Individuals relying on shallow groundwater or natural springs for drinking water have a higher risk of contamination from these insecticides compared to those getting their drinking water from deep groundwater wells. They also found that these insecticides could affect organisms in the streams that are fed by those springs.

The research was recently published in Science of the Total Environment, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

With the increased use of insecticides for agriculture and insect control in the past few decades, research has shown that consistent application of them can lead to contamination in water. This can have a negative impact on human health and pollinator insect species, such as bees and butterflies.

A large portion of Minnesota’s drinking water comes from groundwater. Looking at the levels of these specific insecticides can help water treatment plants determine what to monitor and filter.

In this study, researchers looked at the levels of neonicotinoids in surface and groundwater across Minnesota, identifying factors that may affect the extent of contamination. The DNR was able to collect water samples from 15 springs and 75 unique wells from 13 counties in Minnesota over four years (2019-2022) allowing comparisons between urban and rural areas.

The researchers not only collected an extensive amount of geographic locations, they also looked at the chemical levels at various depths. In testing the water samples, they found that natural springs are very susceptible to contamination from neonicotinoid insecticides.

“Oftentimes people think a natural spring has water that is safe to drink,” said Bill Arnold, Distinguished McKnight University Professor & Joseph T. and Rose S. Ling Professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering. “That’s not necessarily true, it depends on how deep that water is sourced.”

There are multiple ways these types of chemicals can get into the environment. In addition to direct application, stormwater runoff and snow melt can contribute to these chemicals in ground and surface water. The researchers were able to map different classes of the insecticides across the state.

“This study is a key first step in identifying pollutants in the water, even in some unexpected places like natural springs,” said Arnold. “We use so many of these insecticides in Minnesota — basically every corn and soybean seed is treated before planting — and many of these chemicals can be purchased at a local hardware store for spraying fruit trees, flea and tick control for your pets, and eliminating bedbugs.”

While the researchers knew they would find traces of the insecticide in water, some of their study results were unexpected.

“We were surprised by the high levels of the chemical detected in the natural springs and in some cases the chemicals were observed at much deeper levels in wells than we expected going into this project,” Arnold added.

As a follow-up to the study, researchers are collaborating with county and state agencies to include these chemicals on water treatment monitoring lists and want to continue to educate watershed districts about these insecticides. The researchers will also work with the University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Laboratory to improve stormwater treatment methods for urban environments, including the use of biofiltration to remove pollutants.

In addition to Arnold, the team included University of Minnesota Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering retired adjunct associate professor Paul Capel, former research assistant Grant Goedjen, and John Barry from the DNR’s Division of Ecological and Water Resources.

This work was funded by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENTRF) as recommended by the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR). The ENRTF is a permanent fund in Minnesota that provides funding for the protection and conservation of Minnesota’s natural resources.

Such are te findings of a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research co-authored by UC Riverside marketing professor Hai Che that examined policies to curtail the use of single-use plastic bags in grocery stores and other retail outlets in Austin and Dallas, Texas — policies that were later repealed.

Significantly, the behaviors spurred by the plastic bag rules continued after the rules were no longer in place. And some impacts were not beneficial to the environment.

Che and his coauthors found an increase in sales of plastic bags after the cities prohibited stores from giving away free plastic bags for carrying home groceries. They quantified plastic bag sales by analyzing barcode scanner data on consumer purchases.

“We were hoping for positive spillover effects, like customers will be more environmentally conscious and consume less one-time use plastic or paper products,” said Che, an associate professor at UCR’s School of Business. “But that’s not what happened in the data. People wound up buying more plastic.”

Che added store customer had been repurposing the free grocery bags al as liners for household trash bins.”

The bag rules, however, most likely changed consumer behavior in positive ways as well, such as people getting in the habit of using reusable canvas or burlap bags for everyday shopping, although such data wasn’t available to the researchers, Che said.

The study found that the longer a policy is in place, the longer the behaviors spurred by the policy lingered on.

The Dallas City Council had imposed a 5-cent fee for single-use bags for five months in 2015 before repealing the fee when the city faced lawsuits from plastic bag manufacturers. When free bags became available again, plastic bag sales initially declined sharply and returned to pre-policy levels after 13 months.

The Austin City Council banned single-use carryout bags in 2013, and the policy remained in place for five years until 2018 when the Texas Supreme Court struck down such bans statewide when it ruled on a case about a similar bag ban in Lerado. After the repeal, the carryover effect of plastic bag purchases declined gradually and did not revert to the pre-policy baseline after 18 months, which was the end of the researchers’ analysis time frame. In fact, the carryover effect remained 38.6% above the baseline even at the end of the analysis

To assess the net environmental impact, the research team conducted a “break-even analysis” to determine if the plastic bag policy, despite the negative spillover effects, ultimately reduced plastic waste. They calculated how many fewer single-use grocery bags consumers would need to use to offset the additional trash bags purchased due to the policy. In Dallas, consumers would need to use one less grocery bag every seven trips, while in Austin, it would be one less bag every five trips to break even in terms of environmental impact.

The study contributes to a growing body of knowledge on the unintended consequences of environmental policies and offers insights applicable beyond plastic bag usage, Che said.

“While our study focused on plastic bags, similar spillover effects have been documented in policies targeting sugary drinks, energy efficiency, and health incentives,” Che said. “In each case, behaviors that weren’t directly targeted by the policy — like purchasing more sugary snacks when soda is taxed — can offset or even undermine the policy’s primary goals.”

Remembering a code for long enough to type it in; holding a conversation and reacting appropriately to what is being said: in everyday situations like these, we use our working memory. It allows a memory to be actively retained for a few seconds. Certain conditions, such as schizophrenia or depression, as well as ADHD, impair working memory. Those affected lose track in conversations and struggle to organize their thoughts.

Fampridine is a drug that could help in such cases, as researchers led by Professor Andreas Papassotiropoulos and Professor Dominique de Quervain at the University of Basel have shown. The team has reported their findings in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Effective only if working memory is poor

In their study, the researchers tested the effectiveness of fampridine on working memory in 43 healthy adults. It was in those participants whose baseline working memory was at a low level that fampridine showed a more pronounced effect: after taking the active substance for three days, they scored better in the relevant tests than those who took the placebo. In contrast, in people who already had good baseline working memory, the drug showed no effect.

The researchers also observed that fampridine increased brain excitability in all participants, thus enabling faster processing of stimuli. The study was randomized and double-blind.

Established drug, new application

“Fampridine doesn’t improve working memory in everyone. But it could be a treatment option for those with reduced working memory,” explains Andreas Papassotiropoulos. Dominique de Quervain adds: “That’s why, together with researchers from the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel (UPK), we’re planning studies to test the efficacy of fampridine in schizophrenia and depression.”

The drug is currently used to improve walking ability in multiple sclerosis (MS). Particularly in capsule form, which releases the active ingredient slowly in the body, fampridine has shown effects on cognitive performance in MS patients: for some, it alleviates the mental fatigue that can accompany MS.

The researchers did not select the drug at random: this study followed comprehensive analyses of genome data in order to find starting points for repurposing established drugs. Fampridine acts on specific ion channels in nerve cells that, according to the researchers’ analyses, also play a role in mental disorders such as schizophrenia.

Small-scale fisheries play a vital role in providing food and livelihoods for millions of people around the world, particularly in low-income countries in Africa. However, there is limited statistical data on the composition, abundance, and distribution of the fisheries’ resources, which is crucial for effective management.

New research, recently published in the journal Marine Policy, documents changes in the catches of small-scale fisheries, highlighting a significant decline not only in volume of catches, but also in the size of fish for key local species.

Scientists compiled official catch landing data and combined it with local ecological knowledge from local fishermen and fishmongers on Maio island, in Cabo Verde, designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2020.

“Monitoring of fish landings in West African countries is limited and under-represents catches at the local level, especially from artisanal fisheries, creating data gaps that hinder effective management,” says Thais Peixoto Macedo, ICTA-UAB researcher and lead author of the study, who explains that traditional fishers’ accounts revealed trends that are poorly captured in official records. “The findings in this area show us trends that are likely to occur on other islands of the archipelago or other West African coastal areas and should be taken into account in marine resource management plans.”

Local communities believe that certain fishing practices, such as spearfishing with scuba gear and semi-industrial fishing with purse seines and night lights, are major contributors to the decline of fish stocks. In the case of semi-industrial fishing, they report that vessels fish within the three-nautical-mile zone and in marine protected areas reserved for artisanal fishing.

The most reported depleted species include groupers (dusky grouper, island grouper and the African hind) and small pelagic fish such as mackerel and bigeye scad. “According to local fishermen, the decline of small pelagic fish due to semi-industrial coastal fishing is negatively affecting artisanal catches of large pelagic species, such as yellowfin tuna and albacore, an important commercial species for local and international markets,” says Benalsy Varela, FMB staff who contributed to the study. Spiny and slipper lobsters, particularly targeted to supply more tourist-intensive islands, were also considered depleted.

The research highlights a phenomenon known as “Shifting Baseline Syndrome,” where people gradually adjust their perception of what is healthy or natural to a new reality, forgetting past conditions and accepting it as the ‘new normal’. Younger fishermen reported smaller catches and fish sizes than older generations, but a larger proportion of the younger group believe that fish stocks are not in decline.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Clinical Ophthalmology, is among the first to look into how climate change may affect the eyes.

“The World Health Organization has declared climate change to be “the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” said the study’s lead author Jennifer Patnaik, PhD, MHS, assistant professor of epidemiology and ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Yet there are limited studies on the impact of climate change-related air pollution on ocular health.”

The researchers, including Associate Professor Katherine James, PhD, who directs the Climate & Human Health program at the Colorado School of Public Health, examined the associations between ocular surface irritation and allergy-related daily outpatient office visits with daily ambient particular matter (PM) levels in the Denver Metropolitan area.

They obtained data of PM concentrations that were 10 micrometers or less and 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. The researchers found 144,313 ocular surface irritation and allergy visits to ophthalmic clinics during the study period. The daily visit counts were 2.2 times higher than average when PM₁₀ concentrations were 110. The clinic visit rate ratio increased as daily concentrations increased.

The study reported that conjunctivitis was the second most common eye disease among the clinic visits in the study, representing exactly one-third of all the visits. The prevalence of ocular allergic conjunctivitis has increased worldwide and varies across regions. Socioeconomic and environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and air pollution have been proposed as reasons for the increase.

Patnaik said the health risks of air pollution and climate change span a wide range of outcomes including infectious disease, weather-related morbidity and a variety of lung, kidney and cardiovascular maladies.

“Less studied chronic diseases such as dementia have also been shown to be associated with temperature and air pollutants,” she said. “Research on the topic of ocular conditions and climate is still in its early stages; therefore, more studies are needed to better understand how climate and air pollutants impact eye health.”

James agreed.

“This study highlights the systemic health impacts of climate stressors including air quality, wildfires, temperature, and drought conditions and the continued need to for transdisciplinary research,” she said.

The researchers hope to build and expand on these initial discoveries, said the study’s senior author Malik Kahook, MD, professor of ophthalmology at the CU School of Medicine.

“These findings open the door to a deeper understanding of how environmental factors affect eye health. From a clinical standpoint, we’re now seeing more evidence suggesting that particulate matter in the air isn’t just affecting respiratory or cardiovascular health but also directly impacting ocular surface health,” Kahook said. “Our next steps are to investigate how other air pollutants might influence eye health and to expand our focus to areas outside of Colorado. By doing so, we aim to identify preventive strategies and consider new treatment protocols tailored to address these environmental influences, ultimately protecting the most vulnerable patients in areas heavily affected by pollution.”

Amy Dye-Robinson, from the Department of Biostatistics & Informatics at CU Anschutz, is a study co-author.

From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land — that includes liquid surface water like lakes and rivers, plus water in aquifers underground — was 290 cubic miles (1,200 cubic km) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost.”

During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped. The reduction in available water puts a strain on farmers and communities, potentially leading to famine, conflicts, poverty, and an increased risk of disease when people turn to contaminated water sources, according to a UN report on water stress published in 2024.

The team of researchers identified this abrupt, global decrease in freshwater using observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, operated by the German Aerospace Center, German Research Centre for Geosciences, and NASA. GRACE satellites measure fluctuations in Earth’s gravity on monthly scales that reveal changes in the mass of water on and under the ground. The original GRACE satellites flew from March 2002 to October 2017. The successor GRACE-Follow On (GRACE-FO) satellites launched in May 2018.

The decline in global freshwater reported in the study began with a massive drought in northern and central Brazil, and was followed shortly by a series of major droughts in Australasia, South America, North America, Europe, and Africa. Warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific from late 2014 into 2016, culminating in one of the most significant El Niño events since 1950, led to shifts in atmospheric jet streams that altered weather and rainfall patterns around the world. However, even after El Niño subsided, global freshwater failed to rebound. In fact, Rodell and team report that 13 of the world’s 30 most intense droughts observed by GRACE occurred since January 2015. Rodell and colleagues suspect that global warming might be contributing to the enduring freshwater depletion.

Global warming leads the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which results in more extreme precipitation, said NASA Goddard meteorologist Michael Bosilovich. While total annual rain and snowfall levels may not change dramatically, long periods between intense precipitation events allow the soil to dry and become more compact. That decreases the amount of water the ground can absorb when it does rain.

“The problem when you have extreme precipitation,” Bosilovich said, “is the water ends up running off,” instead of soaking in and replenishing groundwater stores. Globally, freshwater levels have stayed consistently low since the 2014-2016 El Niño, while more water remains trapped in the atmosphere as water vapor. “Warming temperatures increase both the evaporation of water from the surface to the atmosphere, and the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere, increasing the frequency and intensity of drought conditions,” he noted.

While there are reasons to suspect that the abrupt drop in freshwater is largely due to global warming, it can be difficult to definitively link the two, said Susanna Werth, a hydrologist and remote sensing scientist at Virginia Tech, who was not affiliated with the study. “There are uncertainties in climate predictions,” Werth said. “Measurements and models always come with errors.”

It remains to be seen whether global freshwater will rebound to pre-2015 values, hold steady, or resume its decline. Considering that the nine warmest years in the modern temperature record coincided with the abrupt freshwater decline, Rodell said, “We don’t think this is a coincidence, and it could be a harbinger of what’s to come.”