Tuesday, November 08, 2022

Violence on TV: the effects can stretch from age 3 into the teens

UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL

Watching violent TV during the preschool years can lead to later risks of psychological and academic impairment, the summer before middle school starts, according to a new study led by Linda Pagani, a professor at Université de Montréal’s School of Psycho-Education.

The study is published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Before now, "it was unclear to what extent exposure to typical violent screen content in early childhood—a particularly critical time in brain development—can predict later psychological distress and academic risks," said Pagani.

"The detection of early modifiable factors that influence a child's later well-being is an important target for individual and community health initiatives, and psychological adjustment and academic motivation are essential elements in the successful transition to adolescence," she added.

"So, we wanted to see the long-term effect of typical violent screen exposure in preschoolers on normal development, based on several key indicators of youth adjustment at age 12."

To do this, Pagani and her team examined the violent screen content that parents reported their children viewing between ages three-and-a-half and four-and-a-half, and then conducted a follow-up when the children reached 12.

Two reports were taken

At the follow-up, two reports were taken: first, of what teachers said they observed, and second, of what the children themselves, now at the end of Grade 6, described as their psychological and academic progress.

"Compared to their same-sex peers who were not exposed to violent screen content, boys and girls who were exposed to typical violent content on television were more likely to experience subsequent increases in emotional distress," said Pagani.

"They also experienced decreases in classroom engagement, academic achievement and academic motivation by the end of the sixth grade," she added.

"For youth, transition to middle school already represents a crucial stage in their development as adolescents. Feeling sadness and anxiety and being at risk academically tends to complicate their situation."

Pagani and co-authors Jessica Bernard and Caroline Fitzpatrick came to their conclusions after examining data from a cohort of children born in 1997 or 1998 who are part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, coordinated by the Institut de la statistique du Québec.

Close to 2,000 children studied

In all, the parents of 978 girls and 998 boys participated in the study of violent TV viewing at the preschool age. At age 12 years, the children and their teachers rated the children's psychosocial and academic achievement, motivation and participation in classroom activities.

Pagani’s team then analyzed the data to identify any significant link between problems with those aspects and violent content they were exposed to at preschool, while trying to account for as many possible biases and confounding influences as possible.

"Our goal was to eliminate any pre-existing conditions of the children or families that could have provided an alternative explanation or throw a different light on our results," Pagani said.

Watching TV is a common early childhood pastime, and some of the children in the study were exposed to violence and some were not.

Psychological and academic impairment in children is of increasing concern for education and public-health sector workers. According to Pagani, problems starting middle school are rooted in early childhood.

Identifying with fictional characters

“Preschool children tend to identify with characters on TV and treat everything they see as real," she said. "They are especially vulnerable to humorous depictions of glorified heroes and villains who use violence as a justified means to solve problems.

"Repeated exposure,” she added, “to rapidly paced, adrenaline-inducing action sequences and captivating special effects could reinforce beliefs, attitudes and impressions that habitual violence in social interactions is ' normal'. Mislearning essential social skills can make it difficult to fit in at school."

Added Bernard: “Just like witnessing violence in real life, being repeatedly exposed to a hostile and violent world populated by sometimes grotesque-looking creatures could trigger fear and stress and lead these children to perceive society as dangerous and frightening.

"And this can lead to habitually overreacting in ambiguous social situations."

She continued: "In the preschool years, the number of hours in a day is limited, and the more children get exposed to aggressive interactions (on screens) the more they might think it normal to behave that way."

Pagani added: "Being exposed to more appropriate social situations, however, can help them develop essential social skills that will later be useful and ultimately play a key role in their personal and economic success.”

About this study

"Prospective associations between preschool exposure to violent televiewing and psycho-social and academic risks in early adolescent boys and girls" was published Nov. 8, 2022 in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Universite de Montréal professor Linda Pagani, Ph.D., is lead author of the study; Jessica Bernard, M.Sc., is a graduate student under her supervision, and Caroline Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., is Canada Research Chair in Education at Université de Sherbrooke. Pagani is also a researcher at the UdeM-affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre and with the Research Group on Learning Environments of the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture. Fitzpatrick is an assistant professor at both Université de Sherbrooke's Department of Preschool and Elementary School Education and at the University of Johannesburg's Department of Childhood Education.

The authors wish to acknowledge the sponsors funding the larger public data set. The Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development was made possible thanks to the funding provided by the Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon, the Institut de la Statistique du Québec, the Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur (MÉES), the Ministère de la Famille (MF), the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRSST), the Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine, the Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale (MTESS) and the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux du Québec (MSSS). Source: Data compiled from the final master file ‘E1-E22’ from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (1998–2019), ©Gouvernement du Québec, Institut de la statistique du Québec.

JOURNAL

Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Prospective associations between preschool exposure to violent televiewing and psycho-social and academic risks in early adolescent boys and girls

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Nov-2022

Should maize farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa store or sell their grain?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

maize storage in Zambia — IMAGE: MAIZE STORAGE STRUCTURES AT THE ZAMBIA AGRICULTURE RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN CHILANGA, ZAMBIA. view more
CREDIT: PROTENSIA HADUNKA. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

URBANA, Ill. – Many maize farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa sell their crop at harvest, often because they need funds to pay expenses. Development agencies often support or sponsor harvest-time loans that encourage farmers to store some of their grain for later sale, on an assumption that its market value will increase in months to come. But that’s not a sure bet, as a new University of Illinois study reveals.

Analyzing maize prices across more than a thousand Sub-Saharan African markets over a 20-year period, the researchers found not only that maize prices do not always rise after the harvest season, but also that farmers cannot fully predict whether prices are likely to rise or fall. As a result, there is significant risk associated with storing grain for later sale, and farmer risk tolerance can impact the decision, says Hope Michelson, associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) at Illinois and co-author on the study.

“There is a long-standing assumption in the agricultural development literature that grain prices always rise after harvest in these rural grain markets,” Michelson notes. “In a given region, people grow maize and harvest it on essentially the same schedule. Many of them also sell at the same time because this is when buyers are ready and bills at the farm have to be paid. And when lot of maize hits the marketplace at once, selling prices can drop sharply.

“Because prices tend to rise over the course of the year and peak before harvest, small-scale farmers may be forced to buy maize back from the market a few months later for their own consumption, when the price has gone up significantly.”

Policy interventions that provide farmers with access to credit at harvest could prompt them to retain some of their crop, either to meet their own household’s food needs or to sell when prices rise later. However, this strategy works only if prices actually and reliably go up.

From her field work in Malawi, Michelson observed the unpredictability of market prices after the high season of harvest and crop-sale. She teamed up with then-doctoral student Lila Cardell, who is now a research economist with the USDA Economic Research Service, to gather data from markets across the region to track post-harvest maize price trends over a range of nations and years.

“Many agricultural development initiatives in low-income countries and associated academic papers assume farmers are leaving money on the table by selling all their maize at harvest,” says Cardell, who is lead author on the paper. “We looked at that assumption carefully, asking, ‘What if the farmers are right? What if the dilemma they face is not just a credit issue?’”

Michelson and Cardell reviewed price data from 1,038 markets over 20 years in 30 African countries. While they found that prices do generally rise after harvest, they also found that prices fell 16.3% of the time, ranging from a frequency of 10.9% in Mozambique to 50% in Mauritania. They argue consequently that for poor farmers, average trends provide no reassurance about present or future market conditions.

“It may be true that on average maize prices go up after harvest, but averages are not the only thing that matters. One bad year may actually have a lot of consequences for a poor household that can’t borrow across years. To opt for crop storage, risk-averse farmers may need firm assurances of more than the average payoff,” Michelson says.

“We show that the phenomenon of maize prices not rising after harvest does not occur only in a handful of years or in one particular cluster of markets. We see it happening in all countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is more likely to happen in some years and some places, but the fact is that maize prices don't always rise after harvest,” Cardell states.

Because markets are unpredictable, farmers essentially have to guess whether it makes sense to sell or store their grain. In addition, there are storage expenses and risks of spoilage and loss to consider.

Cardell and Michelson conclude that though storing maize grain at harvest may be a sound strategy as a general rule, development organizations should consider local marketplace dynamics and observe how traders, farmers, and maize millers see the market and what kinds of strategies they adopt or prefer to protect themselves from risk.

Circumstances may require different kinds of interventions: For example, forward contracting agreements or multi-year credit could help buffer against price fluctuations.

“We need to spend more time understanding the nature of what's going on and how people respond to it,” Michelson concludes.

The Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics is in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois.

The paper, “Price risk and small farmer maize storage in Sub-Saharan Africa: New insights into a long-standing puzzle,” is published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics [https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12343].

This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.

JOURNAL

American Journal of Agricultural Economics

DOI

10.1111/ajae.12343

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

American Journal of Agricultural Economics American Journal of Agricultural Economics Article Open Access Price risk and small farmer maize storage in Sub-Saharan Africa: New insights into a long-standing puzzle

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Sep-2022

HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE

Early planetary migration can explain missing planets

Model accounts for scarcity of planets with masses between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

Exoplanet Types - Illustration — IMAGE: HTTPS://EXOPLANETS.NASA.GOV/RESOURCES/2319/EXOPLANET-TYPES-ILLUSTRATION/ CAPTION: AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE VARIATIONS AMONG THE MORE THAN 5,000 KNOWN EXOPLANETS DISCOVERED SINCE THE 1990S. view more
CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF NASA/JPL-CALTECH

HOUSTON – (Nov. 7, 2022) – A new model that accounts for the interplay of forces acting on newborn planets can explain two puzzling observations that have cropped up repeatedly among the more than 3,800 planetary systems cataloged to date.

One puzzle known as the “radius valley” refers to the rarity of exoplanets with a radius about 1.8 times that of Earth. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft observed planets of this size about 2-3 times less frequently than it observed super-Earths with radii about 1.4 times that of Earth and mini-Neptunes with radii about 2.5 times Earth’s. The second mystery, known as “peas in a pod,” refers to neighboring planets of similar size that have been found in hundreds of planetary systems. Those include TRAPPIST-1 and Kepler-223, which also feature planetary orbits of near-musical harmony.

“I believe we are the first to explain the radius valley using a model of planet formation and dynamical evolution that self-consistently accounts for multiple constraints of observations,” said Rice University’s André Izidoro, corresponding author of a study published this week in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We’re also able to show that a planet-formation model incorporating giant impacts is consistent with the peas-in-a-pod feature of exoplanets.”

Izidoro, a Welch Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice’s NASA-funded CLEVER Planets project, and co-authors used a supercomputer to simulate the first 50 million years of the development of planetary systems using a planetary migration model. In the model, protoplanetary disks of gas and dust that give rise to young planets also interact with them, pulling them closer to their parent stars and locking them in resonant orbital chains. The chains are broken within a few million years, when the disappearance of the protoplanetary disk causes orbital instabilities that lead two or more planets to slam into one another.

Planetary migration models have been used to study planetary systems that have retained their resonant orbital chains. For example, Izidoro and CLEVER Planets colleagues used a migration model in 2021 to calculate the maximum amount of disruption TRAPPIST-1’s seven-planet system could have withstood during bombardment and still retained its harmonious orbital structure.

In the new study, Izidoro partnered with CLEVER Planets’ investigators Rajdeep Dasgupta and Andrea Isella, both of Rice, Hilke Schlichting of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Christian Zimmermann and Bertram Bitsch of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

“The migration of young planets towards their host stars creates overcrowding and frequently results in cataclysmic collisions that strip planets of their hydrogen-rich atmospheres,” Izidoro said. “That means giant impacts, like the one that formed our moon, are probably a generic outcome of planet formation.”

The research suggests planets come in two “flavors,” super-Earths that are dry, rocky and 50% larger than Earth, and mini-Neptunes that are rich in water ice and about 2.5 times larger than Earth. Izidoro said new observations seem to support the results, which conflict with the traditional view that both super-Earths and mini-Neptunes are exclusively dry and rocky worlds.

Based on their findings, the researchers made predictions that can be tested by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. They suggest, for instance, that a fraction of planets about twice Earth’s size will both retain their primordial hydrogen-rich atmosphere and be rich in water.

The research was funded by NASA (80NSSC18K0828), the Welch Foundation (C-2035-20200401) and the European Research Council (757448-PAMDORA).

super-Earth gap illustration

CAPTION

An illustration depicting the scarcity of exoplanets about 1.8 times the size of Earth that were observed by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.

CREDIT

Graphic courtesy of A. Izidoro/Rice University

Peer-reviewed paper:

“The Exoplanet Radius Valley from Gas-driven Planet Migration and Breaking of Resonant Chains” | Astrophysical Journal Letters | DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac990d

André Izidoro, Hilke E. Schlichting, Andrea Isella, Rajdeep Dasgupta, Christian Zimmermann and Bertram Bitsch

https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac990d

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/2319/exoplanet-types-illustration/
CAPTION: An illustration of the variations among the more than 5,000 known exoplanets discovered since the 1990s. (Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/10/1102_GAP-graph-lg.jpeg
CAPTION: An illustration depicting the scarcity of exoplanets about 1.8 times the size of Earth that were observed by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. (Graphic courtesy of A. Izidoro/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/11/1102_GAP-izidoro16-lg.jpg
CAPTION: André Izidoro (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI

10.3847/2041-8213/ac990d

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The Exoplanet Radius Valley from Gas-driven Planet Migration and Breaking of Resonant Chains

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Nov-2022

Rare fossil clam discovered alive

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara and SB Museum of Natural History discover a tiny clam, previously known only from fossils, alive in the tidepools of Santa Barbara

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

Cymatioa cooki rainbow — IMAGE: A DAZZLING PLAY OF COLORS HIGHLIGHTS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S LONG LOST CLAM. view more
CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: JEFF GODDARD

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Discovering a new species is always exciting, but so is finding one alive that everyone assumed had been lost to the passage of time. A small clam, previously known only from fossils, has recently been found living at Naples Point, just up the coast from UC Santa Barbara. The discovery appears in the journal Zookeys.

“It's not all that common to find alive a species first known from the fossil record, especially in a region as well-studied as Southern California,” said co-author Jeff Goddard, a research associate at UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute. “Ours doesn't go back anywhere near as far as the famous Coelacanth or the deep-water mollusk Neopilina galatheae — representing an entire class of animals thought to have disappeared 400 million years ago — but it does go back to the time of all those wondrous animals captured by the La Brea Tar Pits.”

On an afternoon low tide in November 2018, Goddard was turning over rocks searching for nudibranch sea slugs at Naples Point, when a pair of small, translucent bivalves caught his eye. “Their shells were only 10 millimeters long,” he said. “But when they extended and started waving about a bright white-striped foot longer than their shell, I realized I had never seen this species before.” This surprised Goddard, who has spent decades in California’s intertidal habitats, including many years specifically at Naples Point. He immediately stopped what he was doing to take close-up photos of the intriguing animals.

With quality images in hand, Goddard decided not to collect the animals, which appeared to be rare. After pinning down their taxonomic family, he sent the images to Paul Valentich-Scott, curator emeritus of malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. “I was surprised and intrigued,” Valentich-Scott recalled. “I know this family of bivalves (Galeommatidae) very well along the coast of the Americas. This was something I'd never seen before.”

He mentioned a few possibilities to Goddard, but said he’d need to see the animal in-person to make a proper assessment. So, Goddard returned to Naples Point to claim his clam. But after two hours combing just a few square meters, he still hadn’t caught sight of his prize. The species would continue to elude him many more times.

Nine trips later, in March 2019, and nearly ready to give up for good, Goddard turned over yet another rock and saw the needle in the haystack: A single specimen, next to a couple of small white nudibranchs and a large chiton. Valentich-Scott would get his specimen at last, and the pair could finally set to work on identification.

Valentich-Scott was even more surprised once he got his hands on the shell. He knew it belonged to a genus with one member in the Santa Barbara region, but this shell didn’t match any of them. It raised the exciting possibility that they had found a new species.

“This really started ‘the hunt’ for me,” Valentich-Scott said. “When I suspect something is a new species, I need to track back through all of the scientific literature from 1758 to the present. It can be a daunting task, but with experience it can go pretty quickly.”

The two researchers decided to check out an intriguing reference to a fossil species. They tracked down illustrations of the bivalve Bornia cooki from the paper describing the species in 1937. It appeared to match the modern specimen. If confirmed, this would mean that Goddard had found not a new species, but a sort of living fossil.

It is worth noting that the scientist who described the species, George Willett, estimated he had excavated and examined perhaps 1 million fossil specimens from the same location, the Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles. That said, he never found B. cooki himself. Rather, he named it after Edna Cook, a Baldwin Hills collector who had found the only two specimens known.

Valentich-Scott requested Willett’s original specimen (now classified as Cymatioa cooki) from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This object, called the “type specimen,” serves to define the species, so it’s the ultimate arbiter of the clam’s identification.

Meanwhile, Goddard found another specimen at Naples Point — a single empty shell in the sand underneath a boulder. After carefully comparing the specimens from Naples Point with Willett’s fossil, Valentich-Scott concluded they were the same species. “It was pretty remarkable,” he recalled.

Small size and cryptic habitat notwithstanding, all of this begs the question of how the clam eluded detection for so long. “There is such a long history of shell-collecting and malacology in Southern California — including folks interested in the harder to find micro-mollusks — that it's hard to believe no one found even the shells of our little cutie,” Goddard said.

He suspects the clams may have arrived here on currents as planktonic larvae, carried up from the south during marine heatwaves from 2014 through 2016. These enabled many marine species to extend their distributions northward, including several documented specifically at Naples Point. Depending on the animal’s growth rate and longevity, this could explain why no one had noticed C. cooki at the site prior to 2018, including Goddard, who has worked on nudibranchs at Naples Point since 2002.

“The Pacific coast of Baja California has broad intertidal boulder fields that stretch literally for miles,” Goddard said, “and I suspect that down there Cymatioa cooki is probably living in close association with animals burrowing beneath those boulders.

JOURNAL

ZooKeys

ARTICLE TITLE

A fossil species found living off southern California, with notes on the genus Cymatioa (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Galeommatoidea)

Mindfulness shows promise as an effective intervention to lower blood pressure

American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2022, Abstract 18627

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION

CHICAGO, Nov. 6, 2022 — A customized mindfulness program that taught participants to apply those skills to have healthy relationships with their diet, physical activity, alcohol use, medication adherence and stress, led to notably lower systolic (top number) blood pressure measures six months after participating in the mindfulness program, according to late-breaking science presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022. The meeting, held in person in Chicago and virtually, Nov. 5-7, 2022, is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science.

Nearly half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, or hypertension, and many aren’t aware they have it, according to the American Heart Association. High blood pressure - a consistently high force of blood flowing through blood vessels - is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke, the No. 1 and No. 5 causes of death in the U.S., respectively.

The mindfulness program focused on training participants in skills such as attention control, self-awareness and emotion regulation, and then applied that training to health behavior change. This approach may offer a novel way to improve blood pressure control, according to lead study author Eric B. Loucks, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology and director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

“Mindfulness is non-judgmental, present-moment awareness of physical sensations, emotions and thoughts,” Loucks said. “It is almost like a scientist curiously and objectively observing the information coming in through the sense organs and the mind, and then responding skillfully to that information. Mindfulness also involves the concept of remembering, or in other words, remembering to bring one’s wisdom (wherever it was gained, such as from health care professionals or public health messages) into the present moment. Wisdom in the context of elevated blood pressure levels may include knowledge that evidence-based practices, such as physical activity, diet, limited alcohol consumption and antihypertensive medication adherence, can improve well-being.”

In this study, researchers compared enhanced usual care (e.g., a home blood pressure monitor, blood pressure education material, facilitated access to a physician if needed) to participation in an 8-week mindfulness-based program, customized for people with elevated blood pressure.

This clinical trial, conducted from June 2017 to November 2020, included more than 200 adults recruited from the Providence, Rhode Island area who had elevated/high blood pressure, defined as greater than 120 mm Hg systolic or 80 mm Hg diastolic blood pressure. Participants included men (41%) and women (59%), average age 59 years, 81% were white adults and 73% had a college education.

About half of the participants were randomly assigned to the enhanced usual care group. The remaining participants received the mindfulness program, called Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP). Those in the intervention group went to a group orientation session, eight 2.5-hour weekly group sessions and a 7.5-hour, one-day group retreat. Recommended home mindfulness practice was at least 45 minutes a day, six days a week.

At six months, researchers found:

Participants in the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction group had an average drop in systolic blood pressure of 5.9 mm Hg, compared to a 1.4 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure in the enhanced usual care group.
There were no notable changes in diastolic blood pressure measures for either group.
Those in the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction group also reduced sedentary sitting by an average of 351 minutes each week compared to the participants in the enhanced usual care group.

When the researchers analyzed changes in diet including eating a diet consistent with the recommendations in the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet (DASH), perceived stress and mindfulness, they found participants in the mindfulness intervention group were more likely to eat heart-healthy foods, report improved perceived stress and levels of mindfulness.

While more research on using the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction program for blood pressure control needs to be done to confirm these results, the intervention is promising as a blood pressure lowering intervention, according to Loucks.

Among the limitations of the study is that most participants were college-educated white adults, which limits its generalizability to people from diverse racial and ethnic groups or who have other education levels.

Co-authors are Zev Schuman-Olivier, M.D.; Frances Saadeh, M.P.H.; Mathew M. Scarpaci, M.P.H.; WIlliam R. Nardi, M.P.H.; Roee Gutman, Ph.D.; Jean A. King, Ph.D.; Willoughby B. Britton, Ph.D.; and Ian Kronish, M.D., M.P.H. Authors’ disclosures are listed in the abstract.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health Science of Behavior Change Common Fund Program through an award by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

Statements and conclusions of studies that are presented at the American Heart Association’s scientific meetings are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association’s policy or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. Abstracts presented at the Association’s scientific meetings are not peer-reviewed, rather, they are curated by independent review panels and are considered based on the potential to add to the diversity of scientific issues and views discussed at the meeting. The findings are considered preliminary until published as a full manuscript in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The Association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific Association programs and events. The Association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and biotech companies, device manufacturers and health insurance providers and the Association’s overall financial information are available here.

Additional Resources:

Multimedia is available on the right column of the release link https://newsroom.heart.org/news/mindfulness-shows-promise-as-an-effective-intervention-to-lower-blood-pressure?preview=0d4a7c53964197ee5e181df2dd23dba7
Link to abstract; and AHA Scientific Session 2022 Online Program Planner
AHA news release: Diet change may make biggest impact on reducing heart risk in people with hypertension (Sept. 2022)
AHA news release: Mindfulness linked to better psychological health a year or longer after cardiac arrest (Nov. 2021)
For more news at AHA Scientific Sessions 2022, follow us on Twitter @HeartNews #AHA22

The American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022 is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science. The 3-day meeting will feature more than 500 sessions focused on breakthrough cardiovascular basic, clinical and population science updates occurring Saturday through Monday, November 5-7, 2022. Thousands of leading physicians, scientists, cardiologists, advanced practice nurses and allied health care professionals from around the world will convene virtually to participate in basic, clinical and population science presentations, discussions and curricula that can shape the future of cardiovascular science and medicine, including prevention and quality improvement. During the three-day meeting, attendees receive exclusive access to more than 4,000 original research presentations and can earn Continuing Medical Education (CME), Continuing Education (CE) or Maintenance of Certification (MOC) credits for educational sessions. Engage in Scientific Sessions 2022 on social media via #AHA22.

About the American Heart Association

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Lucid dying: Patients recall death experiences during CPR

Detection of rhythmic brain waves suggestive of near-death experiences

Reports and Proceedings

NYU LANGONE HEALTH / NYU GROSSMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Note: This presentation is titled “AWAreness during REsuscitation II: a multicenter study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest,” and is scheduled to be presented during the resuscitation science symposium at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022 on Sunday, Nov. 6, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago Hotel in Chicago.

One in five people who survive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after cardiac arrest may describe lucid experiences of death that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious and on the brink of death, a new study shows.

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and elsewhere, the study involved 567 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalized and who received CPR between May 2017 and March 2020 in the United States and United Kingdom. Despite immediate treatment, fewer than 10% recovered sufficiently to be discharged from hospital.

Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, intentions and thoughts toward others. The researchers found these experiences of death to be different from hallucinations, delusions, illusions, dreams or CPR-induced consciousness.

The work also included tests for hidden brain activity. A key finding was the discovery of spikes of brain activity, including so-called gamma, delta, theta, alpha and beta waves up to an hour into CPR. Some of these brain waves normally occur when people are conscious and performing higher mental functions, including thinking, memory retrieval, and conscious perception.

“These recalled experiences and brain wave changes may be the first signs of the so-called near-death experience, and we have captured them for the first time in a large study,” says Sam Parnia, MD, PhD, the lead study investigator and an intensive care physician, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health, as well as the organization’s director of critical care and resuscitation research.“Our results offer evidence that while on the brink of death and in a coma, people undergo a unique inner conscious experience, including awareness without distress.”

Identifying measureable electrical signs of lucid and heightened brain activity, together with similar stories of recalled death experiences, suggests that the human sense of self and consciousness, much like other biological body functions, may not stop completely around the time of death, adds Parnia.

“These lucid experiences cannot be considered a trick of a disordered or dying brain, but rather a unique human experience that emerges on the brink death,” says Parnia. As the brain is shutting down, many of its natural braking systems are released. Known as disinhibition, this provides access to the depths of a person’s consciousness, including stored memories, thoughts from early childhood to death, and other aspects of reality. While no one knows the evolutionary purpose of this phenomenon, it clearly reveals “intriguing questions about human consciousness, even at death," says Parnia.

The study authors conclude that although studies to date have not been able to absolutely prove the reality or meaning of patients’ experiences and claims of awareness in relation to death, it has been impossible to disclaim them either. They say recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine empirical investigation without prejudice.

Researchers plan to present their study findings at a resuscitation science symposium that is part of the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022 taking place in Chicago on Nov. 6.

Some 25 hospitals in the U.S. and U.K. participated in the study, called AWARE II. Only hospitalized patients were enrolled to standardize the CPR and resuscitation methods used after cardiac arrest, as well as the recordings made of brain activity. Additional testimonies from 126 community survivors of cardiac arrest with self-reported memories were also examined in this study to provide greater understanding of the themes related to the recalled experience of death.

Parnia says further research is needed to more precisely define biomarkers of what is considered to be clinical consciousness, the human recalled experience of death, and to monitor the long-term psychological effects of resuscitation after cardiac arrest.

Funding and support for the study was provided by NYU Langone, The John Templeton Foundation, and the Resuscitation Council (UK) and National Institutes for Health Research in the U.K.

Besides Parnia, other NYU Langone study investigators are Tara Keshavarz Shirazi, BA; Caitlin O’Neill, MPH; Emma Roellke, MD; Amanda Mengotta, MD; Thaddeus Tarpey, PhD; Elise Huppert, MD; Ian Jaffe, BS; Anelly Gonzales, MS; Jing Xu, MS; and Emmeline Koopman, MS. Other study investigators are Deepak Pradhan, MD, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City; Jignesh Patel, MD; Linh Tran, MD; Niraj Sinha, MD; and Rebecca Spiegel, MD, at Stony Brook University in N.Y.; Shannon Findlay, MD, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City; Michael McBrine, MD, at Tufts University in Boston; Gavin Perkins, MD, at the University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K.; Alain Vuylsteke, MD, at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Cambridge, U.K.; Benjamin Bloom, MD, at Barts Health NHS Trust in London, U.K.; Heather Jarman, RN, at St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in London; Hiu Nam Tong, MD, at Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust in King’s Lynn, U.K.; Louisa Chan, MD, at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Hampshire, U.K.; Michael Lyacker, MD, at Ohio State University in Columbus; Matthew Thomas, MD, at University Hospitals Bristol and Wexton NHS Foundation Trust in Bristol, U.K.; Veselin Velchev, MD, at St. Anna University in Sofia, Bulgaria; Charles Cairns, MD, at Drexel University in Phildelphia; Rahul Sharma, MD, at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City; Erik Kulstad, MD, at University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas; Elizabeth Scherer, MD, at University of Texas San Antonio; Terence O’Keeffe, MD, at Augusta University in Augusta, Ga.; Mahtab Foroozesh, MD, at Virginia Tech in Roanoke; Olumayowa Abe, MD, at New York-Presbyterian in New York City; Chinwe Ogedegbe, MD, at Hackensack University in Nutley, N.J.; Amira Girgis, MD, at Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Surrey, U.K.; and Charles Deakin, MD, at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust in Southampton, U.K.

Media Inquiries:

David March

212-404-3528

david.march@nyulangone.org

Allison Clair (on site at AHA)

917-301-5699

allison.clair@nyulangone.org

JOURNAL

Circulation

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Nov-2022

COI STATEMENT

N/A

Artificial intelligence could help ease hospital pressures

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND

Artificial intelligence could help hospitals — IMAGE: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COULD EASE WINTER STRAIN ON HOSPITALS view more
CREDIT: N/A

Pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) which automatically diagnoses lung diseases – such as tuberculosis and pneumonia – could ease winter pressures on hospitals, University of the West of Scotland researchers believe.

Tuberculosis and pneumonia – potentially serious infections which mainly affect the lungs –often require a combination of different diagnostic tests– such as CT scans, blood tests, X-rays, and ultrasounds. These tests can be expensive, with often lengthy waiting times for results.

Developed by UWS, the revolutionary technology – originally created to quickly detect Covid-19 from X-ray images – has been proven to automatically identify a range of different lung diseases in a matter of minutes, with around 98 per cent accuracy.

UWS researcher Professor Naeem Ramzan said: “Systems such as this could prove to be crucial for busy medical teams worldwide.”

It is hoped that the technology can be used to help relieve strain on pressured hospital departments through the quick and accurate detection of disease – freeing up radiographers continuously in high demand; reducing waiting times for test results; and creating efficiencies within the testing process.

Professor Ramzan, Director of the Affective and Human Computing for SMART Environments Research Centre at UWS, led the development of the technology, along with UWS PhD students Gabriel Okolo and Dr Stamos Katsigiannis.

Professor Ramzan added: “There is no doubt that hospital departments across the globe are under pressure and the outbreak of Covid-19 exacerbated this, adding further strain to pressured departments and staff. There is a real need for technology that can help ease some of these pressures and detect a range of different diseases quickly and accurately, helping free up valuable staff time.

“X-ray imaging is a relatively cheap and accessible diagnostic tool that already assists in the diagnosis of various conditions, including pneumonia, tuberculosis and Covid-19. Recent advances in AI have made automated diagnosis using chest X-ray scans a very real prospect in medical settings.”

The state-of-the-art technique utilises X-ray technology, comparing scans to a database of thousands of images from patients with pneumonia, tuberculosis and covid. It then uses a process known as deep convolutional neural network – an algorithm typically used to analyse visual imagery – to make a diagnosis.

During an extensive testing phase, the technique proved to be 98 pre cent accurate.

Professor Milan Radosavljevic, UWS’s Vice-Principal of Research, Innovation and Engagement, said: “Hospitals around the world are under sustained stress. This can be seen throughout the UK, as our fantastic NHS continues to undergo immense pressure, with hard-pressed medical staff bearing the brunt.

“I am excited about the potential of this innovative technology, which could help streamline diagnostic processes and reduce strain on staff.

“It’s another example of purposeful, impactful research at UWS, as we strive to find solutions to global challenges.”

Researchers at UWS are now exploring the suitability of the technology in detecting other diseases using X-ray images, such as cancer.

JOURNAL

Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine

DOI

10.1016/j.cmpb.2022.107141

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

IEViT: An enhanced vision transformer architecture for chest X-ray image classification

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Nov-2022