It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Amazon mammals threatened by climate change
Study reveals impacts of Savannization on Brazilian Amazon land animals
IMAGE: TWO JAGUARS, CAUGHT WITH A CAMERA TRAP SURVEY, WALK THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON RAINFOREST.view more
CREDIT: DANIEL ROCHA/UC DAVIS
From jaguars and ocelots to anteaters and capybara, most land-based mammals living in the Brazilian Amazon are threatened by climate change and the projected savannization of the region. That’s according to a study published in the journal Animal Conservation by the University of California, Davis.
The study found that even animals that use both forest and savanna habitats, such as pumas and giant armadillos, are vulnerable to such changes. It also illustrates how species and lands protected through local conservation efforts are not immune to global climate change.
“We’re losing Amazon forest as we speak,” said lead author Daniel Rocha, who conducted the research as a doctoral student in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. “The Amazon’s biodiversity is very susceptible to climate change effects. It’s not just local; it’s a global phenomenon. We cannot stop this just by law enforcement, for example. These species are more susceptible than we realized, and even protected areas can’t protect them as much as we thought.”
What is ‘savannization?’
Pristine savanna is a unique biome that supports a diverse array of life. But “savannization” here refers to when lush rainforest gives way to a drier, open landscape that resembles savanna but is actually degraded forest. Local deforestation and global climate changes in temperature and precipitation favor this conversion along the southern and eastern edges of the Brazilian Amazon.
Arboreal species like monkeys clearly will be impacted by such changes. But the study’s authors wanted to better understand how land-based mammals are expected to fare — especially those who use both forest and savanna habitats when they have access to both.
Caught on camera
For the study, the researchers conducted camera trap surveys of land-based mammals in four protected areas of the southern Brazilian Amazon, which is a mixture of rainforest and natural Cerrado, or savanna. Using statistical models, they quantified how 31 species were affected by savanna habitat. They then looked for differences among species known to use mostly rainforest, savanna, or both habitats.
The results showed that only a few species preferred savanna habitat. Rocha notes that the models were based on pristine — not degraded — savanna, so the negative effects of savannization among animals will likely be even stronger.
Riparian forests, which line the wet edges of rivers and streams, helped buffer the effects of savannization to some extent.
Winners and losers
“Unfortunately, there are more losers than winners,” said Rocha, who is currently an assistant professor at Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma. “Most Amazon species, when they can choose between good forests and good savanna, they choose the forest. That’s true even for species considered ‘generalists,’ which use both habitats. As we lose forests, they suffer, too.”
The results indicate that if climate-driven savannization causes species to lose access to their preferred habitat, it will reduce the ability of even protected areas to safeguard wildlife. The authors say that should be considered when assessing the potential climate-change effects on these species.
The study is co-authored by Rahel Sollmann, Rocha’s former advisor at UC Davis who is now at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany.
The study was funded by CAPES, the National Geographic Society, Horodas Family Foundation for Conservation Research, The Explorers Club, Alongside Wildlife Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. This study received logistical support from ICMBio.
Scientists examine jaguar tracks on a road in the Brazilian Amazon.
CREDIT
Fernanda Cavalcante/PCMC Brasil
A white-lipped peccary walks past a camera trap in the Brazilian Amazon. (Daniel Rocha/UC Davis)
CREDIT
Daniel Rocha, UC Davis
A marsh deer approaches the forest edge. It’s among the few mammals species not expected to be negatively affected by savannization in the Amazon
IMAGE: BOB RODE, AT LEFT, MANAGER OF THE AQUACULTURE RESEARCH LAB, AND TECHNICIAN IAN KOVACS TEND TO TILAPIA RAISED IN THE FACILITY. PAUL BROWN, PROFESSOR OF FORESTRY AND NATURAL RESOURCES AT PURDUE UNIVERSITY, OVERSEES THE LAB’S EXPERIMENTAL AQUAPONICS SYSTEMS.view more
CREDIT: PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHOTO/TOM CAMPBELL
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University has received a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to increase the production of seafood, also known as “blue food,” which is healthier and more sustainably produced than land-based foods.
"Many studies indicate the importance of increasing seafood consumption in U.S. diets,” said Jen-Yi Huang, project director and associate professor of food science at Purdue University. Those studies show that seafood can boost intake of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins and minerals while also reducing more harmful substances such as cholesterol and saturated fat.
A 2021 blue food assessment published in the journal Nature found that a 15.5-million-ton increase in aquatic animal-source food by 2030 would decrease the price of such food by 26%. The resulting increase in blue food consumption would result in preventing an estimated 166 million cases of inadequate intake of micronutrients such as vitamin A, calcium and iron worldwide.
Seafood is readily available in local grocery stores, but most of it is imported from Asia and elsewhere. Such long-distance supply chains recently have proven vulnerable to volatile markets, fluctuating fuel costs, the COVID-19 pandemic and regional war, said Huang, who also holds a courtesy appointment in Environmental and Ecological Engineering.
About 90% of U.S. seafood comes from abroad, resulting in a $17 billion trade deficit. U.S. fisheries are not sustainable because of overfishing concerns, Huang noted. Aquaculture — growing aquatic organisms under controlled conditions — offers an alternative.
Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics (growing plants in water) that offers the advantage of intensively producing seafood and plants using less land and water than conventional food production.
The Midwest especially could benefit from aquaponics. The region suffers high obesity rates, operates the fewest aquaculture farms and consumes the least amount of seafood.
“It can increase production yields, but aquaponics production hasn’t been widely adopted, especially in the Midwest,” Huang said. Energy use in the required greenhouse environment is one key reason.
Aquaponics operations require the daily discharge of up to 20% of wastewater into the environment. For large farms, that becomes a maintenance cost because they need permits to treat their wastewater before discharge.
Purdue researchers will build a pilot-scale integrated aquaponics system on campus to produce tilapia and lettuce. This zero-waste food production system will convert nutrient-rich waste into energy for system operation and high-value bioproducts.
CREDIT
Illustration by Tom Kronewitter
“The smaller farms don’t need permits,” Huang said. “They can discharge whatever they generate, which can cause environmental issues.”
With the USDA funding, Purdue researchers will build a pilot-scale integrated aquaponics system on campus, where some lab-scale components already exist, to produce tilapia and lettuce.
Also on the team is Nicole Wright, aquaculture extension educator at The Ohio State University.
“Algae cultivation and anaerobic digestion are two of the most important components in Purdue’s integrated aquaponic system,” Ni said. “We use the algae to treat the wastewater and also anaerobic digestion to treat the algal biomass and other waste streams like fish processing wastes.”
The Purdue system will direct the aquaponics wastewater discharge into algal bioreactors, where algae can feed on its nutrients. The next step is anaerobic digestion, which generates biogas fuel as one of its products.
"That energy can be sent back to the aquaponics system to offset the energy requirement of the indoor facility operation, at least partially,” Huang said. The system is designed to generate zero waste and to operate independently of the power grid.
The system also includes a biorefinery subsystem to convert algae and fish byproducts into high-value nutraceuticals such as bioactive peptide and phenolic compounds. The biorefinery can turn the algae into fish feed for the aquaponics operation as well.
“By integration with the biorefinery, we can have additional revenues for aquaponics farmers so that they can improve their economic viability,” Huang said. “We will develop multidimensional sustainability metrics for system assessment and management to make sure that this kind of integration is technically feasible, economically viable and environmentally friendly.”
The project will further include stakeholder education and outreach components. The research team will survey farmers and suppliers about the barriers and opportunities for blue foods and aquaponics. The team also will develop workshops to help interested farmers build aquaponics systems or improve their existing operations.
In addition, the grant will foster a workforce that can support blue food production by funding the creation of educational materials for high school, undergraduate and graduate students.
“We also want to educate consumers on the benefit of blue foods so that they can diversify their dietary pattern to include more blue foods and ultimately improve health,” Huang said.
Writer: Steve Koppes
HIV treatment and prevention in Zambian prisons may be model for prisons worldwide
IMAGE: ZAMBIAN PRISONERS PARTICIPATING IN HIV TREATMENT AND PREVENTION.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
A recent study performed in Zambia by University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Institute of Human Virology researchers found that high uptake of HIV preventative medicine, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), is possible in prison populations with adequate resources and support from the criminal justice health system.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, HIV infection disproportionately affects people detained within the criminal justice system. These vulnerable populations may not access regular medical care before and during incarceration.
Published in the January 2023 issue of The Lancet HIV, the research team provided evidence of a model HIV prevention with at-risk populations that could possibly be extended to other criminal justice facilities, as many of the issues faced by Zambian prisoners are universal to prisoners worldwide.
"Our results show it is feasible to deliver PrEP in diverse criminal justice settings where other HIV prevention commodities, such as condoms and lubricants, are prohibited,” said epidemiologist Brianna R. Lindsay, MPH, PhD, Director of Health Programs at the Center for International Health, Education, and Biosecurity (Ciheb) at the Institute of Human Virology at UMSOM. “The approach was well received by justice-involved individuals, demonstrating high uptake among those eligible. To our knowledge, this is the first description of PrEP service delivery for people who are incarcerated in criminal justice settings in Sub-Saharan Africa."
In the study, the largest proportion of incarcerated people reached with HIV prevention services and initiated on PrEP were men between the ages of 25 and 29 years, consistent with the known demographics of the incarcerated population in Zambia. Prior to HIV testing, individuals were screened using a high-risk screening form. People who are incarcerated may be exposed to risks such as consensual and coerced sex, sexual violence, injection drug use, and tattooing. High-risk activity paired with other barriers to HIV prevention in prisons, including high inmate turnover, lack of health education, and the absence of HIV prevention tools, contributes to at least a 14 percent higher rate of infection than seen in the adult general population.
Funded by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (USPFAR) through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the study implemented PrEP through existing and previous projects that support HIV testing, and links participants, including people who are incarcerated, to treatment and service, such as the University of Maryland Baltimore-supported Community Impact to Reach Key and Underserved Individuals for Treatment and Support (CIRKUITS) and Zambia Community HIV Epidemic Control for Key Populations (Z-CHECK) programs. With an all-hands-on-deck approach, there was support for the study from all stakeholders, from the Correctional Service and Zambian Ministry of Health to the prison health committee and peer-led adherence support groups, to provide PrEP services.
To ensure a stable and continuous supply of PrEP medication, trained personnel worked with Zambia Ministry of Health supply chain teams to assess stock levels and support the distribution of HIV prevention supplies.
“We are honored to work with the Zambia Correctional Services and Ministry of Health to accomplish this initial implementation of PrEP at these facilities,” said Cassidy W. Claassen, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine and Principal Investigator for this study, and Technical Director for the Zambia County Office at the Institute of Human Virology at UMSOM. “This represents one of the first such implementations anywhere in the world and marks an important step forward in demonstrating successful HIV prevention protocols for people who are incarcerated. “
Data was collected between October 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, from 16 Zambian criminal justice facilities, involving a total of 12,367 people (of all sexes) in the study. Of all those who tested HIV negative and were screened for PrEP, 67 percent considered high risk were eligible to initiate. All PrEP participants participated voluntarily, and care was taken to avoid undue coercion or incentives. PrEP participation exceeded 90 percent among those eligible.
“Due to Ciheb’s collaborative efforts with our partners to control HIV infection in Zambia, we have been able to help bring the HIV prevention and treatment rates to 98% across the country, and now we are focusing on targeting this previously and traditionally ignored population of people in prisons,” said Manhattan Charurat, PhD, MHS, Professor of Medicine, Director of Ciheb, and Director of the Division of Epidemiology and Prevention at UMSOM’s Institute of Human Virology.
“In many developing countries, it is much harder to institute plans for HIV interventions in prisons. However, we believe that our model can be successfully adapted to help control the spread and improve the health and well-being of inmates across the globe.”
For future studies, the researchers plan to evaluate PrEP persistence and adherence, as well as the perceptions of people who are incarcerated regarding their HIV risk and preferences for combined HIV prevention services. They will also aim to assess and support PrEP adherence and persistence after these people are released from prison.
"There is an urgent need for health equity for all members of society. With almost 400,000 people globally incarcerated who are living with HIV, including 18,000 in the United States alone, controlling the spread of HIV in the prison system translates to healthier communities," said Dean Mark Gladwin, MD, who is also Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor. "What the team has accomplished in this study will hopefully accelerate further changes to the prison healthcare systems in Zambia and around the globe. "
The study was funded by grant 6NU2GGH002123-02-07 by the CDC.
About the Institute of Human Virology
Formed in 1996 as a partnership between the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, the University System of Maryland, and the University of Maryland Medical System, the IHV is an institute of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is home to some of the most globally recognized and world-renowned experts in all of virology. The IHV combines the disciplines of basic research, epidemiology, and clinical research in a concerted effort to speed the discovery of diagnostics and therapeutics for a wide variety of chronic and deadly viral and immune disorders, most notably HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. For more information, visit ihv.org and follow us on Twitter @IHVmaryland.
About the University of Maryland School of Medicine
Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world -- with 46 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs, and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1.3 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has nearly $600 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 students, trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System (“University of Maryland Medicine”) has an annual budget of over $6 billion and an economic impact of nearly $20 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine, which ranks as the 8th highest among public medical schools in research productivity (according to the Association of American Medical Colleges profile) is an innovator in translational medicine, with 606 active patents and 52 start-up companies. In the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of the Best Medical Schools, published in 2021, the UM School of Medicine is ranked #9among the 92 public medical schools in the U.S., and in the top 15 percent (#27) of all 192public and private U.S. medical schools. The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visit medschool.umaryland.edu
Patients with heart failure often suffer from co-morbidities, which places a great strain on the healthcare services, a multinational study published in Heart reports. The researchers, who are based at Karolinska Institutet, identify an urgent need to improve risk management of the disease.
Up to 64 million people around the world have heart failure a figure that is expected to rise as populations age and diagnostic methods improve.
According to the new study, there are no multinational studies describing heart failure patients and the consequences of the disease.
“Given that we know that the incidence of heart failure increases with population age, a modern, broad view of what the heart failure population looks like, involving risks and costs, is important for all forms of care planning,” says Anna Norhammar, adjunct professor at the Cardiology Unit, Department of Medicine (Solna), Karolinska Institutet.
The researchers therefore collected data from both digital medical records and national registry data on over 600,000 heart failure patients from eleven European countries, including Sweden, plus Canada and Israel, from between 2018 and 2020.
The study concludes that between one and two per cent of the population suffer heart failure and shows that it is relatively fatal, with an average annual death rate of 13 per cent.
Heart failure patients also suffer a higher rate of co-morbidity than previous national studies have suggested.
“Half of the heart failure patients had ischemic heart disease, half had signs of kidney failure and a third had diabetes,” says Professor Norhammar. “One likely reason for the escalation in comorbidity in such patients is that we live longer nowadays with several concurrent conditions. This complicates heart failure care even more, as there are many contributory factors to take account of.”
Another of the study’s conclusions is that heart failure is costly. In Europe, one to two per cent of the total healthcare budget goes towards heart failure care, a cost that is expected to increase,” she continues. “The healthcare costs are mainly related to a deterioration in heart and kidney failure that requires hospitalisation, and to a lesser extent to traditional cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke. So our data make it clear that intervention to prevent further heart and kidney failure is needed.”
One exciting find that Professor Norhammar identifies is that more patients than previous research has shown have heart failure with preserved left ventricular function.
“This is interesting because a possible new treatment is now available for these patients,” she explains. “It’s a diabetes drug that, following extensive studies, is now used for heart failure, irrespective of whether the patients have diabetes. These new drugs were basically not used by our cohort since the evidence wasn’t in place until 2020. Now that the evidence is here, it’ll be interesting to see if the situation can be improved, as we have high hopes it will.”
Anna Norhammar has participated in advisory board meetings with companies that develop diabetes and heart failure drugs. The study was largely financed by Astra Zeneca.
Publication: “Prevalence, outcomes and costs of a contemporary, multinational population with heart failure”, Anna Norhammar, Johan Bodegard, Marc Vanderheyden, Navdeep Tangri, Avraham Karasik, Aldo Pietro Maggioni, Kari Anne Sveen, Tiago Taveira-Gomes, Manuel Botana, Lukas Hunziker, Marcus Thuresson, Amitava Banerjee, Johan Sundström, Andreas Bollmann, Heart, online 14 February 2023, doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2022-321702
Prevalence, outcomes and costs of a contemporary, multinational population with heart failure
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
12-Feb-2023
A tool to prevent deaths due to female underrepresentation in clinical trials
Females are often underrepresented in clinical trials, yet male data does not always reflect females’ risk of heart issues due to a drug. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, are working on a new tool to predict females’ heart response
IMAGE: DRUGS CAN AFFECT THE HEART RHYTHMS OF MALES AND FEMALES DIFFERENTLY. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS, RESEARCHERS DEVELOPED A “TRANSLATOR” THAT CAN USE MALE DATA TO PREDICT FEMALE HEART RESPONSE.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY STEFANO MOROTTI
ROCKVILLE, MD – Women are often underrepresented in cardiac clinical trials—yet they are at least at equally high risk of death due to cardiovascular disease, and at higher risk of developing drug-induced heart complications compared to men. Clinical trials of medicines generally rely on electrocardiograms (EKG) to measure a patient’s heart’s response to a medicine and determine its safety, yet males and females have a number of differences in their heart physiology that are reflected in consistent variations in their EKGs. As a result, a drug that might appear to be safe in males may not be safe for females.
“People tend to think that females don't really get heart diseases, but that’s not the case—males and females are equally impacted by heart issues, though most of what we know about heart disease comes from what researchers have studied in males” explained Kim Hellgren, a pharmacology researcher in the lab of Eleonora Grandi at University of California, Davis. “The best thing would be if we did our research on half males and half females,” he said. But to help interpret studies that don’t have ideal representation, and to highlight the risk of overlooking sex differences in the heart, he’s programming a tool to help predict the female response based on input from male clinical trial participants. Hellgren will present his work work on Sunday, February 19 at the67th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in San Diego, California.
Compared to males, females heart cells take more time to return to their resting state after an electrical impulse, which shows up as a longer QT interval on an EKG. The sex-related differences in the excitation and contraction of heart muscle cells may also affect the way in which these cells respond to drugs. As a result, what might be a therapeutic effect in males could simultaneously be detrimental in females.
Using mathematical models of excitation and contraction patterns in male and female human heart muscle cells, the team developed a regression-based “translator” that can use male data to predict female heart response. So far they’ve used their tool in virtual data sets of simulated cardiac responses to a large group of different drugs. Using male data, the translator was able to successfully predict female data that matched the computer’s simulated female data for each drug they tried.
The next step is to package the program so that it can be easily used by people conducting clinical trials, Hellgren said. The program will make it easy to enter a pile of clinical data from male EKGs and get feedback as to whether the drug would be safe or unsafe for women. This would help prevent drugs that could be unsafe for women from going to market.
Ultimately, Hellgren hopes his translator is rarely used, and instead brings attention to the disparities in clinical trials to encourage clinical trial coordinators to recruit an equal number of men and women. But for studies already underway, and for those when it just isn’t possible to get to exactly 50/50, Hellgren believes his tool will be able to bridge the gaps.
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The Biophysical Society, founded in 1958, is a professional, scientific Society established to lead development and dissemination of knowledge in biophysics. The Society promotes growth in this expanding field through its annual meeting, publications, and committee and outreach activities. Its 7,500 members are located throughout the United States and the world, where they teach and conduct research in colleges, universities, laboratories, government agencies, and industry.
GSA applauds aging-related initiatives highlighted in SOTU
Following President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union (SOTU) Address, The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) — the nation’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging — is commending his administration’s commitment to several initiatives that will contribute to meaningful lives as we age.
GSA supports continued efforts to promote access to life-saving therapies and treatments. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare beneficiaries now have access to Part D vaccines, such as shingles and pertussis, at no cost. And thanks to executive action, the Food and Drug Administration has enabled 30 million hearing impaired Americans to buy affordable hearing aids without a prescription.
And as an organization dedicated to research and education to inform practice and policy in aging, GSA supports the establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to accelerate breakthroughs related to cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and diabetes, and other conditions. As GSA imagines the opportunities to catalyze new approaches to solve the vexing challenges of today, it draws attention to the intersection of aging and chronic disease. ARPA-H should embrace a geroscience approach, which will further understanding of how the aging process contributes to the many chronic diseases that accompany older ages.
Furthermore, GSA supports efforts to strengthen home and community-based services for older people and people with disabilities, to support the direct care workforce and family caregivers, and to improve nursing home care. A new issue of GSA’s Public Policy & Aging Report focuses on specific recommendations from the 2022 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report titled “The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality” — and describes how relevant stakeholders can move those recommendations into action.
Finally, GSA supports the administration’s position on avoiding cuts to Medicare and Social Security. These programs provide support for older people and people with disabilities as well as family caregivers who so often are confronted by health, social engagement, and economic challenges. GSA will continue to work with the administration and all policy makers to advance evidence-based policies and practices that advance the well-being of all Americans.
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The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) is the nation's oldest and largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to research, education, and practice in the field of aging. The principal mission of the Society — and its 5,500+ members — is to advance the study of aging and disseminate information among scientists, decision makers, and the general public. GSA’s structure also includes a policy institute, the National Academy on an Aging Society.
Nightly sleep is key to student success
A new study at Carnegie Mellon University shows the impact of nightly sleep on a student’s academic performance
College is a time of transition for young adults. It may be the first time students have the freedom to determine how to spend their time, but this freedom comes with competing interests from academics, social events and even sleep.
A multi-institutional team of researchers conducted the first study to evaluate how the duration of nightly sleep early in the semester affects first year college students end-of-semester grade point average (GPA). Using Fitbit sleep trackers, they found that students on average sleep 6.5 hours a night, but negative outcomes accumulate when students received less than six hours of sleep a night. The results are available in the Feb. 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Previous studies have shown that total sleep is an important predictor for a broad range of health and performance outcomes. Sleep guidelines recommend teenagers get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night. Many college students experience irregular and insufficient sleep.
David Creswell, the William S. Dietrich II Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, led a team of researchers to evaluate the relationship between sleep and GPA. College students often push themselves to achieve, and GPA is the important marker of academic success.
“Animal studies have shown how critical sleep is for learning and memory,” said Creswell. Here we show how this work translates to humans. The less nightly sleep a first year college student gets at the beginning of the school term predicts lower GPA at the end of the term, some five to nine weeks later. Lack of sleep may be hurting students’ ability to learn in their college classrooms.”
Past work with animals has shown that memories that form during the day are consolidated during sleep. When normal sleep patterns are interrupted, the content learned during the day is lost. Extending this logic to students, the researchers were curious if interrupted or inadequate sleep could impair their academic learning and if this would be apparent by academic achievement.
The study evaluated more than 600 first-year students across five studies at three universities. The students wore wrist Fitbit devices to monitor and record their sleep patterns. The researchers found that students in the study sleep on average 6.5 hours a night.
More surprising, the researchers found that students who receive less than six hours of sleep experienced a pronounced decline in academic performance. In addition, each hour of sleep lost corresponded to a 0.07 decrease in end-of-term GPA.
“Once you start dipping below six hours, you are starting to accumulate massive sleep debt that can impair a student’s health and study habits, compromising the whole system,” said Creswell. “Most surprising to me was that no matter what we did to make the effect go away, it persisted.”
The study controlled for past academic performance, daytime napping, race, gender and first-generation status. Several of the studies also controlled for total academic course load. None of these factors affected the overall impact of nightly sleep on GPA.
“A popular belief among college students is value studying more or partying more over nightly sleep,” said Creswell. Our work here suggests that there are potentially real costs to reducing your nightly sleep on your ability to learn and achieve in college. There’s real value in budgeting for the importance of nightly sleep.”
This works suggests the importance of building structured programs and interventions at institutions of learning that encourage undergraduate students to focus on their sleep.
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Creswell was joined by Stephen Price, Sheldon Cohen, Janine M. Dutcher, Daniella Villalba, Kasey Creswell and Marsha Lovett at CMU; Michael J. Tumminia at the University of Pittsburgh; Yasaman Sefidgar, Jennifer Brown Jennifer Mankoff, Yiyi Ren, Anind K. Dey and Xuhai Xu at the University of Washington; Afsaneh Doryab at the University of Virginia and
Stephen Mattingly, Aaron Striegel, Gonzalo Martinez and David Hachen at the University of Notre Dame on the project titled, “Nightly sleep duration predicts grade point average in the first year of college.” The project received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research.
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
ARTICLE TITLE
Nightly sleep duration predicts grade point average in the first year of college
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
13-Feb-2023
A sense of purpose may have significant impact on teens' emotional well-being
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU
IMAGE: EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR KAYLIN RATNER FOUND IN A STUDY OF MORE THAN 200 ADOLESCENTS THAT FEELING A SENSE OF PURPOSE HAD A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON THEIR EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING. THOSE WHO SCORED HIGH ON PURPOSEFULNESS WERE MORE SATISFIED WITH THEIR LIVES AND EXPERIENCED MORE POSITIVE EMOTIONS IN GENERAL.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY FRED ZWICKY
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Adolescents who feel a greater sense of purpose may be happier and more satisfied with life than peers who feel less purposeful, suggests a recent study of more than 200 teens.
Studies with adults have suggested that a sense of purpose in life is an integral component of well-being that fuels hope and optimism and has a variety of positive effects on individuals’ physical and mental health.
However, less is known about the effects of purposefulness in adolescents, who, while characteristically hopeful, are in the throes of developing their identities, making choices that reflect who they are and aspire to be, according to the study.
Educational psychology professor Kaylin Ratner of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign led the current study, which examined how youths’ feelings of purposefulness related to their daily levels of life satisfaction and subjective well-being.
“Teens who scored high on purpose were more satisfied with their lives and experienced more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions,” said Ratner, who collected the data while working as a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University. “Importantly, we found that on the days when these adolescents felt more purposeful than usual, they also tended to experience greater well-being.”
Her co-authors included Anthony L. Burrow, the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies and the director of the Bonfenbrenner Center for Translational Research; and Qingyi Li and Gaoxia Zhu, both then-postdoctoral research associates, all of Cornell University.
Published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, the project also examined how subclinical autistic traits that fell below the diagnostic threshold for autism – behavioral and cognitive patterns such as poor social skills and difficulty shifting one’s attention – related to these teens’ sense of purpose in life and their overall happiness.
Each day for 70 days, the participants – teens ages 14-19 – were asked to rate how purposeful they felt, how satisfied they were with their life and the levels of positive and negative emotions they were feeling.
All of those in the study were participants in GripTape, a nationwide nonprofit in the U.S. that strives to instill a sense of agency in youths by providing them with the resources to pursue a 10-week Learning Challenge project of their choosing.
Applicants whose Learning Challenge proposals are accepted receive up to a $500 grant and an adult mentor who supports them in pursuing a project they are passionate about, such as starting a small business or researching higher education resources for undocumented teens, according to the study.
Melody Estevez, the research manager at GripTape, also was a co-author of the study.
At the beginning of the Learning Challenge, the study participants completed a 28-item survey that assessed their levels of subclinical autistic traits. A higher aggregate score suggested the teen had greater numbers of these traits, Ratner said.
Each day, the participants completed assessments, rating on a five-point scale how purposeful they currently felt. Ratner’s team calculated the average of these daily purpose scores to determine each person’s dispositional sense of purpose – their characteristic level of this trait – across the 70 days studied.
The researchers also tracked day-to-day variations in purposefulness by subtracting the teens’ daily purpose score from their dispositional level of purpose.
On the daily assessments, those in the study rated how much they were feeling four positive emotions – content, relaxed, enthusiastic or joyful – and four negative emotions – angry, anxious, sluggish or sad.
Participants’ composite positive and negative emotional affect scores, along with their life satisfaction scores, were used to assess their psychological well-being.
Feeling more purposeful than usual on any single day was a unique predictor of participants’ emotional well-being on those days, regardless of their dispositional level of purposefulness, the team found.
“Our findings show that no matter where you are in comparison with your peers, when you feel more purposeful than usual, you have better outcomes,” Ratner said. “Purpose is accessible to everyone. What we need to do is help individuals feel more purposeful from day to day.”
Ratner and her team found that the participants with greater levels of subclinical autistic traits tended to report higher levels of negative feelings, and lower levels of life satisfaction and positive feelings from day to day. However, the strength of the association between well-being and daily purpose was not moderated by these traits.
In other words, those who had more of these traits seemed to be able to reap well-being benefits at levels equal to their peers who had fewer of these traits, Ratner said. She cautioned, however, that the findings could differ for youths with known clinical diagnoses of autism.
“Our 70-day study is one of the most consistent examinations of youths’ purposefulness to date and helps cement the beneficial influence it has on their well-being,” Ratner said. “With the groundwork laid by this study, interventions that promote purposefulness may be viable routes to enhancing the well-being of many young people, including neurodiverse youths.”
The population in the study was 70% female. Nearly 31% were Asian, 22% were African American or Black, 18% were white and 14% were Hispanic. The researchers said because the sample was not representative of the gender and racial and ethnic diversity among teens in the general U.S. population, the findings may not be generalizable.
The research was supported by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Daily adolescent purposefulness, daily subjective well-being and individual differences in autistic traits
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
7-Feb-2023
COI STATEMENT
KR, QL, GZ, and ALB declare they have no financial interests related to the publication of this research. ME is a paid employee, the Research Manager, of the GripTape program.
