PHILOSOPHERS STONE

Dynamical fractal discovered in clean magnetic crystal

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

 

IMAGE: EXAMPLE OF THE FRACTAL STRUCTURES IN SPIN ICE TOGETHER WITH A FAMOUS EXAMPLE OF A FRACTAL (THE MANDELBROT SET), ON TOP OF A PHOTOGRAPH OF WATER ICE. view more 

CREDIT: JONATHAN N. HALLÉN, CAVENDISH LABORATORY, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The nature and properties of materials depend strongly on dimension. Imagine how different life in a one-dimensional or two-dimensional world would be from the three dimensions we’re commonly accustomed to. With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that fractals – objects with fractional dimension – have garnered significant attention since their discovery. Despite their apparent strangeness, fractals arise in surprising places – from snowflakes and lightning strikes to natural coastlines.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, the University of Tennessee, and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata have uncovered an altogether new type of fractal appearing in a class of magnets called spin ices. The discovery was surprising because the fractals were seen in a clean three-dimensional crystal, where they conventionally would not be expected. Even more remarkably, the fractals are visible in dynamical properties of the crystal, and hidden in static ones. These features motivated the appellation of "emergent dynamical fractal".

The fractals were discovered in crystals of the material dysprosium titanate, where the electron spins behave like tiny bar magnets. These spins cooperate through ice rules that mimic the constraints that protons experience in water ice. For dysprosium titanate, this leads to very special properties.

Jonathan Hallén of the University of Cambridge is a PhD student and the lead author on the study. He explains that “at temperatures just slightly above absolute zero the crystal spins form a magnetic fluid.” This is no ordinary fluid, however.

“With tiny amounts of heat the ice rules get broken in a small number of sites and their north and south poles, making up the flipped spin, separate from each other traveling as independent magnetic monopoles.”

The motion of these magnetic monopoles led to the discovery here. As Professor Claudio Castelnovo, also from the University of Cambridge, points out: “We knew there was something really strange going on. Results from 30 years of experiments didn’t add up.”

Referring to a new study on the magnetic noise from the monopoles published earlier this year, Castelnovo continued, “After several failed attempts to explain the noise results, we finally had a eureka moment, realizing that the monopoles must be living in a fractal world and not moving freely in three dimensions, as had always been assumed.”

In fact, this latest analysis of the magnetic noise showed the monopole’s world needed to look less than three-dimensional, or rather 2.53 dimensional to be precise! Professor Roderich Moessner, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, and Castelnovo proposed that the quantum tunneling of the spins themselves could depend on what the neighboring spins were doing.

As Hallén explained, “When we fed this into our models, fractals immediately emerged. The configurations of the spins were creating a network that the monopoles had to move on. The network was branching as a fractal with exactly the right dimension.”

But why had this been missed for so long?

Hallén elaborated that, “this wasn’t the kind of static fractal we normally think of. Instead, at longer times the motion of the monopoles would actually erase and rewrite the fractal.”

This made the fractal invisible to many conventional experimental techniques.

Working closely with Professors Santiago Grigera of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and Alan Tennant of the University of Tennessee, the researchers succeeded in unravelling the meaning of the previous experimental works.

 “The fact that the fractals are dynamical meant they did not show up in standard thermal and neutron scattering measurements,” said Grigera and Tennant. “It was only because the noise was measuring the monopoles motion that it was finally spotted.”

As regards the significance of the results, which appear in Science this week, Moessner explains: “Besides explaining several puzzling experimental results that have been challenging us for a long time, the discovery of a mechanism for the emergence of a new type of fractal has led to an entirely unexpected route for unconventional motion to take place in three dimensions.”

Overall, the researchers are interested to see what other properties of these materials may be predicted or explained in light of the new understanding provided by their work, including ties to intriguing properties like topology. With spin ice being one of the most accessible instances of a topological magnet, Moessner said, “the capacity of spin ice to exhibit such striking phenomena makes us hopeful that it holds promise of further surprising discoveries in the cooperative dynamics of even simple topological many-body systems.”.

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 [PP1]Reference perhaps?

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.add1644 

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamical fractal and anomalous noise in a clean magnetic crystal

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Dec-2022

One is the loneliest number: game theory shows why sexual misconduct is underreported

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

 

IMAGE: ING-HAW CHENG IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FINANCE AT ATHE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO'S ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT. HE RESEARCHES HOW BELIEFS AND INCENTIVES AFFECT CAPITAL MARKETS AND THE ECONOMY. RECENT WORK INCLUDES STUDIES OF VOLATILITY AND COMMODITY DERIVATIVES MARKETS, THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 AND THE 2008 GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS ON MARKETS, AND NEW AND EMERGING TOPICS IN ECONOMICS AND FINANCE. view more 

CREDIT: ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

Toronto - The idea that there’s safety in numbers was a major driver behind the #MeToo movement, which encouraged people who had been targets of sexual misconduct to come forward.

While there have been many heated debates about why people who have experienced abuse don’t report, a pair of economists used their academic discipline’s tools to dispassionately explain why underreporting is at its highest when misconduct is widespread, and why awareness-raising campaigns like #MeToo can help.

“There are real economic reasons why people don’t come forward,” says Ing-Haw Cheng, an associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management who co-authored the research with Alice Hsiaw of Brandeis University.

The pair built a model of the decision to report using game theory, which applies mathematics to represent situations where the outcome for each individual’s decision is affected by everybody else’s choices.

In an environment where sexual misconduct by one or more individuals is an open secret, those who have been their targets face uncertainty over whether others will come forward. If one person chooses to report misconduct, they do not know if their information will be backed by other reports, or if it will be an outlier, weakening their credibility and making them vulnerable to reprisals. In the language of game theory, the complainant who sticks their neck out to report faces a “first mover disadvantage,” with significant potential costs.

"Uncertainty over whether others will come forward can be so strong enough that no one will report even when misconduct is widespread, creating a 'culture of silence',” says Prof. Cheng.

Reporting improves when individuals are aware that other reports have been made, when problematic behaviour is penalized, or when people who have been targeted by sexual misconduct receive damage awards, such as through a lawsuit, the model shows.

However, it also shows that movements like #MeToo can have unintended consequences, something Prof. Cheng says are unavoidable. As awareness of sexual misconduct rises, some managers choose not to act as mentors to junior employees. If those managers have a tendency towards misconduct, it reduces the number of incidents and the number of reports, leading once again to reluctance to report. If the managers who shy away from mentoring behave ethically, junior employees lose out by not having access to good mentors.

Some organizations attempt to deal with the uncertainty hurdle through a “holding tank” system where misconduct reports are received and held confidentially, but only acted on once there are multiple complaints for an individual. However, the researchers found that the approach does not always help because complainants may again be unsure whether their report will lead to action.

The findings are useful for understanding how to overcome the culture of silence that prevents people from speaking up when they see behaviour that runs counter to a group or organization’s rules, ethics or values.

“A model in economics provides a chain of logic that rests on a set of assumptions,” says Prof. Cheng. “We can use this as a basis for a sensible conversation in an emotionally charged topic.”

The paper appears in the November issue of American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

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

Visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub.

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

 

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JOURNAL

American Economic Journal Microeconomics

DOI

10.1257/mic.20200218 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Reporting Sexual Misconduct in the #MeToo Era

Marsquake!

Seismic waves from the largest marsquake ever detected revealed possible past meteoroid impact

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES

The largest earthquake ever detected on Mars has revealed layers in its crust that could indicate past collision with a massive object, such as a meteoroid. Previous data has suggested the past occurrence of a large impact, and the findings offer evidence that might support this hypothesis.

The research, led by UCLA planetary scientists and published in two papers in Geophysical Research Letters, could also indicate that alternating layers of volcanic and sedimentary rocks lie beneath the surface.

The 4.7 magnitude earthquake, or marsquake, happened in May 2022 and lasted more than four hours, releasing five times more energy than any previously recorded quake. Though moderate by Earth standards, the temblor was nonetheless powerful enough to send seismic surface waves completely around the planet’s circumference, the first time this phenomenon has been observed on Mars.

The readings were taken from InSight, which landed on Mars in 2018. InSight is the first outer space seismometer to study in-depth the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle and core.

“The seismometer aboard the InSight lander has recorded thousands of marsquakes but never one this large, and it took over three years after landing to record it,” said corresponding author Caroline Beghein, a professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences. “This quake generated different kinds of waves, including two types of waves trapped near the surface. Only one of those two has been observed on Mars before, after two impact events, never during a marsquake.”

Mapping the seismic activity, the location and frequency of impacts on Mars and the interior structure is important for future missions to the red planet as it will inform scientists and engineers where and how to build structures to ensure the safety of future human explorers.

As on Earth, studying how seismic waves travel through rocks can give scientists clues about the temperature and composition of the planet below the surface that help inform the search for underground water or magma. It also helps scientists understand the past forces that shaped the planet.

Beghein’s group combined measurements from two types of surface waves, called Love and Rayleigh waves, to infer the speed of underground shear-waves, which travel horizontally and move rocks perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation. This is the first time Love waves have been observed in conjunction with Rayleigh waves on Mars.

The measurements showed that the shear-waves move faster in the crust when rocks between 10 and 25 kilometers underground oscillate in a direction almost parallel to the planet surface than if the rocks vibrate in the vertical direction.

“This wave speed information is related to deformations inside the crust,” Beghein said. “Alternating volcanic rocks and sedimentary layers, which were deposited long ago, or a very large impact, such as a meteoroid, most likely account for the seismic wave measurements we observed.”

These data also enabled Jiaqi Li, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in Beghein’s group, to learn that shear-waves move faster in the Martian southern highland areas than in the northern lowlands. The northern hemisphere of Mars has a lower elevation and is covered with more craters than the southern hemisphere. A large impact in the lowlands has been the prevalent theory to explain the origin of this difference.

The new data point toward the presence of thick accumulations of sedimentary rocks and relatively higher porosity in the lowlands.  Larger amounts of gas, such as trapped air in these sedimentary rocks, slow the waves down.  

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JOURNAL

Geophysical Research Letters

DOI

10.1029/2022GL101508 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Crustal Anisotropy in the Martian Lowlands From Surface Waves

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2022

Some claim culture affects our basic visual perception. A UCLA study takes a fresh look

Researchers found little difference in how people of East Asian and European descent performed on a famous test

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES

Research claims made over recent years that people of East Asian and European descent perform differently on a well-known visual perception test as a result of fundamental cultural differences may be overstated, according to UCLA psychologists.

In new experiments conducted by the UCLA researchers, white, Asian American and recent Asian immigrant college students in the U.S. performed similarly on the test, known as the rod-and-frame task, which measures the influence of surrounding contextual visual information on perception.  

The findings, published in PLOS One suggest that the basics of visual perception, such as object orientation, are largely independent of cultural variation and apply broadly across human populations.

What is the rod-and-frame task and what is the debate?

The rod-and-frame task asks participants to view a single line within a square frame and to orient that line straight up and down vertically. The difficulty comes when the surrounding frame is tilted in various ways, which can influence viewers’ perception of the vertical orientation of the line.

Historically, much of this type of research had been conducted in Western countries with college students as participants, raising questions about how accurate the data is for people in other cultures and parts of the world.

In some previous, highly publicized work produced since 2000, researchers exploring that question found that East Asians and Europeans performed differently on the rod-and-frame task; East Asians, the researchers said, tended to focus on the square frame first or give equal attention to the frame and the line, while Europeans placed more emphasis on the line.

These researchers hypothesized that cultural influences could be at the root of the differences, with participants from East Asian cultures, which social scientists say emphasize the embeddedness of individuals within collective groups, perceiving more holistically and taking context into consideration. Similarly, participants from Western cultures, which social scientists say tend to elevate individuals over groups, may perceive more analytically and independently of context. The claims bucked against a fundamental assumption in visual neuroscience research that basic visual functions are the same for humans everywhere, as well as for non-human primates.

“If culture influences even the most basic visual functions, then all studies must take into consideration the cultures of the participants and the fact that findings might not apply to other cultures,” said Zili Liu, a UCLA psychology professor and the current study’s corresponding author. “Perhaps more importantly, vision research with animals will have limited utility.”

If these previous findings were true, Liu noted, it would stand to reason that people who have been immersed in another’s culture for enough time will start to perform similarly to people raised in that culture on the rod-and-frame task.

“I thought UCLA was a good place to test this because we have many Asian American students, as well as more recent Asian immigrants to the U.S., and they should serve as supportive evidence that the longer people have lived here, the less the data would look like Asian nations,” Liu said.

Reassessing the influence of culture on the rod-and-frame task

Chéla R Willey, a UCLA doctoral student at the time of the study who is now an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University, recruited a diverse group of 342 UCLA students to perform the rod-and-frame task using virtual reality goggles. All participating students answered a questionnaire about their ethnicity and country of citizenship. In this first experiment, participants used a computer mouse to rotate the center line to make it vertical.

In a second experiment, 216 of the 342 students judged whether the line was clockwise or counter-clockwise with respect to the vertical.

Among the 84 East Asian participants who completed both experiments, 40 were second-generation Americans (born in the U.S. with at least one immigrant parent) or beyond and 44 were first generation or non-citizens. Among the white dual-experiment participants, nearly all — 51 out of 57 — were second-generation Americans or beyond, while six were first generation or non-citizens.

The results of the first experiment revealed that a participant’s cultural background had little, if anything, to do with how they judged the line’s vertical orientation inside both tilted and non-tilted frames. In the second experiment, the researchers once again found no significant difference between ethnicity or generation. They did, however, observe a well-known gender difference in which frame tilt affects the perception of women more than men.

“The gender finding replicates what has been found in many other studies, indicating that our data are of reasonable quality,” Liu said. “Our failure to replicate the cultural effect therefore suggests that culture might not influence orientation perception that much.”

The work lends support to research showing that some basic mechanisms of visual perception are universal and that for these kinds of studies, it might not matter much which population the researchers use.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0276393 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Re-assessing the role of culture on the visual orientation perception of the rod and frame test

When using virtual reality as a teaching tool, context and ‘feeling real’ matter

People remember foreign vocabulary better when lessons are associated with distinct environments, UCLA study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES

A new study by UCLA psychologists reveals that when VR is used to teach language, context and realism matter.

The research is published in the journal npj Science of Learning.

“The context in which we learn things can help us remember them better,” said Jesse Rissman, the paper’s corresponding author and a UCLA associate professor of psychology. “We wanted to know if learning foreign languages in virtual reality environments could improve recall, especially when there was the potential for two sets of words to interfere with each other.”

Researchers asked 48 English-speaking participants to try to learn 80 words in two phonetically similar African languages, Swahili and Chinyanja, as they navigated virtual reality settings.

Wearing VR headsets, participants explored one of two environments — a fantasy fairyland or a science fiction landscape — where they could click to learn the Swahili or Chinyanja names for the objects they encountered. Some participants learned both languages in the same VR environment; others learned one language in each environment.

Participants navigated through the virtual worlds four times over the course of two days, saying the translations aloud each time. One week later, the researchers followed up with a pop quiz to see how well the participants remembered what they had learned.

The results were striking: Subjects who had learned each language in its own unique context mixed up fewer words and were able to recall 92% of the words they had learned. In contrast, participants who had learned both sets of words in the same VR context were more likely to confuse terms between the two languages and retained only 76% of the words.

The study is particularly timely because so many K-12 schools, colleges and universities moved to develop online learning platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Apps like Zoom provide a rather bland context for learning,” Rissman said. “As VR technology becomes more ubiquitous and affordable, remote learners could be instantly teleported into unique and richly featured contexts for each class.”

The experiment was designed by Rissman and Joey Ka-Yee Essoe, the study’s first author who was a UCLA doctoral student at the time.

Rissman said a key predictor of the subjects’ ability to retain what they had learned was how immersed in the VR world they felt. The less a participant felt like a subject in a psychology experiment — and the more “at one” they felt with their avatar — the more the virtual contexts were able to positively affect their learning.

“The more a person’s brain was able to reconstruct the unique activity pattern associated with the learning context, the better able they were to recall the foreign words they had learned there,” Rissman said.

Psychologists have long understood that people tend to recall things more readily if they can remember something about the surrounding context in which they learned it — the so-called “context crutch” phenomenon. But when information is tied to contextual cues, people can have trouble recalling it later in the absence of those cues.

For example, students might learn Spanish in the same kind of classroom where they learn other subjects. When that happens, their Spanish vocabulary can be tied to the same contextual cues that are tied to other material they’ve been taught, like the Pythagorean theorem or a Shakespeare play. Not only does that similar context make it easier to mix up or forget what they have learned, but it also can make it harder to remember any of the information outside of a classroom setting.

“A key takeaway is that if you learn the same thing in same environment, you’ll learn it really fast,” said Essoe, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at Johns Hopkins University. “But even though you learn fast, you might have trouble with recall. What we were able to harness in this research takes advantage of both learning fast and improving recall in new environment.”

To understand the brain mechanisms that support context-dependent learning, the researchers recruited a separate group of participants and scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. As the subjects attempted to recall foreign words while in the scanner, their brain activity indicated that they were thinking about the context in which they had learned each word.

That finding suggests that virtual reality can enhance learning if it is convincingly produced and if different languages or scholastic subjects are taught in highly distinctive environments.

Rissman said although the study only assessed how people learned a foreign language, the results indicate that VR could be useful for teaching other subjects as well. Similar approaches could also be used for mental and behavioral health therapies and to help patients adhere to doctors’ instructions after medical visits: Patients might be able to remember such guidance better if they’re in their own homes while chatting online with their doctors, for example.

Said Essoe: “Variable contexts can ground information in more environmental cues.”

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JOURNAL

npj Science of Learning

DOI

10.1038/s41539-022-00147-6 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Enhancing learning and retention with distinctive virtual reality environments and mental context reinstatement

Rosenstiel marine researcher identifies new bottlenose dolphin subspecies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE, ATMOSPHERIC, AND EARTH SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: NEW SUBSPECIES, CALLED THE EASTERN TROPICAL PACIFIC BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN (TURSIOPS TRUNCATUS NUUANU), IS SMALLER THAN OTHER COMMON BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS. view more 

CREDIT: NOAA

A marine researcher at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science has identified a new bottlenose dolphin subspecies found only in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.  “While there is a common belief that all dolphin species are already known, improvements in technologies and methodologies are helping to reveal a greater biodiversity in more recent years,” said Ana Costa, Ph.D., a Rosenstiel lecturer specializing in marine mammalogy.

After examining and analyzing a series of specimens, Costa and collaborators of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that the new subspecies, called the Eastern Tropical Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus nuuanu), is smaller than other common bottlenose dolphins. These dolphins likely prefer deep offshore waters between southern Baja California and the Galapagos Islands, she added.

In this study, which began in 2016, Costa and her colleagues examined total body length and skull morphology of common bottlenose dolphin specimens that were collected in the Pacific Ocean and are archived in several museum collections in the United States. They used multivariate and clustering analyses to examine the level of differentiation among the bottlenose dolphin populations.

“We found two distinct morphological clusters: the new subspecies found in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) and the common bottlenose dolphins found primarily in the eastern and western North Pacific waters,” Costa said. “The ETP bottlenose dolphins might be differentiating due to the distinct environmental conditions in these waters, such as oxygen and salinity levels and temperature conditions.”

Reflecting on the study, Costa said that a greater understanding of marine mammal populations is vital for preserving and protecting different species and subspecies at a time of global warming. “The conservation and management of marine life should be an international priority,” she added.

The  study, “Tursiops truncatus nuuanu, a new subspecies of the common bottlenose dolphin from the eastern tropical Pacific,” was published December 10, 2022 in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution. Additional authors were Eric Archer, Ph.D., and the late William Perrin, Ph.D., of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, and Patricia Rosel, Ph.D., of the Southeast Fisheries Science Center, all of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

 

About the University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private research university and academic health system with a distinct geographic capacity to connect institutions, individuals, and ideas across the hemisphere and around the world. The University’s vibrant and diverse academic community comprises 12 schools and colleges serving more than 17,000 undergraduate and graduate students in more than 180 majors and programs. Located within one of the most dynamic and multicultural cities in the world, the University is building new bridges across geographic, cultural, and intellectual borders, bringing a passion for scholarly excellence, a spirit of innovation, a respect for including and elevating diverse voices, and a commitment to tackling the challenges facing our world. Founded in the 1940’s, the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science is one of the world’s premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. www.earth.miami.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Mammalian Evolution

DOI

10.1007/s10914-022-09641-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Tursiops truncatus nuuanu, a new subspecies of the common bottlenose dolphin from the eastern tropical Pacific

Children and young people need lessons in building strong relationships to counteract negative role models and “Disneyfied” portrayals of love, experts say

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Children should get lessons in school on how to build strong relationships to counteract negative role models and any “Disneyfied” portrayals of love they are exposed to, experts have said.

Learning how to build and sustain a strong partnership should be an integral part of work in schools to promote good health and wellbeing, according to a new study.

Relationship distress is associated with public health problems such as alcohol misuse, obesity, poor mental health, and child poverty.

Children should learn how relationships require work, how to manage expectations and that ‘good’ relationships do not just happen.

Young people who took part in a new study said relationship education would help them to develop better skills to manage communication and conflict. They said they would welcome lessons on how to manage different stages in relationships, how to sustain happy relationships, and how to end relationships that could not be sustained, and cope with the aftermath.

The interdisciplinary research, by Simon Benham-Clarke, Jan Ewing, Anne Barlow and Tamsin Newlove-Delgado from the University of Exeter, was carried out as part of the Beacon project, funded by the university’s Wellcome Centre for the Cultures and Environments of Health.

Experts conducted focus groups with 24 young people from the South West aged between 14 and 18 and ten relationship professionals. All recognised the importance of schools supporting young people to build healthy relationships.

Simon Benham-Clarke said: “Our research shows schools need improved support to run relationships education, including specialist expertise and resources, and guidance on signposting pupils to external sources of help. Positive relationship behaviours should be modelled, integrated and built on throughout curriculums nationally and reflected in a school’s ethos.”

“Those we surveyed highlighted the importance of teaching skills such as relating, communication, empathy, respect, conflict resolution and repair and ending relationships kindly and safely.”

Dr Newlove-Delgado said: “Young people saw schools as offering an unbiased and alternative perspective on relationships, particularly for those who might have more challenging backgrounds, however a desire was expressed for a greater focus in schools on how relationships ‘work’ rather than on sex education.”

“Participants also felt that talking about family and peer relationships should come first, building up to later discussions about romantic relationships in later years at school, with some highlighting links between patterns of relationship behaviour.”

“Some young people were concerned about whether education about romantic relationships could put people of their age under pressure if it were too early.”

Professor Barlow said: “Those we surveyed felt schools could improve relationship outcomes for pupils in other ways beyond the relationship education lesson, such as having someone to talk to, in person and in private. Others wanted signposting and information about sources of help outside the school setting.”

Dr Ewing said “While young people’s families were seen as the primary source of learning about healthy relationships, there was clear support for schools’ role to augment this, as not all families exhibit healthy relationships. Relationship professionals thought that there were key transition moments in life, getting married or having a baby, where people are receptive to learning relationship skills, but that schools had a critical role in teaching and embedding critical skills around initiating and maintaining a healthy relationship.”

There was strong support for relationships education to start early, preferably in primary schools, exploring what a healthy friendship and relating well to others looks like before moving onto romantic relationships, which would give young people vital life skills. Starting early, in primary schools and with counselling support where needed, was thought to be particularly important for young people whose parents were locked in conflict.

JOURNAL

BMC Public Health

DOI

10.1186/s12889-022-14802-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Learning how relationships work

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Dec-2022

Two fungi work together to kill fig trees

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NAGOYA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: CERATOCYSTIS FICICOLA view more 

CREDIT: ZI-RU JIANG AND HISASHI KAJIMURA

In many countries, the number of fig trees have been declining. While there are numerous explanations, one key problem is fig-wilting disease. A recognized cause of this disease is a fungus, Ceratocystis ficicola, which is transmitted by an ambrosia beetle, Euwallacea interjectus. Now, a group from Nagoya University in central Japan has identified another fungus, Fusarium kuroshium, which is harmless by itself, but ravages fig trees when found together with C. ficicola.  

Along with known agents, such as C. ficicola, many other fungi are believed to be important in fig-wilting disease. These include F. kuroshium, a well-known infective agent of fig and avocado trees. As these fungi are frequently found on the heads, including a special organ for storing fungi, of wild and reared E. interjectus adult females, it has long been suspected that they are responsible for the spread of disease.  

To determine whether the fungi are related to the damage of the fig trees, Dr. Zi-Ru Jiang and Associate Professor Hisashi Kajimura of the Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, in partnership with the Hiroshima Prefectural Institute of Technology, Kobe University, and the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, inoculated fig saplings with various combinations of fungi collected from E. interjectus. As a control, they also included Neocosmospora metavorans, which is found in a wide range of plant hosts, including avocado and Robusta coffee. Some saplings received only one of the three fungi, and one group received a combination of F. kuroshium and C. ficicola.  

As expected, the saplings infected with C. ficicola wilted, whereas the other two groups infected with only N. metavorans or only F. kuroshium did not, suggestingthat these two fungi are not harmful to fig trees. However, in the combination group, the saplings wilted less than two weeks after infection and had a larger area of dead wood. It seems that F. kuroshium and C. ficicola worked together in a symbiotic way that accelerated wilting in the saplings. The findings were reported in Microorganisms.  

“A combination of the ambrosia beetle and its fungi may lead to symptoms of fig-wilting disease in the case of mass beetle attacks and decreased resistance in host trees. Therefore, understanding the relationship between C. ficicola and its symbionts may be useful in developing suitable disease control strategies,” explains Kajimura. “This study suggests that symbiotic fungi do not kill fig trees by themselves, but that synergistic effects are driven by their coexistence with companion fungi, and that they have a more detrimental effect on fig trees than the companion fungi alone. This fact leads to additional targets for control and provides important clues to improve integrated pest management methods in the future.” 

Cross cut stem surfaces of different fungal infections, note especially the discoloration caused by Ceratocystis ficicola as well as Fusarium kuroshium + C. ficicola (righthand red box).

CREDIT

Zi-Ru Jiang and Hisashi Kajimura

JOURNAL

Microorganisms

DOI

10.3390/microorganisms10101912 

ARTICLE TITLE

The role of mycangial fungi associated with ambrosia beetles (Euwallacea interjectus) in fig wilt disease: Dual inoculation of Fusarium kuroshium and ceratocystis ficicola can bring fig saplings to early symptom development

Warwick University to host UK’s most powerful Nuclear Magnetic Resonance instrument

A consortium led by the University of Warwick has been awarded £17M to procure the UK’s most powerful Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instrument at 1.2 GHz. There are only seven such machines currently operating around the world. 

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

A consortium led by the University of Warwick has been awarded £17M to procure the UK’s most powerful Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instrument at 1.2 GHz. There are only seven such machines currently operating around the world.  The funds have been awarded to a consortium of six UK Universities through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund.  Other Universities in the consortium are Lancaster, Liverpool, Nottingham, Southampton and St Andrews. 

 

In the UK and at Warwick University, researchers are using NMR technology to improve green infrastructure by expanding their knowledge of how to make more efficient plant biofuels, to improve batteries and solar cells. The instrument will also be used in research on anti-microbial resistance and drug design and delivery.  Scientists from around the country will be able to use the facility and students at Warwick and other universities will gain invaluable experience on the state of the art NMR instrument enabling them to compete at the cutting edge of scientific research.

 

Professor Steven Brown, from the University of Warwick's Solid State NMR Group, commented: “It is exciting that Warwick has been selected as the site for this world-class NMR instrumentation. I look forward to working with the consortium partners and the UK community to deliver this world-class resource for UK science.” 

 

Professor Caroline Meyer, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) at the University of Warwick, said: “This instrument will provide the greatest resolution and sensitivity yet – allowing us to make scientific breakthroughs that will benefit us all as they improve our technology in a range of areas.”  

 

Jane Nicholson, Research Base Director at EPSRC, part of UK Research and Innovation said: “This national facility, one of only seven 1.2 GHz magnets in the world, will advance the study of all types of molecules.   

 

“The applications will be many and varied with the potential for new insights into areas such as materials for energy applications, catalysis, pharmaceutical research, synthetic biology and antimicrobial resistance.”  

 

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance instruments are used to analyse complex materials to work out their structure. This is done using magnets that are about one million times more powerful than the earth’s magnetic field. They work on the magnetic field of each atom in the material being investigated and provide detailed information on the atomic-level structure of that material.  

The 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometer will be housed in a new building and will create two new jobs for scientists. It builds upon current capability at 1.0 GHz at the Warwick-hosted UK High-Field Solid-State NMR National Research Facility. 

 

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