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A leading cause of a rising pH value in the world’s oceans is human CO2 emission. As more CO2 is released into the atmosphere and absorbed by the oceans, the water becomes more acidic. This poses problems for many organisms – including sharks, a new study showed. Scientists incubated shark teeth in water with pH levels that reflect the current ocean pH, and in water with a pH value that oceans are predicted to reach by 2300. In the more acidic water of the simulated scenario, shark teeth, including roots and crowns, were significantly more damaged. This shows how global changes reach all the way to the microstructure of sharks’ teeth, the researchers said.

• Avoiding information: Around one third of people avoid medical information, especially in the case of serious illnesses, due to fear and a lack of trust in the healthcare system.
• Study basis: The meta-analysis is based on 92 studies with 564,497 participants from 25 countries, including Germany, and shows that information avoidance is a widespread phenomenon.
• The reasons: Sixteen factors drive information avoidance, including, above all, feeling overwhelmed, fear of stigmatization, a sense of lack of self-efficacy, and low trust in the medical system.
• Health policy implications: The results suggest that greater trust in the healthcare system could promote willingness to engage with medical information.

Research.

We tend to credit animals like cats and dogs with a certain degree of mental complexity. But fish aren't usually afforded that kind of praise.

"They do not talk, they do not bark," says Caio Maximino, a neuroscientist at the Federal University of the South and Southeast Pará in Brazil. "We usually think, 'Well, these are very simple-minded animals. They are like little robots that do not do much.'"

But personally, Maximino doesn't believe that. "Those animals, they have very rich behavior that is mediated by these internal, emotional-like states," he says.

Previous research has largely focused on the negative experiences of fish that are driven by fear, anxiety and discomfort. "It has been demonstrated that they feel pain, for example," says Marta Soares, a behavioral physiologist at the University of Porto in Portugal. "And that was a huge step, actually."

• Most human and animal teams suffer from the Ringelmann effect: individuals contribute less the more the team grows
• Weaver ants avoid the Ringlemann effect as they work in a team to fold leaves into nest chambers
• A study showed that weaver ants use division of labor to not only avoid the Ringlemann effect but to achieve super efficiency

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