Friday, March 12, 2021

Combined technique using diamond probes for nanoscale imaging of magnetic vortex structure

Magnetometry exploiting color center defects in diamond probes and magneto-optic imaging found to complement each other; progress towards the creation of more effective data storage systems

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ

Research News

IMAGE: DIAMOND MAGNETOMETER WITH NITROGEN-VACANCY DEFECTS BEING OPTICALLY INITIALIZED USING GREEN LASER LIGHT view more
CREDIT: PHOTO/©: ARNE WICKENBROCK, JGU

Obtaining a precise understanding of magnetic structures is one of the main objectives of solid-state physics. Significant research is currently being undertaken in this field, the aim being to develop future data processing applications that use tiny magnetic structures as information carriers. Physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) recently presented a new method for investigating magnetic structures combining two different techniques. This allows to measure and map the magnetization as well as the magnetic fields of the sample. Involved in the project were atomic physicists from the work group led by Professor Dmitry Budker and the team of experimental solid-state physicists led by Professor Mathias Kläui. The findings have been published in "Physical Review Applied".

"In this project we combined two quantum sensing techniques which never before had been used together to analyze a sample," explained Till Lenz, first author of the article and a doctoral candidate in Budker's group. One well-known method employed in solid-state physics uses the magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE) in order to detect magnetic fields and magnetization. "But this gives us only a limited amount of information," said Lenz. For this reason, the researchers decided to combine the Kerr effect with magnetometry methods that utilize so-called diamond color centers in order to also enable the mapping of magnetic fields. "We hope that this will lead to new insights when it comes to solid-state physics and ferromagnetic structures," stated Georgios Chatzidrosos, also a doctoral student in the Budker group. Professor Mathias Kläui is excited about the new measuring capabilities: "The use of diamond probes provides a sensitivity that opens up entirely new options with regard to measurement potentials."

New combined measurement methods can be used in a wide range of different ambient conditions

Diamond is not only a precious stone but is also used to make cutting and grinding tools. Specific defects in the diamond crystal lattice result in properties that can be used to examine magnetic structures. These color centers, also known as nitrogen-vacancy centers, are point defects in the carbon lattice structure of diamond. The research group led by Professor Dmitry Budker uses these color centers in diamond as probes to measure magnetic phenomena.

Diamond-based magnetometers can function at very low temperatures as well at temperatures above room temperature, while the distances required between sample and probe can be miniscule, in the range of just a few nanometers. "We have a thin layer of nitrogen defects in a diamond crystal and with this we can map magnetic structures and take photos of magnetic fields," explained Dr. Arne Wickenbrock from the Budker group. And co-author Dr. Lykourgos Bougas added: "By mapping all the components of a magnetic field, we can complement and extend the possibilities offered by magneto-optic measurements."

Support for the JGU Dynamics and Topology (TopDyn) Top-level Research Area

"The probe that functions with the help of diamond color centers is much more sensitive than conventional tools and provides us with extremely good results. We are able to access some fascinating samples, which results in unique opportunities for cooperation," emphasized Professor Mathias Kläui, describing the advantage of the collaboration between the two research groups. "Combining our complementary measurement techniques enables the complete reconstruction of the magnetic properties of our samples." The recently published article is the product of teamwork within the Dynamics and Topology (TopDyn) Top-level Research Area at JGU, which is funded by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In addition, the work was also undertaken under the umbrella of the 3D MAGiC project, which was launched in collaboration with Forschungszentrum Jülich and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and has been awarded an ERC Synergy Grant.

To quote the paper published in "Physical Review Applied": "Our concept represents a novel platform for wide-field imaging of the magnetization and resultant magnetic fields of magnetic structures using engineered diamond magnetic sensors and an optical setup that allows for both measurement modalities." In addition to the two JGU and HIM work groups, also involved was Professor Yannick Dumeige of Université de Rennes 1 in France, who as a recipient of a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2018 also worked with the Budker group. Professor Kai-Mei Fu, physicist at the University of Washington, also participated in the project as a HIM Distinguished Visitor.

Looking to the future, the cooperation partners plan to employ the new technique to analyze various multidisciplinary aspects that are of particular interest to the respective groups. These include investigating two-dimensional magnetic materials, the magnetic effects of molecular chirality, and high-temperature superconductivity.

CAPTION

A thin layer of nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond allows to measure magnetic structures of samples.

CREDIT

photo/©: Arne Wickenbrock, JGU

CAPTION

Experimental setup for the imaging of magnetic structures using simultaneous magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE) microscopy and wide-field diamond magnetometry

CREDIT

photo/©: Arne Wickenbrock, JGU

Scientists' discovery ends long-standing photosynthesis controversy

New findings overturn conventional thinking about the location of a key plant enzyme involved in photosynthesis

ELIFE

Research News

Scientists have pinpointed the location of an essential enzyme in plant cells involved in photosynthesis, according to a study published today in eLife.

The findings overturn conventional thinking about where the enzyme resides in plant cells and suggest a probable role in regulating energy processes as plants adapt from dark to light conditions.

During photosynthesis, plants convert carbon into energy stores through 'electron transport', involving an enzyme called ferredoxin:NADP(H) oxidoreductase, or FNR.

Plants can switch rapidly between two types of electron transport - linear electron flow (LEF) and cyclic electron flow (CEF) in response to environmental conditions. The transfer of FNR between membrane structures in the chloroplast, where photosynthesis takes place, has been linked to this switch.

"Current dogma states that FNR carries out its function in the soluble compartment of the chloroplast, but evidence suggests that the activity of FNR increases when it is attached to an internal membrane," explains first author Manuela Kramer, a PhD student at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, UK. "We needed to find out precisely where FNR is located in the chloroplast, how it interacts with other proteins, and how this affects its activity in order to understand its role in switching between electron transport processes."

The researchers used immuno-gold staining to pinpoint FNR in more than 300 chloroplasts from 18 individual Arabidopsis plants. The staining density of FNR was five times higher in the internal membrane system of the chloroplast (thylakoids) than in the soluble compartment (stroma), where it did not rise above background levels. This significantly higher labelling in the membrane proved that chloroplasts contain little soluble FNR, and confirmed for the first time where the enzyme is located.

To understand more about FNR's location, the team generated plants where the enzyme is specifically bound to different proteins called 'tether proteins'. In Arabidopsis plants with decreased FNR content, they substituted three versions of FNR from maize, each with a different capacity for binding to the tether proteins TROL and Tic62. They found that rescue with maize FNR types that strongly bound to the Tic62 tether protein resulted in much higher density of gold FNR labelling in specific, lamellar membrane regions of the thylakoids. This suggests that the distribution of FNR throughout the chloroplast in plant cells is dependent on binding to the tether proteins.

Finally, the team tested how FNR location affects electron transport, by comparing electron flow rates when plants were adapted to the dark with electron flow after their acclimatisation to light. In normal dark-adapted plants, a short exposure to light resulted in a switch to higher CEF activity. However, this was not seen in plants lacking strong interaction between FNR and the tether proteins, suggesting these plants lack the ability to switch on CEF. After light acclimatisation, both the wild-type and mutant plants had similar, decreased CEF activity, suggesting that the impact of FNR is related to light-dependent changes in the interactions between the enzyme and tether proteins.

"Our results show a link between the interaction of FNR with different proteins and the activity of an alternative photosynthetic electron transport pathway," concludes senior author Guy Hanke, Senior Lecturer in Plant Cell and Molecular Biology at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London. "This supports a role for FNR location in regulating photosynthetic electron flow during the transition of plants from dark to light."

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Media contact

Emily Packer, Media Relations Manager
eLife
e.packer@elifesciences.org
+44 (0)1223 855373

About eLife

eLife is a non-profit organisation created by funders and led by researchers. Our mission is to accelerate discovery by operating a platform for research communication that encourages and recognises the most responsible behaviours. We aim to publish work of the highest standards and importance in all areas of biology and medicine, including Plant Biology, while exploring creative new ways to improve how research is assessed and published. eLife receives financial support and strategic guidance from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.

To read the latest Plant Biology research published in eLife, visit https://elifesciences.org/subjects/plant-biology.

Author contact details for more information: Guy Hanke, senior author (Queen Mary University of London, UK) - g.hanke@qmul.ac.uk

Full list of funders for this study:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, University Grenoble Alpes graduate school, European Research Council, LabEx Saclay Plant Sciences-SPS, French Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology, Bayer CropScience

Grant numbers:

BB/R004838/1, ANR-10-LABX-49-01, ANR-10-LABX-0040-SPS, ANR-10-INSB-05, F-2016-BS-0555

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes to people's wellbeing around the world

A decrease in physical activity during the pandemic was associated with poorer perceived physical and mental health

UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ - JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO

Research News

IMAGE: THERE HAS BEEN GREAT VARIABILITY IN PEOPLE'S PHYSICAL ACTIVITY DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC. view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ

According to an international study published in Frontiers in Psychology, people around the world have reported changes in their physical activity levels, wellbeing, and eating habits during the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. A decrease in physical activity during the pandemic was associated with poorer perceived physical and mental health. Reduced exercise was also associated with perceptions of weight gain and decreased sleep.

More than a thousand individuals from several countries with different containment measures participated in an online survey that explored changes in physical activity, eating, sleep, physical and mental health, and wellbeing during the first lockdown phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted in collaboration between the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä, the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Northampton in the United Kingdom.

Comparisons across countries revealed significant differences in physical health, with Finnish participants reporting higher values and participants residing in the UK indicating poorer health.

There was great variability in participants' physical activity. Some individuals reported a high increase in physical activity while others reported a great decrease.

"Increased physical activity was associated with better physical health as rated over the past week along with increased wellbeing and sleep," says Sport and Exercise Psychology Lecturer Montse Ruiz from the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. "In contrast, reduced physical activity was related to lowest mental health, represented by more personal and emotional problems, and a signi?cant increase in eating and weight."

Participants living in Latin American countries perceived themselves to have poorer mental health, compared to South Koreans who indicated being significantly less affected by personal or emotional problems. Filipino participants reported higher sleep and eating scores compared to the other countries.

"Our findings indicate that irrespective of country of residence or age, participants reporting reduced physical activity typically experienced poorer physical and mental health along with diminished wellbeing," Ruiz says. "Reduced exercise was also associated with perceptions of weight gain and decreased sleep."

To minimize the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a range of containment measures, including the restriction of people's movement, were implemented in several countries. As a result, changes in peoples' behaviors were observed, such as the well-documented instances of panic buying and stockpiling of household items.

"As the containment measures related to COVID-19 continue, our findings highlight the importance of exercise in maintaining good physical and mental health," Ruiz says. "As such, we encourage individuals to find ways of incorporating physical activity into their day where possible."

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Ecosystem restoration is a pressing issue in fragmented rainforest

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

Research News

IMAGE: AIRBORNE LIDARS ARE USUAL AIRPLANES FLYING ACROSS THE STUDIED FORESTS WITH A SENSOR ATTACHED TO THEM. view more
CREDIT: PHOTO: AIRCRAFT NERC, LANDSCAPE BENJAMIN BLONDER. IMAGE PROCESSING JANI NÄRHI

In light of the United Nations (UN) declaration that 2021-2030 is the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a group of scientists voice concerns about restoration in heavily fragmented landscapes under a hotter and drier future scenario.

Poor recovery of small fragments will end up costing management and wider society later down the line. Millions are invested in setting aside patches, but management is then weak and costly.

Rainforests turn into oil palm plantations

The past 40 years in Southeast Asia have seen about 50% of lowland rainforests converted to oil palm and other plantations, and much of the remaining forest heavily logged.

Little is known about how fragmentation influences recovery and whether climate change will hamper restoration.

"Here, we use repeat airborne LiDAR surveys spanning the hot and dry 2015-16 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event to measure canopy height growth across 3,300 ha of regenerating tropical forests spanning a logging intensity gradient in Malaysian Borneo", says postdoctoral researcher Matheus Nunes from the University of Helsinki, lead author of the paper recently published in Nature Communications.

Repeat high-density airborne LiDAR across the human-modified forests of Borneo provided a unique perspective on the regrowth of forests during the 2015-2016 ENSO and the environmental controls on the canopy. Regeneration of logged forests was still positive during the hot and dry ENSO in Borneo when the highest temperatures and the highest VPD exceeded 2.1 °C and 140% the local long-term average during non-El Niño years. The results demonstrate that regenerating logged forests in this landscape - which contain a high abundance of pioneer tree species with acquisitive traits - continued to grow, despite the high temperatures and water demand in these logged forests.

However, the predictions revealed in the paper show that environmental controls were key to modulating regrowth at the landscape level.

Fragmentation effects increased exponentially with proximity to oil palm plantations, which is consistent with the long-term fragmentation effects that lead to tree mortality and lower productivity.

"Additionally, we demonstrate that the position of fragmented forests across the landscape was also a predictor of forest growth, with valleys and riparian forests showing higher canopy growth compared to those on hilltops during the El Niño", says Nunes.

Suggestions to the Roundtable for Sustainable Oil Palm

Oil palm companies that have joined the Roundtable for Sustainable Oil Palm are committed to the protection of high conservation value forests along rivers and on steep slopes within their estates.

"Our results suggest buffers have to be wide (at least 40 m on each side of the river) to ensure the interior of the strip retains a stable canopy height during droughts", says Nunes.

This is twice the width of what is currently required by law in Sabah, Malaysia. If designed and protected appropriately, riparian reserves in oil palm estates support regrowth with potential positive consequences for the global carbon cycle and for ecosystem function.

The results also demonstrate that small, fragmented patches of regenerating logged forests left on hilltops will be slow to recover due to lower water availability, particularly as El Niño events are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change. Fragmentation in these regenerating logged forests leads to consistent canopy loss within 110 m from oil palm plantations. These results suggest that small patches of logged forests on hilltops will not recover, reflecting the intertwined effects of fragmentation and climate.

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Reference:

Recovery of logged forest fragments in a human-modified tropical landscape during the 2015-16 El

Niño: Matheus Henrique Nunes, Tommaso Jucker, Terhi Riutta, Martin Svátek, Jakub Kvasnica, Martin Rej�ek, Radim Matula, Noreen Majalap, Robert M. Ewers, Tom Swinfield, Rubén Valbuena, Nicholas R. Vaughn, Gregory P. Asner and David A. Coomes

Link to Nature Communications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20811-y

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20811-y

Making the role of AI in medicine explainable

Analysis system for the diagnosis of breast cancer

CHARITÉ - UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN BERLIN

Research News

IMAGE: DETECTION OF TUMOR-INFILTRATING LYMPHOCYTES (TILS) USING EXPLAINABLE AI. THE AI-TECHNIQUE IS USED TO GENERATE A HEATMAP SHOWING TILS (RED) AND OTHER TISSUES AND CELLS (BLUE AND GREEN). view more
CREDIT: IMAGE: KLAUSCHEN/CHARITÉ

Researchers at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and TU Berlin as well as the University of Oslo have developed a new tissue-section analysis system for diagnosing breast cancer based on artificial intelligence (AI). Two further developments make this system unique: For the first time, morphological, molecular and histological data are integrated in a single analysis. Secondly, the system provides a clarification of the AI decision process in the form of heatmaps. Pixel by pixel, these heatmaps show which visual information influenced the AI decision process and to what extent, thus enabling doctors to understand and assess the plausibility of the results of the AI analysis. This represents a decisive and essential step forward for the future regular use of AI systems in hospitals. The results of this research have now been published in Nature Machine Intelligence*.

Cancer treatment is increasingly concerned with the molecular characterization of tumor tissue samples. Studies are conducted to determine whether and/or how the DNA has changed in the tumor tissue as well as the gene and protein expression in the tissue sample. At the same time, researchers are becoming increasingly aware that cancer progression is closely related to intercellular cross-talk and the interaction of neoplastic cells with the surrounding tissue - including the immune system.

Although microscopic techniques enable biological processes to be studied with high spatial detail, they only permit a limited measurement of molecular markers. These are rather determined using proteins or DNA taken from tissue. As a result, spatial detail is not possible and the relationship between these markers and the microscopic structures is typically unclear. "We know that in the case of breast cancer, the number of immigrated immune cells, known as lymphocytes, in tumor tissue has an influence on the patient's prognosis. There are also discussions as to whether this number has a predictive value - in other words if it enables us to say how effective a particular therapy is," says Prof. Dr. Frederick Klauschen of Charité's Institute of Pathology.

"The problem we have is the following: We have good and reliable molecular data and we have good histological data with high spatial detail. What we don't have as yet is the decisive link between imaging data and high-dimensional molecular data," adds Prof. Dr. Klaus-Robert Müller, professor of machine learning at TU Berlin. Both researchers have been working together for a number of years now at the national AI center of excellence the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) located at TU Berlin.

It is precisely this symbiosis which the newly published approach makes possible. "Our system facilitates the detection of pathological alterations in microscopic images. Parallel to this, we are able to provide precise heatmap visualizations showing which pixel in the microscopic image contributed to the diagnostic algorithm and to what extent," explains Prof. Müller. The research team has also succeeded in significantly further developing this process: "Our analysis system has been trained using machine learning processes so that it can also predict various molecular characteristics, including the condition of the DNA, the gene expression as well as the protein expression in specific areas of the tissue, on the basis of the histological images.

Next on the agenda are certification and further clinical validations - including tests in tumor routine diagnostics. However, Prof. Klauschen is already convinced of the value of the research: "The methods we have developed will make it possible in the future to make histopathological tumor diagnostics more precise, more standardized and qualitatively better."

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*Binder A et al. Morphological and molecular breast cancer profiling through explainable machine learning. Nat Mach Intell (2021), doi: 10.1038/s42256-021-00303-4

CAPTION

Breast cancer tissue sample (hematoxylin and eosin staining).

CREDIT

Image: Klauschen/Charité

School closures may have wiped out a year of academic progress for pupils in Global South

As much as a year's worth of past academic progress made by disadvantaged children in the Global South may have been wiped out by school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have calculated.

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Research News

The research, by academics from the University of Cambridge and RTI International, attempts to quantify the scale of learning loss that children from poor and marginalised communities in the Global South may have experienced, and the extent to which home support and access to learning resources could ameliorate it. While it is known that the education of these children has suffered disproportionately during the pandemic, it is much harder to measure exactly how much their academic progress has been impeded while schools have been closed.

The researchers used data from Ghana to model the likely impact of closures for children in remote and deprived parts of that country. They found that on average, 66% of the learning gains made in foundational numeracy during the academic year are lost during three months out of school. The outcome is, however, far worse for children without adequate home learning resources or support.

The authors suggest these findings provide a glimpse of a much wider pattern of learning loss that is being experienced by millions of disadvantaged children around the world.

Co-author Professor Ricardo Sabates, from the REAL Centre in the University's Faculty of Education, said: "Despite teachers' best efforts, we know school closures have held up, or reversed, the progress of millions of children. This study is one approach to estimate how much learning could have been lost, and how much worse this may have been for children from disadvantaged settings."

"These figures represent an estimate of learning loss for children who spent 3 to 4 months out of school. We expect that as schools remained closed for longer, losses could be higher. We also acknowledge the important support that many families and communities provided with supplementary learning, which may have in turn limited the potential loss overall."

The study built on earlier research that highlighted the significant learning losses that occur when certain groups of children in developing countries move from one academic year to the next, particularly those who change language of instruction, and disadvantaged girls.

The researchers used data charting the progress of more than 1,100 students on Ghana's Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme between 2016 and 2018. This programme supports children aged eight to 14 who would not normally attend school, providing them with education in their own language and at flexible times. On completion, students are encouraged to enrol at a local government school, but the start of that school year occurs after a three-month gap, during which they receive no education.

The researchers compared participants' scores in foundational maths tests at four stages: when they started the CBE, when they finished, when they joined a government school, and after their first year in government school. They also accessed data about how much home learning support the students had - for example, whether they had books at home, or could seek help from an adult when struggling with homework.

During the CBE programme, the students' test scores improved, on average, by 27 percentage points. When they were tested again after the three-month gap, however, their scores had reduced by an average of 18 percentage points. Two-thirds of the gains these students had made during the previous academic year were therefore lost while they were out of school. The researchers argue that this is an upper estimate of the expected scale of loss during an equivalent period of school closures due to COVID-19. Fortunately, during the pandemic community efforts to enhance learning may have mitigated this effect for some children.

In spite of this, they also found that the basic learning loss was compounded among children who lacked support to study at home. For example:

* Children without access to reading and learning resources at home (such as books) experienced a learning loss above 80%.

* Children who said that they never asked adults in their household for help experienced a learning loss of around 85%.

Encouragingly, the study showed that in the first year of formal education, students not only recouped their learning loss, but improved, while the attainment gap between more and less advantaged students narrowed.

In many countries, however, it is becoming clear that many disadvantaged students - especially marginalised groups such as disabled children and many girls - are not returning to school. Therefore, the researchers suggest supporting access to diverse forms of education for students from less-advantaged backgrounds. There is evidence to show that community-based programmes, for example, can enhance a range of learning skills for these children. "Learning at home and in communities has to be reimagined if rapid gains are to be achieved as we continue to face the COVID-19 situation," the authors say.

The pattern of learning loss charted in Ghana may also apply far beyond the Global South. "This is an international challenge," said co-author Emma Carter, also from the REAL Centre. "In Europe and the US, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds will similarly be experiencing severe learning loss. The levels of attainment may differ between countries, but it is highly likely that the pattern of loss remains."

The evaluation data used in the study was commissioned and funded by FCDO Ghana. The research is published in the International Journal of Educational Development.

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Ice skating and permafrost

Investigation of thin liquid films at interfaces between ice and clay materials

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR POLYMER RESEARCH

Research News

For ice, so-called "surface melting" was postulated as early as the 19th century by Michael Faraday: Already below the actual melting point, i.e. 0 °C, a thin liquid film forms on the free surface because oft he interface between ice and air. Scientists led by Markus Mezger, group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (department of Hans-Jürgen Butt) and professor at the University of Vienna, have now studied this phenomenon in more detail at interfaces between ice and clay minerals.

In nature, this effect is particularly interesting in permafrost soils - i.e. soils that are permanently frozen. About a quarter of the land area in the northern hemisphere is covered by permafrost. These are composed of a mixture of ice and other materials. Microscopically thin platelets were formed over geological time by the weathering of clay minerals. Similar to a sponge, a lot of water can enter the narrow slit pores between the thin platelets, be stored there, and freeze. Therefore, there is a lot of contact area between ice and clay minerals. For every gram of clay mineral, there are about 10 square meters of surface area! This causes a comparatively high proportion of liquid water in the interfacially induced melt layer already below 0 °C.

The researchers have now investigated how fast the water molecules move in the thin melt layer at the boundary between ice and clay mineral. This value, known as "self-diffusion," is directly linked to the viscosity of the water. For three different minerals, it has been shown that the viscosity of water in the interface-induced melt layer is sometimes significantly higher than that of ordinary water - i.e., the molecules are limited in their ability to move because the layer is more viscous. These results may help to better understand various phenomena in the future, such as the mechanical stability of permafrost, the transport of plant nutrients and pollutants, and geochemical reactions such as ion exchange processes at ice/mineral interfaces.

For their measurements, the Mainz scientists collaborated with partners at the research reactors of the TU Munich and the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France. The neutrons generated in the reactors there strike the sample at a certain speed. Similar to a ball bouncing back from a vehicle moving toward it at a higher speed, velocity measurements of the neutrons scattered from the sample allow conclusions to be drawn about the motion of the water molecules in the interface-induced premelting layer.

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The results have now been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie - International Edition.

UConn researcher finds 'Goldilocks problem' in child welfare decision-making

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

Research News

When something bad happens to a child, the public and policy response is swift and forceful.

How could this have happened?

What went wrong?

What do we do to make sure it never happens again?

When a family becomes erroneously or unnecessarily enmeshed in the child welfare system, that burden is largely invisible - a burden borne mostly by the family itself.

In both situations, the fault for the systemic failure is often placed on the caseworker - overburdened, under-resourced, and forced to make quick and critical judgments about the risk of harm or neglect to children.

But, according to new study coauthored by a researcher in the UConn School of Social Work, a major tool used in child welfare decision-making - and the way agencies try to implement it - may be part of the problem.

"I think it seems appealing to have a consistent way to do something," says Megan Feely, an assistant professor of social work who specializes in child welfare and child maltreatment prevention. "It's when you get into the details that it becomes kind of murky."

In their study - recently published in the journal, Social Service Review - Feely and coauthor Emily Bosk, an assistant professor at the Rutgers University School of Social Work, examined the application of the Structured Decision-Making Model's Risk Assessment in two states.

"What to do with children who need to be safe, and families who may need help keeping their children safe, seem like some of the most important decisions a state will make," says Feely, "and it's really sort of shocking how little attention has been given to how these decisions are made - these incredibly, incredibly important decisions."

Commonly called the "RA," the risk assessment is an actuarially-based prognostic tool that provides a checklist for child welfare workers to use to help assess a family's future risk. It asks questions -- Has the family been involved in child welfare before? Have they had an allegation of neglect? Does the primary caretaker have a substance use problem? Do they have a current or past mental health problem? Are the children medically fragile? - and then categorizes the family as low, medium, high, or intensive risk, based on the worker's responses.

The RA is considered the gold standard in child welfare decision-making, developed with the goal of providing a level of standardization and predictability. It was intended to be used in conjunction with workers' clinical judgement but designed to eliminate some of the most glaring problems with clinical decision-making, such as individual variation in the interpretation of the same set of facts, implicit bias, and lack of knowledge about empirically established risk factors.

"The RA is premised on the idea that when workers follow it, different individuals are reasonably likely to come to the same conclusion about case actions," Bosk and Feely wrote. "No longer will outcomes be random - that is, contingent on which worker a family is assigned."

For their study, Bosk and Feely examined the RA's use - reviewing policies and interviewing caseworkers and their supervisors - and found drastically different applications of the assessment between the two states at the organizational level. In the first, the application of the RA has been mandated by the legislature and was used strictly and in place of clinical judgment. In the other, while the RA was always completed, it was not a significant factor in decision-making, with clinical judgment typically driving decisions.

"We call this 'the Goldilocks problem,' because one state essentially totally privileges the RA score," Feely says, "so it's a too tight interpretation of what to do with it. And in the other, most workers don't really use it, so it's an overly loose interpretation of what to do with it and how to integrate it into clinical judgment. There's no middle point."

In the so-called "tight state," workers explained they were unable to use anything other than the RA to make case determinations, which was not the intended application of the assessment by its developers. Clinical assessment was discouraged and, because of the rigidity of the framework, some workers would intentionally circumvent the RA - changing scores to either increase or decrease the predicted risk - in order to achieve a case trajectory that better matched their otherwise disregarded clinical judgment.

By contrast, in the so-called "loose state," workers were required to complete the RA, but it had little to no role in case decision-making, with the majority of workers relying on their clinical judgements and consultations with their supervisors to decide case trajectories. While the workers had significantly more flexibility in their decision making, the researchers found, the potentially systemizing and standardizing effect of the RA was eliminated.

The problem, Feely says, comes down to a flaw in the RA itself: While the developers intended for the RA to be used in conjunction with clinical judgment, they never provide any guidance or methodology on how to integrate the two. The propensity is to blame the workers, or the agencies, for the RA's shortcomings, she says, but workers consistently found the tool to be problematic, and the study validates those concerns.

"Without guidance, it's not clear how to integrate them, exactly, because it's not another piece of more qualitative information, which we would use in clinical judgment, but a hard number," Feely says. "We found that organizational context really matters for the application of the RA, and that because it's not specified in the model, organizations are responsible for figuring out how to integrate the score with clinical judgment themselves."

While that led to some workers in the "tight state" manipulating the RA, it also led workers to escalate cases involving families that, through clinical judgement, would likely not have been considered at risk. Feely said that unnecessarily high rates of child welfare involvement, particularly in marginalized communities or communities with many Black, Indigenous, or other people of color, contributes to the overall sense that the system is unfair.

"You can see how frustrating it would be if your child had autism, or was categorized as having behavioral or mental health issues, and you were on antidepressants, and then all of a sudden you're labeled as at risk," she says. "You can't do anything about those things. You can't fix them. You're not going to go off your antidepressants, because that obviously would make it worse."

She continues, "It feels like the conservative option is to err on the side of having more false positives, where people that are really not at risk are misidentified as at risk. But there are real downsides to that, and I think that, in child welfare, we're seeing a sort of paralleling with some of the attention that's on police - there are longer-term big consequences when we keep getting it wrong, because people don't trust the system."

While a clinical-based approach offers more nuance, she says, it also loses what could make the process more consistent. As the RA and other prognostic tools and their potential use in child welfare situations are being discussed, Feely said that this study offers a cautionary tale that should encourage policymakers to be wary of trusting a tool more than is warranted.

"A main issue is really having a more open discussion of how these sort of probability-based tools should be included into the context of clinical decision-making," she says. "I think that the move toward trying to incorporate more evidence and a more scientific base in social services, is positive, but I think it has to be really carefully balanced with the limits of that science. Overestimating the science, and the veracity of it, and its ability to be applicable in a particular situation, can be just as problematic for families and society as under-using it."

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Friday, March 12, 2021

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