Large computer language models carry environmental, social risks

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Research News 

Computer engineers at the world's largest companies and universities are using machines to scan through tomes of written material. The goal? Teach these machines the gift of language. Do that, some even claim, and computers will be able to mimic the human brain.

But this impressive compute capability comes with real costs, including perpetuating racism and causing significant environmental damage, according to a new paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? ?" The paper is being presented Wednesday, March 10 at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (ACM FAccT).

This is the first exhaustive review of the literature surrounding the risks that come with rapid growth of language-learning technologies, said Emily M. Bender, a University of Washington professor of linguistics and a lead author of the paper along with Timnit Gebru, a well-known AI researcher.

"The question we're asking is what are the possible dangers of this approach and the answers that we're giving involve surveying literature across a broad range of fields and pulling them together," said Bender, who is the UW Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor.

What the researchers surfaced was that there are downsides to the ever-growing computing power put into natural language models. They discuss how the ever-increasing size of training data for language modeling exacerbates social and environmental issues. Alarmingly, such language models perpetuate hegemonic language and can deceive people into thinking they are having a "real" conversation with a person rather than a machine. The increased computational needs of these models further contributes to environmental degradation.

The authors were motivated to write the paper because of a trend within the field towards ever-larger language models and their growing spheres of influence.

The paper already has generated wide-spread attention due, in part, to the fact that two of the paper's co-authors say they were fired recently from Google for reasons that remain unsettled. Margaret Mitchell and Gebru, the two now-former Google researchers, said they stand by the paper's scholarship and point to its conclusions as a clarion call to industry to take heed.

"It's very clear that putting in the concerns has to happen right now, because it's already becoming too late," said Mitchell, a researcher in AI.

It takes an enormous amount of computing power to fuel the model language programs, Bender said. That takes up energy at tremendous scale, and that, the authors argue, causes environmental degradation. And those costs aren't borne by the computer engineers, but rather by marginalized people who cannot afford the environmental costs.

"It's not just that there's big energy impacts here, but also that the carbon impacts of that will bring costs first to people who are not benefiting from this technology," Bender said. "When we do the cost-benefit analysis, it's important to think of who's getting the benefit and who's paying the cost because they're not the same people."

The large scale of this compute power also can restrict access to only the most well-resourced companies and research groups, leaving out smaller developers outside of the U.S., Canada, Europe and China. That's because it takes huge machines to run the software necessary to make computers mimic human thought and speech.

Another risk comes from the training data itself, the authors say. Because the computers read language from the Web and from other sources, they can pick up and perpetuate racist, sexist, ableist, extremist and other harmful ideologies.

"One of the fallacies that people fall into is well, the internet is big, the internet is everything. If I just scrape the whole internet then clearly I've incorporated diverse viewpoints," Bender said. "But when we did a step-by-step review of the literature, it says that's not the case right now because not everybody's on the internet, and of the people who are on the internet, not everybody is socially comfortable participating in the same way."

And, people can confuse the language models for real human interaction, believing that they're actually talking with a person or reading something that a person has spoken or written, when, in fact, the language comes from a machine. Thus, the stochastic parrots.

"It produces this seemingly coherent text, but it has no communicative intent. It has no idea what it's saying. There's no there there," Bender said.

###

Angelina McMillan-Major, a doctoral student in linguistics at UW, also co-authored the paper.

MUTUAL AID

Helpful behavior during pandemic tied to recognizing common humanity

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Research News

 

IMAGE: THIS BAR CHART SHOWS THAT "IDENTIFICATION WITH ALL HUMANITY " HAD A LARGER EFFECT SIZE THAN ANY OTHER VARIABLE ON COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR DURING THE PANDEMIC. view more 

CREDIT: BARRAGAN ET AL., 2021, PLOS ONE

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people who recognize the connections they share with others are more likely to wear a mask, follow health guidelines and help people, even at a potential cost to themselves, a new University of Washington study shows.

Indeed, an identification with all humanity, as opposed to identification with a geographic area like a country or town, predicts whether someone will engage in "prosocial" behaviors particular to the pandemic, such as donating their own masks to a hospital or coming to the aid of a sick person.

The study, published March 10 in PLOS ONE, is drawn from about 2,500 responses, from more than 80 countries, to an online, international study launched last April.

Researchers say the findings could have implications for public health messaging during the pandemic: Appealing to individuals' deep sense of connectedness to others could, for example, encourage some people to get vaccinated, wear masks or follow other public health guidelines.

"We want to understand to what extent people feel connected with and identify with all humanity, and how that can be used to explain the individual differences in how people respond during the COVID-19 pandemic," said author Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, a postdoctoral researcher at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, who co-led the study with postdoctoral researcher Nigini Oliveira at the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering.

In psychology, "identification with all humanity" is a belief that can be measured and utilized in predicting behavior or informing policy or decision-making. Last spring, as governments around the world were imposing pandemic restrictions, a multidisciplinary team of UW researchers came together to study the implications of how people would respond to pandemic-related ethical dilemmas, and how those responses might be associated with various psychological beliefs.

Researchers designed an online study, providing different scenarios based in social psychology and game theory, for participants to consider. The team then made the study available in English and five other languages on the virtual lab LabintheWild, which co-author Katharina Reinecke, an associate professor in the Allen School, created for conducting behavioral studies with people around the world.

The scenarios presented participants with situations that could arise during the pandemic and asked people to what extent they would:

• Follow the list of World Health Organization health guidelines (which mostly focused on social distancing and hygiene when the study was run between mid-April to mid-June)
• Donate masks of their family's to a hospital short on masks
• Drive a person exhibiting obvious symptoms of COVID-19 to the hospital
• Go to a grocery store to buy food for a neighboring family
• Call an ambulance and wait with a sick person for it to arrive

In addition to demographic details and information about their local pandemic restrictions, such as stay-at-home orders, participants were asked questions to get at the psychology behind their responses: about their own felt identification with their local community, their nation and humanity, in general. For instance, participants were asked, "How much would you say you care (feel upset, want to help) when bad things happen to people all over the world?"

Researchers found that an identification with "all humanity" significantly predicted answers to the five scenarios, well above identifying with country or community, and after controlling for other variables such as gender, age or education level. Its effect was stronger than any other factor, said Barragan, and popped out as a highly significant predictor of people's tendency to want to help others.

The authors noted that identifying with one's country, in fact, came in a distant third, behind identification with humanity in general and one's local community. Strong feelings toward one's nation, nationalism, can lead to behavior and policies that favor some groups of people over others.

"There is variability in how people respond to the social aspects of the pandemic. Our research reveals that a crucial aspect of one's world view - how much people feel connected to others they have never met - predicts people's cooperation with public health measures and the altruism they feel toward others during the pandemic," said co-author Andrew Meltzoff, who is co-director of I-LABS and holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair in psychology.

Since last spring, of course, much has changed. More than 2.5 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19, vaccines are being administered, and guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, especially regarding masks, has evolved. If a new survey was launched today, Barragan said, the research group would like to include scenarios tuned to the current demands of the pandemic and the way it challenges us to care for others even while we maintain physical distancing.

While surveys, in general, can be prone to what's known as self-serving bias -- the participant answers in ways that they believe will make them "look good" -- researchers say that's not evident here. They point to the sizeable differences between responses that identify with all humanity, and those that identify with community or country, and note there would be little reason for participants to deliberately emphasize one and not the others.

The project is part of a larger multidisciplinary effort by this same UW research team to bring together computer scientists and psychologists interested in decision-making in different cultural contexts, which could inform our understanding of human and machine learning.

An eventual aim of the study is to use tools from artificial intelligence research and online interactions with humans around the world to understand how one's culture influences social and moral decision-making.

"This project is a wonderful example of how the tools of computer science can be combined with psychological science to understand human moral behaviors, revealing new information for the public good," said co-author Rajesh Rao, the Hwang Endowed Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the UW.

For COVID-19 and future humanitarian crises, the ethical dilemmas presented in the study can offer insight into what propels people to help, which can, in turn, inform policy and outreach.

"While it is true that many people don't seem to be exhibiting helpful behaviors during this pandemic, what our study shows is that there are specific characteristics that predict who is especially likely to engage in such behavior," Barragan said. "Future work could help people to feel a stronger connection to others, and this could promote more helpful behavior during pandemics."

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Additional co-authors were Koosha Khalvati, a doctoral student in the Allen School and Rechele Brooks, a research scientist with I-LABS.

The study was funded by the UW, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

 

Bacterial competition in situations of food scarcity prevents survival of mutants

Study compares the phenomenon observed in the species E. coli to a "tragedy of the commons", in which individual interests take precedence over the collective good. It masks the emergence of variants and makes the colony's mutation rate seem lower.

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

Research News 

IMAGE: AT TIMES OF NUTRITIONAL SCARCITY, BACTERIA DON'T INTERACT FOR MUTUAL BENEFIT, TO ASSURE GROWTH OF THE COLONY. view more 

CREDIT: BENY SPIRA

A study conducted by researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil shows that competition for nutrients and lack of cooperation among bacteria of the species Escherichia coli in the same population and in situations of food scarcity prevent mutants that are better adapted to the environment from flourishing, except those that organize in small groups. The phenomenon masks the emergence of novel bacterial variants, making the mutation rate seem lower than it is in fact.

Mutants constantly emerge and accumulate from one generation to the next. Mutation frequency determines the evolution of a given species. Understanding the origin of mutations is also important to explain biological processes. In the case of bacteria, for example, it helps explain the potential evolutionary divergence of a pathogen in an epidemic or resistance to antibiotics.

In an article on the study published in the journal BMC Biology, the researchers compare what happens in colonies of E. coli with the "tragedy of the commons", a term used by economists as well as ecologists to refer to the problems that occur when individuals pursue personal gain to the detriment of their community, resulting in the destruction of public goods or natural resources.

"At times of nutritional scarcity, bacteria don't interact for mutual benefit, to assure growth of the colony. We found that even the emergence of a few individuals that can use the available food sources doesn't prevent this lack of cooperation from jeopardizing the entire population. Only a small number of mutants are able to multiply and form new colonies," said Beny Spira, a professor at the university's Biomedical Sciences Institute (ICB-USP) and last author of the article.

The finding explains the longstanding question of why the frequency of mutants capable of cleaving certain nutrients (breaking them down into molecules that can be metabolized) is always much lower in practice than in theory.

The research on mutant frequency masking is part of a project supported by São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP via a Research Regular Grant, a doctoral scholarship and a scientific initiation grant.

Tragedy of the commons

Unlike wild-type E. coli, bacteria with PHO-constitutive mutations overexpress the enzyme alkaline phosphatase and hence can cleave glycerol-2-phosphate (G2P) to release phosphate and glycerol, an important source of carbon, especially in situations of nutritional scarcity. PHO stands for phosphate. The "PHO regulon" helps plant cells survive and thrive despite nutrient scarcity and phosphate depletion in the environment.

The frequency of PHO-constitutive colonies on G2P selective plates (cell culture dishes) is exceptionally low. "When we measure actual mutant frequency, we find that in a population of 100 billion bacteria there are tens of thousands of PHO-constitutive mutants. Yet only 50 to 100 manage to multiply and produce new colonies with the mutation that confers the ability to cleave G2P," Spira told.

The mutant, he explained, is capable of expressing large amounts of alkaline phosphatase, which is compartmentalized in the cell periplasm (a region between the inner cytoplasmic and outer membranes). Thus when G2P is cleaved and glycerol produced, the nutrient can be stored by the bacterium or released into the external environment, where it will be promptly taken up by the many wild-type (non-mutant) bacteria in the vicinity.

However, the glycerol released by mutants is not sufficient for colonies of wild-type bacteria to grow. Some 20,000 bacteria can be found in the vicinity of every mutant. "The few mutants that succeed in multiplying are those that cooperate with each other to form clusters and swap glycerol. Otherwise, the nutrient becomes scarce, mutants are inhibited, and the population dies out," Spira said.

Wild-type and mutant bacteria normally compete for insufficient glycerol. "Mutants don't multiply owing to the scarcity of this nutrient, creating the impression that there are no mutations and drastically reducing the frequency of PHO-constitutive mutants in the population," he said.

Inhibition of PHO-constitutive mutants, therefore, is an example of mutation frequency masked by competition between mutants and their ancestral wild-type cells. "The example shows that cases similar to a 'tragedy of the commons' may occur in other settings and should be taken into consideration when mutation rates are estimated," he said.

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About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at http://www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at http://www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

 

Pandemic-related anxiety in pregnancy

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: RESULTS OF THE SURVEY view more 

CREDIT: TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

Pregnant women in Japan who responded to an online survey early in the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated higher levels of anxiety compared to women undergoing fertility treatments and to pregnant women in Iran.

The findings were published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports.

"The pandemic has changed the social environments of pregnant women and fertility patients," says Tohoku University clinical psychologist Koubon Wakashima.

For example, restrictions in Japan meant that pregnant women have been unable to participate in group parenting classes or travel to their parents' homes to receive traditional childbirth assistance. Medical institutions in the country reported fewer women accessing infertility treatments.

Wakashima and colleagues at Tohoku University, Hokkaido University and the National Foundation of Brief Therapy posted a survey on several pregnancy and fertility websites towards the end of May and the beginning of June 2020. Almost 300 pregnant women and 13 women undergoing fertility treatment responded to a Japanese version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, originally developed by Iranian researchers.

Analyses of the surveys revealed that pregnant women in Japan had higher levels of anxiety compared to fertility patients. Their anxiety levels were associated with increased stockpiling and monitoring their own health. Pregnant women who considered social networking services an important information source expressed lower levels of anxiety compared to those who preferred newspapers and TV. Finally, the researchers compared the results of their survey to a similar one done in Iran and found that pregnant Japanese women demonstrated higher levels of anxiety compared to pregnant Iranian women.

The scientists acknowledge that their study has several limitations regarding, for example, the ability to assess strict causal relationships between anxiety and various coping behaviours, and a lack of detailed information on the media content the women were accessing.

Nevertheless, they suggest the results indicate the importance of improving communications that can help pregnant women cope with feelings of anxiety in addition to relaying information on infection prevention.

The team next aims to analyse how fear of COVID-19 varies by occupation and by time of year. They also plan to investigate how one person's fears impact other family members.

###

Tracing and controlling High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza

HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: THE NORTHERN PINTAIL, A MIGRATORY DUCK, ONE OF WHICH CARRIED THE HIGH PATHOGENICITY AVIAN INFLUENZA VIRUS H5N8 TO JAPAN (PHOTO: KOHEI OGASAWARA). view more 

CREDIT: KOHEI OGASAWARA

Scientists have discovered a route of introduction for High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Virus (HPAIV) H5N8 into Japan and, in parallel, have investigated the potential of two human anti-influenza drugs for the control of HPAI in birds.

Since October 30, 2020, there have been over 30 recorded outbreaks of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) in domestic poultry and wild fowl in Japan. This outbreak was caused by the influenza A virus H5N8, a known High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Virus (HPAIV). In such a scenario, identification of the source of the virus and its transmission route is important to control its spread.

A team of scientists led by Professor Yoshihiro Sakoda of Hokkaido University have recently found the probable route of introduction of the current HPAIV into Japan -- by migratory birds from Europe. Separately, they showed that anti-influenza drugs used for humans can potentially be used to treat HPAI in poultry and wild fowl, providing an alternative to culling infected birds. Their findings were published within a week of each other in the journal Viruses.

HPAI is a devastating disease in poultry, leading to large losses both economically and materially. Once present in domesticated poultry, the primary means of controlling HPAI is by culling all infected populations. There is no approved drug for the treatment of HPAI. In addition, it can infect captive wild birds, such as those in zoos and sanctuaries, which has major implications for the protection and conservation of endangered species.

In addition, HPAI is closely related to influenza in humans; certain strains of HPAIV have jumped to humans in the past, most recently in mid February 2021, in Russia. For prevention and control, it is vital to track the spread of this disease.

The scientists collected migratory duck feces samples from the lakeside of Lake Komuke, eastern Hokkaido in October 2020. After a number of tests, they confirmed the presence of H5N8 virus in one of the samples. Further, their genetic analysis showed that the H5N8 virus was closely related to the variants that caused outbreaks in Europe from late 2019 to early 2020 and the variants found in Korea and southern Japan from October to November 2020, rather than from the H5N8 viruses in East Asia from 2018-2019. This suggested that the H5N8 virus transmitted with migratory birds from Europe to Eastern Asia within 10 months. In addition, the team found that it is a different H5N8 variant that is causing current outbreaks in Europe, raising the alarm that the northern biosphere is becoming a reservoir of HPAIV.

The scientists also investigated two antivirals, baloxavir marboxil (BXM) and peramivir (PR), used for the treatment of influenza in humans for their potential to treat HPAI in poultry. In their experiments, both drugs improved the survival rate of infected chickens and reduced viral amounts in their organs and feces, with BXM showing higher efficacy. Further work on BXM suggested that an early single-administration of BXM at doses of 2.5 mg/kg or higher would be most effective for the treatment of HPAI in real-life settings.

"Based on our findings, the government authorities warned poultries in Japan in November last year, which helped local businesses take measures to prevent potential outbreaks. As in the past years, we will continue to monitor HPAIV in migratory birds visiting Hokkaido as well as researching possible treatments of the disease," said Sakoda.

The next steps would be to confirm if the strain of H5N8 detected by the scientists is responsible for the ongoing HPAI outbreak in Japan, and to verify if BXM is capable of treating HPAI in rare wild birds and poultry farms.

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References

1. Augustin Twabela, et al. Evaluation of Baloxavir Marboxil and Peramivir for the Treatment of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza in Chickens. Viruses. December 8, 2020. (https://doi.org/10.3390/v12121407)

2. Norikazu Isoda, et al. Re-Invasion of H5N8 High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Virus Clade 2.3.4.4b in Hokkaido, Japan, 2020. Viruses. December 14, 2020. (https://doi.org/10.3390/v12121439) The key paper is the second paper (Norikazu Isoda, et al).

The full funding information for the papers is as follows:

1. Augustin Twabela, et al.: Environment Research and Technology Development (JPMEERF18S20103), Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development ( JP18Fm0108008), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JP20jm0110019).

2. Norikazu Isoda, et al.: Environment Research and Technology Development (JPMEERF18S20103), Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (JP20jm0210054h0004), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JP20jm0110019).

CAPTION

Northern Pintails on Lake Komuke, eastern Hokkaido, the site where the infected feces sample was collected (Photo: Kohei Ogasawara).

CREDIT

Kohei Ogasawara

Climate change damaging North America's largest temperate rainforest, harming salmon

CU Denver's Brian Buma joined researchers to evaluate the region's ecosystem of 200-foot trees and deep soils

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER

Research News

 

New research released in Bioscience found that a remote region of North America's largest temperate rainforest is experiencing changes to its ecosystem due to climate change. Brian Buma, a researcher and professor of integrated biology at University of Colorado Denver, co-leads the research network that outlined the changes in a new paper.

North America's largest remaining temperate rainforest, located in Southeast Alaska, is one of the most pristine and intact ecosystems. The entire ecosystem stretches well over 2,000 km from north to south and stores more carbon in its forests than any other.

The region can store more than 1,000 tons per hectare of carbon in biomass and soil. Although the area is extremely remote, researchers say it is not immune from the negative impacts of climate change. Glaciers are disappearing faster than most other places on Earth and winter snows are turning into winter rains. This is leading to a change in stream temperatures, which can harm salmon, and changes in ground temperatures, causing the death of forests.

"This is an incredible landscape in a relatively compact area we have as much biomass carbon as 8% of the lower 48 states put together," said Buma. "The 200-foot trees, the deep soils--it's just layers and layers of life. And that land is so intertwined with the water that any change in one means massive change in the other, downstream and into the ocean."

Why is this important? Forests absorb more carbon than they release. Trees absorb carbon during photosynthesis, removing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Since the forest is growing faster as the climate warms, a lot of that carbon "leaks" out through the creeks and rivers. This carbon powers downstream and marine ecosystems, which thrive on the flow of energy off the land.

"This region is immensely important to global carbon cycles and our national carbon strategy, but we still don't know the direction overall carbon stocks and movement will take as the world warms," said Buma. "While there is ample research identifying how important this area is, more work is needed to determine where this large reservoir will trend in the future."

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Credit for the research paper is attributed to a workshop organized by the Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network, supported by the National Science Foundation, the University of Washington Freshwater Initiative, the Hakai Institute, and the University of Alaska Southeast.Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

How India's rice production can adapt to climate change challenges

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Research News

 

IMAGE: FARM WORKERS PLANT RICE TRANSPLANTS AT THE BORLAUG INSTITUTE FOR SOUTH ASIA'S RESEARCH FARM IN BIHAR, INDIA. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

URBANA, Ill. ¬- As the global population grows, the demand for food increases while arable land shrinks. A new University of Illinois study investigates how rice production in India can meet future needs by adapting to changing climate conditions and water availability.

"Rice is the primary crop in India, China, and other countries in Southeast Asia. Rice consumption is also growing in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world," says Prasanta Kalita, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at U of I and lead author on the study.

"If you look at where they traditionally grow rice, it is countries that have plenty of water, or at least they used to. They have tropical weather with heavy rainfall they depend on for rice production. Overall, about 4,000 liters of water go into production and processing per kilogram of rice," he states.

Climate change is likely to affect future water availability, and rice farmers must implement new management practices to sustain production and increase yield, Kalita says.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the world population will grow by two billion people by 2050, and food demand will increase by 60%.

"We will need multiple efforts to meet that demand," Kalita states. "And with two billion more people, we will also need more water for crop production, drinking water, and industrial use."

Kalita and his colleagues conducted the study at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia's research farm in Bihar, India. Farmers in the region grow rice during the monsoon season, when heavy rainfall sustains the crop.

The researchers collected data on rice yield and climate conditions, then used computer simulations to model future scenarios based on four global climate models. The purpose of the study was to estimate rice yield and water demand by 2050, and evaluate how farmers can adapt to the effects of climate change.

"As the weather changes, it affects temperature, rainfall, and carbon dioxide concentration. These are essential ingredients for crop growth, especially for rice. It's a complicated system, and effects are difficult to evaluate and manage," Kalita states.

"Our modeling results show the crop growth stage is shrinking. The time for total maturity from the day you plant to the day you harvest is getting shorter. The crops are maturing faster, and as a result, you don't get the full potential of the yield."

If farmers maintain current practices, rice yield will decrease substantially by 2050, the study shows. But various management strategies can mitigate the effects of climate change, and the researchers provide a series of recommendations.

Traditional rice farming involves flooding the fields with water. Rice transplants need about six inches of standing water. If fields aren't level, it requires even more water to cover the crops, Kalita says. However, if farmers use direct-seeded rice instead of transplants, they can increase production while using significantly less water.

Another practice involves soil conservation technology. "The soil surface continuously loses water because of temperature, humidity, and wind. If you keep crop residue on the ground, it reduces the evaporation and preserves water. Furthermore, when the crop residue decomposes, it will help increase soil quality," Kalita explains.

The researchers also suggest implementing strategies to prevent post-harvest crop losses. FAO estimates about 30% of crops are lost or wasted after harvest, so efforts to reduce those losses can further increase crop availability and food security.

Overall, the best approach to achieve a 60% increase in rice production while minimizing additional irrigation needs is a combination of conservation strategies and a 30% reduction in post-harvest loss, the researchers conclude.

###

The Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering is in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois.

The article, "Predicting the water requirement for rice production as affected by projected climate change in Bihar, India" is published in Water.

Authors are Ranjeet Jha, Prasanta Kalita, Richard Cooke, Praveen Kumar, Paul Davidson, and Rajkumar Jat.

This research was partly funded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

 

THIRD WORLD USA

Multiple factors synergistically drive socioeconomic disparities in flu burden

Computational modeling identifies areas where inequities are most severe and overlooked

PLOS

Research Ne

 

IMAGE: FLU view more 

CREDIT: FLOCKINE, PIXABAY

A comprehensive modeling study sheds new light on socioeconomic-based mechanisms that drive disparities in influenza burden across the U.S. Casey Zipfel of Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and colleagues present this analysis in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology.

People of lower socioeconomic status experience increased burden of influenza. Past studies have identified various factors that underlie this health inequity, including decreased flu vaccination, lack of access to paid sick leave, lack of healthcare access, increased susceptibility to infection, and different exposure patterns. However, no previous study has considered all of these factors at once.

For the new study, Zipfel and colleagues considered how multiple underlying factors independently and synergistically drive health disparities in influenza burden. They combined large-scale disease datasets and observations from past studies to develop data-driven computational models, enabling them to explore how various factors impact influenza transmission and burden for people of varying socioeconomic status across the U.S.

The analysis showed that people of lower socioeconomic status bear a disproportionate burden of influenza infection in the U.S., and this disparity arises from the synergistic combination of multiple social-economic and healthcare factors. The researchers also identified geographic regions where disparities are most severe and where existing systems to track influenza tend to overlook flu cases among people of low socioeconomic status.

"As the divide in health disparities grows wider across the world, it is imperative that we continue to understand how social determinants impact health, and how this is reflected geographically," Zipfel says. "Our work spotlights inequities in respiratory disease transmission, currently on display due to the COVID-19 pandemic."

The new findings could help inform efforts to eliminate public health disparities due to socioeconomic status and systemic racism. Meanwhile, the researchers note the need to collect better data on healthcare access and usage among people of low socioeconomic status in order to validate their model findings and inform future research and public health efforts.

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Peer-reviewed; Simulation / modelling

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Computational Biology: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008642

Citation: Zipfel CM, Colizza V, Bansal S (2021) Health inequities in influenza transmission and surveillance. PLoS Comput Biol 17(3): e1008642. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008642

Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01GM123007 (SB, https://www.nih.gov/). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We also acknowledge support from the PhRMA Foundation, the Chateaubriand Fellowship Program, and the Georgetown Global Health Initiative (CMZ, https://www.phrma.org/en, https://www.chateaubriand-fellowship.org/, https://globalhealth.georgetown.edu/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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

 

USA

Mapping the best places to plant trees

CELL PRESS

Research News

 

IMAGE: THIS IMAGE SHOWS THE REFORESTATION HUB TOOL. view more 

CREDIT: THE NATURE CONSERVANCY AND AMERICAN FORESTS

Reforestation could help to combat climate change, but whether and where to plant trees is a complex choice with many conflicting factors. To combat this problem, researchers reporting in the journal One Earth on December 18 have created the Reforestation Hub, an interactive map of reforestation opportunity in the United States. The tool will help foresters, legislators, and natural resource agency staff weigh the options while developing strategies to restore lost forests.

"Often the information we need to make informed decisions about where to deploy reforestation already exists, it's just scattered across a lot of different locations," says author Susan Cook-Patton, a Senior Forest Restoration Scientist at the Nature Conservancy. "Not everybody has the computer science experience to delve into the raw data, so we tried to bring this information together to develop a menu of options for reforestation, allowing people to choose what they would like to see in their community, state, or nation."

The culmination of these efforts is the Reforestation Hub, a web-based interactive map that color-codes individual counties by reforestation opportunity or level of potential for successful reforestation. And the results show that there is a great deal of reforestation opportunity in the United States.

"There are up to 51.6 million hectares (about 200,000 square miles) of opportunity to restore forest across the United States after excluding productive cropland and other places where trees are infeasible," she says. "Those additional forested areas could absorb the emissions equivalent to all the personal vehicles in California, Texas, and New York combined."

In addition to quantifying the amount of land that could yield viable forests, the Hub also identifies trends in how this opportunity is distributed throughout the country.

"While there's no single best place to restore forest cover, we did find a particularly high density of opportunity in the Southeastern United States," says Cook-Patton. "This is a region where carbon accumulation rates are high, costs are low, and there is a lot of opportunity to achieve multiple benefits like creating habitats for biodiversity, improving water quality, and climate mitigation."

The map also quantifies the acreage of 10 individual opportunity classes--or categories based on land ownership and quality. Some of these include pastures, post-burn lands, and floodplains. "The choice to plant trees really depends on what people want out of the landscape, whether it's controlling flood waters, improving urban environments, or recovering forests after a fire," she says.

The researchers hope to create similar maps for other countries, an important next step for combating the global problem of climate change.

"We have about a decade to get climate change in check," Cook-Patton says, "and I am excited about the potential for this study to help accelerate decisions to invest in reforestation as a climate solution."

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The research was supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rodney Johnson and Katharine Ordway Stewardship Endowment. The Reforestation Hub was created with support from American Forests and the Sant Foundation.

The Reforestation Hub can be found at https://www.reforestationhub.org/

One Earth, Cook-Patton et al.: "Lower cost and more feasible options to restore forest cover in the contiguous United States for climate mitigation" https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(20)30603-5?utm_source=EA

One Earth (@OneEarth_CP), published by Cell Press, is a monthly journal that features papers from the fields of natural, social, and applied sciences. One Earth is the home for high-quality research that seeks to understand and address today's environmental Grand Challenges, publishing across the spectrum of environmental change and sustainability science. A sister journal to Cell, Chem, and Joule, One Earth aspires to break down barriers between disciplines and stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas with a platform that unites communities, fosters dialogue, and encourages transformative research. Visit http://www.cell.com/one-earth. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.