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Background: Global climate change is anticipated to reduce future cereal yields and threaten food security, thus potentially increasing the risk of undernutrition. The causation of undernutrition is complex, and there is a need to develop models that better quantify the potential impacts of climate change on population health. OBJECTIVES: We developed a model for estimating future undernutrition that accounts for food and nonfood (socioeconomic) causes and can be linked to available regional scenario data. We estimated child stunting attributable to climate change in five regions in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in 2050. METHODS: We used current national food availability and undernutrition data to parameterize and validate a global model, using a process-driven approach based on estimations of the physiological relationship between a lack of food and stunting. We estimated stunting in 2050 using published modeled national calorie availability under two climate scenarios and a reference scenario (no climate change). RESULTS: We estimated that climate change will lead to a relative increase in moderate stunting of 1-29% in 2050 compared with a future without climate change. Climate change will have a greater impact on rates of severe stunting, which we estimated will increase by 23% (central SSA) to 62% (South Asia). Conclusions: Climate change is likely to impair future efforts to reduce child malnutrition in South Asia and SSA, even when economic growdi is taken into account. Our model suggests that to reduce and prevent future undernutrition, it is necessary to both increase food access and improve socioeconomic conditions, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Hot ambient conditions and associated heat stress can increase mortality and morbidity, as well as increase adverse pregnancy outcomes and negatively affect mental health. High heat stress can also reduce physical work capacity and motor-cognitive performances, with consequences for productivity, and increase the risk of occupational health problems. Almost half of the global population and more than 1 billion workers are exposed to high heat episodes and about a third of all exposed workers have negative health effects. However, excess deaths and many heat-related health risks are preventable, with appropriate heat action plans involving behavioural strategies and biophysical solutions. Extreme heat events are becoming permanent features of summer seasons worldwide, causing many excess deaths. Heat-related morbidity and mortality are projected to increase further as climate change progresses, with greater risk associated with higher degrees of global warming. Particularly in tropical regions, increased warming might mean that physiological limits related to heat tolerance (survival) will be reached regularly and more often in coming decades. Climate change is interacting with other trends, such as population growth and ageing, urbanisation, and socioeconomic development, that can either exacerbate or ameliorate heat-related hazards. Urban temperatures are further enhanced by anthropogenic heat from vehicular transport and heat waste from buildings. Although there is some evidence of adaptation to increasing temperatures in high-income countries, projections of a hotter future suggest that without investment in research and risk management actions, heat-related morbidity and mortality are likely to increase.

Heat extremes (ie, heatwaves) already have a serious impact on human health, with ageing, poverty, and chronic illnesses as aggravating factors. As the global community seeks to contend with even hotter weather in the future as a consequence of global climate change, there is a pressing need to better understand the most effective prevention and response measures that can be implemented, particularly in low-resource settings. In this Series paper, we describe how a future reliance on air conditioning is unsustainable and further marginalises the communities most vulnerable to the heat. We then show that a more holistic understanding of the thermal environment at the landscape and urban, building, and individual scales supports the identification of numerous sustainable opportunities to keep people cooler. We summarise the benefits (eg, effectiveness) and limitations of each identified cooling strategy, and recommend optimal interventions for settings such as aged care homes, slums, workplaces, mass gatherings, refugee camps, and playing sport. The integration of this information into well communicated heat action plans with robust surveillance and monitoring is essential for reducing the adverse health consequences of current and future extreme heat.

Applying psychological measures to Human Robot Interaction (HRI) has become increasingly common. Among these, the Social Mindfulness Paradigm (SoMi)has been used to study social mindfulness towards robots through online experiments using vignettes. This line of work indicated that humans do not show prosocial behavior towards robots. However, these findings are potentially confounded in two ways: items in the SoMi task were based on human-human interactions (HHI), not HRI, and experiments did not involve real-life interactions with robots. Addressing these methodological shortcomings, the current studies investigated whether the SoMi task is a valid assessment of social mindfulness in HRI to determine under which conditions, if any, we observe prosocial behavior towards robots. In Study One, participants interacted with a social robot (Cozmo) for three days, with perceived anthropomorphism and social mindfulness assessed before and after the interaction period. In Study Two, participants played the classic version of the SoMi paradigm using revised items matched in value for humans and robots, based on prior evaluations by a separate sample. Prolonged interaction with Cozmo did not increase social mindfulness but increased anthropomorphic perception of the robot. The revised items did not increase social mindfulness in the anthropomorphic condition, but they increased overall social mindfulness compared with previous studies. We conclude that real-life interaction does not necessarily enhance social mindfulness towards robots, that the item selection and their value for both human and robots must be considered, and that future studies should explore other interaction time frames and items.. Further, the increase in perceived anthropomorphism after a period of real-life interaction supports theory on anthropomorphism as a dynamic process. More general, the results stress that the field should carefully test HHI measures to ensure measurement validity before transferring them to HRI and that researchers must consider the context in which HRI occurs for external validity. Our findings also raise new questions for theory on social mindfulness, and support the emerging critique of the widely used Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) theory, which lead to the emergence of psychological measures in the field of HRI.

Assessments of the potential human health impacts of climate change are needed to inform the development of adaptation strategies, policies, and measures to lessen projected adverse impacts. We developed methods for country-level assessments to help policy makers make evidence-based decisions to increase resilience to current and future climates, and to provide information for national communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The steps in an assessment should include the following: a) determine the scope of the assessment; b) describe the current distribution and burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes; c) identify and describe current strategies, policies, and measures designed to reduce the burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes; d) review the health implications of the potential impacts of climate variability and change in other sectors; e) estimate the future potential health impacts using scenarios of future changes in climate, socioeconomic, and other factors; f) synthesize the results; and g) identify additional adaptation policies and measures to reduce potential negative health impacts. Key issues for ensuring that an assessment is informative, timely, and useful include stakeholder involvement, an adequate management structure, and a communication strategy.

Endocytosis is a process essential to the health and well-being of cell. It is required for the internalisation and sorting of ‘cargo’ – the macromolecules, proteins, receptors and lipids of cell signaling. Clathrin mediated endocytosis (CME) is one of the key processes required for cellular well-being and signaling pathway activation. CME is key role to the recycling of synaptic vesicles (synaptic vesicle recycling (SVR)) in the brain, it is pivotal to signaling across synapses enabling intracellular communication in the sensory and nervous systems. In this review we provide an overview of the general process of CME with a particular focus on two key proteins: clathrin and dynamin that have a central role to play in ensuing successful completion of CME. We examine these two proteins as they are the two endocytotic proteins for which small molecule inhibitors, often of known mechanism of action, have been identified. Inhibition of CME offers the potential to develop therapeutic interventions into conditions involving defects in CME. This review will discuss the roles and the current scope of inhibitors of clathrin and dynamin, providing an insight into how further developments could affect neurological disease treatments.

As digital devices, such as smartphones, are becoming ever more absorbed in the daily lives of adolescents, a major assumption is that they start taking over basic functions of the human mind. A main focus of current debate and research is therefore on investigating adolescents' use of digital technologies. However, the lack of an instrument measuring the degree to which adolescents offload cognitive and social functions to technology hinders debate and research. This paper tests the reliability and validity of the Extended Mind Questionnaire (XMQ) which measures the degree to which digital technology is used to offload cognitive and social functions. In a first study on young adults (n = 63), we constructed a 12-tem scale, which proved to be highly reliable. A large-scale study on teenagers (n = 947) demonstrated the high structural validity, reliability, and construct and criterion validity of the XMQ. In sum, these studies provide evidence that the XMQ is psychometrically sound and valid, and can be useful in future research on the consequences of digital technology in the daily lives of adolescents.

In 2016, 23% of children (155 million) aged [Formula: see text] were stunted. Global-level modeling has consistently found climate change impacts on food production are likely to impair progress on reducing undernutrition. We adopt a new perspective, assessing how climate change may affect child stunting via its impacts on two interacting socioeconomic drivers: incomes of the poorest 20% of populations (due to climate impacts on crop production, health, labor productivity, and disasters) and food prices. We developed a statistical model to project moderate and severe stunting in children aged [Formula: see text] at the national level in 2030 under low and high climate change scenarios combined with poverty and prosperity scenarios in 44 countries. We estimated that in the absence of climate change, 110 million children aged [Formula: see text] would be stunted in 2030 under the poverty scenario in comparison with 83 million under the prosperity scenario. Estimates of climate change-attributable stunting ranged from 570,000 under the prosperity/low climate change scenario to [Formula: see text] under the poverty/high climate change scenario. The projected impact of climate change on stunting was greater in rural vs. urban areas under both socioeconomic scenarios. In countries with lower incomes and relatively high food prices, we projected that rising prices would tend to increase stunting, whereas in countries with higher incomes and relatively low food prices, rising prices would tend to decrease stunting. These findings suggest that food prices that provide decent incomes to farmers alongside high employment with living wages will reduce undernutrition and vulnerability to climate change. Shifting the focus from food production to interactions between incomes and food price provides new insights. Futures that protect health should consider not just availability, accessibility, and quality of food, but also the incomes generated by those producing the food. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP2916.

Climate change is expected to have significant effects on human health, partly through an increase in extreme events such as heatwaves. People with mental illness may be at particular risk. To estimate risk conferred by high ambient temperature on patients with psychosis, dementia and substance misuse. We applied time-series regression analysis to data from a nationally representative primary care cohort study. Relative risk of death per 1°C increase in temperature was calculated above a threshold. Patients with mental illness showed an overall increase in risk of death of 4.9% (95% CI 2.0-7.8) per 1°C increase in temperature above the 93rd percentile of the annual temperature distribution. Younger patients and those with a primary diagnosis of substance misuse demonstrated greatest mortality risk. The increased risk of death during hot weather in patients with psychosis, dementia and substance misuse has implications for public health strategies during heatwaves.

Seasonal fluctuation in suicide has been observed in many populations. High temperature may contribute to this, but the effect of short-term fluctuations in temperature on suicide rates has not been studied. To assess the relationship between daily temperature and daily suicide counts in England and Wales between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2003 and to establish whether heatwaves are associated with increased mortality from suicide. Time-series regression analysis was used to explore and quantify the relationship between daily suicide counts and daily temperature. The impact of two heatwaves on suicide was estimated. No spring or summer peak in suicide was found. Above 18 degrees C, each 1 degrees C increase in mean temperature was associated with a 3.8 and 5.0% rise in suicide and violent suicide respectively. Suicide increased by 46.9% during the 1995 heatwave, whereas no change was seen during the 2003 heat wave. There is increased risk of suicide during hot weather.