Study highlights steep rise in cardiac

 arrests associated with opioid use

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EUROPEAN SOCIETY OF CARDIOLOGY

Sophia Antipolis, France – 23 Aug 2021:  A nationwide US study has shown that the rate of opioid-related cardiac arrests has steeply risen and is now on par with the rate of cardiac arrest from other causes. The research is presented at ESC Congress 2021.1

Opioid use disorder, which includes dependence and addiction, affects more than two million people in the US, while opioid overdose is the leading cause of death for those aged 25 to 64 years.2

This study examined the trends and outcomes of opioid-related cardiac arrest in 2012 to 2018. The US Nationwide Readmissions Database (NRD) was used to study all hospitalisations for cardiac arrest in active or chronic opioid users compared to cardiac arrests in patients not using opioids.

Of 1,410,475 cardiac arrest hospitalisations, 43,090 (3.1%) occurred in opioid users. The rate of in-hospital mortality in cardiac arrest patients with and without opioid use was 56.7% versus 61.2%, respectively. However, in an analysis adjusted for several factors including liver disease, atrial fibrillation and renal failure, there was no difference in the risk of mortality between cardiac arrest patients with or without opioid abuse (odds ratio 0.96; 95% confidence interval 0.92–1.01; p=0.15). Opioid users had higher rates of alcohol abuse (16.9% vs. 7.1%; p<0.05), depression (18.8% vs. 9%; p<0.05) and smoking (37.0% vs. 21.8%; p<0.05) compared to those not using opioids.

The study found a significant increasing trend in opioid-associated cardiac arrest over the seven-year period (p for trend <0.05).

Study author Ms. Senada S. Malik, a medical researcher at the University of New England, Biddeford, US said: “The rise in opioid-related cardiac arrests during the study period was significant. By 2018, opioids were related to a similar number of cardiac arrests as all other reasons put together.”

She continued: “This was an observational study so we cannot conclude causality, but the findings do suggest that the opioid epidemic in the US may have contributed to an increasing number of cardiac arrests.”

Ms. Malik concluded: “The rising use of opioids is having a devastating impact on the lives of many Americans. Abuse of these drugs has been linked with poor lifestyle choices including excessive alcohol intake, lack of exercise, insufficient sleep and smoking – which can lead to a downward spiral of poor decision-making. A constant need for opioids contributes to addiction, depression, poverty, unemployment and criminal/legal problems. Public health strategies including increased surveillance, research, and tracking opioid cases are desperately needed to curtail this epidemic.”

 

ENDS

 

Notes to editors

Authors: ESC Press Office

Mobile: +33 (0)7 85 31 20 36
Email: press@escardio.org

The hashtag for ESC Congress 2021 is #ESCCongress.

Follow us on Twitter @ESCardioNews 

Funding: None.

Disclosures: None.

References and notes

1Abstract title: Trends and outcomes in opioid related cardiac arrest in a contemporary US population from 2012-18.

2Dezfulian C, Orkin AM, Maron BA, et al. Opioid-associated out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: Distinctive clinical features and implications for health care and public responses. Circulation. 2021;143:e836–e870.

About the European Society of Cardiology

The European Society of Cardiology brings together health care professionals from more than 150 countries, working to advance cardiovascular medicine and help people lead longer, healthier lives.

About ESC Congress 2021 - The Digital Experience

It is the world’s largest gathering of cardiovascular professionals, disseminating ground-breaking science in a new digital format. Online each day – from 27 to 30 August. Explore the scientific programme. More information is available from the ESC Press Office at press@escardio.org.

Heart attacks in young adults are related to unhealthy lifestyles, not just family history

Reports and Proceedings

EUROPEAN SOCIETY OF CARDIOLOGY

Sophia Antipolis, France – 24 Aug 2021:  Young heart attack victims are more likely to be smokers, obese, and have high blood pressure or diabetes compared to their peers, according to research presented at ESC Congress 2021.1 The study shows that while parental history of a premature heart attack is linked with heart events at a young age, it is not the only contributing factor.

“The findings underline the importance of preventing smoking and overweight in children and adolescents in order to reduce the likelihood of heart disease later in life,” said study author Professor Harm Wienbergen of the Bremen Institute for Heart and Circulation Research, Germany.

“Understanding the reasons for heart attacks in young adults is important from a societal perspective due to their employment and family responsibilities,” he continued. “However, there are limited data on the predictors of heart events in this group.”

The case-control study compared the clinical characteristics of consecutive patients admitted to hospital with acute myocardial infarction at 45 years of age or younger with randomly selected individuals from the general population in the same geographic region in Germany. Cases and controls were matched according to age and gender.

A total of 522 patients were enrolled from the Bremen STEMI registry and 1,191 matched controls were identified from the German National Cohort (NAKO).

The proportion of active smokers was more than three-fold higher in the young heart attack group compared to the general population (82.4% vs. 24.1%; p<0.01). Patients were more likely to have high blood pressure (25.1% vs. 0.5%; p<0.01), diabetes (11.7% vs. 1.7%; p<0.01) and a parental history of premature heart attack (27.6% vs. 8.1%; p<0.01) compared to their peers. Patients were more often obese, with a median body mass index (BMI) of 28.4 kg/m2 compared to 25.5 kg/m2 for controls (p<0.01). In contrast, the proportion consuming alcohol at least four times a week was higher in the general population (11.2%) compared to heart patients (7.1%; p<0.01).

The researchers analysed the independent risk factors for the occurrence of acute myocardial infarction at 45 years of age or younger. The analysis was adjusted for age, sex, high blood pressure, diabetes, active smoking, body mass index, alcohol consumption, years of school education, and birth in Germany.

Having hypertension was associated with an 85-fold odds of a heart attack aged 45 or under. The corresponding odds of a premature heart attack associated with active smoking, diabetes mellitus, parental history and obesity (BMI 30 kg/m2 or above) were 12, 5, 3 and 2. Alcohol consumption was associated with a lower odds of heart attack at a young age with an odds ratio of 0.3.

Professor Wienbergen said: “Our study shows that smoking and metabolic factors, such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity, are strongly associated with an increased likelihood of premature acute myocardial infarction. A protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption has been described by other studies2 and is confirmed in the present analysis of young patients.”

He concluded: “Our study suggests that family history is not the only predisposing factor for early heart attacks. The findings add impetus to the argument that young people should be educated about why it is important to avoid smoking and have a healthy body weight.”

 

ENDS

 

Notes to editors

Authors: ESC Press Office
Mobile: +33 (0)7 85 31 20 36
Email: press@escardio.org

Follow us on Twitter @ESCardioNews 

The hashtag for ESC Congress 2021 is #ESCCongress.

This press release accompanies an abstract at ESC Congress 2021. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Society of Cardiology.

Funding: The Bremen STEMI registry is funded by the Gesundheit Nord – Klinikverbund Bremen and the Stiftung Bremer Herzen. The German National Cohort is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), federal states, and the Helmholtz Association, with additional financial support from the participating universities and the institutes of the Leibniz Association.

Disclosures: There are no conflicts of interest to disclose.

References and notes

1Abstract title: Risk factors in young patients with myocardial infarction: what is different from the general population?

2Leong DP, Smyth A, Teo KK, et al. Patterns of alcohol consumption and myocardial infarction risk. Circulation. 2014;130:390–398.

About the European Society of Cardiology

The European Society of Cardiology brings together health care professionals from more than 150 countries, working to advance cardiovascular medicine and help people lead longer, healthier lives.

About ESC Congress 2021 - The Digital Experience

It is the world’s largest gathering of cardiovascular professionals, disseminating ground-breaking science in a new digital format. Online each day – from 27 to 30 August. Explore the scientific programme. More information is available from the ESC Press Office at press@escardio.org.

 

Young age, housing insecurity primary factors in vaccine hesitancy among African Americans

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MEDICAL COLLEGE OF GEORGIA AT AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: DR. JUSTIN XAVIER MOORE view more 

CREDIT: MICHAEL HOLAHAN

AUGUSTA, Ga. (August 23, 2021) –  A survey of mostly African American adults living in and around one of Georgia’s largest cities found that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was greatest among those age 18 to 29, investigators say.

“Age is the main driver,” says Dr. Justin Xavier Moore, epidemiologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, with those 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed having 21-fold increased odds of being vaccine resistant compared to those 50 and older.

COVID-related housing insecurity — difficulty paying the rent or mortgage or even eviction — increased the odds of vaccine resistance sevenfold, and was the next strongest association they found in one of the first studies examining factors related to vaccine hesitancy among a large African American community sample, says Moore, corresponding author of the study published in a special edition of the journal Vaccines.

“These findings highlight an important issue and necessity for innovative and proactive approaches in reaching two vulnerable populations: the younger (African American) population that may believe that their risk of severe COVID-19 and mortality are low due to their youth and little to no chronic medical conditions, and participants with housing insecurity due to COVID-19 who may have limited or no reliable interactions with health care systems,” the investigators write.

While reduced vaccine hesitancy among African Americans may result from increasing vaccination rates of all Americans, health care systems and organizations must still work to build trust and rapport with these communities with increased diversity of medical professionals, community services and transparency about vaccine facts, concluded the investigators, which included colleagues at the Department of Behavioral Health Sciences at Saint Louis University in Missouri.  

The research team surveyed 257 adults living in Augusta, and the surrounding communities of Hephzibah, Georgia and North Augusta and Aiken, S.C., during six events starting Dec. 5, 2020, a little more than a week before the first person in the United States, ICU nurse Sandra Lindsay from New York City, received the vaccine, and running through April 17, 2021. 

The community events were held by 100 Black Men of Augusta, a not-for-profit organization focused on improving people’s lives, in collaboration with MCG, the state’s public medical school, to bring information and eventually the vaccine directly to those communities.

“We are trying to meet people where they are, and trying to break down barriers in the sense of having health care providers that look like them who are going to have real conversations with them about why they may be hesitant and what questions they have,” Moore says.

The gatherings were mostly in Black churches and barbershops, so nearly 100% of those taking the anonymous, three-page survey were African American. Investigators asked about a wide variety of demographics like age and education and about health behavior like current alcohol or cigarette use and whether they took the flu vaccine. They also asked COVID-specific questions like whether they wore face masks or had lost a job or home.

They classified responders as resistant, hesitant or acceptant of receiving the new COVID-19 vaccines.

They found about one-third, 31.9%, were hesitant or resistant to receiving a vaccine. Those hesitant were more likely to be young, a median age of 31, while the median age of the acceptant individuals was 61. A greater percentage, 57.1%, of those considered resistant, were female, and they were more likely to be employed full time but less likely to have health insurance. They had fewer comorbidities, like high blood pressure and diabetes, compared to acceptant individuals, but were also more likely to be smokers than those in the other two categories and less likely to have ever received a flu shot. Those with more chronic health problems, like high blood pressure, were least likely to be vaccine resistant.

Among the resistant, 33.3% reported housing insecurity, compared with 10% and 6.9% for hesitant and acceptant participants, respectively.

About half the participants also had not been tested for the novel coronavirus when they were surveyed, more evidence that “public health prevention strategies and infrastructures have largely failed to protect communities of color, low-income neighborhoods, essential workers and those with variable employment status,” the investigators write.

Moore expected hesitancy to be more homogenous across the African American individuals surveyed because of the untenable history they share.

Lack of trust resulting from medical exploitation and abuse is connected to ethnicity, and racial inequities have undoubtedly contributed to the disproportionate COVID-19 disease burden on African American individuals, Moore and his colleagues say.

“There are systemic issues that have disproportionately affected Black and brown communities for a long time in this country,” he says, noting that both Black men and women have a higher allostatic load — where challenges faced exceed the ability to cope — at a younger age compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts.

“Allostatic load is the wear and tear on the body due to external stressors that happen within your environment over a life course,” Moore says. That stress results in chronically higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol which increases inflammation, which increases blood pressure and a host of other health problems from heart disease to cancer.

“If one group is under elevated stress simply because of their complexion, compared to their counterparts, their reaction to everything is going to be different,” he says. “It’s going to explain some of the environment-gene interactions we are seeing,” and so do cultural differences like unhealthy diets passed down for generations, Moore says.

The pandemic, which has been stressful for everyone, highlights these areas of concern, Moore adds.

To identify the best way to help those most affected, the investigators are now taking the key factors of hesitancy they found and having targeted conversations to find the reasons behinds them, he says.

At the moment, the investigators can only make hypotheses about their findings. For example, younger individuals may be more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation on social media and online. “There may be low self-perceived risk among the young demographic, the: ‘I personally don’t fear this disease therefore I don’t see the see the need to get the shot,’ coupled with misinformation regarding COVID-19, which further complicates this paradigm,” Moore says.

Housing insecurity, which was such a prominent factor, may be associated with lower socioeconomic circumstances, including working in frontline jobs that may increase potential exposure and limit the ability to take protective precautions, Moore says. In his conversations with other young people, Moore also hears the recurring issue of ‘time,’ that they need more ‘time’ to ensure the vaccine is safe.

Moore also is working with Dr. Veronica L. Womack, executive director of Georgia College and State University’s Rural Studies Institute, to develop targeted messaging for those living in rural and underserved Georgia communities that will help promote COVID vaccination.

Black Americans are both disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and less likely to be vaccinated against it than whites, Moore and his colleagues write. Black Americans are nearly three times more likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to die from COVID-19.

The “Georgia Black Belt” which runs from the Southwest corner of the state through middle and central eastern Georgia, where the Augusta area is located, has a wide range of health disparities in common conditions like stroke, cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as infectious diseases like COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index and Area Deprivation Index identify areas like the Georgia Black Belt as “markedly vulnerable, under-resourced and underserved communities,” the investigators write.

But the vulnerability of these areas and residents was not recognized early in the pandemic, which delayed mitigation efforts like ensuring access to personal protective equipment. Subsequent delays in availability of testing and later vaccination, they write, grew the significant body of evidence of the effect of racism on health behaviors and outcomes. The growth, particularly of online sources of misinformation about both the disease and the vaccine, have further fueled the deleterious impact of these inactions, Moore says.

“To maximize the efficacy of a vaccine, you want nine out of 10 people saying they will get it,” Moore says. “We had more than 30%, about one- third, saying they are not going to get vaccinated. We wouldn’t be here if we would have had a larger uptake of the vaccine within the first three or four months of it being available. We wouldn’t have the issues we’re seeing regarding increasing rates of COVID-19 infection.”

He notes that as they began their meetings and surveys, little was known about the vaccine, but they had good information about safety and efficacy  by the subsequent gatherings. The Georgia Department of Public Health received its first vaccine shipment Dec. 14, 2020, the same day the first person in the country was vaccinated, and the first peer reviewed study about the vaccine was published two days later.

In August the number of vaccinated Americans was reaching 170 million, or about 50.8% of the population, but as late as early June less than a quarter of Black Americans had received their first vaccine dose, although some recent reports indicate the rate of vaccination among Black and Hispanic populations is starting to improve. Previous studies have indicated that Black Americans are three times more likely to be unsure or unwilling to receive the vaccine compared to whites.

The research was funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National institutes of Health.

Read the full study.

---

JOURNAL

Vaccines

ARTICLE TITLE

Correlates of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among a Community Sample of African Americans Living in the Southern United States

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2021

 

Study gauges social responsibility in slowing COVID-19 spread

Researchers conducted focus groups of UC Riverside faculty, staff, and students

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: EVELYN VAZQUEZ IS A POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER AT UC RIVERSIDE. view more 

CREDIT: UC RIVERSIDE.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Uncertainty and anxiety generated by the COVID-19 pandemic motivated social psychologist Evelyn Vázquez at the University of California, Riverside, to collaborate with UCR Healthy Campus on a study to identify safety measures and public health messaging that reduce the spread of the coronavirus within campus communities. 

Working with Ann Cheney, an associate professor in the Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, Vázquez and the UCR Healthy Campus research team conducted nine focus groups at UCR with a variety of stakeholders including 42 students, 41 staff members, and 30 faculty. The UCR Healthy Campus group works to elevate health and well-being on campus.

Last September, participants took part in a 90-minute session to discuss their beliefs about the COVID-19 pandemic, the mental health burden linked to the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, challenges with adhering to public health measures, and the abrupt shift to working or studying from home, which for some also involved raising children and caring for others. 

Vázquez, a postdoctoral researcher at the medical school, led the project’s research design, data analysis, and data interpretation. Researchers asked focus group participants open-ended questions related to COVID-19 on topics including risk-reduction measures such as face coverings, and recommendations for a safe return to campus.

“Ours was a qualitative study, allowing us to get a deeper understanding of why people behave in certain ways, what their core values are, and how culture may be informing their behaviors,” said Vázquez, who received her doctoral degree in education in 2019 from the UCR Graduate School of Education. “Qualitative methods are ideal for exploring shared ideas and community-based strategies to promote public health responses.”

All participants expressed concern about the risk of contracting COVID-19 based on other people’s behaviors in public spaces, with the lack of mask wearing and social distancing constituting a main source of discomfort. Private home spaces were another source of perceived risk.

“Participants discussed how difficult it was being in these private spaces with friends, family, and housemates who did not wear masks or were skeptical of their use,” Vázquez said. “Several participants thought younger generations saw themselves as less vulnerable to COVID-19.”

Misinformation spread by social media and news outlets came up in the focus groups. Participants expressed concern that some people felt face coverings compromised breathing and would forgo wearing masks or wear them improperly. The ways personal freedom outweighed shared responsibility to protect others came up in discussions as well. Participants also weighed the stress of balancing social and emotional needs against the risk of contracting COVID-19. 

“Unless safety measures were successfully implemented, participants said they refused to return to campus,” Vázquez said.

According to the study, which appears in the journal Health Education and Behavior, participants:
Indicated need for transparent messaging, regulations, and enforcement of precautions for community members’ safety and comfort. 

• Encouraged partnerships with the county public health department for COVID-19 education and resources.
• Suggested several structural interventions, such as free rapid COVID-19 testing, sanitation materials, cleaning supplies, increased indoor ventilation, and outdoor seating.
• Suggested flexible class policies to allow students to meet their academic needs; and flexible schedules for staff and faculty to accommodate their child care and/or caretaking responsibilities.
• Suggested a top-down approach to promote public health safety measures and institutional policies implemented across campus. 
• Suggested a ground-up approach to widely adopt and adhere to public health measures.
• Emphasized strict adherence to mask wearing and consequences for those who do not follow guidelines.
• Recommended workshops and training on COVID-19 safety information for the campus community regardless of sociocultural and political differences.
• Recommended the university provide information on how vulnerable populations on campus could be supported.
• Advocated to support the mental health needs of staff and faculty members.
• Discussed the need to “redesign the entire campus,” including classroom and offices.

“Public research universities such as UCR can generate and spread knowledge through research and education and are well positioned to address community health needs in this pandemic,” Cheney said. “As our study participants recommend, a combination of top-down and ground-up solutions focused on community building and school spirit could be effective for adopting COVID-19 safety measures.”

The research was conducted before the emergency approval of COVID-19 vaccines. With the public now having widespread access to these vaccines, the research team is considering a new set of focus group discussions about returning to campus.

Vázquez and Cheney were joined in the study by Julie Chobdee and Niloufar Nasrollahzadeh. Chobdee, who served as a wellness program coordinator at UCR when the study was conducted, now works at the University of Southern California; Nasrollahzadeh is a former graduate student who worked for UCR Healthy Campus.

The title of the research paper is “Personal Freedom and Social Responsibility in Slowing the Spread of COVID-19: A Rapid Qualitative Study.”

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

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JOURNAL

Health Education & Behavior

DOI

10.1177/10901981211033241 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Personal Freedom and Social Responsibility in Slowing the Spread of COVID-19: A Rapid Qualitative Study.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Aug-2021

 

Nurse leaders instrumental in new state law ensuring clean air in operating rooms

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Friday a measure that requires hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers in the state to adopt policies to ensure surgical smoke plume elimination with an appropriate evacuation system. 

Rebecca Vortman, clinical assistant professor of population health nursing science in the UIC College of Nursing, and Penny Smalley, an independent nurse consultant and director of education and regulatory affairs for the International Council on Surgical Plume, were instrumental in getting the law passed.  

Vortman, together with Smalley, who has been advocating for surgical plume mitigation for decades, worked with the bill’s sponsors, including Senate Leader Julie Morrison, Rep. Angie Guerrera-Cuellar, and co-sponsors Sen. Laura Murphy and Rep. Natalie Manley, throughout the legislative process. Smalley and Vortman worked with the bill’s sponsors to build a grassroots coalition to get the measure passed.  

Surgical smoke plume is the vaporization of substances, such as tissue, blood or fluid, into a gaseous form and is the byproduct of surgical instruments used to destroy tissue. Those instruments include lasers and other electrosurgery units. Surgical smoke contains contaminants harmful to the surgical team and patients.  

Vortman’s research has added to the growing volume of studies showing the health consequences from exposure to surgical smoke. Surgical smoke plume can cause eye and upper respiratory tract irritation and has mutagenic and carcinogenic potential, Vortman explained. In her recent paper, “Empowering Nurse Executives to Advocate for Surgical Smoke-Free Operating Rooms,” published in the journal Nurse Leader, Vortman called for a state mandate requiring mitigation of exposure to the harmful health hazards associated with surgical smoke plume. 

Studies have shown that surgical smoke plume can contain E. coli, MRSA, HPV, hepatitis viruses and HIV, and there is potential for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and variants, as well as toxic gases such as benzene, toluene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. Live tissue fragments and cells, carbon and blood-borne pathogens can also be present. 

OR personnel have reported asthma, allergies, chronic bronchitis, sore throat, cough, watery irritated eyes, headaches and flu-like symptoms from surgical smoke exposure. It’s especially difficult for those who already have respiratory conditions to be exposed to surgical smoke, Vortman said.  

“Patients are also at risk from internal absorption of the hazardous gases and particulates in plumes during endoscopic surgical procedures,” Smalley said.  

Additionally, patient safety is put at risk if team members, including surgeons, nurses, technicians, assistants and students, are exposed to the plume and experience symptoms causing them to feel so unwell that they cannot provide the level of safe and effective care their patients deserve, Vortman said.   

Currently, surgical facilities individually make their own surgical smoke evacuation policies and practices. The new law requires hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers in Illinois adopt policies to ensure the elimination of surgical smoke plume with an appropriate evacuation system for every procedure that generates surgical smoke plume as a result of the use of energy-based devices, including electrosurgery and lasers. The law takes effect Jan. 1, 2022. 

Vortman said this law is important for future health care workers. 

“For me, it’s about my daughter and the current and future perioperative workforce. If my daughter decides to pursue a career in the operating room, I want to make sure she’s working in a safe work environment. I don’t want her or any surgical team members to be exposed to the harmful contaminants of surgical smoke plume,” Vortman said. 

“We are so appreciative of the bill’s sponsors for their work and support, and for all the stakeholders in our coalition that contributed to this success,” Smalley said. 

Vortman agreed: “We are so proud that we were two nurses who proved that our voices could be heard, and that we could effectively lead the advocacy efforts needed to get this bipartisan bill passed through a grassroots effort.”  

 

Bringing order to chaotic bubbles can make mining more sustainable

A new technique can structure bubbles by vibrating particles

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

New York, NY—August 23, 2021—A new way to control the motion of bubbles from researchers at Columbia Engineering might one day help separate useful metals from useless dirt using much less energy and water than is currently needed.

When mining for metals such as the copper used in most electronics and the lithium used in many batteries, only a small fraction of the material that is mined is useful metal, with the vast majority just useless dirt-like particles.

"We have to separate the useful metals from the useless particles, and we do this by blowing air bubbles up through them," said Chris Boyce, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Columbia Engineering. However, "this process utilizes a large amount of energy and water, causing climate change and water shortages, thus creating problems we are trying to prevent. We have this issue in part because we currently cannot control the motion of these bubbles."

Now Boyce and his colleagues reveal that if they vibrate these particles while blowing air up through them, the normally chaotic motion of these bubbles becomes orderly and controllable. The vibrations cause the particles to quickly shift between solid-like to fluid-like behavior, which in turn helps structure the bubbles into regularly spaced triangular arrays.

"I think the simple addition of vibration to go from chaos to order is beautiful," Boyce said. Their study appears August 23 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Having a way to control the behavior of these bubbles can help scale up and optimize separation techniques. "We expect that the ability to create structure in flows can reduce energy and water use in mining as well as improve the efficiency of many clean energy processes," Boyce said.

The researchers now aim to apply this structured bubbling to sustainable mining separation techniques.

 

About the Study

The study is titled "Dynamically structured bubbling in vibrated gas-fluidized granular materials."

The study appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 23, 2021.

Authors are: Qiang Guo, Yuxuan Zhang, Azin Padash, Kenan Xi, Thomas M. Kovar, and Christopher M. Boyce.

Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia Engineering.

The researchers received support from the China Scholarships Council and the Bakhmeteff Fellowship for Fluid Mechanics.

 

LINKS:

Paper: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108647118

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108647118

http://engineering.columbia.edu/

https://www.cheme.columbia.edu/

https://boyce.cheme.columbia.edu/

https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/press-releases/chris-boyce-sand-bubbles

 

Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The School's faculty are at the center of the University's cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, "Columbia Engineering for Humanity," the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2108647118 

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamically structured bubbling in vibrated gas-fluidized granular materials

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Aug-2021

COI STATEMENT

The study is titled "Dynamically structured bubbling in vibrated gas-fluidized granular materials." The study appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 23, 2021. Authors are: Qiang Guo, Yuxuan Zhang, Azin Padash, Kenan Xi, Thomas M. Kovar, and Christopher M. Boyce. Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia Engineering. The researchers received support from the China Scholarships Council and the Bakhmeteff Fellowship for Fluid Mechanics.

The science of ants' underground cities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Picture an anthill. What do you see? A small mound of sand and crumbly dirt poking up through the lawn? A tiny hole disappearing into the ground? A few ants scrambling around busily. Not very impressive, right? 

But slip beneath the surface and the above-ground simplicity gives way to subterranean complexity. Tunnels dive downward, branching and leading to specialized chambers that serve as home for the colony's queen, as nurseries for its young, as farms for fungus cultivated for food, and as dumps for its trash. These are not just burrows. They are underground cities, some of them home to millions of individuals, reaching as far as 25 feet underground, often lasting for decades. 

This kind of construction would be an impressive undertaking for most creatures, but when performed by animals that don't get much bigger than your fingernail, it is especially remarkable. 

Now, driven by the desire to improve our own ability to dig underground—whether it is for mining, subways or underground farming—a team of researchers from Caltech has unraveled one of the secrets behind how ants build these amazingly complex and stable structures. 

Led by the laboratory of Jose Andrade, the George W. Housner Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, the team studied the digging habits of ants and uncovered the mechanisms guiding them. The research is described in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What are ants thinking (if anything)?

Before beginning this research, Andrade, who is also the Cecil and Sally Drinkward Leadership Chair and Executive Officer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering, had a big question he wanted to answer: Do ants "know" how to dig tunnels, or are they just blindly digging?

"I got inspired by these exhumed ant nests where they pour plastic or molten metal into them and you see these vast tunnel systems that are incredibly impressive," Andrade says. "I saw a picture of one of these next to a person and I thought 'My goodness, what a fantastic structure.' And I got to wondering if ants 'know' how to dig."

"We didn’t interview any ants to ask if they know what they're doing, but we did start with the hypothesis that they dig in a deliberate way," Andrade says. "We hypothesized that maybe ants were playing Jenga."

What he means by "playing Jenga" is that the team suspected the ants were feeling their way around in the dirt, looking for loose grains of soil to remove, in much the same way a person playing Jenga checks for loose blocks that are safe to take out of the stack. The blocks that can't be removed—the ones bearing the load of the stack—are said to be part of the structure's 'force chains,' the collection of pieces jammed together by the forces placed on them. 

"We hypothesized that the ants could sense these force chains and avoided digging there," Andrade says. "We thought maybe they were tapping grains of soil, and that way they could assess the mechanical forces on them."

Ants do what they want

To learn about ants, the team needed to have ants to study. But Andrade is an engineer, not an entomologist (someone who studies insects), so he enlisted the help of Joe Parker, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering, whose research focuses on ants and their ecological relationships with other species. 

"What Jose and his team needed was somebody who works with ants and understands the adaptive, collective behaviors of these social insects to give them some context for what they were doing," Parker says. 

With Parker on board, the team started culturing ants and learning how to work with them. It was a process that took nearly a year, Andrade says. Not only did they need to breed enough ants to work with, there was a lot of trial and error involved in getting the ants to dig in little cups of soil that they could load into an X-ray imager. Through that work, they determined an optimal size of cup to use, and an ideal number of ants to put in each cup. Still, the ants did not always cooperate with the researchers' own priorities. 

"They're sort of capricious," Andrade says. "They dig whenever they want to. We would put these ants in a container, and some would start digging right away, and they would make this amazing progress. But others, it would be hours and they wouldn’t dig at all. And some would dig for a while and then would stop and take a break." 

But once the ants got going, the researchers would take the little cups and X-ray them using a technique that created a 3-D scan of all the tunnels inside. By taking a series of these scans, letting the ants work a little bit between each, the researchers could create simulations showing the progress the ants made as they extended their tunnels further and further below the surface. 

The caterpillar is protected by “Kropotkin” ants – Small Meat Ant Iridomyrmex sp. The ants provide protection in return for sugary fluids secreted by caterpillar. Imperial Hairstreaks will only return to breed where both caterpillar food plants and the ants are present. Kropotkin is a reference to Russian biologist Peter Kropotkin who proposed a concept of evolution based on “mutual aid” between species helping species from ants to higher mammals survive.

Understanding ant physics

Next, Andrade's team set about analyzing what the ants were actually doing as they worked, and a few patterns emerged. For one, Andrade says, the ants tried to be efficient as possible. That meant they dug their tunnels along the inside edges of the cups, because the cup itself would act as part of their tunnels' structures, resulting in less work for them. They also dug their tunnels as straight as possible. 

"That makes sense because a straight line is the shortest path between two points," Andrade says. "And with them taking advantage of the sides of the container, it shows that the ants are very efficient at what they do."

The ants also dug their tunnels as steeply as they possibly could, right up to what's known as the angle of repose. That angle represents the steepest angle that a granular material—a material made of individual grains—can be piled up before it collapses. To understand the angle of repose, picture a child building a sand castle at the beach. If the child uses dry sand, every scoop of sand they add will slide down the sides of the pile they've already made. More sand will make the pile taller, but also wider, and it will never get steeper. On the other hand, if the child uses wet sand, they will be able to pile the sand steeply enough to build walls, and towers, and all the other things a sand castle might have. Wet sand has a higher angle of repose than dry sand, and every granular material has an angle that is unique to it. The ants, Andrade says, can tell how steep that angle is for whatever they're digging in, and they don't exceed it. That, too, makes sense, he says.

"If I'm a digger, and I'm going to survive, my digging technique is going to align with the laws of physics, otherwise my tunnels are going to collapse and I'm going to die," he says. 

Finally, the team discovered something about the physics of ant tunnels that could one day be useful to humans. 

As ants remove grains of soil they are subtly causing a rearrangement in the force chains around the tunnel. Those chains, somewhat randomized before the ants begin digging, rearrange themselves around the outside of the tunnel, sort of like a cocoon or liner. As they do so, two things happen: 1.) the force chains strengthen the existing walls of the tunnel and 2.) the force chains relieve pressure from the grains at end of the tunnel where the ants are working, making it easier for the ants to safely remove them. 

"It's been a mystery in both engineering and in ant ecology how ants build these structures that persist for decades," Parker says. "It turns out that by removing grains in this pattern that we observed, the ants benefit from these circumferential force chains as they dig down." 

But what about the central question of the team's hypothesis? Are ants aware of what they're doing when they dig?

What ants know and don't

"What we discovered was that they didn’t seem to 'know' what they are doing," Andrade says. "They didn’t systematically look for soft spots in the sand. Rather, they evolved to dig according to the laws of physics."

Parker calls this a behavioral algorithm. 

"That algorithm does not exist within a single ant," he says. "It's this emergent colony behavior of all these workers acting like a superorganism. How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for."

Andrade says he hopes to begin working on an artificial intelligence approach that can emulate that behavioral algorithm so he can simulate how ants dig on a computer. Part of that emulation, Andrade says, will be determining how to scale ant physics for human-sized tunnels. 

"Granular materials scale in different ways than other materials like fluids or solids," he says. "You can go from experiments at the grain scale, in this case a few millimeters, to the meter scale, by scaling the intergranular friction coefficient."

The next step after that? Robotic ants that could dig tunnels for humans. 

"Moving granular materials is very energy intensive, and it's very expensive and you always need an operator there running the machines," he says. "This would be the final frontier."

###

The paper describing the research, titled, "Unearthing real time 3D ant tunneling mechanics," appears in the August 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Co-authors are Robert Buarque de Macedo, applied mechanics graduate student; Shilpa Joya, a former PhD student at Caltech; Edward Andò and Gioacchino Viggiani of Université Grenoble Alpes; and Raj Kumar Pal of Kansas State University.

Funding for the research was provided by a grant from the United States Army Research Office.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Unearthing real time 3D ant tunneling mechanics

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Aug-2021

  

 

Statistics say large pandemics are more likely than we thought

Most people are likely to experience an extreme pandemic like COVID-19 in their lifetime

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

DURHAM, N.C. -- The COVID-19 pandemic may be the deadliest viral outbreak the world has seen in more than a century. But statistically, such extreme events aren’t as rare as we may think, asserts a new analysis of novel disease outbreaks over the past 400 years.

The study, appearing the week of Aug. 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a newly assembled record of past outbreaks to estimate the intensity of those events and the yearly probability of them recurring.

It found the probability of a pandemic with similar impact to COVID-19 is about 2% in any year, meaning that someone born in the year 2000 would have about a 38% chance of experiencing one by now. And that probability is only growing, which the authors say highlights the need to adjust perceptions of pandemic risks and expectations for preparedness.

“The most important takeaway is that large pandemics like COVID-19 and the Spanish flu are relatively likely,” said William Pan, Ph.D., associate professor of global environmental health at Duke and one of the paper’s co-authors. Understanding that pandemics aren’t so rare should raise the priority of efforts to prevent and control them in the future, he said.     

The study, led by Marco Marani, Ph.D., of the University of Padua in Italy, used new statistical methods to measure the scale and frequency of disease outbreaks for which there was no immediate medical intervention over the past four centuries. Their analysis, which covered a murderer’s row of pathogens including plague, smallpox, cholera, typhus and novel influenza viruses, found considerable variability in the rate at which pandemics have occurred in the past. But they also identified patterns that allowed them to describe the probabilities of similar-scale events happening again.    

In the case of the deadliest pandemic in modern history – the Spanish flu, which killed more than 30 million people between 1918 and 1920 -- the probability of a pandemic of similar magnitude occurring ranged from 0.3% to 1.9% per year over the time period studied. Taken another way, those figures mean it is statistically likely that a pandemic of such extreme scale would occur within the next 400 years.    

But the data also show the risk of intense outbreaks is growing rapidly. Based on the increasing rate at which novel pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 have broken loose in human populations in the past 50 years, the study estimates that the probability of novel disease outbreaks will likely grow three-fold in the next few decades.        

Using this increased risk factor, the researchers estimate that a pandemic similar in scale to COVID-19 is likely within a span of 59 years, a result they write is “much lower than intuitively expected.” Although not included in the PNAS paper, they also calculated the probability of a pandemic capable of eliminating all human life, finding it statistically likely within the next 12,000 years.       

That is not to say we can count on a 59-year reprieve from a COVID-like pandemic, nor that we’re off the hook for a calamity on the scale of the Spanish flu for another 300 years. Such events are equally probable in any year during the span, said Gabriel Katul, Ph.D., the Theodore S. Coile Distinguished Professor of Hydrology and Micrometeorology at Duke and another of the paper’s authors.       

“When a 100-year flood occurs today, one may erroneously presume that one can afford to wait another 100 years before experiencing another such event,” Katul says. “This impression is false. One can get another 100-year flood the next year.”    

As an environmental health scientist, Pan can speculate on the reasons outbreaks are becoming more frequent, noting that population growth, changes in food systems, environmental degradation and more frequent contact between humans and disease-harboring animals all may be significant factors. He emphasizes the statistical analysis sought only to characterize the risks, not to explain what is driving them.          

But at the same time, he hopes the study will spark deeper exploration of the factors that may be making devastating pandemics more likely – and how to counteract them.         

“This points to the importance of early response to disease outbreaks and building capacity for pandemic surveillance at the local and global scales, as well as for setting a research agenda for understanding why large outbreaks are becoming more common,” Pan said.

Marani, the paper’s lead author, holds an adjunct appointment at Duke, where he previously was a professor of civil and environmental engineering. Another co-author, Anthony Parolari, Ph.D., of Marquette University, is a former Duke postdoctoral researcher.

CITATION: “Intensity and Frequency of Extreme Novel Pandemics,” Marco Marani, Gabriel Katul, William Pan and Anthony Parolari. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aug. 23, 2021. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2105482118

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2105482118 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Intensity and Frequency of Extreme Novel Pandemics

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Aug-2021