Pregnant trauma patients with certain injury patterns should be screened for intimate partner violence during their hospital stay

Head injuries, multiple contusions, and other injury patterns can indicate that pregnant women are at risk of intimate partner violence, and should be screened by trauma care professionals, according to a new study

AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS

 

VIDEO: A NEW STUDY PUBLISHED IN JACS PROVIDES KEY RECOMMENDATIONS ON WHICH PREGNANT TRAUMA PATIENTS SHOULD BE SCREENED FOR INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE (IPV). view more 

CREDIT: AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS

Key takeaways

• Pregnant women are especially vulnerable to intimate partner violence (IPV) and those with certain injury patterns should be screened for IPV early in their hospital stay.
• Pregnant trauma patients with injuries to the head, face, and neck, multiple injuries, and other abrasions are at risk of IPV and should be screened by a medical professional.
• More research is needed to assess the follow-up care of IPV trauma patients and to ensure they receive proper resources and counseling.

CHICAGO: Pregnant trauma patients with certain injury patterns—including multiple injuries, injuries to the head, face, neck, and scalp, and multiple contusions—should be screened for intimate partner violence (IPV), according to study results published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).

The study, “Intimate Partner Violence in Pregnancy: A Nationwide Analysis of Injury Patterns and Risk Factors,” defines specific risk factors for IPV in pregnant patients—and provides key recommendations on which subset of pregnant patients should be screened for IPV.

Lead author Paul Thomas Albini, MD, FACS, an acute care surgeon at Riverside University Health System, Moreno Valley, California, notes that this study was born out of a concern from the staff at his hospital who noticed an uptick in pregnant trauma patients affected by IPV in recent years.

“To the best of my knowledge, there has not been an analysis to show specific risk factors for intimate partner violence in a defined population,” said Dr. Albini, who is also an assistant professor of surgery at Loma Linda University and the University of California, Riverside. “We wanted to study intimate partner violence in pregnant patients as we know that they are particularly vulnerable, and their outcomes are generally poor.”

IPV—which includes forms of physical, emotional, sexual, or psychological abuse—is a significant global health problem, affecting about 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men in their lifetime.1 Pregnant patients are especially vulnerable. About 3% to 9% of women experience abuse during pregnancy, and trauma is the leading cause of non-obstetric maternal death, affecting approximately 8% of pregnancies.2,3 Public health experts and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) IPV Task Force have raised the alarm that IPV may be severely underreported, and may have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic when lockdowns prevented many from seeking help.

Current methods and tools for IPV screening vary per hospital system. Guidelines for trauma center recognition of IPV from the ACS Trauma Quality Programs (TQP) recommend universal IPV screening for trauma patients of all ages seeking health care, noting that IPV is linked to increased self-reported mental illness, substance abuse, and recurrent injuries. In pregnant patients who experience IPV, fetal outcomes can also be impacted, leading to premature birth and low birth weight. Surgeons can play an important role in recognizing IPV in patients by incorporating screening tolls into healthcare assessment protocols.

Study details

Using the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) database—part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)—the researchers identified pregnant adult women patients (18-44 years old) who visited emergency room (ER) departments with traumatic injuries between 2010-2014. Based on injury code, the authors first compared pregnant IPV patients with pregnant trauma (non-IPV) patients and completed a secondary analysis comparing pregnant IPV patients with non-pregnant IPV patients. In both comparisons, the researchers noted demographics, injury mechanisms, and National Trauma Data Standard injury diagnoses of the patients. They then used statistical analyses to identify risk factors and the outcomes of pregnant IPV patients. In total, they analyzed data from 556 pregnant IPV patients, 73,970 non-IPV pregnant trauma patients, and 56,543 non-pregnant IPV patients.

Key findings

• Risk factors in pregnant trauma patients that may point toward IPV include multiple injuries, head injuries, face, neck, and scalp injuries, as well as contusions and abrasions.
• Pregnant IPV patients were more likely to experience abdominal injuries, firearm violence, and abrasions/friction burns compared with non-pregnant IPV patients.
• Due to the vulnerability of both the mother and fetus, pregnant IPV patients may benefit from increased monitoring during their hospital stay.
• Most pregnant and non-pregnant IPV patients were treated and released from the ER, with no significant difference in mortality and hospital admissions between the two groups.
• Pregnant women with multiple injuries and those who had experienced firearm violence were more likely to be admitted to the hospital.
• Pregnant IPV patients were younger, and more often had Medicaid insurance or self-pay coverage than private/HMO insurance, though income distribution was not significantly different between the groups.
• The authors concluded that trauma systems should consider improving screening methods and offer counseling and prevention measures in the ER, where most patient care will occur before discharge.

Helping stop the cycle of violence

The study was retrospective and included a relatively small sample size of pregnant women with reported IPV, so it may not capture granular data on suspected IPV cases and other larger demographic data on IPV patterns, Dr. Albini noted. But the study points to several important risk factors to recognize patterns of IPV injury more closely.

“I think we have identified certain risk factors that should prompt screening for intimate partner violence. Using these risk factors to guide screening can happen anywhere, not just at our institution,” he said. “I think that would be very helpful and may address an underlying problem for a proportion of patients.”

He also hopes the study illuminates more of the complexities of screening for IPV—and many of the unanswered questions that still need to be investigated. There are validated tools for IPV screening, but many hospital staff may lack guidance on who to screen, and how to provide appropriate counseling or follow-up care.

“This study was eye-opening in so many ways on the more research that needs to be done,” Dr. Albini said. “We need to prevent the cycle of violence from happening again.”

Study coauthors are Bishoy Zakhary, MPH, Sara B. Edwards, MD, MS, FACS, Raul Coimbra, MD, PhD, FACS, and Megan L. Brenner, MD, MS, FACS.

Dr. Brenner is a member of the Prytime Medical Inc. Clinical Advisory Board. Dr. Coimbra is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. The authors report no other disclosures.

Citation: Albini PT, Zakhary B, Edwards SB, et al. Intimate Partner Violence in Pregnancy, A Nationwide Analysis of Injury Patterns and Risk Factors. Journal of the American College of Surgeons. DOI:10.1097/XCS.0000000000000421

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1. Evans ML, Lindauer M, and Farrell ME. A pandemic within a pandemic—Intimate partner violence during Covid-19. N Engl J Med 2020: 383(24), 2302-2304.

2. Alhusen JL, Ray E, Sharps P, and Bullock L. Intimate partner violence during pregnancy: maternal and neonatal outcomes. J Womens Health 2015: 24(1), 100-106.

3. Brown S, Mozurkewich E. Trauma during pregnancy. Obstet Gynecol Clin North Am 2013: 40(1), 47-57.

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About the American College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for all surgical patients. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an influential advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 84,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.

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JOURNAL

Journal of the American College of Surgeons

DOI

10.1097/XCS.0000000000000421 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Intimate Partner Violence in Pregnancy: A Nationwide Analysis of Injury Patterns and Risk Factors

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2022

Despite the promotion of wood construction, wooden multi-storey buildings are still rare in Finland – Why is that?

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF VAASA

 

IMAGE: JAAKKO JUSSILA view more 

CREDIT: RIIKKA KALMI, UNIVERSITY OF VAASA

The use of wood promotes sustainable development in construction. However, its costs are considered high and there are prejudices about its quality, which makes it difficult for industrial wood construction to become more common in Finland. According to Jaakko Jussila’s new doctoral dissertation from the University of Vaasa, wood construction should be more customer-oriented instead of just focusing on technology and cost-efficiency issues.

“Dwellings should not be produced to meet contractors’, investors’ or civil servants’ requirements, but the residents’ needs. The industry should keep the customer in mind when developing product features and construction processes,” says Jussila, who will be defending his doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa on Friday, 18 November.

Wood construction would reduce the carbon footprint

Wood construction has developed and gained related interest in recent years. This has also been supported by social pressure to develop low-carbon construction.

“The use of wood is recognised as one of the key ways to reduce the carbon footprint of construction, as wood is a renewable raw material that holds carbon for decades and is easily recyclable. However, we know from research and in practice that the adoption of large-scale wood construction has been slow in Finland, despite the well-known benefits of wood construction and the measures to promote it,” says Jussila.

Jussila’s recent doctoral dissertation discusses the adoption of wood construction as part of the sustainability transformation in construction. The dissertation discusses various factors that are promoting and hindering wood construction from the perspective of Finnish municipal decision-makers and institutional factors in particular.

“Municipalities play a significant role in promoting wood construction not only as instances in public construction but also because of their monopoly on land use planning.”

Jussila has conducted an extensive literature review in his doctoral dissertation. In addition, he has interviewed municipal decision-makers about their views on sustainable construction and the identified factors that hinder and promote wood construction.

Pros: good product properties – cons: high-perceived costs

Positive product properties and product innovations, such as improved construction efficiency through prefabrication, promote industrial wood construction. On the other hand, higher costs, prejudices related to quality, lack of experience and well-established production methods are examples of factors that are hindering wood construction. In addition, the municipal decision-makers interviewed in the research identified limited supply together with unfavourable regulation as factors hindering the development of industrial wood construction.

Land use planning and land use are essential in promoting wood construction

The research results show that the majority of municipalities had adopted objectives and practices to promote sustainable construction. Most commonly, this meant the pursuit of energy efficiency and carbon neutrality, life cycle-focused thinking and the promotion of the use of renewable energy. Alongside these, wood construction was considered a part of sustainable construction. Many municipalities are confident that the existing provisions and regulations are sufficient to promote sustainable construction, which in turn highlights the importance of institutional factors, regulation in particular.

Many municipalities identified ways to promote wood construction. Land use planning and zoning, supporting local businesses, the construction of detached houses and setting environmental objectives for new residential areas were the most common. Thus, municipalities have several means at their disposal to promote sustainable construction and wood construction.

A new wooden apartment building in Vaasa, Finland.

CREDIT

Riikka Kalmi, University of Vaasa

Excessive regulation should not become a barrier

The climate crisis and sustainability transformation are causing a need for change in virtually every organisation – the construction industry is not immune to this pressure for change. Adapting to change requires taking risks and making investments, but it also creates new business opportunities and, at best, makes companies perform more efficiently.

“In recent years, expectations have been set for public construction about the use of wood, but it is important to note that not only municipalities are responsible for promoting wood construction. The competitiveness of wood products and increasing consumer demand for wood construction are key elements for the growth of commercial housing production. Excessive regulation should not become an obstacle,” says Jussila.

The producer-oriented perspective has become more important

So far, research on the construction of wooden multi-storey buildings has largely focused on the perspectives of housing producers, especially construction companies, element manufacturers and designers as well as the pros and cons of the construction of wooden blocks of flats. In contrast, limited research has been focusing on housing transactions and residential experiences. In addition, only a few studies have examined the role of institutions or municipal decision-makers in the construction of wooden multi-storey buildings, although their importance has been recognised. Jussila’s doctoral dissertation contributes to filling in these research gaps.

Dissertation

Jussila, Jaakko (2022) Transformation towards sustainability in the construction market: Adoption of wood construction in Finland. Acta Wasaensia 494. Doctoral Dissertation. Vaasan yliopisto / University of Vaasa.
Publication pdf

Public defence

The public examination of M.Sc. Jaakko Jussila’s doctoral dissertation“Transformation towards sustainability in the construction market: Adoption of wood construction in Finland” will be held onFriday 18 November at noon at the auditorium Wolff, at the University of Vaasa. Participation in the event is also possible online (Zoom, password: 926950)

Professor Pauliina Ulkuniemi (University of Oulu) will act as the opponent and Professor Hannu Makkonen as the custos.

Renters underrepresented in local, state and federal government

1 in 3 Americans rent but only around 7% of elected officials are renters

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Renters make up more than a third of the U.S. population, but new research from the University of Georgia suggests they’re grossly underrepresented in all levels of government.

The study found that roughly 93% of members of Congress, federal judges, mayors, city councilmembers, state legislators and governors are homeowners. And according to the researchers, that’s likely an undercount.

The researchers matched 10,800 public officials across the above categories to property and other administrative records to estimate the rate at which renters run and are elected to public office.

When they focused specifically on 1,800 city councilmembers and mayors across the 190 largest cities in the U.S., the researchers found that more than 90% of the local officeholders likely own a home. Mayors and city councilors were 38% more likely to be homeowners than the average residents in their cities.

“For me, the most surprising finding is that even in places like New York City, Boston or San Francisco—where the population is overwhelmingly renters—city councils are still dominated by homeowners,” said Joseph Ornstein, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor in the School of Public and International Affairs.

That lack of representation across local, state and federal political offices puts renters at a decided disadvantage when it comes to policymaking.

“The people who show up are the people who make policy,” Ornstein said. “If you don't show up, then your agenda doesn't even get put on the table.”

Zoning, tax policies favor homeowners over renters

Previous research has documented how restrictive zoning policies banning multifamily homes favor homeowners over renters, as do decades of federal government policies like the mortgage interest deduction.

Ornstein and his colleagues have previously documented that people who own their homes are more likely to participate in politics. They vote at higher rates, particularly in local races that influence future zoning and land use policies, and they’re more likely than renters to show up to local city council and planning meetings.

Homeowners are also more likely to run for office themselves.

Understandably, once in office, those homeowners tend to push policies that maintain or elevate home values.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented increase in home prices over the past decade, and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing for you depends on whether you own your own home,” Ornstein said. “If you’ve owned a home for the past 10 years, that’s great! You’re now two times wealthier than you were a decade ago.”

Renters, on the other hand, are paying roughly twice (if not more) than they were before the home value boom.

“If most of the people in elected office are homeowners, then government is less likely to consider the rise in home prices an urgent crisis in need of addressing,” Ornstein said. “I think there are lots of people who rent their homes and are affected by policies made by their local city council but don’t consider running for office. But they’re residents of the community, and they deserve to have their voices heard.”

Renter representation can make a big difference in policy. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example, a recent surge in city council members who rent resulted in a variety of renter-friendly legislation, including new tenant protection ordinances and a broad upzoning of residential areas throughout the city, allowing duplexes and triplexes in neighborhoods that previously banned anything but single-family homes.

“That was over the strong objections of a lot of homeowners in Minneapolis, but it was something that, because the city council had experience with renting and had experienced the crushing cost burden of renting in an expensive city, they made a priority,” Ornstein said. “And they were able to get the legislation passed as a result.”

Published in Housing Policy Debate, the study was co-authored by Katherine Levine and Maxwell Palmer.

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JOURNAL

Housing Policy Debate

DOI

10.1080/10511482.2022.2109710 

ARTICLE TITLE

Who Represents the Renters?

Deprivation in childhood linked to impulsive behaviour in adulthood – research

Researchers found a link between childhood deprivation, impulsive behaviour and addictions later in life

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ASTON UNIVERSITY

Children who have experienced deprivation are more likely to make more impulsive choices than those who don’t and can lead to addictions in later life - research has shown.

‘Trait impulsivity’, the preference for immediate gratification, has been linked to spending more on food, especially unhealthy, highly calorific food. Studies have shown that children who experience poverty and food insecurity tend to have a higher body-mass index as adults than those who do not.

Researchers from the School of Psychology at Aston University found a link between deprivation in childhood and impulsive behaviour – leading to addictions later in life. The findings, which are a culmination of six years of research, also found a further link between impulsivity, obesity and the cost of living crisis.

Professor Richard Tunney, head of the School of Psychology at Aston University, published a study in Scientific Reports earlier this year where he showed that children who experience deprivation make more impulsive choices than children who don’t.

The research team studied 146 children, with an average age of eight, living in some of the most deprived areas of England and compared them with children living in some of the most affluent neighbourhoods.

Children were given a choice between taking home a small amount of money (for example, £1) or getting £10 a week, or even more a year later. How long a person is willing to wait for the larger amount of money can be used to calculate a ‘discount rate’ that shows how much the waiting time reduces the value of the money.

An impulsive person might prefer £1 now because the value of £10 in six months is ‘discounted’ to less than £1 right now. This means that, for them, the £10, is discounted by £9 over the six-month wait.

A less impulsive person might be willing to wait six months for £10, but not wait for a whole year for £15. This means that, for them, the value of the £15 is discounted by £5 over the additional six-month wait. This discount rate is a measure of how impulsive someone is.

Commenting on the findings, Professor Tunney said: “The results showed that children living in the most deprived areas had significantly higher discount rates than children living in the least deprived areas, regardless of age or intelligence, indicating that deprivation was the causal factor in the children’s choice.

“This preference for immediate outcomes is a stable personality trait that remains constant throughout a person’s life.”

However, in the research team’s most recent study published by the Royal Society, they investigated impulsivity in over 1,000 older adults aged between 50 and 90.

The study found that older adults living in the most deprived areas showed the same preference for smaller-sooner financial outcomes as the children in the first study.

It also found that a person’s job predicted the choices they made. Adults working in technical or routine occupations, such as mechanics or cleaners, chose to receive smaller amounts of money than wait for larger amounts compared with people in professional occupations, such as engineers or scientists.

Professor Tunney added: “These findings are concerning because impulsivity doesn’t just predict obesity. These findings tell us a lot about why people living in poorer areas tend to be unhealthier than people living in wealthy areas.

“People who experience deprivation as children are more likely to choose to do things that, although they might be pleasurable in the short term, are unhealthy in the long run. This includes overeating, taking drugs, smoking cigarettes and gambling.

“We know too, that impulsivity can help to explain why some people go on to become addicts, while other people can avoid some of the more harmful effects of drugs and alcohol.

“Deprivation is one of many factors that can lead to impulsive behaviour throughout a person’s lifetime. Genetics also plays a role in impulsivity. Policymakers can’t do anything about a person’s genes but they can influence the nation’s long-term mental and physical health by minimising child poverty. Failing to do so will have long-term implications for the children living through today’s cost of living crisis.”

For more information about the School of Psychology at Aston University, please visit our website.

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JOURNAL

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.220102 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Individual differences in decision-making: evidence for the scarcity hypothesis from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

NASA’s Webb draws back curtain on universe’s early galaxies

Reports and Proceedings

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: TWO OF THE FARTHEST GALAXIES SEEN TO DATE ARE CAPTURED IN THESE WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE PICTURES OF THE OUTER REGIONS OF THE GIANT GALAXY CLUSTER ABELL 2744. THE GALAXIES ARE NOT INSIDE THE CLUSTER, BUT MANY BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS FARTHER BEHIND IT. THE GALAXY LABELED (1) EXISTED ONLY 450 MILLION YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG. THE GALAXY LABELED (2) EXISTED 350 MILLION YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG. BOTH ARE SEEN REALLY CLOSE IN TIME TO THE BIG BANG WHICH OCCURRED 13.8 BILLION YEARS AGO. THESE GALAXIES ARE TINY COMPARED TO OUR MILKY WAY, BEING JUST A FEW PERCENT OF ITS SIZE, EVEN THE UNEXPECTEDLY ELONGATED GALAXY LABELED (1). DOWNLOAD THE FULL-RESOLUTION IMAGE FROM THE SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE. view more 

CREDIT: CREDITS: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, TOMMASO TREU (UCLA); IMAGE PROCESSING: ZOLT G. LEVAY (STSCI)

A few days after officially starting science operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope propelled astronomers into a realm of early galaxies, previously hidden beyond the grasp of all other telescopes until now.

 

“Everything we see is new. Webb is showing us that there's a very rich universe beyond what we imagined,” said Tommaso Treu of the University of California at Los Angeles, principal investigator on one of the Webb programs. “Once again the universe has surprised us. These early galaxies are very unusual in many ways.”

Two research papers, led by Marco Castellano of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, Italy, and Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

These initial findings are from a broader Webb research initiative involving two Early Release Science (ERS) programs: the Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS), and the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS).

With just four days of analysis, researchers found two exceptionally bright galaxies in the GLASS-JWST images. These galaxies existed approximately 450 and 350 million years after the big bang (with a redshift of approximately 10.5 and 12.5, respectively), though future spectroscopic measurements with Webb will help confirm.

“With Webb, we were amazed to find the most distant starlight that anyone had ever seen, just days after Webb released its first data," said Naidu of the more distant GLASS galaxy, referred to as GLASS-z12, which is believed to date back to 350 million years after big bang. The previous record holder is galaxy GN-z11, which existed 400 million years after the big bang (redshift 11.1), and was identified in 2016 by Hubble and Keck Observatory in deep-sky programs.

“Based on all the predictions, we thought we had to search a much bigger volume of space to find such galaxies,” said Castellano.

“These observations just make your head explode. This is a whole new chapter in astronomy. It's like an archaeological dig, and suddenly you find a lost city or something you didn’t know about. It’s just staggering,” added Paola Santini, fourth author of the Castellano et al. GLASS-JWST paper.

“While the distances of these early sources still need to be confirmed with spectroscopy, their extreme brightnesses are a real puzzle, challenging our understanding of galaxy formation,” noted Pascal Oesch at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, second author of the Naidu et al. paper.

The Webb observations nudge astronomers toward a consensus that an unusual number of galaxies in the early universe were much brighter than expected. This will make it easier for Webb to find even more early galaxies in subsequent deep sky surveys, say researchers.

“We’ve nailed something that is incredibly fascinating. These galaxies would have had to have started coming together maybe just 100 million years after the big bang. Nobody expected that the dark ages would have ended so early,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz, a member of the Naidu/Oesch team. “The primal universe would have been just one hundredth its current age. It’s a sliver of time in the 13.8 billion-year-old evolving cosmos.”

Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado, a member of the Naidu/Oesch team, noted that "our team was struck by being able to measure the shapes of these first galaxies; their calm, orderly disks question our understanding of how the first galaxies formed in the crowded, chaotic early universe." This remarkable discovery of compact disks at such early times was only possible because of Webb’s much sharper images, in infrared light, compared to Hubble.

 “These galaxies are very different than the Milky Way or other big galaxies we see around us today,” said Treu.

Illingworth emphasized the two bright galaxies found by these teams have a lot of light. He said one option is that they could have been very massive, with lots of low-mass stars, like later galaxies. Alternatively, they could be much less massive, consisting of far fewer extraordinarily bright stars, known as Population III stars. Long theorized, they would be the first stars ever born, blazing at blistering temperatures and made up only of primordial hydrogen and helium – before stars could later cook up heavier elements in their nuclear fusion furnaces. No such extremely hot, primordial stars are seen in the local universe.

“Indeed, the farthest source is very compact, and its colors seem to indicate that its stellar population is particularly devoid of heavy elements and could even contain some Population III stars. Only Webb spectra will tell,” said Adriano Fontana, second author of the Castellano et al. paper and a member of the GLASS-JWST team.

Present Webb distance estimates to these two galaxies are based on measuring their infrared colors. Eventually, follow-up spectroscopy measurements showing how light has been stretched in the expanding universe will provide independent verification of these cosmic yardstick measurements.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

For more information about the Webb mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/webb

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JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

LGB youth more than twice as likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual peers

Lesbian, gay and bisexual students are also twice as likely to experience suicidal thoughts, plan an attempt

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

New research from the University of Georgia suggests lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) youth experience disproportionately high rates of suicidal thoughts, planning and attempts compared to their heterosexual peers.

The study found that LGB adolescents are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide, plan a suicide attempt and endure suicidal thoughts than their heterosexual classmates.

They were also more likely to experience trauma, such as sexual violence or dating violence, the research showed. Previous research has drawn links between exposure to trauma and suicidal ideation and attempts, but the current study found a significant difference between how trauma affects heterosexual youth and its effects on LGB teens.

“The major message of this paper is that among a group of survivors of these types of violence, those who identify as a sexual minority are more likely to develop suicidal thoughts and behaviors,” said Émilie Ellis, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Public Health.

“We know that LGBTQ+ people are much more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and behaviors, but they're also a lot more likely to have experienced trauma more frequently and to develop posttraumatic stress following those trauma exposures.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most likely reasons that LGB youth experience more traumatic stress than heterosexuals is due to discrimination.

They’re more likely to experience rejection and childhood maltreatment due to their sexual orientation at home, and they’re also more likely to experience bullying and victimization at school.

The survey’s findings are concerning, and it’s likely an underrepresentation of the number of suicidal LGB youth due to underreporting and stigma surrounding suicide, Ellis said.

“There could be consequences to admitting that you have suicidal ideation,” said Ellis, who recently earned her doctorate in human development and family science with emphasis in marriage and family therapy from UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “We have to think about how many more kids are out there who didn't get this survey who have experienced trauma and suicidal ideation but answered no because they were worried someone was going to tell a parent.”

More than one in five students considered suicide

The researchers analyzed 14,690 responses to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that provides representative data from public and private high school students across the country.

The study dataset comprised responses from 2015 through 2019, focusing on students who identified their sexual orientation.

Overall, almost one out of every five students (20%) who responded to the survey reported seriously considering suicide in the last year. More than 7% of the students actually attempted to kill themselves. More than one in every 10 students experienced sexual violence. Of those who said they dated, 7% reported at least one experience of sexual violence in their dating lives and 7.4% said they’d experienced physical violence at least once in a dating relationship.

The researchers found that exposure to sexual and dating violence was associated with an increased likelihood of suicidal thoughts, planning for suicide and attempting suicide across all sexualities. However, exposure to violence was significantly more predictive of suicidal thoughts and behaviors for sexual minority youth.

Previous research has shown that LGB individuals are more likely to experience childhood sexual abuse and dating violence than their heterosexual peers and more frequently suffer from traumatic stress after violent incidents. That puts them at a greater risk of experiencing suicidal thoughts and attempting suicide, the researchers said.  

Sexual abuse had the strongest influence on suicidal thoughts and attempts among gay and lesbian youth, while sexual dating violence had the biggest impact on bisexual adolescents. This finding suggests that the approach to dealing with suicide and violence among LGB youth shouldn’t be one size fits all, the researchers said.

School policies could strengthen suicide prevention efforts

Gay-straight alliances, anti-homophobia policies and strengthening staff-student relationships have proven effective at reducing rates of suicidal ideation and attempts among sexual minority students. Building on those existing structures and educating teachers, school staff, nurses and counselors on heightened rates of dating and sexual violence among LGB youth could strengthen suicide prevention efforts.

“There are dating violence and suicide prevention programs happening, but we need more of them, and we need to include interventions that specifically address violence among LGB populations,” Ellis said. “We know these types of violence are associated with higher suicidality. Let’s go to where we’ve already got programs in place.”

Published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, the study was co-authored by Allan Tate, an assistant professor in the College of Public Health.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma

DOI

10.1007/s40653-022-00475-0 

ARTICLE TITLE

Is Trauma Exposure More Harmful for Sexual Minority Youth? Differences in Trauma-Suicide Associations in a Nationally Representative Sample of U.S. Youth and Implications for Suicide Prevention

How does radiation travel through dense plasma?

First-of-its-kind experimental evidence defies conventional theories about how plasmas emit or absorb radiation.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

Most people are familiar with solids, liquids, and gases as three states of matter. However, a fourth state of matter, called plasmas, is the most abundant form of matter in the universe, found throughout our solar system in the sun and other planetary bodies. Because dense plasma—a hot soup of atoms with free-moving electrons and ions—typically only forms under extreme pressure and temperatures, scientists are still working to comprehend the fundamentals of this state of matter. Understanding how atoms react under extreme pressure conditions—a field known as high-energy-density physics (HEDP)—gives scientists valuable insights into the fields of planetary science, astrophysics, and fusion energy.

One important question in the field of HEDP is how plasmas emit or absorb radiation. Current models depicting radiation transport in dense plasmas are heavily based on theory rather than experimental evidence.

n a new paper published in Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) used LLE’s OMEGA laser to study how radiation travels through dense plasma. The research, led by Suxing Hu, a distinguished scientist and group leader of the High-Energy-Density Physics Theory Group at the LLE and an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Philip Nilson, a senior scientist in the LLE’s Laser-Plasma Interaction group, provides first-of-its-kind experimental data about the behavior of atoms at extreme conditions. The data will be used to improve plasma models, which allow scientists to better understand the evolution of stars and may aid in the realization of controlled nuclear fusion as an alternative energy source.

“Experiments using laser-driven implosions on OMEGA have created extreme matter at pressures several billion times the atmospheric pressure at Earth’s surface for us to probe how atoms and molecules behave at such extreme conditions,” Hu says. “These conditions correspond to the conditions inside the so-called envelope of white dwarf stars as well as inertial fusion targets.”

Using x-ray spectroscopy

The researchers used x-ray spectroscopy to measure how radiation is transported through plasmas. X-ray spectroscopy involves aiming a beam of radiation in the form of x-rays at a plasma made of atoms—in this case, copper atoms—under extreme pressure and heat. The researchers used the OMEGA laser both to create the plasma and to create the x-rays aimed at the plasma.

When the plasma is bombarded with x-rays, the electrons in the atoms “jump” from one energy level to another by either emitting or absorbing photons of light. A detector measures these changes, revealing the physical processes that are occurring inside the plasma, similar to taking an x-ray diagnostic of a broken bone.

A break from conventional theory

The researchers’ experimental measurements indicate that, when radiation travels through a dense plasma, the changes in atomic energy levels do not follow conventional quantum mechanics theories often used in plasma physics models—so-called “continuum-lowering” models. The researchers instead found that the measurements they observed in their experiments can be best explained using a self-consistent approach based on density-functional theory (DFT). DFT offers a quantum mechanical description of the bonds between atoms and molecules in complex systems. The DFT method was first described in the 1960s and was the subject of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“This work reveals fundamental steps for rewriting current textbook descriptions of how radiation generation and transport occurs in dense plasmas,” Hu says. “According to our experiments, using a self-consistent DFT approach more accurately describes the transport of radiation in a dense plasma.”
Says Nilson, “Our approach could provide a reliable way for simulating radiation generation and transport in dense plasmas encountered in stars and inertial fusion targets. The experimental scheme reported here, based on a laser-driven implosion, can be readily extended to a wide range of materials, opening the way for far-reaching investigations of extreme atomic physics at tremendous pressures.”

Researchers from Prism Computational Sciences and Sandia National Laboratories and additional researchers from the LLE, including physics graduate students David Bishel and Alex Chin, also contributed to this project.

 

 

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-34618-6 

ARTICLE TITLE

Probing atomic physics at ultrahigh pressure using laser-driven implosions

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Nov-2022

Disclaimer: AA

Patent for first-ever saliva-based concussion test awarded to Penn State and partners

Saliva-based concussion test expected to be available in 2023

Business Announcement

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: THE FIRST-EVER SALIVA-BASED CONCUSSION TEST, DEVELOPED BY SCIENTISTS AT PENN STATE, QUADRANT BIOSCIENCES AND THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, IS EXPECTED TO BE AVAILABLE IN 2023. view more 

CREDIT: QUADRANT BIOSCIENCES

Hershey, Pa. — A saliva-based test that rapidly and accurately diagnoses concussions is expected to be available to physicians in 2023 following a patent awarded to Quadrant Biosciences, Penn State and the State University of New York by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent covers an essential component of the team’s ClarifiTM mTBI Saliva Test, which was developed after several years of research.

According to Steve Hicks, associate professor of pediatrics, Penn State College of Medicine, who co-led the research, three million concussions occur in the United States each year and approximately two-thirds take place in children and adolescents.

Concussions — or mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) — occur as a result of physical injury to the head and may result in short-lived symptoms including headaches, dizziness and confusion. Physicians currently use symptom scales and neurocognitive tests to assess patients and diagnose concussions. Hicks said these methods are not always reliable because they can be subject to patient and physician bias. For example, athletes may underreport a symptom’s severity to return to the field.

“Current methods for diagnosing concussions rely on patients to accurately and honestly report their symptoms and participate in neurocognitive testing,” said Hicks. “The ClarifiTM mTBI Saliva Test — which measures tiny strands of molecules, called micro ribonucleic acids [microRNAs], in saliva following a head trauma — is a non-invasive way to test for concussion that can’t be influenced by a patient’s feelings or motives.”

To develop the test, the team conducted research to determine if the presence of microRNAs in saliva could accurately indicate a concussion. These microRNAs play an important role in cellular processes and exist in high amounts in the brain, Hicks explained.

Indeed, the researchers found that the accuracy of the saliva approach performed favorably when compared with currently available tests involving balance and reaction time. The results were published in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine.

According to Rich Uhlig, CEO and Founder of Quadrant Biosciences, the company is in the process of seeking licensing of this technology and expects the test to be available to physicians in 2023.

“As a pediatrician who provides medical care for children and teens with concussion, I am excited by the potential of this technology to improve the way clinicians manage this common injury,” said Hicks. “A saliva-based test for concussion could provide a novel addition to the physician toolbox.”

Frank Middleton, professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, was also involved with this research and patent.