Lithium-ion batteries: One size does not fit all in application or in assessment

Electron microscopy reveals molecular mechanisms of lithium-ion batteries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY PRESS

 

IMAGE: A REVIEW PAPER BY A TIANJIN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH TEAM USED VARIOUS ADVANCED ELECTRON MICROSCOPY AND ASSOCIATE CHARACTERIZATION TECHNIQUES TO CLARIFY TWO STRUCTURE-BASED MECHANISMS OF LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES. view more 

CREDIT: NANO RESEARCH ENERGY, TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Seeing is believing — or, rather, seeing can aid in understanding, especially when it comes to the mechanisms underpinning lithium-ion batteries. Despite near-ubiquitous use in cell phones, computers and more, the complex electrochemical environments of lithium-ion batteries remain murky. To better understand and to improve battery performance, researchers examined the current scientific literature and used electron microscopy to take a closer look at the charge-transfer and lithium-ion migration mechanisms that produce power.

 

This study was publicly available online on Sept. 6 in Nano Research Energy.

 

“Commercial lithium-ion batteries are widely used as energy storage devices, including electric vehicles, portable electronics and grid energy storage,” said Yi Ding, a professor of Tianjin University of Technology. “Energy, power, charge-discharge rate, cost, cycle life, safety and environmental impact are to be considered while adopting lithium-ion batteries for a suitable application, but each specific application faces a variety of different challenges.”

 

The amount of energy stored is important for portable electronics, while cost and safety are more important for electric vehicles, for example. Cost and safety are also important for energy grid needs, but energy density becomes less so than for electric vehicles. The trade-off between these elements shift based on need, but the ability to tune performance is limited by incomplete understanding of the materials used in batteries.

 

“The active electrode materials are the main portion responsible for the cell chemistry and performance and, ultimately, affect the commercialization of the constructed battery,” Ding said. “The performances, such as cycle life and energy density, of existing commercial electrode material systems still need to be improved, so it is important to understand the inherent physical and chemical properties, such as structural evolution/kinetics during lithium de-embedding and the effect of electrode-electrolyte interface on the performance of lithium-ion batteries.”

 

The researchers reviewed recent advances in electron microscopy to see how traditional characterization techniques measure up when it comes to understanding the structure-activity relationships of commercial lithium-ion batteries.

 

“By comparing with the characterization content obtained by traditional characterization techniques, such as X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we illustrate the advantages and limitations of common electronic microscopes and recently developed advanced electronic microscopic characterization techniques, such as in situ electron microscopy technology, in this critical research,” Ding said.

 

The researchers examined how advanced electron microscopy and the associated characterization techniques can provide different insights into how, for example, lithium ions migrate in the battery to produce charge or how charge transfer can trigger energy use. They specifically focused on transition metal dissolution and charge transfer mechanism in the charging-discharging process of lithium-ion battery positive electrodes; the structure and evolution of cathode-electrode interfaces and solid electrolyte interphase during long-term cycling; and the effect of electrode structure and interface on lithium-ion migration.  

 

The conclusion, according to Ding, is that next-generation lithium-ion battery technologies with better cost and performance benefits are needed.  

 

“We propose the possibility of combining electron microscopy with other techniques to obtain more comprehensive information,” Ding said, noting that electron microscopy has three common limitations in battery assessment. These include inconsistent electrochemical environments between electron microscopy fields and actual batteries; unstable time windows that can skew data related to evolution of the sample; and certain batteries cannot be quantitatively assessed at the nanoscale. “Even with limitations, these discussions allow researchers to gain a deeper understanding of how commercial lithium-ion batteries operate at the microscale and provide guidance for design strategies for high-performance practical batteries.”

 

Other contributors include Chao Li, Bowen Liu and co-corresponding author Ningyi Jiang, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Porous Materials, Institute for New Energy Materials and Low-Carbon Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology. Jiang is also affiliated with Tianjin University’s School of Chemical Engineering and Technology.

 

The National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars funded this work.

 

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About Nano Research Energy 

 

Nano Research Energy is launched by Tsinghua University Press, aiming at being an international, open-access and interdisciplinary journal. We will publish research on cutting-edge advanced nanomaterials and nanotechnology for energy. It is dedicated to exploring various aspects of energy-related research that utilizes nanomaterials and nanotechnology, including but not limited to energy generation, conversion, storage, conservation, clean energy, etc. Nano Research Energy will publish four types of manuscripts, that is, Communications, Research Articles, Reviews, and Perspectives in an open-access form.

 

About SciOpen 

 

SciOpen is a professional open access resource for discovery of scientific and technical content published by the Tsinghua University Press and its publishing partners, providing the scholarly publishing community with innovative technology and market-leading capabilities. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics, and identity management and expert advice to ensure each journal’s development by offering a range of options across all functions as Journal Layout, Production Services, Editorial Services, Marketing and Promotions, Online Functionality, etc. By digitalizing the publishing process, SciOpen widens the reach, deepens the impact, and accelerates the exchange of ideas.

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JOURNAL

Nano Research Energy

DOI

10.26599/NRE.2022.9120032 

ARTICLE TITLE

Elucidating the charge-transfer and Li-ion-migration mechanisms in commercial lithium-ion batteries with advanced electron microscopy

UCLA to participate in phase 3 trial evaluating monkeypox treatment

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES

The UCLA Clinical AIDS Research and Education (CARE) Center today announced its participation in STOMP (Study of Tecovirimat for Human Monkeypox Virus), or A5418, a phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of tecovirimat for the treatment of human monkeypox. STOMP, which is being led by the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), has been designed to learn as much as possible in a broad population of people with monkeypox.

A global outbreak of monkeypox emerged in the spring of 2022 and has since spread throughout the world, with more than 56,000 cases in 103 countries and more than 21,000 cases in the United States. Monkeypox was first identified in 1958 and has caused an increasing number of infections annually in endemic countries. The current outbreak has been characterized by increased person-to-person transmission. Close contact during sexual activity is believed to play an important role in this outbreak. While most cases thus far have been reported among men who have sex with men, women and children have also been infected. There are currently no therapies approved to treat human monkeypox.

Tecovirimat (SIGA Technologies, Inc.) is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat smallpox, but it is not yet known if it can effectively or safely treat monkeypox.

This multi-center trial will enroll more than 500 adults with monkeypox virus infection. Importantly, this trial will include people with severe disease and those at high risk of severe disease including pregnant and breastfeeding people, children, and individuals with underlying immune deficiency and active inflammatory skin conditions who will receive open-label tecovirimat. Study participants with symptomatic monkeypox virus infection who do not meet the criteria for the open-label cohort will be randomly assigned in a ratio of two to one to receive either tecovirimat or placebo orally for 14 days. Participants who are randomized in the double-blinded cohort of the study who later progress to severe disease will be offered the option to switch to open-label tecovirimat, as will participants who report persistent severe pain from monkeypox virus infection.

All participants in STOMP will be followed for at least eight weeks through a combination of virtual and in-person visits, and daily self-reports to determine if those receiving tecovirimat heal more quickly compared to those receiving placebo. STOMP will also provide critical data on the optimal dosing and safety of tecovirimat in children and people who are pregnant and breastfeeding.

Individuals who have presumptive or confirmed monkeypox infection (testing positive within seven days) and started experiencing symptoms within 13 days are eligible. Testing will be provided by the study. Participants with presumptive monkeypox virus infection who have not yet been tested are able to enroll as long as their study-provided test is positive. Participants must also have at least one active skin lesion that has not yet scabbed, a mouth lesion, or proctitis (inflammation in the lining of the rectum).

“The ACTG has designed this study to give us the greatest possible insights into whether and how tecovirimat works against monkeypox, including whether the virus develops resistance to the treatment,” said ACTG chair Judith Currier, M.D., M.Sc., of UCLA. “An important part of that design is the inclusion of children and pregnant people. The study will also evaluate markers that may tell us that the drug is working so we can identify future promising drugs. Beyond addressing the current outbreak, this study has the potential to profoundly inform the treatment of individuals who acquire monkeypox virus in endemic countries.”

STOMP is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also funds the ACTG.  A list of participating sites in the United States can be found here.

STOMP is led by Timothy Wilkin, M.D., M.P.H., Weill Cornell Medicine and William Fischer, M.D., University of North Carolina (UNC) and Jason Zucker, M.D., Columbia University (vice-chairs) and is supported by Dr. Currier and Joseph J. Eron, M.D., UNC (ACTG Co-Chair).

Caller ID: Hyena ‘whoops’ feature individual signatures

Study also finds repetition of whoops may improve identification

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN

 

IMAGE: A STUDY HAS REVEALED THAT LONG-DISTANCE HYENA CALLS FEATURE SIGNATURES UNIQUE TO INDIVIDUALS — A FORM OF CALLER ID DISTINCT ENOUGH THAT HYENAS CAN LIKELY TELL ONE FROM ANOTHER. view more 

CREDIT: ELI STRAUSS

As dusk begins cloaking the Maasai Mara grasslands of southwestern Kenya, a spotted hyena slinks beneath the woody umbrella that is the acacia tree.

The carnivore pauses, its rounded ears cocking forward as a faint sound sails in, an airborne missive traversing three miles at 767 miles per hour. Again, then again. Whhhhhooo-OOOppp! There it is… the call of a fellow spotted hyena, repeated rapidly enough to warrant attention. A warning of lions in the area, maybe, or of one hyena clan encroaching on another’s territory.

To help or not to help? With so much ground to cover, and so much potential peril lying beyond it, the answer could depend on who, exactly, is on the other end of the long-distance call. For spotted hyenas, then, identification is no laughing matter. But it is a whooping one, says a new study from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Kenna Lehmann and colleagues.

By applying machine learning to audio clips collected from the field, the team has concluded that hyena whoops feature signatures unique to individuals — a form of caller ID distinct enough that hyenas can likely tell one from another. For the first time, the researchers also managed to quantify how much repeating a call, as spotted hyenas do, might improve the odds of being identified.

The fact that spotted hyena clans are built on hierarchies of social rank, yet consist of multiple families that regularly come together and disperse across the savanna, makes individual identity especially important.

“Hyenas don’t treat every individual in the clan the same, so if they’re deciding whether to show up and help someone, they want to know who they’re showing up to help,” said Lehmann, a postdoctoral researcher at Nebraska.

In its search for vocal signatures, the team turned to what’s known as a random forest model. The researchers first trained the model by feeding it the identities of each hyena they had recorded, along with a massive number of acoustic traits extracted from each of its whoops.

From there, the model used a randomly selected series, or bout, of whoops from one hyena to generate decision trees. Each branch of a tree represented a binary choice in an acoustic trait from a batch that was also randomly selected. The model might begin by splitting the hyena whoops by higher vs. lower frequencies, for instance, then further divide those groupings into, say, longer vs. shorter calls, and so on. Ultimately, the tip of every branch represented a vote in favor of a particular hyena.

After assembling 500 of those haphazard decision trees — a random forest — the model predicted a given whoop’s identity based on which hyena received the most votes from those 500 trees. The team put its trained model to the test by asking it to identify which one of 13 hyenas produced a randomly selected bout of whoops, then repeated that test 999 times.

The model correctly paired a whoop bout with its hyena roughly 54% of the time, or about six times more often than would be expected by chance. That success rate suggests there’s enough variation in the whoops of different hyenas, and enough consistency within the whoops of a single hyena, for the model to reasonably tell them apart. And if the model can discern those differences, Lehmann said, it’s reasonable to presume that the hyenas can, too.

Three traits of the whoops seemed especially instructive: the duration of a call, the highest frequency of the call, and the average frequency during the portion of the call that was most consistent in pitch. The greater the disparity in those traits, the more likely the model — and potentially, hyenas themselves — would be to distinguish among the sources of the respective whoops.

Still, 54% is well short of 100%, even before accounting for the challenges inherent to communicating with a fellow hyena in the Maasai Mara. For one, spotted hyena clans can swell to more than 125 members, a number to seemingly strain even the most voluminous, airtight memories. There’s also the possibility of acoustic nuances getting lost in transmission, particularly when those signals are traveling multiple miles before reaching rounded ears. Wind, rain and other animal calls, meanwhile, can introduce noise to the signal.

“There’s an understanding that one of the ways to get your message across is to repeat it,” Lehmann said, “especially if you’re in a noisy environment or if you’re communicating over long distances.”

Prior research has shown that penguins, for example, reiterate their calls more often when the wind picks up. And other studies have found evidence that various animal species favor repetition under similarly noisy circumstances. But as far as Lehmann and her colleagues could tell, none had quantified the extent to which repeating an animal call might actually improve the transmission of information.

So the team again resorted to its random forest model. When the model guessed the identity of a hyena on the basis of just one whoop, it correctly pegged that identity only about half as often as it did when provided with three whoops. That accuracy rose even further with additional calls, peaking at seven whoops.

“It’s like getting a little bit more information (each time),” said Lehmann, who previously studied vocalizations in orcas. “The first time you hear it, you might notice: Oh, that was definitely a male or a female voice. Then, the next whoop, you might be able to narrow it down further.”

Lehmann and her colleagues knew that the calls of some animal species also contain signatures that differentiate the groups to which they belong from other same-species groups they might come across — somewhat akin to human accents or dialects. She recalled that some researchers studying orcas had become so familiar with pod signatures that the researchers could instinctively tell them apart. (One researcher claimed that a certain pod’s calls were “more nasally” than others’.)

Given the size of spotted hyena clans, Lehmann figured that their whoops, too, might employ a group-specific signature.

“Obviously, if you just have to remember what your group sounds like, and you don’t have to remember each of the 100-plus individual voices, that would be a lot easier to do,” she said.

When the researchers went looking for a group signature in the random forest, though, they couldn’t find one. One potential explanation: The apparent ability to memorize so many individual signatures may have rendered a clan signature either useless or, at best, not useful enough to bother developing.

“If you know who the individual is, you know what group they’re in,” Lehmann said. “Animals are pretty good at associating that information.

“So if they need individual signatures for other reasons, then there just may have never been a need to also develop a group signature, which is what this finding suggests. They should be able to keep track of all the individual voices and be able to distinguish: If this is Individual X, they’re in my group. I can choose to help them based on them being a group member, but maybe there are more decisions to be made about whether they’re a group mate that I actually want to help.”

‘A million different stars that have to align’

All of the team’s findings — the presence of individual signatures, the absence of a clan signature, the utility of repetition — ultimately originated not from a random forest but from the savanna of Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve. There, Michigan State University’s Kay Holekamp and colleagues have been conducting research on the spotted hyena since the late 1980s.

Lehmann herself spent a year in the Maasai Mara, which takes its name from the Maasai people who have long inhabited it. From 2014 to 2015, the then-doctoral student and several colleagues regularly drove west from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, to a field site at the reserve.

“The first time I went out there … I thought, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be sleeping on the ground for 10 months, in a sleeping bag,’” said Lehmann, who soon learned that a sizable canvas tent and a soft bed awaited her. “But we were pretty spoiled out there, to be perfectly honest.”

If the accommodations were cushier than expected, the data collection proved anything but. From their vantage point in a Toyota Land Cruiser, Lehmann and her colleagues would point a directional microphone out the window and flip on an audio recorder. Unfortunately, the team was very much subject to the vagaries of Murphy’s law.

“You need to not be driving. And the car has to be turned off,” she said, noting that its engine drowned out the sounds of the Maasai Mara. “And the hyena has to whoop. And you have to be able to actually … see who it is. They can’t be in a bush. And they have to be close enough so that you can get a good recording. And the other hyenas need to be quiet at the same time. There are just, like, a million different stars that have to align to get a good recording that you can then use in an analysis like this.”

Under those circumstances, Lehmann said, patience was more than a virtue. It was a necessity.

“With this handheld recording equipment, we were opportunistically, constantly recording and just hoping that they whooped for us,” she said, laughing.

Over those months of hoping and waiting, the researchers stayed busy observing and chronicling behaviors that would inform other studies. As they did, they caught glimpses of the individuality that their analyses of the hyenas’ whoops would, years later, come to affirm.

“You definitely get to know that different individuals have different personalities or might react a certain way in different situations,” Lehmann said. “So it’s always fun to just get to know the hyenas and their little interactions and the dramas that might be going on in their lives.”

The team reported its findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Lehmann and Holekamp authored the study with Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Frants Jensen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Andrew Gersick of Princeton University. The researchers received support in part from the National Science Foundation.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.0548 

Users trust AI as much as humans for flagging problematic content

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Social media users may trust artificial intelligence — AI — as much as human editors to flag hate speech and harmful content, according to researchers at Penn State. 

The researchers said that when users think about positive attributes of machines, like their accuracy and objectivity, they show more faith in AI. However, if users are reminded about the inability of machines to make subjective decisions, their trust is lower.

The findings may help developers design better AI-powered content curation systems that can handle the large amounts of information currently being generated while avoiding the perception that the material has been censored, or inaccurately classified, said S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory.

“There's this dire need for content moderation on social media and more generally, online media,” said Sundar, who is also an affiliate of Penn State’s Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. “In traditional media, we have news editors who serve as gatekeepers. But online, the gates are so wide open, and gatekeeping is not necessarily feasible for humans to perform, especially with the volume of information being generated. So, with the industry increasingly moving towards automated solutions, this study looks at the difference between human and automated content moderators, in terms of how people respond to them.”

Both human and AI editors have advantages and disadvantages. Humans tend to more accurately assess whether content is harmful, such as when it is racist or potentially could provoke self-harm, according to Maria D. Molina, assistant professor of advertising and public relations, Michigan State, who is first author of the study. People, however, are unable to process the large amounts of content that is now being generated and shared online.

On the other hand, while AI editors can swiftly analyze content, people often distrust these algorithms to make accurate recommendations, as well as fear that the information could be censored.

“When we think about automated content moderation, it raises the question of whether artificial intelligence editors are impinging on a person’s freedom of expression,” said Molina. “This creates a dichotomy between the fact that we need content moderation — because people are sharing all of this problematic content — and, at the same time, people are worried about AI’s ability to moderate content. So, ultimately, we want to know how we can build AI content moderators that people can trust in a way that doesn’t impinge on that freedom of expression.”

Transparency and interactive transparency

According to Molina, bringing people and AI together in the moderation process may be one way to build a trusted moderation system. She added that transparency — or signaling to users that a machine is involved in moderation — is one approach to improving trust in AI. However, allowing users to offer suggestions to the AIs, which the researchers refer to as “interactive transparency,” seems to boost user trust even more.

To study transparency and interactive transparency, among other variables, the researchers recruited 676 participants to interact with a content classification system. Participants were randomly assigned to one of 18 experimental conditions, designed to test how the source of moderation — AI, human or both — and transparency — regular, interactive or no transparency — might affect the participant’s trust in AI content editors.  The researchers tested classification decisions — whether the content was classified as “flagged” or “not flagged” for being harmful or hateful. The “harmful” test content dealt with suicidal ideation, while the “hateful” test content included hate speech.

Among other findings, the researchers found that users’ trust depends on whether the presence of an AI content moderator invokes positive attributes of machines, such as their accuracy and objectivity, or negative attributes, such as their inability to make subjective judgments about nuances in human language.

Giving users a chance to help the AI system decide whether online information is harmful or not may also boost their trust. The researchers said that study participants who added their own terms to the results of an AI-selected list of words used to classify posts trusted the AI editor just as much as they trusted a human editor.

Ethical concerns

Sundar said that relieving humans of reviewing content goes beyond just giving workers a respite from a tedious chore. Hiring human editors for the chore means that these workers are exposed to hours of hateful and violent images and content, he said.

“There's an ethical need for automated content moderation,” said Sundar, who is also director of Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence. “There’s a need to protect human content moderators — who are performing a social benefit when they do this — from constant exposure to harmful content day in and day out.”

According to Molina, future work could look at how to help people not just trust AI, but also to understand it. Interactive transparency may be a key part of understanding AI, too, she added.

“Something that is really important is not only trust in systems, but also engaging people in a way that they actually understand AI,” said Molina. “How can we use this concept of interactive transparency and other methods to help people understand AI better? How can we best present AI so that it invokes the right balance of appreciation of machine ability and skepticism about its weaknesses? These questions are worthy of research.”

The researchers present their findings in the current issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

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DOI

10.1093/jcmc/zmac010 

THE COMMODIFICATION OF ART

Support for art and other cultural objects can be strengthened by highlighting their collective value, finds new Rotman School research

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

 

IMAGE: SIYIN CHEN IS A PH.D. CANDIDATE IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO’S ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT. SHE IS A FIELD RESEARCHER INTERESTED IN THE COMMODIFICATION OF PERSONALIZED WORK – THE DIFFICULT EXPERIENCE OF SELLING WORK THAT CLOSELY DEFINES WORKERS’ SENSE OF SELF. SHE STUDIES THIS PHENOMENON THROUGH THE THEORETICAL LENSES OF IDENTITY AND MORALITY, USING BOTH QUALITATIVE (E.G., ETHNOGRAPHY, INTERVIEWS), AND QUANTITATIVE METHODS (E.G., FIELD EXPERIMENTS, SURVEYS). IN HER DISSERTATION, SHE STUDIED HOW PORCELAIN ARTISTS IN CHINA NAVIGATED A MARKET SHOCK THAT FORCED THEM TO COMMODIFY ART FOR MASS MARKET AUDIENCES. IT RECEIVED THE BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD (FIRST PLACE) FROM THE EUROPEAN GROUP FOR ORGANIZATIONAL STUDIES (EGOS) AND THE DISSERTATION AWARD FROM THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR CHINESE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH (IACMR). HER DISSERTATION PROPOSAL WAS SELECTED AS A FINALIST FOR THE 2022 ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/INFORMS DISSERTATION PROPOSAL COMPETITION. view more 

CREDIT: SIYIN CHEN

Toronto - New research into the sacredness of artistic objects shows that it’s possible to get people to see just about any artwork as sacred – even an amateur drawing -- so long as they believe that the art connects humanity to something bigger than itself. And when people do that, they are more willing to put themselves out to ensure it’s protected.

“Art and sacredness have been documented in a lot of disciplines. They can be traced back to philosophy, art history, sociology,” says Siyin Chen, lead researcher and a doctoral student in organizational behaviour and human resource management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “We are showing what is making the art sacred. It can have a broader function that binds you to all of humanity, transcending your own community.”

Ms. Chen and her two co-investigators happened on this notion of “collective transcendence” as they searched for the mechanism that underpins people’s judgments about what makes something sacred when they have no other personal connection to it. Since Ms. Chen’s dissertation work has been about the art industry, she chose art as a case study for this current research.

The researchers conducted nearly a dozen experiments using human subjects and a variety of artistic mediums, including music, sculpture, painting and interactive public park art. When asked which artworks they considered sacred and why, study participants frequently mentioned the Mona Lisa, and that such art was collectively meaningful, spiritual or held historical significance.

Some experiments showed that people could be influenced into judging something as sacred when its spiritual or historical qualities were emphasised, even when the “facts” were made up. In one experiment, the researchers showed participants a drawing by Ms. Chen of the other two researchers. But some participants were told either that “The Portrait,” was made by people more than 3,000 years ago or that it depicted followers of Buddhism and was spiritually significant. Both groups rated the drawing as more sacred compared to a control group, where only the drawing’s unique artistic qualities were pointed out. Participants in the spiritual and historical condition groups were also willing to donate more towards conserving the artwork when told it had been damaged.

The findings give clues for how to cultivate greater public support for the arts, says Ms. Chen, such as highlighting the historical and spiritual significance of artistic works in accompanying information at a gallery or in marketing materials.

The mechanism the researchers identified may even be transferable to other contexts, she says: “Can we make the environment collectively transcendent, leading to people protecting the environment even more? That would be an exciting future avenue for us to explore.”

The research was co-authored by Rachel Ruttan, an assistant professor, and Matthew Feinberg, an associate professor, who are both in the organizational behaviour and human resource management area at the Rotman School.

The study appeared in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

Bringing together high-impact faculty research and thought leadership on one searchable platform, the new Rotman Insights Hub offers articles, podcasts, opinions, books and videos representing the latest in management thinking and providing insights into the key issues facing business and society.

Visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub.

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca

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JOURNAL

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

DOI

10.1037/pspa0000319 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Collective transcendence beliefs shape the sacredness of objects: The case of art.

NOT GOP STUPID

Texas A&M AgriLife to lead historic investment in Texas’ efforts to become ‘climate-smart’

Texas A&M AgriLife Research receives largest competitive grant in its history

Grant and Award Announcement

TEXAS A&M AGRILIFE COMMUNICATION

Texas A&M AgriLife Research is anticipating the largest competitive grant in the organization’s history, up to $65 million, to execute a five-year multi-commodity project to work with Texas’ large agricultural sector on expanding climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices.

The grants are not just historic for The Texas A&M University System, but for the nation, as part of a federal investment in 70 partnerships recently announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the USDA announcement, these federal projects will expand markets for climate-smart commodities, leverage the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart commodity production, and provide direct, meaningful benefits to production agriculture, including for small and underserved producers.

“We are proud to lead this major effort,” said Chancellor John Sharp. “The diversity of Texas’ climates, soils and agriculture allows a carefully crafted Texas Climate-Smart Initiative to serve as a model for future climate-smart programs nationwide. This grant further cements Texas A&M as the No. 1 research university in Texas and the Southwest.”

“Production agriculture is the backbone of the Texas economy,” said Jeffrey W. Savell, Ph.D., vice chancellor and dean for Agriculture and Life Sciences. “This grant proves that when we assemble a team of expert researchers and leaders, while simultaneously staying focused on being responsive to the needs of Texas and key priority areas, that real magic can happen. We’re proud to be creating meaningful solutions for the people of Texas.”

Project partners will be tasked with providing technical and financial assistance to producers to implement climate-smart production practices on a voluntary basis on working lands.

“Sustainable production systems that strengthen economies and bolster human health are cornerstone priorities for our research enterprise,” said Cliff Lamb, Ph.D., director of AgriLife Research. “Over the next five years, we will build on all the competitive advantages that make AgriLife Research the premier agency to lead a research initiative of this magnitude in Texas.”

Texas A&M AgriLife's internal members for this initiative include AgriLife Research, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Texas A&M Forest Service and the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

For The Texas Climate-Smart Initiative, AgriLife Research will partner with the Texas Soil and Water Conservation Board, Prairie View A&M University, University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, Tarleton State University, BCarbon, Nori, Plains Cotton Growers Association, Texas Wheat Producers Board, Texas Corn Producers Board, Texas Sorghum Producers Board, Texas Rice Producers Board, U.S. Rice Producers Association, Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Texas International Produce Association, Texas Citrus Mutual, Texas Pecan Growers Association, Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Organization, 100Ranchers, Texas Cattle Feeders Association, Texas Association of Dairymen, Texas Poultry Federation, Texas Forestry Association, Texas Chapter of National Women in Agriculture, Global Revive, Small Producers Initiative and American Plant Food.

Additional commodity-specific funding awarded to Texas A&M AgriLife Research for projects relating to climate-smart production  

Texas A&M AgriLife also will serve as a major contributor to four other partnership projects totaling $185 million that focus on cotton, beef and bison production, and sorghum systems:

• U.S. Climate-Smart Cotton Program, led by US Cotton Trust Protocol: This project, with potential funding up to $90 million, will build markets for climate-smart cotton and aid more than 1,000 cotton farmers, including historically underserved cotton producers, across the country.
• Climate-Smart Cotton through a Sustainable & Innovative Supply Chain Approach, led by ECOM USA, LLC: This project, with potential funding of $30 million, will strive to implement methods to restore soil and ecosystem health in cotton production through regenerative farming and best practices based on specific regions and needs.
• Climate-Smart Beef and Bison Commodities, led by South Dakota State University: This project, with potential funding up to $80 million, will create stronger market opportunities for beef and bison producers, educate producers on practices best suited for their operations and manage large-scale data.
• National Sorghum Producers Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Project, led by National Sorghum Producers Association: This project, with potential funding up to $65 million, plans to implement climate-smart production practices across hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum working lands over a five-year period, with the goal to reduce hundreds of millions of pounds of carbon emissions and develop markets for sorghum as a climate-smart commodity.

For a comprehensive listing of projects and participating organizations included, visit: https://www.usda.gov/climate-solutions/climate-smart-commodities/projects.

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Does exercise drive development? In the sea anemone, the way you move matters

Researchers from EMBL’s Ikmi group employed an interdisciplinary approach to show how sea anemone “exercise” changes their developing size and shape, uncovering an intimate relationship between behavior and body development

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EUROPEAN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: SEA ANEMONES, IT TURNS OUT, ALSO BENEFIT FROM MAINTAINING AN ACTIVE LIFESTYLE, PARTICULARLY AS THEY GROW FROM OVOID-SHAPED SWIMMING LARVAE TO SEDENTARY, TUBULAR POLYPS. THE TISSUE IS VISUALIZED USING ACTIN-STAINING. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: IKMI GROUP/EMBL AND ALMF/EMBL

As humans, we know that an active lifestyle gives us some control over our form. When we hit the pavement, track our steps, and head to the gym, we can maintain muscle development and reduce body fat. Our physical activity helps shape our physical figure. But what if we sustained similar aerobics in our earlier forms? Is it possible that our embryos also exercised?

Researchers at EMBL’s Ikmi group turned these questions towards the sea anemone to understand how behaviour impacts body shape during early development. Sea anemones, it turns out, also benefit from maintaining an active lifestyle, particularly as they grow from ovoid-shaped swimming larvae to sedentary, tubular polyps. This morphological transformation is a fundamental transition in the life history of many cnidarian species, including the immortal jellyfish and the builders of our planet’s richest and most complex ecosystem, coral reefs.

During development, starlet sea anemone larvae (Nematostella) perform a specific pattern of gymnastic movements. Too much or too little muscle activity or a drastic change in the organization of their muscles can deviate the sea anemone from its normal shape.

In a new paper published in Current Biology, the Ikmi group explores how this kind of behaviour impacts animal development. With expertise in live imaging, computational methodology, biophysics, and genetics, the multidisciplinary team of scientists turned 2D and 3D live imaging into quantitative features to track changes in the body. They found that developing sea anemones behave like hydraulic pumps, regulating body pressure through muscle activity, and using hydraulics to sculpt the larval tissue.

“Humans use a skeleton made of muscles and bones to exercise. In contrast, sea anemones use a hydroskeleton made of muscles and a cavity filled with water,” said Aissam Ikmi, EMBL group leader. The same hydraulic muscles that help the developing sea anemones move also seem to impact how they develop. Using an image analysis pipeline to measure body column length, diameter, estimated volume, and motility in large data sets, scientists found that Nematostella larvae naturally divide themselves into two groups: slow- and fast-developing larvae. To the team’s surprise, the more active the larvae, the longer they take to develop. “Our work shows how developing sea anemones essentially ‘exercise’ to build their morphology, but it seems that they cannot use their hydroskeleton to move and develop simultaneously,” Ikmi said.

Making microscopes and building balloons

“There were many challenges to doing this research,” explains first author and former EMBL predoc Anniek Stokkermans, now a postdoc at the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands. “This animal is very active. Most microscopes cannot record fast enough to keep up with the animal’s movements, resulting in blurry images, especially when you want to look at it in 3D. Additionally, the animal is quite dense, so most microscopes cannot even see halfway through the animal.”

To look both deeper and faster, Ling Wang, an application engineer in the Prevedel group at EMBL, built a microscope to capture living, developing sea anemone larvae in 3D during its natural behaviour.

“For this project, Ling has specifically adapted one of our core technologies, Optical Coherence Microscopy or OCM. The key advantage of OCM is that it allows the animals to move freely under the microscope while still providing a clear, detailed look inside, and in 3D.” said Robert Prevedel, EMBL group leader. “It has been an exciting project that shows the many different interfaces between EMBL groups and disciplines.”

With this specialized tool, the researchers were able to quantify volumetric changes in tissue and body cavity. “To increase their size, sea anemones inflate like a balloon by taking up water from the environment,” Stokkermans explained. “Then, by contracting different types of muscles, they can regulate their short-term shape, much like squeezing an inflated balloon on one side, and watching it expand on the other side. We think this pressure-driven local expansion helps stretch tissue, so the animal slowly becomes more elongated. In this way, contractions can have both short-term and a long-term effects.”

Balloons and sea anemones

To better understand the hydraulics and their function, researchers collaborated with experts across disciplines. Prachiti Moghe, an EMBL predoc in the Hiiragi group, measured pressure changes driving body deformations. Additionally, mathematician L. Mahadevan and engineer Aditi Chakrabarti from Harvard University introduced a mathematical model to quantify the role of hydraulic pressures in driving system-level changes in shape. They also engineered reinforced balloons with bands and tapes that mimic the range of shapes and sizes seen in both normal and muscle-defective animals.

“Given the ubiquity of hydrostatic skeletons in the animal kingdom, especially in marine invertebrates, our study suggests that active muscular hydraulics play a broad role in the design principle of soft-bodied animals,” Ikmi said. “In many engineered systems, hydraulics is defined by the ability to harness pressure and flow into mechanical work, with long-range effects in space-time. As animal multicellularity evolved in an aquatic environment, we propose that early animals likely exploited the same physics, with hydraulics driving both developmental and behavioural decisions.”

As the Ikmi group previously studied the connections between diet and tentacle development, this research adds a new layer to understanding how body forms develop.

“We still have many questions from these new findings. Why are there different activity levels? How do cells exactly sense and translate pressure into a developmental outcome?” Stokkermans ponders as she considers where this research leads. “Furthermore, since tube-like structures form the basis of many of our organs, studying the mechanisms that apply to Nematostella will also help gain further understanding in how hydraulics play a role in organ development and function.”

In the sea anemone, the way you move matters (VIDEO)

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.065 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Muscular hydraulics drives larva-polyp morphogenesis.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Sep-2022

FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

Prevalence and Risk Factors for Medical Debt and Subsequent Changes in Social Determinants of Health in the US

David U. Himmelstein, MD^1,2,3,4; Samuel L. Dickman, MD⁵; Danny McCormick, MD, MPH^2,3; et alDavid H. Bor, MD^2,3; Adam Gaffney, MD, MPH^2,3; Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH^1,2,3,4

Author Affiliations Article Information

JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(9):e2231898. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.31898

Original Investigation 

Health Policy

September 16, 2022

Key Points

Question  What are the prevalence and risk factors associated with medical debt in the US?

Findings  In this cross-sectional and cohort study of survey data from 2017 to 2019, 10.8% of adults carried medical debt, including 10.5% of the privately insured, and 9.6% of residents of Medicaid-expansion states, significantly fewer than in nonexpansion states. Over 3 years, decreases in health status and coverage loss were significant risk factors associated with acquiring medical debt, which was, in turn associated with a significant 1.7-fold to 3.1-fold higher risk of worsening housing and food security.

Meaning  Results of this study suggest that medical indebtedness is common, even among the insured, and may be associated with subsequent worsening of social determinants of health.

Abstract

Importance  Cost barriers discourage many US residents from seeking medical care and many who obtain it experience financial hardship. However, little is known about the association between medical debt and social determinants of health (SDOH).

Objective  To determine the prevalence of and risk factors associated with medical debt and the association of medical debt with subsequent changes in the key SDOH of food and housing security.

Design, Setting, and Participants  Cross-sectional analyses using multivariable logistic regression models controlled for demographic, financial, insurance, and health-related factors, and prospective cohort analyses assessing changes over time using the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Surveys of Income and Program Participation. Participants were nationally representative samples of US adults surveyed for 1 to 3 years.

Exposures  Insurance-related and health-related characteristics as risk factors for medical debt; Newly incurred medical debt as a risk factor for deterioration in SDOHs.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Prevalence and amounts of medical debt; 4 SDOHs: inability to pay rent or mortgage or utilities; eviction or foreclosure; and food insecurity.

Results  Among 51 872 adults surveyed regarding 2017, 40 784 regarding 2018 and 43 220 regarding 2019, 51.6% were female, 16.8% Hispanic, 6.0% were non-Hispanic Asian, 11.9% non-Hispanic Black, 62.6% non-Hispanic White, and 2.18% other non-Hispanic. A total of 10.8% (95% CI, 10.6-11.0) of individuals and approximately 18.1% of households carried medical debt. Persons with low and middle incomes had similar rates: 15.3%; (95% CI,14.4-16.2) of uninsured persons had debt, as did 10.5% (95% CI, 10.2-18.8) of the privately-insured. In 2018 the mean medical debt was $21 687/debtor (median $2000 [IQR, $597-$5000]). In cross-sectional analyses, hospitalization, disability, and having private high-deductible, Medicare Advantage, or no coverage were risk factors associated with medical indebtedness; residing in a Medicaid-expansion state was protective (2019 odds ratio [OR], 0.76; 95% CI, 0.70-0.83). Prospective findings were similar, eg, losing insurance coverage between 2017 and 2019 was associated with acquiring medical debt by 2019 (OR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.23-2.14), as was becoming newly disabled (OR, 2.42; 95% CI, 1.95-3.00) or newly hospitalized (OR, 2.95; 95% CI, 2.40-3.62). Acquiring medical debt between 2017 and 2019 was a risk factor associated with worsening SDOHs, with ORs of 2.20 (95% CI,1.58-3.05) for becoming food insecure; 2.29 (95% CI, 1.73-3.03) for losing ability to pay rent or mortgage; 2.37 (95% CI, 1.75-3.23) for losing ability to pay utilities; and 2.95 (95% CI, 1.38-6.31) for eviction or foreclosure in 2019.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this cross-sectional and cohort study, medical indebtedness was common, even among insured individuals. Acquiring such debt may worsen SDOHs. Expanded and improved health coverage could ameliorate financial distress, and improve housing and food security.

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