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Health

Published on 25 Jun 2025

New ‘designer drugs’ pose growing threat to road safety in the US

Researchers from the US have reported the initial results from the first quantitative study to focus on the contribution of multiple new psychoactive substances (NPS) from a range of classes to roadway crashes in the US. They found that 2% of 1,000 adults who visited one of two trauma centers in California within six hours after being involved in a roadway crash had traces of NPS in their blood. The most frequent were bromazolam, para-fluorofentanyl, and mitragynine. In most (88%) of these positive cases, NPS had been taken together with traditional recreational drugs such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine. These results indicate that NPS are a new concern in roadway crashes and put lives at risk.

Health

Published on 06 Jun 2025

Statins may reduce risk of death by 39% for patients with life-threatening sepsis

It has been suggested that statins could boost the chances of survival of patients with sepsis because of their multipronged effects on inflammation. Here, researchers from China used the MIMIC-IV database to perform a retrospective cohort study on two large, matched groups: critically ill patients with sepsis in the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who received standard of care with or without statins. The 28-day all-cause mortality was 39% lower in relative terms [an absolute reduction from 23.4% to 14.3%] in the statin group, suggesting a protective effect. Previous randomized controlled trials that didn’t find any such benefit might have been too small or have had other weaknesses. The present results need to be confirmed in a large, well-designed randomized clinical trial.

Neuroscience

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Environment

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Environment

Published on 05 Jun 2025

Survival of the greenest: why world’s oldest organizations are surpassing young upstarts in environmental sustainability

In a new article published in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology, Daria Haner, Dr Yilei Wang, Dr Deniz Ones, Dr Stephan Dilchert, Dr Yagizhan Yazar, and Karn Kaura unveil surprising new findings: the world’s most sustainable businesses are the world’s most long-lived businesses, too. In this guest editorial, they explain their results, discuss the potential underlying reasons for their findings, and underline the importance of sustainability to the future of business.

Psychology

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Space sciences and astronomy

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