Wildfires in 2021 emitted a record-breaking amount of carbon dioxide

UC Irvine-led study found northern-latitude forest fires to be the highest source

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE

Irvine, Calif., March 2, 2023 — Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers led by Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine.

Nearly half a gigaton of carbon (or 1.76 billion tons of CO2) was released from burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021, 150 percent higher than annual mean CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2020, the scientists reported in a paper in Science.

“According to our measurements, boreal fires in 2021 shattered previous records,” said senior co-author Steven Davis, UCI professor of Earth system science. “These fires are two decades of rapid warming and extreme drought in Northern Canada and Siberia coming to roost, and unfortunately even this new record may not stand for long.”

The researchers said that the worsening fires are part of a climate-fire feedback in which carbon dioxide emissions warm the planet, creating conditions that lead to more fires and more emissions.

“The escalation of wildfires in the boreal region is anticipated to accelerate the release of the large carbon storage in the permafrost soil layer, as well as contribute to the northward expansion of shrubs,” said co-author Yang Chen, a UCI research scientist in Earth system science. “These factors could potentially lead to further warming and create a more favorable climate for the occurrence of wildfires."

Davis added, “Boreal fires released nearly twice as much CO2 as global aviation in 2021. If this scale of emissions from unmanaged lands becomes a new normal, stabilizing Earth’s climate will be even more challenging than we thought.”

Analyzing the amount of carbon dioxide released during wildfires is difficult for Earth system scientists for a variety of reasons. Rugged, smoke-enshrouded terrain hampers satellite observations during a combustion event, and space-based measurements are not at a sufficiently fine resolution to reveal details of CO2 emissions. Models used to simulate fuel load, fuel consumption and fire efficiency work well under ordinary circumstances but are not robust enough to represent extreme wildfires, according to the researchers.

And there is another roadblock of our own creation. “Earth’s atmosphere already contains large amounts of carbon dioxide from human fossil fuel burning, and the existing greenhouse gas is difficult to distinguish from that produced by forest fires,” said Chen.

The team found a way around these hurdles by studying carbon monoxide expelled into the atmosphere during blazes. Combining CO readings from MOPITT – the Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere satellite instrument – with existing fire emissions and wind speed datasets, the team reconstructed changes in global fire CO2 emissions from 2000-2021. Carbon monoxide has a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than CO2, so if scientists detect an anomalous abundance of CO, that provides evidence of fires.

The researchers independently confirmed the occurrence of extreme fires in 2021 with data sets provided by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. 

"The inversion approach employed in this study is a complementary method to the conventional bottom-up approach, which is based on estimating the burned area, fuel load, and combustion completeness,” Chen said. “Combining these approaches can result in a more comprehensive understanding of wildfire patterns and their impacts."

The researchers said their data analysis revealed links between extensive boreal fires and climate drivers, especially increased annual mean temperatures and short-lived heat waves. They found that higher northern latitudes and areas with larger tree cover fractions were especially vulnerable.

“Wildfire carbon emissions globally were relatively stable at about 2 gigatons per year for the first two decades of the 21st century, but 2021 was the year when emissions really took off,” David said. “About 80 percent of these CO2 emissions will be recovered through vegetation regrowth, but 20 percent are lost to the atmosphere in an almost irreversible way, so humans are going to have to find some way to remove that carbon from the air or substantially cut our own production of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Joining UCI’s Davis and Chen on this project was an international team of researchers from Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, China; China’s State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex in Beijing; the University of Paris-Saclay; Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry; the Netherlands Institute for Space Research; Vrije University in Amsterdam; Harbin Institute of Technology in China.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

NOTE TO EDITORS: PHOTO AVAILABLE AT
https://news.uci.edu/2023/03/02/wildfires-in-2021-emitted-a-record-breaking-amount-of-carbon-dioxide

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JOURNAL

Science

ARTICLE TITLE

Record-high CO2 emissions from boreal fires in 2021

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Mar-2023

NFL players who experienced concussion symptoms during careers show reduced cognitive performance decades after retirement

Using data from the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, study led by Mass General Brigham investigators contributes further evidence elucidating the impact of a playing career on long-term cognitive function.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASS GENERAL BRIGHAM

Former professional football players who reported experiencing concussion symptoms during their playing careers were found to perform worse on a battery of cognitive tests than non-players, according to a study led by Mass General Brigham investigators from McLean Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Network. Results of the study are published March 2nd in Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology.[JR1] 

Of the more than 350 former National Football League (NFL) players who were studied an average of 29 years after their playing career ended, those who reported experiencing concussion symptoms during their careers scored worse on assessments of episodic memory, sustained attention, processing speed and vocabulary. However, the number of concussions diagnosed by a medical professional or length of playing career had no observed effect on cognition.

A follow-up analysis compared the former players to more than 5,000 male volunteers in the general population who did not play professional football, which found that cognitive performance was generally worse for former players than nonplayers. While younger former players outperformed nonplayers on some tests, older retired players more likely to perform worse than controls on cognitive tasks.

The researchers who led the study said that their results underline the importance of tracking concussion symptoms as opposed to diagnosed concussions in research. This work also adds evidence to the impact a professional football career can have on accelerating cognitive aging. 

“It is well-established that in the hours and days after a concussion, people experience some cognitive impairment. However, when you look decades out, the data on the long-term impact have been mixed,” said study senior author Laura Germine, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Health Technology at McLean Hospital  and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “These new findings from the largest study of its kind show that professional football players can still experience cognitive difficulties associated with head injuries decades after they have retired from the sport.”

Concussion Symptoms Linked to Cognitive Performance

For the study, 353 retired NFL players completed hour-long neuropsychological tests through an online platform called TestMyBrain, which is supported by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Players were fully remote and completed tests on a laptop or desktop that included assessments that measured processing speed, visual-spatial and working memory, and aspects of short- and long-term memory and vocabulary. 

Recollected concussion symptoms were measured by asking the players the number of times they experienced any one of the following symptoms following a blow to the head during play or practice: headaches, nausea, dizziness, loss of consciousness, memory problems, disorientation, confusion, seizure, visual problems or feeling unsteady on their feet. They were also asked whether they lost consciousness during their careers, and whether they were ever diagnosed with a concussion by a medical professional.

The results showed that the former players’ cognitive performance (for example, on memory tasks) was associated with recalled football concussion symptoms. For example, differences observed in visual memory scores between former players with the highest and lowest reported concussion symptoms were equivalent to the differences in cognitive performance between a typical 35-year-old and 60-year-old.

However, poor cognitive performance was not associated with diagnosed concussions, years of professional play or age of first football exposure. The researchers noted that many head injuries or sub-concussive blows may not have been diagnosed as concussions due to a lack of awareness at the time or underreporting of symptoms by players. 

When comparing the retired players to a group of 5,086 men who did not play football, cognitive performance was generally worse for former players. On two tests of processing speed, age-related differences in cognitive performance were larger among the former player group than the nonplayer group, with older players performing worse.

These comparison data suggest that football exposure might accelerate age-related cognitive declines and produce greater disadvantages at older ages, according to the researchers, who added that more studies are needed to track cognitive performance in former players as they age. Another possibility is that improved awareness and management of head injuries may have spared younger retired players more than older ones. The researchers also noted that this comparative finding is limited by a lack of data on cognition prior to head injuries, and that more research is needed that closely matches former players and nonplayers and measures their cognitive performances across their lifetimes.

“For both former players and researchers, we can glean some important takeaways from this study,” said principal investigator of the Football Players Health Study, Ross Zafonte, DO. “Former players can support their cognitive health as they age by taking proactive steps, and continuing to consult with their providers and educate themselves on symptoms of head injury. For researchers and providers, these findings support efforts to develop ways to enhance diagnosis and define long-term sequalae of concussion.” Zafonte is president of Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, a Mass General Brigham sports medicine physician, and the Earle P. and Ida S. Charlton Professor and Chair of the Harvard Medical School Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

“The Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach taken in this study is where this field is heading,” said Germine. “We are grateful to the players and how much they have taught us. It would not have been possible to do a study like this without engaging and deeply involving their community.”

Research Driven by Input from Former NFL Players

The Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, launched in 2014, is a comprehensive research program dedicated to examining the multifactorial causes that impact the health of former NFL players. The research has been informed by the players themselves, who have provided input on the health concerns and conditions they face after a career in football. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Harvard University and Harvard Medical School and its affiliated teaching hospitals, including those in the Mass General Brigham system, conduct research from neurology, cardiology, sports medicine, rehabilitation medicine, chronic pain and public health. While concussion and head injury are of paramount concern, the study examines all aspects of player health across the life span. Former players can find important resources to support their health in this section of the study’s website.

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This work was supported by the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, which is funded by the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors, and does not necessarily represent the official views of Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, and its affiliated academic healthcare centers. The NFLPA had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

In addition to Drs. Germine and Zafonte, other investigators on the study included Roger W. Strong, PhD, Rachel Grashow, PhD, MS, Andrea L. Roberts, PhD, Eliza Passell, BA, Luke Scheuer, BA, Douglas P. Terry, PhD, Sarah Cohan, PMP, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD and Marc G. Weisskopf PhD, ScD.

Paper cited: Strong RW et al. “Association of retrospectively reported concussion symptoms with objective cognitive performance in former American-style football players” Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology DOI: 10.1093/arclin/acad008.

About Mass General Brigham

Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic healthcare system, uniting great minds in medicine to make life-changing impact for patients in our communities and people around the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a non-profit organization that is committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.

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 [JR1]Article link once embargo lifts: https://academic.oup.com/acn/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/arclin/acad008

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JOURNAL

Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology

DOI

10.1093/arclin/acad008 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Association of Retrospectively Reported Concussion Symptoms with Objective Cognitive Performance in Former American-Style Football Players

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Mar-2023

COI STATEMENT

Laura Thi Germine, PhD, is President and Director of the 501c3 nonprofit Many Brains Project, Inc., that supports open source cognitive tests for research. She previously served as Scientific Advisor to Sage Bionetworks, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit that supports research studies. Douglas Terry, PhD, serves as a scientific advisor for HitIQ. He previously consulted for REACT Neuro, Inc. He has a consulting practice in forensic neuropsychology, including expert testimony, involving individuals who have sustained mild TBIs (including former athletes).

Gene editing technique highlighted as possible ‘savior’ for climate change threatened rice crops

A review of gene editing techniques suggests that the CRISPR/Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas) method could be a possible ‘saviour’ for rice crops threatened by climate change and high food demand.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CABI

 

IMAGE: A SCIENTIST INSPECTS RICE IN CHINA view more 

CREDIT: CABI

A review of gene editing techniques suggests that the CRISPR/Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas) method could be a possible ‘saviour’ for rice crops threatened by climate change and high food demand.

The study, published in CABI Reviews, highlights that while rice is one of the most consumed cereals worldwide and feeds about three billion people, climate-induced abiotic and biotic stresses have affected the production and quality of rice crops.

Dr Antonio Costa de Oliveira, lead author of the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil, and a team of fellow scientists found that the CRISPR/Cas tool was efficient in gene editing in studies related to yield, tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and rice grain quality.

However, the review, which sought to describe the different gene editing techniques and their respective applications in rice breeding, argues that the impact of the CRISPR/Cas approach in breeding programmes depends upon the cultivation of the edited plants on a large scale in the field.

Dr Costa de Oliveira said, “The development of new, higher yielding cultivars is necessary to ensure global food security.

“Although great progress has already been achieved by conventional breeding, biotechnological tools, such as transgenics and genome editing, can aid in meeting future demands.

“Gene editing is characterized by cutting and modifying target genes. Among the genome editing techniques, CRISPR/Cas has been proposed because of its ease of manipulation.

“Variants such as multiple Cas proteins, base editing and prime editing, which aim to increase editing efficiency have also been proposed. Edited plants are also more accepted because they are transgene free.”

The study outlines that a 50% increase in the current consumption of rice is projected for 2050 – which would mean a demand as high as 1.125 billion tonnes.

But the occurrence of biotic stresses (diseases – viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, pests and weeds) coupled with abiotic stresses (drought, submergence, salinity, heat, cold and heavy metals) is a limiting factor for rice production. 

Climate change also influences the frequency, intensity and duration of these stresses, the scientists say. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new rice cultivars with tolerance to stress and higher yield potential, since the expansion of the cultivated area is limited.

Dr Costa de Oliveira added, “The high potential of CRISPR/Cas9 editing, for instance, has aided in the development of broad-spectrum resistance against bacteria, fungi and viruses by silencing susceptibility genes and the insertion of resistance genes.

“In this sense, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing has made it possible to introduce mutations in three promoters of the SWEET gene that resulted in rice lines with broad-spectrum resistance to Xanthomonas oryzae pv. Oryzae.”

The researchers conclude by stating that although conventional breeding has been decisive so far, there is still a long way to go in order to meet future demands and face the challenges of rice cultivation.

“plants improved from genome editing and conventional breeding are similar in terms of risks to the environment and human health, which are practically non-existent,” Dr Costa de Oliveira said. “Therefore, it is expected that edited plants, in addition to meeting the demands, have good acceptance among consumers.”

 

Additional information

Main image: A scientist inspects rice in China (Credit: CABI).

Full paper reference

Nizolli, Valeria de Oliveira; Oliveira, Victoria Freitas de; Maia, Luciano Carlos da; Pegorario, Camila; de Oliveira, A. C. ‘Gene editing techniques in rice: new paths for an old crop,’ CABI Reviews, 3 March (2023). DOI: 10.1079/cabireviews.2023.0008

The paper can be read open access from 00:01hrs UK time 3 March, 2023, here: https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/10.1079/cabireviews.2023.0008

Media enquiries

For more information and an advance copy of the paper contact:

Dr Antonio Costa de Oliveira, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil – email: acostol@gmail.com

Wayne Coles, Senior PR Manager, CABI – email: w.coles@cabi.org

About CABI Reviews

CABI Reviews is a reviews journal covering agriculture, global health, nutrition, natural resources and veterinary science.

About CABI

CABI is an international not-for-profit organization that improves people’s lives by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.

Through knowledge sharing and science, CABI helps address issues of global concern such as improving global food security and safeguarding the environment. We do this by helping farmers grow more and lose less of what they produce, combating threats to agriculture and the environment from pests and diseases, protecting biodiversity from invasive species, and improving access to agricultural and environmental scientific knowledge. Our 49-member countries guide and influence our core areas of work, which include development and research projects, scientific publishing and microbial services.

We gratefully acknowledge the core financial support from our member countries (and lead agencies) including the United Kingdom (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), China (Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs), Australia (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research), Canada (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), Netherlands (Directorate-General for International Cooperation, and Switzerland (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). Other sources of funding include programme/project funding from development agencies, the fees paid by our member countries and profits from our publishing activities which enable CABI to support rural development and scientific research around the world.

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JOURNAL

CABI Reviews

DOI

10.1079/cabireviews.2023.0008 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Gene editing techniques in rice: new paths for an old crop

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Mar-2023

Fighting friction to protect machinery

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

 

VIDEO: COMBINATION OF AI AND CONTACT POSITION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR COMPLETE CONTACT AVOIDANCE. view more 

CREDIT: MOTOYUKI MURASHIMA

Mechanical systems in which moving parts come into regular contact are prone to damage due to the effects of friction. Researchers at Tohoku University have developed a contact control system, driven by artificial intelligence, to greatly reduce contact with damaged areas. Although currently tested only in lab experiments, they believe it could eventually help many types of machinery run more smoothly. 

"This could shift the design strategy of mechanical systems away from the traditional approach of developing new and superior materials to developing surfaces that can actively adapt to reduce the damage," says Professor Motoyuki Murashima. 

The work was a collaboration between Murashima at Tohoku University's Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering and colleagues at Nagoya University and the Korea Photonics Technology Institute in South Korea. 

The research is focused on the potential of innovative materials possessing 'morphing surfaces', which can be changed depending on the environment they operate in. These materials are being developed by several research groups to mimic a common flexibility found in living systems, such as leaf surfaces that change in response to variations in humidity. One example in engineering, previously developed by Murashima and colleagues, is a surface composed of a diaphragm supported by hard substrate, with changes in stress pressure altering the surface morphologies. 

The team developed an artificial intelligence procedure in which sensors analyse the friction between two surfaces. Having detected where damage is occurring, the procedure can then use the 'morphing' capacity of the surface to minimize the frictional contact with damaged regions. 

"This is the first research in the world to use artificial intelligence to control the shape of morphing surfaces and successfully detect the position of damage on interacting surfaces," says Murashima. 

As the analysis and adjustment proceeded in simulated test cases, the researchers were able to achieve a steady reduction in the fluctuated friction caused by contact between affected parts of the material under investigation. 

The proof-of-concept system used discs spinning within a cylinder. The crucial next step will be to move closer to situations in which the procedure could be applied to real engineering challenges, such as industrial machinery. The ultimate aim is to allow a wide range of machinery to operate with less routine wear and damage, achieving longer useful lifespans and cost savings due to less frequent part replacements. 

"An important next step is to develop more sophisticated learning and control algorithms that will reduce the time needed to learn the characteristics of the analysed surfaces and therefore achieve more refined and speedier control that prevents damage," says Murashima. 

How to avoid contact with damaged position using morphing surfaces.

The friction stabilizes as AI learning progresses.

CREDIT

Motoyuki Murashima

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JOURNAL

Tribology International

DOI

10.1016/j.triboint.2023.108280 

ARTICLE TITLE

Novel friction stabilization technology for surface damage conditions using machine learning

Experts share insights on evolving global vaccine landscape including mRNA trends

Novotech, the leading Asia Pacific centred biotech CRO with extensive experience in vaccine trials, is convening an expert panel webinar with Endpoints News covering the evolving landscape in vaccine development. (Register here)

Meeting Announcement

DIGITAL MANTRA GROUP

 

IMAGE: NOVOTECH AND ENDPOINTS WEBINAR, KEEPING PACE WITH THE EVOLVING GLOBAL LANDSCAPE IN VACCINE DEVELOPMENT view more 

CREDIT: ENDPOINTS

Novotech, the leading Asia Pacific centred biotech CRO with extensive experience in vaccine trials, is convening an expert panel webinar with Endpoints News covering the evolving landscape in vaccine development. (Register here)

 

Novotech research data shows between 2017 and 2021, there were close to 1,400 industry-sponsored single-country vaccine-based clinical trials globally, with the Asia Pacific involved in over 45% of the trials. Mainland China, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea were the frequently involved locations in the region.

 

During this period the top 3 regions including the US (369), EU7 (162) and APAC5 (541) together contributed over 1,000 vaccine trials with Asia-Pacific contributing more than 50% of the global share of trials.

 

Download our latest data report here: Vaccines – Asia Pacific Clinical Trial Landscape

 

Novotech offers biotechs a unique and unparalleled suite of early to late-phase CRO services across Europe and the US, with a focus on Asia Pacific where the company has built a reputation for delivering high-quality expedited clinical trials.

 

The Endpoints webinar, Keeping pace with the evolving global landscape in vaccine development, will hear from a panel of life science experts on the latest advancements and innovative modalities paving the way in the global vaccine development space including:

 

• The COVID-19 impact on drug development and the regulatory landscape including mRNA vaccines.
• Key factors contributing to Asia Pacific being recognised as the hub for vaccine development and opportunities for biotech’s to leverage.
• Key considerations for pre-clinical and clinical planning to accelerate vaccine development, supporting a robust global strategy.

 

Date/Time: March 09 11:00 am - 12:00 pm EST

Register here

 

Panelists:

 

SUSHANT SAHASTRABUDDHE

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR GENERAL, INTERNATIONAL VACCINE INSTITUTE (IVI)

Dr. Sushant Sahastrabuddhe, Associate Director General at the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), joined in July 2010, leading the clinical trials of IVI’s typhoid vaccine and process to achieve its licensure, the global clinical development of and licensure of SK bioscience’s COVID-19 vaccines and Phase 1 and 2 trials of Bharat Biotech’s Chikungunya vaccine. As a vaccine enthusiast with more than 17 years of experience in multiple countries across diverse projects, he continues to lead collaborative efforts with companies and partners in Korea, India and globally to get these vaccines through early- to late-stages of their clinical development. Dr. Sahastrabuddhe is also the Associate Editor for Vaccines for tropical diseases and associated with Yonsei University as Research Professor and with Universite Claude Bernanrd, Lyon France as Research Fellow. In 2021, Dr. Sahastrabuddhe was named an ‘Honorary Citizen of Seoul’ for his contributions to the joint efforts with Korean companies and international partners to develop vaccines against COVID-19 and other diseases.

 

PAUL GRIFFIN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, INFECTIOUS DISEASES PHYSICIAN, MICROBIOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

An Infectious Diseases Physician and Microbiologist, Dr. Paul Griffin was appointed as the Director of Infectious Diseases at Mater Health Services in 2013 and continues an appointment as an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Queensland Medical School. Additionally, Dr. Griffin chairs the Advanced Training Committee in Infectious Diseases with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the committee that oversees the training of Infectious Diseases specialists in Australia.

Previously, Dr. Griffin was the Principal Investigator (PI) and Medical Director at Nucleus Network, a contract research organization specializing in infectious diseases trials, which included a PI role on in excess of 125 clinical trials predominantly in Infectious Diseases including novel vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines. With fellowships in Infectious Diseases from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, in Clinical Microbiology from the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and from the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Griffin has an active interest in vaccine education and advocacy and has become a trusted media authority and spokesperson across the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

BABAJI YADAV

SENIOR CONSULTANT, NOVOTECH DRUG DEVELOPMENT CONSULTING

Babaji Yadav is a Senior Consultant with over eight years of academic experience in pre-clinical oncology drug development and eight years of industry experience in drug development. Babaji has a strong background in pharmaceutical sciences with a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Otago, New Zealand. Previously he has worked as a Research Project Manager to oversee IND-enabling toxicology studies for lead oncology drugs and, prior to joining Novotech, was a Clinical Project Manager for early-phase oncology trials. Babaji is a UK Registered Toxicologist and at Novotech he is focused on providing technical toxicology advice and product development strategies to facilitate the entry of client’s compounds into clinical trials. Babaji has experience in small molecules, combination products, and biologicals including vaccines, proteins, monoclonal antibodies, and advanced cell and gene therapies.

 

JENNIFER ARELLANO

DIRECTOR OF CLINICAL SERVICES (PHILIPPINES), NOVOTECH

Jennifer Arellano is the Director of Clinical Services in the Philippines with over 25 years of technical and leadership experience in managing clinical trial operations for sponsors and CROs. With a Bachelor of Industrial Pharmacy from the University of the Philippines and a Pharmacist license, Jennifer’s research operations experience includes monitoring, auditing, project leadership, feasibility, study start-up, driving inspection readiness and hosting regulatory inspection, client engagement and business development, learning & development and organization SOP development/review. Jennifer has contributed to the transformation of the Philippine clinical research industry – bringing improvement to the local clinical research regulations and practices and is the founding President of a non-profit organization, the Philippine Clinical Research Professionals Inc, with more than 400 members from pharmaceutical and CROs and has, more recently, volunteered pro-bono services during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide trial management consultancy to the Philippine DOH-funded trials such as WHO Solidarity COVID-19 Treatment and Vaccine trials, Avigan COVID-19 treatment trial, and Philippine Heart Association funded cardiovascular outcome study.

Novotech has recently acquired EastHORN a European CRO with clinical, medical and regulatory expertise in multiple strategically important locations across the continent. The acquisition is part of Novotech’s global expansion program in Europe and the US.

Novotech has been benchmarked as a top 10 CRO among the world’s leading CROs, is the recipient of the Asia Pacific Cell & Gene Therapy Clinical Trials Excellence award and the Asia-Pacific Contract Research Organization Company of the Year Award, and has signed 45 Leading Site Partnership agreements over the last 3 years.

About Novotech Novotech-CRO.com

 

Novotech is the leading Asia Pacific centred biotech CRO with global execution capabilities. Novotech is a clinical CRO with labs, phase I facilities, drug development consulting services and FDA regulatory expertise and has experience in over 5,000 clinical projects, including Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials and bioequivalence studies. Novotech is positioned to serve biotech clients conducting clinical trials in Asia Pacific, the US and Europe. Novotech has over 3,000 staff globally and 33 office locations across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.

 

For more information visit https://novotech-cro.com/contact

Scientists find that people use emojis to hide, as well as show, their feelings

Scientists studying emoji use in Japan found that the images were used to soften the impact of negative expressions as well as to express positive feelings 😈😈😈😱😻

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

Have you ever received an unwanted gift and still said ‘thank you’? This choice to hide a negative emotion is a display rule — one of many which define socially appropriate responses to emotions. Although display rules can promote interpersonal harmony, they can also have negative consequences for the person choosing to change how they express emotions. As more social interaction goes online, scientists are investigating how emojis are used to reflect our emotions in different contexts. Are there display rules that apply to emojis, and how do those affect people’s wellbeing?

“As online socializing becomes more prevalent, people have become accustomed to embellishing their expressions and scrutinizing the appropriateness of their communication,” said Moyu Liu of the University of Tokyo, who investigated this question in a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. “However, I realized that this may lead us to lose touch with our authentic emotions.”

Emojis and emotions

Liu recruited 1,289 participants, all users of the most-downloaded emoji keyboard in Japan, Simeji, to investigate how emojis were used to express or mask emotions. Previous research had established that people use emojis as functional equivalents of facial expressions, but not the relationships between emotions expressed and experienced. This is when display rules can prove problematic: if the dissonance between the emotions that you experience and the emotions that you can express is too great, emotional exhaustion can develop, although members of different cultures experience this differently.

Display rules impact more on negative emotions, which it is usually considered less appropriate to express. It is also often more acceptable to express emotions to someone who is closer to you, and it can be more acceptable for a particular gender to express particular emotions. It can also be considered more acceptable to express negative emotions in more individualist societies.

Wearing your heart on your screen

The participants in Liu’s study provided demographic data, answered questions about their subjective wellbeing, and rated how often they use emojis. They were given messages with varying social contexts, responded to them as they would normally, and rated the intensity of the expression of their emotions.

Liu found that people chose to express more emotions with emojis in private contexts or with close friends. Respondents expressed least emotion towards higher-status individuals. Intense expressions of emotion came with matching emojis, unless people felt the need to mask their true emotions: for instance, using smiling emojis to mask negative emotions. Negative emojis were used only where negative feelings were very strongly felt. Expressing emotions with emojis was associated with higher subjective wellbeing compared to masking emotions.

“With online socializing becoming ever more prevalent, it is important to consider whether it is causing us to become more detached from our true emotions,” said Liu. “Do people require a ‘shelter’ to express their genuine emotions, and is it possible to break free from pretense and share our true selves in online settings?”

Liu emphasized that the study should be expanded in the future. The Simeji keyboard is extremely popular among young women, which skewed the sample towards women and generation Z. However, this also reflected the gender imbalance in use of emojis in general and the Simeji keyboard in particular. A broader pool of participants would provide a fuller picture of the display rules around emojis.

“First, the highly gender-imbalanced sample may have led to stronger results. Future research should explore potential gender differences in emoji display rules and examine the structural issues surrounding the formation of these emotion cultures,” cautioned Liu. “Second, Japanese culture's emphasis on interpersonal harmony and concealment of negative emotions may have influenced the results.”

“I would welcome the opportunity to expand this study and investigate the display rules for emojis across different genders and cultures,” added Liu. “Collaboration with scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds would be invaluable in this endeavor, and I am open to any contact.”

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1035742 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Are you really smiling? Display rules for emojis and the relationship between emotion management and psychological well-being

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Mar-2023

Archaeological study of 24 ancient Mexican cities reveals that collective forms of governance, infrastructural investments, and collaboration all help societies last longer

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FIELD MUSEUM

 

IMAGE: THE SHARED CENTRAL PLAZA OF MONTE ALBAN, A CITY THAT LASTED FOR MORE THAN 1,300 YEARS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY LINDA M. NICHOLAS

Some cities only last a century or two, while others last for a thousand years or more. Often, there aren’t clear records left behind to explain why. Instead, archaeologists piece together clues from the cities’ remains to search for patterns that help account for why certain places retained their importance longer than others. In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, researchers examined 24 ancient cities in what’s now Mexico and found that the cities that lasted the longest showed indications of collective forms of governance, infrastructural investments, and cooperation between households.

“For years, my colleagues and I have investigated why and how certain cities maintain their importance or collapse,” says Gary Feinman, the study’s lead author and MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago.

In previous studies, Feinman and his colleagues cast a wide net in terms of the cities they looked at, ranging across Mesoamerica over thousands of years. They found a broad pattern of societies with good governance that fostered the well-being of their people lasting longer than ones with autocratic leaders and big disparities in wealth. This new study tightens the focus on cities from similar places and times: all 24 of the cities analyzed were in the western half of Mesoamerica and were founded between 1000 and 300 BCE.

To a non-archaeologist, looking at ancient ruins and trying to extrapolate what its government was like might seem like an impossible task. But remnants of the cities’ buildings, ground plans, plazas, and monuments contain clues.

“We looked at public architecture, we looked at the nature of the economy and what sustained the cities. We looked at the signs of rulership, whether they seem to be heavily personalized or not,” said Feinman. Art and architecture celebrating larger-than-life rulers point to more autocratic or despotic societies, whereas the depiction of leaders in groups, often masked, is more indicative of shared power arrangements.

Feinman and his co-authors, David Carballo of Boston University, Linda Nicholas of the Field Museum, and Stephen Kowalewski of the University of Georgia, found that among the 24 ancient cities they analyzed, the ones with more collective forms of governance tended to remain in power longer than the autocratically ruled cities, sometimes by a thousand years. However, even among places that likely had good governance, some cities outlasted others.

To get at why these similarly governed cities fared differently, the researchers examined other aspects of their makeup including infrastructure and indications of household interdependence. “We looked for evidence of path dependence, which basically means the actions or investments that people make that later end up constraining or fostering how they respond to subsequent hazards or challenges,” says Feinman.

Early efforts to construct dense, interconnected residential spaces and the construction of large, central, open plazas were two of the factors that the authors found contributed to greater sustainability and importance of the early cities.

To examine sustainability in the past, most research looks for correlations between specific climatic or environmental events and the human responses. This approach may make sense, but it is hard to know whether the timing is reliable. Such studies often emphasize a correlation between environmental crisis and collapse without also considering how other cities successfully navigated the challenges and continued as major population centers.

The authors use a different tack. Knowing residents faced hazards, including drought, earthquakes, periodic hurricanes/heavy rains, challenges from competing centers and groups, they examined the durational history of the 24 centers and what factors fostered their sustainability. The finding that governance had an important role in sustainability shows that “responses to crises and disasters are to a degree political,” says Linda Nicholas, an adjunct curator at the Field Museum and co-author of the study.

The cities that lasted the longest had a combination of infrastructural investments and collective governance. It’s a lesson still relevant today. “You cannot evaluate responses to catastrophes like earthquakes, or threats like climatic change, without considering governance,” says Feinman. “The past is an incredible resource to understand how to address contemporary issues.”

  

Aerial image of Monte Alban

CREDIT

Photo by Linda M. Nicholas

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2023.1076740 

ARTICLE TITLE

Sustainability and duration of early central places in prehispanic Mesoamerica

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Mar-2023