Scientists show how we can anticipate rather than react to extinction in mammals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: CONCENTRATIONS OF TERRESTRIAL MAMMAL SPECIES WITH MULTIPLE FUTURE RISK FACTORS view more 

CREDIT: CURRENT BIOLOGY/CARDILLO ET AL.

Most conservation efforts are reactive. Typically, a species must reach threatened status before action is taken to prevent extinction, such as establishing protected areas. A new study published in the journal Current Biology on April 10 shows that we can use existing conservation data to predict which currently unthreatened species could become threatened and take proactive action to prevent their decline before it is too late.

“Conservation funding is really limited,” says lead author Marcel Cardillo (@MarcelCardillo) of Australian National University. “Ideally, what we need is some way of anticipating species that may not be threatened at the moment but have a high chance of becoming threatened in the future. Prevention is better than cure.”

To predict “over-the-horizon” extinction risk, Cardillo and colleagues looked at three aspects of global change—climate change, human population growth, and the rate of change in land use—together with intrinsic biological features that could make some species more vulnerable. The team predicts that up to 20% of land mammals will have a combination of two or more of these risk factors by the year 2100.

“Globally, the percentage of terrestrial mammal species that our models predict will have at least one of the four future risk factors by 2100 ranges from 40% under a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario with broad species dispersal to 58% under a fossil-fueled development scenario with no dispersal,” say the authors.

“There’s a congruence of multiple future risk factors in Sub-Saharan African and southeastern Australia: climate change (which is expected to be particularly severe in Africa), human population growth, and changes in land use,” says Cardillo. “And there are a lot of large mammal species that are likely to be more sensitive to these things. It’s pretty much the perfect storm.”

Larger mammals in particular, like elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and kangaroos, are often more susceptible to population decline since their reproductive patterns influence how quickly their populations can bounce back from disturbances. Compared to smaller mammals, such as rodents, which reproduce quickly and in larger numbers, bigger mammals, such as elephants, have long gestational periods and produce fewer offspring at a time.

“Traditionally, conservation has relied heavily on declaring protected areas,” says Cardillo. “The basic idea is that you remove or mitigate what is causing the species to become threatened.”

“But increasingly, it's being recognized that that's very much a Western view of conservation because it dictates separating people from nature,” says Cardillo. “It's a sort of view of nature where humans don't play a role, and that's something that doesn't sit well with a lot of cultures in many parts of the world.”

In preventing animal extinction, the researchers say we must also be aware of how conservation impacts Indigenous communities. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to many Indigenous populations, and Western ideas of conservation, although well-intended, may have negative impacts.

Australia has already begun tackling this issue by establishing Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs), which are owned by Indigenous peoples and operate with the help of rangers from local communities. In these regions, humans and animals can coexist, as established through collaboration between governments and private landowners outside of these protected areas.

“There’s an important part to play for broad-scale modeling studies because they can provide a broad framework and context for planning,” says Cardillo. “But science is only a very small part of the mix. We hope our model acts as a catalyst for bringing about some kind of change in the outlook for conservation.”

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Current Biology, Cardillo et al. “Priorities for conserving the world’s terrestrial mammals based on over-the-horizon extinction risk” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00236-1

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.063 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Priorities for conserving the world’s terrestrial mammals based on over-the-horizon extinction risk

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Apr-2023

This elephant’s self-taught banana peeling offers glimpse of elephants’ broader abilities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

VIDEO: PHA PEELING BANANAS view more 

CREDIT: CURRENT BIOLOGY/KAUFMANN ET AL.

Elephants like to eat bananas, but they don’t usually peel them first in the way humans do. A new report in the journal Current Biology on April 10, however, shows that one very special Asian elephant named Pang Pha picked up banana peeling all on her own while living at the Berlin Zoo. She reserves it for yellow-brown bananas, first breaking the banana before shaking out and collecting the pulp, leaving the thick peel behind.

The female elephant most likely learned the unusual peeling behavior from watching her caretakers peel bananas for her, the study authors report. The findings in a single elephant show that elephants more broadly have special cognitive and manipulative abilities, they say.

“We discovered a very unique behavior,” said Michael Brecht (@BrechtLab) of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience. “What makes Pang Pha's banana peeling so unique is a combination of factors—skillfulness, speed, individuality, and the putatively human origin—rather than a single behavioral element.”

Like other elephants, Pha eats green or yellow bananas whole. She rejects brown bananas outright. But when it comes to yellow bananas spotted with brown—the kind one might reserve for banana bread—she eats after peeling them first.

Brecht and colleagues including Lena Kaufmann (@lena_v_kaufmann), also at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Andreas Ochs, Berlin Zoological Garden, made the discovery after learning from Pha’s caretakers about her unusual banana-peeling talent. At first, they were confused. They brought Pha nice yellow and green bananas, and she never peeled them.

“It was only when we understood that she peels only yellow-brown bananas that our project took off,” Brecht said.

When yellow-brown bananas are offered to a group of elephants, Pha changes her behavior, they report. She eats as many bananas as she can whole and then saves the last one to peel later.

Banana-peeling appears to be rare in elephants as far as anyone knows, and none of the other Berlin elephants engage in peeling. It’s not clear why Pha peels them. The researchers note, however, that she was hand raised by human caretakers in the Berlin Zoo. They never taught her to peel bananas, but they did feed her peeled bananas.

Based on this, the researchers suggest she acquired peeling through observational learning from humans. Earlier reports on African elephants suggest elephants can interpret human pointing gestures and classify people into ethnic groups, but complex human-derived manipulation behaviors, like banana-peeling, appear rather unique, according to the researchers. The findings in Pha nevertheless suggest that elephants overall have surprising cognitive abilities and impressive manipulative skill.

“Elephants have truly remarkable trunk skills and that their behavior is shaped by experience,” says Brecht.

The researchers find it surprising that Pha alone picked up on banana peeling. It leads them to wonder if such habits are normally passed on through elephant families. They’re now looking into other sophisticated trunk behaviors, such as tool use.

####

Current Biology, Kaufmann et al. “Elephant banana peeling” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00266-X

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

---

JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.076 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Elephant Banana Peeling

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Apr-2023

Navigating the cosmos with Georgia State’s CHARA Array

New instruments and plans for a seventh telescope at Georgia State’s CHARA Array will allow scientists to see the stars in greater detail than ever before.

Reports and Proceedings

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: GEORGIA STATE'S CHARA ARRAY IS AN OPTICAL INTERFEROMETER LOCATED ON MOUNT WILSON, CALIFORNIA view more 

CREDIT: GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

ATLANTA—Plans are underway to add a seventh movable telescope to Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy— known as the CHARA Array—that would increase the resolution, or the ability to see small objects, by a factor of three.

Located at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California and operated by Georgia State, the new telescope will be connected using fiber optics to transport the starlight, a technique that will serve as a pathfinder for future expansion of the Array. The update comes after a group of international scientists gathered in Atlanta to take part in the 2023 CHARA Science Meeting to share the latest developments in high-resolution astronomical imaging using the CHARA Array.

“Adding a seventh moveable telescope to the Array represents a great leap forward in stellar astronomy,” says Doug Gies, Regents’ Professor of Physics and Astronomy and director of the center. “Collaboration is truly fundamental for an undertaking like the CHARA Array. With scientists all over the world using our telescopes, this annual gathering is an important forum for us to share our latest discoveries.”

The CHARA Array combines the light from six optical telescopes spread across the mountaintop to image stars with a spatial resolution equivalent to a single telescope 331 meters (over 1000 ft) in diameter. The visible and infrared observatory offers astronomers the opportunity to capture images of space with better resolution than any other telescope in the world.

More than 40 members of the CHARA Consortium, which represents 10 institutions around the world, took part in the annual review of the latest scientific and technical progress.

Scientists gathered at Georgia State University in March 2023 for the CHARA Science Meeting and Imaging Workshop.

CHARA features a new suite of instruments built by partner institutions at the University of Michigan, University of Exeter, and Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France. This next generation of instrumentation provides unprecedented capabilities to image the surfaces of stars and their circumstellar environments at a variety of different wavelengths from the near-infrared to the visible part of the spectrum. Georgia State University is also building a new instrument that will increase the sensitivity of the CHARA Array to measure light 30 times fainter than possible now. This improvement will help astronomers probe the gas clouds swirling around supermassive black holes in very distant active galaxies.

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), CHARA has expanded its user base over the last six years by offering open access time to the global community of astronomers through a competitive proposal process offered through the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory. In addition to over 60 active observers at Georgia State University and partner institutions, the open-access program has received applications from over 350 visiting astronomers around the world.

“Expanding the user community brings new opportunities for innovative science projects that broaden the impact and productivity of the CHARA Array,’’ says Gail Schaefer, Director of the CHARA Array.

At the recent meeting, members presented some science highlights and findings from the CHARA Array.

• Georgia State graduate student Katherine Shepard presented results on a sample of evolved massive binary star systems surrounded by outflowing disks. The disks in these fascinating systems form as one star in the system grows in size as it evolves and material from that star is transferred to the companion. Some of the mass escapes into a disk that surrounds the system. Katherine is using the CHARA Array to resolve the structure of these disks and search for interactions between the disk and the inner binary system.
• Noura Ibrahim, a graduate student from the University of Michigan, imaged the ring-like structure of a circumstellar disk around the young star V1295 Aquila. Two images taken one month apart show a bright spot in the ring that rotates between the two epochs. This variation could be caused by a stellar companion, an exoplanet in formation, or asymmetries in the density distribution.
• Visiting astronomer Willie Torres at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics mapped the orbits in the Castor multiple star system. The system consists of Castor A and B that revolve around each other every 450 years, and each component in turn are short-period binary systems with periods of a few days. They are joined by a more distant component Castor C, which is also a binary. Torres used the CHARA Array to resolve the close, faint companions in Castor A and B for the first time. He combined these observations with historical observations spanning the past three centuries to map the orbits of the stars in the Castor system and measure their stellar masses with a precision better than 1%. The CHARA observations were also used to measure the radii of the two brightest stars to infer an age for the system of 290 million years.
• Rachael Roettenbacher, a Postdoctoral Associate from the University of Michigan, presented recent work on mapping starspots over a rotation cycle for the sun-like star Epsilon Eridani, which is orbited by an exoplanet. The starspot images, in combination with data from other telescopes, were used to develop a technique to distinguish between small changes in the stellar spectrum caused by starspots and those caused the orbiting planet. These techniques will improve the detection of planets around other stars.

The annual meeting was followed by a workshop on imaging and modeling of interferometric observations. Participants were given an overview of modeling and imaging software packages available to analyze data from stellar interferometers (arrays of telescopes that combine light together), and the workshop included interactive hands-on sessions where participants used the software tools to analyze data. Participants also brought their own data for review in order to get the most from observations made with the CHARA Array.

Scientists map gusty winds in a far-off neutron star system

The 2D map of this “disk wind” may reveal clues to galaxy formation.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: MIT ASTRONOMERS MAPPED THE “DISK WINDS” ASSOCIATED WITH THE ACCRETION DISK AROUND HERCULES X-1, A SYSTEM IN WHICH A NEUTRON STAR IS DRAWING MATERIAL AWAY FROM A SUN-LIKE STAR, REPRESENTED AS THE TEAL SPHERE. THE FINDINGS MAY OFFER CLUES TO HOW SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES SHAPE ENTIRE GALAXIES. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: JOSE-LUIS OLIVARES, MIT. BASED ON AN IMAGE OF HERCULES X-1 BY D. KLOCHKOV, EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY.

An accretion disk is a colossal whirlpool of gas and dust that gathers around a black hole or a neutron star like cotton candy as it pulls in material from a nearby star. As the disk spins, it whips up powerful winds that push and pull on the sprawling, rotating plasma. These massive outflows can affect the surroundings of black holes by heating and blowing away the gas and dust around them.

At immense scales, “disk winds” can offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies. Astronomers have observed signs of disk winds in many systems, including accreting black holes and neutron stars. But to date, they’ve only ever glimpsed a very narrow view of this phenomenon.

Now, MIT astronomers have observed a wider swath of winds, in Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star. This neutron star’s accretion disk is unique in that it wobbles, or “precesses,” as it rotates. By taking advantage of this wobble, the astronomers have captured varying perspectives of the rotating disk and created a two-dimensional map of its winds, for the first time.

The new map reveals the wind’s vertical shape and structure, as well as its velocity — around hundreds of kilometers per second, or about a million miles per hour, which is on the milder end of what accretion disks can spin up. 

If astronomers can spot more wobbling systems in the future, the team’s mapping technique could help determine how disk winds influence the formation and evolution of stellar systems, and even entire galaxies. 

“In the future, we could map disk winds in a range of objects and determine how wind properties change, for instance, with the mass of a black hole, or with how much material it is accreting,” says Peter Kosec, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “That will help determine how black holes and neutron stars influence our universe.”

Kosec is the lead author of a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. His MIT co-authors include Erin Kara, Daniele Rogantini, and Claude Canizares, along with collaborators from multiple institutions, including the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, U.K.

Fixed sight

Disk winds have most often been observed in X-ray binaries — systems in which a black hole or a neutron star is pulling material from a less dense object and generating a white-hot disk of inspiraling matter, along with outflowing wind. Exactly how winds are launched from these systems is unclear. Some theories propose that magnetic fields could shred the disk and expel some of the material outward as wind. Others posit that the neutron star’s radiation could heat and evaporate the disk’s surface in white-hot gusts.  

Clues to a wind’s origins may be deduced from its structure, but the shape and extent of disk winds has been difficult to resolve. Most binaries produce accretion disks that are relatively even in shape, like thin donuts of gas that spins in a single plane. Astronomers who study these disks from far-off satellites or telescopes can only observe the effects of disk winds within a fixed and narrow range, relative to their rotating disk. Any wind that astronomers manage to detect is therefore a small sliver of its larger structure. 

“We can only probe the wind properties at a single point, and we’re completely blind to everything around that point,” Kosec notes.

In 2020, he and his colleagues realized that one binary system could offer a wider view of disk winds. Hercules X-1 has stood out from most known X-ray binaries for its warped accretion disk, which wobbles as it rotates around the system’s central neutron star. 

“The disk is really wobbling over time every 35 days, and the winds are originating somewhere in the disk and crossing our line of sight at different heights above the disk with time,” Kosec explains. “That’s a very unique property of this system which allows us to better understand its vertical wind properties.”

A warped wobble

In the new study, the researchers observed Hercules X-1 using two X-ray telescopes — the European Space Agency’s XMM Newton and NASA’s Chandra Observatory. 

“What we measure is an X-ray spectrum, which means the amount of X-ray photons that arrive at our detectors, versus their energy. We measure the absorption lines, or the lack of X-ray light at very specific energies,” Kosec says. “From the ratio of how strong the different lines are, we can determine the temperature, velocity, and the amount of plasma within the disk wind.”

With Hercules X-1’s warped disk, astronomers were able to see the line of the disk moving up and down as it wobbled and rotated, similar to the way a warped record appears to oscillate when seen from edge-on. The effect was such that the researchers could observe signs of disk winds at changing heights with respect to the disk, rather than at a single, fixed height above a uniformly rotating disk. 

By measuring X-ray emissions and the absorption lines as the disk wobbled and rotated over time, the researchers could scan properties such as the temperature and density of winds at various heights with respect to its disk and construct a two-dimensional map of the wind’s vertical structure. 

“What we see is that the wind rises from the disk, at an angle of about 12 degrees with respect to the disk as it expands in space,” Kosec says. “It’s also getting colder and more clumpy, and weaker at greater heights above the disk.” 

The team plans to compare their observations with theoretical simulations of various wind-launching mechanisms, to see which could best explain the wind’s origins. Further out, they hope to discover more warped and wobbling systems, and map their disk wind structures. Then, scientists could have a broader view of disk winds, and how such outflows influence their surroundings — particularly at much larger scales. 

“How do supermassive black holes affect the shape and structure of galaxies?” poses Erin Kara, the Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics at MIT. “One of the leading hypotheses is that disk winds, launched from a black hole, can affect how galaxies look. Now we can get a more detailed picture of how these winds are launched, and what they look like.”

This research was supported in part by NASA.

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

---

JOURNAL

Nature Astronomy

ARTICLE TITLE

“Vertical wind structure in an X-ray binary revealed by a precessing accretion disk”

Changes in children’s screen time during pandemic

JAMA Pediatrics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: The largest increase in children’s recreational screen time during the pandemic was on weekdays, especially at the outset of the pandemic when schools were closed; this increase was greater than expected for age-related growth. Change in weekend screen time during the pandemic was not significant compared with weekday screen time. Once in-person school resumed, weekday screen time decreased versus that during the COVID-1 wave (spring 2020), although it remained consistently higher than pre-pandemic estimates and age-related expectations. 

Authors: Sheri Madigan, Ph.D., of the University of Calgary in Calgary, Canada, is the corresponding author.

 link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.0393)

Research Letter

April 10, 2023

Changes in Children’s Recreational Screen Time During the COVID-19 Pandemic

André Plamondon, PhD¹; Brae Anne McArthur, PhD²; Rachel Eirich, MSc²; et alNicole Racine, PhD³; Sheila McDonald, PhD²; Suzanne Tough, PhD²; Sheri Madigan, PhD²

Author Affiliations Article Information

JAMA Pediatr. Published online April 10, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.0393

The COVID-19 pandemic changed children’s daily lives, including their sedentary behavior.¹ A meta-analysis comparing the screen time duration of 29 017 children reported daily screen time increased from 1.4 hours prepandemic to 2.7 hours during the pandemic.² However, studies on children’s screen time compared differences from prepandemic to early in the pandemic, when restrictions and closures (eg, schools and gyms) were more prevalent.² It remains unknown if increases in screen time were sustained as pandemic restrictions changed. We compared children’s prepandemic screen time with screen time during 3 pandemic waves and assessed whether increases were greater than age-expected changes.

Methods

Participants were from All Our Families,^3,4 an ongoing pregnancy cohort of mothers and children from Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Table). Data included a 2018 survey of mothers and surveys of mothers and children during 3 pandemic waves: COVID 1 (spring 2020); COVID 2 (winter 2021), and COVID 3 (fall 2021). Screen time (ie, smartphone, tablet, gaming, or computer device use “for fun [outside of schoolwork]”) was reported in hours per typical weekday and weekend day. Schools were closed during the COVID-1 wave but were open during subsequent waves. The University of Calgary Institutional Ethics Board approved this cohort study. Written consent was obtained from participants. We followed the STROBE reporting guideline.

We performed multilevel modeling to compare waves of data collection while controlling for age (as a linear effect) using MPlus, version 8.8 (Muthén & Muthén). Two-sided P < .05 was considered significant. Data were analyzed from July 25 to November 11, 2022.

Results

Participants included 2123 mothers (mean [SD] age at pregnancy, 30.8 [4.4] years) and 1288 children (mean [SD] child age prepandemic, 7.9 [0.6] years; COVID-1 wave, 9.7 [0.8] years; COVID-2 wave, 10.4 [0.9] years; COVID-3 wave, 11.1 [0.8 years). We examined conditional means and 95% CIs across waves according to each participant type (Figure), controlling for age using a daily screen time of 0.12 to 0.15 hours per year of age.

For weekdays, mothers reported 1.35 (95% CI, 1.23-1.47) more mean daily hours of screen at COVID-1 wave vs prepandemic. At the COVID-2 wave, mothers and youths reported fewer hours in daily screen time vs the previous wave (Figure). Mothers reported a larger decrease than youths (−1.06 [95% CI, −1.15 to −0.97] hours vs −0.55 [−0.69 to −0.42] hours). Mean screen time did not differ between the COVID-2 and COVID-3 waves (Figure), although mean screen time was higher for both waves compared with that of prepandemic.

For weekends, participants reported increased mean daily screen time that did not differ significantly at each subsequent wave. However, when averaged, the increase in mean hours per day across waves reported by mothers (0.14 [95% CI, 0.07-0.21] hours) and youth (0.18 [95% CI, 0.10-0.26] hours) was significant. Compared with weekdays, on weekends mean hours of screen time did not significantly differ between prepandemic and COVID-1 wave, and concurrent maternal and youth reports of weekend screen time did not differ significantly.

Discussion

The largest increase in children’s recreational screen time during the pandemic was on weekdays, especially at the outset of the pandemic when schools were closed; this increase was greater than expected for age-related growth. Change in weekend screen time during the pandemic was not significant compared with weekday screen time. Once in-person school resumed, weekday screen time decreased vs that during the COVID-1 wave, although it remained consistently higher than prepandemic estimates and age-related expectations.

Participant agreement varied. Mothers and children reported similar time estimates when schools were closed, but differences in estimates were observed for weekdays when schools were open. If children are the best informants of their screen time, as they often are for their mental health,⁵ mothers may have underestimated daily weekday screen time or schools may have allowed more screen time when in-person learning resumed.

Study limitations include screen time measurement via self-report only and exclusion of other indicators of screen use: context (ie, connecting with others), content (eg, violent gaming), and type (eg, gaming vs smartphone) of screen use. These limitations warrant future research.

Back to top

Article Information

Accepted for Publication: January 22, 2023.

Published Online: April 10, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.0393

Corresponding Author: Sheri Madigan, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Ave, Calgary, AL T2N 1N4, Canada (sheri.madigan@ucalgary.ca).

Author Contributions: Drs Plamondon and Madigan had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Drs Tough and Madigan are senior authors.

Concept and design: Plamondon, Eirich, Madigan.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: Plamondon, McArthur, Racine, McDonald, Tough, Madigan.

Drafting of the manuscript: Plamondon, Madigan.

Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: All authors.

Statistical analysis: Plamondon, McArthur.

Obtained funding: Tough, Madigan.

Administrative, technical, or material support: Eirich, Tough, Madigan.

Supervision: Tough, Madigan.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Tough reported receiving grants from Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation outside the submitted work during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.

Funding/Support: The All Our Families study was funded by an Alberta Innovates Health Solutions Interdisciplinary Team grant 200700595 and the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation (Dr Tough). Funding for the data collection for the COVID-19 pandemic waves was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Children and Screens Institute of Digital Media and Child Development COVID-19 grant (Dr Madigan) and an Alberta Innovates grant (Dr Tough).

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funders 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 decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Data Sharing Statement: See the Supplement.

Additional Contributions: We acknowledge the contributions of the All Our Families research team who were compensated for their contributions to this work, and we thank the participants who took part in the study.

References

1.

Neville  RD, Lakes  KD, Hopkins  WG,  et al.  Global changes in child and adolescent physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis.   JAMA Pediatr. 2022;176(9):886-894. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.2313
ArticlePubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

2.

Madigan  S, Eirich  R, Pador  P, McArthur  BA, Neville  RD.  Assessment of changes in child and adolescent screen time during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis.   JAMA Pediatr. 2022;176(12):1188-1198. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.4116
ArticlePubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

3.

Tough  SC, McDonald  SW, Collisson  BA,  et al.  Cohort profile: the All Our Babies pregnancy cohort (AOB).   Int J Epidemiol. 2017;46(5):1389-1390k. doi:10.1093/ije/dyw363PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

4.

McDonald  SW, Lyon  AW, Benzies  KM,  et al.  The All Our Babies pregnancy cohort: design, methods, and participant characteristics.   BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2013;13(Suppl 1)(suppl 1):S2. doi:10.1186/1471-2393-13-S1-S2PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

5.

De Los Reyes  A, Youngstrom  EA, Swan  AJ, Youngstrom  JK, Feeny  NC, Findling  RL.  Informant discrepancies in clinical reports of youths and interviewers’ impressions of the reliability of informants.   J Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol. 2011;21(5):417-424. doi:10.1089/cap.2011.0011PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

Internet2 Community Exchange 2023 convenes research and education technology leaders in Atlanta

Sessions highlight digital inclusion and equity, automation, cloud strategy, cybersecurity, and more

Meeting Announcement

INTERNET2

 

IMAGE: INTERNET2 LOGO view more 

CREDIT: INTERNET2

Emerging and established leaders from the U.S. and global research and education (R&E) technology community will convene in Atlanta for the 2023 Internet2 Community Exchange, May 8-11.

Attendees will share perspectives, shape policy, and influence the development of services and infrastructures in support of their educational, research, and community-service missions. The program includes inspiring keynotes, expert-led talks, and workshops on topics including digital transformation, digital inclusion and equity, accessibility, cybersecurity, cloud strategy, trust and identity, advanced network modernization and automation, and collaborative projects to move the community forward.

Thought-Provoking Keynotes Set to Celebrate and Inspire

Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band and co-founder of VICE’s Terraform, will present the opening keynote, “The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet,” at 8:45 a.m. ET Tuesday, May 9. Evans will offer an insightful social history of the women visionaries at the vanguard of technology and innovation who made the internet what it is today.

A panel of leaders from historically underserved higher education institutions will take center stage to deliver the closing keynote, “Reframing our Perspective: Centering HBCU and TCU Voices to Reimagine a Stronger R&E Community,” at 1:15 p.m. ET Thursday, May 11. Panelists will spotlight their institutions’ lasting impacts and ask to reimagine together how to ensure equal participation in the national and global R&E communities.

More Program Highlights

The Internet2 Community Exchange event program includes 44 presentations led by subject-matter experts, 29 working meetings for community groups, three technical workshops on network automation and security, and an invitation-only Leadership Exchange for executive leaders in the Internet2 community.

With dozens of sessions to choose from, here are some of the don’t-miss highlights:

• Building a Cohesive Cloud Community – Higher ed panelists will discuss a joint effort by the EDUCAUSE Cloud Community Group, its co-chairs, Internet2, and the community at large that has led to interesting and potentially transformative outcomes.
• CIO Perspectives on Federated Cybersecurity for NIH Research – The National Institutes of Health will host a panel discussion about the critical importance of secure credentials in trust federations to enable and protect highly collaborative research environments.
• What is Happening in Network Services? – Internet2’s new vice president of Network Services will share about the new Insight Console, community discussions around automation tools and methods, efforts to improve routing security across the research and education community, and support for data-intensive science in the U.S. and around the world.
• MS-CC - Bridging the Digital Divide – Panelists will discuss the Minority Serving – Cyberinfrastructure Consortium’s plans to affect change so students and faculty at HBCUs, TCUs, and other MSIs have access to advanced cyberinfrastructure capabilities.
• Research IT Strategic Planning – Panelists will discuss a free assessment tool and complementary resources used by institutions of all sizes and complexity to aid in the research IT strategic planning needs of CIOs and senior executive leadership.
• Enabling RPKI – A speaker from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) will talk about how network operators can strengthen their routing security through Resource Public Key Infrastructure services.
• InCommon Futures 2.0 – The InCommon Steering Committee chair will review the InCommon visioning process and implementation timeline for identity tools and services used by the community.
• Aiming High: Internet2’s Five-Year Roadmap – Leaders of the five-year roadmap process will provide an update on steps being taken to categorize the input and feedback received to date, and will share how Internet2 plans to work with the community to validate priorities and future direction.

Two co-located events will also take place during Community Exchange: the Higher Education Cloud Forum and the first MS-CC Annual Meeting.

More information can be found on the 2023 Internet2 Community Exchange website.

About Internet2

Internet2® is a non-profit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages, integrates, and amplifies the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research, and community service missions. Internet2’s core infrastructure components include the nation’s largest and fastest research and education network that was built to deliver advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by the community-developed trust and identity framework. For more information, visit https://internet2.edu or follow @internet2 on Twitter.