adapted to steppe-desert climate extremes one million years ago.

Questions about when early members of the genus adapted to extreme environments like deserts and rainforests have traditionally focused on . Here, we present multidisciplinary evidence from Engaji Nanyori in Tanzania's Oldupai Gorge, revealing that thrived in hyperarid landscapes one million years ago. Using biogeochemical analyses, precise chronometric dating, palaeoclimate simulations, biome modeling, fire history reconstructions, palaeobotanical studies, faunal assemblages, and archeological evidence, we reconstruct an environment dominated by semidesert shrubland.

The North American Repository for Archaeological Isotopes.

Here, we present the North American Repository for Archaeological Isotopes (NARIA), the largest open-access compilation of previously reported isotopic measurements (n = 28,374) from bioarchaeological samples in North America (i.e., Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and the United States of America) covering a time-frame of more than 12,000 years.

A comparative study of menstrual poverty among urban and rural female learners in government schools of Zambia.

Background: Menstrual poverty remains a significant health problem among female learners in Zambia, particularly due to the lack of access to menstrual products, leading to the use of unsafe alternatives and potential health risks such as reproductive tract infections. To address this pressing issue, this study examined the disparities in knowledge, attitudes, and practices concerning menstrual poverty among female learners in both urban and rural government schools within Zambia.

Methods: The study utilized a mixed-method sequential explanatory design, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Effectiveness of a comic book intervention on mental health literacy among adolescents and youth in Burkina Faso: a randomized controlled trial protocol.

Background: In Burkina Faso, nearly half of the population is under 15 years old, and one in four adolescents experience depression. This underscores the critical need to enhance mental health literacy among adolescents and youth, empowering them to manage their mental well-being effectively. Comic books offer an engaging approach to health education, yet their effectiveness in addressing mental health remains largely untested.

Raising Awareness for Sustainable Faecal Treatment Using Augmented Reality.

Pit latrines-the simplest on-site sanitation system-have been extensively used in developing countries in Asia for a long time. However, pit latrines are pollution and health risk hotspots that can cause widespread contamination. It is preferable to upgrade them to septic tanks, which are more advanced, effective, and simple alternatives.

Embedded Ethics in Practice: A Toolbox for Integrating the Analysis of Ethical and Social Issues into Healthcare AI Research.

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into critical domains such as healthcare holds immense promise. Nevertheless, significant challenges must be addressed to avoid harm, promote the well-being of individuals and societies, and ensure ethically sound and socially just technology development. Innovative approaches like Embedded Ethics, which refers to integrating ethics and social science into technology development based on interdisciplinary collaboration, are emerging to address issues of bias, transparency, misrepresentation, and more.

Ontological pleasure: Exploring eating as enjoyment among people with experience of homelessness.

Amidst globally escalating housing and cost of living crises, more and more people face the double challenge of securing shelter and food in their day-to-day lives. Yet, what meanings people with experience of homelessness attribute to eating is not well understood. We analyse eating as embedded in social relations between individual actors, social institutions, and organisations.

Wishful perceiving: A value-based bias for perception of close others.

Why do people not perceive their close others accurately, although they have ample information about them? We propose that one reason for such errors may be bias based on personal values. Personal values may serve as schemas defining what people see as positive, and thus affect perceptions of others' behavior, values, and traits. We propose that, in close relationships, people see others as sharing their own values.

The impact of neighborhood deprivation on mental health and quality of life in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from the COPSY Hamburg study.

Introduction: Socioeconomic inequalities have been associated with poorer mental health outcomes in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite numerous studies on individual risk factors, the impact of societal environment, such as neighborhood characteristics, on changes in mental health has rarely been investigated. This study investigates the effect of neighborhood deprivation on mental health problems and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hamburg, Germany.

Patterns of partisan toxicity and engagement reveal the common structure of online political communication across countries.

Existing studies of political polarization are often limited to a single country and one form of polarization, hindering a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Here we investigate patterns of polarization online across nine countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, UK, USA), focusing on the structure of political interaction networks, the use of toxic language targeting out-groups, and how these factors relate to user engagement. First, we show that political interaction networks are structurally polarized on Twitter (currently X).

Link between gender inequality and women's satisfaction with maternal healthcare services: a cross-sectional study in Khulna, Bangladesh.

Background: Gender inequality within households remains a significant barrier to accessing maternal healthcare services in many low-resource settings, including Bangladesh. Understanding the relationship between the gender inequality faced by women in households and their perceived satisfaction with maternal healthcare services is important.

Objective: This study aims to identify the factors influencing gender inequality and investigate the association between gender inequality faced by women within households and their perceived satisfaction with maternal healthcare services.

Mothers' and fathers' experiences of breastfeeding and returning to paid work after birth: A mixed-method study.

This mixed-method study explored the experiences of mothers and fathers combining breastfeeding with returning to paid employment after childbirth. Tasmanian State Service employees participated in an online survey and phone interviews. A total of 130 parents completed the survey, and 42 participated in 60-min phone interviews.

Stone Babies: A Pictorial Essay With Insights From 25 Museal Lithopaedions.

Background: Lithopaedion, or "stone baby," represents an exceptionally rare clinical phenomenon with fewer than 350 documented cases existing in the medical literature. This condition arises when an advanced extrauterine pregnancy ceases its developmental trajectory and undergoes a lithification process, potentially resulting in a calcified mass with fetal-like morphology. Typically, lithopaedions remain asymptomatic for decades, but may occasionally elicit acute symptoms necessitating medical intervention.

Contesting Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome: How Narratives of Cannabis Shape Diagnosis Contestation and Treatment Resistance.

Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) is characterized by the onset of cyclic bouts of severe nausea and vomiting in chronic cannabis users. As the number of CHS diagnoses rises, it is important to understand how people experience the disease. Using a narrative framework, we explore how the symbolic meaning participants associated with cannabis shaped the way they experienced diagnosis and treatment of CHS.

Atmospheric particulates over the northwestern Pacific during the late Holocene: Volcanism, dust, and human perturbation.

Mineral aerosols form a key component of Earth's dynamic biogeochemical systems, yet their composition and mass are variable in time. We reconstruct patterns in mineral aerosol flux from East Asia, the second largest global dust source, in a peat mire in northern Japan. Using geochemical fingerprinting, we show for the past ~3600 years that high but variable tephra flux dominated regional aerosol loads.

Fuzzy bow-tie analysis for mitigating self-heating risks in maritime coal transportation.

Coal self-heating presents significant risks to maritime transportation, including spontaneous combustion, environmental damage, and economic losses. This study aims to apply a Fuzzy Bow-Tie analysis to assess and mitigate the risks associated with coal self-heating during transportation. By integrating expert judgments and addressing uncertainties in the data, the Fuzzy Bow-Tie model offers a comprehensive evaluation of risk factors and safety barriers.

Patterns of Health Behaviors and Trajectories of Stress among People with Disabilities in Korea.

Background: As a health vulnerable group, people with disabilities require more health-promoting behavior than non-disabled people. We aimed to identify the types of health behavior of disabled people and to track the trajectories of stress by the type of health behaviors.

Methods: Data came from the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled Second Wave by the Employment Development Institute (EDI) in Korea.

The full picture of people's realities must be considered to deliver better diets for all.

Efforts to address poor-quality diets have stepped up considerably in recent years, but the problem of inadequate, unhealthy, unsustainable and unequal diets persists. Here we argue that to get policies and interventions working more effectively and equitably, a fresh approach is needed-one that considers the full picture of people's realities. People's realities interact to shape the way people respond to and engage with policies and interventions, thereby influencing their impact, particularly, albeit not only, on dietary inequalities.

Verbal attacks on terrorist groups increase violence against civilians.

Terrorists and other transnational extremist groups are responsible for thousands of civilian deaths. In confronting extremists, governments have relied heavily on threats, demands, denunciations, and other forms of Do these efforts at verbal coercion have any effect on terrorist behavior? This analysis focuses on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which continues to be the world's deadliest terrorist group and was responsible for recent high-profile attacks in Baghdad, Vienna, Kabul, and Russia. We use Bayesian structural vector autoregression models to analyze daily event data on interactions between ISIS and foreign governments for the 2014-2020 period.

Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED): A systematic mixed-methods review focusing on the carers' experiences.

Background: Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) is a way to end one's life prematurely. We synthesized the empirical data on VSED.

Methods: In this systematic mixed-methods review, we searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and BELIT for English and German articles published between January 1, 2013 and November 12, 2021.