Tuesday, September 06, 2022

'Full-time work doesn't pay': Why are so many working American families living day to day?

by Bailey Schulz

money — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Rosalba Hernandez and her husband both work full time at a restaurant, but with five kids, soaring inflation rates and a San Diego apartment that keeps jacking up rent, the family is living day to day.

Things have gotten especially tight after the onset of the pandemic. An immigration raid in 2019 caused Hernandez to lose a second job at a Korean grocery store. And when the restaurant she previously worked at closed after the state entered lockdowns, the family fell $6,000 behind on rent and continue to carry the debt.

Hernandez and her husband have had to be creative to make do. With housing costs up, the couple is renting one room in their two-bedroom apartment to a family member for $800 a month. Day care expenses are out of the question, so Hernandez and her husband work opposite shifts to care for their 1-year-old. Whatever tips Hernandez makes go toward food.

"(It's) stressful because we're worried about hours being cut or being sent home early," Hernandez told USA TODAY through a translator. "Every little bit is helping."

The Hernandez family isn't alone. Basics such as food, housing and medical care are too pricy for many American families, even with full-time jobs.

More than one-third of U.S. families that work full time year-round do not earn enough to cover a basic family budget, according to a recent report from researchers at Brandeis University's diversitydatakids.org program at the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy.

The situation is even more dire for Black and Hispanic families, according to the report. More than half cannot afford basic needs, compared to 25% of white families and 23% of Asian and Pacific Islander families. Inequities remain even when controlling for education and occupation.

"This is contributing to a significant difference in the opportunities that families can provide for their children," said Abigail Walters, a research associate at the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy. "Full-time work doesn't pay, and families need a raise."

How many families don't earn enough to meet basic needs?

The report found that 35% of families who work full time don't earn enough for basic necessities such as housing, food, medical care, transportation to work, child care and minimal household expenses.

For low-income families—those whose income falls below 200% of the supplemental poverty measure, or $52,492 for two adults and two related children in 2020 it's—77% who can't pay the bills despite working full time.

In 2020, more than a quarter of the population, 89.7 million people, were considered low income per the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit that collects statistics for research on the health and structure of populations.

How far off from prosperity are these families?

The report found that low-income families working full time would need an additional $23,500 annually—or $11 more per hour—to cover basic expenses. Black and Hispanic families would need about $26,000 more per year.

The data used in the report is from 2015 to 2019. Researchers say the situation has likely gotten worse after the pandemic brought on massive layoffs and record inflation rates.

What can be done to lift Americans out of poverty?

Researchers noted that earning more isn't as easy as changing fields or taking on a second job.

"(There are) issues with structural racism," Walters said. "There are significant barriers to getting the better job, whether it's due to hiring discrimination or being the last hired and first fired, as well as pay gaps."

Researchers outlined actions employers and policymakers can take to help families:

Give working families a raise: Employers can help by raising wages, offering more benefits and providing opportunities to advance to higher-paying jobs. Alternatively, policymakers can boost families' incomes with increased tax credits.
Fix the child care system: A more affordable child care system would also benefit families struggling to afford the basics. The average annual cost of child care in the U.S. is $10,174, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Child Care Aware.
Expand paid family and medical leave: Researchers say families should be able to afford medical leave without the threat of losing their job or a substantial portion of their income.

Full-time working families still lack benefits

About 80% of families working full time have access to health insurance from their employer if they are white or Asian. If they're Black or Hispanic, it's only 71% and 59%, respectively.

Employer benefits are less common for low-income families. Less than half of low-income Hispanic families with full-time jobs have access to health insurance from their employers.

"(The low wages are) not being made up by employer benefits," said Pamela Joshi, a senior research scientist and the paper's lead author.

Disparities in access to high-speed internet found among Chicago parents

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Using science to solve a 1,300-year-old art mystery

by University of Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Art Museum turned to a scientist at the University of Cincinnati for help solving a mystery 1,300 years in the making.

The museum's Chinese dancing horse sculpture is so realistic that the fiery steed seems ready to gallop off its pedestal. But East Asian art curator Hou-mei Sung questioned the authenticity of a decorative tassel on the terracotta horse's forehead that resembles the horn of a mythological unicorn.

The museum reached out to UC College of Arts and Sciences assistant professor of chemistry Pietro Strobbia for help to determine if the tassel was original to the work.

"Many museums have a conservator but not necessarily scientific facilities needed to do this kind of examination," Strobbia said. "The forehead tassel looks original, but the museum asked us to determine what materials it was made from."

Strobbia and his collaborators wrote about the project for a paper published in the journal Heritage Science.

Sung has seen many examples of ancient sculptures paying tribute to the dancing horses that performed for emperors as far back as 202 B.C. But no others have forehead tassels, she said. Was it perhaps added at some later date?

"I believed it was a mistake. The tassel wasn't in the right position," she said. "These pieces are so old. They often go through many repairs."

Donated to the Cincinnati museum by a collector in 1997, the dancing horse dates back to the Tang dynasty when such sculptures were commissioned for the express purpose of entombing them with royalty upon their deaths, Sung said.

Dancing horses were trained to move in time with a drumbeat. Sung said Emperor Xuanzong from the eighth century loved horses so much that he had a stable of more than 40,000. For one birthday celebration, he invited a troupe of 400 dancing horses to perform the "Song of the Upturned Cup."

"During the dramatic finale, one horse would bend its knees and clench a cup in its mouth and offer wine to the ruler to wish him longevity," Sung said. "This became a ritual."

The museum's terracotta horse is saddled with a blanket and flowing silken material where stirrups often hang. Ten conical tassels adorn the horse in the same reddish color as its short-cropped tail and long mane.

"The making of the sculpture is beautiful. These horses are renowned," said Kelly Rectenwald, co-author of the paper and associate objects conservator at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

With a background in archaeology and chemistry, Rectenwald said she understands how the latest science techniques are helping to shed new light on antiquities.

"We don't have that kind of scientific equipment here, so partnering with UC has been a great resource," she said.

To answer some of the fundamental questions about the piece, the museum agreed to allow UC's Strobbia and collaborators such as Claudia Conti at Italy's Institute of Heritage Science to take 11 tiny samples for analysis.

"We judged the risk was worth the reward to answer the question," Rectenwald said.

Researchers deployed a battery of molecular, chemical and mineralogical tests of the masterpiece and its features using cutting-edge techniques such as X-ray powder diffraction, ionic chromatography and Raman spectroscopy.

University of Cincinnati assistant professor Pietro Strobbia is using chemistry tools to help museums understand the provenance and origins of ancient masterpieces. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC

Strobbia has always had an interest in art, surrounded by the work of Raphael, Michelangelo and Bernini in Italy.

"I think I grew up a little spoiled coming from Rome," he said.

He and his research partners found that, indeed, the sculpture's forehead tassel was made of plaster, not terra cotta. It was added to the sculpture using animal glue.

The museum decided to remove the tassel in keeping with what they know about the original artworks, Rectenwald said. Beneath the tassel, Rectenwald found a smooth surface with no sign of scoring one might expect to see under sculptural adornments, providing more evidence that the tassel was a subsequent addition.

Researchers also discovered that two other tassels were repaired at different times, suggesting the sculpture was the subject of multiple restoration efforts over its many centuries, Rectenwald said.

"It was restored at least twice in its lifetime," she said. "Finding anything new about an artwork is really interesting."

Now Strobbia hopes to expand on his experience with the Cincinnati Art Museum by offering his chemistry expertise to other museums in the Midwest and perhaps UC's own art collection.

Collaborations between art historians and scientists give an added dimension to the stories behind these precious masterpieces.Long-term relationship with owner reduces horses' stress reactions in new situations

More information: C. Conti et al, Scientific investigation to look into the conservation history of a Tang Dynasty terracotta Dancing Horse, Heritage Science (2022). DOI: 10.1186/s40494-022-00758-7

Provided by University of Cincinnati

Researchers capture live footage of virus infecting cell

by Stephanie Dutchen, Harvard Medical School

In a first, scientists have captured on video all the steps a virus follows as it enters and infects a living cell in real time and in three dimensions.

Scientists achieved the feat by using advanced imaging called lattice light sheet microscopy as well as chemical and genetic manipulation.

The first part of the video shown here follows a virus engineered to sprout SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins (labeled pink) as it is captured at a cell surface and engulfed by a cellular compartment called an endosome. The virus then fuses with the endosome membrane and injects its genetic material (labeled blue) inside the cell—the steps necessary to kick off a cycle of viral infection and replication.

The second part of the video shows many such viruses inside the cell. The video covers 4 minutes of activity, with snapshots taken every 4 seconds.

The findings, published Sept. 1 in PNAS, provide new insights into the fundamental mechanics of viral infection and could point the way to new methods for intervening before the onset of COVID-19.

The researchers' work reveals that viruses can't fuse with the membrane and release their genomes unless they're bathed in a slightly acidic environment. Experiments indicated that the pH must fall between 6.2 and 6.8, just shy of neutral and on par with bodily fluids such as saliva and urine. Endosomes have such acidity, and the team's measurements confirmed that this is also the pH range inside a typical human nose, where SARS-CoV-2 infection often begins.

Credit: Harvard Medical School

"Amusingly enough, measuring the pH of the nostril cavity has rarely been done before," noted co-senior author Tomas Kirchhausen, professor of cell biology in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and HMS professor of pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital.

The acidic environment allows enzymes in the endosome or on the cell surface—including TMPRSS2, a key enabler of SARS-CoV-2 infection—to cut the spike protein and facilitate membrane fusion, the team found.

The work was led by the labs of Kirchhausen; former HMS professor Sean Whelan, now at Washington University in St. Louis; and Giuseppe Balistreri at the University of Helsinki. Alex Kreutzberger, HMS instructor in pediatrics in the Kirchhausen lab, is first author of the paper.Powerful new antibody neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 variants

More information: Alex J. B. Kreutzberger et al, SARS-CoV-2 requires acidic pH to infect cells, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2209514119

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by Harvard Medical School

Archaeologists discover monumental evidence of prehistoric hunting across Arabian desert

by University of Oxford

Archaeologists at the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology have used satellite imagery to identify and map more than 350 monumental hunting structures known as "kites" across northern Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq—most of which had never been previously documented.

Led by Dr. Michael Fradley, a team of researchers in the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project used a range of open-source satellite imagery to carefully study the region around the eastern Nafud desert, an area little studied in the past. The surprising results, published in the journal The Holocene, have the potential to change our understanding of prehistoric connections and climate change across the Middle East.

Termed kites by early aircraft pilots, these structures consist of low stone walls making up a head enclosure and a number of guiding walls, sometimes kilometers long. They are believed to have been used to guide game such as gazelles into an area where they could be captured or killed. There is evidence that these structures may date back as far as 8,000 BCE in the Neolithic period.

Kites cannot be observed easily from the ground, however the advent of commercial satellite imagery and platforms such as Google Earth have enabled recent discoveries of new distributions. While these structures were already well-known from eastern Jordan and adjoining areas in southern Syria, these latest results take the known distribution over 400km further east across northern Saudi Arabia, with some also identified in southern Iraq for the first time.

Dr. Fradley said, "The structures we found displayed evidence of complex, careful design. In terms of size, the 'heads' of the kites can be over 100 meters wide, but the guiding walls (the 'strings' of the kite) which we currently think gazelle and other game would follow to the kite heads can be incredibly long. In some of these new examples, the surviving portion of walls run in almost straight lines for over 4 kilometers, often over very varied topography. This shows an incredible level of ability in how these structures were designed and built."

Evidence suggests considerable resources would have had to be coordinated to build, maintain, and rebuild the kites over generations, combined with hunting and returning butchered remains to settlements or camps for further preservation. The researchers suggest that their exaggerated scale and form may be an expression of status, identity and territoriality. Appearances of the kites in rock art found in Jordan suggests they had an important place within the symbolic and ritual spheres of Neolithic peoples in the region.

From the design of the kite heads to the careful runs of guiding walls over long distances, these structures contrast markedly in scale with any other evidence of architecture from the early Holocene period. The researchers suggest that the builders of these kites dwelt in temporary structures made from organic materials that have left no trace visible on current satellite imagery data.

These new sites suggest a previously unknown level of connection right across northern Arabia at the time they were built. They raise exciting questions about who built these structures, who the hunted game were intended to feed, and how the people were able to not only survive, but also invest in these monumental structures.

In the context of this new connectedness, the distribution of the star-shaped kites now provides the first direct evidence of contact through, rather than around, the Nafud desert. This underlines the importance areas that are now desert had under more favorable climatic conditions in enabling the movement of humans and wildlife. It is thought the kites were built during a wetter, greener climatic period known as the Holocene Humid Period (between around 9000 and 4000 BCE).

The largest number of kites were built on the Al Labbah plateau in the Nafud desert, where the absence of later Bronze Age burial monuments suggests that a shift into a drier period meant some of these areas became too marginal to support the communities once using these landscapes, with game species also potentially displaced by climate change.

Whether the patterns of kite construction over space and time represent the movement of ideas or people, or even the direction of that movement, remain questions to be answered.

The project is now extending its survey work across these now arid zones to further develop our understanding of these landscapes and the effect of climate change.

The study, "Following the herds? A new distribution of hunting kites in Southwest Asia," is published in The Holocene.

Stone age desert kites found in southern Africa

More information: Michael Fradley et al, Following the herds? A new distribution of hunting kites in Southwest Asia, The Holocene (2022). DOI: 10.1177/09596836221114290

Provided by University of Oxford

Faster in the past: New seafloor images – the highest resolution of any taken off the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – upend understanding of Thwaites Glacier retreat

At times in its past, retreat of the massive Thwaites Glacier was even quicker than it is today, heightening concerns for its future

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

IMAGE: THE R/V NATHANIEL B. PALMER PHOTOGRAPHED FROM A DRONE AT THWAITES GLACIER ICE FRONT IN FEBRUARY 2019. view more
CREDIT: ALEXANDRA MAZUR/UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

TAMPA, Fla. (Sept. 2, 2022) – The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica – about the size of Florida – has been an elephant in the room for scientists trying to make global sea level rise predictions.

This massive ice stream is already in a phase of fast retreat (a “collapse” when viewed on geological timescales) leading to widespread concern about exactly how much, or how fast, it may give up its ice to the ocean.

The potential impact of Thwaites’ retreat is spine-chilling: a total loss of the glacier and surrounding icy basins could raise sea level from three to 10 feet.

A new study in Nature Geoscience led by marine geophysicist Alastair Graham at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science adds cause for concern. For the first time, scientists mapped in high-resolution a critical area of the seafloor in front of the glacier that gives them a window into how fast Thwaites retreated and moved in the past.

The stunning imagery shows geologic features that are new to science, and also provides a kind of crystal ball to see into Thwaites’ future. In people and ice sheets alike, past behavior is key to understanding future behavior.

The team documented more than 160 parallel ridges that were created, like a footprint, as the glacier’s leading edge retreated and bobbed up and down with the daily tides.

“It’s as if you are looking at a tide gauge on the seafloor,” Graham said. “It really blows my mind how beautiful the data are.”

Beauty aside, what’s alarming is that the rate of Thwaites’ retreat that scientists have documented more recently are small compared to the fastest rates of change in its past, said Graham.

To understand Thwaites’ past retreat, the team analyzed the rib-like formations submerged 700 meters (just under half a mile) beneath the polar ocean and factored in the tidal cycle for the region, as predicted by computer models, to show that one rib must have been formed every single day.

At some point in the last 200 years, over a duration of less than six months, the front of the glacier lost contact with a seabed ridge and retreated at a rate of more than 2.1 kilometers per year (1.3 miles per year) – twice the rate documented using satellites between 2011 and 2019.

“Our results suggest that pulses of very rapid retreat have occurred at Thwaites Glacier in the last two centuries, and possibly as recently as the mid-20th Century,” Graham said.

“Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future–even from one year to the next–once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed,” said marine geophysicist and study co-author Robert Larter from the British Antarctic Survey.

To collect the imagery and supporting geophysical data, the team, which included scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden, launched a state-of-the-art orange robotic vehicle loaded with imaging sensors called ‘Rán’from the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer during an expedition in 2019.

Rán, operated by scientists at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, embarked on a 20-hour mission that was as risky as it was serendipitous, Graham said. It mapped an area of the seabed in front of the glacier about the size of Houston – and did so in extreme conditions during an unusual summer notable for its lack of sea ice.

This allowed scientists to access the glacier front for the first time in history.

“This was a pioneering study of the ocean floor, made possible by recent technological advancements in autonomous ocean mapping and a bold decision by the Wallenberg foundation to invest into this research infrastructure,” said Anna Wåhlin, a physical oceanographer from the University of Gothenburg who deployed Rán at Thwaites. “The images Ran collected give us vital insights into the processes happening at the critical junction between the glacier and the ocean today.”

“It was truly a once in a lifetime mission,” said Graham, who said the team would like to sample the seabed sediments directly so they can more accurately date the ridge-like features.

“But the ice closed in on us pretty quickly and we had to leave before we could do that on this expedition,” he said.

While many questions remain, one thing’s for sure: It used to be that scientists thought of the Antarctic ice sheets as sluggish and slow to respond, but that’s simply not true, said Graham.

“Just a small kick to Thwaites could lead to a big response,” he said.

According to the United Nations, roughly 40 percent of the human population lives within 60 miles of the coast.

“This study is part of a cross-disciplinary collective effort to understand the Thwaites Glacier system better,” said Tom Frazer, dean of the USF College of Marine Science, “and just because it’s out of sight, we can’t have Thwaites out of mind. This study is an important step forward in providing essential information to inform global planning efforts.”

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the UK Natural Environment Research Council through the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration.

The 2019 expedition was the first in a five-year project dubbed THOR, which stands for Thwaites Offshore Research, and also included team members from a sister project called the Thwaites-Amundsen Regional Survey and Network Integrating Atmosphere-Ice-Ocean Processes, or TARSAN.

For more information, read this companion story authored by Graham and the team.

About the University of South Florida

The University of South Florida, a high-impact global research university dedicated to student success, generates an annual economic impact of more than $6 billion. Over the past 10 years, no other public university in the country has risen faster in U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings than USF. Serving more than 50,000 students on campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee, USF is designated as a Preeminent State Research University by the Florida Board of Governors, placing it in the most elite category among the state’s 12 public universities. USF has earned widespread national recognition for its success graduating under-represented minority and limited-income students at rates equal to or higher than white and higher income students. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu

JOURNAL

Nature

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in the pre-satellite era

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Sep-2022

A 3D-rendered view of the multibeam bathymetry (seafloor shape) colored by depth, collected by Rán across a seabed ridge, just in front of Thwaites Ice Shelf.
CREDIT
Alastair Graham/University of South Florida

Rán, a Kongsberg HUGIN autonomous underwater vehicle, amongst sea ice in front of Thwaites Glacier, after a 20-hour mission mapping the seafloor.

CREDIT

Anna Wåhlin/University of Gothenburg

THOR scientists Alastair Graham (right) and Robert Larter (left) look on in awe at the crumbling ice face of the Thwaites Glacier margin, from the bridge deck of the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer.

CREDIT

Frank Nitsche

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for THWAITES

COVID rekindled an appreciation of nature for many

An opportunity to rediscover why the great outdoors are so great in the first place

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

The pandemic has impacted our lives in a multitude of ways, many of which will no doubt be felt for years to come. While many of those effects are clearly negative, UConn researchers have identified at least one positive impact – our perception of natural spaces changed. The findings are published in Nature Scientific Reports.

As people flocked to outdoor spaces for recreation in the spring of 2020, Sohyun Park, assistant professor in UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, noticed some interesting trends: more people were on the trails, and many of those people had traveled from far away to enjoy nature.

Park was also part of the team for the Connecticut Trail Census and co-wrote a paper about the trends.

Sohyun Park of the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture in her office in the W.B. Young Building. Mar. 8, 2022. (Jason Sheldon/UConn Photo)

“What’s interesting was rural trail use increased compared to urban trails,” Park says. “I wanted to try to find out how people were changing their mindset or their attitudes or perceptions.”

To do this, Park and co-authors Seungman Kim and Jaehoon Lee of Texas Tech University, and Biyoung Heo of James Corner Field Operations, looked to social media data and machine learning techniques to help make sense of the vast quantities of information on Twitter and try to find a pattern among those data, says Park. They utilized Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API), which allows researchers to obtain aggregated data from Twitter posts.

“We wanted to know from the people who have been in greenspaces, what were they doing and what they were writing about on Twitter. We utilized very innovative and advanced levels of machine learning methods,” says Park. “The machine categorized the keywords and classified them into several human-recognizable groups. One group was nature related. The second group is all traditional park-related activities and the third one is obviously the COVID-related one, so mask wearing and social distancing, and things like that.”

A newfound appreciation for nature

Though what people were doing in the parks did not change significantly, the researchers noticed some significant changes in keyword usage between pre-pandemic and pandemic Twitter, with people frequently referencing nature, and their experiences within it.

“Users began to put the word ‘nature’ and nature-related activities or nature-related pictures on their Twitter,” Park says. “It was very interesting because, in the past, there were not many keywords like that, but people used keywords like ‘playing’, ‘walking the dog’, ‘baseball’, and other traditional, active park activities that they were enjoying while they were there in the parks. If you look at post- 2020 Twitter, you can also see keywords thanking God or showing appreciation for nature, describing the birds singing or water sounds.”

What the researchers found was people seemed to have realized a newfound appreciation for nature and greenspaces, especially true for those in urban settings. As a landscape architect, Park was interested to see if there was something more to the findings and perhaps if there might be some design implications for the results.

Common features in modern parks include benches, walking paths, and sports fields, for instance. However, Park says the results of the paper seem to suggest that natural greenspaces appeal to people differently.

“We might want to go back to the origin of public parks like those Olmsted designed,” Park says. “In his time in 19th century, there was a lot of hustle and bustle in the city, and they wanted to have space for people to find respite and peace. We might want to go back to that era living with a 21st century health crisis and try to rethink about the design principles.”

Park says to imagine Manhattan’s Central Park, which hosts ponds, wooded areas, and meadows. Most of those natural features were introduced artificially and were not there in the first place. Compare this with contemporary parks:

“Modern parks may be well managed, maintained, and manicured, everything is clean and tidy,” Park says. “There are some seating areas, paved surfaces, and structures where you can play something with your friends and family members, but not really in a naturalistic style. People can feel that in public spaces.”

The outdoors as essential resource for overall well-being

Greenspaces impact mental, physical, and spiritual health, and Park reasons that these natural elements might be essential in public spaces, particularly for those who have less access to the public parks, or marginalized communities that don’t have any green areas at their residences.

“I’m arguing that parks are not only recreational spaces; greenspaces and parks serve as essential amenities for all including those with low incomes or disabilities, and the elderly,” Park says. “Parks need inclusive planning approaches that might be added to the current principles for park development.”

Park explains that many people are involved in the planning, design, and management of parks and greenspaces. The tricky part is that the more naturalistic, garden concept for public parks may require more planning and maintenance, and therefore these design features rely more heavily on resources and budgets.

“In the long term, I think that will be the direction that we need to go and now officials and park managers need to work together with those who are living nearby so that we can have some kind of co-managing type of approaches to the future,” Park says.

This study highlights the importance of those design features and their roles in our emotional and spiritual well-being, and Park says it is important for the public to advocate for our greenspaces. Research like this can inform decision-making.

“It is important for the public and decision-makers to understand that ultimately, we need to have a budget to have more natural features and nature-oriented programs in the park. We all need to be more active in terms of the things that towns are doing. That can start with joining your town’s Conservation Commission or attending monthly meetings. Participate and make your voice heard. That makes a huge change and can impact big decisions. Sometimes these decision makers are really grounded by how the stakeholders are feeling so giving some input and feedback on the public decision-making should be the first step. It is empowering and more people need to be involved in public planning.”