Aim: The aim of this systematic review is to obtain a better understanding of the association between unemployment among young people and mental health. Methods: After screening the title and abstract of 794 articles drawn from four electronic databases, 52 articles remained for full-text reading. Of these, 20 studies met the inclusion criteria and were assessed on methodological quality. All steps were performed independently by two reviewers. Finally, a total of 17 articles were included in the systematic review. Results: Analysis of cross-sectional studies ( N = 5) showed an association between unemployment among young people and mental health. An effect of unemployment on mental health was found when considering cohort studies ( N = 12) that did not control for confounders (7/7). When controlling for confounders except mental health at baseline, this effect decreased in most studies leading to mixed results, although the majority (6/8) still found an effect. However, when taking mental health at baseline into account as one of the confounders, only a minority of studies (3/8) found a significant effect of unemployment on mental health. Conclusions: This systematic review showed an association between unemployment among young people and mental health. However, whether there is a causal relationship is less clear. More evidence from, for example, natural experiments and longitudinal studies that control for confounding variables, especially mental health at baseline, is required to better understand the association and potential causation between unemployment among young people and mental health.

Myanmar is highly biodiverse, with more than 16,000 plant, 314 mammal, 1131 bird, 293 reptile, and amphibian species. Supporting this biodiversity is a variety of natural ecosystems-mostly undescribed-including tropical and subtropical forests, savannas, seasonally inundated wetlands, extensive shoreline and tidal systems, and alpine ecosystems.Although Myanmar contains some of the largest intact natural ecosystems in Southeast Asia, remaining ecosystems are under threat from accelerating land use intensification and overexploitation. In this period of rapid change, a systematic risk assessment is urgently needed to estimate the extent and magnitude of human impacts and identify ecosystems most at risk to help guide strategic conservation action. Here we provide the first comprehensive conservation assessment of Myanmar's natural terrestrial ecosystems using the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems categories and criteria. We identified 64 ecosystem types for the assessment, and used models of ecosystem distributions and syntheses of existing data to estimate declines in distribution, range size, and functioning of each ecosystem. We found that more than a third (36.9%) of Myanmar's area has been converted to anthropogenic ecosystems over the last 2-3 centuries, leaving nearly half of Myanmar's ecosystems threatened (29 of 64 ecosystems). A quarter of Myanmar's ecosystems were identified as Data Deficient, reflecting a paucity of studies and an urgency for future research. Our results show that, with nearly two-thirds of Myanmar still covered in natural ecosystems, there is a crucial opportunity to develop a comprehensive protected area network that sufficiently represents Myanmar's terrestrial ecosystem diversity.

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Myanmar has a drier sub-tropical climate than countries that typically contain Ni laterite deposits, but hosts a Ni laterite deposit at Tagaung Taung. Given that Ni enrichment processes in the Tagaung Taung deposit are poorly understood, we investigated the geochemical and mineralogical evolution of two weathering profiles developed on different bedrocks in the central part of Myanmar: a partly serpentinized harzburgite at Tagaung and an almost completely serpentinized peridotite at Budaung. The whole-rock geochemical data indicate that Si was retained relative to Fe and Al in the weathering profiles. Nickel has been enriched to contents as high as 4.89 wt.% NiO in the saprolite layers at Tagaung, whereas the saprolite layers at Budaung contain ≤1.55 wt.% NiO. Smectite is the main mineral that formed in the saprolite layers at Tagaung, whereas secondary serpentine dominates the saprolite layers at Budaung. Microscopic observations indicate that Ni-smectite (>10 wt.% NiO), which is only observed at Tagaung, formed as a replacement product of orthopyroxene. In addition to the high Ni fixation capacity of smectite relative to secondary serpentine, Ni-rich pore water derived from the dissolution of olivine likely contributed to the high Ni contents of smectite. Our results imply that high-grade Ni laterite deposits may develop on unaltered or partly serpentinized harzburgite under the climatic conditions typical of Myanmar.