Walking and slithering aren't as different as you think

At least, if you have enough legs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Images/Video 

Abrahamic texts treat slithering as a special indignity visited on the wicked serpent, but evolution may draw a more continuous line through the motion of swimming microbes, wriggling worms, skittering spiders and walking horses. 

A new study found that all of these kinds of motion are well represented by a single mathematical model.

"This didn't come out of nowhere—this is from our real robot data," said Dan Zhao, first author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a recent Ph.D. graduate in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan.

"Even when the robot looks like it's sliding, like its feet are slipping, its velocity is still proportional to how quickly it's moving its body."

Unlike the dynamic motion of gliding birds and sharks and galloping horses—where speed is driven, at least in part, by momentum—every bit of speed for ants, centipedes, snakes and swimming microbes is driven by changing the shape of the body. This is known as kinematic motion.

The expanded understanding of kinematic motion could change the way roboticists think about programming many-limbed robots, opening new possibilities for walking planetary rovers, for instance. 

Shai Revzen, professor of electrical and computer engineering at U-M and senior author of the study, explained that two- and four-legged robots are popular because more legs are extremely complex to model using current tools. 

"This never sat well with me because my work was on cockroach locomotion," Revzen said. "I can tell you many things about cockroaches. One of them is that they're not brilliant mathematicians."

And if cockroaches can walk without solving extremely complex equations, there has to be an easier way to program walking robots. The new finding offers a place to start.

Slipping feet complicates typical motion models for robots, and the assumption was that it might add an element of momentum to the motion of many-legged robots. But in the model reported by the U-M team, it is not so different from lizards that "swim" in sand or microbes swimming in water. 

Because microbes are small, the water seems a lot thicker and stickier—as if a human was trying to swim in honey. In all of these cases, the limbs move through the surrounding medium, or slide over a surface, rather than being connected at a stationary point.

The team discovered the connection by taking a known model that describes swimming microbes and then reconfiguring it to use with their multi-legged robots. The model reliably reflected their data, which came from multipods—modular robots that can operate with 6 to 12 legs—and a six-legged robot called BigAnt. 

The team also collaborated with Glenna Clifton, assistant professor of biology at the University of Portland in Oregon, who provided data on ants walking on a flat surface. While the robot legs slip a lot—up to 100% of the time for the multipods—ant feet have much firmer connections with the ground, slipping only 4.7% of the time. 

Even so, the ants and robots followed the same equations, with their speeds proportional to how quickly they moved their legs. It turned out that this kind of slipping didn't alter the kinematic nature of the motion.

As for what this suggests about how walking evolved, the team points to the worm believed to be the last common ancestor for all creatures that have two sides that are mirror images of each other. This worm, wriggling through water, already had the foundations of the motion that enabled the first animals to walk on land, they propose. Even humans begin learning to propel ourselves kinematically, crawling on hands and knees with the three points of contact on the ground at any time.

The skills of managing momentum—running with four legs or fewer, walking or running on two legs, flying or gliding—ladder on top of that older knowledge about how to move, the researchers suggest.

The research was supported by the Army Research Office (grants W911NF-17-1-0243 and W911NF-17-1-0306), the National Science Foundation (grants 1825918 and 2048235) and the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Michigan-Israel Partnership for Research and Education Autonomous Systems Mega-Project.

Zhao is now a senior controls engineer at XPENG Robotics.

Study: Walking is like slithering: a unifying, data-driven view of locomotion (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.202113222)

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.202113222 

Sept. 6, 2022

Contact: Katherine McAlpine, kmca@umich.edu

Captions: Walking and slithering aren't as

different as you think 

Produced video for social media MP4 | YouTube

Credit: Hans Anderson, Michigan News

Multipod videos

Data collected using modular robots with six to

twelve legs helped to show that many-legged walking,

slithering and some kinds of swimming follow the same

mathematical model.

Credit: BIRDS Lab, University of Michigan

Ant videos

Data gathered from ants helped to show that many-legged walking,

slithering and some kinds of swimming follow the same mathematical model.

Credit: Clifton Group, University of Portland

BigAnt photos and videos

A six-legged ant-inspired robot. Data collected with this robot

helped to show that many-legged walking, slithering and some

kinds of swimming follow the same mathematical model.

Credit: BIRDS Lab, University of Michigan

The physics of walking is simpler than we thought

Walking for multi-legged creatures is a lot like slithering, researchers find by comparing ants to robots

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

VIDEO: B-ROLL OF ANTS WALKING, A MULTIPOD ROBOT WALKING AND THE BIGANT ROBOT WALKING. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO/UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

The physics of walking for multi-legged animals and robots is simpler than previously thought. That is the finding described by a team of roboticists, physicists and biologists in the Sept. 5 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a paper titled “Walking is like slithering: a unifying, data-driven view of locomotion.” 

“This is important because it will allow roboticists to build much simpler models to describe the way robots walk and move through the world,” said paper coauthor Nick Gravish, a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego.

The researchers had previously studied ant walking and wanted to see how their findings could be applied to robots. In the process, they discovered a new mathematical relationship between walking, skipping, slithering and swimming in viscous fluids for multi-legged animals and bots. 

The team studied several colonies of Argentine ants at UC San Diego, and two different types of multi-legged robots at the University of Michigan. 

“Argentine ants are very easy to study in the lab,” said paper coauthor Glenna Clifton, a faculty member at the University of Portland, who conducted most of the ant research while she was a postdoctoral scholar in Gravish’s lab at UC San Diego. 

Argentine ants are good walkers that can go long distances over various terrains. These ants also easily acclimate to lab settings, rebuilding their colonies quickly. Researchers then can motivate them to walk by placing food in specific locations. “These ants will set up foraging trails and follow them,” Clifton said. “They bounce back quickly and they don’t hold a grudge.” 

To study these different animals and robots, researchers used an algorithm developed by the research group of Shai Revzen at the University of Michigan, which turns complex body motions into shapes. “This algorithm allows us to create a simple relationship between what posture you’re in and where you are going to move next,” Gravish said. 

The researchers found that the same algorithms could be applied both to ants and the two different types of robots in the study, even though the amount of slipping motions when they walk differs widely. Argentine ants also don’t slip much when they walk – just 4.7% of total motion. By contrast, that slipping percentage is 12% to 22% for the six-legged BigANT robot and 40% to 100% for the multipod robots with six to 12 legs in the study, which sometimes crawl. 

 By using this model, researchers can predict where the insect or robot is going to move next simply based on what posture–or shape–they’re making.  “This provides a universal model for location that applies whenever the movement is dominated by friction with the environment,” the researchers write. 

The mathematics the researchers used aren’t new. But the math was understood to only apply to slithering and swimming in viscous liquids. The team showed that the same equations apply to multi-legged walking, whether the walkers are slipping or not. In addition, the same rules apply from millimeter-scale insects, such as ants, to meter-scale robots. An early version of the paper title was “walking like a worm.” 

“The universality of this approach may have applications in robot design and motion planning, and provides insight into the evolution and control of legged locomotion,” the researchers write. 

Researchers hypothesize that these universal principles may have implications for understanding major evolutionary transitions, for example from swimming to walking. Given that walking, even with slipping, follows the same general control principles as viscous swimming, early land animals might already have had the neural circuitry needed for locomotion on land. 

Researchers didn’t study two-legged creatures, but the model would apply to them as long as they move slowly; have both feet on the ground at the same time; and do not fall. (Picture Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk.) 

The team still has more fine tuning to do, to understand, for example, the role friction forces play in the model. 

“Either way, walking can be much simpler than we usually think,” Gravish said. 

Walking is like slithering: a unifying, data-driven view of locomotion

University of Michigan: Dan Zhao, Brian Bittner, Shai Revzen 

University of Portland: Glenna Clifton 

University of California San Diego: Nick Gravish

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Walking is like slithering: A unifying, data-driven view of locomotion

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Sep-2022

CAPTION

Experimental equipment to study ants walking similar to the one used in the study

CREDIT

David Baillot/University of California San Diego

CAPTION

Researchers Glenna Clifton, from the University of Portland, and Nick Gravish, from the University of California San Diego, harvest ants on the UC San Diego campus.

CREDIT

David Baillot/University of California San Diego

Cancers in adults under 50 on the rise globally

Researchers identify risks factors and trends behind an increasing incidence of early-onset cancers around the world

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

Over recent decades, more and more adults under the age of 50 are developing cancer. A study conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital reveals that the incidence of early onset cancers (those diagnosed before age 50), including cancers of the breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver, and pancreas among others, has dramatically increased around the world, with this drastic rise beginning around 1990. In an effort to understand why many more younger individuals are being diagnosed with cancer, scientists conducted extensive analyses of available data in the literature and online, including information on early life exposures that might have contributed to this trend. Results are published in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology.

“From our data, we observed something called the birth cohort effect. This effect shows that each successive group of people born at a later time (e.g., decade-later) have a higher risk of developing cancer later in life, likely due to risk factors they were exposed to at a young age,” explained Shuji Ogino, MD, PhD, a professor and physician-scientist in the Department of Pathology at the Brigham. “We found that this risk is increasing with each generation. For instance, people born in 1960 experienced higher cancer risk before they turn 50 than people born in 1950 and we predict that this risk level will continue to climb in successive generations.”

To conduct this study, Ogino and lead author Tomotaka Ugai, MD, PhD, also of the Department of Pathology, and their colleagues first analyzed global data describing the incidence of 14 different cancer types that showed increased incidence in adults before age 50 from 2000 to 2012. Then, the team searched for available studies that examined trends of possible risk factors including early life exposures in the general populations. Finally, the team examined the literature describing clinical and biological tumor characteristics of early-onset cancers compared to later-onset cancers diagnosed after age 50.

In an extensive review, the team found that the early life exposome, which encompasses one’s diet, lifestyle, weight, environmental exposures, and microbiome, has changed substantially in the last several decades. Thus, they hypothesized that factors like the westernized diet and lifestyle may be contributing to the early-onset cancer epidemic. The team acknowledged that this increased incidence of certain cancer types is, in part, due to early detection through cancer screening programs. They couldn’t precisely measure what proportion of this growing prevalence could solely be attributed to screening and early detection. However, they noted that increased incidence of many of the 14 cancer types is unlikely solely due to enhanced screening alone.

Possible risk factors for early-onset cancer included alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation, smoking, obesity, and eating highly processed foods. Surprisingly, researchers found that while adult sleep duration hasn’t drastically changed over the several decades, children are getting far less sleep today than they were decades ago. Risk factors such as highly-processedhighly processed foods, sugary beverages, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sedentary lifestyle, and alcohol consumption have all significantly increased since the 1950s, which researchers speculate has accompanied altered microbiome.

“Among the 14 cancer types on the rise that we studied, eight were related to the digestive system. The food we eat feeds the microorganisms in our gut,” said Ugai. “Diet directly affects microbiome composition and eventually these changes can influence disease risk and outcomes.”

One limitation of this study is that researchers did not have an adequate amount of data from low- and middle-income countries to identify trends in cancer incidence over the decades. Going forward, Ogino and Ugai hope to continue this research by collecting more data and collaborating with international research institutes to better monitor global trends. They also explained the importance of conducting longitudinal cohort studies with parental consent to include young children who may be followed up for several decades.

“Without such studies, it’s difficult to identify what someone having cancer now did decades ago or when one was a child,” explained Ugai, “Because of this challenge, we aim to run more longitudinal cohort studies in the future where we follow the same cohort of participants over the course of their lives, collecting health data, potentially from electronic health records, and biospecimen at set time points. This is not only more cost effective considering the many cancer types needed to be studied, but I believe it will yield us more accurate insights into cancer risk for generations to come.”

Funding: The work of S.O. is supported in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health grants (R35 CA197735 and R01 CA248857) and the Cancer Research UK Cancer Grand Challenge Award [6340201/A27140]. The work of T.U. is supported by grants from the Prevent Cancer Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and Mishima Kaiun Memorial Foundation.

Paper cited: Ugai T et al. “Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic? Current evidence and future implications.” Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology DOI: 10.1038/s41571-022-00672-8

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DOI

10.1038/s41571-022-00672-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic? Current evidence and future implications

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Sep-2022

Do masculine leadership titles undermine women’s leadership?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

 

IMAGE: ALLISON ARCHER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND JACK. J. VALENTI SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Debates about using masculine or gender-neutral words to describe leadership positions, jobs and awards affect nearly all domains of society from business to politics and media. Recently, local politicians have considered changing titles such as "alderman" or "councilman" to their gender-neutral counterparts (e.g., "council member"). While some dismiss calls for gender-neutral titles as mere acts of political correctness, proponents argue that masculine language is not a neutral stand-in for "person" or "leader." Instead, masculine language may undermine women's leadership by reinforcing harmful stereotypes that positions of power are reserved for men.

Allison Archer, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston, sought to understand if masculine language has this effect. Working with Cindy Kam from Vanderbilt University, the researchers studied what happens when masculine versus gender-neutral language is used when describing leadership positions — specifically, the titles of "chairman" versus "chair." Little research had previously analyzed the role of gendered language in reinforcing gendered stereotypes, which might contribute to the persistent gender gap in leadership, according to the researchers.

Two experimental studies were conducted to understand the effect of masculine leadership titles. The work is published in The Leadership Quarterly. In the first study, participants read about a hypothetical "chair" or "chairman" of a paperclip company, a state legislative Ways and Means Committee, or a sociology department at a university. The researchers purposefully chose a gender-neutral name for the leader: Taylor or Pat Simmons. Respondents were told about Simmons' leadership position, age and time spent at their institution. They were also given some information about the company, committee or department. After reading this brief paragraph, individuals were asked to write, in five complete sentences, what a typical morning for Chair or Chairman Simmons might look like.

“The pronouns used in participants' sentences revealed their assumptions about Simmons' gender. Our results first reflect the stereotype that leadership positions belong to men: when reading about Chair Simmons, a little more than half of respondents assumed the leader was a man even though Simmons' gender was not specified,” said Archer.

When reading about Chairman Simmons, study participants became more likely to assume the leader was a man than in the chair condition. “The results suggest masculine language further accentuates stereotypes that men hold leadership positions,” she added.

In the real world, unlike in the first experiment, the gender of a leader who uses a masculine leadership title is typically known. The second study looked at what happens when people know the gender of a leader who goes by either "chairman" or "chair." Study participants read a brief paragraph discussing a new leader of a state legislature's Ways and Means Committee. The leader in the vignette was either referred to as a "chair" or "chairman" and was either named Joan or John Davenport. Here, the gender of the leader was perfectly clear from Davenport's first name and the pronouns used to refer to Davenport. After reading the paragraph, participants shared their opinions about the leader and then were asked to recall the name of the new leader. They could choose between John, Joan, Joseph, Josie and Don't Know.

“In yet another demonstration of the power of gendered language and unconscious stereotypes, we found masculine titles affect recollections of women and men leaders differently,” said Kam.

The title "chairman" increased the accuracy of recall for male leaders yet undermined the accuracy of recall for women leaders: a woman who goes by "chairman" is less likely to be correctly remembered compared to a man who does the same. A woman who goes by "chairman" is more likely to have her leadership wrongly ascribed to a man.

In both studies, the researchers tested for but did not uncover any evidence that the participants' own gender made a difference: women participants were no less susceptible to the effects of masculine titles than men participants. This could be because gender stereotypes are transmitted and learned at the societal level (through television, books, and other forms of socialization) and can be applied unconsciously and unintentionally.

“Overall, we found that masculine leadership titles really do matter—they affect assumptions about and recollections of leaders' gender. Titles like ‘chairman’ increase people's assumptions that men are in leadership positions and decrease recollections that women hold such positions of power,” said Archer. “This suggests gender-neutral and masculine leadership titles are not just synonyms for each other. Masculine leadership titles reinforce stereotypes that tie men to leadership and undermine the connection between women and leadership.”

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JOURNAL

The Leadership Quarterly

DOI

10.1016/j.leaqua.2022.101610 

ARTICLE TITLE

She is the chair(man): Gender, language, and leadership

Transgender parents bring child-centered perspective to parenthood

Transgender parents may let children explore gender on their own before labeling child's identity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Many transgender parents with children between one-and-a-half and six years of age hesitate to label their child’s gender identity, according to new research from a team at Penn State and Guilford College. In addition, the results suggest that many children with transgender parents play in ways that conform to gendered societal expectations, while others play in more gender-expansive ways.

“Previous research has shown that misgendering, or incorrectly labeling someone’s gender identity, often harms a person’s mental and physical health,” said Samantha L. Tornello, assistant professor of human development and family studies at Penn State and principal investigator of the Gender Diverse Parents Study, who noted that gender identity is a person’s internal sense of their own gender — for example, woman, man, nonbinary, or another gender identity. “This new research suggests that transgender parents may offer their children supportive environments to explore their own gender identity and expression."

Tornello and lead co-author Rachel G. Riskind, the Christina B. Gidynski Associate Professor of Psychology at Guilford College, also found a strong link between child age and the likelihood of labeling — the older the child, the more likely parents were to label their child’s gender identity. Transgender parents of elementary-school-aged children may be more likely than transgender parents of toddlers to label their child’s gender identity.

“This study can’t speak to whether transgender parents assign their children gendered names or pronouns, or otherwise socialize them in gendered ways,” Riskind said. “But it does suggest that transgender parents hesitate to label their child’s gender identity before their child can communicate it themselves.”

The study utilized web-based surveys of 64 nonbinary and binary transgender parents from across the United States. Binary transgender people are those who identify primarily as women, girls, men, or boys; nonbinary people are those whose gender identity is not captured by these labels.

The study measured children’s gender expression: their interest in masculinized and feminized toys (e.g., toolsets and jewelry), activities (e.g., climbing and playing house), and personality characteristics (e.g., enjoying tumble play and liking pretty things). Participants rated how often their child engaged with and enjoyed each item or activity.

The surveys also asked parents about the sex their child was assigned at birth and about their child’s current gender identity.

The team found that 41% of the participants did not report their child’s current gender identity, choosing either “unknown,” “choose not to label,” or “self-describe,” with a text field to write in their response. For “self-describe,” parents often described a gender-fluid child or a child who had not verbalized their gender identity. Several parents wrote, “I think it’s too early to know.” Although the surveys revealed that, on average, children’s play was conventionally gendered, there was a great deal of diversity within the sample. Older children of nonbinary parents, for example, may be more likely to engage in gender-expansive play.

The study published on Aug. 17 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

According to Tornello, “Some believe that parent gender identity has either everything, or nothing, to do with child gender expression. But this study suggests that the truth is somewhere in between.”

“This is one of the largest studies to focus on the gender of young children with transgender parents. It will further inform our understanding of gender development, parenting, and child development more broadly.”

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2022.9160 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(novel)

Triton (novel) - Wikipedia 

Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) is a science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the 1976 Nebula ...

https://www.tor.com/2010/08/02/i-am-a-reasonably-happy-man-the-trouble-with-trouble-on-triton

I am a Reasonably Happy Man: The Trouble with Trouble on Triton 

Aug 2, 2010 ... Samuel Delany takes the concept of the heterotopia from French philosopher Michel Foucault's book The Order of Things (although there was a ...

https://www.wondriumdaily.com/samuel-delanys-trouble-on-triton-an-ambiguous-heterotopia

Samuel Delany's "Trouble on Triton : An Ambiguous Heterotopia" 

Bron Helstrom is the protagonist of Samuel Delany's novel Trouble on Triton. Bron is a Martian who emigrated to Triton several years ago.

https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/delany52interview.htm

On Triton and Other Matters: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany 

The kinds of problems they solve in Triton (always off stage and of a complexity that makes the solution really too hard to follow) are analogous to the ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(mythology)

Triton (mythology) - Wikipedia 

Triton is a Greek god of the sea, the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, god and goddess of the sea respectively. Triton lived with his parents in a golden ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(moon)

Triton (moon) - Wikipedia 

Triton is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune, and was the first Neptunian moon to be discovered, on October 10, 1846, by English astronomer ...

Fertility preservation counseling 

needed for transgender men

Rutgers researchers provide guidelines for fertility preservation counseling before gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender men

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

There are no standards on comprehensive counseling for transgender men on how to preserve their fertility while undergoing gender-affirming medical procedures, according to a new Rutgers study.

The study, published in the journal F&S Reports, lists guidelines that health care providers can follow to effectively counsel transgender men on fertility preservation to help them make informed decisions regarding pelvic surgery and future family-building plans. An estimated 1.4 million adults and 150,000 youth in the United States are transgender.

“Fertility preservation is important to discuss with patients prior to beginning gender-affirming interventions like hysterectomy and removal of ovaries, which result in irreversible infertility,” said Juana Hutchinson-Colas, a coauthor of the study who is director of the division of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery and co-director of the Women’s Health Institute at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Researchers reviewed six medical databases to determine guidelines for fertility preservation counseling in transgender men and created the following guidelines for health care providers to follow:

• Offer fertility preservation counseling in an inclusive environment that is welcoming, gender-neutral and with staff that is trained on the proper use of pronouns. Office spaces should clearly state a nondiscrimination policy and avoid assumptions about a patient’s orientation, name or pronoun. Providers should be aware of biases that may affect how they offer and deliver fertility counseling.
• Start fertility preservation counseling before the transition. “Transgender youth and adolescents also should be counseled that the long-term impact of medical treatment on fertility remains unclear,” said Hutchinson-Colas. “They should also be counseled on the effect of puberty suppression medications and the psychosocial implications of treatments. However, fertility preservation options for transgender men can be pursued during any stage of gender transition, even after gender-affirming hormonal therapy has started.”
• Include discussions of ovarian tissue cryopreservation – surgical excision of ovarian tissue for preservation for future thawing and maturing of follicles – which is the only procedure that can be offered to adolescents before puberty as well as oocyte or embryo cryopreservation, which are the preferred methods of fertility preservation in transgender men after puberty.
• Include discussions of other family-building options, such as fostering, adoption and donor eggs. “Some studies suggest transgender men prefer adoption, but that might be because they do not realize that they can start a family through fertility preservation,” said Hutchinson-Colas.
• Provide contraception counseling, which includes addressing the misconception that testosterone is an effective contraceptive. About one-quarter of transgender men on testosterone experience unplanned pregnancies.
• Provide information about third-party reproduction options, such as surrogacy.
• Discuss the importance of disclosing a parent’s identity to a child early in childhood and disclose the limited, but positive, data showing normal development of children of transgender parents. “Patients should be reassured that children of transgender parents are not adversely affected and few experience psychosocial problems, identity distress, depression or gender dysphoria,” said Hutchinson-Colas.
• Acknowledge and address all barriers to family-building and fertility services that transgender patients may face, particularly the barrier of cost.
• Use a multidisciplinary approach, including fertility specialists, obstetricians, transgender care specialists, mental health professionals, financial advisers and patient navigators.

Other Rutgers authors include Selena U. Park, Devika Sachdev, Shelley Dolitsky, Matthew

Bridgeman, Mark V. Sauer and Gloria Bachmann.

---

DOI

10.1016/j.xfre.2022.07.006 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Fertility preservation in transgender men and the need for uniform, comprehensive counseling

Gender Identity Gets Starring Role At Venice Film Festival

By Alexandria Sage and Gildas Le Roux
09/06/22 

Trace Lysette: 'It's very rare that you see a script where there's a trans 

character at the centre and the movie is told through her lens' 

AFP / Tiziana FABI

Transgender issues have taken centre stage at the Venice Film Festival this year, with Italian director Emanuele Crialese even using the platform to reveal he was born a woman as he presented his new film starring Penelope Cruz.

The revelation by Crialese came at a press conference for his new film, "L'Immensita", which is inspired by his difficult adolescence.

"I am never going to be like any other man... I was born biologically a woman," Crialese said.

He added that, despite his transition, there was still a "huge part of my character that is female".

In the film, Cruz's character attempts to protect her teenage daughter, who identifies as a boy, in a bourgeois household dominated by an abusive, unfaithful husband.

It is not alone at this year's festival in embracing artists who reject traditional gender roles or tackle issues around sexual identity.

Another film in the main competition, "Monica" by Italian director Andrea Pallaoro, stars a transgender actress in the leading role -- a first in 79 editions of the festival.

Trace Lysette, known for her role in Amazon Prime series "Transparent", plays a transgender woman who returns to Ohio after a long absence to care for her dying mother.

"It's very rare that you see a script where there's a trans character at the centre and the movie is told through her lens," Lysette told reporters.

"Usually trans characters are more a sidebar vehicle for someone else's story."

Besides exploring the title character's emotional and psychological world, the movie reflects on "the precarious nature of each of our identities when faced with the need to survive and transform", said Pallaoro.

Themes of gender identity are also the subject of various documentaries in the festival.

In "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed", director Laura Poitras centres on the art and activism of US photographer Nan Goldin, whose early work focused on gay culture and volatile male-female relationships.

One of the breakout performances has been Quintessa Swindell, a non-binary actor, who stars alongside Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton in "Master Gardener", playing out of competition.

Meanwhile, a documentary by French director Sebastien Lifshitz, "Casa Susanna", recounts the story of a clandestine community of cross-dressers in conservative America of the 1950s and 1960s, relying on archival footage and surviving members of this "pre-queer" history.

"It's been a struggle for decades to try to break out of the archetypes," Lifshitz told AFP.

Another French director, Florent Gouelou, presented "Three Nights a Week", a film he described as "a declaration of love" to the art form of drag.

In the film, Baptiste, a man in a relationship with a woman, discovers the Parisian world of drag queens and falls in love with one of them, Cookie.

"Through the character of Baptiste you see my own fascination and through the character of Cookie, you see my own experience as a drag queen," said Gouelou.

Air pollution heightened COVID risk in low-income pregnant New Yorkers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Pregnant, low-income New Yorkers living in neighborhoods with higher levels of air pollution were 60 percent more likely to test positive for COVID-19, according to a new study led by scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Study results appear in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The researchers examined the relationship between 3,318 pregnant individuals’ COVID-19 test results and their long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5). COVID testing was done for everyone at the time of delivery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, March–December 2020. Exposure estimates were based on location-specific air pollution data between 2018 and 2019 at participant residences. Results were adjusted to account for individual- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic status.

They found no association between PM2.5 and ever testing positive for COVID-19 for everyone in the study group. However, odds of testing positive were 60 percent higher for each 1 μg/m3 increase in long-term PM2.5 among those using Medicaid health coverage for low-income Americans. While only 22 percent of those testing positive reported symptoms, 69 percent of symptomatic individuals used Medicaid.

Pregnant persons with COVID-19 are more likely to experience significant respiratory morbidity and more likely to die than non-pregnant persons with COVID-19. Pregnant persons with COVID-19 are also more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm delivery, preeclampsia, and possibly stillbirth. Exposure to PM2.5 during pregnancy has been shown to increase risk of preterm birth, as well as delivery of a low-birth-weight neonate.

Large-scale epidemiologic studies reveal consistent associations between higher long-term PM2.5 concentrations and increased risk of acute respiratory infection in the general population.

“COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated existing health disparities. Low-income pregnant people may have been more likely to test positive for the virus and be symptomatic due to more exposure on the job or inability to isolate, as well as heightened exposure to a range of environmental pollutants,” says first author Joan Casey, PhD, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

Study co-authors include Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, Jeffrey Shaman, Sasikiran Kandula of Columbia Mailman; Andreas Neophytou of Colorado State University; Elizabeth L. Ogburn, Kristin C. Darwin, and Jeanne S. Sheffield of Johns Hopkins University; and Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman, University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grants ES027023 and ES009089).

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Epidemiology

DOI

10.1093/aje/kwac139 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-Term Fine Particulate Matter Concentrations and SARS-CoV-2 Prevalence: Differential Relationships by Socioeconomic Status Among Pregnant Individuals in New York City