The secret to the skillful skydiving of wingless springtails

Georgia Tech researchers discover how this tiny hexapod survives predators

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOG

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS COLLECTING SPRINGTAILS view more 

CREDIT: GEORGIA TECH

Early in the pandemic, Víctor Ortega-Jiménez was exploring creeks near his home and observing springtails. The organisms are the most abundant non-insect hexapods on earth, and Ortega-Jiménez suspected their avoidance of predators had something to do with their ability to jump on the water surface and land perfectly in the same spot.  

Ortega-Jiménez brought the hypothesis back to his lab in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). Using a combination of computational and robophysical modeling, as well as fluid dynamics experiments, the researchers were able to see for the first time the mechanics of springtail movement. They determined how springtails control their jump, self-right in midair, and land on their feet — all within the blink of an eye — effectively saving them from predators.

“These extraordinary organisms with unique morphology live at a very precarious place: the water surface,” said ChBE Assistant Professor Saad Bhamla. “So, when they jump from and land back on water, we must understand the effects of both hydrodynamics and aerodynamics. How they land perfectly on their feet almost every time on the surface of water was the puzzle we set to solve in this paper.”

Ortega-Jiménez, Bhamla, and their collaborators presented this research in “Directional Takeoff, Aerial Righting, and Adhesion Landing of Semiaquatic Springtails,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Springtails

CREDIT

Georgia Tech

Understanding Springtails

The researchers discovered that springtails are so successful because of posture and mostly by their unique appendages for jumping and adhesion. First, they adjust the angle of their leaping organ, the furcula, when they take off. Then they change their posture midair into a U-shape that creates aerodynamic torque, effectively self-righting them 20 milliseconds into the jump, the fastest of any wingless organism. They land on a collophore, an appendage particular to the springtail that holds water.

Springtails are part of the Collembola family, organisms that are known for having a hydrophilic collophore, a tube-like structure that holds a water droplet and can adhere to surfaces. The researchers determined this collophore is essential for the springtail to glide on the surface of water and effectively land on its feet without bouncing. With high-speed imaging and a hydrodynamic oscillator force mathematical model — using surface tension, inertia, buoyancy, drag, capillary dissipation, and adhesion forces — the researchers calculated how the springtail takes advantage of its collophore for stable landings that release energy through capillary waves.

“Nobody has ever shown experimentally what the collophore is really for, and we're showing that it’s for their survival,” Ortega-Jiménez said. “They need this for stability, controlling their takeoff but more importantly how to perfectly land like an acrobat.”

After the researchers observed the jump, they found that springtails could control their takeoff angle and speed. They broke it down into a mathematical model to determine how precise these jumps were in a computer simulation. The model suggested that if springtails can control the angle of their body, they can glide on the surface of the water with their collophore, validating Ortega’s experimental observations.  

Researchers explored the self-righting ability of springtails by using dead and living springtails in a wind tunnel, as well as using freefall physical models. They found that the springtails' U-shaped posture and a droplet collected by the collophore create the perfect landing.  

“This work shows just how important controlled motion is for predator escape and survival,” said Kathryn Dickson, a program director at the National Science Foundation, which partially funded the research. “Springtails could not have become the most abundant non-insect hexapod without being able to control their gymnast-like escape response. In addition to being fascinating to watch, this new understanding of the biomechanics of how springtails control their jump, spin in midair, and land safely on water could lead to advances in fields from robotics to aerodynamics.”

Next, the researchers built small robots to replicate their experimental and computational observations in a physical environment in collaboration with Professor Jesung-Koh’s team at Ajou University in South Korea.

“It has been a major challenge for jumping robots, specifically at small scales, to control their orientation in the air for landing and jumping,” Koh said. “The finding in this research could inspire insect-scale jumping robots that are able to land safely and expand the capability of robots in new terrains, such as the open-water surfaces in our planet’s lakes and oceans.”

The researchers created a small robot with drag flappers to validate the observations that a collophore and body shape are needed to land.

“We show in three different cases that the native robot spins out of control and lands unpredictably,” Bhamla said. “But as you add each of these increments, like the drag flappers, we demonstrate the robot can achieve stability and land on its feet.”

The robot has a 75% success rate, compared to the springtail’s 85% success rate, making the results significant. But the results could have implications for more than just springtails.

“We are now opening this Pandora's box of what smaller animals can do,” Ortega-Jiménez said. “There is a belief that because they are tiny, they don't have as much control as big animals do. So, we are opening some possibilities of control at this small scale that could give insights into the origins of flight in organisms.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2211283119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Directional takeoff, aerial righting, and adhesion landing of semiaquatic springtails

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Nov-2022

Dementia prevalence is declining among older Americans, study finds

Study also finds decreases in disparities based on race and sex

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RAND CORPORATION

The prevalence of dementia in the U.S. is declining among people over age 65, dropping 3.7 percentage points from 2000 to 2016, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

The age-adjusted prevalence of dementia declined from 12.2% of people over age 65 in 2000 to 8.5% of people over age 65 in 2016 – a nearly one-third drop from the 2000 level. The prevalence of dementia decreased over the entire period, but the rate of decline was more rapid between 2000 and 2004.

Differences in the prevalence of dementia between Black men and white men narrowed, with the prevalence of dementia dropping by 7.3 percentage points among Black men as compared to 2.7 percentage points among white men.

The findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The reason for the decline in the prevalence of dementia are not certain, but this trend is good news for older Americans and the systems that support them,” said Péter Hudomiet, the study's lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “This decline may help reduce the expected strain on families, nursing homes and other support systems as the American population ages.”

Michael D. Hurd and Susann Rohwedder of RAND are co-authors of the study

The prevalence of dementia was higher among women than men over the entire period, but the difference shrank between 2000 and 2016. Among men, the prevalence of dementia decreased by 3.2 percentage points from 10.2% to 7.0%. The decrease was larger among women -- 3.9 percentage points from 13.6% to 9.7%.

In 2021, about 6.2 million U.S. adults aged 65 or older lived with dementia. Because age is the strongest risk factor for dementia, it has been predicted that increasing life expectancies will substantially increase the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias from about 50 million to 150 million worldwide by 2050.

However, there is growing evidence that age-adjusted dementia prevalence has been declining in developed countries, possibly because of rising levels of education, a reduction in smoking, and better treatment of key cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure.

Any change in these age-specific rates has important implications for projected prevalence and associated costs, such as payments for nursing care by households, insurance companies, and the government.

The new RAND study employs a novel model to assess cognitive status based on a broad set of cognitive measures elicited from more than 21,000 people who participate in the national Health and Retirement Study, a large population-representative survey that has been fielded for more than two decades.

The model increases the precision of dementia classification by using the longitudinal dimension of the data. Importantly for the study of inequality, the model is constructed to ensure the dementia classification is calibrated within population subgroups and, therefore, it is equipped to produce accurate estimates of dementia prevalence by age, sex, education, race and ethnicity, and by a measure of lifetime earnings.

The RAND study found that education was an important factor that contributed, in a statistical sense, to the reduction in dementia, explaining about 40% of the reduction in dementia prevalence among men and 20% of the reduction among women.

The fraction of college-educated men in the study increased from 21.5% in 2000 to 33.7% in 2016, and the fraction of college-educated women increased from 12.3% to 23% over this period.

Trends in the level of education differ across demographic groups, which may affect inequalities in dementia in the future. For example, while women traditionally had lower levels of education than men, among younger generations, women are more educated. While racial and ethnic minority groups still have lower education levels than non-Hispanic White individuals, the gaps across racial and ethnic groups have shrunk.

“Closing the education gap across racial and ethnic groups may be a powerful tool to reduce health inequalities in general and dementia inequalities in particular, an important public health policy goal,” Hudomiet said.

The age-adjusted prevalence of dementia tended to be higher among racial and ethnic minority individuals, both among men and women. However, among men, the difference in the prevalence between non-Hispanic Black and White individuals narrowed while it remained stable among women. Among non-Hispanic White men, the prevalence of dementia decreased from 9.3% to 6.6%. Among non-Hispanic Black men, the rate fell from 17.2% to 9.9%.

Support for the study, which is titled “Trends in Inequalities in the Prevalence of Dementia in the U.S.,” was provided by a grant from National Institute on Aging.

The RAND Social and Economic Well-Being division seeks to actively improve the health, social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2212205119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Trends in inequalities in the prevalence of dementia in the United States

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Nov-2022

In ironic twist, CRISPR system used to befuddle bacteria

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: BRACHYPODIUM DISTACHYON PLANT GROWN ON LIQUID MEDIA. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF MARTA TORRES, M-CAFES POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER, DEUTSCHBAUER LAB, ENVIRONMENTAL GENOMICS AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY "© THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY."

Call it a CRISPR conundrum.

Bacteria use CRISPR-Cas systems as adaptive immune systems to withstand attacks from enemies like viruses. These systems have been adapted by scientists to remove or cut and replace specific genetic code sequences in a variety of organisms. 

But in a new study, North Carolina State University researchers show that viruses engineered with a CRISPR-Cas system can thwart bacterial defenses and make selective changes to a targeted bacterium – even when other bacteria are in close proximity.

“Viruses are very good at delivering payloads. Here, we use a bacterial virus, a bacteriophage, to deliver CRISPR to bacteria, which is ironic because bacteria normally use CRISPR to kill viruses,” said Rodolphe Barrangou, the Todd R. Klaenhammer Distinguished Professor of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The virus in this case targets E. coli by delivering DNA to it. It’s like using a virus as a syringe.”

The NC State researchers deployed two different engineered bacteriophages to deliver CRISPR-Cas payloads for targeted editing of E. coli, first in a test tube and then within a synthetic soil environment created to mimic soil – a complex environment that can harbor many types of bacteria. 

Both the engineered bacteriophages, called T7 and lambda, successfully found and then delivered payloads to the E. coli host on the lab bench. These payloads expressed bacterial florescent genes and manipulated the bacterium’s resistance to an antibiotic. 

The researchers then used lambda to deliver a so-called cytosine base editor to the E. coli host. Rather than CRISPR’s sometimes harsh cleaving of DNA sequences, this base editor changed just one letter of E. coli’s DNA, showing the sensitivity and precision of the system. These changes inactivated certain bacterial genes without making other changes to E. coli.

“We used a base editor here as a kind of programmable on-off switch for genes in E. coli. Using a system like this, we can make highly precise single-letter changes to the genome without the double-strand DNA breakage commonly associated with CRISPR-Cas targeting,” said Matthew Nethery, a former NC State Ph.D. student and lead author of the study.

Finally, the researchers demonstrated on-site editing through the use of a fabricated ecosystem (EcoFAB) loaded with a synthetic soil medium of sand and quartz, along with liquid, to mimic a soil environment. The researchers also included three different types of bacteria to test if the phage could specifically locate E. coli within the system. 

“In a lab, scientists can oversimplify things,” Barrangou said. “It’s preferable to model environments, so rather than soup in a test tube, we wanted to examine real-life environments.”

The researchers inserted lambda into the fabricated ecosystem. It showed good efficiency in finding E. coli and making the targeted genetic changes.

“This technology is going to enable our team and others to discover the genetic basis of key bacterial interactions with plants and other microbes within highly controlled laboratory environments such as EcoFABs,” said Trent Northen, a scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who collaborates with Barrangou.

“We see this as a mechanism to aid the microbiome. We can make a change to a particular bacterium and the rest of the microbiome remains unscathed,” Barrangou said. “This is a proof of concept that could be employed in any complex microbial community, which could translate into better plant health and better gastrointestinal tract health – environments of importance to food and health.

“Ultimately this study represents the next chapter of CRISPR delivery – using viruses to deliver CRISPR machinery in a complex environment.”

The researchers plan to further this work by testing the phage CRISPR technique with other soil-associated bacteria. Importantly, this illustrates how soil microbial communities can be manipulated to control the composition and function of bacteria associated with plants in fabricated ecosystems to understand how to enhance plant growth and promote plant health, which is of broad interest for sustainable agriculture. 

Funding was provided by m-CAFEs Microbial Community Analysis & Functional Evaluation in Soils, a Science Focus Area led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and supported by the U.S. Dept. of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231, with collaborative efforts including UC Berkeley and the Innovative Genomics Institute. Co-authors of the paper include Nethery, former NC State post-doctoral researcher Claudio Hidalgo-Cantabrana and NC State graduate student Avery Roberts.

-kulikowski-

Note to editors: The abstract of the paper follows.
      
“CRISPR-based engineering of phages for in situ bacterial base editing”
 

Authors: Matthew A. Nethery, Claudio Hidalgo-Cantabrana, Avery Roberts, Rodolphe Barrangou, NC State University

Published: Nov. 7, 2022 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2206744119

Abstract: Investigation of microbial gene function is essential to the elucidation of ecological roles and complex genetic interactions that take place in microbial communities. While microbiome studies have increased in prevalence, the lack of viable in situ editing strategies impedes experimental design and progress, rendering genetic knowledge and manipulation of microbial communities largely inaccessible. Here, we demonstrate the utility of phage-delivered CRISPR-Cas payloads to perform targeted genetic manipulation within a community context deploying a fabricated ecosystem (EcoFAB) as an analog for the soil microbiome. First, we detail the engineering of two classical phages for community editing using recombination to replace non-essential genes through Cas9-based selection. We show efficient engineering of T7, then demonstrate expression of antibiotic resistance and fluorescent genes from an engineered lambda prophage within an Escherichia coli host. Expanding on this, we modify lambda to express an APOBEC-1-based cytosine base editor (CBE), which we leverage to perform C to T point mutations guided by a Cas9 modified to contain only a single active nucleolytic domain (nCas9). We strategically introduced these base substitutions to create premature stop codons in-frame, inactivating both chromosomal (lacZ) and plasmid-encoded genes (mCherry and ampicillin resistance) without perturbation of the surrounding genomic regions. Further, using a multi-genera synthetic soil community, we employed phage-assisted base editing to induce host-specific phenotypic alterations in a community context both in vitro and within the EcoFAB, observing editing efficiencies from 10% to 28% across the bacterial population. The concurrent use of a synthetic microbial community, soil matrix, and EcoFAB device provides a controlled and reproducible model to more closely approximate in situ editing of the soil microbiome.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2206744119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

CRISPR-based engineering of phages for in situ bacterial base editing

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Nov-2022

COI STATEMENT

R.B. is a co-founder of Intellia Therapeutics, Locus Biosciences, TreeCo, CRISPR Biotechnologies and Ancilia Biosciences, and a shareholder of Caribou Biosciences, Inari Ag, Felix Biotechnologies, and Provaxus. C.H.-C. is a co-founder of Microviable Therapeutics and shareholder of CRISPR Biotechnologies.

Geobiologists shine new light on Earth’s first known mass extinction event 550 million years ago

Work shows a major loss of diversity during the Ediacaran Period, which lasted from 635 million to 540 million years ago

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VIRGINIA TECH

 

IMAGE: IMPRESSIONS OF THE EDIACARAN FOSSILS DICKINSONIA (AT CENTER) WITH THE SMALLER ANCHOR SHAPED PARVANCORINA (LEFT) IN SANDSTONE OF THE EDIACARA MEMBER FROM THE NILPENA EDIACARA NATIONAL PARK IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTT EVANS.

A new study by Virginia Tech geobiologists traces the cause of the first known mass extinction of animals to decreased global oxygen availability, leading to the loss of a majority of animals present near the end of the Ediacaran Period some 550 million years ago.

The research spearheaded by Scott Evans, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geosciences, part of the Virginia Tech College of Science, shows this earliest mass extinction of about 80 percent of animals across this interval. “This included the loss of many different types of animals, however those whose body plans and behaviors indicate that they relied on significant amounts of oxygen seem to have been hit particularly hard,” Evans said. “This suggests that the extinction event was environmentally controlled, as are all other mass extinctions in the geologic record.”

Evans’ work was published Nov. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was co-authored by Shuhai Xiao, also a professor in the Department of Geosciences, and several researchers led by Mary Droser from the University of California Riverside’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, where Evans earned his master’s degree and Ph.D.

“Environmental changes, such as global warming and deoxygenation events, can lead to massive extinction of animals and profound disruption and reorganization of the ecosystem,” said Xiao, who is an affiliated member of the Global Change Center, part of the Virginia Tech Fralin Life Sciences Institute. “This has been demonstrated repeatedly in the study of Earth history, including this work on the first extinction documented in the fossil record. This study thus informs us about the long-term impact of current environmental changes on the biosphere.”

What exactly caused the drop in global oxygen? That’s still up for debate. “The short answer to how this happened is we don't really know,” Evans said. “It could be any number and combination of volcanic eruptions, tectonic plate motion, an asteroid impact, etc., but what we see is that the animals that go extinct seem to be responding to decreased global oxygen availability.”

The study by Evans and Xiao is timelier than one would think. In an unconnected study, Virginia Tech scientists recently found that anoxia, the loss of oxygen availability, is affecting the world’s fresh waters. The cause? The warming of waters brought on by climate change and excess pollutant runoff from land use. Warming waters diminish fresh water’s capacity to hold oxygen, while the breakdown of nutrients in runoff by freshwater microbes gobbles up oxygen.

“Our study shows that, as with all other mass extinctions in Earth's past, this new, first mass extinction of animals was caused by major climate change — another in a long list of cautionary tales demonstrating the dangers of our current climate crisis for animal life,” said Evans, who is an Agouron Institute Geobiology fellow.

Some perspective: The Ediacaran Period spanned roughly 96 million years, bookended on either side by the end of Cryogenian Period — 635 million years ago — and the beginning of the Cambrian Period — 539 million years ago. The extinction event comes just before a significant break in the geologic record, from the Proterozoic Eon to the Phanerozoic Eon.

There are five known mass extinctions that stand out in the history of animals, the “Big Five,” according to Xiao, including the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction (440 million years ago), the late Devonian Extinction (370 million years ago), the Permian-Triassic Extinction (250 million years ago), the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction (200 million years ago), and the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction (65 million years ago).

“Mass extinctions are well recognized as significant steps in the evolutionary trajectory of life on this planet,” Evans and team wrote in the study. Whatever the instigating cause of the mass extinction, the result was multiple major shifts in environmental conditions. “Particularly, we find support for decreased global oxygen availability as the mechanism responsible for this extinction. This suggests that abiotic controls have had significant impacts on diversity patterns throughout the more than 570 million-year history of animals on this planet,” the authors wrote.

Fossil imprints in rock tell researchers how the creatures that perished in this extinction event would have looked. And they looked, in Evans’ words, “weird.”

“These organisms occur so early in the evolutionary history of animals that in many cases they appear to be experimenting with different ways to build large, sometimes mobile, multicellular bodies,” Evans said. “There are lots of ways to recreate how they look, but the take-home is that before this extinction the fossils we find don't often fit nicely into the ways we classify animals today. Essentially, this extinction may have helped pave the way for the evolution of animals as we know them.”

The study, like scores of other recent publications, came out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because Evans, Xiao, and their team couldn't get access to the field, they decided to put together a global database based mostly on published records to test ideas about changing diversity. “Others had suggested that there might be an extinction at this time, but there was a lot of speculation. So we decided to put together everything we could to try and test those ideas.” Evans said. Much of the data used in the study was collected by Droser and several graduate students from the University of California Riverside.

Dickinsonia+Andiva 

Impressions of the Ediacaran fossils Dickinsonia (at left) and related but rare form Andiva (at right) in sandstone of the Ediacara Member from the Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia.

CREDIT  Photo courtesy of Scott Evans.

Media assets here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VHWbN0UMe53Ki8AIomogoeOmvSOScuOO?usp=sharing

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of NAS RA Earth Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2207475119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Environmental drivers of the first major animal extinction across the Ediacaran White Sea-Nama transition

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Nov-2022

How dangerous is digital media for democracy?

New systematic review in Nature Human Behaviour summarizes studies conducted worldwide

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Some believe that digital media are a threat to democracy; others argue that they represent an opportunity for increased political participation. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the Hertie School, and the University of Bristol have conducted a systematic review of studies investigating whether and how digital media impacts citizens’ political behavior. The empirical studies show that some effects may be beneficial for democracy. For example, digital media can increase political knowledge and diversity of news exposure. However, they can also have detrimental effects, such as fostering polarization and populism.

What’s more, the way effects such as increased political mobilization and decreasing trust in institutions play out depends largely on the political context. Such developments are beneficial in emerging democracies but can have destabilizing effects in established democracies. “The advantage of our systematic review—against the background of a divisive and often partisan debate—is that it allows objective conclusions to be drawn,” says author Philipp Lorenz-Spreen of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. At the institute’s Center for Adaptive Rationality, he studies how new technologies can help to promote participatory democracy online. While the impact of digital media on democracy cannot be judged as simply ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ the results clearly show that digital media can have several negative effects on political behavior, he continues.

In their review, the researchers synthesize causal and correlational evidence from nearly 500 articles on the relationship between digital media and democracy worldwide. They structure their analysis along the 10 most researched political outcome variables: political participation, knowledge, trust, news exposure, political expression, hate, polarization, populism, network structure, and misinformation. “When studying complex political and social phenomena, it is important to determine whether there is in fact a causal relationship,” explains author Lisa Oswald from the Hertie School in Berlin. With this in mind, the researchers focused on the subset of articles reporting causal evidence of a relationship between digital media and democracy. These include large-scale field experiments conducted on social media platforms and articles in which causal conclusions could be drawn due to factors such as data having been collected at different points in time.

The research findings can also help to clarify important issues in the young research field, such as whether the much-discussed phenomenon of echo chambers—in which people tend to encounter only like-minded people online—really exists. The results depend heavily on the digital media in question. There was no evidence of echo chambers in studies looking at news exposure, for example, but they do seem to emerge within social media networks.

“Our analysis covered studies conducted all over the world, allowing us to shine a light on how the effects of digital media differ across political systems,” says co-author Ralph Hertwig, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The positive effects of digital media on political participation and information consumption were most pronounced in emerging democracies in South America, Africa, and Asia. Negative effects—in terms of increasing populism and polarization and decreasing political trust—were more evident in established democracies in Europe and the United States, for example. “In short, the findings show that social media have a significant impact around the world, but that the effects are complex. Further research including synthesis and analysis of existing studies is thus required”, says co-author Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol. Already, though, research findings would reveal some clear trends and indicate that governments and civil societies need to take steps to better understand and actively shape the interplay of digital media and democracy.

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JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-022-01460-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Nov-2022

New research suggests political events impact sleep

Study finds association between elections and sleep, alcohol consumption and overall public mood

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER

BOSTON – Major political and societal events can have dramatic impacts on psychological health and impact sleep and emotional well-being. While conventional wisdom suggests these highly anticipated events, such as elections, can cause stress and disrupt well-being, little research has been published exploring this relationship.

Now, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and colleagues show how major sociopolitical events can have global impacts on sleep that are associated with significant fluctuations in the public’s collective mood, well-being, and alcohol consumption. The findings, published in the National Sleep Foundation’s journal Sleep Health show that divisive political events negatively influenced a wide variety of factors related to public mood.

“It is unlikely that these findings will come as shock to many given the political turbulence of the last several years,” said corresponding author Tony Cunningham, PhD, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at BIDMC. “Our results likely mirror many of our own experiences surrounding highly stressful events, and we felt this was an opportunity to scientifically validate these assumptions.”

As part of a larger study exploring the sleep and psychological repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team surveyed 437 participants in the United States and 106 international participants daily between October 1–13, 2020 (before the election) and October 30–November 12, 2020 (days surrounding the November 3 U.S. election). Participants reported on their duration and quality of sleep, alcohol consumption and subjective experience of overall stress. Their responses revealed reduced sleep quantity and efficiency coupled with heightened stress, negative mood and alcohol use in the period surrounding the election. While these results were observed at a lower level in non-U.S. participants, worsening health habits were significantly correlated with mood and stress only among U.S. residents.

The daily surveys—delivered each morning at 8:00 am local time—asked respondents to assess the previous night’s sleep by recording their bedtimes, time required to fall asleep, number of awakenings through the night, morning wake time and time spent napping during the day. They also recorded the previous night’s alcohol consumption. Mood was assessed using a validated questionnaire as well as questions from a standard depression screening tool.

With regard to sleep, both U.S. and non-U.S. participants reported losing sleep in the run-up to the election; however, U.S. respondents had significantly less time in bed in the days around the election. On Election night itself, U.S. participants reported waking up frequently during the night and experiencing poorer sleep efficiency.

U.S. participants who ever reported drinking alcohol significantly increased consumption on three days during the assessment period: Halloween, Election Day and the day the election was called by more media outlets, Saturday, November 7. Among non-U.S. participants, there was no change in alcohol consumption over the November assessment period.

When the scientists looked at how these changes in behavior may have affected mood and well-being of U.S participants, they found significant links between sleep and drinking, stress, negative mood, and depression.

Analysis revealed that stress levels were largely consistent for both U.S. and non-U.S. participants in the assessment period in early October, but there was a sharp rise in reported stress for both groups in the days leading up to the November 3 election. Stress levels dropped dramatically once the election was officially called November 7. This pattern held for both U.S. and non-U.S. residence, but changes in stress levels were significantly greater in U.S. participants.

U.S. participants reported a similar pattern with depression that their non-U.S. counterparts did not experience; however, non-U.S. participants reported significant decreases in negative mood and depression the day after the election was called.

“This is the first study to find that there is a relationship between the previously reported changes in Election Day public mood and sleep the night of the election,” Cunningham said. “Moreover, it is not just that elections may influence sleep, but evidence suggests that sleep may influence civic engagement and participation in elections as well. Thus, if the relationship between sleep and elections is also bidirectional, it will be important for future research to determine how public mood and stress effects on sleep leading up to an election may effect or even alter its outcome.“

The authors emphasize that the interpretation of their results are limited in that the experience of the majority of participants was the buildup of election stress and subsequent response dependent on their preferred political candidate. Further research with a more representative and diverse sample is needed to confirm the impacts of political stress on public mood and sleep for the general public.

“The 2020 election took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Cunningham. “Despite the chronic stress experienced during that time, the acute stress of the election still had clear impacts on mood and sleep. As such, research exploring the impact of the pandemic should also consider other overlapping, acute stressors that may exert their own influence to avoid inappropriately attributing effects to the pandemic.”

Co-authors include senior author Elizabeth A. Kensinger of Boston College, Eric C. Fields of Brandeis University, Dan Denis of University of Notre Dame, Ryan Bottary of Harvard Medical School, and Robert Stickgold of BIDMC.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants T32 HL007901, T32 NS007292), Boston College and the Sleep Research Society Foundation.

The authors reported no financial or non-financial conflicts of interests to report in relation to this work.

About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks as a national leader among independent hospitals in National Institutes of Health funding. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, a health care system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,800 physicians and 36,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.

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JOURNAL

Sleep Health

DOI

10.1016/j.sleh.2022.08.009 

Willingness to use video telehealth increased during pandemic

Increase greatest among Black Americans and people with less education

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RAND CORPORATION

Americans’ use and willingness to use video telehealth has increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising most sharply among Black Americans and people with less education, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

 

Following a representative survey panel of Americans from March 2019 through March 2021, researchers found that the willingness to use video telehealth increased overall from 51% in February 2019 to 62% in March 2021.

 

Some of the largest changes occurred in subgroups that had the lowest levels of willingness to use video telehealth before the pandemic, rising from 42% to 67% among Black adults and from 30% to 56% among adults with less than a high school education.

 

The study is published in the November edition of the journal Health Affairs.

 

“Our findings suggest that more Americans are becoming comfortable with telehealth and using video technology,” said Shira H. Fischer, the study’s lead author and a physician scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “This is important because there are concerns that lack of access to or willingness to use video telehealth may exacerbate disparities in the delivery of high-quality health care.”

 

Use of telehealth has increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic as health care providers offered telephone or video visits to reduce the potential for virus spread and have generally maintained that access.

 

Before the pandemic, some groups including Black Americans, people with lower incomes and adults with lower educational attainment, were less willing to engage in video telehealth. While the reasons are uncertain, researchers say some people have a lower trust of technology and lower rates of access to high-quality internet service.

 

While audio-only telehealth visits can increase access to care, experts say this may come at the expense of quality. Evidence of the quality of audio-only visits is scant and many clinicians report that audio-only visits are not as effective.

 

Studies have shown that clinicians can miss visual cues and struggle to establish rapport with patients, and audio-only visits are shorter. Some insurance companies and other health care payors have signaled they may stop reimbursing for audio-only visits when the public health emergency ends.

 

The new RAND study followed about 1,600 adults who participate in the RAND American Life Panel and completed surveys during February 2019, May 2020, August 2020 and March 2022 about their use and attitudes toward telehealth.

 

The RAND study found that in May 2020, 12% of people had used video telehealth since

the beginning of the pandemic, which was more than three times the proportion who had reported having used it when asked in February 2019.

 

The percentage of those who reported having video telehealth visits increased to almost 20% by August 2020 and 45% by March 2021.

 

RAND researchers found that over the course of the study period, the willingness to use telehealth increased among all subgroups, with the exception of people who were uninsured and those in the non-Hispanic/other race and ethnicity category, whose willingness remained unchanged.

 

Researchers found that increased exposure to telehealth triggered by the pandemic,

as well as positive experiences with the modality, may have influenced people’s willingness to use video telehealth.

 

Further, people may have become more willing to use video telehealth because telehealth was suddenly delivered by patients’ trusted providers (in addition to telehealth-only providers) and in the context of hybrid (in-person and telehealth) care models that could leverage the advantages of both modalities.

 

“As telehealth establishes a more permanent place in the delivery of health care, it will be important to address sources of variation in patients’ willingness to use video telehealth to ensure equitable access to quality care,” Fischer said.

 

Other authors of the study are Zachary Predmore, Elizabeth Roth, Lori Uscher-Pines, Matthew Baird and Joshua Breslau.  

 

RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries. 

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JOURNAL

Health Affairs

DOI

10.1377/hlthaff.2022.00118 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Use Of And Willingness To Use Video Telehealth Through The COVID-19 Pandemic

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Nov-2022

Why some Latino communities fear the COVID-19 vaccine, and what can be done to help

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

 

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some people in medically underserved Latino communities avoided getting vaccinated due to fears of side effects, mistrust of health officials and vaccine manufacturers and discrimination from health care workers, according to a new study from Rice University.

 

These findings are reported in “Vaccination for COVID-19 among historically underserved Latino communities in the United States: Perspectives of community health workers,” which focuses on communities near the U.S.-Mexico border. The article appears in the latest edition of Frontiers in Public Health.

Lead researcher Luz Garcini, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Rice, points out  a disparity reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even though COVID-19 vaccination rates are higher among Latinos (65% have had at least one dose) than whites (54%), U.S. Latinos are 1.5 times more likely to be infected and 2.3 times more likely to be hospitalized when compared to whites.

 

“Given this information, we really wanted to get to the bottom of what is keeping individuals in these communities from taking the vaccine,” she says.  

 

Garcini and her fellow authors used online surveys and focus groups to gather information from 64 community health workers and promoters. They found that about 44% said patients believed vaccines can have harmful side effects, and approximately 28% said patients feared illness or death as a result of taking the vaccine.

 

Patients also cited the following reasons for not taking the vaccine:

 

· Discrimination or stigmatization from health care professionals administering the vaccine.

 

· Fear of exploitation or manipulation by the government or health authorities.

 

· Fear of having personal information mishandled and/or undocumented status disclosed.

 

· Limited information about vaccines or logistical hurdles to access.

 

Garcini said targeted, culturally sensitive efforts are needed to reduce the risk of infection in these communities.

 

The study was coauthored by Arlynn Ambriz, Alejandro Vázquez, Cristina Abraham, Vyas Sarabu, Ciciya Abraham, Autumn Lucas-Marinelli, Sarah Lill and Joel Tsevat. It is online at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.969370/full.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Public Health

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Vaccination for COVID-19 among historically underserved Latino communities in the United States: Perspectives of community health workers