How to recover from aclimate disasters
The impact of the 2016 Rio Grande do Sul floods on mental health and public health: lessons for people in the United States and for countries outside the US
More than 2 million people were affected by devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, earlier this year. The floods and infrastructure failures of the state caused 500,000 people to be displaced. Extreme weather events leave lasting damage to people’s mental health, along with their homes and possessions. It is hard to find ways to help people facing mental healthcare challenges in the aftermath of a disaster, but there are lessons that can be learned from studies that were done after the Rio Grande do sul crisis.
Nature’s survey of around 2,000 readers finds that 90% of respondents — around one-half of whom say they are based outside the United States — think that the US election could have big impacts on everything from climate change to public health and science policy. Respondents overwhelmingly favour Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, and one-third of the researchers rooting for her said it might affect their plans for where they live or study if the Republican candidate Donald Trump wins next week. “A country that doesn’t believe in facts is not a safe place to build a career in science,” wrote one respondent.
How to mentally recover from an extreme weather event: how to subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and RSS feeds
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Reforms introduced by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to support young scientists to get research funding might actually be making it more difficult. The NSFC is based in Beijing and oversees several programmes that provide funding through competitive grants. The reforms scrapped a rule whereby applicants who had been rejected for two consecutive years had to sit a year out before applying again. This year saw more than 380,000 applications made, but only 13% of those were successful, compared with 16% in 2023. “The competition is very, very intense,” says Cong Cao, a science-policy researcher.
Source: Daily briefing: How to mentally recover from an extreme weather event
Hidden Maya city in Campeche, Mexico: A hidden urban oasis found with the Moon during the first Moon landing since 1972 and its educational use
The first crewed Moon landing since 1972 will occur during NASA’s upcoming Artemis III mission. The regions are all near the lunar South Pole, an area of the Moon that has never been explored. Selection criteria included terrain suitability, lighting conditions and communication capabilities with Earth. “The Moon’s South Pole is a completely different environment than where we landed during the Apollo missions,” says Sarah Noble, Artemis lunar science lead. “It offers access to some of the Moon’s oldest terrain, as well as cold, shadowed regions that may contain water and other compounds.”
A hidden Maya city has been found in the Mexican state of Campeche. Archaeologists used a laser technique called LiDAR to scan the area, “accidentally” discovering the forgotten complex, which contains pyramids, amphitheatres and sports fields. They think the site, which they’ve named Valeriana, might have housed up to 50,000 people, which supports claims that Maya lived in complex cities or towns, not in isolated villages, says archaeologist Elizabeth Graham.
Studies conducted after recent floods in Brazil offer lessons on how to help people facing mental-health challenges after a climate disaster. A hidden Maya city has been found in the Mexican jungle.
The past year has seen bans on the use of smartphones in schools in some 60 countries amid worries that social media can harm children’s mental health. The Director of the International Centre for EdTech Impact doesn’t want to see educational technology caught in the crossfire. She knows children in low-income areas can benefit from using educational apps. Any app which claims to be educational must have evidence to back that up, since disrupting proper learning is a big problem.
Source: Daily briefing: How to mentally recover from an extreme weather event
John Hopfield’s Physics Prize: Why We Should Care About Artificial Intelligence if We Learn from One Discipline, Not From One Field
John Hopfield was awarded the physics prize for his work on theHopfield network, which underpins modern artificial intelligence. If you are looking to approach another field from a different angle, Hopfield said that knowledge from one discipline can help you. His prizewinning work was really physics and why we should worry about artificial intelligence.
A new study in Brazil has said that the 2016 Rio Grande do Sul floods have left a long-lasting effect on people’s mental health. The study also found that people who suffered from mental health problems were much more likely to be affected by climate change, and they were more likely to live longer. Over 2 million people were affected by the floods.