Feature Article

Average body mass index (BMI) and depression prevalence grew over the last several decades, increasing medical expenditures. There is a strong correlation between obesity and depression but limited evidence on the causal effect of weight on mental health. I use an index of genetic risk for high BMI as a source of exogenous variation in weight to provide novel evidence on the effect of weight on mental health. This is one of the first studies to use genetics as an instrument for BMI and to examine the causal relationship between weight and depression.

Recent years have shown increased awareness that the use of the basic resources water, food, and energy are highly interconnected (referred to as a ‘nexus’). Spatial scales are an important but complicating factor in nexus analyses, and should receive more attention – especially in the policy-oriented literature. In this paper, we ‘unpack' the nexus concept, aiming to understand the differences between water, food and energy resources, especially in terms of spatial scales.

Residues of pharmaceuticals are increasingly detected in surface waters throughout the world.In four streams in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, we detected analgesics, stimulants, antihistamines, andantibiotics using passive organic samplers. We exposed biofilm communities in these streams to the com-mon drugs caffeine, cimetidine, ciprofloxacin, and diphenhydramine.

Original Source

The aim of this study was to examine cross-sectional associations between objectively measured sedentary time and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-assessed adiposity in a population at high risk for type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and to determine whether associations are modified by the recommended levels of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA).

Original Source

Food retailers and manufacturers are increasingly committing to address agricultural sustainability issues in their supply chains. In place of using established eco-certifications, many companies define their own supply chain sustainability standards. Scholars remain divided on whether we should expect such company-led programs to affect change. We use a major food retailer as a critical case to evaluate the effectiveness of a companyled supply chain standard in improving environmental farm management practices.

Although not considered in climate models, perceived risk stemming from extreme climate events may induce behavioural changes that alter greenhouse gas emissions. Here, we link the C-ROADS climate model to a social model of behavioural change to examine how interactions between perceived risk and emissions behaviour influence projected climate change.

Non-native plants invade some tropical forests but there are few long-term studies of these invasions, and the consequences for plant richness and diversity are unclear. Repeated measurements of permanent plots in tropical montane rain forests in the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park in Jamaica over 24 to 40 years coincided with invasion by a non-native tree, Pittosporum undulatum.

People often fail to adhere to food-related health information. Increasing evidence suggests that environmental stimuli interfere with good intentions by triggering choices relatively automatically. Using a Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) task, we examined whether food-associated stimuli reduce health warnings’ effectiveness. We expected that people adhere to health warnings in the absence, but not presence, of food-associated stimuli.

Future changes in rainfall have serious impacts on human adaptation to climate change, but quantification of these changes is subject to large uncertainties in climate model projections. To narrow these uncertainties, significant efforts have been made to understand the intermodel differences in future rainfall changes. Here, we show a strong inverse relationship between present-day precipitation and its future change to possibly calibrate future precipitation change by removing the present-day bias in climate models.

Aridity—the ratio of atmospheric water supply (precipitation; P) to demand (potential evapotranspiration; PET)—is projected to decrease (that is, areas will become drier) as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change, exacerbating land degradation and desertification. However, the timing of significant aridification relative to natural variability—defined here as the time of emergence for aridification (ToEA)—is unknown, despite its importance in designing and implementing mitigation policies.