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Archival and palaeoenvironmental documentation of extreme climate events reveals generational amnesia in collective memory

Collective memory shapes how societies respond to extreme climate events, yet long-term evidence on how the collective memory of such events becomes perceptually biased over time is lacking. Here, we utilise four centuries (1470–1900) of climatic archives from northern China, along with tree–ring–based hydroclimate reconstructions, which are validated against instrumental observations of Wet/Dry Index (1901–2000) to fill the gap. We find that historical records reveal systematic, non-random mismatches, where severity assessments are often biased toward recent experience rather than absolute climatic anomalies. Correlations between historical and natural records increase when the natural series is re-standardised using 20–40-year sliding windows, reflecting a generational offset. A heuristic agent-based model reproduces this pattern, suggesting that generational amnesia is sufficient to explain the offsets in perception of environmental change. We argue that historical archives carry a generational imprint of perceptual bias, in which the severity of climate extremes is judged against recent lived experience rather than long-term climate variability. This has implications for bias-aware corrections for risk assessment, adaptation, and paleoclimate reconstruction.

Shuang Song, Bo Hu 胡博, David Max Findley, Xutong Wu, Wei Liu, Robert W. Middeke-Conlin, Victor L. Caetano-Andrade, Yuda Yang, Shuai Wang, Jürgen Renn, Patrick Roberts

Climate exposure, family doctor contracting, and rehabilitation needs among older adults with physical disabilities in Jilin Province, China

Background: Older adults with physical disabilities may face greater difficulty maintaining healthcare contact and expressing their service needs under conditions of climatic stress. In China, family doctor contracting may help sustain access to routine care and rehabilitation-related support, but evidence on its role in this context remains limited.

Methods: This study links a large provincial disability service dataset from Jilin in 2020 with county-level climate indicators to examine whether exposure to unusually hot and cold conditions is associated with current rehabilitation needs among older adults with physical disabilities and whether these associations differ by family doctor contract status. The analysis includes 194,418 respondents. The logistic regression models include standardized measures of relative heat and cold days, individual-level controls, and prefecture indicators, with clustered standard errors.

Results: Higher exposure to extreme heat and extreme cold was associated with a lower likelihood of reporting current rehabilitation needs among respondents without family doctor contracts. For a one-standard deviation (SD) increase in relative heat days (14.2 days) and relative cold days (10.8 days), the respective odds ratios were 0.872 (95% CI 0.792–0.960; p = 0.005) and 0.879 (95% CI 0.790–0.978; p = 0.018), corresponding to 12.8% and 12.1% lower odds of reporting current rehabilitation needs. This pattern was weaker among respondents with family doctor contracts: the interaction ratios of odds ratios were 1.131 (95% CI 1.003–1.276; p = 0.044) for heat and 1.122 (95% CI 0.992–1.269; p = 0.067) for cold.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that climate conditions may shape the expression of rehabilitation needs. Whether family doctor contracting helps maintain service contact, monitoring, and referral pathways under adverse environmental conditions requires prospective evaluation. Strengthening continuous primary care linkages may therefore be relevant to climate adaptation strategies for older adults with physical disabilities, but these cross-sectional associations do not establish clinical protection.

Dongyang Guo, Dongyu Guo, Xiaofeng Wang, Bo Hu 胡博

Accelerating medical systematic reviews with large language models: performance, consistency, and potential issues

This review examines empirical evaluations of large language models across five stages of medical systematic reviews: literature search, title-and-abstract screening, full-text screening, data extraction, and quality assessment. It considers performance, agreement with human reviewers, run-to-run reproducibility, and efficiency, and discusses implications for human oversight in evidence synthesis.

Bo Hu 胡博, Ziqian Xia, Liuna Geng

Biodiversity and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analytic structural equation modeling analysis

The relationship between biodiversity and human well-being is a critical area of interdisciplinary research, representing a fundamental interlinkage between environment and society. However, existing evidence remains fragmented regarding whether measured biodiversity (i.e., objectively assessed biodiversity attributes; e.g., Shannon diversity index and species richness) and perceived biodiversity (i.e., individuals’ subjective perceptions of biodiversity-related features) are differentially associated with well-being, and whether and how perceived restorativeness explains this relationship. We thus conducted a systematic review (pre-registered on the Open Science Framework) and utilized one-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling to construct integrated models guided by the attention restoration theory, which posits that environments perceived as restorative can help individuals recover from attentional fatigue. Following PRISMA 2020, 102 studies were finally included from Web of Science, Scopus, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure, covering records indexed up to October 2025. Results showed that measured biodiversity was significantly and positively associated with perceived biodiversity, and indirectly with self-reported well-being via perceived biodiversity and perceived restorativeness. In addition, among the different restorativeness dimensions (i.e., being away, extent, fascination, and compatibility), being away and fascination exhibited the most robust mediation roles. Study location did not significantly moderate any path, although a relatively stronger positive effect was observed in Asian samples than in non-Asian populations, suggesting a broadly consistent biodiversity–well-being relationship across geographic regions. Risk of bias was assessed using the study quality assessment tools developed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Findings support integrated policies and practices that jointly promote biodiversity conservation and human well-being.

Junpeng Chen, Bo Hu 胡博, Liuna Geng, Martin Dallimer

Unravelling the planetary health diet index-depression nexus: utilisation of network and machine learning approaches

Adherence to the planetary health diet index (PHDI) is associated with health benefits, but its relationship with depression, particularly the roles of dietary components and symptoms, remains poorly understood. We aimed to (1) compare PHDI component interrelationships between individuals with and without depression; (2) identify PHDI components most predictive of depression using machine learning and (3) identify bridge nodes connecting PHDI components with depressive symptoms. This cross-sectional study analysed data from 25 542 adults in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005–2018. The PHDI was calculated from two 24-h dietary recalls. Depression was assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 with scores ≥10 indicating depression. We employed network analysis to compare dietary structures, an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) model interpreted using shapley additive explanations (SHAP) values to identify predictors and bridge network analysis to identify bridge nodes connecting the PHDI and depressive symptom communities. The PHDI network in the non-depressed group was more densely connected than in the depressed group. SHAP analysis of the XGBoost model identified non-starchy vegetables (PHDI2) and added sugars (PHDI14) as the most important predictors, with higher component scores associated with a lower predicted probability of depression. In the bridge network analysis, appetite problems (PHQ5) and depressed mood (PHQ2) emerged as the strongest bridge nodes between the PHDI and depressive symptom communities. A structured, plant-forward dietary pattern was associated with lower depression levels, with appetite problems and depressed mood identified as the bridge nodes between the PHDI and depressive symptom communities.

Jiaci Lin, Bo Hu 胡博, Liuna Geng

Nature contact and adolescent paper-reuse behavior: place attachment versus climate anxiety in a two-wave study of Chinese adolescents

Background: Nature contact is often linked to pro-environmental behavior, but the psychological processes connecting these experiences to later behavior remain unclear. This study examined reusing paper and compared two theoretically distinct pathways: a positive-bonding pathway through place attachment and a threat-mobilization pathway through climate anxiety.Methods: A two-wave longitudinal study was conducted among 504 Chinese adolescents nested in 15 classrooms. They reported their nature contact during school days, after school, and on weekends, place attachment, climate anxiety, and paper-reuse behavior. Classroom random-intercept models, cluster-adjusted parallel indirect-association models, and exploratory cross-level interaction models were used.Results: Among the three contexts of nature contact, only weekend nature contact was positively associated with later paper-reuse behavior in the separate-context model (p = .031). The indirect association through place attachment was positive, whereas the corresponding estimate through climate anxiety was not significant. Continuous classroom friendship reciprocity did not reliably moderate the focal associations.Conclusions: For adolescents, weekend nature contact was associated with later paper-reuse behavior and the finding are consistent with an indirect-association account involving place attachment. Future research could further validate the underlying mechanisms involved.