What's the price of climate-driven heat stress on worker producivity? A UC Davis study quantifies the cost.

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa adopt agricultural inputs including fertilizer at a low rate, contributing to low agricultural productivity. Previous research has shown that insufficient information and distrust in the quality of products for sale in local markets are among the reasons for low rates of fertilizer adoption and application. In a new study, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers examined the agricultural marketplace in Tanzania, finding that frequent turnover among local agro-dealers affect farmer perceptions of product quality and have implications for broader market functioning.

Weather data could help predict up to three days in advance when the number of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is likely to rise above average, according to a nationwide study of more than 114,000 cases by researchers from Semmelweis University, the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and the Hungarian National Ambulance Service. The study, published in Public Health, found that lower temperatures emerged as one of the most important weather-related risk factors examined. In the future, models based on weather forecasts could help people with cardiovascular disease and their families prepare for higher-risk periods, while also supporting ambulance services and hospitals in managing expected increases in demand. 

In the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, researchers have built a flexible and ultra-fast artificial synapse printed entirely from room-temperature liquid inks that dissolves on demand in six minutes. The work shows that high-performance and brain-inspired hardware does not require extreme vacuum chambers, rare metals, or permanent electronic waste.

Irrigating U.S. crops prevents higher greenhouse gas emissions by avoiding land conversion, groundbreaking new research by Colorado State University shows.