Shipwrecked ivory a treasure trove for understanding elephants and 16th century trading

CELL PRESS

Research News

 

IMAGE: THIS PHOTO SHOWS AN AFRICAN FOREST ELEPHANT (LOXODONTA CYCLOTIS). view more 

CREDIT: NICHOLAS GEORGIADIS

In 1533, a Portuguese trading vessel carrying forty tons of gold and silver coins along with other precious cargo went missing on its way to India. In 2008, this vessel, known as the Bom Jesus, was found in Namibia, making it the oldest known shipwreck in southern Africa. Now, an international collaboration of researchers in Namibia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States reporting in the journal Current Biology on December 17 have found that the ship's cargo included more than 100 elephant tusks, which paleogenomic and isotopic analyses trace to many distinct herds that once roamed West Africa.

The study is the first to combine paleogenomic, isotopic, archeological, and historical methods to determine the origin, ecological, and genetic histories of shipwrecked cargo, according to the researchers. That's noteworthy in part because ivory was a central driver of the trans-continental commercial trading system connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia via maritime routes. The findings also have implications for understanding African elephants of the past and present.

In the new study, the team, including Alfred L. Roca and Alida de Flamingh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with Ashley Coutu and Shadreck Chirikure, affiliated with the University of Oxford and University of Cape Town, wanted to pinpoint the source of elephant ivory that was widely circulated in the Indian and Atlantic trading systems during early trade and globalization.

"Elephants live in female-led family groups, and they tend to stay in the same geographic area throughout their lives," de Flamingh explains. "We determined where these tusks came from by examining a DNA marker that is passed only from mother-to-calf and comparing the sequences to those of geo-referenced African elephants. By comparing the shipwreck ivory DNA to DNA from elephants with known origins across Africa, we were able to pinpoint the geographic region and species of elephant with DNA characteristics that matched the shipwreck ivory."

"In order to fully explore where these elephant tusks originated, we needed multiple lines of evidence," Coutu adds. "Thus, we used a combination of methods and expertise to explore the origin of this ivory cargo through genetic and isotopic data gathered from sampling the tusks. Our conclusions were only possible with all of the pieces of our interdisciplinary puzzle fitting together."

The team's analyses, including DNA from 44 available tusks and isotope analysis of 97 tusks, showed that the ivory had come from African forest elephants. Their mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mother to calf, traced them to 17 or more herds from West as opposed to Central Africa. That was a surprise, Chirikure says, because the Portuguese had established trade with the Kongo Kingdom and communities along the Congo River by the 16th century. "The expectation was that the elephants would be from different regions, especially West and Central Africa."

Four of the mitochondrial haplotypes they uncovered are still found today in modern elephants. The others may have been lost due to subsequent hunting for ivory or habitat destruction. Isotope analyses also suggest the elephants lived in mixed forest habitat, not deep in the rainforest, the researchers report.

"There had been some thinking that African forest elephants moved out into savanna habitats in the early 20th century, after almost all savanna elephants were eliminated in West Africa," Roca says, noting that savanna elephants represent a distinct elephant species. "Our study showed that this was not the case, because the African forest elephant lived in savanna habitats in the early 16th century, long before the decimation of savanna elephants by the ivory trade occurred."

In addition to these insights, De Flamingh says that these new data can now aid in tracing the source of confiscated illegal ivory. And the new findings are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be learned from studies of ivory about elephants and the people who hunted them.

"There is tremendous potential to analyze historic ivory from other shipwrecks, as well as from archaeological contexts and museum collections to understand the life histories of elephant populations, the skills and lifeways of the people who hunted and traded the ivory, as well as the many journeys of African ivory across the world," Coutu says. "The revelation of these connections tell important global histories."

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This work was supported by USFWS African Elephant Conservation Fund, South African Research Chairs Initiative of the National Research Foundation and Department of Science and Technology of South Africa, NRF, USDA ILLU 875-952 and ILLU-538-939, PEEC and Clark Research Support Grants, Claude Leon Foundation, and the European Union.

Current Biology, de Flamingh et al.: "Sourcing elephant ivory from a 16th century Portuguese shipwreck" https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31663-8

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

CAPTION

From left, animal sciences professor Alfred Roca, postdoctoral researcher Alida de Flamingh and anthropology professor Ripan Malhi led a team that analyzed DNA extracted from elephant tusks recovered from a 16th century shipwreck. Composite image from separate photos, in compliance with COVID-19 safety protocols.

CREDIT

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Study tracks elephant tusks from 16th century shipwreck

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

Research News

 

CAPTION

This photo shows Raw elephant tusks from the 16th century Bom Jesus shipwreck.

CREDIT

National Museum of Namibi

IMAGE: A NEW STUDY ANALYZED THE LARGEST ARCHAEOLOGICAL CARGO OF AFRICAN IVORY EVER FOUND, RESEARCHERS REPORT. ALL OF THE ELEPHANT TUSKS WERE FROM AFRICAN FOREST ELEPHANTS, LOXODONTA CYCLOTIS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY NICHOLAS GEORGIADIS

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- In 1533, the Bom Jesus - a Portuguese trading vessel carrying 40 tons of cargo including gold, silver, copper and more than 100 elephant tusks - sank off the coast of Africa near present-day Namibia. The wreck was found in 2008, and scientists say they now have determined the source of much of the ivory recovered from the ship.

Their study, reported in the journal Current Biology, used various techniques, including a genomic analysis of DNA extracted from the well-preserved tusks, to determine the species of elephants, their geographic origins and the types of landscapes they lived in before they were killed for their tusks.

The ivory had been stowed in a lower level of the Bom Jesus under a weighty cargo of copper and lead ingots, said Alida de Flamingh, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the study with U. of I. animal sciences professor Alfred Roca and anthropology professor Ripan Malhi.

"When the ship sank, the ingots compressed the tusks into the seabed, preventing a lot of physical erosion by sea currents that can lead to the destruction and scattering of shipwreck artifacts," de Flamingh said. "There is also an extremely cold sea current in that region of coastal Namibia, which likely also helped preserve the DNA in the shipwrecked tusks."

The team extracted DNA from 44 tusks.

By analyzing genetic sequences known to differ between African forest and savanna elephants, the scientists determined that all of the tusks they analyzed belonged to forest elephants. A further examination of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed only from mothers to their offspring, offered a more precise geographic origin of the elephant tusks than is otherwise available.

"Elephants live in matriarchal family groups, and they tend to stay in the same geographic area throughout their lives," de Flamingh said. "By comparing the shipwrecked ivory mitochondrial DNA with that from elephants with known origins across Africa, we were able to pinpoint specific regions and species of elephants whose tusks were found in the shipwreck."

All 44 tusks were from elephants residing in West Africa. None originated in Central Africa.

"This is consistent with the establishment of Portuguese trading centers along the West African coast during this period of history," de Flamingh said.

The team used DNA to trace the elephants to 17 family lineages, only four of which are known to persist in Africa.

"The other lineages disappeared because West Africa has lost more than 95% of its elephants in subsequent centuries due to hunting and habitat destruction," Roca said.

The team is adding the new DNA sequences to the Loxodonta Localizer, an open-access tool developed at the U. of I. that allows users to compare mitochondrial DNA sequences collected from poached elephant tusks with those in an online database collected from elephants across the African continent.

To learn more about the environments the elephants inhabited, Oxford University Pitt Rivers Museum research fellow and study co-author Ashley Coutu analyzed the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of 97 tusks. The ratios of these isotopes differ depending on the types of plants the elephants consumed and the amount of rainfall in the environment.

That analysis revealed that the elephants lived in mixed habitats, switching from forested areas to savannas in different seasons, most likely in response to water availability.

"Our data help us to understand the ecology of the West African forest elephant in its historic landscape, which has relevance to modern wildlife conservation," Coutu said.

"Our study analyzed the largest archaeological cargo of African ivory ever found," de Flamingh said. "By combining complementary analytical approaches from multiple scientific fields, we were able to pinpoint the origin of the ivory with a resolution that is not possible using any single approach. The research provides a framework for examining the vast collections of historic and archaeological ivories in museums across the world."

de Flamingh conducted the DNA analysis in the Malhi Molecular Anthropology Laboratory at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I. This project was a multi-institutional effort involving collaborators in Namibia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

CAPTION

This photo shows the sampling team of technicians and curators from the National Museum of Namibia and archaeologists from the University of Cape Town: (L-R) Dawid Kapule, Judith Sealy, Nzila M. Libanda-Mubusisi, Virimuje Kahuure, Fouzy Kambombo, , Eliot Mowa, Ashley Coutu and Henry Nakale.

CREDIT

Shadreck Chirkure

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service African Elephant Conservation Fund, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Department of Science and Technology of South Africa, and Claude Leon Foundation supported this research.

Editor's notes:

To reach Alida de Flamingh, email deflami2@illinois.edu.

To reach Alfred Roca, email roca@illinois.edu.

To reach Ripan Malhi, email malhi@illinois.edu.

To reach Ashley Coutu, email ashley.coutu@prm.ox.ac.uk.

The paper "Sourcing elephant ivory from a 16th century Portuguese shipwreck" is available from the U. of I. News Bureau.
[LINK to email: news@illinois.edu]

New hard-carbon anode material for sodium-ion batteries will solve the lithium conundrum

New sodium-storing electrode material for rechargeable batteries with unprecedented energy density

TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE HIGHER CAPACITY OF THIS NEW HARD CARBON ELECTRODE MATERIAL MEANS THAT A 19% INCREASE IN ENERGY DENSITY BY WEIGHT IS POSSIBLE IN SODIUM-ION BATTERIES COMPARED WITH LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES... view more 

CREDIT: SHINICHI KOMABA FROM TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE

Cost-effective rechargeable batteries are at the heart of virtually all portable electronic devices, which have become ubiquitous in modern daily life. Moreover, rechargeable batteries are essential components in many environment-friendly technologies, such as electric cars and systems that harvest renewable energy. They are also key enablers of various medical devices and facilitate research in various fields as the energy source of electronic sensors and cameras. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there is a lot of effort spent in developing better and cheaper rechargeable batteries.

So far, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries hold the number-one spot thanks to their great performance across the board in terms of capacity, stability, price, and charging time. However, lithium, and other minor and costly metals like cobalt and copper, are not among the most abundant materials on the earth's crust, and their ever-increasing demand will soon lead to supply problems around the world. At the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, Professor Shinichi Komaba and colleagues have been striving to find a solution to this worsening conundrum by developing rechargeable batteries using alternative, more abundant materials.

In a recent study published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, the team found an energy efficient method to produce a novel carbon-based material for sodium-ion batteries. Apart from Prof. Komaba, the team also included Ms. Azusa Kamiyama and Associate Prof. Kei Kubota from Tokyo University of Science, Dr. Yong Youn and Dr. Yoshitaka Tateyama from National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, and Associate Prof. Kazuma Gotoh from Okayama University, Japan. The study focused on the synthesis of hard carbon, a highly porous material that serves as the negative electrode of rechargeable batteries, through the use of magnesium oxide (MgO) as an inorganic template of nano-sized pores inside hard carbon.

The researchers explored a different technique for mixing the ingredients of the MgO template so as to precisely tune the nanostructure of the resulting hard carbon electrode. After multiple experimental and theoretical analyses, they elucidated the optimal fabrication conditions and ingredients to produce hard carbon with a capacity of 478 mAh/g, the highest ever reported in this type of material. Prof. Komaba states, "Until now, the capacity of carbon-based negative electrode materials for sodium-ion batteries was mostly around 300 to 350 mAh/g. Though values near 438 mAh/g have been reported, those materials require heat treatment at extremely high temperatures above 1900°C. In contrast, we employed heat treatment at only 1500°C, a relatively low temperature." Of course, with lower temperature comes lower energy expenditure, which also means lower cost and less environmental impact.

The capacity of this newly developed hard carbon electrode material is certainly remarkable, and greatly surpasses that of graphite (372 mAh/g), which is currently used as the negative electrode material in lithium-ion batteries. Moreover, even though a sodium-ion battery with this hard carbon negative electrode would in theory operate at a 0.3-volt lower voltage difference than a standard lithium-ion battery, the higher capacity of the former would lead to a much greater energy density by weight (1600 Wh/kg versus 1430 Wh/kg), resulting in +19% increase of energy density.

Excited about the results and with his eyes on the future, Prof. Komaba remarks, "Our study proves that it is possible to realize high-energy sodium-ion batteries, overturning the common belief that lithium-ion batteries have a higher energy density. The hard carbon with extremely high capacity that we developed has opened a door towards the design of new sodium-storing materials."

Further studies will be required to verify that the proposed material actually offers superior lifetime, input-output characteristics, and low temperature operation in actual sodium-ion batteries. With any luck, we might be on the verge of witnessing the next generation of rechargeable batteries!

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About The Tokyo University of Science

Tokyo University of Science (TUS) is a well-known and respected university, and the largest science-specialized private research university in Japan, with four campuses in central Tokyo and its suburbs and in Hokkaido. Established in 1881, the university has continually contributed to Japan's development in science through inculcating the love for science in researchers, technicians, and educators.

Website: https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/

About Professor Shinichi Komaba from Tokyo University of Science

Prof. Shinichi Komaba obtained his Ph.D. from Waseda University, Japan, and then joined Iwate University as a research associate. After studying as a post-doctoral researcher at Bordeaux-CNRS, France, he joined Tokyo University of Science in 2005 to work on developing electrodes, electrolytes, and binding materials for various types of rechargeable batteries. His research group carries out cutting-edge research in the field of rechargeable batteries and their electrochemical applications. With more than 270 publications to his credit, Prof. Komaba has won numerous international awards, including the title of "Highly Cited Researcher" in 2019 and 2020.

Funding information

This work was partly supported by MEXT program "Elements Strategy Initiative to Form Core Research Center" (Grant No. JPMXP0112101003) and by JST through CONCERT-Japan program of SICORP (Grant No. JPMJSC17C1).

Training methods based on punishment compromise dog welfare

After aversive training, dogs had a lower behavioral state (higher stress and anxiety); if aversive methods were used in high proportions, that persisted even in other contexts

PLOS

Research News

 

IMAGE: TRAINING A DOG! view more 

CREDIT: ANA CATARINA VIEIRA DE CASTRO

Dogs trained using aversive stimuli, which involve punishments for incorrect behavior, show evidence of higher stress levels compared to dogs trained with reward-based methods, according to a study publishing December 16 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro from the Universidade do Porto, Portugal, and colleagues.

The researchers observed the behavior of 92 companion dogs from 7 dog training schools in Portugal that use either aversive methods (which use mainly aversive stimuli), reward methods (which focus on rewarding desired behaviours), and mixed methods (which combine the use of both rewards and aversive stimuli). They filmed training sessions and tested saliva samples for the stress-related hormone cortisol. Dogs trained using aversive and mixed methods displayed more stress-related behaviors, such as crouching and yelping, and showed greater increases in cortisol levels after training than dogs trained with rewards.

The authors also conducted a cognitive bias test in an unfamiliar location outside of the dog's usual training environment with 79 of the dogs, to measure their underlying emotional state. They found that dogs from schools using aversive methods responded more pessimistically to ambiguous situations compared with dogs receiving mixed- or reward-based training.

Previous survey-based studies and anecdotal evidence has suggested that punishment-based training techniques may reduce animal welfare, but the authors state that this study is the first systematic investigation of how different training methods influence welfare both during training and in other contexts. They say that these results suggest that aversive training techniques may compromise animal welfare, especially when used at high frequency.

The authors add: "This is the first large scale study of companion dogs in a real training setting, using the types of training methods typically applied in dog training schools and data collected by the research team. The results suggest that the use of aversive training methods, especially in high proportions, should be avoided because of their negative impact on dog welfare."

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Citation: Vieira de Castro AC, Fuchs D, Morello GM, Pastur S, de Sousa L, Olsson IAS (2020) Does training method matter? Evidence for the negative impact of aversive-based methods on companion dog welfare. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0225023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225023

Funding: The current research study was supported by FCT - Fundação Portuguesa para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Fellowship SFRH/BPD/111509/2015) and UFAW - Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (Grant 14-16/17), with grants awarded to ACVC. SP was supported by PIPOL - Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. FCT - Fundação Portuguesa para a Ciência e Tecnologia: https://www.fct.pt/index.phtml.pt UFAW - Universities Federation for Animal Welfare: https://www.ufaw.org.uk/.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225023

Proportionally more male bosses negative toward depression

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

Research News

 

A higher proportion of male than of female managers have negative attitudes toward depression, a University of Gothenburg study shows. The more senior the managerial positions, the bigger the share of men with negative attitudes; the same, moreover, applies to women in senior managerial jobs.

The study, published in BMC Public Health, is based on an online questionnaire addressed to managers in Sweden. Of the 2,663 respondents, 901 were women and 1,762 men. The research focuses specifically on attitudes toward depression, a very common mental disorder.

The results show that 24 percent of the male respondents, who were managers at various levels and in a variety of companies and organizations, had negative attitudes toward depression. The corresponding proportion for the female managers in the study was 12 percent.

Monica Bertilsson, senior lecturer in public health science at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, is the project manager for the study.

"We were surprised that the differences between female and male managers persisted even after we'd controlled, in our statistical analyses, for other factors like the managers' training, the type of workplace they were at, how long they'd been managers, and whether they had experience of co-workers with depression," she says.

The differences were explored by means of an index with 12 statements designed to gauge the managers' emotional, cognitive, and behavioral attitudes toward employees with depression. For 11 of the 12, the differences between male and female managers' responses were significant.

To a higher degree than the women, the male respondents agreed with the following statements: that they felt uncertain around co-workers with depression; that these employees were a burden on the workplace; and that these employees should not work while on medication.

Male managers also agreed more frequently with the statements that they would neither make temporary changes in work tasks to support a co-worker with depression nor appoint anyone they knew had a history of depression. On the other hand, male and female managers gave the same responses to the statement that they find employees' depression personally stressful were the same.

The higher the managerial position, the greater the frequency of negative attitudes in both men and women. However, the proportion with negative attitudes decreased inversely with the number of co-workers with these problems encountered by the managers. This applied to male and female managers alike, which the researchers see as positive.

Depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental ill-health are among the most prevalent and rapidly growing categories of health problem worldwide. Stress-related mental ill-health is also the category of disorder that is increasing most among people on sick leave in Sweden.

Under the Swedish Work Environment Act, managers are responsible for employees' health and safety, for preventing ill-health, and also have a far-reaching responsibility for their rehabilitation. What characterizes mental ill-health in particular is the stigma associated with these disorders, along with the prevailing negative attitudes toward them.

"Managers with negative views may find it more difficult not only to relate to issues involved in mental health generally, but also to provide support for people who may need job modification in the short or long term," Bertilsson says.

"The study is based on a questionnaire and extensive material, and we've taken into account many variables other than gender that might affect the results. But the finding persists, which makes the result robust. However, it's important to point out that this is an attitude survey. We don't know how male and female managers act in real life."

The study is part of the project entitled "Managers' perspective - the missing piece". Its purpose is to gain an improved understanding of managers' knowledge and strategies for supporting co-workers with common mental disorders, to enable development of sound measures to strengthen managers' skills in the area of mental health at the workplace.

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Title: Gender differences in managers' attitudes towards employees with depression: a cross-sectional study in Sweden

Irrelevant information interferes with making decisions, new research reveals

The presence of unavailable options also leads to poor choices

RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

Research News

 

TROY, N.Y. -- Especially during the holidays, online shopping can be overwhelming. Have you ever found yourself spending hours comparing nearly identical products, delving into details that don't actually matter to you? Have you ever finally reached a decision only to find that the product you want is out of stock? Unfortunately, if so, there is a good chance you did not end up making the best choice.

According to new research from behavioral economist Ian Chadd, an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, irrelevant information or unavailable options often cause people to make bad choices. When both elements are present, the probability of a poor decision is even greater.

Published in Experimental Economics, Chadd's research examined the behavioral economic concept of free disposal, where resources can be ignored without having a cost. The standard belief has been that, if irrelevant information is included when presenting a product or idea, a consumer can easily skip over the data without taking time or using cognitive power.

Through an experiment involving 222 individual tests each consisting of more than 40 questions, Chadd's research revealed that, in fact, the way information is presented does matter. Decisions made in an environment of irrelevant information carry time, cognitive, and consequence costs.

"These findings tell us a lot about choice architecture, the design process that goes into the creation of environments where people make decisions," Chadd said. "In environments where you have lots of information available, it's exceptionally important that consumers have the ability to filter out information that they find to be irrelevant."

The research also showed that consumers hold a deep "preference for simplicity" in that they are willing to pay a price to reduce the amount of irrelevant and unavailable information.

"This is important insight for policy makers and choice architects alike," Chadd said. "The goal should always be to opt towards simpler and more flexible presentation of information, so that consumers can decide for themselves what is and is not irrelevant and then not just ignore it if they see it, but also give them the option not to see it."

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Chadd's co-authors on this paper, "The Relevance of Irrelevant Information," are Emel Filiz-Ozbay and Erkut Y. Ozbay, both of the University of Maryland.

The power of validation in helping people stay positive

Supporting someone's negative emotions can help foster a positive outlook, study finds

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Telling a distressed friend or family member something as simple as "I understand why you feel that way" can go a long way toward helping loved ones feel better, new research suggests.

In the study, participants described to the researchers a real-life incident that made them angry.

When researchers didn't show support or understanding for the anger participants were describing, the story-tellers showed declines in positive emotions. But when the researchers validated what the participants were saying, their positive emotions were protected and stayed the same.

Similarly, study participants reported dips in their overall mood as they recalled the anger-provoking event, and only those who were validated reported a recovery of mood back to their starting point.

There was no significant difference found in participants' negative emotions - a result that speaks to the value of focusing on protecting positivity, said Jennifer Cheavens, senior author of the study and a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

"We have underestimated the power of positive emotions. We spend so much time thinking about how to remedy negative emotions, but we don't spend much time thinking about helping people harness and nurture positive emotions," Cheavens said.

"It's really important to help people with their depression, anxiety and fear, but it's also important to help people tap into curiosity, love, flexibility and optimism. People can feel sad and overwhelmed, and also hopeful and curious, in the same general time frame."

The study is published online in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

In three experiments, the researchers assessed the effects of validation and invalidation on what are known clinically as positive and negative affect. Positive affect refers to positive emotions and expression that Cheavens said allow us to be curious, connected and flexible in our thinking. Negative affect, on the other hand, refers to negative emotions and expression ranging from disgust to fear to sadness.

A total of 307 undergraduate students participated in the experiments. The students completed questionnaires measuring positive and negative affect at the beginning and end of the study and overall mood at several time points during the experiments.

Researchers asked participants to think and write for five minutes about a time when they felt intense anger, and then verbally describe those experiences to a researcher. Based on randomized assignments, the experimenter either validated or invalidated their angry feelings.

The participants' experiences with anger covered a wide range: roommate troubles, unfaithful romantic partners, being the victim of a theft or getting mad at their parents.

Experimenters listening to their stories used flexible scripts to respond. Validating comments included such phrases as "Of course you'd be angry about that" or "I hear what you're saying and I understand you feel angry."

Invalidating responses ranged from "That doesn't sound like anger" to "Why would that make you so angry?"

Results showed that all participants had a decrease in positive affect while they were thinking and writing about being angry. However, when they started describing the situation to experimenters, the validated participants' positive affect matched or even exceeded their baseline measures. The positive affect scores for those who were invalidated did not recover while talking with the experimenters.

Based on five measures of mood in two of the three studies, participants' mood consistently darkened as they considered what made them angry. Validated participants' moods were restored to normal, but the invalidated students' moods generally continued to get worse.

The research team conducted the studies with plans to apply the results in a therapy setting. But the findings are relevant for relationships as well, Cheavens said.

"When you process negative emotions, that negative affect gets turned on. But if someone validates you, it keeps your positive affect buffered. Validation protects people's affect so they can stay curious in interpersonal interactions and in therapy," she said.

"Adding validation into therapy helps people feel understood, and when we feel understood we can receive feedback on how we also might change. But it's not a uniquely clinical thing - often the same ways you make therapy better are ways you make parenting, friendships and romantic relationships better."

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The study was co-authored by Ohio State psychology graduate students Cinthia Benitez (now a clinical psychologist in Seattle) and Kristen Howard.

Mindfulness meditation may decrease impact of migraine

WAKE FOREST BAPTIST MEDICAL CENTER

Research News

 

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Dec. 14, 2020 - Migraine is a neurological disease that can be severely debilitating and is the second leading cause of disability worldwide. Unfortunately, many patients with migraine discontinue medications due to ineffectiveness or side effects. Many patients still use opioids despite recommendations against them for headache treatment. However, in a recent clinical trial from Wake Forest Baptist Health, researchers showed that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) may provide benefit to people with migraine.

"Mindfulness-based stress reduction is a mind-body treatment that teaches moment-by-moment awareness through mindfulness meditation and yoga," said Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of neurology at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health. "Mindfulness can also teach new ways to respond to stress, a commonly reported migraine trigger."

According to an article published by JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers studied whether MBSR improved migraine outcomes, pain perception and measures of emotional well-being compared to headache education.

In the study, 89 adults with a history of migraine were randomly assigned to either the MBSR group or headache education group with training or instruction delivered in eight weekly two-hour sessions.

The MBSR group followed a standardized curriculum of mindfulness meditation and yoga. Participants also received electronic audio files for home practice and were encouraged to practice at home 30 minutes a day. The headache education group received instruction on headaches, pathophysiology, triggers, stress and treatment approaches.

Participants in both the MBSR and headache education groups reported fewer days with migraine. However, only MBSR also lessened disability and improved quality of life, depression scores and other measures reflecting emotional well-being, with effects seen out to 36 weeks. Further, experimentally induced pain intensity and unpleasantness decreased in the MBSR group compared to the headache education group, suggesting a shift in pain appraisal.

"At a time when opioids are still being used for migraine, finding safe non-drug options with long-term benefit has significant implications," said Wells, who is also the founder and director of the Comprehensive Headache Program at Wake Forest Baptist. "Mindfulness may treat the total burden of migraine and could potentially decrease the impact of this debilitating condition. A larger, more definitive study is needed to confirm these findings."

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Using play to "school" children's emotions

Pretend play promotes the development of socio-emotional competences in children aged five and six.

UNIVERSITÉ DE GENÈVE

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE FIRST IMAGE SHOWS A "COGNITIVE DISTRACTION " STRATEGY AND THE SECOND A "PROBLEM SOLVING " STRATEGY. view more 

CREDIT: @UNIGE/RICHARD

Being socially and emotionally competent from an early age is likely to help children win acceptance by their peers, build better relationships with teachers, and facilitate academic learning. Pretend play is a pedagogical tool that can be used to stimulate a child's socio-emotional competences. A curriculum based on this approach has been introduced in classes of pupils aged five and six by a research team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the Valais University of Teacher Education (HEP/Valais), the Vaud University of Teacher Education (HEP/Vaud) and the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Italy. The study evaluating the effects of the programme, published in the journal British Journal of Psychology, shows that pupils who followed the curriculum increased their emotional recognition capacities and emotional lexicon compared to a control group. The use of pretend play as a teaching tool enables children to acquire emotional skills, with a potential positive effect on their prosocial behaviour and, in the longer term, on their academic success.

When children start school, pupils with the ability to understand their own emotions and the emotions of others are more likely to regulate them and adapt their behaviour. Accordingly, it is thought that these young pupils will have fewer behavioural problems and will be more inclined to manage their interpersonal relationships in a prosocial manner. «These social and emotional competences foster acceptance by their classmates and allow them to build better relationships with their teachers,» begins Sylvie Richard, a PhD student in developmental psychology in UNIGE's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, and a Professor at HEP / VS. «Research has shown that these skills also facilitate their ability to focus on learning, and their academic results are better a few years later».

Potential leads for learning do exist, says Édouard Gentaz, full professor in UNIGE's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. «We know already that pretend play promotes the understanding and regulation of emotions together with prosocial behaviour in the early stages of schooling. But there are currently very few quantitative studies based on objective measures that systematically incorporate pretend play and its development.» This is why Professor Gentaz's research team set up a study to evaluate the effects of implementing a pretend play-based curriculum in five HarmoS second-year classes in the Swiss canton of Valais.

Learning through pretending

Pretend play gives children the opportunity to use their imagination, in particular by means of scenarios that they invent and the roles they play. «For instance, they can pretend to be a wizard or a witch who's brewing a magic potion that will send a dangerous dragon to sleep. The child creates the rules himself, adjusts them to suit their scenario, and calls on their imagination,» explains Sylvie Richard. For this study, the researcher and her colleagues developed a structured curriculum to exploit this approach through pretend play sessions together with more systematised teaching / learning phases with the pupils around the competences being worked on.

Eleven sessions of around 60 minutes were taught by five teachers at a rate of one session per week. The teachers underpinned the play in terms of the scenario, roles, language, symbolic use of props and playing time. They also got involved in the play phases by giving the pupils challenges, such as playing at pretending to be bursting with joy, solving an interpersonal problem, and so forth. To do this, the teachers received approximately 20 hours of training in socio-emotional competences and on how to support pretend play. A team of control teachers and pupils also formed part of the study so that the researchers could compare the progress of the pupils in the five classes. «It was important that the control group also did the pretend play, although not necessarily focused on scenarios related to socio-emotional competences,» notes Sylvie Richard.

Better recognition of emotions

A total of 79 children took part in the research, with the results showing an improvement in the recognition of emotions, particularly anger. The children also enhanced their emotional vocabulary. «The results suggest, on the one hand, that it's essential to design a teaching system that takes socio-emotional competences and pretend play into account as areas of knowledge that should be taught. On the other hand, the study shows that using this kind of play as a teaching tool helps children experiment, re-apply themselves, and test and take ownership of these competences», concludes Professor Gentaz. Given its success, the study is continuing with a more extensive curriculum, which is being carried out now in the canton of Valais.

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When absolute certainty may not be possible: Criteria to determine death by mountain rescue teams

Evidence-based best practices for making life and death medical decisions in less than ideal circumstances, developed by an international panel and published in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine

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Philadelphia, December 14, 2020 - The International Commission for Mountain Emergency Medicine (ICAR MedCom) convened an expert medical panel to develop evidence-based criteria that allow for accurate determination of death in mountain rescue situations. These recommendations appear in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, published by Elsevier.

Activities in remote mountain areas are associated with increased risk of critical injury or fatality. Medical emergencies in the wilderness result in worse outcomes than those that occur where help is more accessible. For example, in the mountain environment, hazards such as rockfalls, avalanches, bad weather or visibility, and low oxygen levels at high altitudes limit rescue capacity and safety. In these situations, especially if close physical examination of an apparently lifeless person is prevented or examination by an authorized person cannot be accomplished, it can be difficult to be absolutely certain that death has occurred.

Guidelines for the determination of death exist, but proper use can be difficult. When mountain rescuers without specific medical knowledge, training, and experience are the first to reach the victim, many factors can be misleading. The ICAR MedCom criteria have been developed to triage decision making to prevent any mistakes during this sometimes difficult task.

"ICAR MedCom brought together a panel of physicians and a forensic pathologist to conduct an extensive literature review to arrive at criteria allowing accurate determination of death even in extreme situations," explained lead author Corinna A. Schön, MD, forensic pathologist from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Bern, Switzerland, and ICAR MedCom member. "The resulting guidelines will guide rescue teams to differentiate between situations in which interventions like resuscitation can save lives and in which there is no hope of victim survival." The review examined 79 articles identified through PubMed searches on determination of death and related topics.

Recognition of definitive signs of death can be problematic due to the variability in time course and the possibility of mimics. The authors caution that only clear criteria should be used to determine death from a distance or by laypersons who are not medically trained. Definitive signs of death include dependent lividity (skin discoloration of dependent body parts); rigor mortis (stiffening of the body); decomposition; decapitation and other injuries totally incompatible with life; frozen body (chest not compressible); burial/airway obstruction for more than 60 minutes in avalanche victims with asystolic cardiac arrest; observed water submersion for more than 90 minutes; and incineration of all visible body surfaces). The absence of vital signs alone is not definitive. In some situations, a person with no vital signs can be resuscitated.

Because there is international and regional variability in legal regulations, mountain rescuers should be familiar with the applicable regulations in their own areas and should implement specific procedures for determination of death and the management of the event.

Dr. Schön noted, "The safety of rescue teams must always take priority in decisions about whether to undertake a rescue." She added that an incorrect determination of death and a failure to perform resuscitation that lead to a probably avoidable death may have terrible emotional and legal consequences for both next of kin and rescuers.

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