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Published on 07 Feb 2025

Relationships that shape us: here are five Frontiers articles on social relationships for Valentine’s Day

At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we’re taking a look at some papers that help us understand how the relationships we have with the people around us shape our lives.

Scientists used sources from the 'society's archive' to reconstruct the evolution of the climate and resulting effects on the people who lived in Transylvania in the 16th century. Credit: Gaceu et al., 2024.

Featured news

Published on 12 Feb 2025

500-year-old Transylvanian diaries show how the Little Ice Age completely changed life and death in the region

Tapping into ‘society’s archive’, researchers have examined written sources from the 16th century that chronicle famine, excessive flooding, and plagues in what today is Romania.

Featured news

Published on 14 Feb 2025

Dangerous bacteria lurk in hospital sink drains, despite rigorous cleaning

Researchers from Spain sampled sink drains from different wards in a single modern university hospital where state-of-the-art cleaning protocols are adhered to. Through culturing and DNA barcoding, they found 67 species of bacteria. These included Klebsiella, Enterobacter, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, notorious for their potential to cause healthcare-associated infections. Several strains detected proved resistant to modern antibiotics, including cephalosporins and carbapenems. Sink drains thus appear to function as reservoirs for known and emerging pathogens of concern.

Health

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Health

Published on 14 Feb 2025

Dangerous bacteria lurk in hospital sink drains, despite rigorous cleaning

Researchers from Spain sampled sink drains from different wards in a single modern university hospital where state-of-the-art cleaning protocols are adhered to. Through culturing and DNA barcoding, they found 67 species of bacteria. These included Klebsiella, Enterobacter, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, notorious for their potential to cause healthcare-associated infections. Several strains detected proved resistant to modern antibiotics, including cephalosporins and carbapenems. Sink drains thus appear to function as reservoirs for known and emerging pathogens of concern.

Psychology

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Psychology

Published on 19 Mar 2024

Is your partner’s disturbed sleep keeping you up at night? Letting go of unattainable dreams may keep you both happy in bed

Research has now shown that the habit of letting go of unattainable goals helps people to stay satisfied with their romantic relationship if their partner experiences sleep problems. Such ‘letting go’ could also be learned, for example through training by clinical psychologists. But the results also showed that being too ready to replace unattainable goals with alternatives can worsen mutual satisfaction with a relationship, perhaps because this prevents spouses from putting more time and effort into it.

Space sciences and astronomy

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Space sciences and astronomy

Published on 03 Feb 2025

Can ocean-floor mining oversights help us regulate space debris and mining on the Moon?

Space belongs to no-one, yet many nations and private entities now plan to lay their claim on its resources. In a recent Frontiers in Space Technologies article, Nishith Mishra, Martina Elia Vitoloni and Dr Joseph Pelton shared their thoughts about how plans to exploit the ocean floors could impact the way resources from space are used and managed.

Credit: Warner Bros Pictures and Legendary Pictures

Space sciences and astronomy

Published on 12 Jul 2024

Real-life ‘stillsuit’: Dune-inspired upgrade for spacesuits allow astronauts to recycle urine into water

Existing waste management systems for spacesuits are uncomfortable, unhygienic, and don’t recycle valuable water in urine. Now, researchers from Cornell University have designed a prototype for an integrated urine collection and recycling system, which can be carried on the back of next-generation spacesuits. The system is now ready for testing.

Climate action

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