Objective To assess whether exposure to high temperatures in pregnancy is associated with increased risk for preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth. Design Systematic review and random effects meta-analysis. Data sources Medline and Web of Science searched up to September 2018, updated in August 2019. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Clinical studies on associations between high environmental temperatures, and preterm birth, birth weight, and stillbirths. Results 14 880 records and 175 full text articles were screened. 70 studies were included, set in 27 countries, seven of which were countries with low or middle income. In 40 of 47 studies, preterm births were more common at higher than lower temperatures. Exposures were classified as heatwaves, 1°C increments, and temperature threshold cutoff points. In random effects meta-analysis, odds of a preterm birth rose 1.05-fold (95% confidence interval 1.03 to 1.07) per 1°C increase in temperature and 1.16-fold (1.10 to 1.23) during heatwaves. Higher temperature was associated with reduced birth weight in 18 of 28 studies, with considerable statistical heterogeneity. Eight studies on stillbirths all showed associations between temperature and stillbirth, with stillbirths increasing 1.05-fold (1.01 to 1.08) per 1°C rise in temperature. Associations between temperature and outcomes were largest among women in lower socioeconomic groups and at age extremes. The multiple temperature metrics and lag analyses limited comparison between studies and settings. Conclusions Although summary effect sizes are relatively small, heat exposures are common and the outcomes are important determinants of population health. Linkages between socioeconomic status and study outcomes suggest that risks might be largest in low and middle income countries. Temperature rises with global warming could have major implications for child health. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD 42019140136 and CRD 42018118113.

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m3811.full.pdf

Associations between high temperatures in pregnancy and risk of preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirths: systematic review and meta-analysis.

I ’m writing this personal opinion about a “hot” topic: the Antropogenic Global Warming (AGW) consensus. In EPN 44/6, John Cook presents the conclusions of a paper by himself et al., published in Environmental Research Letters 8 (2013) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024, where almost 12000 abstracts of papers dealing with global warming, published since 1991, are classified depending on their position about AGW. It is immediately clear from the abstract that two thirds of the analyzed papers do not express a position on AGW: this should be indicative of the scientific uncertainty on the issue. However, this figure is not taken into account and the authors focus on the remaining 33% of the papers. Among these 33% papers, 97% support the AGW: papers stating that “humans are contributing to global warming without quantifying the contribution” are considered to support AGW. It is practically impossible to find a climate scientist against such a statement (it would be like saying that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas), but this is well different from being in agreement with AGW, which – as Cook et al. remind us – means that “humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”. Indeed, an analysis of the papers classified in the support category (which can be done by following the link “online supplementary data”) shows that papers by famous climate scientists known to be against AGW (e.g., Lindzen and Shaviv) fall among those in favour. Trying to reduce the percentage of papers that do not express a position, Cook et al. contact the authors via e-mail: only 14% respond to such a query. At this point it would not make sense to proceed because the sample is drastically reduced and, more important, such a sample can no longer be considered “unbiased” (the analysis is based only on those who have decided to respond and it is reasonable to assume that this is a polarised sample). J. Cook et al. proceed anyway and 35% of the authors, among the 14% who answered to such a query, confirm that they do not have definite position with respect to AGW: a rather high percentage to claim an almost complete consensus, as Cook et al. would like to do. Finally, the reasons given by Cook et al. to find a justification to the high number of papers that do not take a position, show an internal logical contradiction: AGW would be such a scientific certainty that it is no longer needed to specify the authors’ position in the abstract. Besides the fact that this assertion is contradicted by the 35% that confirms “no position”, even if it were true, why is the research by Cook et al. based on such abstracts? Given that the verification of the scientific hypothesis is not based on the level of consensus they get but on a tighter comparison with reality, all of the above has nothing to do with the consistency of AGW. If any meaning may be given to the work about the AGW consensus, I would say it does not point to a unanimous consensus, rather to a scientifically still quite open issue, taking also into account that the percentage of papers that do not take a position grows with time. n

https://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2014/05-06/epn201445-5-6p24.pdf

About ``scientific consensus on climate change''

A rapidly growing body of research examines whether human conflict can be affected by climatic changes. Drawing from archeology, criminology, economics, geography, history, political science, and psychology, we assemble and analyze the 60 most rigorous quantitative studies and document, for the first time, a remarkable convergence of results. We find strong causal evidence linking climatic events to human conflict across a range of spatial and temporal scales and across all major regions of the world. The magnitude of climate's influence is substantial: for each 1 standard deviation (1σ) change in climate toward warmer temperatures or more extreme rainfall, median estimates indicate that the frequency of interpersonal violence rises 4% and the frequency of intergroup conflict rises 14%. Because locations throughout the inhabited world are expected to warm 2-4σ by 2050, amplified rates of human conflict could represent a large and critical impact of anthropogenic climate change.

Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict

Since the Industrial Revolution, human societies have experienced high and sustained rates of economic growth. Recent explanations of this sudden and massive change in economic history have held that modern growth results from an acceleration of innovation. But it is unclear why the rate of innovation drastically accelerated in England in the eighteenth century. An important factor might be the alteration of individual preferences with regard to innovation resulting from the unprecedented living standards of the English during that period, for two reasons. First, recent developments in economic history challenge the standard Malthusian view according to which living standards were stagnant until the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial England enjoyed a level of affluence that was unprecedented in history. Second, behavioral sciences have demonstrated that the human brain is designed to respond adaptively to variations in resources in the local environment. In particular, Life History Theory, a branch of evolutionary biology, suggests that a more favorable environment (high resources, low mortality) should trigger the expression of future-oriented preferences. In this paper, I argue that some of these psychological traits - a lower level of time discounting, a higher level of optimism, decreased materialistic orientation, and a higher level of trust in others - are likely to increase the rate of innovation. I review the evidence regarding the impact of affluence on preferences in contemporary as well as past populations, and conclude that the impact of affluence on neurocognitive systems may partly explain the modern acceleration of technological innovations and the associated economic growth.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/6CBACB4C2DFB11F5A13D3B4A5E9E2EB4/S0140525X1800211Xa.pdf/div-class-title-psychological-origins-of-the-industrial-revolution-div.pdf

Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution.

This article investigates the effects of development projects on economic networks. To this end, we study the impact that a randomly allocated Community-Driven Development program in The Gambia has on economic interactions within rural villages. The program provides an exogenous source of variation to village-level stocks of productive capital and to village-wide collective activities. Based on detailed data on economic and social networks, we find a significant reduction of transfers in these networks in treatment villages. Guided by a theoretical framework, we investigate several possible mechanisms and find evidence that is consistent with two channels. First, the evidence points to modest wealth effects and a village-level transformation process towards a more formal economy. Second, we also find evidence that is consistent with elite capture, favouritism, and unequally distributed benefits leading to reductions in social capital and thus economic transactions. Overall, our findings suggest changes in networks as an avenue through which development interventions may have unintended consequences.

Development Projects and Economic Networks: Lessons from Rural Gambia

We explore howthe introduction of formal insurance affects the within-village dynamics of social capital in south-western Uganda. As a proxy for social capital,we use contributions in a public goods game. Consistent with existing evidence, our data suggest formal insurance crowds out social capital. However, and surprisingly, overall contributions to the common pot do not go down because insurance adopters reduce their contributions. Instead, social capital erodes because the uninsured, or the local poor, lower their contributions. We discuss what might explain this finding.

Formal Insurance and the Dynamics of Social Capital: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

The effect of prenatal stress on cooperation: Evidence from violent conflict in Uganda

Do incentives matter when working for god? The impact of performance-based financing on faith-based healthcare in Uganda

Self-targeted fertilizer subsidies

Guiding principles of AIP reform

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