CSDE Affiliate Clayton Page Aldern published a new book, entitled The Weight of Nature. Climate change has had serious impacts on our world, including rising sea levels, extreme weather, and severe heat. Yet its effects on our brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. In his book, Aldern synthesizes emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. Clayton Aldern is a neuroscientist turned environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, Newsweek, The Economist, Scientific American, and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter.

CSDE Affiliate Donald Chi released an article with colleagues in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health, entitled “Identifying sources of variation in added sugar intake for Alaska Native children using a hair biomarker“. Sugars from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are an important risk factor for tooth decay. The study goal was to determine if there was variation in added sugar intake across communities and between and within households. In this cross-sectional study, intakes of total sugar, added sugar, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) were estimated for 282 Alaska Native children ages 0–10 years from 131 households in three Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta communities using biomarker equations based on hair carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios previously developed for the Yup’ik population.

CSDE Affiliate Joan Casey (Enviromental and Occupational Health Sciences) published an article with co-authors in Plos One, entitled “Missing Black males among preterm births in the US, 1995 to 2019“. In the US, non-Hispanic (NH) Black birthing persons show a two-fold greater risk of fetal death relative to NH white birthing persons. Since males more than females show a greater risk of fetal death, such loss in utero may affect the sex composition of live births born preterm (PTB; <37 weeks gestational age). We examine US birth data from 1995 to 2019 to determine whether the ratio of male to female preterm (i.e., PTB sex ratios) among NH Black births falls below that of NH whites and Hispanics.

CSDE Affiliate Jade D’Alpoim Guedes (Anthropology) released a study with co-authors in Quaternary Science Reviews, entitled “Changes in prehistoric wood procurement strategies in Northern China from 6500 – 2000 BP. Evidence for human preferential harvesting in the face of climatic change“. The article was lead-authored by Liu Fengwen from Yunnan University in China. In the past, humans have adapted their strategies of wood collection to shifts in the surrounding environment. Shifts in wood procurement strategies have been assumed to have been heavily influenced by changes in biomes due to shifts in climate. In these models, wood found on archaeological sites is interpreted as being representative of the surrounding environment. Around the world there is an increasing recognition that human preferences and management strategies impacted forest composition and species harvesting. Authors evaluated charcoal data gathered from 92 archaeological sites in northern China, with chronologies spanning the period from 6500 BP to 2000 BP. By combining the results of the analysis with published paleoenvironment records and archaeological evidence, we aimed to determine when and how there was an anthropogenic impact on wood procurement strategies.