Mothering in domestic violence: Protecting children behind closed doors

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

 

As emerging data shows an alarming rise of domestic violence during the pandemic, researchers at the University of South Australia are urging practitioners to look beyond clinical observations and focus on the strengths that mothers exercise to protect their children from domestic abuse.

The call follows UniSA research that upends the perception that abused women are unable to adequately protect their children, instead revealing the ways that women think and act to shield their children from abuse, often at the expense of their own personal safety.

In the past 12 months, more than 243 million women and girls (aged 15-49) across the globe, were subjected to sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner. In Australia, one in six (or 1.6 million women) have experienced physical or sexual violence with 80 per cent experiencing coercive control by a current or previous partner since the age of 15. More than a quarter of the women said that children in their care had witnessed this violence and abuse.

Lead researcher and experienced social worker, UniSA's Dr Fiona Buchanan, says practitioners need to recognise mothers' protective behaviour if they are to work towards increasing safety for women and children living in abusive environments.

"Far too often, women are perceived as passive victims of domestic abuse, who while enduring unconscionable abuse, are unable to protect their own children," Dr Buchanan says.

"But what many practitioners don't realise is that these women are protecting their children in many unseen ways, that hope to reduce the likelihood of an abusive partner lashing out.

"The mothers in our research talked about the things they did to avoid conflict with their partners, things like controlling the home environment - making sure dinner was ready and on the table; ensuring the children were clean and quiet; and by making sure the house was neat and tidy.

"By trying to pre-empt abuse, they sought to limit their partner's aggressive outbursts, effectively managing his mood and behaviour to safeguard their children's wellbeing."

The study also showed that mothers intentionally tried to 'keep the peace' by purposely avoiding conflict with aggressive partners.

"Protective behaviours could span anything from keeping the children out of harm's way when they thought an assault was likely to occur, to putting themselves physically close to their abuser to try and placate him," Dr Buchanan says.

"In this instance, despite wanting to put distance between them and their violent partner, they placed themselves closer to the danger, arguably increasing risk to themselves in order to reduce the risk to the children."

Using interviews and focus groups UniSA's Dr Buchanan and Professor Nicole Moulding explored the lived experiences of 16 women who had mothered children in domestic abuse, hoping to better understand their thoughts, feelings and actions during that time. Each of the women had left their abusive partner at least one year prior to participating in the study.

Dr Buchanan warns that practitioners who rely on attachment theory (the observed emotional bonds between children and caregivers) in child protection practice are at risk of overlooking invisible acts of protective agency.

"Despite the popularity of attachment theory in child protection, it does not offer much guidance about supporting women and children living in abusive home environments, especially as it categorises the child-mother relationship without context," Dr Buchanan says.

"Clinical observation downplays the protective role of mothers in abusive relationships and promotes a notion of 'bad mothering'.

"There is no evidence to assume that abused women are worse mothers.

"Instead of identifying deficits and assigning blame, practitioners should seek to understand the invisible behaviours that women engage in behind closed doors to protect their children from abuse.

"A strengths-based approach is essential if we are to move towards more positive and empowered practices of safety and protection.

"Sadly, we cannot remove women and children from these terrible scenarios without taking a good look at the society which tolerates domestic abuse and blames women for being victimized."

###

NOTES FOR EDITORS - Other Domestic Abuse Statistics:

• On average one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner
• One in four women have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner since the age of 15
• 80 per cent of women in domestic abuse situations experience coercive control
• One in five women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15
• 85 per cent of Australian women have been sexually harassed
• Almost 40 per cent of women continue to experience violence from a partner while temporarily separated
• One in six women have experienced stalking since the age of 15
• Domestic and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women and their children.
• Indigenous women are 32 times more likely to be hospitalised due to family violence than non-indigenous women.
• Violence against women and children is estimated to cost the Australian economy $22 billion a year.

Rising water temperatures could endanger the mating of many fish species

ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH

Because fish that are ready to mate and their young are especially sensitive to changes in temperature, in the future up to 60 percent of all species may be forced to leave their traditional spawning areas

In a new meta-study, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have published ground-breaking findings on the effects of climate change for fish stock around the globe. As they report, the risks for fish are much higher than previously assumed, especially given the fact that in certain developmental stages they are especially sensitive to rising water temperatures. One critical bottleneck in the lifecycle of fish is their low tolerance for heat during mating. In other words, the water temperature in their spawning areas determines to a great extent how successfully they reproduce, making fish particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change - not only in the ocean, but also in lakes, ponds and rivers. According to the researchers' analyses, if left unchecked, climate change and rising water temperatures will negatively affect the reproduction of up to 60 percent of all fish species. Their study was released today in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Organisms have to breathe in order for their bodies to produce energy; this is equally true for human beings and for fish. In addition, we know that the energy needs of humans and animals alike depend on the temperature: when it's warmer, the need for energy rises exponentially, and with it, the need for oxygen. On this basis, it follows that organisms can only adapt to rising temperatures in their immediate vicinity by providing their bodies with more oxygen. But there are certain species-specific limits on this ability; if those limits are exceeded, it can lead to cardiovascular collapse.

Armed with this knowledge, in a new meta-study, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have investigated in which life phases saltwater and freshwater fish around the world are most sensitive to heat. To do so, the biologists compiled scientific data on the temperature tolerance of 694 fish species and analysed the temperature ranges within which fish can survive as adults ready to mate, as embryos in eggs, as larvae, and as adults outside the mating season.

Most sensitive during the mating season

"Our findings show that, both as embryos in eggs and as adults ready to mate, fish are far more sensitive to heat than in their larval stage or sexually mature adults outside the mating season," says first author and AWI marine biologist Dr Flemming Dahlke. "On the global average, for example, adults outside the mating season can survive in water that's up to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than adults ready to mate or fish eggs can."

The reason for this variable temperature tolerance lies in the anatomy of fish: fish embryos have no gills that would allow them to take in more oxygen. In contrast, fish that are ready to mate produce egg and sperm cells; this additional body mass also needs to be supplied with oxygen, which is why, even at lower temperatures, their cardiovascular systems are under enormous strain.

Every degree of warming increases the pressure on fish stocks

These findings apply to all fish species, and make it clear why fish are sensitive to heat, especially during the mating season and in their embryonic stage. Accordingly, in a second step the team of researchers analysed to what extent water temperatures in the spawning areas of the species investigated would likely rise due to climate change. For this purpose, they employed new climate scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways - SSPs), which will also be used in the IPCC's next Assessment Report.

Their conclusions confirm that every degree Celsius of warming spells more trouble for the world's fish stocks. "If we human beings can successfully limit climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, only ten percent of the fish species we investigated will be forced to leave their traditional spawning areas due to rising temperatures," explains AWI biologist and co-author Prof Hans-Otto Pörtner. In contrast, if greenhouse-gas emissions remain at a high or very high level (SSP 5 - 8.5), it's likely to produce average warming of 5 degrees Celsius or more, which would endanger up to 60 percent of all fish species.

Limited options for adapting

Those species affected would then be forced to either adapt through biological evolution - a process that would most likely take far too long - or to mate at another time of year or in some other place. "Some species might successfully manage this change," says Flemming Dahlke. "But if you consider the fact that fish have adapted their mating patterns to specific habitats over extremely long timeframes, and have tailored their mating cycles to specific ocean currents and available food sources, it has to be assumed that being forced to abandon their normal spawning areas will mean major problems for them." In addition, fish living in rivers and lakes have the problem that their habitat is limited by the size and geographic location of the waters they live in: migrating to deeper waters or to cooler regions is nearly impossible.

New level of detail for improved projections

"Our detailed analyses, which cover all of the fishes' developmental stages, will help us to understand how these species are being affected by climate change, and to what extent the loss of suitable habitats is being driven by the climate-related transformation of ecosystems," says Hans-Otto Pörtner.

Wherever fish migrate or their reproduction rates decline, there will be new interactions between species, and in some cases the ecosystems will experience a drop in productivity. The IPCC published corresponding projections on the future of worldwide fish stocks in its Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. According to Pörtner: "Our new detailed assessments will help to improve those projections."

Spawning fish and embryos most vulnerable to climate's warming waters

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

  

Spawning fish and embryos are far more vulnerable to Earth's warming waters than fish in other life stages, according to a new study, which uniquely relates fish physiological tolerance to temperature across the lifecycles of nearly 700 fish species. The results reveal a critical bottleneck in the lifecycle of fish and suggest that many ecologically and economically important fish species are threatened by climate warming more than studies based on adult fish thermal tolerance alone have shown. Understanding an organism's physiological limits to temperature changes can provide a window into how some species will likely respond to Earth's changing climate. However, thermal tolerances often vary throughout an organism's life. Thus, the vulnerability of a species to climate change hinges on its most temperature-sensitive life stages. But due to a lack of experimental data, large-scale climate risk assessments often simplify or fail to account for the effects of these thermal bottlenecks across the entire lifecycle of many major animal groups, including fish. Whether our current climate mitigation targets are sufficient enough to sustain healthy fish populations remains poorly understood. Flemming Dahlke and colleagues compiled published observational and experimental data to assess the life stage-specific thermal tolerances for 694 marine and freshwater fish from waters worldwide. Their large-scale meta-analysis found that spawning adults and embryos were much more susceptible to temperature changes than other life stages across fish species. Dahlke et al.'s findings suggest that, with unchecked warming, up to 60% of the fish species they evaluated will not be able to exist in the current geographic range of their most vulnerable life stages within a century - a sharp contrast to the 10% of species estimated if using only the thermal tolerance of adults. "The minute thermal safety margins of spawning fish and embryos in the tropics suggest that there are limited fish species on Earth that can tolerate warmer or less oxygenated habitats. Intensified efforts to stabilize global warming are warranted more than ever," writes Jennifer Sunday in a related Perspective.

Higher concentration of metal in Moon's craters provides new insights to its origin

New observations could challenge previous theories of how the Moon was formed

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

IMAGE: VIEW OF MOON LIMB, WITH EARTH ON THE HORIZON view more 

CREDIT: NASA APOLLO 11 MISSION IMAGE

Life on Earth would not be possible without the Moon; it keeps our planet's axis of rotation stable, which controls seasons and regulates our climate. However, there has been considerable debate over how the Moon was formed. The popular hypothesis contends that the Moon was formed by a Mars-sized body colliding with Earth's upper crust which is poor in metals. But new research suggests the Moon's subsurface is more metal-rich than previously thought, providing new insights that could challenge our understanding of that process.

Today, a study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters sheds new light on the composition of the dust found at the bottom of the Moon's craters. Led by Essam Heggy, research scientist of electrical and computer engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and co-investigator of the Mini-RF instrument onboard NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the team members of the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission used radar to image and characterize this fine dust. The researchers concluded that the Moon's subsurface may be richer in metals (i.e. Fe and Ti oxides) than scientists had believed.

According to the researchers, the fine dust at the bottom of the Moon's craters is actually ejected materials forced up from below the Moon's surface during meteor impacts. When comparing the metal content at the bottom of larger and deeper craters to that of the smaller and shallower ones, the team found higher metal concentrations in the deeper craters.

What does a change in recorded metal presence in the subsurface have to do with our understanding of the Moon? The traditional hypothesis is that approximately 4.5 billion years ago there was a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized proto-planet (named Theia). Most scientists believe that that collision shot a large portion of Earth's metal-poor upper crust into orbit, eventually forming the Moon.

One puzzling aspect of this theory of the Moon's formation, has been that the Moon has a higher concentration of iron oxides than the Earth--a fact well-known to scientists. This particular research contributes to the field in that it provides insights about a section of the moon that has not been frequently studied and posits that there may exist an even higher concentration of metal deeper below the surface. It is possible, say the researchers that the discrepancy between the amount of iron on the Earth's crust and the Moon could be even greater than scientists thought, which pulls into question the current understanding of how the Moon was formed.

The fact that our Moon could be richer in metals than the Earth challenges the notion that it was portions of Earth's mantle and crust that were shot into orbit. A greater concentration of metal deposits may mean that other hypotheses about the Moon's formation must be explored. It may be possible that the collision with Theia was more devastating to our early Earth, with much deeper sections being launched into orbit, or that the collision could have occurred when Earth was still young and covered by a magma ocean. Alternatively, more metal could hint at a complicated cool-down of an early molten Moon surface, as suggested by several scientists.

According to Heggy, "By improving our understanding of how much metal the Moon's subsurface actually has, scientists can constrain the ambiguities about how it has formed, how it is evolving and how it is contributing to maintaining habitability on Earth." He further added, "Our solar system alone has over 200 moons - understanding the crucial role these moons play in the formation and evolution of the planets they orbit can give us deeper insights into how and where life conditions outside Earth might form and what it might look like."

Wes Patterson of the Planetary Exploration Group (SRE), Space Exploration Sector (SES) at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who is the project's principal investigator for Mini-RF and a co-author of the study, added, "The LRO mission and its radar imager Mini-RF are continuing to surprise us with new insights into the origins and complexity of our nearest neighbor."

The team plans to continue carrying out additional radar observations of more crater floors with the Mini-RF experiment to verify the initial findings of the published investigation.

###

This research project was funded through the University of Southern California under NASA award NNX15AV76G.

Radar points to moon being more metallic than researchers thought

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: THIS IMAGE BASED ON DATA FROM NASA'S LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER SPACECRAFT SHOWS THE FACE OF THE MOON WE SEE FROM EARTH. THE MORE WE LEARN ABOUT OUR NEAREST NEIGHBOR, THE... view more 

CREDIT: NASA / GSFC / ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITYWhat started out as a hunt for ice lurking in polar lunar craters turned into an unexpected finding that could help clear some muddy history about the Moon's formation.

Team members of the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft found new evidence that the Moon's subsurface might be richer in metals, like iron and titanium, than researchers thought. That finding, published July 1 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, could aid in drawing a clearer connection between Earth and the Moon.

"The LRO mission and its radar instrument continue to surprise us with new insights about the origins and complexity of our nearest neighbor," said Wes Patterson, Mini-RF principal investigator from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and a study coauthor.

Substantial evidence points to the Moon as the product of a collision between a Mars-sized protoplanet and young Earth, forming from the gravitational collapse of the remaining cloud of debris. Consequently, the Moon's bulk chemical composition closely resembles that of Earth.

Look in detail at the Moon's chemical composition, however, and that story turns murky. For example, in the bright plains of the Moon's surface, called the lunar highlands, rocks contain smaller amounts of metal-bearing minerals relative to Earth. That finding might be explained if Earth had fully differentiated into a core, mantle and crust before the impact, leaving the Moon largely metal-poor. But turn to the Moon's maria -- the large, darker plains -- and the metal abundance becomes richer than that of many rocks on Earth.

This discrepancy has puzzled scientists, leading to numerous questions and hypotheses regarding how much the impacting protoplanet may have contributed to the differences. The Mini-RF team found a curious pattern that could lead to an answer.

Using Mini-RF, the researchers sought to measure an electrical property within lunar soil piled on crater floors in the Moon's northern hemisphere. This electrical property is known as the dielectric constant, a number that compares the relative abilities of a material and the vacuum of space to transmit electric fields, and could help locate ice lurking in the crater shadows. The team, however, noticed this property increasing with crater size.

For craters approximately 1 to 3 miles (2 to 5 kilometers) wide, the dielectric constant of the material steadily increased as the craters grew larger, but for craters 3 to 12 miles (5 to 20 kilometers) wide, the property remained constant.

"It was a surprising relationship that we had no reason to believe would exist," said Essam Heggy, coinvestigator of the Mini-RF experiments from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and lead author of the published paper.

Discovery of this pattern opened a door to a new possibility. Because meteors that form larger craters also dig deeper into the Moon's subsurface, the team reasoned that the increasing dielectric constant of the dust in larger craters could be the result of meteors excavating iron and titanium oxides that lie below the surface. Dielectric properties are directly linked to the concentration of these metal minerals.

If their hypothesis were true, it would mean only the first few hundred meters of the Moon's surface is scant in iron and titanium oxides, but below the surface, there's a steady increase to a rich and unexpected bonanza.

Comparing crater floor radar images from Mini-RF with metal oxide maps from the LRO Wide-Angle Camera, Japan's Kaguya mission and NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft, the team found exactly what it had suspected. The larger craters, with their increased dielectric material, were also richer in metals, suggesting that more iron and titanium oxides had been excavated from the depths of 0.3 to 1 mile (0.5 to 2 kilometers) than from the upper 0.1 to 0.3 miles (0.2 to 0.5 kilometers) of the lunar subsurface.

"This exciting result from Mini-RF shows that even after 11 years in operation at the Moon, we are still making new discoveries about the ancient history of our nearest neighbor," said Noah Petro, the LRO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The MINI-RF data is incredibly valuable for telling us about the properties of the lunar surface, but we use that data to infer what was happening over 4.5 billion years ago!"

These results follow recent evidence from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission that suggests a significant mass of dense material exists just a few tens to hundreds of kilometers beneath the Moon's enormous South Pole-Aitken basin, indicating that dense materials aren't uniformly distributed in the Moon's subsurface.

The team emphasizes that the new study can't directly answer the outstanding questions about the Moon's formation, but it does reduce the uncertainty in the distribution of iron and titanium oxides in the lunar subsurface and provide critical evidence needed to better understand the Moon's formation and its connection to Earth.

"It really raises the question of what this means for our previous formation hypotheses," Heggy said.

Anxious to uncover more, the researchers have already started examining crater floors in the Moon's southern hemisphere to see if the same trends exist there.

###

LRO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Mini-RF was designed, built and tested by a team led by APL, Naval Air Warfare Center, Sandia National Laboratories, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

For more information on LRO, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/lro

Written by: Jeremy Rehm, jeremy.rehm@jhuapl.edu

Feeds of the future

University of Göttingen research team investigates the influence of insect and microalgae feeds on meat quality

UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN HAVE FOUND THAT THE MEAT QUALITY OF CHICKENS FED WITH CERTAIN INSECTS OR MICROALGAE IS SUITABLE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. view more 

CREDIT: QUALITY OF ANIMAL PRODUCTS, UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN

Worldwide there is a growing demand for animal products for human nutrition, despite vegan and vegetarian diets becoming more popular in Western countries. Changing diets necessitate a substantial amount of protein as an input for animal production. Future protein feedstuffs will need to become independent of arable land in order to avoid further land use changes, such as deforestation. The cultivation of insects as well as microalgae are up-and-coming sectors in Germany, as well as globally, to meet protein demands for humans and animals alike. Therefore, a research team at the University of Göttingen investigated whether these alternative protein sources alter typical meat quality. Their results have been published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture (JSFA).

In a study conducted as a part of the project "Sustainability Transitions in the Food Production", broiler chickens were fattened using feed with the main protein sources being soybean meal, spirulina, or insects. Animal growth, meat quality (especially concerning shelf life), and eating quality were investigated. Their results of laboratory testing and sensory (taste-testing) analyses across 132 birds show that black soldier fly larvae meal and spirulina can be included in poultry feed without negatively impacting quality. Chickens fed with black soldier fly larvae meal produce meat equivalent to the status quo. Chickens fed with spirulina produce meat with a more intensive colour and flavour. "Overall, both prove to be potential soybean meal alternatives in the search for new protein sources for animal feed," as explained by the study lead researcher Dr Brianne Altmann.

Microalgae are currently produced globally for biofuel, animal feed, and human consumption; however, they remain much more expensive than soybean meal. Currently in the European Union (EU), insects are only authorized for human consumption and for fish feed; they are likely to be approved for poultry feed in the near future. In the EU, all insects must be produced using certified animal feedstuffs. However, "sustainability necessitates the incorporation of waste products in the production of insects," explains Professor Daniel Mörlein, professor for the Quality of Animal Products.

Three groups at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Göttingen, are currently examining the foundations for more sustainable and socially-accepted plant and animal-based foods. Product perception as well as consumer acceptance studies are commonly conducted in the faculty's modern sensory laboratory.

###

Original publication: Brianne A. Altmann, Ruth Wigger, Marco Ciulu, Daniel Mörlein: The effect of insect or microalga alternative protein feeds on broiler meat quality. (Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, open access). http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.10473

Contact:

Dr Brianne Altmann
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Animal Sciences
Quality of Animal Products
Albrecht-Thaer-Weg 3, 37075 Göttingen, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)551 39-5611
Email: brianne.altmann@agr.uni-goettingen.de
http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/86980.htmll

Professor Daniel Mörlein
daniel.moerlein@uni-goettingen.de

Showing pro-diversity feelings are the norm makes individuals more tolerant

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

MADISON, Wis. -- Showing people how their peers feel about diversity in their community can make their actions more inclusive, make members of marginalized groups feel more like they belong, and even help close racial achievement gaps in education, according to a new study.

Drawing on strategies that have worked in anti-smoking, safe-sex and energy-saving campaigns, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers decided to try to change behavior by showing people that positive feelings about diversity are the norm.

"In any other domain of public health -- saving for retirement, sustainability, eating healthy -- it's the key thing to communicate: It's the right thing to do, your peers do it, and your peers would actually approve of you doing it as well," says Markus Brauer, the UW-Madison psychology professor whose lab designed the pro-diversity intervention.

It's an effect that's reflected in attitudes about ongoing protests over Black people killed by police officers. Exposed to larger crowds, more frequent news coverage and the opinions of friends and neighbors, more people have expressed support for Black Lives Matter groups and activities.

"People are heavily influenced by finding out what their peers have done," Brauer says. "But in the diversity domain, we haven't been trying this."

The researchers, who published their findings today in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, conducted extensive focus groups with UW-Madison students.

"We asked them -- students of color and white students, students of the LGBT+ community: What actually is it that decreases your sense of belonging? What are the kinds of behaviors that hurt your feelings, that make you feel excluded?" Brauer says. "And then please tell us, what are the behaviors that would make you feel welcome?"

The non-white students felt like they were kept at a distance from white students -- not included in class groups or projects, not included in activities, not invited to participate in simple interactions.

"When we asked about what decreased their sense of belonging, they didn't complain so much about racial slurs or explicit forms of discrimination," says Brauer. "It was the distance, the lack of interest, the lack of caring that affected them."

Brauer, graduate student Mitchell Campbell, and Sohad Murrar, a former graduate student of Brauer's who is now a psychology professor at Governors State University in Illinois, used what they learned to choose their messages.

"We used a social marketing approach, where we identify a target audience, we decide what our target behavior is, and then we show people how their peers support that behavior," Brauer says.

They designed a relatively simple poster, covered in students' faces and reporting actual survey results -- that 93 percent of students say they "embrace diversity and welcome people from all backgrounds into our UW-Madison community," and that 84 percent of them agreed to be pictured on the poster. They also produced a five-minute video, which described the pro-diversity opinions reported by large majorities in other campus surveys and showed real students answering questions about tolerance and inclusion.

In a series of experiments over several years, hundreds of students were exposed passively to the posters in brief encounters in study waiting rooms or hung day after day on the walls of their classrooms. In other experiments, the video was shown to an entire class during their first meeting. Control groups came and went from waiting rooms and classroom with no posters, or watched videos about cranberry production, or other alternatives to the study materials.

Then the researchers surveyed subjects to assess their attitudes about appreciation for diversity, attitudes toward people of color, intergroup anxiety, their peers' behaviors and other measures.

"When we measured 10 or 12 weeks later, the students who were exposed to the interventions report more positive attitudes towards members of other groups and stronger endorsement of diversity," Brauer says.

The differences for students from marginalized groups went further.

"The students belonging to marginalized groups tell us that they have an enhanced sense of belonging. They are less anxious in interactions with students from other ethnic groups. They tell us that they're less and less the target of discrimination," Brauer says. "They evaluate the classroom climate more positively, and feel that they are treated more respectfully by their classmates."

The researchers tested the effectiveness of their diversity intervention in a series of UW-Madison courses in which white students have historically received better grades than their non-white peers. In course sections that viewed the 5-minute video during their first meeting -- classes including more than 300 students -- the privileged and marginalized students' grades were equal in the end.

"We know the marginalized students experience discrimination; we know their feelings are valid. But we know, too, from the campus climate surveys and our own extensive surveys, that their fellow students report real appreciation for diversity, and tell us that they want to be inclusive," Brauer says. "They stay socially distant, though, because they worry about putting themselves out there. Our experience is that this intervention is changing those perceptions and experiences, and possibly the behavior, of both groups."

It may be the first result of its kind for such a long-running study with so many participants, and the researchers are hopeful that future work will help better reveal whether students actually change the way they treat each other.

"Promoting inclusion and dismantling systemic racism is one of the most important issues of our times. And yet, it turns out that many pro-diversity initiatives are not being evaluated," says Brauer, whose work was supported in part by funding from the office of UW-Madison's vice provost and chief diversity officer. "We really need evidence-based practices, but for a long time we've had no idea whether the things we do in the diversity domain actually have a beneficial effect. We're hoping to change that."

###

--Chris Barncard, barncard@wisc.edu

READ ONLINE: https://news.wisc.edu/showing-pro-diversity-feelings-are-the-norm-makes-individuals-more-tolerant/

DOWNLOAD IMAGE AND VIDEO LINK: https://uwmadison.box.com/v/diversity-feelings

Different tracks, same dinosaurs: Brown researchers dig deeper into dinosaur movements

BROWN UNIVERSITY

    SHARE

 PRINT  E-MAIL

Volume 0%

VIDEO: XROMM COMBINES CT SCANS OF A SKELETON WITH X-RAY VIDEO, AIDED BY TINY IMPLANTED METAL MARKERS, TO VISUALIZE HOW BONES AND MUSCLES MOVE INSIDE ANIMALS. view more 

CREDIT: BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- When picturing dinosaur tracks, most people imagine a perfectly preserved mold of a foot on firm layer of earth. But what if that dinosaur was running through mud, sinking several inches -- or even up to their ankles -- into the ground as it moved?

Using sophisticated X-ray-based technology, a team of Brown University researchers tracked the movements of guineafowl to investigate how their feet move below ground through various substrates and what those findings could mean for understanding fossil records left behind by dinosaurs.

They found that regardless of the variability in substrates, or the guineafowl moving at different speeds, sinking at different depths or engaging in different behaviors, the birds' overall foot movement remained the same: The toes spread as they stepped onto the substrate surface, remained spread as the foot sank, collapsed and drew back as they were lifted from the substrate, and exited the substrate in front of the point of entry, creating a looping pattern as they walked.

And part of what that means is that fossilized dinosaur tracks that look distinct from each other, and appear to be from different species, might instead come from the same dinosaurs.

"This is the first study that's really shown how the bird foot is moving below ground, showing the patterns of this subsurface foot motion and allowing us to break down the patterns that we're seeing in a living animal that has feet similar to those of a dinosaur," said Morgan Turner, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown in ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author of the research. "Below ground, or even above ground, they're responding to these soft substrates in a very similar way, which has potentially important implications for our ability to study the movement of these animals that we can't observe directly anymore."

The findings were published on Wednesday, July 1, in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

To make the observations, Turner and her colleagues, Professor of Biology and Medical Science Stephen Gatesy and Peter Falkingham, now at Liverpool John Moores University, used a 3D-imaging technology developed at Brown called X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM). The technology combines CT scans of a skeleton with high-speed X-ray video, aided by tiny implanted metal markers, to create visualizations of how bones and muscles move inside humans and animals. In the study, the team used XROMM to watch guineafowl move through substrates of different hydration and compactness, analyzing how their feet moved underground and the tracks left behind.

Sand, typically a dense combination of quartz and silica, does not lend itself well to X-ray imaging, so the team used poppy seeds to emulate sand. Muds were made using small glass bubbles, adding various amount of clay and water across 107 trials to achieve different consistencies and realistic tracks.

They added metal markers underneath the claws of the guineafowl to allow for tracking in 3D space. It's these claw tips that the researchers think are least disturbed by mud flow and other variables that can impact and distort the form of the track.

Despite the variation, the researchers observed a consistent looping pattern.

"The loops by themselves I don't think are that interesting," Gatesy said. "People are like, 'That's nice. Birds do this underground. So what?' It was only when [Turner] went back into it and said, 'What if we slice those motion trails at different depths as if they were footprints?' Then we made the nice connection to the fossils."

By "slicing" through the 3D images of the movement patterns at different depths, the researchers found similarities between the guineafowl tracks and fossilized dinosaur tracks.

"We don't know what these dinosaurs were doing, we don't know what they were walking through exactly, we don't know how big they were or how deep they were sinking, but we can make this really strong connection between how they were moving and some level of context for where this track is being sampled from within that movement," Turner said.

By recognizing the movement patterns, as well as the entry and exit point of the foot through various substrates, the team says they're able to gain a better understanding of what a dinosaur track could look like.

"You end up generating this big diversity of track shapes from a very simple foot shape because you're sampling at different depths and it's moving in complicated ways," Gatesy said. "Do we really have 40 different kinds of creatures, each with a differently shaped foot, or are we looking at some more complicated interaction that leaves behind these remnants that are partly anatomical and partly motion and partly depth?"

To further their research, the team spent time at the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College in Massachusetts, which is home to an expansive collection of penetrative tracks discovered in the 1800s by geologist Edward Hitchcock.

Hitchcock originally believed that his collection housed fossil tracks from over 100 distinct animals. Because of the team's work with XROMM, Gatesy now thinks it's possible that at least half of those tracks are actually from the same dinosaurs, just moving their feet in slightly different ways or sampled at slightly different depths.

"Going to museum together and being able to pick out these features and say, 'We think this track is low in the loop and we think this one is high,' that was the biggest moment of insight for me," Turner said.

Turner says she hopes their research can lead to a greater interest in penetrative tracks, even if they seem a little less pretty or polished than the tracks people are used to seeing in museums.

"They have so much information in them," Turner said, "and I hope that this gives people a lens, a new way to view these footprints and appreciate the movement preserved within in them."

###

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation (EAR 1452119 to SMG and PLF; IOS 0925077 to SMG), a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the 7th European Framework Programme to PLF, and the Bushnell Research and Education Fund to MLT.

Alarming long-term effects of insecticides weaken ant colonies

UNIVERSITY OF BERN

IMAGE: YOUNG COLONY OF THE BLACK GARDEN ANT (LASIUS NIGER) WITH QUEEN, WORKERS AND BROOD (EGGS, LARVAE AND PUPAE) IN A NESTING TUBE. view more 

CREDIT: © DANIEL SCHLAEPPI

"Ants are one of the most important animal groups on our planet. However, they are also affected by the recently observed global declines in abundance and diversity of insects", says Daniel Schläppi of the Institute of Bee Health of the University of Bern, main author of the study. Evidence suggests that pesticides are among the factors responsible for the observed declines. "One problem of these substances is their persistence and the potential to contaminate soils and water, even in areas in which they are not applied", says co-author Gaétan Glauser from the University of Neuchâtel.

But so far, no data existed to show how exposure to low concentrations, which do not induce direct mortality, affect ants in the long run. The data, collected at the University of Bern in cooperation with Agroscope and the University of Neuchâtel, clearly demonstrate previously overlooked long-term effects, which are not detectable during the first year of colony development. The results are published in "Communications Biology", an Open-Access Journal of Nature. According to the authors, this study highlights the importance to develop sustainable agricultural practices that incorporate reduced use of agro-chemicals to prevent irreparable damages to natural ecosystems.

Worrying long-term impacts

Thiamethoxam has a clear negative impact on the health of ants. Thiamethoxam is a neonicotinoid insecticide used to combat pest insects that threaten our harvest. Unfortunately, there is more and more evidence showing that thiamethoxam and similar agro-chemicals have negative consequences for other beneficial insects, including ants and honey bees.

"With our study we show that ants, which play a very important roles in our ecosystems and provide valuable ecosystem services such as natural pest control, are negatively affected by neonicotinoids too", says Schläppi.

In the present work, colonies of black garden ants were chronically exposed to field realistic concentrations of thiamethoxam over 64 weeks. Colonies were raised in the laboratory from queens that were captured in the field. Before the first overwintering of the colonies no effect of neonicotinoid exposure on colony strength was visible. However, until the second overwintering it became apparent that colonies exposed to thiamethoxam were significantly smaller than control colonies. Because the number of workers is a very important factor for the success of an ant colony, the observed effects are most likely to compromise colony survivorship. Considering the important role of ants in natural ecosystems, our results indicate that neonicotinoids impose a threat to ecosystem functioning.

The call for sustainable solutions

"Accumulating long-term impact of neonicotinoids on ants is alarming", says Prof. Peter Neumann of the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern. "This is an exemplary study showing how negative effects of an environmental contaminant only become visible after long monitoring, but with potentially far reaching consequences". Therefore, the authors stress the importance to include ants as model organisms and to fully incorporate long-term effects in future risk assessment schemes for more sustainable agriculture.

###

This study was financially supported by the Béatrice Ederer-Weber Foundation, the Vinetum Foundation and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The research was conducted by scientist working at the University of Bern (Institute of Bee Health, Vetsuisse Faculty), Agroscope (Swiss Bee Research Centre) as well as University of Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel Platform of Analytical Chemistry).