UK
NHS budget to fund health staff’s pay rise, Downing Street says

The Government has announced that nurses, paramedics, consultants and other NHS staff will get the rise / PA Wire

Sophia SleighPolitical Correspondent@SophiaSleigh

The three per cent pay rise for health staff will be paid for from within the NHS budget, Downing Street said on Thursday.

The confirmation risks sparking a fresh row over the hike.

No10 insisted the money would not be diverted from funds “already earmarked” for the NHS frontline.

But the revelation left open from where the funding would be found in the NHS budget.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ““The pay uplift will be funded from within the NHS budget.

“But we are very clear that it will not impact funding already earmarked for the NHS frontline.

“We gave the NHS a historical settlement in 2018 which saw its budget rise by £33.9 billion by 2023/24...we provided £92 billion to support the NHS and social care through the pandemic.”

Pressed if the pay settlement was not being funded from NHS frontline expenditure, where it would come from, he added: “It will be funded from within that budget but it won’t stop any funding that has been eamarked for the frontline from taking place.”


There is “no way” the NHS can pay for the planned three per cent pay rise for staff out of its own budget, health chiefs warned on Thursday.

The Government has announced that nurses, paramedics, consultants and other NHS staff will get the rise while other public sector workers, such as police, will see their pay frozen.

However, nurses and trade unions said it is not enough and are threatening to strike following the offer to NHS staff in England and Wales.

Big questions remain over where the money will come from and there have been suggestions it could be funded through a mooted increase in National Insurance that was intended to pay for the overhaul of social care.

The chief executive of NHS Employers, an organisation that supports NHS leaders, suggested the health service could not fund the pay rise through “efficiencies”.

Danny Mortimer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The key question is: Is the Government going to fund this pay award properly?

“What we can’t have is a situation where the assumption is that the NHS will make efficiencies, will cut the number of staff or reduce the services it provides to pay for this pay award.

“What we can’t have is a situation where some parts of the NHS, particularly the services that provide specialist public health services, don’t receive the pay award in the same way that my members who run services in hospitals do.”

Former NHS Trust chairman Roy Lilley told Talk Radio: “The NHS only has a budget up until September because there’s been no spending review. The NHS doesn’t know what money it’s going to get after September, so it doesn’t know how it’s going to pay for this uplift.”

He added: “If it’s three per cent, you’re looking at about probably £2 billion. There’s no way the NHS can find £2 billion to pay this.”

The Times reported on Thursday that the rise was likely to be funded from an increase in National Insurance that was intended to pay for social care reforms.

Asked if taxes were going to increase to fund the pay rise, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told BBC Breakfast: “I don’t think they are because if the economy continues to perform strongly, if it can grow, our tax receipts will grow without having to put up tax rates. So, it means that we can afford a little bit more.”

Pressed on where the money will come from, Mr Kwarteng replied: “I’m not going to write a future budget on the 22nd of July.”

 

Study: Young workers now value respect over 'fun' perks in the workplace

Researchers at University of Missouri and Kansas State University discovered having respectful communication outweighs 'fun' work perks when attracting and retaining young workers

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

Research News

 

Millennials, often referred to as the "job-hopping generation," represent a group of young workers who once grabbed the national spotlight with their publicized demands for "fun" work perks, such as happy hours. However, researchers at the Novak Leadership Institute at the University of Missouri and Kansas State University discovered today's young workers -- ages 21-34 -- represent a life-stage shift toward placing more value on having respectful communication in the workplace over trendy work perks.

"Millennials have been called the 'entitled generation,' and they kind of give young workers a bad rap because their often-publicized interests began with wanting to have fun in the workplace, but today's young workers have shifted toward interests in doing valuable work and finding meaning in their day-to-day job functions," said Danielle LaGree, an assistant professor of strategic communication at Kansas State University, who earned her doctorate at the Missouri School of Journalism. "Leaders and managers are the ones who have the power to help foster that connection of meaningful work, determine what employee well-being means and how to communicate that meaning in a respectful way to their employees."

The team of researchers, which includes experts from the Novak Leadership Institute and the MU Department of Communication, were able to identify this shift in workplace values for young workers after surveying more than 1,000 full-time workers, ages 21-34, who represent 18 different career areas, including the service industry. The team analyzed how participants rated, on a 1 to 5 scale, how each of the following workplace culture aspects were representative of their current place of employment -- respectful engagement, autonomous respect, occupational resilience, job satisfaction, employee loyalty and retention, and job engagement.

While previous studies have reported leaders and managers spend 70-90% of their time communicating, LaGree believes this study shows more emphasis needs to be placed on training leaders and managers on how to be effective communicators and convey respectful communication with their employees. She believes that even though the study was completed before the COVID-19 pandemic began, their results continue to be relevant in today's workplaces, which may have adjusted to more of a hybrid workplace split between work and home offices, or gone entirely remote.

LaGree acknowledges the extent to which leaders and managers can foster supportive cultures and outcomes is still unclear, yet she believes their study strongly contributes to the concept that workplaces are intensely social experiences.

"As we see here with our research, actively recognizing employees for the value they bring to their organization will help equip them to bounce back after adversity, to perform better in their jobs and be more committed to their organizations in the long term," LaGree said. "I think that's especially relevant today, even though this study was conducted before the coronavirus pandemic."

Margaret Duffy, executive director of the Novak Leadership Institute and a professor of strategic communication in the Missouri School of Journalism, believes employers risk losing younger employees if they don't make an effort to use respectful communication in the workplace.

"There's a giant risk for employers if they don't help employees have a sense of purpose and a sense of well-being and engagement," Duffy said. "Coming to work may not be joyful every day, but if work is something where I can feel fulfillment, I can feel respected as a human being and most important, that I can feel that I have earned the respect and recognition that I'm given by my boss and by my co-workers."

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The study, "The effect of respect: respectful communication at work drives resiliency, engagement, and job satisfaction among early career employees," was published in the International Journal of Business Communication. Other co-authors are Brian Houston and Haejung Shin at MU. The study was funded in part by the Novak Leadership Institute.

The Novak Leadership Institute was established in 2017 with an endowment of $21.6 million from MU alumnus David Novak and family. A strategic communication graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, Novak is the retired CEO of Yum! Brands, the world's largest restaurant brand (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC).

'Nobody wants to work anymore': How a simple phrase became the oversimplified scapegoat for every problem plaguing the American labor market

"Instead of no one wants to work anymore," former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said, "Try no one wants to be exploited anymore."

insider@insider.com (Ben Gilbert) 

© Ben Gilbert / Insider A Starbucks location in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania offered a variety of additional incentives to new hires, including "Free College" and "Free Spotify." Ben Gilbert / Insider

On a recent trip to Pennsylvania, I heard the phrase "nobody wants to work anymore" over and over.

It's become common since businesses began reopening fully this spring.

As with so many memes this year, this one began on TikTok and spread quickly.

Maybe you've seen it on a sign at your local Taco Bell drive-thru, or as part of a screed on social media: "Nobody wants to work anymore."

The phrase has become strikingly common in current American society, and taken at face value, it stands to reason that everyone has collectively decided to stop working.

On a recent trip near Reading, Pennsylvania, I heard the phrase no less than three times in 24 hours from three completely different people.

My colleague Áine Cain recently traveled through several states and saw the same signs everywhere, from Virginia to upstate New York:

© Courtesy of Kevin Greenlee Signs in Virginia (left) and New York. Courtesy of Kevin Greenlee

It even spread to the most popular show on cable news, "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

"The government is paying people more to not work than to work," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his primetime show in May. "So why would they work? Would you?"

While some Americans are receiving more money in unemployment than they would from a minimum wage job, the situation is much more complicated than Carlson makes it out to be.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has been the catalyst for a variety of huge changes in the labor market, including a drastic decrease in women - especially women of color - participating as a result of lacking access to childcare and major retailers like Amazon hoovering up available workers with higher wage minimums.

Some workers simply say they've had enough of being overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated during a particularly stressful moment: So-called "rage quitting" has become more common after 15 months of life with the coronavirus. And that's all before we start talking about long-term trends in worker wages, which have been on the decline for years.

"Instead of no one wants to work anymore," former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said, "Try no one wants to be exploited anymore."

© Rachel Flores 9 employees quit en masse at a Burger King location in Nebraska. They cited egregious working conditions. Rachel Flores

So why, exactly, is the phrase "Nobody wants to work anymore" so common, even across political, class, and cultural lines?

Like so many things in 2021, this meme appears to have its origins on TikTok: On April 9, a user shared a video of her local McDonald's drive-thru.

"We are short staffed," a sign above the drive-thru microphone said. "Please be patient with the staff that did show up. No one wants to work anymore."

That video - more specifically, the sign in the video - quickly transcended TikTok: A phrase that originated with frustrated retail and fast-food chain managers rapidly became the go-to explanation for why it took so long for your aunt to get her burger at Chili's.

"I suspect this is a mix of media amplification of critical opinions of Millennials/Gen Z workers who want to change what work is and the growing job shortage," Diara Townes, a program manager at the Aspen Institute who has studied narratives and patterns of spread, told Insider.

Older generations will always believe younger generations to be lazier and more entitled than their generation was, just as our parents' grandparents told them about hardships "back in my day."

"It leans on the long-held belief that 'young people are entitled' and prefer instant gratification," Townes said. "And it appears bipartisan likely because - as social research has shown - as some people age their politics shift to be more conservative, adding to the generational effect."

One thing is clear: When businesses offer higher wages, they're able to attract more workers. Whether they will do that or continue to criticize potential employees remains to be seen.

Got a tip? Contact Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@insider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.
Read the original article on Business Insider

During COVID-19, nurses face significant burnout risks, reports American Journal of Nursing

Findings point to strategies to support well-being and resilience

WOLTERS KLUWER HEALTH

Research News

July 22, 2021 - Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 40 percent of nurses and other health care workers had risks associated with an increased likelihood of burnout, reports a survey study in the August issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

The study identifies risk factors for poor well-being as well as factors associated with greater resilience - which may reduce the risk of burnout for hands-on care providers, according to the new research by Lindsay Thompson Munn, RN, PhD, and colleagues of a North Carolina healthcare system. They write, "The insights gained from this study can help health care leaders to target these risk factors and develop strategies that allow organizations to better support well-being and resilience among clinicians."

New evidence of pandemic's impact on well-being in health care workers

The researchers conducted an online survey of nurses and other non-physician health care workers (HCWs), and received responses from 2,459 participants who provided direct patient care. The survey focused on risk factors for decreased well-being: a key contributor to the epidemic of burnout among health care professionals.

The survey also evaluated aspects of resilience. Defined as the ability to cope with and adapt positively to adversity, resilience is an important contributor to well-being. Data were collected in June and July 2020, providing a snapshot of well-being and resilience among HCWs a few months into the pandemic.

At that time, 44 percent of HCWs surveyed had "at risk" well-being, which is associated with increased risk of burnout, fatigue, and patient care errors. Analysis of the responses identified several factors associated with increased odds of poor well-being, including:

• Having low scores on a measure of resilience
• Believing that supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) were insufficient
• Feeling that the organization did not understand health care workers' emotional support needs during the pandemic
• Believing that workload had increased
• Believing that staffing was inadequate to safely care for patients
• Having a lower degree of psychological safety (feeling that the work environment was conducive to vulnerability and interpersonal risk-taking)

In contrast, opposite levels of some of the same factors were associated with higher scores for resilience:

• Feeling that the organization did understand emotional support needs
• Believing that staff were being redeployed to areas of critical need
• Having a higher degree of psychological safety

Less than one-fourth of health care workers had used available resources to support their well-being and resilience (such as meditation apps, employee assistance programs, and counseling). Perhaps reflecting high levels of stress early in the COVID-19 pandemic, those who used such resources were more likely to have "at risk" well-being.

Dr. Munn and coauthors believe their study has practical implications for health care leaders to promote well-being and resilience among health care workers, during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

"While it may seem obvious that nurses and other HCWs would sustain burnout and poor well-being after dealing with providing care under arduous circumstances, it's important to establish the contributing factors and to learn how some were able to mitigate the effects of the stressors," notes Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, Editor in Chief of AJN. "We're in serious need of successful strategies to support frontline caregivers."

The researchers discuss steps that may help to support resilience while addressing modifiable factors that negatively affect well-being in the health care work environment. "[L]eaders can take crucial steps toward optimizing workers' well-being by paying careful attention to workload and staffing, creating a culture of psychological safety within teams and units, and recognizing and actively addressing the unique challenges posed by the pandemic," Dr. Munn and colleagues conclude.

Click here to read "Well-Being and Resilience Among Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study."

DOI: 10.1097/01.NAJ.0000767352.47699.0c

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About American Journal of Nursing

American Journal of Nursing is the most honored broad-based nursing journal in the world. Peer reviewed and evidence-based, it is considered the profession's premier journal. AJN's mission is to promote excellence in nursing and health care through the dissemination of evidence-based, peer-reviewed clinical information and original research, discussion of relevant and controversial professional issues, adherence to the standards of journalistic integrity and excellence, and promotion of nursing perspectives to the health care community and the public.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of €4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,200 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. We support clinical effectiveness, learning and research, clinical surveillance and compliance, as well as data solutions. For more information about our solutions, visit https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.

For more information, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

California's carbon mitigation efforts may be thwarted by climate change itself

UCI study: Higher heat will limit ecosystem's role in removing atmospheric CO2

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE

Research News

IMAGE: REDWOOD FORESTS SUCH AS THIS ONE IN CALIFORNIA'S HUMBOLDT COUNTY ARE KEY COMPONENTS OF THE STATE'S CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION EFFORTS, BUT UCI RESEARCHERS SUGGEST THAT ONGOING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS MAY... view more 

CREDIT: SHANE COFFIELD / UCI

Irvine, Calif., July 22, 2021 - To meet an ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, California's policymakers are relying in part on forests and shrublands to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but researchers at the University of California, Irvine warn that future climate change may limit the ecosystem's ability to perform this service.

In a paper published today in the American Geophysical Union journal AGU Advances, the UCI Earth system scientists stressed that rising temperatures and uncertain precipitation will cause a decrease in California's natural carbon storage capacity of as much as 16 percent under an extreme climate projection and of nearly 9 percent under a more moderate scenario.

"This work highlights the conundrum that climate change poses to the state of California," said lead author Shane Coffield, a UCI Ph.D. candidate in Earth system science. "We need our forests and other plant-covered areas to provide a 'natural climate solution' of removing carbon dioxide from the air, but heat and drought caused by the very problem we're trying to solve could make it more difficult to achieve our objectives."

Trees and plants draw CO2 from the atmosphere when they photosynthesize, and some of the carbon ends up stored in their biomass or the soil. California's climate strategy depends in part on enhanced carbon storage to offset some of the emissions from transportation, power generation and other sources. The combination of this natural carbon sequestration system and measures to promote green energy is hoped to help the state reach its target of not contributing net carbon to the environment by 2045.

But the UCI scientists suggest that an even more aggressive approach to curtailing emissions may be necessary.

"The emissions scenario that we follow will have a large effect on the carbon storage potential of our forests," said co-author James Randerson, who holds the Ralph J. & Carol M. Cicerone Chair in Earth System Science at UCI. "A more moderate emissions scenario in which we convert to more renewable energy sources leads to about half of the ecosystem carbon [sequestration] loss compared to a more extreme emissions scenario."

Coffield said that current climate models are not in agreement about California's future precipitation, but it's probable that the northern part of the state will get wetter and the southern part drier. He also said that coastal areas of Central and Northern California and low- and mid-elevation mountain areas - sites of large offset projects - are the most likely to lose some of their carbon sequestration powers over the next several decades.

In addition, the researchers were able to estimate the effects of climate change on specific tree species. They project that coast redwoods will be constrained to the far northern part of their range by the end of the century and that hotter, drier conditions will favor oak trees at the expense of conifers.

While the study used statistical modeling to peer into the future of the state's ecosystems, the research also highlights the importance of present-day drought and wildfire as key mechanistic drivers of carbon sequestration losses. Other studies have estimated that the 2012-2015 drought killed more than 40 percent of ponderosa pines in the Sierra Nevada range. Another issue the researchers describe is the loss of trees from California's worsening wildfire situation.

"We hope that this work will inform land management and climate policies so that steps can be taken to protect existing carbon stocks and tree species in the most climate-vulnerable locations," Randerson said. "Effective management of fire risk is essential for limiting carbon [sequestration] losses throughout much of the state."

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Joining Coffield and Randerson on this project were Kyle Hemes, from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University; Charles Koven, from the Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Michael Goulden, UCI professor of Earth system science and ecology & evolutionary biology. The study received funding from the National Science Foundation, the UC National Laboratory Fees Research Program, and the California Strategic Growth Council's Climate Change Research Program.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation's top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

Cattle losing adaptations to environment, MU researchers find

Researchers pave the way for genetic tests of cattle that can look for the presence of specific adaptations, such as heat resistance

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

Research News

IMAGE: OVER THE COURSE OF GENERATIONS, CATTLE ARE LOSING THE GENETIC ADAPTATIONS THAT HELP THEM THRIVE IN SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENTS. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.

As a fourth-generation cattle farmer, Jared Decker knows that cattle suffer from health and productivity issues when they are taken from one environment -- which the herd has spent generations adapting to -- to a place with a different climate, a different elevation or even different grass. But as a researcher at the University of Missouri, Decker also sees an opportunity to use science to solve this problem, both to improve the welfare of cattle and to plug a leak in a nearly $50 billion industry in the U.S.

"When I joined MU in 2013, I moved cattle from a family farm in New Mexico to my farm here in Missouri," said Decker, an associate professor and Wurdack Chair in Animal Genetics at the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. "New Mexico is hot and dry, and Missouri is also hot but has much more humidity. The cattle certainly didn't do as well as they did in New Mexico, and that spurred me to think about how we could give farmers more information about what their animals need to thrive."

In a new study published today in PLOS Genetics, Decker and his team have uncovered evidence showing that cattle are losing important environmental adaptations, losses the researchers attribute to a lack of genetic information available to farmers. After examining genetic material stretching back to the 1960s, they identified specific DNA variations associated with adaptations that could one day be used to create DNA tests for cattle -- tests that could tell farmers whether their cattle are suited for one environment or another.

"We can see that, for example, historically cows in Colorado are likely to have adaptations that ease the stress on their hearts at high altitudes," Decker said. "But if you bring in bulls or semen from a different environment, the frequency of those beneficial adaptations is going to decrease. Over generations, that cow herd will lose advantages that would have been very useful to a farmer in Colorado."

Decker's team, including then-doctoral student Troy Rowan, analyzed six decades worth of bovine DNA data from tests of cryo-preserved semen produced by cattle breed associations. They found that over time, while genes associated with higher productivity and fertility improved due to careful selection by farmers, many genes connected to environmental adaptations have faded.

Decker noted this is not the fault of farmers, given that there is currently no cost-effective genetic test they can use to determine whether their cattle are suitable for a particular environment. In other words, the study demonstrates a need for user-friendly cattle DNA tests that can look for the specific adaptations identified in the study. These adaptations include resistance to vasoconstriction -- a narrowing of the blood vessels that occurs at high elevations and puts undue stress on the heart -- resistance to a toxin in grass that can also cause vasoconstriction, and tolerance for high heat or humidity, all of which tend to recede over generations when cattle are removed from the associated environments.

"Sometimes, natural and artificial selection are moving in the same direction, and other times there is a tug of war between them," Decker said. "Efficiency and productivity have vastly improved in the last 60 years, but environmental stressors are never going to go away. Farmers need to know more about the genetic makeup of their herd, not only for the short-term success of their farm, but for the success of future generations."

The first broadly adopted genetic test for cattle was invented at the University of Missouri in 2007, and Decker and Rowan hope to tell the next chapter of that story. Both grew up on farms and share a passion for using research to help farmers balance America's farming traditions with the need for environmentally friendly business practices.

"As a society, we must produce food more sustainably and be good environmental stewards," Decker said. "Making sure a cow's genetics match their environment makes life better for cattle and helps farmers run efficient and productive operations. It's a win-win."

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Early-life social connections influence gene expression, stress resilience

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Research News

IMAGE: HYENA MOM LICKING HER CUB IN KENYA'S MASAI MARA NATIONAL RESERVE. view more 

CREDIT: KAY E. HOLEKAMP

Having friends may not only be good for the health of your social life, but also for your actual health--if you're a hyena, that is. Strong social connections and greater maternal care early in life can influence molecular markers related to gene expression in DNA and future stress response, suggests a new University of Colorado Boulder study of spotted hyenas in the wild.

Researchers found that more social connection and maternal care during a hyena's cub and subadult, or "teenage," years corresponded with lower adult stress hormone levels and fewer modifications to DNA, including near genes involved in immune function, inflammation and aging. 

Published this week in Nature Communications, the study is one of the first to examine the association between early-life social environments and later effects on markers of health and stress response in wild animals.

"This study supports this idea that, yes, these early experiences do matter. They seem to have an effect at the molecular level and future stress response--and they're persistent," said lead author Zach Laubach, a postdoctoral fellow in ecology and evolutionary biology.

As far back as the 1950s and 60s, laboratory research has drawn associations between early life experiences in rodents, primates and humans and behavioral and physiological differences later in life. One landmark study published in 2004 also showed that the offspring of rats who got licked and groomed more by their mothers had less DNA methylation in a gene involved in regulating stress response. This kick-started the desire for more evidence that early life experiences could be related to patterns of modification in genes that influence stress and health.

One of the missing pieces in the past 20 years of research has been the ability to study this relationship in wild animals.

Enter the Masai Mara Hyena Project. Launched by co-authors Kay E. Holekamp and Laura Smale of Michigan State University in the 1980s, the project has collected more than 30 years of uninterrupted data on hyena populations in Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. With this invaluable resource for studying animal behavior, evolution and conservation, the researchers have been able to utilize generations of data on individually known animals to draw connections between their interactions, behaviors and biological markers.

"Being able to measure behavior, physiology and molecular markers from the same population has allowed us to dig deeper into the possible mechanisms," said Laubach, who has been working with data from this project for nearly a decade.

Healthy stress response

Hyenas are ideal for such research as they are devoted mothers, have a strict social hierarchy and follow a consistent timeline for raising their cubs. Instead of giving birth to larger litters, they typically have one or two cubs at a time. Soon after birth, the cubs move into a communal den, where they are integrated into their peer group. For the next year, they still nurse and their mother licks and grooms them, but after that the cubs start to wander out of the den and, like teenagers, learn to start making their way in the world.

The researchers found that the more socially connected hyenas were during their teenage years, the lower their baseline stress hormone levels were later in life. This generally indicates a healthy stress response: Stress hormones can be elevated in an appropriate situation--like when being chased by a lion or a higher-ranking hyena--and when nothing's happening, levels of stress hormones remain low.

"So if you have more friends as a subadult, essentially, you have lower stress hormone levels as an adult," said Laubach. "This suggests that the type, timing and mechanisms that link these early life experiences with stress seem to be important not only in controlled laboratory settings but also in the wild, where animals are subject to natural variation."

In general, hyenas, like other vertebrates, benefit from the effects of stress hormones (e.g. cortisol) mobilizing energy, increasing their heart rate and shutting down non-essential functions, like digestion or reproduction, when escaping a dangerous situation. However, there are significant physical drawbacks to these processes occurring chronically, day after day in humans or other animals as the result of chronic stressors. That's why having a healthy stress response is so critical.

"We need these stress hormones because they are critical to a variety of basic biological functions," said Laubach. "And in the right context, like when escaping a predator, they can save your life. But when elevated chronically, these hormones can be detrimental to your health," said Laubach.

Time travel through DNA

The researchers also wanted to find out if the relationships between early life social experiences and how stress presents later in life is managed by molecular mechanisms.

To do this, Laubach and his co-authors measured and analyzed the level of care and interaction the animal received in early life and their associations with certain modifications to its DNA later in life. These modifications can, through a process known as DNA methylation, end up changing the expression of certain genes, which can in turn, affect an animal's physiology or behavior.

The researchers found that the maternal care hyenas received during their first year of life, as well as their social connections after den independence, corresponded to differences in DNA methylation levels.

"This echoes a growing body of epidemiological work which studies how the timing of an exposure affects a health outcome. The idea is that, as an organism develops, there are certain points in time, often referred to as sensitive periods, when an exposure has a larger and a more persistent effect than if that exposure occurred at a later point in time," said Laubach.

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Additional authors on this paper include Julia R. Greenberg, Julie W. Turner and Kay E. Holekamp of Michigan State University and the Mara Hyena Project; Tracy M. Montgomery of Michigan State University, the Mara Hyena Project and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior; Malit O. Pioon of the Mara Hyena Project; Maggie A. Sawdy, and Laura Smale of Michigan State University; Raymond G. Cavalcante, Karthik R. Padmanabhan and Claudia Lalancette of the University of Michigan; Bridgett vonHoldt of Princeton University; Christopher D. Faulk of the University of Minnesota; Dana C. Dolinoy of the University of Michigan and University of Michigan School of Public Health; and Wei Perng of the University of Colorado Denver.

New 3D images of shark intestines show they function like Nikola Tesla's valve

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Research News

 

IMAGE: A CT SCAN IMAGE OF THE SPIRAL INTESTINE OF A PACIFIC SPINY DOGFISH SHARK (SQUALUS SUCKLEYI). THE BEGINNING OF THE INTESTINE IS ON THE LEFT, AND THE END IS ON... view more 

CREDIT: SAMANTHA LEIGH/CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, DOMINGUEZ HILLS

Contrary to what popular media portrays, we actually don't know much about what sharks eat. Even less is known about how they digest their food, and the role they play in the larger ocean ecosystem.

For more than a century, researchers have relied on flat sketches of sharks' digestive systems to discern how they function -- and how what they eat and excrete impacts other species in the ocean. Now, researchers have produced a series of high-resolution, 3D scans of intestines from nearly three dozen shark species that will advance the understanding of how sharks eat and digest their food.

"It's high time that some modern technology was used to look at these really amazing spiral intestines of sharks," said lead author Samantha Leigh, assistant professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. "We developed a new method to digitally scan these tissues and now can look at the soft tissues in such great detail without having to slice into them."

The research team from California State University, Dominguez Hills, the University of Washington and University of California, Irvine, published its findings July 21 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The researchers primarily used a computerized tomography (CT) scanner at the UW's Friday Harbor Laboratories to create 3D images of shark intestines, which came from specimens preserved at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. The machine works like a standard CT scanner used in hospitals: A series of X-ray images is taken from different angles, then combined using computer processing to create three-dimensional images. This allows researchers to see the complexities of a shark intestine without having to dissect or disturb it.

"CT scanning is one of the only ways to understand the shape of shark intestines in three dimensions," said co-author Adam Summers, a professor based at UW Friday Harbor Labs who has led a worldwide effort to scan the skeletons of fishes and other vertebrate animals. "Intestines are so complex, with so many overlapping layers, that dissection destroys the context and connectivity of the tissue. It would be like trying to understand what was reported in a newspaper by taking scissors to a rolled-up copy. The story just won't hang together."

From their scans, the researchers discovered several new aspects about how shark intestines function. It appears these spiral-shaped organs slow the movement of food and direct it downward through the gut, relying on gravity in addition to peristalsis, the rhythmic contraction of the gut's smooth muscle. Its function resembles the one-way valve designed by Nikola Tesla more than a century ago that allows fluid to flow in one direction, without backflow or assistance from any moving parts.

CAPTION

Two live Pacific spiny dogfish sharks (Squalus suckleyi).

CREDIT

Samantha Leigh/California State University, Dominguez Hills

This finding could shed new light on how sharks eat and process their food. Most sharks usually go days or even weeks between eating large meals, so they rely on being able to hold food in their system and absorb as many nutrients as possible, Leigh explained. The slowed movement of food through their gut caused by the spiral intestine probably allows sharks to retain their food longer, and they also use less energy processing that food.

Because sharks are top predators in the ocean and also eat a lot of different things -- invertebrates, fish, mammals and even seagrass -- they naturally control the biodiversity of many species, the researchers said. Knowing how sharks process what they eat, and how they excrete waste, is important for understanding the larger ecosystem.

"The vast majority of shark species, and the majority of their physiology, are completely unknown. Every single natural history observation, internal visualization and anatomical investigation shows us things we could not have guessed at," Summers said. "We need to look harder at sharks and, in particular, we need to look harder at parts other than the jaws, and the species that don't interact with people."

The authors plan to use a 3D printer to create models of several different shark intestines to test how materials move through the structures in real time. They also hope to collaborate with engineers to use shark intestines as inspiration for industrial applications such as wastewater treatment or filtering microplastics out of the water column.

CAPTION

A CT scan image of a dogfish shark spiral intestine, shown from the top looking down.

CREDIT

Samantha Leigh/California State University, Dominguez Hills

Other co-authors on the paper are Donovan German of University of California, Irvine, and Sarah Hoffmann of Applied Biological Services.

This research was funded by Friday Harbor Laboratories, the UC Irvine OCEANS Graduate Research Fellowship, the Newkirk Center Graduate Research Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and UC Irvine.

For more information, contact Leigh at sleigh@csudh.edu and Summers at fishguy@uw.edu.

Images available for download: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1te8DfhcY9XwvoabSFdU5JChFrk1SQLsf?usp=sharing

Big data-derived tool facilitates closer monitoring of recovery from natural disasters

Texas A&M researchers have mined location-based data to essential establishments during Hurricane Harvey to develop a framework for monitoring communities' resilience

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

Research News

By analyzing peoples' visitation patterns to essential establishments like pharmacies, religious centers and grocery stores during Hurricane Harvey, researchers at Texas A&M University have developed a framework to assess the recovery of communities after natural disasters in near real time. They said the information gleaned from their analysis would help federal agencies allocate resources equitably among communities ailing from a disaster.

"Neighboring communities can be impacted very differently after a natural catastrophic event," said Dr. Ali Mostafavi, associate professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Urban Resilience.AI Lab. "And so, we need to identify which areas can recover faster than others and which areas are impacted more than others so that we can allocate more resources to areas that need them more."

The researchers have reported their findings in Interface, a publication of The Royal Society, a scientific academy.

The metric that is conventionally used to quantify how communities bounce back from nature-caused setbacks is called resilience and is defined as the ability of a community to return to its pre-disaster state. And so, to measure resilience, factors like the accessibility and distribution of resources, connection between residents within a community and the level of community preparedness for an unforeseen disaster are critical.

The standard way of obtaining data needed to estimate resilience is through surveys. The questions considered, among many others, are how and to what extent businesses or households were affected by the natural disaster and the stage of recovery. However, Mostafavi said these survey-based methods, although extremely useful, take a long time to conduct, with the results of the survey becoming available many months after the disaster.

"For federal agencies allocating funds, recovery information is actually needed in a faster and more near real-time fashion for communities that are trailing in the recovery process," said Mostafavi. "The solution, we thought, was to look for emerging sources of data other than surveys that could provide more granular insights into community recovery at a scale not previously investigated."

Mostafavi and his collaborators turned to community-level big data, particularly the information collected by companies that keep track of visits to locations within a perimeter from anonymized cell phone data. In particular, the researchers partnered with a company called SafeGraph to obtain location data for the people in Harris County, Texas, around the time of Hurricane Harvey. As a first step, they determined "points of interest" corresponding to the locations of establishments, like hospitals, gas stations and stores, that might experience a change in visitor traffic due to the hurricane.

Next, the researchers mined the big data and obtained the number of visits to each point of interest before and during the hurricane. For different communities in Harris County, they calculated the time taken for the visits to return to the pre-disaster level and the general resilience, that is, the combined resilience of each point of interest based on the percent change in the number of visits due to the hurricane.

Their analysis revealed that communities that had low resilience also experienced more flooding. However, their results also showed that the level of impact did not necessarily correlate with recovery.

"It's intuitive to assume, for example, that businesses impacted more will have slower recovery, which actually wasn't the case," said Mostafavi. "There were places where visits dropped significantly, but they recovered fast. But then others that were impacted less but took longer to recover, which indicated the importance of both time and general resilience in evaluating a community's recovery."

The researchers also noted that another important finding was that the areas that are in close proximity to those that had flooding are also impacted, suggesting that the spatial reach of flooding goes beyond flooded areas.

"Although we focused on Hurricane Harvey for this study, our framework is applicable for any other natural disaster as well," said Mostafavi. "But as a next step, we'd like to create an intelligent dashboard that would display the rate of recovery and impacts in different areas in near real time and also predict the likelihood of future access disruption and recovery patterns after a heavy downpour."

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Other contributors to the research include Cristian Podesta, Natalie Coleman, Amir Esmalian and Dr. Faxi Yuan from the civil and environmental engineering department. Podesta, an undergraduate student, is the lead author in this study. Coleman is a National Science Foundation graduate fellow.

This research is funded by a National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Award.

 

New tests can detect tiny but toxic particles of coal ash in soil

Test finds ash at concentrations so low and sizes so small that other tests would likely miss it

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Research News

DURHAM, N.C. - Scientists at Duke University have developed a suite of four new tests that can be used to detect coal ash contamination in soil with unprecedented sensitivity.

The tests are specifically designed to analyze soil for the presence of fly ash particles so small other tests might miss them.

Fly ash is part of coal combustion residuals (CCRs) that are generated when a power plant burns pulverized coal. The tiny fly ash particles, which are often microscopic in size, contain high concentrations of arsenic, selenium and other toxic elements, many of which have been enriched through the combustion process.

While the majority of fly ash is captured by traps in the power plant and disposed to coal ash impoundments and landfills, some escapes and is emitted into the environment. Over time, these particles can accumulate in soil downwind from the plant, potentially posing risks to environment and human health.

"Because of the size of these particles, it's been challenging to detect them and measure how much fly ash has accumulated," said Avner Vengosh, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Our new methods give us the ability to do that - with high level of certainty."

Coal combustion residuals are the largest industrial solid wastes produced in the United States. When soil contaminated with fly ash is disturbed or dug up, dust containing the ash can be transported through the air into nearby homes and other indoor environments. Inhaling dust that contains fly ash particles with high levels of toxic metals has been linked to lung and heart disease, cancer, nervous system disorders and other ill effects.

"Being able to trace the contamination back to its source location is essential for protecting public health and identifying where remediation efforts should be focused," said Zhen Wang, a doctoral student in Vengosh's lab at Duke, who led the study. "These new methods complement tests we've already developed for tracing coal ash in the environment and expand our range of investigation."

The new tests are designed to be used together to provide independent corroborations of whether fly ash particles are present in a soil sample and if so, at what proportion to the total soil.

"First, we measure the abundance of certain metals, such as arsenic, selenium and antimony, that we know are more enriched in coal ash than in normal soil," Wang said. "If these metals are present at higher-than-normal levels, we test the sample using two other geochemical indicators, radium nuclides and lead stable isotopes, which are more sensitive than trace metals and can be used to detect low occurrence of fly ash in soils. We also examine the soil under a microscope to test if we can physically identify fly ash particles and estimate what proportion of the soil they comprise."

Each method has its own strengths and weaknesses, and if used solely could lead to overestimates or underestimates the occurrence of fly in soil, Vengosh said. "By using all four together, we are able to verify the forensic investigation of fly ash presence in soils."

To assess the reliability of the new tests, the researchers analyzed surface soil from 21 sites downwind of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bull Run Fossil Plant in Claxton, Tenn., and 20 sites downwind of Duke Energy's Marshall Steam Station on Lake Norman, N.C. The North Carolina samples came from Mooresville, a town located across the lake from the Marshall plant. Control samples were also collected at sites upwind of each plant.

The tests consistently showed that most of the samples collected downwind of both plants contained fly ash contamination, but because the proportion of the fly ash was low, the concentrations of toxic elements did not exceed human health guidelines for metals occurrence in soil.

The tests also showed that soil samples near Bull Run Fossil Plant in Tennessee generally contained significantly higher levels of fly ash than those from North Carolina, and that the highest concentration was in soil from the Claxton Community Park, a playground and recreational site located outside the Bull Run plant.

What does this all tell us?

"First, it confirms that our new tools perform consistently and, when used together, provide a reliable method for detecting contamination that other tests might miss," Vengosh said.

"Second, it underscores the need to regularly monitor sites in close downwind proximity to a coal-fired power plant, even if levels of contamination are below current safety thresholds. Fly ash accumulates over time, and risks can grow with repeat exposures to playground dust or home dust," Vengosh said.

"Low concentrations of toxic metals in soil does not equal to no risk," Vengosh said. "We need to understand how the presence of fly ash in soils near coal plants could affect the health of people who live there. Even if coal plants in the United States are shutting down or replaced by natural gas, the environmental legacy of coal ash in these areas will remain for decades to come."

The peer-reviewed study was published in July 20 in Environmental Science & Technology.

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The study was co-authored by Ellen Cowan of Appalachian State University, and by Rachel Coyte, Heather Stapleton and Gary Dwyer, all of Duke. Support came from the National Science Foundation and from Mooresville, N.C., community funding, led by Susan Wind, a former resident.

CITATION: "Evaluation and Integration of Geochemical Indicators for Detecting Trace Levels of Coal Fly Ash in Soils," Zhewn Wang. Rachel M. Coyte, Ellen A. Cowan, Heather M. Stapleton, Gary S. Dwyer and Avner Vengosh; Environmental Science & Technology, July 20, 2021. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c01215