New research to be published Wednesday, 29 July in AGU's journal Earth’s Futurehas found 6.5 million Americans live in homes on or near landslide-prone slopes. Although much of the U.S.’s steepest terrain is in the west, the study finds over half of the people exposed to landslides live closer to the east coast, simply due to higher population densities in that region. The researchers also found people in rural areas have less capacity to recover than their urban counterparts.

Previous research may have underestimated the capacity of natural environments to promote concentration and well-being, even in the absence of prior stressors, a review by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development shows. 

VALOR has launched an open-access collection in the RIO journal to make its research on pollinator decline openly accessible, starting with its Description of Action as the first publication.

Acute pancreatitis is rising faster than expected in South Australia, with new research revealing rates above the global average and climbing most sharply among women and people living in wealthier areas.

Archaic human parents had to look after helpless infants like modern day parents do, according to new research. Human babies are born less developed than those of other great apes, and so are unable to move as freely. A common result of this is deformational plagiocephaly, also called flat head syndrome. Professor Yousuke Kaifu at the University of Tokyo led a team which studied head shapes from scans of living infants, historical Japanese skeletal remains, fossilized specimens of Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis, and compared these to measurements of dry skulls from other great apes. Human head shapes across the ages, as well as the fossilized samples, exhibited a far wider range of deformation. The team sees this as evidence that archaic humans birthed helpless infants, with implications for childcare practices and potentially cooperative social behaviors dating back hundreds of thousands of years.