Campaign launched to pardon Scottish 'witches' burned at the stake nearly 300 years ago

Georgia Forrester, Sep 24 2020


MIRIAM ESPACIO/ UNSPLASH
There's been no recognition for the thousands of people who were tortured and burned at the stake during witch trials 300 years ago, a lawyer says. (File photo)

A lawyer is on a mission to pardon thousands of women who are still classified as being “witches” in Scotland.

Dating back nearly 300 years, Scotland’s past saw women tortured and burned at the stake as ”witches”.

But Claire Mitchell QC wants a legal pardon to be given to those who were condemned under the Witchcraft Act 1563.

She’s launched a Witches of Scotland campaign, aiming to help bring about an apology – like that given to the victims of the trials in the 1690s in Salem, Massachusetts.

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* Salem witch trials house is for sale
* The Witches: a cautionary tale of mass delusion
* Stacy Shchiff's The Witches a terrific account of the Salem witchcraft trials

The Witchcraft Act remained in force until 1736, and more than 3000 people, the majority women, were accused of witchcraft.


It’s believed about 2600 people were executed by being strangled and then burned at the stake. Many people were also tortured.

Methods of torture included using sleep deprivation until people confessed to their crimes, as well as pricking people’s skin to see whether they bled, the Witches of Scotland website states.

People were also stripped naked to see if any “witches mark” could be found on them, and torture by crushing and pulling out nails was also used.

FREESTOCKS/ UNSPLASH
Nearly 300 years ago, many people, namely women, died in witch trials. (File photo)

Mitchell told the Observer that unlike Salem, there has been no recognition of those who died in Scotland during the trials.

“There should be an acknowledgement that what happened to these women was a terrible miscarriage of justice,” she was reported saying.

The Guardian reported that according to Mitchell, accusations of witchcraft were four times higher in Scotland than elsewhere.

“It was an incredibly sad period in the history of women,” she said. “These women were voiceless, unable even to speak in their own defence. We need to publicly recognise the terrible wrong done to them.”

The campaign aims to achieve three things: a pardon, an apology and also a national memorial.

An application to the Scottish parliament’s justice committee for a pardon for those executed is expected to be lodged in 2021, The Guardian reported.


Stuff

Killer obsessed with witchcraft executed at Indiana prison
20 hrs ago
AMERIKA KILLS THE MENTALLY ILL

TRUMP IS NOT PRO LIFE HE IS PRO DEATH PENALTY



The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, is shown. AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File


TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — The U.S. government on Tuesday executed a former soldier who said an obsession with witchcraft led him to kill a Georgia nurse he believed had put a spell on him.

William Emmett LeCroy, 50, was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the same U.S. prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where five others have been executed i n 2020 following a 17-year period without a federal execution.

Lawyers had asked President Donald Trump in a petition to commute LeCroy’s sentence to life in prison, saying that LeCroy’s brother, Georgia State Trooper Chad LeCroy, was killed during a routine traffic stop in 2010 and that another son’s death would devastate their family.

The execution began nearly three hours later than scheduled as LeCroy's lawyers made an ultimately failed, last-minute bid to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay.

As a curtain rose across glass windows separating witnesses from the death chamber, LeCroy lay strapped to a cross-shaped gurney, with IVs in his forearms and hands. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling, not turning to look toward witnesses. The witnesses included the father and fiancé of Joann Lee Tiesler, whom LeCroy raped and stabbed to death 19 years ago, Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement.

LeCroy's spiritual adviser, Sister Barbara Battista, stood a few feet away inside the chamber, her head bowed and reading softly from a prayer book.

LeCroy had said last week he didn’t want to play into what he called the “theater” surrounding his execution and so might not make a full statement in the minutes before he died, Battista told The Associated Press earlier Tuesday.

When a prison official leaned over him Tuesday night and gently pulled off LeCroy’s face mask to ask if he had any last words, LeCroy responded calmly and matter-of-factly. His last and only words were: “Sister Battista is about to receive in the postal service my last statement.

LeCroy kept his eyes open as someone out of his view in an adjacent room began administering the lethal injection of pentobarbital. His eyelids grew heavy while his midsection began to heave uncontrollably. After several more minutes, color drained from his limbs, his face turned ashen and his lips tinted blue. After about 10 more minutes, an official with a stethoscope entered the chamber, felt LeCroy’s wrist for a pulse and then listened to his heart before officially declaring him dead.

Another execution, of Christopher Vialva, is scheduled Thursday. He would be the first African American on federal death row to be put to death in the series of federal executions this year.

Critics say the Justice Department's resumption of federal executions this year is a cynical bid to help Trump claim the mantel of law-and-order candidate leading up to Election Day. Supporters say Trump is bringing long-overdue justice to victims and their families.

LeCroy broke into the Cherrylog, Georgia, mountain home of Joann Lee Tiesler on Oct. 7, 2001, and waited for her to return from a shopping trip. When she walked through the door, LeCroy struck her with a shotgun, bound and raped her. He then slashed her throat and repeatedly stabbed her in the back.

LeCroy had known Tiesler because she lived near a relative’s home and would often wave to her as he drove by. He later told investigators he’d come to believe she might have been his old babysitter he called Tinkerbell, who LeCroy claimed sexually molested him as a child. After killing Tiesler, he realized that couldn’t possibly be true.

Two days after killing Tiesler, LeCroy was arrested driving Tiesler’s truck after passing a U.S. checkpoint in Minnesota heading to Canada.

Authorities found a note LeCroy wrote before his arrest in which he asked Tiesler for forgiveness, according to court filings. “You were an angel and I killed you,” it read. “I am a vagabond and doomed to hell.”

"Today justice was finally served. William LeCroy died a peaceful death in stark contrast to the horror he imposed on my daughter Joann,” the victim’s father, Tom Tiesler, said in a statement.

“I am unaware that he ever showed any remorse for his evil actions, his life of crime or for the horrific burden he caused Joann’s loved ones," the statement read.

A few hours before the execution, Battista, waiting near the prison, held a bag of caramel chocolate that she said was LeCroy’s favorite. In conversations with him in the days leading up to the execution, she said he had been contemplating his likely death and sounded resigned.

“He said, ‘You know, once we were not and then we are and then we are not,’” she said. “He was reflective. He didn’t seem agitated.”

LeCroy joined the Army at 17 but was soon was discharged for going AWOL and later spoke about an interest in witchcraft that began during a previous stint in prison for burglary, child molestation and other charges.

He had ruminated for days before the slaying about how Tiesler was Tinkerbell and that assaulting her would reverse a hex she put on him. After he cut her throat, he went to Tiesler’s computer to search for books about witchcraft, court filings said.


He was convicted in 2004 on a federal charge of carjacking resulting in death and a jury recommended a death sentence.

LeCroy's lawyers had unsuccessfully tried to halt the execution and argued that his trial lawyers didn’t properly emphasize evidence about his upbringing and mental health that could have persuaded jurors not to impose a death sentence. Their last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was also rejected.

Over previous 56 years, before the Trump administration’s reboot of executions this year, the federal government had executed just three people — all in the early 2000s. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was among them.

Neandertals have adopted male sex chromosome from modern humans
WAIT! WHAT? HAVE IS PRESENT TENSE THAT MEANS

NEANDERTALS ARE STILL AROUND

by Max Planck Society

Matthias Meyer at work in the clean laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Credit: MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology

In 1997, the very first Neandertal DNA sequence—just a small part of the mitochondrial genome—was determined from an individual discovered in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856. Since then, improvements in molecular techniques have enabled scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to determine high quality sequences of the autosomal genomes of several Neandertals, and led to the discovery of an entirely new group of extinct humans, the Denisovans, who were relatives of the Neandertals in Asia.

However, because all specimens well-preserved enough to yield sufficient amounts of DNA have been from female individuals, comprehensive studies of the Y chromosomes of Neandertals and Denisovans have not yet been possible. Unlike the rest of the autosomal genome, which represents a rich tapestry of thousands of genealogies of any individual's ancestors, Y chromosomes have a peculiar mode of inheritance—they are passed exclusively from father to son. Y chromosomes, and also the maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA, have been extremely valuable for studying human history.

New method to identify Y chromosome molecules

In this study, the researchers identified three male Neandertals and two Denisovans that were potentially suitable for DNA analysis, and developed an approach to fish out human Y chromosome molecules from the large amounts of microbial DNA that typically contaminate ancient bones and teeth. This allowed them to reconstruct the Y chromosome sequences of these individuals, which would not have been possible using conventional approaches.

By comparing the archaic human Y chromosomes to each other and to the Y chromosomes of people living today, the team found that Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes are more similar to one another than they are to Denisovan Y chromosomes. "This was quite a surprise to us. We know from studying their autosomal DNA that Neandertals and Denisovans were closely related and that humans living today are their more distant evolutionary cousins. Before we first looked at the data, we expected that their Y chromosomes would show a similar picture," says Martin Petr, the lead author of the study. The researchers also calculated that the most recent common ancestor of Neandertal and modern human Y chromosomes lived around 370,000 years ago, much more recently than previously thought.

Upper molar of a male Neandertal (Spy 94a) from Spy, Belgium. Credit: I. Crevecoeur

It is by now well established that all people with non-African ancestry carry a small amount of Neandertal DNA as a result of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans approximately 50,000-70,000 years ago, quite shortly after modern humans migrated out of Africa and started spreading around the world. However, whether Neandertals might also carry some modern human DNA has been a matter of some debate.


These Y chromosome sequences now provide new evidence that Neandertals and early modern humans met and exchanged genes before the major out of Africa migration—potentially as early as 370,000 years ago and certainly more than 100,000 years ago. This implies that some population closely related to early modern humans must already have been in Eurasia at that time. Surprisingly, this interbreeding resulted in the replacement of the original Neandertal Y chromosomes with those of early modern humans, a pattern similar to what has been seen for Neandertal mitochondrial DNA in an earlier study.

Selection for Y chromosomes from early modern humans

At first, the complete replacement of both Y chromosomes and mtDNA of early Neandertals was puzzling, as such replacement events are quite unlikely to occur by chance alone. However, the researchers used computer simulations to show that the known small size of Neandertal populations may have led to an accumulation of deleterious mutations in their Y chromosomes which would reduce their evolutionary fitness. This is quite similar to situations where extremely small population sizes and inbreeding can sometimes increase the incidence of some diseases. "We speculate that given the important role of the Y chromosome in reproduction and fertility, the lower evolutionary fitness of Neandertal Y chromosomes might have caused natural selection to favor the Y chromosomes from early modern humans, eventually leading to their replacement," says Martin Petr.

Janet Kelso, the senior author of the study, is optimistic that this replacement hypothesis could be tested in the near future: "If we can retrieve Y chromosome sequences from Neandertals that lived prior to this hypothesized early introgression event, such as the 430,000 year old Neandertals from Sima de los Huesos in Spain, we predict that they would still have the original Neandertal Y chromosome and will therefore be more similar to Denisovans than to modern humans."


Explore further Neandertals had older mothers and younger fathers

More information: Martin Petr et al, The evolutionary history of Neanderthal and Denisovan Y chromosomes", Science; September 25th, 2020, science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.abb6460

Journal information: Science

Provided by Max Planck Society

#KINKY

Talc and petroleum jelly among the best lubricants for people wearing PPE
GOOD NEWS FOR CANADIANS TOLD TO WEAR MASKS DURING SEX BY HEALTH CANADA
by Imperial College London

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

For frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) like face visors, googles, and respiratory protective equipment is an essential part of working life. More workers are wearing facial PPE now than ever before, often for extended periods of time, to protect them against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.


However, extended PPE use, particularly on the delicate skin of the face, can cause friction and shear injuries like skin tears, blistering, ulcers, and hives.

The effects of friction and shear can be reduced by lubricants, which workers are advised to apply every half hour. Half-hourly applications can be impractical during shift work and may expose workers to the virus, and many typical moisturisers don't last long as they are designed to be absorbed into the skin for a 'non-greasy feel'.

Now, researchers from Imperial College London have investigated which products create the longest-lasting protective layer between PPE and skin. They hope their findings will help healthcare workers and other long-term PPE users like those in hospitality to prevent skin injury and deformity.

They found that the best lubricants to use are those that don't absorb into the skin, creating a long-lasting layer of protection between skin and PPE. They say that non-absorptive creams like coconut oil-cocoa butter beeswax mixtures, and powders like talcum powder, are most likely to provide PPE wearers with long-lasting skin protection.

The findings are published today in PLOS ONE.

Lead author Dr. Marc Masen, of Imperial's Department of Mechanical Engineering, said: "We think of moisturisers as good for our skin, but commercial skin creams are often designed to absorb into the skin without leaving any residue. While this is fine for everyday moisturising, our study shows that a greasy residue is precisely what's needed to protect skin from PPE friction."

To identify the best-performing lubricants, the researchers custom-built a tribometer—an instrument that assesses friction between two surfaces—and used it to test the friction between skin and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which is a common component of PPE.

They used the tribometer to test commercially available products to measure how they changed the friction between PDMS and the inner forearm skin of a healthy 44-year-old male participant. They tested friction upon application, and then one, two, and four hours after application.

They found that while most products initially reduced friction by 20 percent, some silicone-based and water-and-glycerin based lubricants increased friction levels over time by up to 29 percent compared to dry skin.

However, two products reduced friction as time went on. Talcum powder reduced friction by 49 percent on application and 59 percent at four hours, and a commercially available product comprising coconut oil, cocoa butter and beeswax reduced friction by 31 percent on application and 53 percent at four hours. A mixture of petrolatum and lanolin reduced friction by 30 percent throughout testing.

When testing commercial moisturisers, they found that friction on application was low, but increased drastically within ten minutes of application. The researchers say this is because the active ingredients, known as humectants, attract water like magnets from the lower layers of skin to the upper ones, leaving it soft, unlubricated, and breakable.

Co-author Dr. Zhengchu Tan, also of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, said: "The products that don't absorb easily into the skin are the ones that provide a protective layer. In fact, for PPE wearers, it's best to actively avoid creams and moisturisers which advertise a 'non-greasy feel'."

Dr. Masen said: "Friction can be incredibly damaging for the skin, particularly when applied for an extended period. We hope our study will save healthcare workers and other frontline PPE wearers from suffering with the painful and damaging effects of skin friction."

The researchers say that while their study signposts PPE wearers to the best skin-saving products, they are looking to perform further studies using facial skin and more participants. Due to COVID-19 restrictions during lockdown, they were only able to test the products on one study participant, and used his inner forearm as a surrogate for facial skin.


Explore further Advice to health staff suffering skin damage from face masks

More information: "Evaluating lubricant performance to reduce COVID-19 PPE-related skin injury" by Marc Masen et al, published 24 September 2020 in PLOS ONE. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti … journal.pone.0239363

Journal information: PLoS ONE


Provided by Imperial College London

BOY'S IN THE BAND REDUX

LBG individuals use stimulants at higher rates than heterosexuals

by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health


Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals report higher rates of medical, non-medical, and illegal stimulant use compared to heterosexuals, mirroring patterns seen in other substance use. The study by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers provides the most detailed picture to date on stimulant use by LGB subgroups and gender. Findings are published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The researchers analyzed data from the 2015-2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health to examine associations between sexual identity and past-year use of medical and non-medical stimulants (i.e., Adderall, Ritalin) and illegal stimulants (i.e., cocaine, crack, methamphetamine). They found that bisexual women's illegal stimulant use in the past year was fivefold that of heterosexual women (7.8% vs. 1.5%), while gay men's use was threefold that of heterosexual men (9.2% vs. 3.2%). Non-medical use of prescription stimulants was higher among gay and bisexual men than heterosexual men (5.4% and 6.6% vs. 2.4%) and among gay/lesbian and bisexual women versus heterosexual women (3.3% and 6.8% vs. 1.6%). Past-year medical use of prescription stimulants was higher among gay men than heterosexual men (6.6% vs. 4.1%) and bisexual women than heterosexual women (7.9% vs. 4.9%). There were no differences between bisexual men and women compared to their gay/lesbian counterparts.

Potential consequences of stimulant include substance use disorder and overdose, particularly given increases in fentanyl contamination in illegally produced pills and cocaine and methamphetamine. As many as half of LGB individuals who reported nonmedical and illegal stimulant use also reported nonmedical prescription opioid use.

"This study highlights the need for future interventions to target stimulant use among LGB populations, with a particular focus on harm reduction approaches," says first author Morgan Philbin, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociomedical sciences. "The findings have important implications across sexual identities, and demonstrate the need to disaggregate stimulant use by subgroup and gender, particularly related to polysubstance use."

Higher drug use among LGB individuals is likely a result of minority stress—that is, the fact that exposure to stigma and discrimination based on sexual orientation results in health disparities. Structural stigma (e.g., employment or housing discrimination) drives psychological and physical health morbidities among LGB populations, and perceived stigma is associated with cocaine use. Bisexuals can also experience "double discrimination" from heterosexuals and lesbian and gay communities, which the researchers say may account for the particularly high substance use among bisexual individuals.

The paper outlines several avenues to address stimulant use, including by educating healthcare providers who focus on LGB communities to screen for and discuss substance use, including stimulants. Communities and providers can also scale-up access to medication disposal and harm reduction services.

The researchers note that their dataset started assessing sexual identity among adults in 2015, so these relationships could not be examined in earlier years or among adolescents. The options for gender included only "male" or "female" and thus did not allow researchers to differentiate between transgender and cis-gender individuals. The dataset does not assess sexual behavior, so this study only captured associations based on individuals' sexual identity.


Explore further Study examines stimulant use in context of state medical cannabis laws

More information: Morgan M. Philbin et al, Medical, Nonmedical, and Illegal Stimulant Use by Sexual Identity and Gender, American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.025

Journal information: American Journal of Preventive Medicine


Provided by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Twinkling, star-shaped brain cells may hold the key to why, how we sleep

by Washington State University

Astrocytes in the brain expressing a fluorescent calcium indicator captured with a two-photon microscope. Credit: Ashley Ingiosi, courtesy of Current Biology

A new study published today in the journal Current Biology suggests that star-shaped brain cells known as astrocytes could be as important to the regulation of sleep as neurons, the brain's nerve cells.

Led by researchers at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, the study builds new momentum toward ultimately solving the mystery of why we sleep and how sleep works in the brain. The discovery may also set the stage for potential future treatment strategies for sleep disorders and neurological diseases and other conditions associated with troubled sleep, such as PTSD, depression, Alzheimer's disease, and autism spectrum disorder.

"What we know about sleep has been based largely on neurons," said lead author and postdoctoral research associate Ashley Ingiosi. Neurons, she explained, communicate through electrical signals that can be readily captured through electroencephalography (EEG). Astrocytes—a type of glial (or "glue") cell that interacts with neurons—do not use electrical signals and instead use a process known as calcium signaling to control their activity.

It was long thought that astrocytes—which can outnumber neurons by five to one—merely served a supportive role, without any direct involvement in behaviors and processes. Neuroscientists have only recently started to take a closer look at their potential role in various processes. And while a few studies have hinted that astrocytes may play a role in sleep, solid scientific tools to study their calcium activity have not been available until recently, Ingiosi said.

Illustration of how a miniature microscope captures fluorescent astrocytes in the brain (left), with a miniature microscope image of fluorescent astrocytes in the brain shown at right. Credit: Ashley Ingiosi, courtesy of Current Biology

To delve deeper into astrocytes' role in sleep, she and her coauthors used a rodent model to record astrocytes' calcium activity throughout sleep and wake, as well as after sleep deprivation. They used a fluorescent calcium indicator that was imaged via tiny head-mounted microscopes that looked directly into the brains of mice as they moved around and behaved as they normally would. This indicator allowed the team to see calcium-driven fluorescent activity twinkling on and off in astrocytes during sleep and waking behaviors. Their one-of-a-kind methodology using these miniature microscopes allowed the team to conduct the first-ever study of astrocytes' calcium activity in sleep in freely behaving animals.


The research team set out to answer two main questions: do astrocytes change dynamically across sleep and wake states like neurons do? And do astrocytes play a role in regulating sleep need, our natural drive to sleep?

Looking at astrocytes in the frontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with measurable EEG changes in sleep need, they found that astrocytes' activity changes dynamically across the sleep-wake cycle, as is true for neurons. They also observed the most calcium activity at the beginning of the rest phase—when sleep need is greatest—and the least calcium activity at the end of the test phase, when the need for sleep has dissipated.

Next, they kept mice awake for the first 6 hours of their normal rest phase and watched calcium activity change in parallel with EEG slow wave activity in sleep, a key indicator of sleep need. That is, they found that sleep deprivation caused an increase in astrocyte calcium activity that decreased after mice were allowed to sleep.

Video of astrocyte activity in the brain during a single sleep cycle, captured using a fluorescent calcium indicator and miniature microscope. The footage shows dynamic changes throughout the cycle as it transitions through non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREMS), rapid eye movement sleep (REMS), and wakefulness (WAKE). Video shown is 16 times faster than normal speed. Credit: Ashley Ingiosi, Current Biology https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-twinkling-star-shaped-brain-cells-key.html

Their next question was whether genetically manipulating astrocyte calcium activity would impact sleep regulation. To find out, they studied mice that lacked a protein known as STIM1 selectively in astrocytes, which reduced the amount of available calcium. After being sleep deprived, these mice did not sleep as long or get as sleepy as normal mice once allowed to sleep, which further confirmed earlier findings that suggest that astrocytes play an essential role in regulating the need for sleep.

Finally, they tested the hypothesis that perhaps astrocyte calcium activity merely mirrors the electrical activity of neurons. Studies have shown that the electrical activity of neurons becomes more synchronized during non-REM sleep and after sleep deprivation, but the researchers found the opposite to be true for astrocytes, with calcium activity becoming less synchronized in non-REM sleep and after sleep deprivation.

"This indicates to us that astrocytes are not just passively following the lead of neurons," said Ingiosi. "And because they don't necessarily display the same activity patterns as neurons, this might actually implicate a more direct role for astrocytes in regulating sleep and sleep need."

More research is needed to further unravel the role of astrocytes in sleep and sleep regulation, Ingiosi said. She plans to study astrocytes' calcium activity in other parts of the brain that have been shown to be important for sleep and wake. In addition, she would like to look at astrocytes' interactions with different neurotransmitters in the brain to start to tease out the mechanism by which astrocytes might drive sleep and sleep need.

"The findings of our study suggest that we may have been looking in the wrong place for more than 100 years," said senior author and professor of biomedical sciences Marcos Frank. "It provides strong evidence that we should be targeting astrocytes to understand why and how we sleep, as well as for the development of therapies that could help people with sleep disorders and other health conditions that involve abnormal sleep."

Explore further Researchers discover new clues on how sleep works in the brain

More information: Current Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.052 , www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(20)31242-2

Journal information: Current Biology

Provided by Washington State University

Researchers use artificial intelligence tools to predict loneliness

by University of California - San Diego

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

For the past couple of decades, there has been a loneliness pandemic, marked by rising rates of suicides and opioid use, lost productivity, increased health care costs and rising mortality. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its associated social distancing and lockdowns, have only made things worse, say experts.

Accurately assessing the breadth and depth of societal loneliness is daunting, limited by available tools, such as self-reports. In a new proof-of-concept paper, published online September 24, 2020 in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, a team led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine used artificial intelligence technologies to analyze natural language patterns (NLP) to discern degrees of loneliness in older adults.

"Most studies use either a direct question of ' how often do you feel lonely,' which can lead to biased responses due to stigma associated with loneliness or the UCLA Loneliness Scale which does not explicitly use the word 'lonely,'" said senior author Ellen Lee, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "For this project, we used natural language processing or NLP, an unbiased quantitative assessment of expressed emotion and sentiment, in concert with the usual loneliness measurement tools."

In recent years, numerous studies have documented rising rates of loneliness in various populations of people, particularly those most vulnerable, such as older adults. For example, a UC San Diego study published earlier this year found that 85 percent of residents living in an independent senior housing community reported moderate to severe levels of loneliness.

The new study also focused on independent senior living residents: 80 participants aged 66 to 94, with a mean age of 83 years. But, rather than simply asking and documenting answers to questions from the UCLA Loneliness Scale, participants were also interviewed by trained study staff in more unstructured conversations that were analyzed using NLP-understanding software developed by IBM, plus other machine-learning tools.

"NLP and machine learning allow us to systematically examine long interviews from many individuals and explore how subtle speech features like emotions may indicate loneliness. Similar emotion analyses by humans would be open to bias, lack consistency, and require extensive training to standardize," said first author Varsha Badal, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow.

Among the findings:
Lonely individuals had longer responses in qualitative interview, and more greatly expressed sadness to direct questions about loneliness.
Women were more likely than men to acknowledge feeling lonely during interviews.
Men used more fearful and joyful words in their responses compared to women.

Authors said the study highlights the discrepancies between research assessments for loneliness and an individual's subjective experience of loneliness, which NLP-based tools could help to reconcile. The early findings reflect how there may be "lonely speech" that could be used to detect loneliness in older adults, improving how clinicians and families assess and treat loneliness in older adults, especially during times of physical distancing and social isolation.

The study, said the authors, demonstrates the feasibility of using natural language pattern analyses of transcribed speech to better parse and understand complex emotions like loneliness. They said the machine-learning models predicted qualitative loneliness with 94 percent accuracy.

"Our IBM-UC San Diego Center is now exploring NLP signatures of loneliness and wisdom, which are inversely linked in older adults. Speech data can be combined with our other assessments of cognition, mobility, sleep, physical activity and mental health to improve our understanding of aging and to help promote successful aging" said study co-author Dilip Jeste, MD, senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care and co-director of the IBM-UC San Diego Center for Artificial Intelligence for Healthy Living.


Explore further Loneliness levels high during COVID-19 lockdown

More information: Varsha D. Badal et al, Prediction of Loneliness in Older Adults using Natural Language Processing: Exploring Sex Differences in Speech, The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jagp.2020.09.009

Journal information: American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry

Provided by University of California - San Diego

Waste generation by hospital emergency departments is highlighted for first time

by Massachusetts General Hospital

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Emergency departments of hospitals generate significant amounts of environmentally harmful waste which could be reduced through basic changes to disposal policies and practices, while producing lower operating costs, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found. Efforts to optimize the daily waste stream through improvements such as switching from disposable to reusable items in the ED, better sorting of infectious waste, and more effective recycling of items like glass and aluminum could have meaningful impact both environmentally and financially, according to the study published in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.


"People working in emergency departments have no idea how much waste they routinely generate, nor that the environmental impact is totally at odds with their professional mission to improve health and save lives," says Jonathan E. Slutzman, MD, investigator in the Department of Emergency Medicine at MGH and senior author of the study. "A greater awareness of the harm that's being done, along with the opportunities that are available to turn that situation around, should be on the agenda of every hospital in America."

Healthcare facilities in the U.S. generate 6,600 metric tons of waste each day, making them the second largest contributor to landfill waste (next to the food industry). They also produce 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emission as well as other pollutants known to adversely affect human health. The MGH investigation is the first to quantify and characterize the volume of waste emanating from emergency departments. To that end, researchers conducted a 24-hour waste audit in July 2019 at MGH's Level 1 trauma center in Boston. The team collected, manually sorted into separate categories, and weighed each waste stream component. It also calculated direct pollutant emissions from ED waste disposal activities.

Among the findings was that 85 percent of all items disposed of as regulated medical waste (RMW)—the most hazardous ED materials that must be deposited in red bags and autoclaved to render them safe prior to being sent to landfills—did not meet the criteria for regulated medical waste. "We always want healthcare workers to err on the side of caution when it comes to waste disposal, but the fact is regulated medical waste costs up to ten times as much to dispose of as solid waste," notes Sarah Hsu, with the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, and lead author of the study. "But if we could divert through better sorting some fraction of medical waste that now goes into red biohazard bags to regular solid waste, it would open up significant cost-saving opportunities for hospitals."

Another area rife with opportunity, according to the researchers, is transitioning from the use of disposable devices to more durable, reusable alternatives that would lead to waste reduction and supply savings. One example is the laryngoscope, commonly used in the ED to insert a breathing tube into the trachea, which could be reprocessed onsite and safely used multiple times rather than discarding it after a single use. Rethinking the use of plastic packaging, which was estimated by the MGH study to be responsible for over 40 percent of all emergency department solid waste, also holds the potential for significant waste reduction. MGH, for its part, asks suppliers to ship products in non-disposable bulk packaging, whenever possible, enabling reuse. Suppliers are also "debulking" items at distribution centers, enabling packaging to be reused from that point rather than being shipped all the way to the hospital.

To determine the best opportunities for waste reduction, Slutzman suggests that hospitals conduct their own audits of emergency department waste. "Gaining a full awareness of the problem and its downstream consequences on the health of the community is an important first step toward a solution," he says. "In addition to audits, hospitals should assemble all stakeholders around the table to explore alternatives to their current waste disposal practices. Our study shows that significant improvements can be made to optimize ED waste management, and as healthcare professionals we owe it to our patients and the community to take responsible action."

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More information: Sarah Hsu et al, Dumpster Diving in the Emergency Department: Quantity and Characteristics of Waste at a Level I Trauma Center, Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.5811/westjem.2020.6.47900

Provided by Massachusetts General Hospital

Job security, finances strongly related to increased anxiety during pandemic

by Jaclyn Severance, University of Connecticut

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

In mid-April 2020, the national unemployment rate reached 14.7 percent—the highest since the Great Depression. Forty-one million American workers filed for unemployment between February and May of 2020.

Unprecedented unemployment rates don't just have an impact on the unemployed, though. For people still employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, job insecurity and financial concern are associated with greater symptoms of depression and anxiety, according to findings from the UConn School of Nursing published recently in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, or JOEM.

"The impact the virus and the pandemic is having on the economy and employment is not surprisingly taking a big toll," says Natalie J. Shook, a social psychologist, associate professor in the School of Nursing, and principal investigator for the study.

The findings are part of a year-long examination of how behavior and social attitudes change, and what factors influence those changes, when people in the United States are faced with the threat of widespread disease. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, the study is tracking the well-being, feelings, and behavioral practices of about 1,000 individuals across the United States, and more than 18 surveys of the participants have already been conducted since March.

"We definitely are seeing, within our employed participants, higher rates of anxiety than in individuals who indicated they were not employed," says Shook, noting that most study participants who are not employed are retirees. "Controlling for demographics, controlling for income level, and also taking into account participant health and concerns about COVID—and the extent to which people were engaging in social distancing or quarantine—we are seeing that job security and financial concerns are the significant predictors associated with anxiety and depression."

The study asked participants to identify symptoms of anxiety by asking if they were feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge, or if they were not able to stop or control their worrying. They were also asked about the extent of their financial concerns—how worried they were about their employment and financial situation, if they expected their financial situation to get worse over the next 12 months, and if they had the means to secure food and housing for their family for the next 12 months.

Most study participants reported some level of worry about the effects of COVID-19 on their employment. While previous studies have linked large-scale disruptions like recessions and pandemics with poor mental health, the researchers note that their study importantly expands on these associations by demonstrating independent links between greater financial concern with greater anxiety symptoms, and greater job insecurity with greater depressive symptoms, after accounting for demographics, health, and other COVID-19 concerns and experiences.

Shook and her research team say employers can play a critical role in supporting the mental health of their employees by recognizing the increased anxiety that workers experience when their job security feels threatened during the pandemic.

"Our results demonstrate the potential adverse consequences that job insecurity and financial concern have on employee mental health," the researchers write. "Based on these findings, for those experiencing depressive symptoms during the pandemic, it may be particularly important for employers to be mindful and try to minimize feelings of uncertainty for the employees, as well as instilling hope or agency in employees. For those experiencing anxiety symptoms, employers could attempt to reduce financial concerns by allowing employees to continue to work (eg, telework), even with reduced hours and income, to ensure that employees do not lose their entire income."

More information: Jenna M. Wilson et al, Job Insecurity and Financial Concern During the COVID-19 Pandemic Are Associated With Worse Mental Health, Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000001962

Journal information: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Provided by University of Connecticut

Intersecting social inequities increase the likelihood of severe illness due to COVID-19

by University of Toronto

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Black, South Asian and Aboriginal populations from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds in Canada are nearly four times more likely to have three or more medical conditions that have been identified as risk factors for severe illness from COVID-19.

Shen (Lamson) Lin, a doctoral candidate in gerontology and course instructor at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Institute for Life Course and Aging, compared 1,102 racialized immigrants and 338 Aboriginal Canadians with 23,802 Canadian-born Whites, aged 45 and older, using population-based data from the baseline Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA, 2012-2015). His findings were recently published in The Gerontologist (Special collection: Gerontology in a Time of Pandemic).

"We know that COVID-19 outbreak is not affecting everyone at the same levels, and the prevalence of multiple chronic conditions within an individual—known as multimorbidity—has also been linked to social inequalities for decades," says Lin, the sole author of the study. "I was curious to explore how one's family income, education levels and experience of racism and nativism—and the intersection of these three social standings—shape the health of aging populations."

Lin's study examined nine chronic conditions associated with an increased likelihood that one will experience severe illness due to COVID-19 infection, requiring hospitalization, intensive care and the use of a ventilator. These medical conditions include diabetes, asthma, cancer, previous heart attack or myocardial infarction, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and obesity.

The odds of having three or more of these medical conditions was greater for Black and South Asian immigrants and close to double for Aboriginal populations in Canada, relative to Canadian-born Whites. Black, South Asian and Aboriginal populations from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds (those without any post-secondary education and/or those who earned less than the median household income) had the highest odds of having three or more medial conditions.

The multimorbidity differences associated with these populations were enhanced for older adults (aged 66 to 85) compared to their middle-aged counterparts (aged 45-65). Among older respondents, Black immigrants were five times more likely and Aboriginal Canadians three times more likely to have three or more medical conditions.

"These observed health gaps illustrate various minority struggles that are often obscured within a discourse of multiculturalism and diversity" says Lin, "Given the lack of socio-demographic and race-based data in Canadian health systems, my study provides a timely frame of reference for public-health decision makers to reconsider measuring upstream health inequalities to mitigate the pandemic's long-term societal harms."

Additional risk factors for multimorbidity were identified. These included being male, experiencing chronic pain, having a physical impairment, living without partners, and a lifetime of smoking.

"Widespread chronic disease and racism in addition to the contemporary pandemic make living conditions more difficult for vulnerable older adults, especially those from racialized, immigrant, and impoverished communities," says Lin. "With COVID-19 spreading globally, health equity should be placed at the center of all policy responses designed to mitigate the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on underserved aging communities."

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More information: Shen (Lamson) Lin, Intersectionality and inequalities in medical risk for severe COVID-19 in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, The Gerontologist (2020). DOI: 10.1093/geront/gnaa143

Provided by University of Toronto