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Wood wide web: trees’ social networks are mapped 

    Research has shown that beneath every forest and wood there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria helping to connect trees and plants to one another. This subterranean social network, nearly 500 million years old, has become known as the “wood wide web”. Now, an international study has produced the first global map of the “mycorrhizal fungi networks” dominating this secretive world.

    Using machine-learning, researchers from the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Stanford University in the US used the database of the Global Forest Initiative, which covers 1.2 million forest tree plots with 28,000 species, from more than 70 countries. Using millions of direct observations of trees and their symbiotic associations on the ground, the researchers could build models from the bottom up to visualise these fungal networks for the first time. Prof Thomas Crowther, one of the authors of the report, told the BBC, “It’s the first time that we’ve been able to understand the world beneath our feet, but at a global scale.”

    The research reveals how important mycorrhizal networks are to limiting climate change — and how vulnerable they are to the effects of it. “Just like an Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan of the brain helps us to understand how the brain works, this global map of the fungi beneath the soil helps us to understand how global ecosystems work,” said Prof Crowther. “What we find is that certain types of microorganisms live in certain parts of the world, and by understanding that we can figure out how to restore different types of ecosystems and also how the climate is changing.” Losing chunks of the wood wide web could well increase “the feedback loop of warming temperatures and carbon emissions.”

    Mycorrhizal fungi are those that form a symbiotic relationship with plants. There are two main groups of mycorrhizal fungi: arbuscular fungi (AM) that penetrate the host’s roots, and ectomycorrhizal fungi (EM) which surround the tree’s roots without penetrating them.

                                                (Claire Marshall. www.bbc.com, 15.05.2019. Adaptado.)

               An increasing body of evidence suggests that the time we spend on our smartphones is interfering with our sleep, self-esteem, relationships, memory, attention spans, creativity, productivity and problem-solving and decision-making skills. But there is another reason for us to rethink our relationships with our devices. By chronically raising levels of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, our phones may be threatening our health and shortening our lives.

          If they happened only occasionally, phone-induced cortisol spikes might not matter. But the average American spends four hours a day staring at their smartphone and keeps it within arm’s reach nearly all the time, according to a tracking app called Moment.

         “Your cortisol levels are elevated when your phone is in sight or nearby, or when you hear it or even think you hear it,” says David Greenfield, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. “It’s a stress response, and it feels unpleasant, and the body’s natural response is to want to check the phone to make the stress go away.”

          But while doing so might soothe you for a second, it probably will make things worse in the long run. Any time you check your phone, you’re likely to find something else stressful waiting for you, leading to another spike in cortisol and another craving to check your phone to make your anxiety go away. This cycle, when continuously reinforced, leads to chronically elevated cortisol levels. And chronically elevated cortisol levels have been tied to an increased risk of serious health problems, including depression, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, fertility issues, high blood pressure, heart attack, dementia and stroke.

(Catherine Price. www.nytimes.com, 24.04.2019. Adaptado.)

New Parents Don’t Get Enough Sleep for Six Years After a Child Is Born

Those first three months with a newborn can be rough, but researchers say sleep deprivation is an issue with parents for years. New parents are sometimes shocked to discover how little sleep they get in the first six months after a baby is born. They might also be discouraged to learn that their sleep patterns might not return to normal until that newborn is ready for kindergarten.

A new study published in the journal Sleep found that both parental sleep satisfaction and sleep duration sharply declined after childbirth, hitting their lowest point when a baby is 3 months old.

Women’s sleep duration and quality were far more affected than men, whether or not they breastfed their child. Women lost an average of one hour of sleep nightly compared to what they got prior to pregnancy, while men lost about 15 minutes of sleep per night.

Even four to six years after childbirth, mothers were getting 20 minutes less sleep per night than before they became pregnant, while fathers were still getting 15 minutes less sleep.

“The short-term effects of childbirth on parental sleep is well known. Our study just confirmed these effects,” Lemola told Healthline. “However, it was largely unexpected to find decreased sleep duration and sleep satisfaction six years after birth.”

Sleep was more affected among first-time parents than among parents with more than one child.

The findings were based on interviews of 4,659 parents who had a child between 2008 and 2015.

“While having children is a major source of joy for most parents, it is possible that increased demands and responsibilities associated with the role as a parent lead to shorter sleep and decreased sleep quality even up to six years after birth of the first child,” said Lemola.

Lemola said that future research would be required to determine how parents can cope with sleep loss and regain their sleep patterns sooner.

Adaptado de: <https://www.healthline.com/health-news/newparents-dont-get-sound-sleep-for-6-years#The-bottom-line> Acessado em 04 de março de 2019