It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, August 03, 2021
‘Hey, do you have a second?’— The upside of workplace interruptions
Research shows these disturbances can create a sense of belonging
If you work in an office environment, it’s a common occurrence: You’re right in the middle of a project and a co-worker stops by to ask for help with a task or to share a photo of their new puppy.
When this happens, don’t sigh at being distracted. A new study finds that these interruptions are beneficial to a sense of belonging and can counterbalance negatives such as lost productivity.
According to the study, which predominantly took place at the University of Cincinnati and soon will appear in the print edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology, while there were downsides to interruptions at work, like raising levels of stress and lowering people’s energy, there was also an upside: Employees felt more like they “belonged” and that eventually led to higher job satisfaction.
“If the past year of social distancing and isolation has shown us anything, it is that humans are social beings who have an inherent need for interacting with others,” says the study’s lead author Harshad Puranik, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Managerial Studies at University of Illinois at Chicago.
In the study, the team surveyed 111 full-time employees twice a day for three weeks. They asked participants about their experience at work (since the beginning of the day for lunchtime surveys and since lunch for the end of workday surveys), including work interruptions, how mentally drained they felt, their sense of belonging and overall job satisfaction. The researchers found that while work interruptions can take a toll on interrupted employees' mental resources, thereby reducing job satisfaction, social interaction with an interrupter can also help boost employees' level of belonging, which was associated with increased job satisfaction.
What previous research has not considered, Puranik says, is that apart from their task-based aspect, work interruptions by others also involve a social component — the social interaction with the interrupter. “Our study revealed that by providing this avenue for social interaction with one's colleagues, work interruptions led to a greater sense of belonging. This sense of belonging, in turn, led to higher job satisfaction.”
The bulk of the study was conducted as part of Puranik’s UC doctoral thesis, with two former UC faculty members at UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business: Joel Koopman, now at Texas A&M University, and Heather C. Vough, now with George Mason University.
“We find that interruptions can actually benefit individuals from an interpersonal perspective — people feel like they belong when others come and talk to them or ask them questions, even while being distracted from their tasks,” says Vough.
What was surprising, Vough says, is that “the sense of belongingness mitigated the negative effect of interruptions on job satisfaction. Thus, interruptions at work may have gotten a bad rap due to a failure to consider their human element.”
Since management historically has focused on ways to eliminate work interruptions, the study suggests alternatives to address interruptions, such as allowing employees more leeway in choosing when and where they work from and how they schedule their work.
JOURNAL
Journal of Applied Psychology
DOI
10.1037/apl0000875
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Excuse Me, Do You Have a Minute? An Exploration of the Dark- and Bright-Side Effects of Daily Work Interruptions for Employee Well-being
Mitacs provides $5M for wearable tech development at SFU
A new partnership between Simon Fraser University’s Personalized Lightweight Apparel Network (PLANet) and Mitacs, a not-for profit organization dedicated to innovation, will accelerate the development of new Canadian wearables and gear over the next five years.
The agreement provides $5.1 million in funding for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to work with the industry to develop new technologies that will benefit societal health and wellbeing.
PLANet is dedicated to improving Canadians’ lives by creating intelligent wearables and gear. The network combines BC’s strengths in materials science, biomedical physiology and kinesiology, engineering, interactive arts and technology, and innovative commercialization with Metro Vancouver’s industry leaders in wearables and gear products.
Professor Neil Branda, SFU Innovates director of technology readiness and prototyping and 4D LABS executive director, says, “Through this partnership we will deliver new smarter, personalized apparel and gear to better our lives, and change the ‘tech’ in tech apparel from ‘technical’ to ‘technology.’ By combining new textiles, embedded sensors and actuators, and machine learning our advanced wearable systems will improve health and wellbeing.”
Eric Bosco, chief business development and partnerships officer at Mitacs, says, “Mitacs is pleased to partner with SFU and the PLANet to facilitate the development of the next generation of wearable gear and apparel. Mitacs accelerates innovation by connecting researchers to industrial partners in important areas such as this. This agreement will play a key role in making Metro Vancouver and Canada a global leader in wearable technology.”
Research will advance wearable technology innovation
Branda says the new technologies will benefit a wide range of users, from first responders and medical staff to recreational and professional athletes, as well as those in military services. “When we think of wearable technology perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is fitness trackers and smart watches, but the technology has the potential to provide much more than just feedback to the user,” he says.
Developing smart helmets with the aim of preventing injuries or diagnosing impacts, including the onset of concussions, is just one potential application.
Others include designing smart fabrics that respond to environmental conditions, which could benefit athletes as well as others whose lives or livelihoods are impacted by weather conditions, by measuring temperature, humidity and moisture loss, then adjusting to become more breathable for the wearer.
Such technology can also provide biomarkers of stress, helping to detect and prevent potential injuries while keeping individuals’ wellbeing top of mind.
An overactive sweet tooth may spell trouble for our cellular powerplants
GRANDRAPIDS, Mich. (August 3, 2021) — The average American eats roughly 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day — more than three times the recommended amount for women and more than double the recommended amount for men.
Although this overconsumption is known to contribute to Type 2 diabetes and other disorders, the exact ways in which eating too much sugar sets the stage for metabolic diseases on a cellular level has been less clear.
Now, a team led by Van Andel Institute scientists has found that surplus sugar may cause our cellular powerplants — called mitochondria— to become less efficient, reducing their energy ouput.
The findings, published today in Cell Reports, highlight the cellular implications of excessive sugar consumption and provide an important new model to study the initial metabolic events that may contribute to diabetes development.
“The body needs sugar, or glucose, to survive, but, as the saying goes: ‘All good things in moderation,’” said Ning Wu, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Van Andel Institute and corresponding author of the study. “We found that too much glucose in cells, which is directly linked to the amount of sugar consumed in one’s diet, affects lipid composition throughout the body, which in turn affects the integrity of mitochondria. The overall effect is a loss of optimal function.”
Using their new model, Wu and her colleagues demonstrated that excess glucose reduces the concentration of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in the mitochondrial membrane and makes mitochondria less efficient. PUFAs are vital players in supporting mitochondrial function and mediating a host of other biological processes such as inflammation, blood pressure and cellular communication.
Instead, excess glucose is synthesized into a different form of fatty acid that isn’t as efficient or as flexible as PUFAs. This upends the lipid composition of the membrane and puts stress on the mitochondria, damaging them and impacting their performance.
Wu and her colleagues were able to reverse this detrimental effect by feeding their mouse models a low-sugar ketogenic diet, which suggests that reducing glucose and restoring normal membrane lipid composition supports healthy mitochondrial integrity and function. They also found that consuming excess carbohydrates reduces the beneficial effect of PUFA supplements.
“Although we may not always notice the difference in mitochondrial performance right away, our bodies do,” Wu explained. “If the lipid balance is thrown off for long enough, we may begin to feel subtle changes, such as tiring more quickly. While our study does not offer medical recommendations, it does illuminate the early stages of metabolic disease and provides insights that may shape future prevention and therapeutic efforts.”
Other authors include Althea N. Waldhart, Brejnev Muhire, Ph.D., Ben Johnson, Ph.D., Dean Pettinga, Zachary B. Madaj, M.S., Emily Wolfrum, MPH, Vanessa Wegert, and J. Andrew Pospisilik, Ph.D., of VAI; and Xianlin Han, Ph.D., of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies and the Department of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio.
Research reported in this publication was supported by Van Andel Institute; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R01GM120129 (Wu); and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award no. RF1AH061872 (Han). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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ABOUT VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE Van Andel Institute (VAI) is committed to improving the health and enhancing the lives of current and future generations through cutting edge biomedical research and innovative educational offerings. Established in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1996 by the Van Andel family, VAI is now home to more than 400 scientists, educators and support staff, who work with a growing number of national and international collaborators to foster discovery. The Institute’s scientists study the origins of cancer, Parkinson’s and other diseases and translate their findings into breakthrough prevention and treatment strategies. Our educators develop inquiry-based approaches for K-12 education to help students and teachers prepare the next generation of problem-solvers, while our Graduate School offers a rigorous, research-intensive Ph.D. program in molecular and cell biology. Learn more at vai.org.
JOURNAL
Cell Reports
DOI
10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109488
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
ARTICLE TITLE
Excess dietary carbohydrate affects mitochondrial integrity as observed in brown adipose tissue
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
3-Aug-2021
Study: Consumption of music streaming declined significantly during COVID-19 lockdowns worldwide
The COVID-19 pandemic was expected to change how people consume media. A new study analyzed online music streaming data for top songs for two years in 60 countries, as well as COVID-19 case and lockdown statistics and daily mobility data, to determine the nature of those changes. The study found that the pandemic significantly reduced the consumption of audio music streaming in many countries.
The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and City University of New York, appears in Marketing Science.
“Our work is the first to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on digital streaming consumption in a global context,” explains Rahul Telang, professor of information systems at CMU’s Heinz College, who coauthored the study. “It upends the popular expectation that online media platforms would benefit from the restrictions put in place during the pandemic, in part because this type of music consumption is not standalone entertainment, but complements activities that declined during lockdowns, such as commuting.”
Worldwide, the economic impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns have been substantial. But amid a market meltdown, some anticipated that demand for digital streaming services would surge since many people were forced to stay at home and work remotely, spending more time online. Moreover, as theaters and live concerts were shuttered, it was anticipated that consumers would be more likely to listen to music at home.
In this study, researchers analyzed streaming data from Spotify, one of the largest music streaming service providers, for weekly top 200 songs during 104 consecutive weeks between June 2018 and May 2020 in 60 countries. They also examined COVID-19 case data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, data on enforced social distancing measures by governments from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, and country-level data on changes to individuals’ time allocation during the pandemic from Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports.
To account for the growth and seasonality of streaming demand, researchers compared weekly streams with those of a comparable week the prior year for each country, comparing 52 weeks from June 1, 2018, to May 30, 2019, with 52 weeks from May 31, 2019, to May 28, 2020.
In more than two-thirds of the countries studied that enforced lockdowns, music streaming volume declined significantly after the lockdowns took effect. On average, audio music consumption decreased 12.5 percent after the World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic declaration on March 11, 2020. As a result, during the pandemic, Spotify lost 692 million euros ($838 million) of revenue in the first three quarters of 2020.
Reductions in workers’ commuting time correlated strongly with the decline in music consumption, the study found, indicating that restricted movement contributed to the shrinkage. In fact, countries with larger decreases in mobility and transit time saw more marked reductions in music streaming after the pandemic. Another factor driving consumption could be that people spent less money on music streaming during the pandemic, a time when many lost income.
The study also examined music consumption through video platforms (e.g., online video channels), using data from YouTube’s music streaming platform from July 2019 to October 2020. Consumption via video platforms, which requires more attention and is less complementary to activities like driving, rose during the study period, with unprecedented surges in volume after the WHO’s declaration. Based on counts of artists’ video views on YouTube, music demand in this medium increased more dramatically in countries with more COVID-19 cases, stricter lockdown policies, and sharper declines in individuals’ mobility.
Finally, the study examined how a temporary easing of many COVID-19 restrictions in late April and early May 2020 affected streaming volume. Results suggest a partial rebound in streaming volume in countries with a decrease in COVID-19 cases and with declines in the amount of time people spent at home. Researchers suggest that any resurgence of new cases of the virus could lead to further restrictions and more work from home, which would likely depress streaming demand once more.
“Our findings suggest that the pandemic has changed the environment of media consumption, putting streaming audio music in fiercer competition with other forms of media,” notes Jaeung Sim, a Ph.D. candidate in KAIST’s College of Business, who led the study. “As such, they provide useful insights and actions that can be put into practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.” Among the possible actions, the study suggests that platform providers look at new approaches to boost fans’ engagement, reconsider the timing of new album releases, and rethink promotion strategies.
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JOURNAL
Marketing Science
ARTICLE TITLE
Virus Shook the Streaming Star: Estimating the COVID-19 Impact on Music Consumption
New report: State of the science on western wildfires, forests and climate change
IMAGE: THE CEDAR CREEK FIRE BURNS IN WASHINGTON STATE'S METHOW VALLEY IN LATE JULY 2021. LUCKY JIM BLUFF, NEAR MAZAMA, IS SEEN BEHIND.view more
CREDIT: JESSICA KELLEY
Exceptionally hot and dry weather this summer has fueled dozens of wildfires across the western U.S., spewing smoke across the country and threatening to register yet another record-breaking year. More than a century of fire exclusion has created dense forests packed with excess trees and brush that ignite and spread fires quickly under increasingly warm and dry conditions.
Scientists largely agree that reducing these fuels is needed to make our forests and surrounding communities more resilient to wildfires and climate change. But policy and action have not kept pace with the problem and suppressing fires is still the norm, even as megafires become more common and destructive.
Seeing the urgent need for change, a team of scientists from leading research universities, conservation organizations and government laboratories across the West has produced a synthesis of the scientific literature that clearly lays out the established science and strength of evidence on climate change, wildfire and forest management for seasonally dry forests. The goal is to give land managers and others across the West access to a unified resource that summarizes the best-available science so they can make decisions about how to manage their landscapes.
“Based on our extensive review of the literature and the weight of the evidence, the science of adaptive management is strong and justifies a range of time- and research-tested approaches to adapt forests to climate change and wildfires,” said co-lead author Susan Prichard, a research scientist in the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.
These approaches include some thinning of dense forests in fire-excluded areas, prescribed burning, reducing fuels on the ground, allowing some wildfires to burn in backcountry settings under favorable fuel and weather conditions, and revitalizing Indigenous fire stewardship practices. The findings were published Aug. 2 as an invited three-paper feature in the journal Ecological Applications.
The authors studied and reviewed over 1,000 published papers to synthesize more than a century of research and observations across a wide geographic range of western North American forests. The analysis didn’t include rainforests in the Pacific Northwest or other wet forests where thinning and prescribed burning wouldn’t be advised.
“The substantial changes associated with more than a century of fire exclusion jeopardize forest diversity and keystone processes as well as numerous other social and ecological values including quantity and quality of water, stability of carbon stores, air quality, and culturally important resources and food security,” said co-lead author and UW researcher Keala Hagmann.
This ambitious set of articles was inspired by the reality that under current forest and wildfire management, massive wildfires and drought are now by far the dominant change agents of western North American forests. There is an urgent need to apply ecologically and scientifically credible approaches to forest and fire management at a pace and scale that matches the scope of the problem, the authors say.
Part of the solution involves addressing ongoing confusion over how to rectify the effects of more than a century of fire exclusion as the climate continues to warm. Land managers and policymakers recognize that the number and size of severe fires are rapidly increasing with climate change, but agreement and funding to support climate and wildfire adaptation are lagging.
To that end, these papers review the strength of the science on the benefits of adapting fire-excluded forests to a rapidly warming climate. The authors address 10 common questions, including whether management is needed after a wildfire, or whether fuel treatments (thinning, prescribed burning) work under extreme fire weather. They also discuss the need to integrate western fire science with traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous fire uses that managed western landscapes for thousands of years.
Although climate change brings with it many uncertainties, the evidence supporting intentional forest adaptation is strong and broad based. The authors clearly demonstrate that lingering uncertainties about the future should no longer paralyze actions that can be taken today to adapt forests and communities to a warming climate and more fire.
“This collection represents a blending of scientific voices across the entire disciplinary domain,” said co-lead author Paul Hessburg, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service and affiliate professor at the UW. “After reviewing the evidence, it is clear that the changes to forest conditions and fire regimes across the West are significant. The opportunity ahead is to adapt forests to rapidly changing climatic and wildfire regimes using a wide range of available, time-tested management tools.”
Co-authors on this special report are from University of Arizona, University of British Columbia, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Merced, University of Idaho, University of Montana, University of New Mexico, Northern Arizona University, Oregon State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, U.S. Forest Service research stations (Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, Rocky Mountain), U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, Washington State Department of Natural Resources, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy, R.W. Gray Consulting, Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research and Spatial Informatics Group.
This research was funded by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy of Oregon, Conservation Northwest, The Ecological Restoration Institute, Washington State Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Forest Service (Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest Research Stations), and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
CAPTION
An aerial image of the smoke from the 2020 Bobcat Fire in southern California. The fire burned more than 115,000 acres.
CREDIT
NASA
CAPTION
These two images show the same landscape in Washington state – the top taken in 1936 and the bottom in 2012. The top photo shows a landscape with less tree cover, maintained naturally through frequent historical wildfires. The bottom photo shows how forest cover has densified and expanded in the same area under policies of fire exclusion.
CREDIT
John Marshall Photography
CAPTION
Forest change caused by fire suppression in Lassen Volcanic National Park in northeastern California, shown during four different years: 1923, 1993, 2010 and 2013. The forest burned severely in the 2012 Reading Fire. Historically, these forests burned about every 10 years at low to moderate severity until fire suppression was implemented in 1905. High surface fuel loads and development of a dense forest understory due to fire exclusion created conditions for the high severity Reading Fire in 2012.
CREDIT
A.H. Taylor and A.E. Weislander
CAPTION
A low-intensity prescribed burn to reduce fuels in a forest accustomed to wildfires.
CREDIT
John Marshall Photography
CAPTION
Fire crews work to control a low-intensity prescribed burn to reduce fuels in Ochoco National Forest in central Oregon.
CREDIT
U.S. Forest Service-Pacific Northwest Region
CAPTION
An aerial photo showing untreated forestland (left) across the road from an area that has been thinned (right).
The Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland is home to approximately 160,000 volumes of literary and historical manuscripts dating back to the eighth century — all of which are written by hand, on parchment, in languages rarely spoken in modern times.
To preserve these historical accounts of humanity, such texts, numbering in the millions, have been kept safely stored away in libraries and monasteries all over the world. A significant portion of these collections are available to the general public through digital imagery, but experts say there is an extraordinary amount of material that has never been read — a treasure trove of insight into the world’s history hidden within.
Now, researchers at University of Notre Dame are developing an artificial neural network to read complex ancient handwriting based on human perception to improve capabilities of deep learning transcription.
“We’re dealing with historical documents written in styles that have long fallen out of fashion, going back many centuries, and in languages like Latin, which are rarely ever used anymore,” said Walter Scheirer, the Dennis O. Doughty Collegiate Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame. “You can get beautiful photos of these materials, but what we’ve set out to do is automate transcription in a way that mimics the perception of the page through the eyes of the expert reader and provides a quick, searchable reading of the text.”
In research published in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Scheirer outlines how his team combined traditional methods of machine learning with visual psychophysics — a method of measuring the connections between physical stimuli and mental phenomena, such as the amount of time it takes for an expert reader to recognize a specific character, gauge the quality of the handwriting or identify the use of certain abbreviations.
Scheirer’s team studied digitized Latin manuscripts that were written by scribes in the Cloister of St. Gall in the ninth century. Readers entered their manual transcriptions into a specially designed software interface. The team then measured reaction times during transcription for an understanding of which words, characters and passages were easy or difficult. Scheirer explained that including that kind of data created a network more consistent with human behavior, reduced errors and provided a more accurate, more realistic reading of the text.
“It’s a strategy not typically used in machine learning,” Scheirer said. “We’re labeling the data through these psychophysical measurements, which comes directly from psychological studies of perception — by taking behavioral measurements. We then inform the network of common difficulties in the perception of these characters and can make corrections based on those measurements.”
Using deep learning to transcribe ancient texts is something of great interest to scholars in the humanities.
“There’s a difference between just taking the photos and reading them, and having a program to provide a searchable reading,” said Hildegund Müller, associate professor in the Department of Classics at Notre Dame. “If you consider the texts used in this study — ninth-century manuscripts — that’s an early stage of the Middle Ages. It’s a long time before the printing press. That’s a time when an enormous amount of manuscripts was produced. There is all sorts of information hidden in these manuscripts — unidentified texts that nobody has seen before.”
Scheirer said challenges remain. His team is working on improving accuracy of transcriptions, especially in the case of damaged or incomplete documents, as well as how to account for illustrations or other aspects of a page that could be confusing to the network.
However, the team was able to adjust the program to transcribe Ethiopian texts, adapting it to a language with a completely different set of characters — a first step toward developing a program with the capability to transcribe and translate information for users.
“In the literary field, it could be really helpful. Every good literary work is surrounded by a vast amount of historical documents, but where it’s really going to be useful is in historical archival research,” said Müller. “There is a great need to advance the digital humanities. When you talk about the Middle Ages and early modern times, if you want to understand the details and consequences of historical events, you have to look through the written material, and these texts are the only thing we have. The problem may be even greater outside the Western world. Think of languages that are disappearing in cultures that are under threat. We must first of all preserve these works, make them accessible and, at some point, incorporate translations to make them a part of cultural processes that are still underway — and we are racing against time.”
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JOURNAL
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Researchers envision better health interventions for men who have sex with men
While much of the health research around men who have sex with men (MSM) involves HIV, these communities are at increased risk for other health problems including certain types of cancer, substance use and mental health issues. A new scoping review by VCU School of Medicine and Massey Cancer Center researchers finds that a specific type of data collection methodology called ecological momentary assessment (EMA), alongside of or as an intervention itself, could be particularly effective in supporting these populations.
EMA is a research method that repeatedly samples subjects in their natural environment to better understand their experiences over a period of time. It has the potential to create a rich dataset allowing researchers and clinicians to identify behavioral trends and contributing factors. This contrasts with other types of health behavior research that rely on retrospective feedback given directly to researchers or clinicians at a single point in time. EMAs minimize recall bias and can improve engagement among participants.
A scoping review provides an overview of available research evidence relative to a specific subject matter.
The authors first identified an initial set of 129 studies in their preliminary search, of which 15 met their eligibility criteria for the scoping review. The eligible studies included a total of 952 participants, with the smallest sample size being 12 and the largest being 120. They found that EMA methodology is both feasible and acceptable at high rates among MSM, especially when examining psychological and behavioral outcomes such as negative or positive affect, risky sexual behavior and substance use.
“Ecological momentary assessment is a relatively novel approach to health behavior research, so I wanted to see what had been done, what were the best practices and what gaps existed in the research in order to inform future studies as well as behavioral and therapeutic interventions for MSM and other populations,” says Viktor Clark, M.S., lead author on the study and doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Policy at VCU School of Medicine. “We found strong support for EMAs, but we also found many of the study designs to be lacking best practices and a tendency for the research to focus on stigmatized behaviors such as substance abuse and unprotected sex.”
Clark conceived of the scoping review while taking a research methodology class led by Sunny Jung Kim, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Policy at VCU School of Medicine and Harrison Scholar and member of the Cancer Prevention and Control research program at VCU Massey Cancer Center. Kim’s class covered experience-sampling methods, including EMAs, and Clark felt they could be uniquely applied to benefit MSM, a collection of populations they had previously studied.
“EMAs have traditionally used methods such as written diaries and phone calls to sample participants over a period of time. 85 percent of Americans now own a smart phone, so there is great potential for EMAs to evolve with advances in technology,” says Kim. “Short, micro surveys delivered through text messages or apps have the ability to collect extensive longitudinal data over time to better understand patterns and changes in behavior. They even have the potential to help health care professionals predict and intervene to prevent negative health outcomes in a variety of populations.”
The review evaluated the different studies based on the Center for Disease Control’s compendium of evidence-based interventions and best practices for HIV prevention. Most studies did not meet the full criteria for best standards defined by the CDC’s recommendations. Kim and Clark stress the importance of developing evidence-based best practices for designing future EMAs, especially when delivered via smartphone or computer as there are unique challenges and opportunities associated with these platforms.
“I hope to continue this line of research into my Ph.D. dissertation. I have submitted a grant application to fund a study to test a conceptual model for interactions between health care providers and gender-and sexual-minority patients to identify points where EMA methodology could add further depth to findings,” says Clark. “The goal is to make the patient-provider relationship better with communication and technology in order to improve things like medicine adherence and overall health outcomes.”
Kim has also submitted a grant application to fund an EMA-based intervention study for cancer survivors. She plans to conduct research to identify factors, barriers and themes related to pain management and quality of life, and then use that information to design and deliver a technology-based intervention that distills scientific evidence into easy-to-understand messages that help support patient care.
Both authors stress the importance of an open science framework in which methods and results can be widely shared. Their article is publicly available on the Journal of Medical Internet Research’s website.
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About VCU Massey Cancer Center VCU Massey Cancer Center is working toward a future without cancer – one discovery, one successful therapy and one life saved at a time. Among the top 4 percent of cancer centers in the country to be designated by the National Cancer Institute to lead and shape America’s cancer research efforts, Massey is dedicated to saving and improving lives by discovering, developing, delivering and teaching effective means to prevent, detect and treat cancer and to making those advancements equally available to all. Massey is leading the nation in establishing a 21st-Century model of equity for cancer research and care, in which the community is informing and partnering with Massey on its research to best address the cancer burden and disparities of those the cancer center serves. Massey conducts cancer research spanning basic, translational, clinical and population sciences; offers state-of-the-art cancer therapies and clinical trials, including a network that brings trials to communities statewide; provides oncology education, teaching and training; and promotes cancer prevention. At Massey, subspecialized oncology experts collaborate in multidisciplinary teams to provide award-winning, comprehensive cancer care at multiple sites throughout Virginia. Visit Massey online at masseycancercenter.org or call 877-4-MASSEY for more information.
JOURNAL
Journal of Medical Internet Research
DOI
10.2196/27751
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Systematic review
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Ecological Momentary Assessment and mHealth Interventions Among Men Who Have Sex With Men: Scoping Review
Social and spatial networks influence HIV and hepatitis transmission in people who inject drugs
Understanding social and spatial networks in the transmission of HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs could identify hubs for more efficient and timely intervention
The risk of HIV or hepatitis C in people who inject drugs is influenced as much by their social interactions and the venues where they inject as other risk factors, according to a study published today in eLife.
The findings could help direct public health efforts to locations where HIV and hepatitis is most frequently transmitted, allowing more efficient use of harm reduction services and more quickly interrupting disease transmission.
India has one of the highest burdens of HIV and hepatitis C resulting from injection drug use. Efforts to stop the spread of these diseases are hindered by a suboptimal understanding of the role social networks can play in the spread of infectious diseases, especially in a population which includes many people who are without homes and hard to reach.
Social interactions can be used to interrupt disease transmission and can be useful for combating epidemics among populations that are linked by a common behaviour – in this case, injecting drugs – according to the authors. However, developing network-based interventions in this population is challenging because the network structure is often unknown or poorly understood, particularly indirect networks (as in ‘friend-of-a-friend’ connections).
To address this, the authors set out to understand the structure of the social connections (injection partners) and spatial connections (places where people inject) of those who inject drugs in New Delhi, India. They started by recruiting an initial group of 10 people who inject drugs, who then provided the names of injecting partners. They were asked to recruit these contacts into the study. These recruits were, in turn, asked to do the same. The study was set up so that none of the contacts were duplicated, but if a person was referred by more than one contact, they were then interconnected to each of the named contacts. The result was a network of direct and indirect connections between 2,512 people who injected drugs, mostly men and aged 26 years on average, covering a total of 181 venues across a 20km radius.
The team then offered testing for HIV and hepatitis C to the participants, with appropriate referrals to care when applicable, and asked them to complete surveys to provide additional information on factors such as education level, homelessness, injection frequency, type of drug injected, sexual activity and syringe-sharing.
At the start of the study, 37% were HIV-positive and 65% had antibodies to hepatitis C, with 80% of these people having an active infection. Most were unaware they had hepatitis C. Of those living with HIV, 65% were directly connected with one other HIV-positive person. Of those with an active hepatitis C infection, 74% were directly connected with at least one other person who had an active infection.
The strongest determinant of testing positive for HIV or hepatitis C was injecting at the most popular injection venue – this increased the odds of infection by 50%. Even if an individual did not personally inject at that site, their odds of infection increased if one of their injection partners did. For each person separating a given individual with the most popular location, the likelihood of having HIV or hepatitis C reduced by 14%. Similarly, for each person separating a given individual from a person testing positive for HIV or hepatitis C, the likelihood of having HIV and hepatitis C decreased by 13%.
The findings show that HIV and hepatitis C infection is not only associated with individual risk factors such as age, education or injection frequency, but also direct and indirect social and spatial network connections – even after accounting for individual-level characteristics. The study has led to a better understanding of the network structure of people who inject drugs in New Delhi and highlighted the role of indirect connections and space on disease burden. The authors say it also urges a rethink of ‘networks’ to incorporate indirect network connections and spaces when thinking about interventions to interrupt disease transmission.
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This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, under award numbers R01DA041736, DP2DA040244, R01DA041034, K24DA035684.
Media contact
Emily Packer, Media Relations Manager
eLife
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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 Epidemiology and Global Health, and Medicine, 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.
Role of direct and indirect social and spatial ties in the diffusion of HIV and HCV among people who inject drugs: A cross-sectional community-based network analysis in New Delhi, India
