Sunday, May 07, 2023

Uncovering the mysteries of alfalfa seed dormancy through multispectral imaging analysis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KEAI COMMUNICATIONS CO., LTD.

Alfalfa seeds often show dormancy and fail to germinate 

IMAGE: SCIENTISTS IN CHINA HAVE NOW USED MULTISPECTRAL IMAGING, MACHINE LEARNING, AND “OMICS” TO REVEAL THE MECHANISMS BEHIND ALFALFA SEED DORMANCY view more 

CREDIT: M7SANCHEZ

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), commonly called the “King of Grass,” is a legume grown in many parts of the world as a source of animal fodder. It is prized in the forage industry for its high protein content and biomass yield. Recently, alfalfa protein has found applications in aquaculture, pet food industry and human diet. Furthermore, it is seen as an environmentally beneficial crop, with positive impacts on biodiversity and soil nitrogen conservation.

Alfalfa produces two seed types—hard and non-hard—with no obvious visible differences. Unfortunately, the hard seeds cannot be avoided and pose a significant challenge from an economic standpoint. Hard seeds have low value as they exacerbate slow germination, nonuniform seedling establishment, increased weed competition, and germination failure. Seed dormancy—the delayed germination following embryogenesis—has multiple dormancy categories. Of these, hormone-mediated physiological dormancy (PD), hard seededness for physical dormancy (PD), and combinatorial dormancy (PY+PD) are suspected to have a role in alfalfa seed germination.

Notably, there is a dearth of hard seed research in legumes and until recently, dormancy in alfalfa was thought to only include the PY type. Now, scientists from the College of Grassland Science and Technology, China Agricultural University led by Associate Professor Shangang Jia have found the PY+PD pattern in this species of legume through multispectral imaging (MSI) technology combined with ‘multi-omics’ platforms.

Their study was made available online on 31 March 2023 and was published in The Crop Journal.

Explaining their motivation behind pursuing this research, Dr. Jia says, "Studying dormancy in hard and non-hard alfalfa seeds is problematic. Doing comparative research by soaking the seeds in water–a technique called imbibition–is time-consuming and causes the non-hard seeds to germinate. We needed an accurate, non-destructive, and high-throughput approach to gain deeper insights."

By combining MSI with multi-omics (transcriptomics, metabolomics, and methylomics) platforms, the team developed a high-throughput technique for identifying seeds, comparing the dormancy pattern, and observing differences in physiology, metabolism, and gene expression in hard and non-hard seeds.

“The technique could successfully identify hard alfalfa seeds with high accuracy—of up to 100%. Furthermore, the transcriptomics, metabolomics, and methylomics analyses revealed that abscisic acid (ABA) responses played a key role in hard alfalfa seeds,” adds Jia.

ABA—a hormone that induces dormancy—acts like a sleeping pill that keeps seeds in a dormant state. Moreover, the balance of ABA and other hormones like indole acetic acid (IAA) and jasmonic acid (JA) also govern the degree of seed dormancy. Compared to non-hard seeds, hard seeds were enriched in antioxidants and flavonoids, lipids, and hormone biosynthetic pathways. Furthermore, the increased expression of ABA genes and the differential methylation of ABA-responsive genes in hard alfalfa seeds underscored the ABA responses.

The team also identified non-PY hard seeds that contained higher ABA/IAA and ABA/JA levels and did not germinate following treatment to break dormancy. This finding gave credence to the involvement of the PD pattern and indicated that PY+PD, rather than PY alone governed the germination failure of hard alfalfa seeds.

"We believe we've provided a theoretical and technical framework for exploring alfalfa hard seed dormancy, and our findings could certainly guide the optimal processing of these seeds in the alfalfa seed industry!" concludes Jia with an air of excitement.

The scientists are confident their findings will have a strong bearing on future research and could have immense economic implications.

###

Contact the corresponding author: Shangang Jia

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 100 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

 

Researchers call for single approach on wild horses

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

The U.S. federal government’s management of wild horses is doomed to fail without fundamental changes in policy and the law, according to a new paper led by researchers at the University of Wyoming and Oklahoma State University.

Because contrasting societal views have created an approach that simultaneously manages horses on the range as wildlife, livestock and pets, current government programs are incapable of succeeding, the researchers argue in the article that appears in the journal BioScience.

“For the federal government to sustain healthy populations, ecosystem health and fiscal responsibility, lawmakers must properly define how feral equids should be labeled,” the scientists wrote. “Each label (wild, livestock, pet) has validity, and management plans can be implemented to optimize equid populations with other land uses. Furthermore, providing a clear definition of feral equids will determine the legal tools that can be applied for their management.”

The lead author of the paper is Jacob Hennig, a former UW Ph.D. student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Oklahoma State. Hennig’s advisers at UW -- Professor Jeff Beck and Associate Professor Derek Scasta, both in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management -- are co-authors of the paper. So are Oklahoma State Professor Sam Fuhlendorf and Assistant Professor Courtney Duchardt, who is a former UW Ph.D. student; Colorado State University research scientist Saeideh Esmaeili, also a former UW Ph.D. student; and Tolani Francisco, of Native Healing LLC in New Mexico.

The researchers note that, while the fossil record shows there were horses in North America previously, they went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

“The equids currently inhabiting North America did not coevolve there; they are descendants of livestock that underwent millennia of domestication and artificial selection,” the paper says. “Most large predators that would help limit their population growth went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene (epoch), and the Anthropocene (current epoch) has led to further predator reductions.”

Because wild horses have no natural predators, cannot be legally hunted under federal law and are no longer slaughtered as livestock in the United States, their numbers on the range have more than doubled in the last decade, the researchers say. They also note that horses removed from the range by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and held in government facilities and private lands have grown in number by 33 percent during that time, with the BLM spending over $550 million since 2013 supporting the captive animals.

“The BLM has increased the number of individuals removed from the wild in each of the past four years, leading to decreases in the on-range population,” the paper acknowledges. “However, the total on-range population is still approximately 50,000 individuals above the maximum (appropriate management level), and the recent moderate decrease in on-range individuals is directly correlated with an increase in the off-range population and subsequent expenditures.”

Removing wild horses from Western rangelands and placing them in long-term holding is not a solution, the researchers say. Doing so “simply exports the issue elsewhere -- including the imperiled tallgrass prairie ecosystem -- with unknown ecological effects,” they wrote, noting that there are now about 23,500 wild horses on private lands in Oklahoma, five times more than the number on open range in Wyoming.

Additionally, the paper contends that wild horses have a comparatively large impact on the range, as they consume more forage and water than ruminants such as cattle, per capita.

The scientists credit the BLM for basing recent management on science, including better population estimates of wild horses and deploying measures to keep them from reproducing. But there are too many animals on the range for this approach to work.

“Although the BLM has admirably increased fertility control research and application, if they are unable to also remove tens of thousands of equids, this process is doomed to be a Sisyphean task,” the researchers wrote.

The federal Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 essentially calls for wild horses to freely roam like wild animals, but they are treated differently from wild animals because the act prohibits hunting. At the same time, the BLM’s practice of gathering and removing wild horses from the range “more closely resemble livestock operations than wildlife management, whereas adoption programs, sales restrictions and the abolition of slaughter have resulted in feral equids effectively serving as society’s pets,” the paper says.

Choosing one of the labels -- wild, livestock or pets -- offers the best hope for the federal government to succeed in wild horse management, the scientists wrote.

“As a wild species that lacks sufficient predation to keep most populations in check, a hunting or culling program, like those for other wild ungulates, could slow their population growth,” the paper says. “As livestock, gathers and removals that lead to sale or slaughter would limit growth and give the animals the monetary value they currently lack. As pets, simultaneously conducting large-scale removals and administering fertility control, including permanent sterilization (and potentially euthanasia), could reduce population sizes and slow growth.”

The researchers’ conclusion?

“The current state of feral horse and burro management in the United States is unsustainable and will continue to be a painful resource sink without fundamental changes to the law. We recommend that the U.S. federal government should officially declare the status of feral equids as either wild, livestock or pets and should provide the BLM and (U.S. Forest Service) the legal latitude and funding to develop and implement respective management options.”

Archaea in a warming climate become less diverse, more predictable

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Jizhong Zhou 

IMAGE: ED BY JIZHONG ZHOU, PH.D., THE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL GENOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA, AN INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH TEAM CONDUCTED A LONG-TERM EXPERIMENT THAT FOUND THAT CLIMATE WARMING REDUCED THE DIVERSITY OF AND SIGNIFICANTLY ALTERED THE COMMUNITY STRUCTURE OF SOIL ARCHAEA. view more 

CREDIT: PROVIDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Led by Jizhong Zhou, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics at the University of Oklahoma, an international research team conducted a long term experiment that found that climate warming reduced the diversity of and significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

At the microbiological level, life can be described as belonging to one of three kingdoms – how species are described in relation to one another. Eukarya contains complex organisms like animals and plants and microorganisms such as fungi. The other two categories, bacteria and archaea, are comprised only of microorganisms. Archaea are prevalent in a range of environments, from some of the most hostile like volcanoes and permafrost. However, archaea are also common in the human microbiome and as an important part of soil ecology.

“As temperature is a major driver of biological processes, climate warming will impact various ecological communities,” Zhou said. “Based on long-term time-series data, our previous studies revealed that experimental warming leads to the divergent succession of soil bacterial and fungal communities, accelerates microbial temporal scaling, reduces the biodiversity of soil bacteria, fungi and protists, but increases bacterial network complexity and stability. However, how climate warming affects the temporal succession of the archaeal community remains elusive. Archaea are ubiquitously present in soil and are vital to soil functions, e.g., nitrification and methanogenesis.”

Using a long-term multifactor experimental field site at OU’s Kessler Atmospheric and Ecological Field Station, the researchers showed that experimental warming of a tallgrass prairie ecosystem significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea and reduced their taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity. In contrast to the researchers’ previous observations in bacteria and fungi, their finds show that climate warming leads to convergent succession of the soil archaeal community, suggesting archaeal community structures would become more predictable in a warmer world.

###

About the Project

The article, “Experimental Warming Leads to Convergent Succession of Grassland Archaeal Community” published May 3, 2023 in Nature Climate Change. DOI no. 10.1038/s41558-023-01664-x. Zhou, who is also a George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Microbiology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, is the corresponding author. The first author is Ya Zhang, Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology at OU. 

About the University of Oklahoma Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships 

The University of Oklahoma is a leading research university classified by the Carnegie Foundation in the highest tier of research universities in the nation. Faculty, staff and students at OU are tackling global challenges and accelerating the delivery of practical solutions that impact society in direct and tangible ways through research and creative activities. OU researchers expand foundational knowledge while moving beyond traditional academic boundaries, collaborating across disciplines and globally with other research institutions as well as decision makers and practitioners from industry, government and civil society to create and apply solutions for a better world. Find out more at ou.edu/research.

UBS white paper: The Rise of the Impact Economy


Zurich  03 May 2023, 

 The latest paper from UBS’s Sustainability and Impact Institute argues that the output economy has become out of step with today’s priorities and charts the evolution of an economy that values people and the planet. Welcome to impact economics.

The UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute today released its latest white paper, ‘The rise of the impact economy: Evolving to the next level,’ and makes a compelling argument for adopting new economic metrics that price in profit, people and planet, and reach beyond outdated output metrics such as GDP.

The key points raised in the white paper are as follows:

The impact economy is better placed than outdated models to help solve the fundamental economic problem of how to allocate our limited means between our unlimited desires

The impact economy addresses a much broader set of people’s well-being needs than simply the quest for material wealth

Financial institutions have a clear role to embrace the impact economy as part of being responsible participants in civil society

The paper charts the evolution of the economic system and argues the world has outgrown GDP and the focus from policy makers on equating living standards with the making of paid-for products. It argues that the impact economy is the necessary next phase in the world’s economic evolution.

The paper urges governments to use both incentives and regulations to drive change with tax incentives used to encourage capital flows into an impact economy; and direct market regulations limiting or redirecting the flows of capital when needed. There is a need for governments and regulators to work with independent research and analytical organizations to build more transparent, accurate and wide-ranging data resources to underpin this new economy.

Paul Donovan, Chief Economist UBS Global Wealth Management: “We are seeing a big shift in the way we quantify economic progress. The output economy and its measures of growth like GDP are no longer fit for purpose in the world we live in now. In fact, it distorts the very thing economics is supposed to achieve. We are evolving towards an impact economy that values people and planet, assuring the consideration of all outcomes in the valuations of goods, services and the entire economy.”

“Financial services firms like UBS not only have a duty to adapt to this evolution but have a clear role to help their clients cope with change successfully in four ways. First, as global employers they need to emphasize the importance of people and planet. Secondly, by harnessing their intellectual firepower and data, they need to make a compelling case for an effective impact economy. Thirdly, they need to advise their clients on how the global economy is changing and how this will impact their investments. Finally, as investors, financial services companies should use different types of capital to develop the impact economy and leverage their ownership of investee companies to drive change.”

UBS Group AG


The rise of the impact economy | UBS Global PDF

How online art viewing can impact our well-being

New research sheds light on the positive effect of online art breaks on our mood

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT

Who benefits from online art viewing, and how 

IMAGE: A NEW STUDY REVEALS HOW AND WHY ONLINE ART VIEWING POSITIVELY IMPACTS MENTAL WELL-BEING. view more 

CREDIT: MPI FOR EMPIRICAL AESTHETICS / F. BERNOULLY

Art can have a positive effect on our mood. But does this also work when we look at paintings on a screen? An international research team involving the University of Vienna, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main decided to investigate this question. The study was funded by the EU Horizon ART*IS Project. The results have now been published as an open access article in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

240 study participants viewed an interactive Monet Water Lily art exhibition from Google Arts and Culture. By filling out a questionnaire, they provided information about their state of mind, how much pleasure they felt when looking at the pictures, and how meaningful they considered the experience to be. The results showed significant improvements in mood and anxiety after just a few minutes of viewing.

“Online art viewing is an untapped source of support for well-being that can be consumed as bite-sized bits of meaning-making and pleasure,” says MacKenzie Trupp, first author from the University of Vienna.

The study also found that some participants were more receptive to art than others and were able to benefit more. This advantage could be predicted using a metric called “aesthetic responsiveness.”

“Aesthetic responsiveness describes how people react to diverse aesthetic stimuli, like art and nature. The results showed that individuals with high levels of art and aesthetic responsiveness benefit more from online art viewing due to having more pleasurable and meaningful art experiences,” explains Edward A. Vessel of MPIEA, developer of the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA).

The findings of this study are particularly interesting for people who are unable to visit museums in person, such as those with health problems. Furthermore, the results suggest that interactive art exhibitions and similar online experiences should be designed with an awareness of individual differences in aesthetic responsiveness. The study thus expands insight into the benefits and limitations of art in digital media and points the way for increasing the wellness potential of online art.

Will Yellowstone’s geology produce rock music?


World first live data sonification performance will turn seismographs into sound

Meeting Announcement

ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY

Dr Domenico Vicinanza, Anglia Ruskin University 

IMAGE: DR DOMENICO VICINANZA, ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY view more 

CREDIT: DR DOMENICO VICINANZA

A scientist will attempt to turn seismic activity – recorded in real time at Yellowstone National Park – into music during an ambitious live performance on Tuesday, 9 May.

Dr Domenico Vicinanza, a Senior Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, is a leading expert in data sonification, which is the process of converting scientific measurements into sound, and the event will be the first time that data sonification using live geophysical data has been attempted on stage.

During the performance at the 2023 Internet2 Community Exchange conference in Atlanta, Georgia, which brings together universities and researchers from across the United States and beyond, Dr Vicinanza will access seismographic data being recorded by the US Geological Survey in Yellowstone National Park.

The music will be produced live on stage with the help of a computer programme developed by Dr Vicinanza, which will map the seismographic data to musical notes. It will then be performed by Dr Alyssa Schwartz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Flute and Musicology at Fairmont State University.

Yellowstone is one of the most seismically active areas of the United States, with as many as 3,000 earthquakes recorded annually. Earthquakes at Yellowstone often occur in “swarms”, with many happening in a short space of time.

This element of chance makes it impossible to predict what the music will sound like, and the duo are ready for whatever nature throws at them.

Dr Vicinanza, who in addition to his role at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is the coordinator for the arts and humanities at GÉANT, the European network for research and education, said: “We have absolutely no idea how the music will turn out.

“Using my programme I’ll be converting the data to musical notes and if there’s significant seismic activity and big spikes in the data we’re receiving at that time, the music will be incredibly dramatic. Equally it could be quite serene, so it’s a huge artistic challenge for Alyssa to interpret, and it’s really Alyssa who will be taking all the risks.

“Alyssa won’t be able to change any note, but she will be able to interpret the piece of music created before her eyes, and she will be able to creatively use speed, articulation, or make certain parts softer or louder. It might be really difficult to play, but that’s what makes it exciting, and Alyssa is incredibly brave to be doing this in front of a live audience.”

Dr Vicinanza’s ongoing work with Yellowstone National Park is the first time the US National Parks Service has recognised music as a research output. He will visit Yellowstone next year to capture his own recordings amongst the hot springs and geysers, but in the meantime he’s delighted to have this opportunity to bring scientific data from the country’s oldest national park to a wider audience.

Dr Vicinanza added: “By being able to ‘perform’ what would otherwise be viewed on a graph, we’re able to bring the power of nature to life and help more people experience the natural wonders of Yellowstone.    

“Music, and sound in general, can be a really useful way of experiencing science – for scientists as well as the general public. After all, our ears are much more sensitive to small changes than our eyes.

“Every pattern, spike, or sudden change in the music is a direct representation of what is happening at that spot in Yellowstone at that time. Rather than just looking at a seismograph we can listen to it, and that’s an incredible thing.”

New findings suggest increased monitoring needed to prevent lung disease in underground coal miners

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH

DENVER — (MAY 5, 2023) For the past two decades, there has been a major resurgence in progressive massive fibrosis (PMF), (also known as black lung) among coal miners, leading researchers from National Jewish Health and across the country to examine what job duties might be putting them at risk. Current federal regulations require routine monitoring of dust levels in specific “high risk” jobs in underground coal mines, mainly jobs near the coal seam where coal is mined from surrounding rock. During the study, crystalline silica, a component of coal mine dust, was found in the lungs of coal miners whose jobs had not been targeted for exposure monitoring based on current regulations during their working lives. Silica is a particular concern since it causes severe and irreversible lung scarring. These findings were published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.    

Researchers examined lung tissue from deceased coal miners and compared findings across specific mining job duties to see which miners were at risk for severe black lung disease. They found that more recent coal miners with PMF (born after 1930 and working primarily with modern mining technologies) had worked significantly fewer years than historic miners (born before 1930) with PMF. They also found that scarring from silica dust exposure was more common in contemporary miners, even those whose job duties were not prioritized for dust sampling in current federal regulations such as electricians and foremen.   

“Our findings show the importance of monitoring silica exposure in coal miners whose job duties weren’t previously considered high risk,” said National Jewish Health researcher Lauren Zell-Baran, MPH, who was the lead author on the study. 

“Severe black lung disease is incurable, disabling and entirely preventable,” said Cecile Rose, MD, MPH, occupational pulmonologist at National Jewish Health and co-senior author of the study. “This study underscores the need to control silica dust exposure for all coal miners.”

National Jewish Health is the leading respiratory hospital in the nation. Founded 124 years ago as a nonprofit hospital, National Jewish Health today is the only facility in the world dedicated exclusively to groundbreaking medical research and treatment of patients with respiratory, cardiac, immune and related disorders. Patients and families come to National Jewish Health from around the world to receive cutting-edge, comprehensive, coordinated care. To learn more, visit njhealth.org or the media resources page.


U$A

Book examines the effects of volatility in state funding for higher education

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

delaney-jennifer-230323-fz-001-m 

IMAGE: JENNIFER DELANEY, A PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION POLICY, ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, AND OTHER EXPERTS EXAMINE THE WIDE-RANGING IMPLICATIONS OF UNPREDICTABLE STATE APPROPRIATIONS IN THE NEW BOOK, “VOLATILITY IN STATE SPENDING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.” view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY FRED ZWICKY

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — With rampant inflation and some financial gurus forecasting an economic recession in the U.S. this year, officials at postsecondary institutions – and college-going families – have reasons to be concerned, as a shaky economy often portends cuts in higher education funding, researchers say in a new book.

Experts in higher education, public policy and other disciplines examine the implications of precarity in state appropriations for higher education and explore possible solutions in the new book “Volatility in State Spending for Higher Education,” published by the American Educational Research Association and released at its recent conference in Chicago.

During recessions and other economic downturns, states’ funding for higher education is particularly vulnerable because it is the largest or second-largest discretionary spending category, averaging about 9.6% of states’ budgets, said book editor Jennifer Delaney, a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“With the exception of Vermont, every state also has a balanced-budget mandate, so when we hit downturns, higher education spending is almost always cut,” Delaney said. “Currently, higher education is still benefitting from COVID-19 relief funding, and when that dries up, many states will face a financial cliff for higher education.”

Studies by various experts in the book examine how volatility in state funding affects college affordability through increased tuition and fees, graduation rates and institutional decisions such as hiring contingent instructors rather than tenure-line professors.

With colleges and universities under increased pressure to find predictable revenue streams to shore up their budgets, there are potential adverse effects on the public good, Delaney said.

“Institutions are more likely to start a revenue-generating MBA program than to develop  one in a humanities field that supports an important social good, like teacher training,” Delaney said. “Uncertainty in state budgeting shifts the nature of what public institutions do and shifts it in a way that tends to lessen the contributions that education makes to society and democratization – and that is typically not the direction that states are hoping to go in. We should worry about that.”

A study in the book by Delaney and co-author William R. Doyle, a professor of higher education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, looks at the length of time it takes for higher education funding to be restored to previous levels when state appropriations are cut.

In the past, institutional leaders might expect their state revenue to rebound quickly, and they could implement stopgap measures such as curtailing travel and salary increases and deferring maintenance on campus buildings for a short time. However, “it has become clear in many states that this approach will no longer suffice,” Delaney and Doyle wrote. “It is taking longer and longer to recover from cuts, if a recovery comes at all.”

They looked at funding cuts of 1%, 3%, 5% and 10% in state appropriations for higher education during the period 1984-2015. They selected that period because it included the Great Recession but excluded the economic downturn precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the 1980s, cuts of 5% or more were rare, and “most states – about 75% – restored higher education funding to its prior levels within four years,” Delaney said. “But in the 1990s, of the 41 states that cut higher education appropriations, only 45% restored that funding within six years. And more recently – from 2000-2015 – recovery became increasingly unlikely. Only 5% of the states in the risk set had their state revenue restored to the previous level within five years.”

States with higher levels of financial aid restored postsecondary funding more quickly, the researchers found, while restoration took the longest in Southern and Western states and in those with higher tuition at their public colleges and universities.

Dramatic fluctuations in state revenue and increased costs of attendance not only affect access, they could shift students’ choice of majors, prompting students to opt for those with higher earning potential to repay their loan debt rather than fields such as education or social work that pay less but benefit the public good, Delaney said.

When weighing the consequences of reducing funding for higher education and the politically unfavorable prospect of raising taxes, state leaders are left seeking alternative revenue sources, the authors said. With these sources limited, some scholars have suggested earmarking states’ lottery revenue for higher education.

A study in the book by researchers Christopher R. Marsicano of Davidson College, Jenna W. Kramer of RAND Corporation and Steven Pittenger Gentile of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission examines 25 years of data on lottery earmarks for higher education and the effects on state appropriations. Concluding that the effects on volatility were “mostly null,” the group cautioned, however, that earmarks and lottery revenues are limited resources that “are not silver bullets for shoring up funding uncertainty.”

Also among the alternative funding mechanisms examined by scholars in the book are counter-cyclical sources such as the creation of federal-state partnerships. Other researchers examine whether state finance policies protect against unpredictability in higher education funding, investigate whether the gender composition and political affiliations of governors and lawmakers affect appropriations and explore potential links between states’ economic performances and their higher education subsidies.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic is waning, the economic chaos it wrought has exacerbated volatility and stretched the resources needed to serve vulnerable student populations, increasing their risks of not completing their degrees, Delaney wrote.

“Volatility is likely to remain a perennial issue or ‘wicked problem’ that will require creative and dedicated minds to manage and research,” she said. “But it has the potential to be improved through carefully crafted public policy. Emphasizing funding stability is important, especially given the public good produced by higher education.”


Published by the American Educational Research Association, the book was released at the group’s 2023 conference in Chicago.

CREDIT

Photo courtesy of American Educational Research Association

Providing legal counsel at initial bail hearings lowers incarceration rates

Demonstration shows no change in likelihood that defendants appear at subsequent hearings

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RAND CORPORATION

Providing defendants with legal counsel during their initial bail hearing decreases use of monetary bail and pretrial detention, without increasing the likelihood that defendants fail to appear at the subsequent preliminary hearing, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

 

Researchers found that having legal counsel at bail hearings increased the probability of being released without monetary bail by 21% and reduced the probability that an individual was in jail three days after their bail hearing by 10%.

 

The analysis, based on a field experiment in Pittsburgh where public defenders were assigned to a limited number of initial bail hearings, is one of the few high-quality studies of what happens when legal services are provided to defendants at an initial bail hearing. The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

 

“These results clearly show that public defenders have a substantial impact on defendants receiving a favorable outcome at the initial bail hearing,” said Shamena Anwar, one of the study’s authors and a senior economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

 

In the U.S., during the first court appearance after an arrest, a judge makes a decision about the conditions necessary for a defendant to be released from jail until the case is resolved. Most jurisdictions operate a cash bail system in which a judge determines an amount a person must pay to be released from detention.

 

Recent studies have provided substantial evidence that pretrial detention leads to worse outcomes for both the defendant and society at large, with longer jail stays and higher chances of conviction in the short term, and worse recidivism and employment outcomes over the long term.

 

Prior to this study, an open question was whether providing a lawyer at the bail hearing will have an impact on defendant outcomes. While defendants have a right to an attorney at all critical stages of a criminal prosecution, bail hearings are not considered a critical stage in many jurisdictions, in part because they are short, non-evidentiary hearings (often lasting less than five minutes) that are often conducted in an assembly line fashion without much input from the defendant or prosecution.  

 

The RAND study analyzes the results from a unique year-long initiative in the Pittsburgh Municipal Court where public defenders were available to represent newly arrested people at some initial bail hearings. The jurisdiction only had sufficient resources to provide public defenders for half of the shifts that did not already have public defenders.

 

The RAND team created a public defender work schedule such that the shifts in which a public defender was working had defendants and judges who were on average nearly identical to those in which a public defender was not working. This meant the study was akin to a randomized control trial, allowing researchers to rigorously measure the impact of providing a public defender at a defendant’s initial bail hearing.

 

The study was in the field from April 2019 to March 2020.

 

Researchers found that while those who did not have legal representation received some type of non-monetary release 49% of the time, those with public defenders received a non-monetary release 59% of the time -- a large increase.

 

This reduction in the use of monetary bail in turn led to a decline in the percentage of individuals who were in jail immediately after their bail hearing. In particular, while 45.4% of those without a public defender were in jail following their bail hearing, this percentage was 40.8% among those with a public defender.

 

However, the intervention did result in a short-term increase in rearrests on theft charges among those who had public defenders. Based upon prior survey work that asked people how they perceive the costs of incarceration and theft, RAND researchers suggest that a theft incident would have to be at least 8.5 times as costly as a day in detention for most jurisdictions to find this tradeoff undesirable.

 

“This study is particularly relevant given that roughly half of the counties in the U.S. do not currently provide defense representation at the bail hearing,” Anwar said. “These results should be helpful for jurisdictions that are considering providing defense representation at bail hearings, although more research in this area is needed to understand the extent to which the results we find here are generalizable to other jurisdictions with different bail hearing procedures.”

 

Support for the study was provided by Arnold Ventures. Other authors of the study are Shawn Bushway and John Engberg.

 

The RAND Social and Economic Well-Being division seeks to actively improve the health, social, and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world.