A 2023 Dartmouth study that quantified the global economic fallout of El Niño is included in this year’s 10 New Insights in Climate Science report, a compendium of pivotal climate research from the past 18 months. The 10NICS report is intended to drive international climate policy, particularly during the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) being held in Azerbaijan next month.

New research from Raghunath Rao, chair of marketing and Arthur James Douglass Centennial Professor in Entrepreneurship and Small Business at Texas McCombs, finds that one practice in particular can help draw donors to worthy projects: a significant self-donation early in a campaign.

“We find that self-donations accelerate the pace of donations and increase the donation amounts from other donors, leading to greater fundraising success,” Rao says.

A survey of patients receiving gender affirming care shows that commercial insurance pays for most of their treatments, they receive less care in the South than other parts of the U.S. and they deal with disproportionate levels of housing insecurity and trauma compared to others, according to a new study by researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The study, using data provided by Kythera Labs, a healthcare clearinghouse, examined millions of insurance claims by patients undergoing gender affirming care (GA) and those not. It also looked at social determinants of healthcare (SDOH), non-medical factors which affect a person’s quality of life.

The study was published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

It showed that commercial insurance covered 72.8% of GA claims followed by Medicaid at 17.2 %, other insurance at 6.6% and Medicare at 3.5%. GA patients incurred more claims across all insurance and age groups, about 87% more overall.

Carbon emissions play a key role in global warming caused by human activity. To comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change, China and Germany are aiming to significantly reduce their carbon emissions. Today, the President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Professor (ETHZ) Dr Gerald Haug, and the President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Dr Jianguo Hou, jointly signed the “Berlin Declaration: On the Path to Carbon Neutrality” at the opening of the Science for Future conference titled “On the Path to Carbon Neutrality”. The declaration emphasises the importance of basic research and international cooperation to achieve carbon neutrality, and sets out specific measures to reduce CO₂ emissions.