Survey finds 1 in 5 Americans fear getting monkeypox, but many know little about it

Most do not know there is a vaccine for monkeypox

Reports and Proceedings

ANNENBERG PUBLIC POLICY CENTER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIAp

 

IMAGE: WORRY ABOUT CONTRACTING MONKEYPOX OR COVID-19 OVER THE NEXT THREE MONTHS. ASKED OF 1,580 ADULTS ON THE ANNENBERG PUBLIC POLICY CENTER ASK SURVEY, JULY 12-18, 2022. view more 

CREDIT: ANNENBERG PUBLIC POLICY CENTER

PHILADELPHIA – As Covid-19 cases surge across the United States dominated by a highly transmissible subvariant and worry about Covid persists, some in the public have begun to voice concern about the new health threat of monkeypox, according to a new Annenberg Public Policy Center national survey.

While 1 in 3 Americans worry about getting Covid-19 in the next three months, according to the July survey, nearly 1 in 5 are concerned about contracting monkeypox, a disease endemic in parts of Africa whose spread to 75 countries across the globe led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global health emergency on July 23, days after the survey was completed.

The nationally representative panel of 1,580 U.S. adults surveyed by SSRS for the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania from July 12-18, 2022, was the seventh wave of an Annenberg Science Knowledge (ASK) survey whose respondents were first empaneled in April 2021. The margin of sampling error (MOE) is ± 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. See the appendix and methodology for additional information.

The survey answers such questions as: How worried is the public about becoming infected with Covid-19 or monkeypox? Does the public possess basic knowledge about monkeypox? How widespread is misinformation about monkeypox?

Highlights

Conducted amid escalating cases of the coronavirus BA.5 omicron subvariant and the spread of monkeypox cases, the survey found that many people (80%) had seen, read, or heard something about monkeypox in the past month, but many lacked knowledge about the disease:

• 19% of Americans are worried about getting monkeypox in the next three months.
• 30% of those surveyed are worried about getting Covid-19 over the next three months.
• Nearly half (48%) are unsure whether monkeypox is less contagious than Covid.
• Two-thirds (66%) either are not sure or do not believe there is a vaccine for monkeypox.

“It’s important that the public calibrate its concerns to the reality of the risk of Covid-19 and monkeypox and act appropriately,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Monkeypox concerns

Monkeypox, a rare disease caused by an orthopoxvirus, is a less deadly member of the same family of viruses as smallpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The disease, discovered in 1958, is typically characterized by rashes, according to the CDC, and is transmitted person-to-person by direct contact with the infectious rash, scabs, or body fluids, respiratory secretions, touching items that touched the infectious body fluid, by a pregnant person to a fetus through the placenta, or to and from infected animals. (For more information see this Q&A on monkeypox by APPC’s FactCheck.org.)

In the current monkeypox outbreak about 2,900 cases were reported in the United States as of June 22, and more than 16,000 cases have been reported in 75 countries, according to the WHO.

Among the survey findings:

• Worry about contracting monkeypox: About 1 in 5 of those surveyed (19%) are somewhat (14%) or very worried (5%) about getting monkeypox in the next three months, while 81% are not too (41%) or not at all worried (40%).
  • Women are more worried about contracting monkeypox than men: Though the vast majority of cases to date in the United States are among men who have sex with men, 23% of women worry about contracting monkeypox vs. 15% of men.
• Covid-19: More Americans (30%) worry about getting Covid in the next three months, with 24% somewhat worried and 6% very worried.
  • Women are also more worried about Covid-19 than men: 33% of women are worried about contracting Covid vs. 27% of men.

Monkeypox knowledge

While many Americans are generally familiar with monkeypox, significant parts of the public lack important information about the disease – and how to protect themselves:

• Knowing how monkeypox spreads: A large majority (69%) knows that monkeypox usually spreads by close contact with an infected person, though a quarter of those surveyed (26%) are not sure whether that is true or false.
• Most do not know a monkeypox vaccine exists: In all, 2 in 3 Americans (66%) either are not sure (51%) whether a vaccine for monkeypox exists or do not think it exists at all (15%). One in 3 people (34%) correctly know that a vaccine for monkeypox exists. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has licensed a vaccine for preventing monkeypox infection and a vaccine licensed for smallpox is also available to prevent monkeypox infection, according to the CDC.
• Which is more contagious: Monkeypox or Covid? More than a third of those surveyed (36%) know that monkeypox is less contagious than Covid-19. But 14% incorrectly say monkeypox is just about as contagious as Covid-19 and nearly half (48%) are unsure. The CDC says monkeypox “is not known to linger in the air and is not transmitted during short periods of shared airspace” but through direct contact with an infected individual or materials that have touched body fluids or sores or through respiratory secretions during “close, face-to-face contact.” An infectious disease expert, Anne Rimoin, told Vox monkeypox is “not as highly transmissible as something like smallpox, or measles, or certainly not Covid.”
• Monkeypox and the Covid-19 vaccine: Most people (67%) say they think that getting a Covid-19 vaccine does not increase the likelihood of getting monkeypox, though over a quarter of respondents (28%) are not sure. There is no evidence to suggest this is true.
• Are people who have had Covid-19 at higher risk? A third of people (33%) report that having had Covid-19 does not of itself put one at a higher risk of infection with monkeypox, though nearly two-thirds (63%) are not sure if this is true. There is no evidence to suggest that having had Covid increases the risk of contracting monkeypox.
• Higher risk for people working with animals? Asked if the CDC advises that people who work with animals are at a higher risk of monkeypox, less than 1 in 10 respondents (9%) say yes. A third (34%) say no, while over half (57%) are not sure. Although the current outbreak involves human-to-human transmission, a 2003 outbreak in domesticated prairie dogs led to 47 U.S. human cases. Monkeypox can infect a range of mammals, including monkeys, anteaters, hedgehogs, prairie dogs, squirrels and shrews. Infected animals can spread the virus to people and it is possible that people who are infected can spread the virus to animals, says the CDC, which lists among higher-risk people who might consider vaccination “laboratory workers who handle culture or animals with orthopoxviruses.”
• Higher risk for men who have sex with men? When asked whether the CDC advises that men who have sex with men are at a higher risk of infection with monkeypox, a third of those surveyed (33%) said yes. Two-thirds (66%) either said this is false or they did not know. The WHO says cases outside Africa in this outbreak have been mainly among men having sex with men, while cautioning that there is no evidence to suggest it will remain confined within those groups. In a Washington Post interview, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said men who have sex with men are “the community most at risk.”

“The time to reduce susceptibility to misinformation about monkeypox is now,” Jamieson said. “It is critically important that public health professionals offer anxious individuals accurate information about the ways in which this virus is transmitted and infection prevented. Vaccinating those who are at highest risk should be a national priority.”

Monkeypox misinformation and conspiracy theories

“As one would expect, conspiracy theorists have incorporated monkeypox into their pre-existing beliefs that, instead of emerging through natural processes, a spreading virus must have been bioengineered, intentionally released to accomplish a political objective, or is the byproduct of exposure to a pervasive new technology such as 5G,” said Jamieson.

Most Americans reject conspiracy theories alleging that monkeypox was bioengineered in a lab or was intentionally released. However, here, too, the Annenberg ASK survey found that worrisome numbers have either accepted one of four conspiracy theories or are unsure whether they are true or false.

• Bioengineered in a lab: Over half of those surveyed (54%) reject as false the idea that monkeypox was bioengineered in a lab, though a third (34%) are not sure if that is true or false and 12% say this is probably or definitely true. There is no evidence of this.
  • Of the small minority who believe that monkeypox was bioengineered in a lab, 56% say the lab was in China; 16% say the United States; 15% Russia; 12% some other country.

• Intentional release (asked of a half-sample, MOE = ± 4.7 percentage points): Over half (56%) said that it was definitely or probably false to state that monkeypox was intentionally released, though 30% were not sure and 14% thought that was probably or definitely true. There is no evidence of this.

• Released to help Biden (asked of a half-sample, MOE = ± 4.7 percentage points): 71% reject as false the statement that monkeypox was intentionally released by scientists to deflect attention from the failures of the Biden administration. However, 19% said they were not sure whether this is true or false, and 10% said it was probably or definitely true. There is no evidence of this.
• Caused by exposure to 5G: A large majority (78%) correctly said it is false to assert that monkeypox is caused by exposure to a 5G signal, though 21% were not sure.

See the appendix and methodology for additional information. Read about prior Annenberg Science Knowledge surveys.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) was established in 1993 to educate the public and policy makers about communication’s role in advancing public understanding of political, science, and health issues at the local, state, and federal levels. APPC is the home of FactCheck.org and its SciCheck program, whose Covid-19/Vaccination Project seeks to debunk misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines, and increase exposure to accurate information.

  

CAPTION

From the Annenberg Public Policy Center ASK survey of 1,580 U.S. adults, July 12-18, 2022.

CREDIT

Annenberg Public Policy Center

CAPTION

From the Annenberg Public Policy Center ASK survey of 1,580 US. adults, July 12-18, 2022.

CREDIT

Annenberg Public Policy Center

Study finds important differences in monkeypox symptoms between current and previous outbreaks

Findings should help clinicians spot infections earlier

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

A study published by The BMJ today identifies important differences in monkeypox symptoms between the current outbreak and previous outbreaks in endemic regions.

The findings are based on 197 confirmed monkeypox cases at an infectious disease centre in London between May and July 2022.

Some of the common symptoms they describe, including rectal pain and penile swelling (oedema), differ from those described in previous outbreaks.

As such, the researchers recommend that clinicians consider monkeypox infection in patients presenting with these symptoms. And they say those with confirmed monkeypox infection with extensive penile lesions or severe rectal pain “should be considered for ongoing review or inpatient management.”

According to government data, as of 18 July 2022, there were 2,137 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the UK. Of these, 2,050 were in England and almost three quarters (73%) were in London.

All 197 participants in this study were men (average age 38 years), of whom 196 identified as gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men. 

All patients presented with lesions on their skin or mucosal membranes, most commonly on the genitals or in the perianal area. 

Most (86%) of patients reported systemic illness (affecting the entire body). The most common systemic symptoms were fever (62%), swollen lymph nodes (58%), and muscle aches and pain (32%). 

And in contrast with existing case reports suggesting that systemic symptoms precede skin lesions, 38% of patients developed systemic symptoms after the onset of mucocutaneous lesions, while 14% presented with lesions without systemic features.

A total of 71 patients reported rectal pain, 33 sore throat, and 31 penile oedema, while 27 had oral lesions, 22 had a solitary lesion, and 9 had swollen tonsils.

The authors note that solitary lesions and swollen tonsils were not previously known to be typical features of monkeypox infection, and could be mistaken for other conditions. 

Just over a third (36%) of participants also had HIV infection and 32% of those screened for sexually transmitted infections had a sexually transmitted infection. 

Overall, 20 (10%) of participants were admitted to hospital for the management of symptoms, most commonly rectal pain and penile swelling. However, no deaths were reported and no patients required intensive hospital care.

Only one participant had recently travelled to an endemic region, confirming ongoing transmission within the UK, and only a quarter of patients had known contact with someone with confirmed monkeypox infection, raising the possibility of transmission by people with no or very few symptoms.

The authors acknowledge some limitations, such as the observational nature of the findings, the potential variability of clinical record keeping, and the fact that the data are limited to a single centre.

However, they say these findings confirm the ongoing unprecedented community transmission of monkeypox virus among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men seen in the UK and many other non-endemic countries.

They write: “Understanding these findings will have major implications for contact tracing, public health advice, and ongoing infection control and isolation measures.” 

And they call for continued research to inform infection control and isolation policies and guide the development of new diagnostics, treatments, and preventive measures.

[Ends]

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj‑2022-072410 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Clinical features and novel presentations of human monkeypox in a central London centre during the 2022 outbreak: descriptive case series

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Jul-2022

Texas A&M AgriLife develops new bioremediation material to clean up ‘forever chemicals’

Sustainable, cheaper method has potential for commercial applications

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TEXAS A&M AGRILIFE COMMUNICATIONS

 

Written by Helen White, helen.white@ag.tamu.edu A novel bioremediation technology for cleaning up per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, chemical pollutants that threaten human health and ecosystem sustainability, has been developed by Texas A&M AgriLife researchers. The material has potential for commercial application for disposing of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.” Published July 28 in Nature Communications, the research was a collaboration of Susie Dai, Ph.D., associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, and Joshua Yuan, Ph.D., chair and professor in Washington University in St. Louis Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, formerly with the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. A grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and support from Texas A&M AgriLife funded the work. Removing PFAS contamination is a challenge PFAS are used in many applications such as food wrappers and packaging, dental floss, fire-fighting foam, nonstick cookware, textiles and electronics. These days, PFAS are widely distributed in the environment from manufacturing or from products containing the chemicals, said Dai. But, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, scientific studies show that, at certain levels, some of these chemicals can be harmful to humans and wildlife. Health effects might include: Reproductive effects such as decreased fertility or increased high blood pressure in pregnant women. Developmental effects or delays in children, including low birth weight, accelerated puberty, bone variations or behavioral changes. Increased risk of some cancers, including prostate, kidney and testicular cancers. Reduced ability of the body’s immune system to fight infections, including reduced vaccine response. Interference with the body’s natural hormones. Increased cholesterol levels and/or risk of obesity. “PFAS do not degrade easily in the environment and are toxic even at trace level concentrations,” said Dai. “They must be removed and destroyed to prevent human exposure and negative impacts on the ecosystem. “PFAS are so stable because they are composed of a chain of carbon and fluorine atoms linked together, and the carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest chemical bonds. They can occur in water at a very low concentration and you have to concentrate them and then destroy them.” The current way to destroy them is to burn them, an expensive multistep process. Commercial products such as active carbon are used as a clean-up material to adsorb the PFAS compounds. The material is then sent to be incinerated. Sustainable and low-cost alternative Dai and Yuan developed a technique of using a plant-derived material to adsorb the PFAS and dispose of them with microbial fungi that literally eat the “forever chemicals.” “We produced a sustainable plant material that could be used to concentrate the PFAS chemicals,” said Dai. “The plant’s cell wall material serves as a framework to adsorb the PFAS,” she said. “Then this material and the adsorbed chemical serve as food for a microbial fungus. The fungus eats it, it’s gone, and you don’t have the disposal problem. Basically, the fungus is doing the detoxification process.” This is a sustainable treatment system with a powerful potential to remove harmful chemicals to protect human health and the ecosystem in a non-toxic, more cost-effective way, said Dai. Potential commercial applications The EPA has established a nationwide program to monitor the frequency and levels of PFAS in public water systems and is considering adding PFAS threshold levels to drinking water standards. “If threshold levels become part of the drinking water standards, municipal water treatment plants must comply with EPA regulations. Manufacturers will need to monitor these chemicals and remove them when required,” said Dai. The innovative biomass remediation Dai and Yuan have developed could help implement these changes more cost-effectively. The interest in this technology goes beyond drinking water standards. “We live on a planet where every component interacts,” said Dai. “People are concerned not only about the water but also about local crops produced by using that water to feed the animals that are part of the food supply.” -30-

 

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-31881-5 

ARTICLE TITLE

Sustainable environmental remediation via biomimetic multifunctional lignocellulosic nano-framework

An increase in oil prices may lead to a decrease in the development of green energy

The reason is that oil is needed to create clean facilities and infrastructure

Peer-Reviewed Publication

URAL FEDERAL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: AS KAZI SOHAG NOTES, THE TRANSITION TO CLEAN ENERGY REQUIRES A LARGE AMOUNT OF MINERALS. view more 

CREDIT: PRESS OFFICE URFU

An increase in oil prices may lead to a reduction in the development of green energy as it is also required in the transition to a carbon-free electricity supply. Precisely, oil is needed for deploying clean energy capacity or infrastructure. This relationship was revealed by an international team of scientists from Russia, Bangladesh and Malaysia using a сross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) method. The scientists obtained the data by analyzing the experience of nine leading mineral-importing countries. These included Russia, Australia, USA, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and Ukraine. The results of the study are published in the international reputed journal Resources Policy.

"On the one hand, oil can be considered the substitute for mineral driven clean energy. For example, in the form of cheaper fuel for cars than the creation of electric lithium batteries for electric cars. and on the other hand, oil is used for transportation, maintenance of energy-intensive technologies for building equipment necessary for green energy. Making solar panels, for example, requires oil, battery production requires transportation of materials and equipment for extraction of minerals. Therefore, in the process of providing renewable electricity, non-renewable resources also incur serious financial costs," explains Kazi Sohag, Head of the Laboratory for International and Regional Economics, Senior Researcher and Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University.

In addition, the magnitude of demand for minerals depends on the countries' installed solar and wind capacity. For example, in producing solar energy the main tool is photovoltaic panels, films created from various fossil metals - copper, tellurium, cadmium, etc. Researchers predict that after 2022 the capacity of solar energy in electricity production will increase by 45% annually. Consequently, the demand for these and other minerals will increase because of the massive use of solar technology in the production process.

" It should be noted that this fact can be useful for Russia as a country - the main exporter of oil and at the same time a major importer of minerals. The Russian Federation imports copper needed for solar energy as well as lithium, chromium, cobalt, and nickel used for electric vehicle batteries. Given the potential growth in demand and rising prices for minerals, now the reallocation of oil revenues could increase the amount of imported metals and accelerate the transition to clean electricity," says Dr. Kazi Sohag.

Economists have calculated that the demand for imports of minerals used in different technologies and sectors of green energy depends on a few variable factors. The price of oil is one of the key. In addition, the demand for minerals depends on the average prices for metals, primarily copper and nickel, as well as on the exchange rate. Thus, fluctuations in prices for mineral resources and an unstable exchange rate limit the volume of imports of minerals.

"At the moment, the volume of consumption and production of renewable energy in Russia is very small, despite the large volume of imports of minerals. To increase the share of green energy in the country, more attention should be paid to the development of intra-regional cohesion to use renewable energy sources, creating solar and wind farms using imported minerals. This strategy will enable Russia to meet its 2030 Sustainable Development Goals," adds Dr. Kazi Sohag.

Reference

Renewable energy sources require more raw materials than traditional ones. For example, a photovoltaic solar power plant contains approximately 5.5 tons of copper per megawatt of electricity generation, while a conventional power plant needs only one ton. In addition to copper, solar panels require other minerals such as indium or tellurium, cadmium, and silver. Lithium is also used in electric vehicles, while cobalt or nickel is used to store energy in car batteries. Thus, the import of minerals has become a priority for those economies that intend to achieve their goal of producing renewable energy in line with the global clean energy agenda. 

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JOURNAL

Resources Policy

DOI

10.1016/j.resourpol.2022.102893 

ARTICLE TITLE

Mineral import demand and clean energy transitions in the top mineral-importing countries

Listening to the people results in a more sustainable future energy system

Energy plan for 2050 based on consumer preferences and future demographics of the US population includes 50% more electricity derived from renewable sources than current projections

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KYUSHU UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC SHOWS THE FRACTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF ELECTRICITY SOURCES IN THE US IN 2050 BASED ON AN ENERGY MIX PLAN THAT TAKES INTO ACCOUNT THE PREFERENCES AND DEMOGRAPHICS OF VARIOUS RACIAL GROUPS, WITH PROJECTIONS BY THE US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION BASED ON CURRENT PLANS AND POLICIES FOR COMPARISON (VALUES IN GRAY). DEVELOPED BY A RESEARCH TEAM LED BY KYUSHU UNIVERSITY BASED ON A 2020 SURVEY OF 3,000 PEOPLE IN THE US, THE PREFERENCE-BASED PLAN INCLUDES 50% MORE ENERGY FROM RENEWABLE SOURCES THAN CURRENT PROJECTIONS. ALLOWING SUCH BOTTOM-UP APPROACHES THAT CONSIDER THE PREFERENCES OF THE POPULATION TO INFLUENCE POLICYMAKING COULD HELP TO REALIZE EMISSION AND CLIMATE GOALS IN THE FUTURE. view more 

CREDIT: KYUSHU UNIVERSITY

As policymakers around the world aim to cut carbon emissions and meet climate goals, new research points to a critical group whose opinions could help to shape energy planning for the better: the consumers.

By taking into account the demographics and preferences of US racial groups, clarified through a nationally representative survey of 3,000 US residents, researchers led by Kyushu University created a ‘desirable’ electricity generation mix for 2050 that includes 50% more energy from renewable sources than projections based on current plans and policies.

“In the US, consumers are being given more and more ways to choose their energy provider, so listening to and understanding these voices is crucial,” says Andrew Chapman, associate professor at Kyushu University’s International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Research (I2CNER) and leader of the study.

“In light of this, we set out to develop an energy plan that incorporates the broad range of voices and the rapidly shifting demographics of the US and then compared it with the current top-down plan in which energy goals are set by policymakers.”

To develop their energy plan, the international team of researchers from Kyushu University, Nagasaki University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign surveyed 3,000 people in the US in 2020 on their preferences, awareness, priorities, and other opinions regarding energy technologies, policies, and issues.

Considering only future construction projects needed to replace power plants at the end of their life and to meet predicted growth in energy consumption, they allocated roughly 2.4 billion kWh of electricity generating capacity out to the year 2050 based on the preferences of each racial group and the predicted future racial demographics of the country.

The resultant energy mix includes nearly 61% renewable-based electricity compared to 42% envisaged under the projected 2050 energy mix according to the US Energy Information Administration based on current plans and policies.

On the other hand, nuclear power is reduced by over half and coal-based generation by over three quarters in the researchers’ plan compared to the projections. Natural gas is similar in both cases, indicating that consumers are aware of the practical need for a stable energy supply.

“There appears to be strong support for a further emphasis on technologies that will help to achieve emission and climate goals when planning the future energy system, as indicated by a strong desire to move away from fossil and nuclear toward renewables,” notes Chapman.

“Though each racial group prefers different sources in the future energy mix, all groups recognize the need for a stable energy supply, combining natural gas with their preference for renewables, led by solar and wind.”

Differences in regional preferences also emerged. For example, along the west coast, there was significantly higher importance placed on dealing with climate change and realizing an equitable energy system. In the future, such input could be used to shape energy plans that leverage divisions among power grids across the US.

The researchers note that their plan’s allotment of hydroelectric and geothermal generation could be unrealistic because of how long such projects take to plan and implement. Furthermore, respondents consistently indicated a healthy economy as one of their priorities, so balancing costs and employment opportunities must also be considered in energy system design.

“In addition to consumer preferences seeming to support more renewables than current plans, we also found that preferences were linked to awareness, which is likewise strongly linked to education,” comments Chapman. “Thus, energy education is likely to be another important aspect for achieving carbon reduction goals and encouraging participatory energy system design.”

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For more information about this research, see “Cultural and demographic energy system awareness and preference: Implications for future energy system design in the United States,” Andrew Chapman, Yosuke Shigetomi, Shamal Chandra Karmaker, Bidyut Saha, and Caleb Brooks, Energy Economics (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2022.106141

About Kyushu University

Kyushu University is one of Japan’s leading research-oriented institutes of higher education since its founding in 1911. Home to around 19,000 students and 8,000 faculty and staff, Kyushu U's world-class research centers cover a wide range of study areas and research fields, from the humanities and arts to engineering and medical sciences. Its multiple campuses—including the largest in Japan—are located around Fukuoka City, a coastal metropolis on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu that is frequently ranked among the world’s most livable cities and historically known as a gateway to Asia. The International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (I2CNER) within Kyushu University is focused on developing carbon-reducing energy technologies and energy analysis of the future ‘carbon neutral’ energy system.

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JOURNAL

Energy Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.eneco.2022.106141 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Cultural and demographic energy system awareness and preference: Implications for future energy system design in the United States

Bridging social science and engineering to design energy facilities that serve local communities

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

NORMAN, OKLA. – There are plenty of novelties cities will proudly claim – ever heard the road trip trope of visiting the biggest ball of yarn? But it has historically been much harder for local communities to take pride in being hosts for critical energy facilities, particularly those that involve the management of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

On March 26, 1999, on the outskirts of Carlsbad, New Mexico, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received its first shipment of nuclear waste. Congress authorized the construction of the WIPP in 1979 due to its unique geology, a 2,000-foot-thick salt bed resulting from the evaporation of the ancient Permian Sea more than 250 million years ago. Additionally beneficial is its proximity to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the support of key local officials, making the WIPP the first U.S. underground nuclear waste repository to safely store decades of nuclear detritus resulting from Cold War-era bomb making and nuclear research. Since its establishment, however, finding a safe and accepted approach for managing the growing stock of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants has proven to be elusive, drawing opposition from potential host states and advocacy groups.

Now, the Department of Energy is reviewing the process for managing spent nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Energy University Program of the DOE has awarded nearly $3 million to a research team led by the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis with collaborators at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, New Mexico State University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop a new approach to “consent-based siting” of storage facilities that brings the questions, concerns and interests of community members to the forefront of the engineering and planning process for future storage sites.

Engaging Community Stakeholders

“As energy security and climate change have become a bigger and bigger problem, nuclear energy is very promising because it provides reliable domestic energy and doesn't emit carbon in the process of producing energy, but it's blocked by the failure to find a reasonable way to handle spent nuclear fuel,” said Hank Jenkins-Smith, co-director of OU’s Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis. “This proposal is using what we've learned from decades of work and focusing it on the problem of how to safely sequester spent nuclear fuel for between 50 and 100 years until it can be managed in a permanent way.”

The researchers contend that an essential missing element of past efforts to develop nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities in the United States is that those who want to build the sites have not provided the potential sites’ community members opportunities to meaningfully shape what it is they are being asked to host. By failing to provide the necessary ways to match the designs of the facilities to the aspirations of communities, those proposing the sites erode a community’s perception of self-determination that shapes its identity and values.

“Going back multiple decades, all of the efforts of consent-based siting for spent nuclear fuel have been haphazard, not consistent, not systematic, and happening after facilities have already been designed,” said Kuhika Gupta, associate research director for IPPRA and the project lead investigator.

“We have this spent fuel, it’s already there. We can’t wish it away, and it has to go someplace safe, but the way that these projects were being approached by government agencies and the engineers from the national labs and so forth was almost designed to generate conflict,” Jenkins-Smith said. “The engineers came up with what they thought was an optimal design by assuring safety and keeping costs down. They would approach a community and say, ‘We’d like to put this here,’ and because of the imagery of nuclear issues and radiation and so forth, that evoked an almost knee-jerk anti-siting response.”

Instead, the research team – which includes nuclear engineers, physical scientists and social scientists – has adopted a “community-first approach,” Gupta said. Their project will simulate the process of how to engage a community in the design and construction of a nuclear waste storage facility.

“Part of the problem with previous efforts was that the community was brought in a little too late, so we decided the first phase is going to be community elicitation before anything else,” Gupta said. “We would essentially start with a blank slate, asking the community when thinking about such a facility what are the types of things that come to their mind to try to elicit some of their wishes and needs and vision for such a facility for their community long-term.”

Project collaborators from the Center for Socially Engaged Design at the University of Michigan are helping develop the community engagement assessments. Starting first with a one- to two-day workshop, the researchers will develop tactics to recruit participation in a listening session as well as the questions and mechanisms that could be used to gauge community sentiment. Those “local” data points would then be paired with a national survey to draw out broader themes and gauge public views at both a local and national scale.

“We would take the responses from the community and bring that to engineers and scientists in phases two and three of the project to get them to think about ‘here's what the community wants, now how do we work with this?’” Gupta said. “I think what is truly innovative about this project is that we are flipping that process, going into the community first and then having the scientists grapple with community requests at the outset … then the final phase is bringing them together for a co-design – bringing them together in the same room to come up with broad features of a facility that matches the vision of the community, but also the physical and scientific attributes that the facility needs to have.”

Bridging the Engineering/Social Science Divide

The thread of collaboration and training runs throughout the project, structured in a way that senior scientists on the team would mentor early career scientists. Simultaneously, the team of engineers, physical scientists and social scientists will work together on nearly all phases of the project. The benefits of this are twofold, Gupta said. The collaborative structure provides training for the next generation of experts who would support this work into the future, and cross-training for social scientists and engineers to better understand the throughlines between the fields.

“Finding a long-term, sustainable solution to this problem requires both an understanding of the technical decisions as well as the social and political requirements,” she said. “The project aims to train experts who have an ability to recognize and engage along all of these dimensions.”

“When we started this work decades ago, the idea that social science would have a significant role other than as a critic of technology was really far-fetched,” said Jenkins-Smith. “We’ve lived that friction from the very beginning, and this whole project is designed to reverse that – to have the engineers engage with representatives and leaders of communities in ways that reduce that friction, to engage across the social science/engineering divide. Social scientists need to know what these engineering problems are and how they can be addressed, just as the engineers need to understand how their potential solutions are affecting the perceptions and identity and potential futures of these communities.”

Building for the Future

The materials in spent nuclear fuel have a half-life that can span many thousands of years, making the need for a long-term commitment from a host community central to the project’s success. The interim storage of these wastes – ranging from 50-100 years – will enable the country to develop and implement permanent disposal options.

For Carlsbad and the WIPP, Jenkins-Smith said the success of that site is due in part to “core community leaders, residents and others who were serious about making this work.”

“The community envisioned what they wanted their future to look like, and what kind of a role the relationship with the national labs and technical capabilities would mean for their community,” he said. “The Carlsbad case is often seen as an anomaly, but from our perspective it has these fundamental characteristics that show how socio-technical collaboration can work to address a problem, to deal with really important social issues that are beneficial to all of us in spite of a lot of built-in opposition to those programs.”

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About the Project
The project, “Integrating socially led co-design into consent-based siting of interim storage facilities,” is funded by the Department of Energy, Nuclear Energy Program, DE-FOA-0002516 IRP-MS-2.

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About the University of Oklahoma

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Pinpointing consciousness in animal brain using mouse ‘brain map’

New study identifies network cores of the brain with strong bidirectional connections

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

 

IMAGE: IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT THE PART OF THE BRAIN NETWORK SUPPORTING CONSCIOUSNESS BRAIN REGIONS SHOULD BE BIDIRECTIONALLY CONNECTED BECAUSE BOTH FEED-FORWARD AND FEEDBACK PROCESSES ARE NECESSARY FOR CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE. FOR EXAMPLE, PREVIOUS STUDIES EXAMINING VISUAL PERCEPTION HAVE SHOWN THAT CONSCIOUS PERCEPTION DOES NOT ARISE WHEN THERE IS ONLY FEED-FORWARD PROCESSING, WHEREAS IT ARISES WHEN THERE IS FEEDBACK AS WELL AS FEED-FORWARD PROCESSING. view more 

CREDIT: ©2022 JUN KITAZONO

Science may be one step closer to understanding where consciousness resides in the brain. A new study shows the importance of certain types of neural connections in identifying consciousness.

The research, published in Cerebral Cortex, was led by Jun Kitazono, a corresponding author and a project researcher in the  Department of General Systems Studies at the University of Tokyo.

“Where in the brain consciousness resides has been one of the biggest questions in science,” said Associate Professor Masafumi Oizumi, corresponding author and head of the lab conducting the study. “Although we have not reached a conclusive answer, much empirical evidence has been accumulated in the course of searching for the minimal mechanisms sufficient for conscious experience, or the neural correlates of consciousness.”

For this study, the team took a step toward identifying the minimally sufficient subnetworks in the brain that support conscious experience.

To identify the areas of the brain where consciousness resides, the researchers looked for one specific hallmark of consciousness within the neural networks of the brain: bidirectional pathways. When we see something or experience a sensation, our brains take in information. This is called a feed-forward signal, but receiving such feed-forward signals is not enough for consciousness. Our brains also need to send information back, in what is called feedback. Not every part of the brain can both receive feed-forward and return feedback information. Researchers hypothesized that these bidirectional connections are an essential hallmark of the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness.

“Feed-forward processing alone is insufficient for subjects to consciously perceive stimuli; rather, feedback is also necessary, indicating the need for bidirectional processing. The feedback component disappears not only during the loss of specific contents of consciousness in awake states, but also during unconscious states where conscious experiences are generally lost, such as general anesthesia, sleep and vegetative states,” said Kitazono. He also explained that it does not matter if you are looking at a human, monkey, mouse, bird or fly; the bidirectionality of processing remains essential.

CAPTION

The proposed algorithm can decompose the entire network hierarchically, into the network part with the strongest bidirectional connections, the part with the second strongest, and so on down the line.

CREDIT

©2022 Jun Kitazono

Researchers used a mouse connectome and computational techniques to test their idea. A connectome is a detailed map of the connections in the brain. First, they developed an efficient algorithm to extract the parts of the brain with strong bidirectional connections, called complexes. Then, they applied the algorithm to the mouse connectome.

“We found that the extracted complexes with the most bidirectionality were not evenly distributed among all major regions, but rather are concentrated in the cortical regions and thalamic regions,” said Kitazono. “On the other hand, regions in the other major regions have low bidirectionality. In particular, regions in the cerebellum have much lower bidirectionality.”

These findings align with where scientists have long thought consciousness resides in the brain. The cerebral cortex, located on the surface of the brain, contains sensory areas, motor areas and association areas that are thought to be essential to consciousness experience. The thalamus, located in the middle of the brain, has likewise been thought to be related to consciousness, and in particular, the interaction between the thalamus and cortical regions, called the thalamo-cortical loop, is considered important for consciousness. These results support the idea that the bidirectionality in the brain network is a key to identifying the place of consciousness.

Researchers emphasized that they are still working toward identifying the place of consciousness.

“This study focuses only on ‘static’ anatomical connections between neurons or brain areas. However, consciousness is ‘dynamic,’ changing from moment to moment depending on neural activity,” said Oizumi. “Although anatomical connections tell us how neural activity would propagate and how brain areas would interact, we need to directly investigate the dynamics of neural activity to identify the place of consciousness at any given moment.”

As a next step, he said the team is currently analyzing activity-based networks of the brain in various types of neural recordings.

“The ultimate goal of our lab is to find the mathematical relationship between consciousness and the brain,” said Oizumi. “In this study, we have attempted to relate the network properties of the brain to the place of consciousness. We will further investigate the relationship between consciousness and the brain, toward what is our ultimate goal.”

CAPTION

Conventional neuroscience has studied the relationship of what kind of brain activity r occurs in response to an external stimulus s (e.g., an image of an apple). If we write this relationship using the function f as r=f(s), we can say that clarifying the function f is the main research that conventional neuroscience has been doing. Such research has revealed much about the mechanism of information processing, that is, how the brain processes information from external stimuli. On the other hand, our brain not only processes information from the external world, but also produces the subjective experience of “seeing an apple.” The ultimate goal of the Oizumi Lab is to theoretically understand the subjective experience and consciousness produced by the brain: that is, to clarify the function g that connects brain activity r and consciousness C, where C is the consciousness produced from brain activity r (C=g(r)).

CREDIT

©2022 Masafumi Oizumi

Journal article

Jun Kitazono, Yuma Aoki, Masafumi Oizumi, “Bidirectionally connected cores in a mouse connectome: towards extracting the brain subnetworks essential for consciousness,” Cerebral Cortex: July 21, 2022, DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac143

Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac143

 

Funding

Japan Science and Technology Agency ACT-X (Grant Number JPMJAX20A6), Japan Science and Technology Agency CREST (Grant Numbers JPMJCR1864 and JPMJCR15E2), AIP challenge program, Japan Science and Technology Agency Moonshot R&D (Grant Number JPMJMS2012), and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (Grant Numbers 18H02713 and 20H05712) supported this research.

 

Related links

Oizumi Lab: https://sites.google.com/a/g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/oizumi-lab/english

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: https://www.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eng_site/

 

About the University of Tokyo

The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.

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JOURNAL

Cerebral Cortex

DOI

10.1093/cercor/bhac143 

ARTICLE TITLE

Bidirectionally connected cores in a mouse connectome: towards extracting the brain subnetworks essential for consciousness

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Jul-2022