Could the precise architectural form of your residence influence how much you participate in politics? A new study by MIT scholars finds this to be exactly the case—at least in Accra, Ghana, where many people live in semi-communal structures known as "compound houses," often sharing kitchens, bathrooms and common living-room spaces, while having private bedrooms.

The detailed study of homes in Ghana's capital finds that residents of compound houses are more likely to vote, attend rallies and take part in political campaigns, compared with people with more private forms of housing.

"The overarching pattern we find is that if you compare people who live in compound houses to residents of other housing types, like single-family homes or self-contained apartments, there is a pretty big difference in political actions," says Noah Nathan, an MIT political scientist and co-author of a newly published paper detailing the study's results. "People seem to vote more, and there are more other types of political behavior, like going to rallies, participating in campaigns and contacting politicians."

While those differences could stem from factors other than housing, the highly granular study suggests the architecture itself really matters. The researchers examined the specific floor plans of compound houses and found variations in people's political information and social connections—key factors that existing studies show predict political activity—that map to differences in where people live within compound houses.

"We show that those kinds of social relationships and exchanges of political information seem to vary systematically with people's individual locations within the layouts of the buildings they live in," says Nathan, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Political Science. "That's consistent with architectural design leading you to have different levels of political participation."

The open-access paper, "Vernacular Architecture and Grassroots Urban Politics: How Politics Is Embedded in Residential Design," is published in the American Political Science Review. Nathan's co-author is Paige Bollen, Ph.D. '23, an assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University.

Over the past 70 years, the study of epigenetics has evolved from a research curiosity for outsiders to one of the most hyped biological concepts. While the pioneers of epigenetic research were met with disbelief when they described phenomena that did not follow the normal Mendelian laws of inheritance, the popular media today praises the modulation of epigenetics through behavioral changes as a cure for diseases. The concept that environmental influences can cause stable, heritable changes in gene expression has been embraced with such enthusiasm that the study of epigenetics has found its place in virtually every medical biology field. Because of the somewhat inflationary way in which the word epigenetics is used nowadays, it is all the more important to clarify definitions and terms before talking about epigenetic studies.

Particles of light cannot be divided into smaller particles, but if you try to snip off the end of one, instead of shortening it multiplies

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Climate change is widely understood as an environmental and economic threat, but new research from the University of Sydney shows it is also a growing social crisis, weakening the relationships people rely on to survive.

Published in Nature Human Behaviour, the international study found climate change is eroding social connection at a time when those ties are most needed, creating a feedback loop where disruption to relationships reduces people's ability to adapt and recover.

"Climate change isn't just something happening 'out there,'" said lead author Dr. Marlee Bower from the Matilda Center for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use. "It's reshaping how we live, how we connect, and ultimately who has support when things go wrong."

Banner image: Deforestation, climate change and trade pose threats to the species, which has dwindled to a few hundred from some 750,000 in the 1960s. Image by kaysud via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

US proposes endangered species protections for an imperiled Jamaican butterfly

• The U.S. has proposed listing a rare butterfly from Jamaica, the Jamaican kite swallowtail under the Endangered Species Act.
• The striking blue-green and black butterfly, endemic to this island country, hovers on the brink of extinction. Scientists have observed no more than 250 adults in the wild in recent years.
• Deforestation, devastating hurricanes and droughts on the island have destroyed much of this butterfly’s breeding sites; only four remain. Demand for framed butterflies used in home decor is another factor in their disappearance.
• ESA listing would bring attention to the species and stop its trade in the U.S. Conservationists hope it will also fund efforts to protect the butterfly’s habitat.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently proposed listing Jamaica’s most imperiled butterfly, the Jamaican kite swallowtail, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The species (Protographium marcellinus), a small, fast-flying butterfly, flutters through its limestone forest home. Its wings, painted in streaks of bright turquoise and black with a dash of red, sport long, narrow tails.

These charismatic butterflies live on this island and nowhere else. In recent years, they’ve nearly disappeared. Back in the 1960s, scientists recorded about 750,000 individuals; that number has plummeted to between 50 and 250 today. In some years, they’ve seen none.

It’s such an alarming decline that scientists say this swallowtail should jump two categories on the IUCN Red List, from vulnerable to critically endangered.

“This listing would be a real turning point for this species,” said Dianne DuBois, senior scientist at the U.S.-based NGO Center for Biological Diversity, which has been fighting for ESA protections for the butterfly since 1994. After a few failed attempts, it sued USFWS in 2021, which resulted in the agency drawing up the current proposal.

ESA listings prevent extinction in 99% of the species under the act, but the wait is often quite long, about 12 years on average. Time may not be on its side for the Jamaican kite swallowtail, which hangs on the brink of extinction.

“We wish this proposal had come three decades ago,” DuBois said. “We really want to urge the Fish and Wildlife Service to work quickly to finalize these protections and let the ESA work its magic.”

Vaughan Turland at Jamaica’s Windsor Research Centre, who has studied the species for decades, welcomed the U.S. proposal. “Any formal recognition of the potential demise of such an iconic species is important,” he said, because it raises awareness and urges urgent conservation actions.

The Jamaican kite swallowtail is a small, endemic species that lives in Jamaica’s limestone forests. Image by Vaughan Turland.

Hammered by vanishing habitat, climate change and trade

Jamaica is rapidly losing its forests, and along with it, the Jamaican kite swallowtail is losing its homelands. Trees are felled to make way for mines, quarries, expanding farmlands, human settlements and livestock grazing.

Baby caterpillars feed only on the leaves of the black lancewood trees (Oxandra lanceolata) found in limestone forests. Cocooned pupae stay buried in the leaf litter for months before turning into showy butterflies. Meanwhile, black lancewood is targeted by loggers: Thousands of these trees are cut down to make furniture, fish pots, stakes for growing yams and charcoal for cooking, among other things.

As a result, the butterfly’s breeding habitat has shrunk by about 70% since the 1960s, according to a study by Turland and his colleague Thomas Turner from the Florida Museum of Natural History, who’s also considered an authority on the species. Today, the swallowtails breed in just four sites on the island where a few dense stands of black lancewood remain.

Extreme weather events, including hurricanes and drought, pose an increasing threat. Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin, made landfall in Jamaica in October 2025, damaging one of the butterfly’s few remaining breeding sites, Turland said.

Caterpillars only eat the leaves of the black lancewood trees, which are logged by the thousands to make furniture, fish pots and charcoal, and more. Image by Vaughan Turland.

Because of its striking appearance, the rare butterfly is also in demand for home décor, framed and hung on the wall. It’s part of a massive trade that includes more than 3,700 butterfly species the world over, mostly coming from the Global South. They’re bought primarily by consumers in the U.S. and Europe.

Fewer than 70 butterfly species have trade protections under CITES, the global wildlife trade agreement. All others, including the Jamaican kite swallowtail, can be traded internationally without restrictions.

“The Jamaican kite swallowtails are one of many butterfly and invertebrate species that have kind of caught the eye of collectors that pin and frame them for display,” DuBois said.

How many are captured and sold remains unclear, as it’s illegal to catch them in Jamaica, but it’s likely a lucrative activity in a country where workers average $34 a day. Dubois said this butterfly sells online for as much as $178 apiece.

For an animal this rare, every sale matters. “Even low levels of collection can be devastating for a species with such a small population,” DuBois said.

This is where the ESA listing could make the most impact. If finalized, the listing would “ensure that this species no longer gets caught up in this popular online decor trade,” DuBois said. It could also bring more attention to the butterfly’s perilous state, and with it, funding to protect its habitat, she added.

(Left) Deforestation has resulted in a nearly 70% loss of the butterfly’s breeding sites. (Right) A Jamaican kite swallowtail. Images by Vaughan Turland and kaysud via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

The ESA listing proposal is currently open for comments until June 16, and it’s an open forum: Anyone with information about the species or who is interested in butterfly conservation can post statements. USFWS will then have a year to make its decision. If the listing is finalized, it would be the first addition to the ESA since U.S. President Donald Trump took office for his second term.

“If we can get it listed, there’s a very good chance that it will avoid extinction,” DuBois said.

Spoorthy Raman is a staff writer at Mongabay, covering all things wild with a special focus on lesser-known wildlife, the wildlife trade, and environmental crime.

Banner image of Andean cock-of-the-rocks (Rupicola peruvianus) in Ecuador. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.

Climate change could erase most South American cloud forests, study warns

• Climate change could eliminate up to 91% of South America’s cloud forests by 2070 under a high-emissions scenario; even the most optimistic projections show significant losses.
• Because cloud forests capture moisture from fog and release it into streams, their disappearance threatens the drinking water supply of an estimated 16 million people who live downstream.
• Only about one-third of South America’s cloud forests fall within protected areas, and those protections cannot shield the forests if the climate itself becomes too warm and dry to support them.
• Scientists say cutting greenhouse gas emissions is the most essential step, alongside stronger protections and financial incentives for landowners to conserve and restore forests in areas projected to remain climatically suitable.

Up in the misty mountains, teems a kaleidoscope of life: trees drip with epiphytes, hummingbirds sip from bright blossoms, and rare creatures occupy every nook in the cloud forests, which scientists have likened to terrestrial coral reefs. But a new study warns that climate change could strip away the conditions that make cloud forests possible, and in the worst case, erase nearly all of them within 50 years.

The research, published in the Journal for Nature Conservation, used machine learning and modeling to project how cloud forest distribution in South America could shift under two different climate scenarios by 2070.

The study reports that under a high-emissions pathway, up to 91% of cloud forest area could be lost. Even under the most optimistic scenario, researchers calculate a 12% reduction, roughly 21,000 square kilometers (8,100 square miles), an area the size of El Salvador.

Cloud forests occupy a narrow band of land, typically between 1,000 and 3,000 meters (about 3,300-10,000 feet) above sea level, and are defined by persistent fog, cool temperatures and high humidity. That humidity shapes everything, from the mosses and orchids draped across surfaces, to the birds and amphibians found nowhere else on Earth.

Epiphytes in the cloud forest of Peru’s Kosñipata valley. Image credit: Rhett A. Butler

The study notes these ecosystems harbor some 1,946 restricted-range species, representing roughly 8% of the world’s mammals, birds, amphibians and tree ferns. Among the species endemic to South American cloud forests are the flamboyant Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus), whose brilliant orange-plumed males perform elaborate courtship dances on the forest floor; the critically endangered yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Lagothrix flavicauda), Peru’s largest endemic primate; and countless glass frogs — delicate, translucent amphibians whose eggs can be seen developing through their own skin.

As temperatures rise, the base of clouds climbs higher up the mountain slopes, effectively shrinking the zone where cloud forests can exist. Species are pushed upward into increasingly fragmented habitat. For those species that live only near the summits, there is nowhere left to go.

A resplendent quetzal, an iconic bird of Central America’s cloud forest. Image by Cephas via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The verdant cloud and mossy evergreen forests in the Pacific Forest are a critical habitat for the Ecuadorian white-fronted capuchin monkey (Cebus aequatorialis). Image by Andreas Kay via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

A male emerald glass frog (Espadarana prosoblepon) in Costa Rica. Image courtesy of Anthony Garita/Cloudbridge.

But the stakes go beyond biodiversity. Because cloud forests capture fog on their leaves and branches and release it steadily into surrounding watersheds, communities downstream depend on them for reliable drinking water, particularly during dry seasons when other sources run low.

The researchers estimated that about 19.5 million people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of rivers whose flow is influenced by upstream cloud forests. Study lead author Patrícia Vieira Pompeu, a professor at the State University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, warned that under the high-emissions scenario, that supply would be compromised for an estimated 16 million people, or 83% of current beneficiaries.

“Cloud forests play an important role in regulating water in the headwaters of many Amazonian rivers, especially those originating in the Andes and other elevated regions of northern Amazonia,” Pompeu told Mongabay. “Their loss could reduce dry-season water availability and increase hydrological variability in Andean–Amazonian tributaries, potentially affecting downstream ecosystems and human populations.”

The study also found that only about one-third of South America’s cloud forests currently fall within protected areas. But that protection offers no guarantee of survival if the climate itself becomes unsuitable. Under the high-emissions scenario, the remaining protected patches would shrink dramatically in size, potentially becoming too small and isolated to support viable populations of many species.

A stream in a cloud forest in Peruvian Amazon. The condensation droplets in the canopies of the world’s cloud forests make up water that replenishes rivers, streams and reservoirs, filters down to thirsty farmland, and flows through pipes into homes and industry. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

“Cloud forests are already known to face many threats from human land-use change,” Walter Jetz, a biodiversity scientist at Yale University in the U.S., who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay. “Montane cloud forests exist in a slim and globally rare climate space marked by cold and foggy conditions. There is no doubt that changing climate, combined with their narrow distribution and encroachment, makes montane cloud forests some of the most vulnerable highly biodiverse ecosystems on the planet.”

The study’s authors argue that two strategies are especially critical for the survival of cloud forests: stronger implementation of payments for ecosystem services, which provide financial incentives for landholders to conserve or restore forests upstream of populated watersheds; and better management of existing protected areas. Identifying which cloud forest patches are likely to remain climatically suitable even under future scenarios, they argue, should guide where those resources are focused.

But Pompeu said the most fundamental solution remains the same as for every climate-driven ecological crisis. “The key message is that we need to care about CO2 emissions,” she said. “We need to stop, or we will have problems with everything.”

Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.

Researchers at Helsinki University compared how effectively various colours and patterns on simulated wind turbine blades discourage a tit from pecking a target it has been trained to associate with food. They found that white blades were the least deterring, followed by red-striped blades, one blade painted black, and the most effective deterrent was a combination of black, red and yellow - colours used by multiple species to indicate bad taste or poison. Field experiments with actual wind turbines are recommended, but not yet possible becuse aviation law requires white blades.

Direct link to PDF, summary in Finnish, main content in English.

Finnish-language news article with video of experimental conditions.

The second Artemis mission took four astronauts around the moon and back – the first crewed deep-space flight since 1972. Not everyone gets a chance to put on a space suit, but you can still be an important part of NASA’s human space exploration story by doing NASA science!

Volunteers with NASA’s citizen science projects have tested chili pepper plant varieties to grow in space, monitored active regions on the Sun, and analyzed data from experiments on how life adapts to the low-gravity, high-radiation environment of space. Participation does not require citizenship in any particular country – you only need a love of science and a desire to help. Join one of the projects below and help NASA make space travel safer and healthier.

Only a few minutes to spare? Space Umbrella is a great project for you. The brief online project tutorial will teach you how to read data collected by NASA’s Magnetosphere Multiscale (MMS) mission, which has been flying back and forth across Earth’s magnetosphere since 2015. By sorting data into in-magnetosphere and out-of-magnetosphere readings, you will help scientists learn more about how solar storms interact with our magnetosphere. Solar storms can pose a serious threat to astronauts, so this work can help missions minimize risks from radiation in space.

Upon excitation at 300 nm, pyrimidones underwent valence isomerization to form the corresponding Dewar isomers.

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Addition of hydrochloric acid (HCl) to Dewar pyrimidone (107 mg in 0.46 ml of water) increased the solution temperature to 100°C and induced boiling within 1 s, demonstrating rapid macroscopic heat transfer to an environmentally benign medium under ambient conditions.

Gardiner, M. E. (2023). Make the Holocene Great Again! Or, Why Is Climate Change Boring?. Journal of Boredom Studies, 1. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8028125

Abstract: This article addresses the conundrum: if climate change is an “existential threat” to our species and the integrity of our entire planetary ecosystem, why is climate change “boring” for even informed, well-meaning individuals? Three main areas will be addressed. The first task is to discuss how “boredom” itself can be characterized as a relatively coherent and valid analytical concept, and how it might be linked to the climate crisis specifically, through sociology of emotion and psychoanalytical approaches. Second, climate change’s ontological status as what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects” will be examined – entities so complex, and extended across almost limitless time and space, they cannot be comprehended by our usual analogies, perceptions, and metrics. Boredom looms here as affective and libidinal disengagement protecting the psyche from the hyperobject’s unsettling effects of cognitive overreach and emotional dissonance. The third theme is “climate apocalypticism”: endless reiterations of our dystopian future, it is argued, evince a monotonous similarity, resulting in emotional exhaustion, melancholia, and morose resignation – and ultimately boredom. The article’s conclusion will focus on some of the ways in which “climate boredom” might prompt a more critical and engaged collective responses to the climate emergency.

Keywords: apocalypse, boredom, climate crisis, emotions, hyperobjects.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/science/p/1784382/single-dose-of-dmt-could-help-treat-depression

People with major depressive disorder can see a rapid and lasting improvement after a single dose of the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) when it is combined with psychotherapy, doctors have said. > > A small clinical trial involving 34 people found that psychedelic-assisted therapy prompted a swift reduction in depressive symptoms that endured long after the drug had worn off, with some still feeling the benefits six months later. > > “There is an immediate antidepressant effect that is significantly sustained over a three-month period and that’s exciting because this is one session with a drug, embedded in psychological support,” said Dr David Erritzoe, a psychiatrist at Imperial College London and lead investigator on the trial.

Summary: we could have considerable extra time to figure out how to not pollute everything and ourselves with microplastic. Systematic flaws in several microplastic studies point towards human body fat mimicking the signature of polyethylene, leading to serious overestimation of how far microplastic can penetrate:

"One of the team behind the letter was blunt. “The brain microplastic paper is a joke,” said Dr Dušan Materić, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. “Fat is known to make false-positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat.” Materić and his colleagues suggested rising obesity levels could be an alternative explanation for the trend reported in the study."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41881536