wide data from 38 skeletons and find 3 clusters with different ancestries and dates, showing the people were desposited in multiple catastrophic events.

• Éadaoin Harney
• Ayushi Nayak

Ketamine can reduce harmful drinking by pharmacologically rewriting drinking memories

Memories linking environmental cues to alcohol reward are involved in the development and maintenance of heavy drinking. Here, the authors show that a single dose of ketamine, given after retrieval of alcohol-reward memories, disrupts the reconsolidation of these memories and reduces drinking in humans.

• Ravi K. Das
• Sunjeev K. Kamboj

Sequential LASER ART and CRISPR Treatments Eliminate HIV-1 in a Subset of Infected Humanized Mice

Here, the authors show that sequential treatment with long-acting slow-effective release ART and AAV9- based delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 results in undetectable levels of virus and integrated DNA in a subset of humanized HIV-1 infected mice. This proof-of-concept study suggests that HIV-1 elimination is possible.

• Prasanta K. Dash
• Rafal Kaminski
• Howard E. Gendelman

XX sex chromosome complement promotes atherosclerosis in mice

Men and women differ in their risk of developing coronary artery disease, in part due to differences in their levels of sex hormones. Here, AlSiraj et al. show that the XX sex genotype regulates lipid metabolism and promotes atherosclerosis independently of sex hormones in mice.

• Yasir AlSiraj
• Lisa A. Cassis

Early-career setback and future career impact

Little is known about the long-term effects of early-career setback. Here, the authors compare junior scientists who were awarded a NIH grant to those with similar track records, who were not, and find that individuals with the early setback systematically performed better in the longer term.

• Benjamin F. Jones
• Dashun Wang

Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle

How do liberals and conservatives differ in their expression of compassion and moral concern? The authors show that conservatives tend to express concern toward smaller, more well-defined, and less permeable social circles, while liberals express concern toward larger, less well-defined, and more permeable social circles.

• Jesse Graham

A metabolic profile of all-cause mortality risk identified in an observational study of 44,168 individuals

Biomarkers that predict mortality are of interest for clinical as well as research applications. Here, the authors analyze metabolomics data from 44,168 individuals and identify key metabolites independently associated with all-cause mortality risk.

• Joris Deelen
• Johannes Kettunen
• P. Eline Slagboom

New insects feeding on dinosaur feathers in mid-Cretaceous amber

Numerous feathered dinosaurs and early birds have been discovered from the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but the early evolution of feather-feeding insects is not clear. Here, Gao et al. describe a new family of ectoparasitic insects from 10 specimens found associated with feathers in mid-Cretaceous amber.

• Taiping Gao
• Xiangchu Yin

Acoustic enrichment can enhance fish community development on degraded coral reef habitat

Healthy coral reefs have an acoustic signature known to be attractive to coral and fish larvae during settlement. Here the authors use playback experiments in the field to show that healthy reef sounds can increase recruitment of juvenile fishes to degraded coral reef habitat, suggesting that acoustic playback could be used as a reef management strategy.

• Timothy A. C. Gordon
• Andrew N. Radford
• Stephen D. Simpson

Phagocytosis-like cell engulfment by a planctomycete bacterium

Phagocytosis is a typically eukaryotic feature that could be behind the origin of eukaryotic cells. Here, the authors describe a bacterium that can engulf other bacteria and small eukaryotic cells through a phagocytosis-like mechanism.

• Takashi Shiratori
• Shigekatsu Suzuki
• Ken-ichiro Ishida

Hippocampal clock regulates memory retrieval via Dopamine and PKA-induced GluA1 phosphorylation

The neural mechanisms that lead to a relative deficit in memory retrieval in the afternoon are unclear. Here, the authors show that the circadian - dependent transcription factor BMAL1 regulates retrieval through dopamine and glutamate receptor phosphorylation.

• Shunsuke Hasegawa
• Hotaka Fukushima
• Satoshi Kida

Agreement between two large pan-cancer CRISPR-Cas9 gene dependency data sets

Integrating independent large-scale pharmacogenomic screens can enable unprecedented characterization of genetic vulnerabilities in cancers. Here, the authors show that the two largest independent CRISPR-Cas9 gene-dependency screens are concordant, paving the way for joint analysis of the data sets.

• Joshua M. Dempster
• Clare Pacini
• Francesco Iorio

Phylogenomics of 10,575 genomes reveals evolutionary proximity between domains Bacteria and Archaea

The authors build a reference phylogeny of 10,575 evenly-sampled bacterial and archaeal genomes, based on 381 markers. The results indicate a remarkably closer evolutionary proximity between Archaea and Bacteria than previous estimates that used fewer “core” genes, such as the ribosomal proteins.

Pan-cancer molecular subtypes revealed by mass-spectrometry-based proteomic characterization of more than 500 human cancers

Mass-spectrometry-based profiling can be used to stratify tumours into molecular subtypes. Here, by classifying over 500 tumours, the authors show that this approach reveals proteomic subgroups which cut across tumour types.

• Fengju Chen
• Darshan S. Chandrashekar
• Chad J. Creighton

CRISPR-Switch regulates sgRNA activity by Cre recombination for sequential editing of two loci

Inducible genome editing systems often suffer from leakiness or reduced activity. Here the authors develop CRISPR-Switch, a Cre recombinase ON/OFF-controlled sgRNA cassette that allows consecutive editing of two loci.

• Krzysztof Chylinski
• Maria Hubmann
• Ulrich Elling

CRISPR-Cas3 induces broad and unidirectional genome editing in human cells

Class 1 CRISPR systems are not as developed for genome editing as Class 2 systems are. Here the authors show that Cas3 can be used to generate functional knockouts and knock-ins, as well as Cas3-mediated exon-skipping in DMD cells.

• Hiroyuki Morisaka
• Kazuto Yoshimi
• Tomoji Mashimo

Genetic evidence for assortative mating on alcohol consumption in the UK Biobank

From observational studies, alcohol consumption behaviours are known to be correlated in spouses. Here, Howe et al. use partners’ genotypic information in a Mendelian randomization framework and show that a SNP in the ADH1B gene associates with partner’s alcohol consumption, suggesting that alcohol consumption affects mate choice.

• Laurence J. Howe
• Daniel J. Lawson
• Gibran Hemani

The autophagy receptor p62/SQST-1 promotes proteostasis and longevity in C. elegans by inducing autophagy

While the cellular recycling process autophagy has been linked to aging, the impact of selective autophagy on lifespan remains unclear. Here Kumsta et al. show that the autophagy receptor p62/SQSTM1 is required for hormetic benefits and p62/SQSTM1 overexpression is sufficient to extend C. elegans lifespan and improve proteostasis.

• Caroline Kumsta
• Jessica T. Chang
• Malene Hansen

The coincidence of ecological opportunity with hybridization explains rapid adaptive radiation in Lake Mweru cichlid fishes

Recent studies have suggested that hybridization can facilitate adaptive radiations. Here, the authors show that opportunity for hybridization differentiates Lake Mweru, where cichlids radiated, and Lake Bangweulu, where cichlids did not radiate despite ecological opportunity in both lakes.

• Joana I. Meier
• Rike B. Stelkens
• Ole Seehausen

Flagellin-elicited adaptive immunity suppresses flagellated microbiota and vaccinates against chronic inflammatory diseases

Gut microbiota alterations, including enrichment of flagellated bacteria, are associated with metabolic syndrome and chronic inflammatory diseases. Here, Tran et al. show, in mice, that elicitation of mucosal anti-flagellin antibodies protects against experimental colitis and ameliorates diet-induced obesity.

• Hao Q. Tran
• Ruth E. Ley
• Benoit Chassaing

Possible role of L-form switching in recurrent urinary tract infection

The reservoir for recurrent urinary tract infection in humans is unclear. Here, Mickiewicz et al. detect cell-wall deficient (L-form) E. coli in fresh urine from patients, and show that the isolated bacteria readily switch between walled and L-form states.

• Katarzyna M. Mickiewicz
• Yoshikazu Kawai
• Jeff Errington

Dual microglia effects on blood brain barrier permeability induced by systemic inflammation

Although it is known that microglia respond to injury and systemic disease in the brain, it is unclear if they modulate blood–brain barrier (BBB) integrity, which is critical for regulating neuroinflammatory responses. Here authors demonstrate that microglia respond to inflammation by migrating towards and accumulating around cerebral vessels, where they initially maintain BBB integrity via expression of the tight-junction protein Claudin-5 before switching, during sustained inflammation, to phagocytically remove astrocytic end-feet resulting in impaired BBB function

• Koichiro Haruwaka
• Ako Ikegami
• Hiroaki Wake

Mice with hyper-long telomeres show less metabolic aging and longer lifespans

Telomere shortening is associated with aging. Here the authors analyze mice with hyperlong telomeres and demonstrate that longer telomeres than normal have beneficial effects such as delayed metabolic aging, increased longevity and less incidence of cancer.

• Miguel A. Muñoz-Lorente
• Alba C. Cano-Martin
• Maria A. Blasco

Extracellular matrix hydrogel derived from decellularized tissues enables endodermal organoid culture

Organoid cultures have been developed from multiple tissues, opening new possibilities for regenerative medicine. Here the authors demonstrate the derivation of GMP-compliant hydrogels from decellularized porcine small intestine which support formation and growth of human gastric, liver, pancreatic and small intestinal organoids.

• Giovanni Giuseppe Giobbe
• Claire Crowley
• Paolo De Coppi

Engineered E. coli Nissle 1917 for the delivery of matrix-tethered therapeutic domains to the gut

Anti-inflammatory treatments for gastrointestinal diseases can often have detrimental side effects. Here the authors engineer E. coli Nissle 1917 to create a fibrous matrix that has a protective effect in DSS-induced colitis mice.

• Pichet Praveschotinunt
• Anna M. Duraj-Thatte
• Neel S. Joshi

Ambient black carbon particles reach the fetal side of human placenta

Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy has been associated with impaired birth outcomes. Here, Bové et al. report evidence of black carbon particle deposition on the fetal side of human placentae, including at early stages of pregnancy, suggesting air pollution could affect birth outcome through direct effects on the fetus.

• Hannelore Bové
• Eva Bongaerts
• Tim S. Nawrot

Real-time decoding of question-and-answer speech dialogue using human cortical activity

Speech neuroprosthetic devices should be capable of restoring a patient’s ability to participate in interactive dialogue. Here, the authors demonstrate that the context of a verbal exchange can be used to enhance neural decoder performance in real time.

• David A. Moses
• Matthew K. Leonard
• Edward F. Chang

In-cell identification and measurement of RNA-protein interactions

RNA-interacting proteome can be identified by RNA affinity purification followed by mass spectrometry. Here the authors developed a different RNA-centric technology that combines high-throughput immunoprecipitation of RNA binding proteins and luciferase-based detection of their interaction with the RNA.

• Antoine Graindorge
• Inês Pinheiro
• Alena Shkumatava

A bacterial gene-drive system efficiently edits and inactivates a high copy number antibiotic resistance locus

Genedrives bias the inheritance of alleles in diploid organisms. Here, the authors develop a gene-drive analogous system for bacteria, selectively editing and clearing plasmids.

• J. Andrés Valderrama
• Surashree S. Kulkarni

Flavonoid intake is associated with lower mortality in the Danish Diet Cancer and Health Cohort

The studies showing health benefits of flavonoids and their impact on cancer mortality are incomplete. Here, the authors perform a prospective cohort study in Danish participants and demonstrate an inverse association between regular flavonoid intake and both cardiovascular and cancer related mortality.

• Nicola P. Bondonno
• Frederik Dalgaard
• Jonathan M. Hodgson

Senescent cell turnover slows with age providing an explanation for the Gompertz law

One of the underlying causes of aging is the accumulation of senescent cells, but their turnover rates and dynamics during ageing are unknown. Here the authors measure and model senescent cell production and removal and explore implications for mortality.

• Amit Agrawal

Optimizing agent behavior over long time scales by transporting value

People are able to mentally time travel to distant memories and reflect on the consequences of those past events. Here, the authors show how a mechanism that connects learning from delayed rewards with memory retrieval can enable AI agents to discover links between past events to help decide better courses of action in the future.

• Chia-Chun Hung
• Timothy Lillicrap

Mutant p53 drives clonal hematopoiesis through modulating epigenetic pathway

Ageing is associated with clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP), which is linked to increased risks of hematological malignancies. Here the authors uncover an epigenetic mechanism through which mutant p53 drives clonal hematopoiesis through interaction with EZH2.

A systematic evaluation of single cell RNA-seq analysis pipelines

There has been a rapid rise in single cell RNA-seq methods and associated pipelines. Here the authors use simulated data to systematically evaluate the performance of 3000 possible pipelines to derive recommendations for data processing and analysis of different types of scRNA-seq experiments.

• Beate Vieth
• Swati Parekh
• Ines Hellmann

Cryo-EM structure and polymorphism of Aβ amyloid fibrils purified from Alzheimer’s brain tissue

Alzheimer’s disease is characterised by the deposition of Aβ amyloid fibrils and tau protein neurofibrillary tangles. Here the authors use cryo-EM to structurally characterise brain derived Aβ amyloid fibrils and find that they are polymorphic and right-hand twisted, which differs from in vitro generated Aβ fibrils.

• Marius Kollmer
• William Close
• Marcus Fändrich

Droplet Tn-Seq combines microfluidics with Tn-Seq for identifying complex single-cell phenotypes

Culturing transposon-mutant libraries in pools can mask complex phenotypes. Here the authors present microfluidics mediated droplet Tn-Seq, which encapsulates individual mutants, promotes isolated growth and enables cell-cell interaction analyses.

• Derek Thibault
• Paul A. Jensen
• Tim van Opijnen

An artificial metalloenzyme biosensor can detect ethylene gas in fruits and Arabidopsis leaves

Existing methods to detect ethylene in plant tissue typically require gas chromatography or use ethylene-dependent gene expression as a proxy. Here Vong et al . show that an artificial metalloenzyme-based ethylene probe can be used to detect ethylene in plants with improved spatiotemporal resolution.

• Kenward Vong
• Katsunori Tanaka

Artificially cloaked viral nanovaccine for cancer immunotherapy

Cancer therapy using oncolytic virus has shown pre-clinical and clinical efficacy. Here, the authors report ExtraCRAd, an oncolytic virus cloaked with tumour cell membrane and report its therapeutic effects in vitro and in vivo in multiple mouse tumour models.

• Manlio Fusciello
• Flavia Fontana
• Vincenzo Cerullo

A transposable element insertion is associated with an alternative life history strategy

Tradeoffs are central to life history theory and evolutionary biology, yet almost nothing is known about their mechanistic basis. Here the authors characterize one such mechanism and find a transposable element insertion is associated with the switch between alternative life history strategies.

• Alyssa Woronik
• Kalle Tunström
• Christopher W. Wheat

Patterns of genetic differentiation and the footprints of historical migrations in the Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula has a complex history. Here, the authors analyse the genetic structure of the modern Iberian population at fine scale, revealing historical population movements associated with the time of Muslim rule.

• Clare Bycroft
• Ceres Fernandez-Rozadilla
• Simon Myers

Single-cell transcriptomics of human T cells reveals tissue and activation signatures in health and disease

Immune cells are shaped by the tissue environment, yet the states of healthy human T cells are mainly studied in the blood. Here, the authors perform single cell RNA-seq of T cells from tissues and blood of healthy donors and show its utility as a reference map for comparison of human T cell states in disease.

• Peter A. Szabo
• Hanna Mendes Levitin
• Peter A. Sims

Genomic risk score offers predictive performance comparable to clinical risk factors for ischaemic stroke

Stroke risk is influenced by genetic and lifestyle factors and previously a genomic risk score (GRS) for stroke was proposed, albeit with limited predictive power. Here, Abraham et al. develop a metaGRS that is composed of several stroke-related GRSs and demonstrate improved predictive power compared with individual GRS or classic risk factors.

• Gad Abraham
• Rainer Malik
• Martin Dichgans

Mitochondrial oxidative capacity and NAD + biosynthesis are reduced in human sarcopenia across ethnicities

Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass and strength associated with physical disability during ageing. Here, the authors analyse muscle biopsies from 119 patients with sarcopenia and age-matched controls of different ethnic groups and find transcriptional signatures indicating mitochondrial dysfunction, associated with reduced mitochondria numbers and lower NAD +  levels in older individuals with sarcopenia.

• Eugenia Migliavacca
• Stacey K. H. Tay
• Jerome N. Feige

NAD + augmentation restores mitophagy and limits accelerated aging in Werner syndrome

The molecular mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction in the premature ageing Werner syndrome were elusive. Here the authors show that NAD + depletion-induced impaired mitophagy contributes to this phenomenon, shedding light on potential therapeutics.

• Evandro F. Fang
• Vilhelm A. Bohr

Novel approach reveals genomic landscapes of single-strand DNA breaks with nucleotide resolution in human cells

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The AI-fueled stock market bubble will crash in 2026, research firm says

• The AI-fueled stock market bubble will burst in 2026, according to Capital Economics.
• The research firm said rising interest rates and higher inflation will weigh down equity valuations.
• "We suspect that the bubble will ultimately burst beyond the end of next year, causing a correction in valuations."

An artificial intelligence-fueled stock market bubble will burst in 2026, according to Capital Economics.

The research firm has said that a stock market bubble, driven by investor excitement towards artificial intelligence, would drive the S&P 500 to as high as 6,500 by 2025, led by technology stocks.

But starting in 2026, those stock market gains should unwind precipitously as higher interest rates and an elevated inflation rate start to weigh down equity valuations.

"Ultimately, we anticipate that returns from equities over the next decade will be poorer than over the previous one. And we think that the long-running outperformance of the US stock market may come to an end," Capital Economics' Diana Iovanel and James Reilly said.

Their bearish stock market call is somewhat counter-intuitive, as the economists expect the growing adoption of AI will spark a boost in economic growth driven by increases in productivity. That economic boost should result in higher inflation than most expect and, in tandem, higher interest rates.

Higher interest rates and inflation are ultimately bad news for stock prices, as evidenced by the recent stock market decline , which was sparked by a surprisingly hot March CPI inflation report.

"We suspect that the bubble will ultimately burst beyond the end of next year, causing a correction in valuations. After all, this dynamic played out around both the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s and the Great Crash of 1929," Iovanel and Reilly said. 

The expected bursting of the stock market bubble should lead to a decade of investment returns that favor bonds over stocks. 

"We expect stronger returns as government bond yields settle at higher levels," Capital Economics said of the fixed-income market. 

Capital Economics forecasts that between now and the end of 2033, US stocks will deliver average annual returns of just 4.3%, which is well below the long-term average return of about 7% after inflation. Meanwhile, Capital Economics said it expects US Treasurys will return 4.5% in the same period, slightly edging out equity gains. 

Those projected returns are in stark contrast to the average annual returns of 13.1% delivered by US stocks over the past decade.

"American exceptionalism may end in the coming years," Iovanel and Reilly said.

But there is one major risk to their outlook, according to the analysts, and that's the inherent difficulty of accurately timing the top of a stock market bubble, and how long the unwinding of the bubble might last.

"When and how the AI-fueled equity bubble bursts is a key risk to our forecast. In particular, one downside risk is that the aftermath of the bursting of the bubble lasts longer than one year, as was the case following the dot com bubble," Iovanel and Reilly said.

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