A threatened tree species in Alaska could serve as a model for integrating ecological and social research methods in efforts to safeguard species that are vulnerable to climate change effects and human activity.

In a new study, scientists assessed the health of yellow cedar, a culturally and commercially valuable tree that is experiencing climate change-induced dieback and that is found throughout coastal Alaska.

In an era when climate change threatens to touch every part of the globe, the traditional conservation approach of setting aside lands to protect biodiversity may no longer sufficient to protect species.

Cervical cancer is an "enormous burden" for Latin American society, and the third leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the region, say Drs. María Correnti and María Eugenia Cavazza of the Central University of Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela. 

"In contrast to other types of cancer, cervical cancer is a preventable and curable disease if it is diagnosed and treated early," say Drs Correnti and Cavazza in an accompanying editorial.

"But the absence of an effective prevention strategy leads to delayed diagnosis, and turns it into one of the leading causes of death among young women."

It sounded ridiculous when Gina McCarthy claimed nature was fixing itself after they created a toxic waste disaster in Colorado but that future methane needed the EPA to halt it right now, yet science has again shown that nature is more resilient than political bodies think.

Biodiversity can often help protect ecosystems from extreme conditions, according to a study of 46 grasslands in North America and Europe. The results showed that increasing plant diversity decreased the extent to which extremely wet or dry conditions disrupt grassland productivity. 

An analysis of emergency department surveys looked for risk and protective factors among teenagers who report dating violence and alcohol use. Patients ages 14 to 20 that came to the  University of Michigan Injury Center emergency department seeking care were asked to complete a survey on alcohol use, peers, mental health and dating violence. 

From those survey results, 842 male and female patients reported alcohol misuse, of which nearly 1 in 4 reported past-year dating violence, defined as being either a victim or perpetrator of physical acts such as throwing something, slapping, pulling hair, pushing, shoving, kicking, hitting or punching. 

The scholars analyzed individual factors such as:

• alcohol use

People who have social power are strongly influenced by internal body cues stemming from their motor system when making judgments about preferences of paintings, objects, movements or letter sequences, according to a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General which looked at how the easiness of high power individuals' motor actions impacted their judgments.

Mesoamerican Nephropathy, a mysterious kidney disease that has killed over 20,000 people in Central America, most of them sugar cane workers, may be caused by chronic, severe dehydration linked to global climate change, according to a new study by Richard J. Johnson, MD, of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The Mesoamerican Nephropathy epidemic was first described in 2002. It's most prevalent among manual laborers on sugar cane plantations in the hotter, lower altitudes of Central America's Pacific coast. The disease has also been reported among farmworkers, miners, fishermen and construction and transportation workers in the region.