Research Alert: UC San Diego study tracks shifting US smoking norms over 30 years
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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-Jun-2026 16:16 ET (18-Jun-2026 20:16 GMT/UTC)
Using data from 1.5 million respondents in the Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey, researchers created a “Willingness to Restrict Smoking” (WTRS) scale that captures how strongly people believe smoking should be restricted in public settings.
The use of GLP-1 medications commonly prescribed for weight loss or managing diabetes may have effects that extend beyond metabolic health, including on behaviors linked to violence, according to Rutgers researchers.
Their study, published in Criminology, examined whether the use of GLP-1 receptor agonist medications, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, influences violent criminal behavior among adults by moderating the effects of impulsivity and alcohol intake.
An analysis published in The Journal of Rural Health found that among US Veterans with serious mental illness (SMI), rural Veterans were somewhat more likely to have co-occurring mental health conditions than urban Veterans but were less likely to receive SMI care.
A team at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has developed a versatile nanorobot with propulsion and payload modules. The two reusable modules autonomously self-assemble and could be used in medicine or industry.
Researchers studied the microbes associated with historical middens conserved in Greenland’s permafrost, left behind by Paleo-Inuit, ancient Norse, and early modern Inuit. These middens harbored biodiverse bacterial communities – including many unknown taxa – that were especially rich in human- and animal-associated groups. The authors concluded that microbial traces of human activities such as defecation, livestock farming, and seal hunting can linger for centuries in Arctic middens. They also found a wide range of antimicrobial resistance genes in the bacterial genomes. However, the limited outward spread of potential pathogens away from the frozen core of the middens means that they currently pose little risk to public health.
Yo-yo dieters who struggle to lose weight and keep it off may achieve better results by following an intermittent fasting diet, rather than traditional calorie counting.An Adelaide University study focusing on the psychological aspects of both intermittent fasting and calorie restriction, compared the effects both diets had on eating behaviours, mood, sleep and quality of life.
As neuroscience strives for generalizability and equity, understanding human brain diversity across populations is crucial. To uncover how ethnicity/race-related differences in the brain functional connectome arise without falling into biological essentialism, Prof. Tianyi Yan and Prof. Guoyuan Yang’s team from the Beijing Institute of Technology recently published a study in Research. Using multimodal and behavioral data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP), they constructed a multi-layered framework to systematically reveal the driving mechanisms behind this population diversity.