Farha: Film about Israeli atrocities in 1948 comes under attack

Joanne Laurier

WSWS.ORG

Written and directed by Darin Sallam

Farha is Jordanian writer-director Darin Sallam’s first feature film. It is set in Palestine in 1948 during the initial period of the Palestinian-Israeli war that resulted in the Nakba, or catastrophe, in which Palestinians were driven from their homes by the hundreds of thousands. The WSWS recently reviewed an Israeli documentary, Tantura, which also treated the tragedy.

The new film, in fictional form, puts a human face on these events. It has also become the target of fierce attacks by Israeli officials and apologists for the Zionist state.

Farha

Farha premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2021. It was screened to critical acclaim at film festivals in Italy, South Korea, Sweden and France, and also presented in Rafah, Gaza City and Ramallah to Palestinian audiences. The film began streaming on Netflix on December 1.

The narrative follows Farha (Karam Taher), a headstrong 14-year-old girl who insistently requests permission from her father Abu Farha (Ashraf Barhom) to leave the village, of which he is mayor, to attend school in a nearby city.

At the film’s outset, Farha is telling her Quran teacher that women should be less concerned with marriage and more with education. At that point, the British are leaving and the Arab villages have no means of defending themselves from the encroaching Israeli military. Various Arab governments have promised guns and ammunition.

When Farha chooses to stay with her father rather than flee north with the family of her best friend and cousin Farida (Tala Gammoh), Abu Farha pushes his daughter into a hidden food cellar and locks the door for her protection, promising to return. Farha, sequestered in the dark, catches rainwater and peers out between the cracks in the stone walls as bombs explode nearby.

Soon, Farha witnesses a barbaric scene. A Palestinian family seeks shelter in Farha’s home. Shortly after the mother gives birth, Israeli soldiers murder the family, leaving the newborn to die unattended in the courtyard.

A title explains the girl’s ultimate fate.

Sun-filled, pastoral opening sequences quickly give way in Farha to abject darkness captured effectively by cinematographer Rachel Aoun. Farha struggles to orient herself, both in relation to her immediate physical conditions and to the violence outside her dank confines. Witnessing the brutal extermination of the family helps destroy her innocence, and childhood.

The representation of these episodes was painful for many of those involved. Sameera Asir, who plays the murdered mother, said that shooting such scenes affected her deeply. “Some of the crew members,” explains director Sallam, “were crying behind the monitor while shooting, remembering their families and their stories, and the stories they heard from their grandparents.”

Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), describes a mass killing that took place in the Palestinian village of Dawaymeh: “The Jewish soldiers who took part in the massacre also reported horrific scenes: babies whose skulls were cracked open, women raped or burned alive in houses, and men stabbed to death.”

The Dawaymeh outrage was one of countless incidents of ethnic cleansing in 1948 and beyond, many of which have survived in the collective memory of Palestinians.

Darin Sallam directing Farha

In an extended interview with Time, Sallam remarked: “Like every Jordanian of Palestinian descent, or any Arab, we grow up listening to stories about Palestine … All these stories that I heard from my grandparents, families of friends, patched together to create the character of Farha, a name that means joy in Arabic. I chose the name because of how they talked about their life before the Nakba—to me it was life before their joy was stolen.”

“I’m not a politician,” she went on. “I’m an artist. But what I can say is that my grandparents were forced into exile in 1948; my father was six months old then. They heard about a massacre near them, so they took their stuff and left. They were scared for their lives … My grandparents thought they would be back in a few days when things calmed down but it didn’t get any better, so they arrived in Jordan. This happened in many other villages.”

Sallam also discussed the problems of making a film in general and in the Middle East in particular, as it is far more difficult to secure funding. “And when you talk about Palestine, it becomes more and more challenging because it’s a topic that is avoided,” she added.

Farha has come under ferocious criticism from Israeli officials, especially when Netflix announced plans to stream the work. Culture Minister Hili Tropper accused the film of equating the actions of Israeli soldiers in 1948 with those of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Israel’s outgoing finance minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, condemned Netflix for streaming the film, which he claimed was created under “a false pretense [to] incite against Israeli soldiers.” He suggested the government should withdraw public funding from the Al Saraya Theater in Jaffa if it went ahead with plans to screen the movie.

The above-mentioned film Tantura and its Israeli director Alon Schwarz also faced attacks earlier this year. Schwarz’s documentary uses eyewitness testimony and recorded accounts by Israeli soldiers to document the 1948 murder of Palestinians in a coastal village.

“The reason I’m so shocked by the backlash,” commented Sallam, “is because I didn’t show anything. Compared to what happened during the massacres, this was a small event. I don’t know why some Israeli officials are very upset about this scene. It’s blurry and out of focus because I always said it’s about this girl’s journey.” She didn’t want to talk about Farha, she explained, “as a number. I want to talk about her as a child who had dreams. She lost her friend, her father, her house, her life. I don’t want to talk about war but it’s there as part of her journey. It’s about her feelings on what she’s witnessing.”

Responding to the attacks on her film, Sallam insists that denying “the Nakba is like denying who I am and that I exist. It’s very offensive to deny a tragedy that my grandparents and my father went through and witnessed … I’m getting hateful, racist messages about who I am, where I come from, and about how I dress. This is not acceptable. They can keep talking; I can’t do anything about it but it’s inhumane.”

Farha is the Jordanian entry for the 2023 Academy Awards. 

“We are overwhelmed by the amount of support the film is receiving globally and are grateful to everyone who is doing their part to stand up against this attack and ensure the film is spoken about and seen,” the filmmakers said in a statement. “The film exists, we exist, and we will not be silenced.”

From climate justice to climate liability

Nick ButlerDecember 20, 2022 

Many have dismissed last month’s COP27 climate conference as a failure, owing to the lack of progress on pledges made at the COP26 summit last year, and to the absence of clear commitments to phase out fossil fuels. More broadly, the COP process itself has been criticized as inadequate and ultimately unworkable, given its reliance on unanimity among all the parties.

But COP27 did produce one notable breakthrough: the world’s advanced economies, including the United States and the European Union, finally accepted some responsibility for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change. In the bureaucratic language of the final communiqué, they agreed “to establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in responding to loss and damage.” A special committee comprising 24 countries has been established to determine how the new fund will be financed, managed, and distributed. Their conclusions are due at the COP28 summit in the United Arab Emirates late next year.

Yet, given that the Republicans will soon have control of the House of Representatives, it is hard to believe that the US will be putting much cash on the table. There is also uncertainty about whether China will be a major contributor. Although it is now a leading source of emissions, the United Nations still considers it a “developing” country. Finally, while the EU has accepted, in principle, that the countries most responsible for climate change should help bear its costs, it is heading into a recession, which will most likely limit Europeans’ contribution.

China’s involvement is especially important. Not only does it generate almost one-third of global emissions, but the EU has made Chinese contributions a condition for its own participation. Hence, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warns that we could end up with a “fund without funders.”

But as real as that danger is, it should not diminish the importance of what governments agreed to at COP27. The developed world’s acceptance of responsibility for the impact of climate change establishes grounds for reparations, and indicates a degree of liability that will now be tested in courts around the world. “Climate justice” will evolve from a powerful slogan into a live legal issue. If climate change is the result of emissions – past and present – and if it is driving the increased incidence and severity of extreme weather, that means this year’s flooding in Pakistan and creeping desertification in North Africa can be attributed to those who caused the emissions.

But who, exactly, is liable? The developed world’s governments have accepted that they are partly accountable. But responsibility, and therefore liability, might also be attributed to the companies that have produced, sold, and profited from the sales of the products that generated the emissions. Energy companies can try to argue that until the 1980s and 1990s, there was no scientific consensus on the adverse climatic effects of burning hydrocarbons. But from the 1990s onwards, that defense cannot stand.

The age of potential liability thus began around 30 years ago, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others started creating a body of credible scientific research. And now, the age of real climate liability is upon us. For the companies involved – particularly those subject to the laws and political decisions of the advanced economies – such liability is an existential threat. It is analogous to the Master Settlement Agreement that resolved the conflict between the tobacco industry and 46 US state attorneys general over responsibility for the medical costs associated with smoking.

But whereas that settlement required the companies to pay a total of $206 billion over 25 years, climate change and its associated costs are much bigger. The risks are global, and they are still growing, because emissions continue to rise. In fact, the worst is yet to come, and the potential costs are almost beyond calculation.

There will be a ferocious legal battle, to be sure. But simply by accepting responsibility for the global costs of climate change, in principle, the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have let the genie out of the bottle. Fossil-fuel companies and their investors will not be able to claim that they weren’t warned.

True, COP27 left many participants and observers disappointed. Climate scientists, activists, and others are understandably dismayed that the urgency of climate change is being ignored, and that more immediate issues such as the cost-of-living crisis and Russia’s war in Ukraine are crowding out the attention of policymakers and the public. But the reality is that COP27 will likely be remembered as a watershed moment. Now that the developed world has finally accepted a degree of financial responsibility for the loss and damage caused by climate change, the broader climate debate will henceforth turn on the question of liability. And that, in turn, could fundamentally change the main protagonists’ incentives.

Copyright: Project Syndicate
-- Contact us at english@hkej.com


NICK BUTLER
Visiting prof

COP15 delegates ensure nature deal sticks


COP15 delegates have been able to build consensus around the most ambitious target of protecting 30 per cent of the world's land and seas by the decade's end. Photo: Getty

Gloria Dickie and Isla Binnie Dec 20

A United Nations summit has approved a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation but objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, reflecting the joint leadership of China and Canada, is the culmination of four years of work toward creating an agreement to guide global conservation efforts through 2030.

The countries attending the UN-backed COP15 biodiversity conference had been negotiating a text proposed on Sunday and talks addressing the finer points of the deal dragged on until Monday morning.

Delegates were able to build consensus around the deal’s most ambitious target of protecting 30 per cent of the world’s land and seas by the decade’s end, a goal known as 30-by-30.

The deal also directs countries to allocate $US200 billion ($298 billion) per year for biodiversity initiatives from both public and private sectors.

Developed countries will provide $US25 billion ($37 billion) in annual funding starting in 2025 and $US30 billion ($45 billion) per year by 2030.

The agreement, which contains 23 targets in total, replaces the 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets that were intended to guide conservation through 2020. None of those goals were achieved, and no single country met all 20 of the Aichi targets.

Unlike Aichi, this deal contains more quantifiable targets — such as reducing harmful subsidies given to industry by at least $US500 billion ($A746 billion) per year — that should make it easier to track and report progress.

More than one million species could vanish by the century’s end, from plants to insects, in what scientists have called a sixth mass-extinction event. As much as 40 per cent of the world’s land has been degraded, and wildlife population sizes have shrunk dramatically since 1970.

Investment firms focused on a target in the deal recommending that companies analyse and report how their operations affect and are affected by biodiversity issues.

The parties agreed to large companies and financial institutions being subject to requirements to make disclosures regarding their operations, supply chains and portfolios – but the word “mandatory” was dropped from previous drafts.

Division over how to fund conservation efforts in developing countries led to fiery negotiations at the end.

With China holding the COP15 presidency, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu appeared to disregard objections from the delegation of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday, declaring the deal passed minutes after they said they were not able to support it.

A Congolese representative argued that developed nations should create a separate fund to help support conservation efforts in developing countries.

Mr Huang declared shortly after 3.30am that the deal was agreed, drawing outrage from other African delegates.

– AAP

Direct laser writing system for high-resolution, high-efficiency nanofabrication

The two-focus parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography system fabricates subdiffraction-limit features with high efficiency

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SPIE--INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR OPTICS AND PHOTONICS

 

IMAGE: THE PARALLEL PERIPHERAL-PHOTOINHIBITION LITHOGRAPHY SYSTEM COMPRISES EIGHT MODULES THAT ARE ARRANGED TO ALLOW THE INDIVIDUAL CONTROL OF THE SPLIT EXCITATION AND INHIBITION BEAMS, THEREBY ALLOWING THE HIGH-RESOLUTION, HIGH-EFFICIENCY FABRICATION OF NANOSTRUCTURES. view more 

CREDIT: ZHU ET AL., DOI 10.1117/1.AP.4.6.066002.

Peripheral photoinhibition (PPI) direct laser writing (DLW) is a lithography technique used to fabricate intricate 3D nanostructures that are widely employed in photonics and electronics. PPI-DLW uses two beams, one to excite the substrate and cause polymerization and the other to inhibit and quench the excitation at the edges. The capacity is limited in some systems, which can be improved through multifocal arrays. However, computing these beams is both time- and memory-intensive.

Recently, a group of researchers from Zhejiang University developed a parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography (P3L) system that can achieve higher efficiency nanoscale fabrication. Their work is published in Advanced Photonics. “The P3L system uses two channels, which allows the execution of different printing tasks and permits the system to fabricate highly complex structures with different periodicities,” says Liu.

The P3L system consists of a physical arrangement of eight modules. The system begins with two printing channels, consisting of an excitation solid spot and a doughnut-shaped inhibition beam. The two beams are first stabilized and are then split into two sub-beams using a polarization filter. This allows the individual on–off control of each sub-beam through an acoustic-optical modulator. Next, the two sub-beams are recombined to regain the excitation and inhibition beams. The beams are then modulated using spatial light modulators. Finally, the two beams are combined and passed through a microscope, after which they focus on the substrate as two spots.

The individual control of each sub-beam allows the printing of nonperiodic and complex patterns simultaneously, without compromising on scanning speed, thereby doubling the efficiency of the system. Adjusting the position and separation of the two spots is easy. These features make the proposed system more flexible and functional than conventional systems with uniform focus control.

The researchers confirmed the feasibility and potential of the system by fabricating a variety of nanostructures. They first fabricated a 2D sub-40 nm nanowire. A sub-20 nm-thick suspended nanowire was fabricated as well. After that, the researchers created two rows of alphabet patterns by printing dots—each 200 nm apart. Finally, they fabricated 3D structures, including nonperiodic cubic frames, hexagonal grids, wire structures, and spherical architectures, all demonstrating exceptional resolution.

The identical on–off control of each focus increases the flexibility of the system and allows the rapid fabrication of complex, nonperiodic patterns and structures. The parallel scanning feature of the system also reduces the time cost required to fabricate large-scale, complex structures and patterns. Moreover, the new P3L system achieves a lithography efficiency that is twice that of conventional systems, regardless of whether the structure is uniform or complex.

Discussing the future potential of the work, senior author Xu Liu says, “Multifocus parallel scanning and PPI have the ability to overcome the current challenges in DLW optical fabrication and enhance the fabrication of blazed gratings, microlens arrays, microfluidic structures, and metasurfaces. The proposed system could, furthermore, facilitate the realization of portable, high-resolution, high-throughput DLW.”

Based on these results, it is clear that the proposed P3L system will serve as a useful tool for the development of a wide range of fields that use nanotechnology.

Read the Gold Open Access article by Dazhao Zhu et al., “Direct laser writing breaking diffraction barrier based on two-focus parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography,” Adv. Photon. 4(6), 066002 (2022), doi 10.1117/1.AP.4.6.066002.

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JOURNAL

Advanced Photonics

DOI

10.1117/1.AP.4.6.066002 

ARTICLE TITLE

Direct laser writing breaking diffraction barrier based on two-focus parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography

New theory on timing for human settlement of some parts of tropical Pacific

Sea-level rise data suggest some islands in Micronesia were possibly settled much earlier than supposed

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TUFTS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A MANGROVE FOREST ON THE ISLAND OF KOSRAE, FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA. THESE MANGROVE FORESTS HAVE BEEN GROWING ON THE COASTLINE OF KOSRAE FOR AT LEAST 5,000 YEARS, KEEPING PACE WITH RISING SEA LEVEL view more 

CREDIT: JULIET SEFTON

Spread across vast distances, the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean are thought to have been populated by humans in two distinct migrations beginning approximately 3,330 years ago.

The first followed a northern route out of what is today the Philippines and the second followed a southern route from Taiwan and New Guinea. People arrived on the islands between these routes—now making up the Federated States of Micronesia—about 1,000 years later.

But a new finding by a Tufts sea-level researcher and his colleagues suggests that the islands in Micronesia were possibly settled much earlier than supposed and that voyagers on the two routes may have interacted with one another. They reported their research in the journal PNAS.

Andrew Kemp, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences, was drawn to Micronesia to improve understanding of how climate change impacts global sea level change by collecting new data from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is not nearly as well documented as the north Atlantic Ocean.

With support from the National Science Foundation, the research team collected cores of mangrove sediment on the islands of Kosrae and Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia.

Although relative sea level—the height of the land relative to the height of the ocean next to it—fell during the past 5,000 years across much of the tropical Pacific, in Micronesia radiocarbon dating showed that relative sea level rose significantly, by about 4.3 meters (14 feet) because the islands are sinking.

Although the researchers can’t yet fully explain why the two islands are subsiding so much faster than others in the Pacific, they could clearly see the results and their meaning for understanding how people came to populate remote Oceania.

The team—including Juliet Sefton, then a postdoctoral researcher at Tufts and now an assistant lecturer at Monash University in Australia, and Mark McCoy, an associate professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University—was struck by the implications of relative sea level for interpreting the monumental ruins of Nan Madol, a large series of stone buildings constructed on islets separated by canals filled with ocean water just offshore from the island of Pohnpei.

The ruins, now a U.N. World Heritage site, are long presumed to have been administrative or religious buildings constructed about 1,000 years ago for the island’s elite to live apart from the main population in the island.

But Kemp and his colleagues realized that long-term relative sea-level rise meant that this presumption was incorrect. When the structures were built, they were on the island itself, not separated by water. According to McCoy, the prevailing description of Nan Madol as the “Venice of the Pacific” may not have been accurate when it was constructed.

It got the researchers thinking about when these islands were in fact first settled. Kemp notes that the seafaring people who first came to the islands would probably have lived at the coastline—that’s why researchers look for archaeological evidence there, but haven’t seen it for older inhabitation.  

“We propose that Pohnpei and Kosrae perhaps weren’t settled anomalously late, but rather they were settled around the same time as the other islands in the Pacific,” Sefton says. “People arrived and lived at the coast, but subsidence of the islands caused relative sea level rise, which submerged the oldest archeological evidence. It’s probably underwater, yet to be found—if it will ever be found.”

If that is the case, people on the northern and southern migrations may have interacted with one another around the volcanic islands of Micronesia—Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, and Yap.

There’s been no evidence of this before because researchers were building on the wrong assumptions about when the islands were first inhabited based on sea levels. McCoy points out that archaeologists “have been looking in the wrong place for years, because we assumed that relative sea level was falling.”

“Although we can’t prove that there was interaction between these two pathways, we can present an argument that says the data that exists now about migration in the Pacific is probably a lot more incomplete than it is thought to be,” says Kemp.

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2210863119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Implications of anomalous relative sea-level rise for the peopling of Remote Oceania

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Dec-2022

Texas Biomed at forefront of Sudan ebolavirus biomedical R&D

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TEXAS BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

SAN ANTONIO (December 19, 2022) – A Sudan ebolavirus vaccine and antibody therapeutic tested at Texas Biomedical Research Institute have been sent to Uganda as part of efforts to control the outbreak there.

Sudan ebolavirus is one of six known species of Ebola, with a fatality rate ranging between 41% and 100%. While an Ebola vaccine now exists, it is effective against the Zaire species, not the closely related Sudan species currently affecting Uganda. Since the Sudan virus outbreak began in September, at least 142 people have been infected and 55 people have died, including many children.

The World Health Organization and other global entities announced in November they are working with Ugandan officials to distribute Sudan ebolavirus vaccine candidates in clinical trials. One of those candidates, currently being developed by Sabin Vaccine Institute, has been undergoing preclinical testing at Texas Biomed to evaluate safety and efficacy, and an initial shipment of the vaccine is now in Uganda. The Institute has also been subcontracted by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. to support the development of its antibody therapeutic, MBP134, which has been deployed to the region to treat infected patients. Development of the vaccine and antibody candidates is currently being funded in whole or in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)*.

Texas Biomed will continue to help advance vaccines and therapies for Sudan ebolavirus. Notably, the Institute has been awarded more than $35 million in subcontracts to run detailed studies required by the FDA to determine if Sudan ebolavirus vaccines and therapies are effective.

“These new multi-year contracts underscore how Texas Biomed is a trusted and valued partner across industry, government and nonprofit sectors all focused on tackling some of the greatest health challenges we face as a global community,” says Cory Hallam, PhD, Texas Biomed’s Vice President for Business Development and Strategic Alliances.

Texas Biomed’s contract research enterprise has tripled in the last three years due in large part to its specialized expertise and facilities.

“There are only a few labs that can perform the regulated and specialized studies required by FDA to support approval of a vaccine or treatment for these types of pathogens,” explains Ricardo Carrion, Jr., PhD, who directs Texas Biomed’s Maximum Containment Contract Research unit.

Work on these deadly viruses must be carried out in a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, which is the highest, most secure level in which researchers wear full body, pressurized suits. Texas Biomed is home to the nation’s first independently operated BSL-4, which opened in 1999.

The Institute also hosts the Southwest National Primate Research Center, one of seven supported by the U.S. government. Over the past decade, Texas Biomed has worked to establish the animal models required to study these viruses and conduct the studies that provide the foundational information for a vaccine or therapy that may go to FDA for review.

“Our work to characterize and establish relevant models helps the pharmaceutical companies move their vaccines and therapies forward faster, because we’ve done the first part for them, providing the baseline information about the virus in the animal models,” says Texas Biomed Staff Scientist Kendra Alfson, PhD, who is first author of the paper describing the Sudan ebolavirus animal model.

Studying vaccines and therapies for such deadly pathogens presents challenges in humans. While a vaccine or therapy can be given to people to confirm it is safe, determining effectiveness requires exposure to the virus. Deliberately exposing people would be unethical, and outbreaks are sporadic and limited in size. Therefore, in-depth studies in nonhuman primates are the gold standard to evaluate how a full body and immune system react to a vaccine or therapy and determine the most effective dosages. The FDA can approve new drugs and vaccines using efficacy data from animals in these cases.

In rare instances, like with previous Ebola outbreaks and the ongoing Sudan ebolavirus outbreak, if vaccines have already undergone rigorous efficacy testing in animals and initial safety testing in humans, it is possible to administer experimental vaccines to people before they have received formal approval, and document how well they help control the spread.

Even as this happens, vital details must still be collected from animal models, including specifically defining what biological markers equal protection against the disease after receiving the vaccine, how soon protection kicks in post vaccination, and how long protection lasts.

“Critical information like this can only be gathered in tightly controlled laboratory settings, not from human patients,” explains Dr. Carrion. “We are proud to help contribute this knowledge so our partners can develop effective tools that will protect people from these deadly viruses, especially as outbreaks become more common.”

 

*BARDA contracts 75A50122C00061 and 75A50119C00055

###

About Texas Biomed

Texas Biomed is a nonprofit research institute dedicated to protecting the global community from infectious diseases. Through basic research, preclinical testing and innovative partnerships, we accelerate diagnostics, therapies and vaccines for the world’s deadliest pathogens. Our San Antonio campus hosts high containment laboratories and the Southwest National Primate Research Center. Our scientists collaborate with industry and researchers globally, and have helped deliver the first COVID-19 vaccine, the first Ebola treatment and first Hepatitis C therapy. For more information, go to TxBiomed.org.

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JOURNAL

Vaccines

DOI

10.3390/vaccines10101723 

ARTICLE TITLE

Development of a Well-Characterized Cynomolgus Macaque Model of Sudan Virus Disease for Support of Product Development

Four decades of NCI-funded NCTN trials: 14.2 million life-years, at $326 per year

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SWOG CANCER RESEARCH NETWORK

Clinical trials in adults conducted within the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) over the last four decades are estimated to have extended the lives of patients with cancer in the U.S. by at least 14.2 million life-years, according to a new analysis. Importantly, the study estimated that the costs of those gains have been quite modest: roughly $326 in federal investment for each life-year added.

The results are published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The analysis was led by researchers from the SWOG Cancer Research Network, one of the NCTN clinical trials groups funded by the NCI, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The research team also quantified some of the enormous clinical and scientific impact the results of NCTN trials have had. Overall, the researchers identified 162 phase III trials conducted since 1980 with positive results. Primary findings of the 162 analyzed studies were cited in the scientific literature more than 165,000 times through the end of 2020, and 87.7 percent of the trials have been referred to as evidence in subsequent cancer care recommendations made in widely used guidelines.

Joseph M. Unger, PhD, a SWOG health services researcher and biostatistician with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, is lead author on the work. 

“This work provides a clear statement about the impact of publicly funded cancer research,” Dr. Unger said. “When we discuss investments in infrastructure, it’s important to also consider scientific infrastructure. In the U.S., the NCI-sponsored network groups have been a vital element of the scientific infrastructure of clinical research for decades, and have returned incredible value to cancer patients and to the U.S. taxpayer.”  

To estimate the life-years gained from NCTN research, the team looked at trials conducted by the four adult network groups (or their predecessors): the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, NRG Oncology, and SWOG Cancer Research Network. Together with the Children’s Oncology Group, which performs research into childhood cancers, these groups are the core of a network that, in conjunction with the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP), runs clinical trials at more than 2,200 academic and community treatment sites across the U.S. and beyond, and they have conducted publicly funded research into effective new cancer treatments for more than half a century.

“First and foremost, we commend the generosity and courage of patients who participate in clinical trials,” said Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D., director of NCI.  “This work is a clear demonstration that those who do so make a tremendous contribution to society.  We also acknowledge the work of clinical providers and other caregivers who go above and beyond usual care to make clinical trials possible.  This result validates the key role of NCTN and other networks in improving the outlook for patients with cancer and progressing toward our goal to reduce the cancer death rate by half within 25 years.”

For the current analysis of the work of the adult NCTN groups, researchers identified randomized phase 3 studies with primary results published in or after 1980 that reported an improvement in a time-dependent outcome favoring the experimental treatment. The 162 trials they analyzed had enrolled at total of 108,334 patients.

For each trial showing an overall survival benefit on the experimental arm, the researchers mapped the benefit onto the U.S. cancer population using national cancer registry and life table data.

The 14.2 million life-years these trials added through 2020 represents 4.2 percent of the 336.8 million years of life lost in the U.S. due to cancer from 1980 – 2020. The researchers further project that by 2030, this same set of already completed studies will have added 24.1 million life-years for patients. 

Total federal investment to conduct these trials was calculated using public data on estimated funding for the four NCTN groups – a total of $4.63 billion in federal investment over those 40 years. To put this $4.63 billion figure (an average yearly investment of about $116 million) in context, in the year 2015 alone, the U.S. spent $183 billion on cancer care, and the total years of life lost to 2015 adult cancer deaths in the U.S. resulted in an estimated $94.4 billion loss in future earnings.

The impact of the results on clinical care was measured by determining whether a trial’s results were cited as evidence in favor of a recommended treatment in major clinical guidelines or in package inserts for new drug approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Overall, the findings from 87.7% of the trials were used to support recommended clinical care. The overall scientific impact of the trial findings was assessed by determining how often the primary report on each study’s results was cited in Google Scholar. In total, the 162 trials were cited 165,336 times through 2020, and nearly all of the trials (90.1 percent) were published in high-impact scientific journals.

The authors acknowledge that the $326 per life-year gained federal investment figure does not encompass all costs, noting that the costs of initial drug discovery and early testing are not included in the analysis, nor are the full costs of conducting these trials, including the costs borne by clinical institutions and the time and effort of research investigators.

On the other hand, the authors also discuss multiple additional benefits patients have derived from these and other NCTN clinical trials that are not accounted for in these statistics. 

“These trials have also made substantial contributions in ways that are harder to measure,” Dr. Unger added. “For instance, negative trials are critical for showing what treatments should not be used, and federally sponsored research groups also provide critical opportunities to mentor new generations of clinical researchers. And for patients, these trials routinely provide access to treatments for underserved patient populations that may not be as accessible in industry-sponsored trials.” 
 

This research was funded by the NIH/NCI through grants CA189974, CA180888, CA180819, CA180820, CA180821, and CA180868.

In addition to Unger, authors on the work include Michael LeBlanc, PhD, SWOG Statistics and Data Management Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Suzanne George, MD, Office of the Alliance Group Chair andDana-Farber Cancer Institute; Norman Wolmark, MD, NRG Oncology; Walter J. Curran, Jr., MD, Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University; Peter J. O’Dwyer, MD, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania; Mitchell D. Schnall, MD, PhD, Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania; Robert S. Mannel, MD, Stephenson Cancer Center, Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Oklahoma; Sumithra J. Mandrekar, PhD, Department of Health Sciences Research, Alliance Statistics and Data Management Center, Mayo Clinic; Robert J. Gray, PhD, ECOG-ACRIN Biostatistics Center andDana-Farber Cancer Institute; Fengmin Zhao, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and ECOG-ACRIN Biostatistics Center; Mariama Bah, SWOG Statistics and Data Management Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Riha Vaidya, PhD, SWOG Statistics and Data Management Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Charles D. Blanke, MD, SWOG Cancer Research Group Chair’s Office and Oregon Health and Science University Knight Cancer Institute
 

SWOG Cancer Research Network is part of the National Cancer Institute's National Clinical Trials Network and the NCI Community Oncology Research Program and is part of the oldest and largest publicly funded cancer research network in the nation. SWOG has more than 18,000 members in 45 states and nine foreign countries who design and conduct clinical trials to improve the lives of people with cancer. SWOG trials have led to the approval of 14 cancer drugs, changed more than 100 standards of cancer care, and saved more than 3 million years of human life. Learn more at swog.org, and follow us on Twitter at @SWOG.

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Clinical Oncology

DOI

10.1200/JCO.22.01826 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Population, Clinical, and Scientific Impact of National Cancer Institute's National Clinical Trials Network Treatment Studies

How a test drive may lead to an electric vehicle purchase

Taking a spin boosts buyer identity as an early technology adopter

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – There’s something about test driving an electric vehicle that boosts some potential buyers’ personal identity as being early adopters of the latest technologies, a new study has found.

And that strengthened sense of being a timely user of new gadgetry was linked to a higher likelihood that the test-driver would show interest in buying the car, the study suggested.

Though the test drive also increased study participants’ impression that an electric vehicle could function as a status symbol, that expectation did not translate into interest in making a purchase.

The findings help increase understanding of what fuels consumer behavior behind purchases related to sustainability and offers insights that could guide electric vehicle (EV) marketing efforts, said senior author Nicole Sintov, associate professor of behavior, decision making and sustainability at The Ohio State University. 

“An electric vehicle can symbolize different things to different people – it’s not going to be the same across the board. That’s why it’s important to consider the variety of different qualities an EV can reflect,” she said. “What we found is that EV test drives have a lot of potential to change how people think of themselves – and that was linked to increased intention to buy.”

Sintov completed the study with first author Atar Herziger, a former postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State who is now on the faculty of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

The research was published recently in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

Sintov and Herziger set out to determine whether and how a test drive of an electric vehicle affects two kinds of symbolic meaning: private meaning, which supports an individual’s self-perception, or public meaning – influencing how others would view the EV owner. And if those meanings change, does that affect the prospective buyer’s plan to make a purchase?

Two studies were conducted, one a randomized experiment using a virtual test drive and the other a partnership with Smart Columbus to survey people who opted to participate in an EV test-driving experience.

A total of 729 participants over the two studies were asked before and after the test drive to rate how owning an EV would influence their self-perception and how having the car would affect the way others view them. After the test drive, they were asked how likely they were to buy or lease the car or recommend it to a friend. 

The research focused on three types of private symbolic meaning linked to owning an electric car: being pro-environment, an early adopter of new technologies or a car authority. To gauge public meaning, the survey asked participants to report the extent to which they perceived that driving the EV says something about the kind of person they are.

In the case of the virtual test drive, the researchers used an identical video – eliminating all visible branding and sound – of an EV model that wasn’t yet available in the United States. The virtual test drive included examples of how interior features worked and took participants on a short ride from the driver’s point of view – the only difference was that some were told the car was a conventional gas-powered vehicle, and others were told it was an EV.

Statistical analysis showed that from pre- to post-test drive, the virtual experience in the EV strengthened participants’ perception of the EV as an expressive object and increased their self-identity as early adopters of technology.

“We didn’t see that for those who were told they were test-driving a conventional vehicle,” said Sintov, a faculty member in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources. “They had the same stimuli, but telling them it was one thing or another obviously changed the perceptions not only of the vehicle, but of themselves.”

But only the reinforced personal identity – the private symbolic meaning – was associated with intention to make a purchase.

The real-life test drive results had similar effects on enhancing public and private symbolic meanings of an EV, this time increasing both early-technology-adopter and car-authority identities – and again, only the reinforced personal identities led to stronger intentions to lease or buy the car.

From a theoretical and practical point of view, the distinctions between public and private meanings and their influence on purchasing intentions is important, Sintov said. And considering the test drive’s influence on those meanings also takes into account the fact that lots of thought usually goes into buying a car – it’s not a decision made at a single point in time, she said.

“We really wanted to parse these things out more concretely than previous studies on EV symbolic meanings have – all in the context of whether a test drive moves things,” she said.

And because the results showed test drives can move consumers toward a purchase, the marketing around such experiences could be particularly important.

“If EV marketing efforts focus on saying, ‘Look at you – you have cool person status,’ that is not the route we identified,” Sintov said. “‘How do I think about myself differently after this test drive, and in particular, how do I see myself differently in terms of being an early adopter of technology?’ That is what makes people want to buy the car.”

#

Contact: Nicole Sintov, Sintov.2@osu.edu

Written by Emily Caldwell, Caldwell.151@osu.edu

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JOURNAL

Journal of Environmental Psychology

DOI

10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101907 

ARTICLE TITLE

Give it a Try! How electric vehicle test drives influence symbolism perceptions and adoption intent

AKRON RUBBER TIRE CO.

Do polar bear paws hold the secret to better tire traction?

University of Akron researchers review paw prints to find secret to traction in snow and ice

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF AKRON

Traction is important. Humans have been continually interested in discovering how to better move across wet or frozen surfaces safely – whether to improve shoes for walking on sidewalks or tires to maneuver the roadways. But what makes it possible for some arctic animals to walk and run across the ice so effortlessly and gracefully without slipping and falling? Three researchers from The University of Akron (UA) took a deep dive into the paws of polar bears to find out. Their research was published in the November issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Why polar bears?

The project team included Ali Dhinojwala, the H.A. Morton Professor of Polymer Science in the School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, Nathaniel Orndorf, a 2022 Ph.D. graduate who is now employed as a senior material scientist at Bridgestone Americas, and Austin Garner, a 2021 Ph.D. graduate who is now an assistant professor of biology at Syracuse University. The project began during the height of the pandemic when things were on lockdown. 

“We had an ongoing project for many years focused on ice; we were looking at the friction of materials and we were interested in this topic because we are in Akron and our national partners need to develop tires with a strong grip on the road in ice and snow conditions,” said Dhinojwala. “Nate had an interest in how nature has adapted to this solution for snow. The example that came to his mind was polar bears – and the research began from there.”

The project was very interdisciplinary, combining approaches and techniques from both biological and materials research. Orndorf and Dhinojwala are polymer scientists who integrate biology into their research, while Garner is an animal biologist who integrates materials science into his research.

The idea was to look at the paw pads of polar bears. Reviewing older literature, the team discovered that previous work studied the microstructures (papillae, the little bumps on the pad of the foot) of polar bear paws and asserted that the papillae were adaptations for improved traction on snow. The previous studies did not include other species of bear so Garner helped identify two species closely related to the polar bear (the brown bear and American black bear) and one distantly related (the sun bear) to include in the study.

“The quietness of the lab during COVID gave me the opportunity to connect with a variety of scientists and environmentalists across the country,” said Orndorf. “I reached out to museums, taxidermists and many others to collect and view actual samples and replicas of bear paw pads.”

Orndorf and Garner then prepared the paw pad samples from the bears and imaged them using a scanning electron microscope. The team also created 3D printouts of the structures to vary diameter and height of features. They were then tested in snow in the lab to see how they reacted to the conditions. 

What the team discovered was that all bears (except sun bears) have papillae on their paw pads, but that the papillae on polar bears were taller – up to 1.5 times. And, that the taller papillae of polar bears help to increase traction on snow relative to shorter ones. Even though polar bears have smaller paw pads compared to the other species (likely because of greater fur coverage for heat conservation), the taller papillae of polar bears compensate for their smaller paw pads, giving them a 30-50% increase in frictional shear stress.

“Papillae are not unique to polar bears. Previous work [in that area] made the implicit assumption that papillae themselves are adaptations for enhanced traction on snow without studying the paw pads of other bears. It was fascinating for us to discover that the other North American bears have them as well and that the physical characteristics of the papillae are what matters for traction on snow,” said Garner.

Impact on traction

Now that the research has been published, other scientists and manufacturers can look at its application to their specific projects.

“If you look at snow tires you will see that they do have some deeper treads, but this research could also show various ways to design them that could have a larger impact,” said Dhinojwala.

But the interest isn’t just for tire manufacturers. “Individuals who do high altitude climbing are interested in this research, companies that specialize in the delivery of goods in bad weather would love to have better grip, etc.” he added.

The same experiments could also be performed on animals such as dogs, wolves, foxes and mountain goats to determine if specific snow/ice induced surface roughness profiles are present in different animals, [TE1] or if nature has evolved different surface roughness profiles in order to increase traction on ice and snow, and which profile has the best performance.

Building on past research

This isn’t the first research conducted in the area of traction or grip at UA. As part of the Biomimicry Research Center (BRIC) at The University of Akron, and in collaboration with faculty members in the BRIC program, Dhinojwala and his team have examined gecko adhesion, spider silk, mussel adhesion, and structural colors inspired by birds and other organisms. His research is supported by National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Industries.

His team is continuing to look at ice – how ice formation takes place, ice adhesion, etc. Research that is very helpful for the automotive and aircraft industries. His students have just begun working with NASA on a grant funded project in this area.

“It’s exciting to give our students such interesting research projects to be part of,” said Dhinojwala. “They are an asset to our team, and many go on to continue to be excellent research partners after they leave UA.”

“The Integrated Bioscience Ph.D. Program at UA provided exceptional interdisciplinary research experiences that were formative in my development as a researcher – this collaboration was certainly one of them,” said Garner. “It was a particularly unique experience for me because most of my work before this had focused on how small lizards, like geckos, attach to surfaces. So, it was an exciting and rewarding opportunity to apply my existing skills and expertise to large mammals like bears."

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JOURNAL

Journal of The Royal Society Interface

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Polar bear paw pad surface roughness and its relevance to contact mechanics on snow