UVA-led team expands power grid planning to improve system resilience

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

 NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

Research News

 

In most animal species, if a major artery is cut off from the heart, the animal will struggle to survive. The same can be said for many of our critical infrastructure systems, such as electric power, water and communications. They are networked systems with vulnerable connections.

This vulnerability was on display in September 2017 when Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico's electric power grid, leaving almost all of the island's 3.3 million people without electricity. The months-long blackout that followed was the worst in U.S. history.

Claire Trevisan, then a civil and environmental engineering undergraduate student in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment at the University of Virginia, took note of Puerto Rico's plight. She asked her fourth-year capstone advisor, professor and associate director of the UVA Environmental Resilience Institute Andres Clarens, if they could use her project to study the problem.

Trevisan's capstone became the impetus behind a critical improvement to the energy system optimization models engineers use to plan infrastructure: Integrating impacts of future hurricanes into decisions about how grids are designed. An interdisciplinary team led by UVA Ph.D. student Jeffrey Bennett and including collaborators from North Carolina State University and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez just published the research in the journal Nature Energy.

Their research demonstrates that modernizing power grids by using more renewable energy sources distributed across the landscape will cost less than repairing hurricane damage to a centralized grid.

Optimization models analyze data to find the cheapest way to deliver power under a set of constraints. Established models already account for costs related to construction, fuels, emissions and resilience -- meaning the system's ability to recover if something disrupts operation -- but the costs of predictable damage from events such as hurricanes, wildfires and floods are not built into existing models.

"In the past, people didn't know how often hurricanes would hit and what kind of damage they would do," Clarens said. "Now we do know those things, and we have the computing power to actually run simulations to say, 'Okay, if we build it this way, how much more is it going to cost your electricity customers?'"

How the grid is configured, or its topology, is integral to the team's research. When the United States was electrified a century ago, the most efficient way to deliver power to customers involved centralized generation plants feeding electricity over a huge network. That was true even with the risk of widespread outages when a main power station or transmission artery was disrupted.

The researchers wanted to examine what happens as grids are gradually redesigned to support more renewable energy sources, which is already underway in much of the country with solar and wind generation. The model can identify the combinations of generation sources that make the most economical sense when you anticipate the cost of hurricane repairs.

"The ability to do this is important because the frequency and severity of storms are increasing as a result of climate change," Clarens said.

Puerto Rico is a good case study to apply the model. The island has been in the path of 13 named storms over the past 25 years. The existing grid architecture remains outdated today, and the system relies on imported fossil fuels, making power expensive. On the other hand, Puerto Rico has abundant solar and wind resources.

One problem in planning, Bennett said, is that government policies such as emissions controls and market conditions -- including decreasing costs of wind and solar energy production and storage -- can create "stranded assets," expensive, built-to-last power plants that end up being retired early because they're no longer economical to run.

Given the large number of policy- and weather-related combinations that could happen in the future, the team needed to run the model on UVA's supercomputer, Rivanna.

"In our study, we simulate the likelihood and intensity of a storm hitting the grid in each five-year time step. The hurricane intensity is used to predict the wind speed and project damage to the electric grid infrastructure," Bennett said.

"The system then builds new infrastructure to be able to meet electricity demand. By considering combinations of hurricane intensities and probabilities, we are then able to project average electricity costs and examine how infrastructure investments vary. Our results show that hurricanes increase electricity costs by 32% based on historical hurricane trends, and more if you consider that storms are increasing in frequency and severity as a result of climate change. Transitioning to renewables and natural gas reduces costs and emissions regardless of hurricane frequency."

Although the research addresses wind damage to the electric power grid brought on by hurricanes, the team's approach can be applied to other weather- and climate-related disasters, Clarens said.

"With this approach to grid decision-making, you can also look at cases like wildfires in the American West and floods in the Midwest," he said. "There are changes to the climate that are impacting our engineered systems. We're trying to develop new tools and new insights that can help us to say, 'Look, the past is not a good model for the future anymore. We need new ways to simulate the future so that we can make the best decisions possible.'"

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A safer, less expensive and fast charging aqueous battery

New anode for aqueous batteries allows use of cheap, plentiful seawater as an electrolyte

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Research News

 

IMAGE: AN ELECTRIC FAN (TOP LEFT) IS POWERED BY THE PROPOSED ZINC BATTERY; TYPICAL CHARGE/DISCHARGE PROFILES OF ZIBS AT 0.5C (TOP RIGHT); IN-SITU MICROSCOPE SETUP TO IMAGE THE ZINC DEPOSITION DYNAMICS... view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Lithium-ion batteries are critical for modern life, from powering our laptops and cell phones to those new holiday toys. But there is a safety risk - the batteries can catch fire.

Zinc-based aqueous batteries avoid the fire hazard by using a water-based electrolyte instead of the conventional chemical solvent. However, uncontrolled dendrite growth limits their ability to provide the high performance and long life needed for practical applications.

Now researchers have reported in Nature Communications that a new 3D zinc-manganese nano-alloy anode has overcome the limitations, resulting in a stable, high-performance, dendrite-free aqueous battery using seawater as the electrolyte.

Xiaonan Shan, co-corresponding author for the work and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston, said the discovery offers promise for energy storage and other applications, including electric vehicles.

"It provides a low-cost, high energy density, stable battery," he said. "It should be of use for reliable, rechargeable batteries."

Shan and UH PhD student Guangxia Feng also developed an in situ optical visualization technique, allowing them to directly observe the reaction dynamics on the anode in real time. "This platform provides us with the capability to directly image the electrode reaction dynamics in situ," Shan said. "This important information provides direct evidence and visualization of the reaction kinetics and helps us to understand phenomena that could not be easily accessed previously."

Testing determined that the novel 3D zinc-manganese nano alloy anode remained stable without degrading throughout 1,000 hours of charge/discharge cycling under high current density (80 mA/cm2).

The anode is the electrode which releases current from a battery, while electrolytes are the medium through which the ionic charge flows between the cathode and anode. Using seawater as the electrolyte rather than highly purified water offers another avenue for lowering battery cost.

Traditional anode materials used in aqueous batteries have been prone to dendrites, tiny growths that can cause the battery to lose power. Shan and his colleagues proposed and demonstrated a strategy to efficiently minimize and suppress dendrite formation in aqueous systems by controlling surface reaction thermodynamics with a zinc alloy and reaction kinetics by a three-dimensional structure.

Shan said researchers at UH and University of Central Florida are currently investigating other metal alloys, in addition to the zinc-manganese alloy.

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In addition to Shan and Feng, researchers on the project include Huajun Tian, Zhao Li, David Fox, Lei Zhai, Akihiro Kushima and co-corresponding author Yang Yang, all with the University of Central Florida; Zhenzhong Yang and Yingge Du, both with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Maoyu Wang and co-corresponding author Zhenxing Feng, both with Oregon State University; and Hua Zhou with Argonne National Laboratory.

Measurements of pulsar acceleration reveal Milky Way's dark side

INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

Research News NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

 

IMAGE: THE RIPPLES IN THE MILKY WAY DISK ARE SHOWN, ALONG WITH THE TIDAL DEBRIS FROM THE SAGITTARIUS DWARF GALAXY. THE PULSARS ANALYZED BY CHAKRABARTI ET AL 2021 TO CALCULATE... view more 

CREDIT: IAS; DANA BERRY

It is well known that the expansion of the universe is accelerating due to a mysterious dark energy. Within galaxies, stars also experience an acceleration, though this is due to some combination of dark matter and the stellar density. In a new study to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters researchers have now obtained the first direct measurement of the average acceleration taking place within our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Led by Sukanya Chakrabarti at the Institute for Advanced Study with collaborators from Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the team used pulsar data to clock the radial and vertical accelerations of stars within and outside of the galactic plane. Based on these new high-precision measurements and the known amount of visible matter in the galaxy, researchers were then able to calculate the Milky Way's dark matter density without making the usual assumption that the galaxy is in a steady-state.

"Our analysis not only gives us the first measurement of the tiny accelerations experienced by stars in the galaxy, but also opens up the possibility of extending this work to understand the nature of dark matter, and ultimately dark energy on larger scales," stated Chakrabarti, the paper's lead author and a current Member and IBM Einstein Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Stars hurtle through the galaxy at hundreds of kilometers per second, yet this study indicates that the change in their velocities is occurring at a literal snail's pace--a few centimeters per second, which is about the same speed as a crawling baby. To detect this subtle motion the research team relied on the ultraprecise time-keeping ability of pulsars that are widely distributed throughout the galactic plane and halo--a diffuse spherical region that surrounds the galaxy.

"By exploiting the unique properties of pulsars, we were able to measure very small accelerations in the Galaxy. Our work opens a new window in galactic dynamics," said co-author Philip Chang of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Extending outwards approximately 300,000 light years from the galactic center, the halo may provide important hints to understanding dark matter, which accounts for about 90 percent of the galaxy's mass and is highly concentrated above and below the star-dense galactic plane. Stellar motion in this particular region--a primary focus of this study--can be influenced by dark matter. Utilizing the local density measurements obtained through this study, researchers will now have a better idea of how and where to look for dark matter.

While previous studies assumed a state of galactic equilibrium to calculate average mass density, this research is based on the natural, non-equilibrium state of the galaxy. One might analogize this to the difference between the surface of a pond before and after a stone is tossed in. By accounting for the "ripples" the team was able to obtain a more accurate picture of reality. Though in this case, rather than stones, the Milky Way is influenced by a turbulent history of galactic mergers and continues to be perturbed by external dwarf galaxies like the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. As a result, stars do not have flat orbits and tend to follow a path similar to that of a warped vinyl record, crossing above and below the galactic plane. One of the key factors that enabled this direct observational approach was the use of pulsar data compiled from international collaborations, including NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves) that has obtained data from the Green Bank and Arecibo telescopes.

This landmark paper expands upon the work of Jan H. Oort (1932); John Bahcall (1984); Kuijken & Gilmore (1989); Holmberg & Flynn (2000); Jo Bovy & Scott Tremaine (2012) to calculate the average mass density in the galactic plane (Oort limit) and local dark matter density. IAS scholars including Oort, Bahcall, Bovy, Tremaine, and Chakrabarti have played an important role in advancing this area of research.

"For centuries astronomers have measured the positions and speeds of stars, but these provide only a snapshot of the complex dynamical behavior of the Milky Way galaxy," stated Scott Tremaine, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study. "The accelerations measured by Chakrabarti and her collaborators are directly caused by the gravitational forces from the matter in the galaxy, both visible and dark, and thereby provide a new and promising window on the distribution and the composition of the matter in the galaxy and the universe."

This particular paper will enable a wide variety of future studies. Accurate measurements of accelerations will also soon be possible using the complementary radial velocity method that Chakrabarti developed earlier this year, which measures the change in the velocity of stars with high precision. This work will also enable more detailed simulations of the Milky Way, improve constraints on general relativity, and provide clues in the search for dark matter. Extensions of this method may ultimately allow us to directly measure the cosmic acceleration as well.

While a direct picture of our home galaxy--similar to the ones of Earth taken by the Apollo astronauts--is not yet possible, this study has provided essential new details to help envision the dynamic organization of the galaxy from within.

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About the Institute

The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world's foremost centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Located in Princeton, N.J., the IAS is dedicated to independent study across the sciences and humanities. Founded in 1930, the Institute is devoted to advancing the frontiers of knowledge without concern for immediate application. From founding IAS Professor Albert Einstein to the foremost thinkers of today, the IAS enables bold, curiosity-driven innovation to enrich society in unexpected ways.

Each year, the Institute welcomes more than 200 of the world's most promising post-doctoral researchers and scholars who are selected and mentored by a permanent Faculty, each of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Among present and past Faculty and Members there have been 35 Nobel Laureates, 42 of the 60 Fields Medalists, and 19 of the 22 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as many MacArthur Fellows and Wolf Prize winners.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of new

Simple monitoring could reduce medicine misuse in care homes

Monitoring system could decrease medicine related harm

SWANSEA UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

New research from Swansea University suggests that a simple nurse- or carer-led medicines' monitoring system can help reduce medication-related illness for people living in residential care homes - and the process takes just a few minutes per patient.

The research paper published in the PLOS ONE journal looked how the monitoring system, known as the Adverse Drug Reaction Profile (ADRe-p), can help nurses or carers identify medicines' mismanagement or adverse drug reactions in patients prescribed multiple medicines, and can help avoid medication-related harm and improve prescribing.

Professor Sue Jordan, who led the study said: "The problem presented by the scale and complexity of inadvertent harm from both use and misuse of medicines is very real, which is reflected in the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Third Global Patient Safety Challenge aiming to reduce avoidable medication-related harm by 50% by next year.

"Our study took place in three independent private sector registered care homes. All the homes were very good, and we witnessed excellent nursing care. Nevertheless, ADRe helped to improve medicines management. Nurses or carers using the ADRe monitoring system identified possible medication-related harms and, following a review by doctors or pharmacists, new medication regimens were introduced.

The outcomes for the 19 patients involved meant that:

• 6 residents were no longer in pain
• 3 no longer experienced convulsions
• 3 no longer experienced aggression
• 2 had swallowing difficulties treated
• 4 no longer reported insomnia
• 1 had breathing difficulties treated
• 2 had their laxative prescriptions adjusted to reduce diarrhoea
• falls ceased for 2 residents (of 4 noted as falling and of 5 able to stand).

The research team also found that few new problems arose, there was no clinical deterioration, and no harms were associated with the intervention.

Professor Jordan said: "What was really important about this study was that it showed that just 10 minutes of nurses' or carers' time, along with 10 minutes for a pharmacist review, made a huge difference to patient wellbeing. The use of ADRe not only improved residents' health, but also changed prescription regimens to ensure the maximum clinical benefits for patients, which ultimately helps to optimize healthcare resources."

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Can a mother's stress impact children's disease development?

University of Cincinnati environmental health researcher says there is a connection between trauma and DNA mutation

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Research News

 

IMAGE: KELLY BRUNST, PHD, SHOWN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. view more 

CREDIT: COLLEEN KELLEY/UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Stress on an expectant mother could affect her baby's chance of developing disease - perhaps even over the course of the child's life, UC researchers have found.

Psychosocial factors creating stress -- such as lack of social support, loneliness, marriage status or bereavement -- may be mutating their child's mitochondrial DNA and could be a precursor to a host of diseases, according to a University of Cincinnati study.

"There are a lot of conditions that start in childhood that have ties to mitochondrial dysfunction including asthma, obesity, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism," says Kelly Brunst, PhD, assistant professor of environmental and public health sciences in the UC College of Medicine and lead author of the study.

"The fetal and infant period is a vulnerable time for environmental exposure due to heightened development during these periods," says Brunst. "We don't just wake up one day and have asthma or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The programming effects resulting from environmentally induced shifts occur over time and likely start during gestation at the molecular and cellular level. These shifts alter physiological states that likely play a role in who is going to go on and develop adverse health outcomes."

As part of the study, researchers sequenced the mitochondrial genome and identified mutations in 365 placenta samples from birth mothers in Boston and New York City from 2013-18. A multivariable regression model was used to look at maternal lifetime stress in relation to the number of gene mutations in the placenta mitochondrial genome.

Women experiencing increased psychosocial stress -- that can range from sexual assault, domestic violence or serious injury to incarceration, physical or mental illness and family hardship -- over their lifetime exhibited a higher number of placental mitochondrial mutations. The strongest associations were observed among Black women. Higher stress-related DNA mutations in the placenta were seen in Black and white women, but not in Hispanic women.

The study's findings were published in the scholarly journal Biological Psychiatry.

"The idea behind this work is about understanding how our environment, in this case maternal stress and trauma, impact mitochondrial function and ultimately neurobehavioral development," says Brunst. "The hope is to gain insight as to why certain children are vulnerable to developing a range of complex conditions previously linked to environmental exposures such as chronic stress or air pollution."

"We ask about events that might have occurred prior to their pregnancy even during the mother's own childhood as part of our study," says Brunst. "So what this is telling us is that the stress that a woman has experienced even before she is pregnant might have an impact on the fetal mitochondrial genome."

Brunst said there are some diseases for which Black women are more at risk -- obesity, diabetes and certain cancers -- so they might be more affected by stress and subsequently develop these diseases which have also been linked to stress."

"What was interesting about the study was that Hispanics exposed to stress had fewer placental mitochondrial DNA mutations," says Brunst.

She says one explanation could be what researchers call the "Hispanic paradox." It is the epidemiological phenomenon documenting better health and lower mortality relative to non-Hispanic whites despite greater risk and lower socioeconomic status for Hispanics."

"Despite exposure to more stress and trauma, sociocultural dynamics specific to Hispanics may attenuate experiences of stress which in turn has downstream effects on psychophysiological mechanisms and better outcomes," says Brunst. "This is just one possible explanation."

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Other co-authors of this study are Xiang Zhang, PhD, and Li Zhang, PhD, both associate professors in the UC College of Medicine, along with Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, and Tessa Bloomquist, both of Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, and Rosalind Wright, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.

The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute under grants R01HL095606 and R01HL114396; the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences under grants R00ES024116, P30ES006096 and P30ES023515.

Brunst led a previous research study that looked at the correlation between exposure to traffic-related air pollution and childhood anxiety, by looking at the altered neurochemistry in pre-adolescents. She is also recipient of a recent $2.9 million five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for the research project, "Epigenetics, air pollution, and childhood mental health."

Motherhood does not drive support for gun control

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Moms are not more likely than other women to support gun control efforts. In fact, a new study finds that parenthood doesn't have a substantial effect on the gun control views of men or women.

"Everybody 'knows' that moms are more politically liberal on gun control issues," says Steven Greene, corresponding author of the study and a professor of political science at North Carolina State University. "We wanted to know if that's actually true. And, as it turns out, it's not true - which was surprising."

To explore the impact of parenthood on people's gun control views, the researchers drew on data collected by the Pew Center for Research in 2017 as part of Pew's nationally representative American Trends Panel. The researchers then used statistical models to account for various confounding variables, such as political affiliation, allowing them to focus specifically on the effect that parenthood has on one's beliefs regarding gun control.

The Pew surveys had examined a range of issues pertaining to gun control. Across the board, men were substantially more politically conservative than women on questions related to gun laws and regulations. In other words, men were more likely to favor fewer regulations and laxer legal requirements when it comes to guns.

On four of the gun control issues, parenthood had no statistical impact at all - meaning that the positions of moms were no different from the positions of women who weren't parents, and the positions of dads were no different from the positions of men who weren't parents. Those four issues pertained to: gun ownership, or how permissive gun ownership laws should be; home safety, or laws pertaining to how guns and ammunition are stored or secured in the home; teachers and guns, or whether school personnel should carry firearms; and whether stricter gun laws would reduce mass shootings.

However, parenthood did have a small - but statistically significant - impact on two other gun control issues.

Mothers were actually more politically conservative than other women on the issue of gun strictness - meaning that moms were slightly more likely to support less restrictive gun laws.

And fathers were more politically conservative than other men on the issue of gun prevalence - meaning they were slightly more likely to believe that more people should be allowed to own guns, and guns should be allowed in more places.

"When we talk about political movements and efforts to change laws, it's important to have a clear, accurate sense of where people stand on the relevant issues," Greene says. "Using the potent symbolism of motherhood in America in order advance a political agenda, in this case, is actually ignoring the fact that positions on gun control are virtually identical for women across the board. There is some minor variation, but even there, it actually suggests that mothers are less supportive of restrictive gun laws.

"To be clear, most women - including most moms - support more restrictive gun laws. But it's not because they're parents."

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The paper, "Do moms demand action on guns? Parenthood and gun policy attitudes," appears in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. The paper was co-authored by Melissa Deckman, of Washington College; Laurel Elder, of Hartwick College; and Mary-Kate Lizotte, of Augusta University.

Scientists make sustainable polymer from sugars in wood

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Research News

 

Scientists from the University of Bath have made a sustainable polymer using the second most abundant sugar in nature, xylose.

Not only does the new nature-inspired material reduce reliance on crude oil products, but its properties can also be easily controlled to make the material flexible or crystalline.

The researchers, from the University's Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies, report the polymer, from the polyether family, has a variety of applications, including as a building block for polyurethane, used in mattresses and shoe soles; as a bio-derived alternative to polyethylene glycol, a chemical widely used in bio-medicine; or to polyethylene oxide, sometimes used as electrolyte in batteries.

The team says additional functionality could be added to this versatile polymer by binding other chemical groups such as fluorescent probes or dyes to the sugar molecule, for biological or chemical sensing applications.

The team can easily produce hundreds of grams of the material and anticipate that production would be rapidly scalable.

Dr Antoine Buchard, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader at the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies, led the study.

He said: "We're very excited that we've been able to produce this sustainable material from a plentiful natural resource - wood.

"The reliance of plastics and polymers on dwindling fossil fuels is a major problem, and bio-derived polymers - those derived from renewable feedstocks such as plants - are part of the solution to make plastics sustainable.

"This polymer is particularly versatile because its physical and chemicals properties can be tweaked easily, to make a crystalline material or more of a flexible rubber, as well as to introduce very specific chemical functionalities.

"Until now this was very difficult to achieve with bio-derived polymers.

"This means that with this polymer, we can target a variety of applications, from packaging to healthcare or energy materials, in a more sustainable way."

Like all sugars, xylose occurs in two forms that are mirror images of each other - named D and L.

The polymer uses the naturally occurring D-enantiomer of xylose, however the researchers have shown that combining it with the L-form makes the polymer even stronger.

The research team has filed a patent for their technology and is now interested in working with industrial collaborators to further scale up production and explore the applications of the new materials.

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The study was published in the prestigious chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition (in open access) and was funded by the Royal Society and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Post-surgical patch releases non-opioid painkiller directly to the wound

New polymer promises localized pain control for critical first four days

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

DURHAM, N.C. - A Duke-led team of scientists has developed a bio-compatible surgical patch that releases non-opioid painkillers directly to the site of a wound for days and then dissolves away.

The polymer patch provides a controlled release of a drug that blocks the enzyme COX-2 (cyclooxygenase-2,) which drives pain and inflammation. The study appears Jan. 10, 2021 in the Journal of Controlled Release.

When they started "We were making hernia meshes and different antimicrobial films," said Matthew Becker, the Hugo L. Blomquist professor chemistry at Duke, and last author on the paper. "We thought you could potentially put pain drugs or anesthetics in the film if you just sew it in as you're stitching the person up, then you wouldn't necessarily have to prescribe any opioids," Becker said.

The work grew out of a $2 million grant Becker received from the state of Ohio at his previous institution to investigate non-opioid pain management , one measure toward fighting a nationwide epidemic of opioid drug abuse. Since arriving at Duke in 2019, Becker's team has partnered with Duke pain control expert Dr. Ru-Rong Ji and his team to refine the idea.

The polymer itself, comprised of poly(ester urea) homopolymers and co-polymers, is also special, Becker said.

"Most polymers that are used in medicine swell, and everything comes out at once," Becker said. But this polymer erodes slowly, and its painkiller dose and longevity can be controlled simply by varying the surface area and thicknesses. "The film is about like a piece of paper."

"If you can get four or five days of pain control out of the patch and not have to take those other pain drugs, not only do you avoid some of the side effects and risks of addiction, you're concentrating therapy where you need it," Becker said.

Rat studies also showed that the painkiller stayed in tissues close to the patch site, rather than dissolving into circulating plasma.

Becker said the patch should be able to provide three or four days of wound-pain management, which is the critical period for post-surgical pain. The implantable film would be particularly useful in endoscopic procedures and instances where the physicians and patients would like to avoid opioid exposure such as Cesarean births and pediatric surgeries. In studies with mice that mimic the neuropathic pain of diabetes, the pain patch was placed against a nerve and provided a four-day nerve block.

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This research was sponsored by Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp, 21st Century Medical Technologies and the Ohio Third Frontier Opioid Challenge. Becker and co-author Natasha Brigham have filed provisional patent applications with the University of Akron Research Foundation. Becker also is a board member and equity holder in 21st Century Medical Technologies.

CITATION: "Controlled Release of Etoricoxib from Poly(ester urea) Films for Post-Operative Pain Management," Natasha Brigham, Rebecca Nofsinger, Xin Luo, Nathan Dreger, Alexandra Abel, Tiffany Gustafson, Seth Forster, Andre Hermans, Ru-Rong Ji, Matthew Becker. Journal of Controlled Release, Jan. 10, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.jconrel.2020.11.052

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accurac

Use of telehealth jumped as pandemic shutdown began

Use is highest for mental health services

RAND CORPORATION

Research News

 

Use of telehealth jumped sharply during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, with the approach being used more often for behavioral health services than for medical care, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Between mid-March and early May 2020, telehealth was used by more than 40% of patients with a chronic physical health condition and by more than 50% of those with a behavioral health condition, according to findings published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Overall, almost half of the people who were undergoing treatment when the pandemic shutdown began reported using some form of telemedicine.

Researchers found that the use of telehealth for behavioral health conditions was lower among women and among people over the age of 60. Use of telehealth also was lower among Non-Hispanic Whites relative to Non-Hispanic Blacks, and was lower among those with less than a high school education relative to those with a college degree.

"While the increased use of telehealth was widespread, some groups of Americans reported using the services less often than others," said Dr. Shira H. Fischer, the study's lead author and a physician researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "If telehealth use is going to remain high, we need to ensure equity of access, particularly for behavioral health care where education, age and gender were all associated with levels of use."

In a finding with important implications for the future of telehealth, researchers also found that during the pandemic a large majority of telehealth users connected with their own doctor rather than a new or unfamiliar doctor.

Prior to the pandemic, patients frequently were reluctant to use telehealth because it often meant seeing a provider other than their own physician. According to researchers, sustaining the ability to see one's own doctor through telehealth may be critical to making telehealth a permanent part of routine health care.

Many reports have documented a spike in the use of telehealth services after the shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. The increase was made possible by emergency regulatory changes that were adopted to promote use of telehealth.

RAND researchers examined the increase in telehealth by surveying 2,052 adults who are a part of the RAND American Life Panel, a nationally representative internet panel. The questions about use of telehealth were part of a larger survey about life during the pandemic that was fielded between May 1 and May 6.

When the pandemic began, nearly 40% of the Americans surveyed were being treated for a chronic physical health condition, while 15% were being treated for a behavioral health condition. Since the pandemic started, 16% had considered seeking care for a new or recurrent condition.

The study found that among patients who were receiving care when the pandemic began, 11% had used telehealth that included video conferencing from the middle of March to early May, a period of less than two months. In contrast, a survey conducted with the same panel in 2019 found that fewer than 4% had ever used video conferencing with a doctor.

Among people who used telehealth services, researchers found that the use of video telehealth was less common for physical health care (14% of patients) than for behavioral health care (30% of patients).

Lack of insurance was associated with lower telehealth use for new conditions, while use of telehealth was more common in the Northeast than other parts of the nation.

"There is a wide expectation that telehealth will continue after the pandemic ends. Lessons from the use of telehealth during this period should inform policy for the post-COVID-19 era," Fischer said.

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Other authors of the study are Lori Uscher-Pines, Elizabeth Roth and Joshua Breslau. Funding for this research was provided by gifts from RAND supporters and income from operations.

RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries.

Instead of pushing students entrepreneurship, they should be helped to make a better decision

According to an international study by two researchers at Pompeu Fabra University and at Abu Dhabi University, entrepreneurship education today does not help students understand what motivates them

UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA - BARCELONA

NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

Research News


Many policymakers and educational institutions hope to boost their economies by stimulating students' entrepreneurial intentions. To date, most research concluded that entrepreneurship education could increase these intentions by improving the image that students have of entrepreneurship as a career option, making them see how their environment can help them become entrepreneurs or increasing their self-confidence regarding their entrepreneurial skills. However, recent studies show that even if these goals are achieved, students' entrepreneurial intentions often do not grow.

Anne van Ewijk, an adjunct lecturer of Management at Abu Dhabi University, and Wiebke Weber, deputy director of the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) at the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, launched an international project that involved several universities in nine countries on six continents: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Finland, Kenya, Malaysia, Netherlands, UAE and the United States. The article has been published recently in the online edition of Journal of Business Venturing Insights, which specializes in research related to entrepreneurial phenomena. s part of the results of this project, the researchers confirmed an alternative dynamics to entrepreneurial intentions in education: "Students make more pronounced decisions for or against entrepreneurship when they are highly aware of what they want in life", they say. And they add: "Unfortunately, entrepreneurship courses included in the study, on average, did not help students better understand their life goals", which is a skill that did not increase greatly either with older age or with a higher level of studies.

According to the authors, when trainers facilitate an understanding of these life goals, they will improve the "sorting effect" (whereby students become more convinced about whether entrepreneurship is right for them or not): "Thus, enterprise training will contribute to the selection of aspiring entrepreneurs who are more motivated", they assure.

This study is a first step towards a new idea of what to measure in studies on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions in entrepreneurship education, in addition to the variables from dominant intention models. Future studies with larger samples could complete these findings with more information of what is happening inside and outside the classroom, or investigating solving possible goal conflicts of future entrepreneurs.

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