Large sub-surface granite formation signals ancient volcanic activity on Moon's dark side

Microwave frequency data from lunar orbiter reveals deposit of cooled magma beneath a volcano that likely erupted 3.5 billion years ago

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS USED MICROWAVE FREQUENCY DATA TO MEASURE HEAT BELOW THE SURFACE OF A SUSPECTED VOLCANIC FEATURE ON THE MOON KNOWN AS COMPTON-BELKOVICH. view more 

CREDIT: NATURE

DALLAS (SMU) – A large formation of granite discovered below the lunar surface likely was formed from the cooling of molten lava that fed a volcano or volcanoes that erupted early in the Moon’s history – as long as 3.5 billion years ago.

A team of scientists led by Matthew Siegler, an SMU research professor and research scientist with the Planetary Science Institute, has published a study in Nature that used microwave frequency data to measure heat below the surface of a suspected volcanic feature on the Moon known as Compton-Belkovich. The team used the data to determine that the heat being generated below the surface is coming from a concentration of radioactive elements that can only exist on the Moon as granite.

Granites are the igneous rock remnants of the plumbing systems below extinct volcanos. The granite formation left when lava cools without erupting is known as a batholith.

“Any big body of granite that we find on Earth used to feed a big bunch of volcanoes, much like a large system is feeding the Cascade volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest today,” Siegler said. “Batholiths are much bigger than the volcanoes they feed on the surface. For example, the Sierra Nevada mountains are a batholith, left from a volcanic chain in the western United States that existed long ago.”

The lunar batholith is located in a region of the Moon previously identified as a volcanic complex, but researchers are surprised at its size, with an estimated diameter of 50 kilometers.

Granite is somewhat common on Earth, and its formation is generally driven by water and plate tectonics, which aid in creating large melt bodies below the Earth’s surface. However, granites are extremely rare on the Moon, which lacks these processes.

Finding this granite body helps explain how the early lunar crust formed.

“If you don’t have water it takes extreme situations to make granite,” Siegler said. “So, here’s this system with no water, and no plate tectonics – but you have granite.

Was there water on the moon – at least in this one spot?  Or was it just especially hot?”

Research team members included Jianquing Fang, from the Planetary Science Institute; Katelyn Lehman-Franco, Rita Economos and Mackenzie White from SMU; Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna from Southwest Research Institute; Michael St. Clair and Chase Million from Million Concepts; James Head III from Brown University and Timothy Glotch from Stony Brook University.

The work was funded through NASA’s Lunar Data Analysis Program and work related to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner Lunar Radiometer.

Data for the study was obtained from public data released from two Chinese lunar orbiters, Chang’E-1 in 2010 and Chang’E-2 in 2012, carrying four-channel microwave radiometer instruments. The original Chang’E‐1 and Chang’E-2 MRM data can be downloaded from: http://moon.bao.ac.cn/index_en.jsp.

Siegler will be presenting the team’s research at the upcoming Goldschmidt Conference, scheduled for July 9-14 in Lyon, France.

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SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas.  SMU’s alumni, faculty and more than 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-06183-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Remote Detection of a Lunar Granitic Batholith at Compton-Belkovich

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Jul-2023

New glass cuts carbon footprint by nearly half and is 10x more damage resistant

Business Announcement

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: A SAMPLE OF LIONGLASS, A NEW TYPE OF GLASS ENGINEERED BY RESEARCHERS AT PENN STATE THAT REQUIRES SIGNIFICANTLY LESS ENERGY TO PRODUCE AND IS MUCH MORE DAMAGE RESISTANT THAN STANDARD SODA LIME SILICATE GLASS. view more 

CREDIT: ADRIENNE BERARD/PENN STATE.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Worldwide, glass manufacturing produces at least 86 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. A new type of glass promises to cut this carbon footprint in half. The invention, called LionGlass and engineered by researchers at Penn State, requires significantly less energy to produce and is much more damage resistant than standard soda lime silicate glass. The research team recently filed a patent application as a first step toward bringing the product to market.

“Our goal is to make glass manufacturing sustainable for the long term,” said John Mauro, Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State and lead researcher on the project. “LionGlass eliminates the use of carbon-containing batch materials and significantly lowers the melting temperature of glass.”

Soda lime silicate glass, the common glass used in everyday items from windows to glass tableware, is made by melting three primary materials: quartz sand, soda ash and limestone. Soda ash is sodium carbonate and limestone is calcium carbonate, both of which release carbon dioxide (CO2), a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, as they are melted.  

“During the glass melting process, the carbonates decompose into oxides and produce carbon dioxide, which gets released into the atmosphere,” Mauro said.

But the bulk of the CO2 emissions come from the energy required to heat furnaces to the high temperatures needed for melting glass. With LionGlass, the melting temperatures are lowered by about 300 to 400 degrees Celsius, Mauro explained, which leads to a roughly 30% reduction in energy consumption compared to conventional soda lime glass.

Not only is LionGlass easier on the environment, it’s also much stronger than conventional glass. The researchers said they were surprised to find that the new glass, named after Penn State’s Nittany Lion mascot, possesses significantly higher crack resistance compared to conventional glass.

Some of the team’s glass compositions had such a strong crack resistance that the glass would not crack, even under a one kilogram-force load from a Vickers diamond indenter. LionGlass is at least 10 times as crack-resistant compared to standard soda lime glass, which forms cracks under a load of about 0.1 kilograms force. The researchers explained that the limits of LionGlass have not yet been found, because they reached the maximum load allowed by the indentation equipment.

“We kept increasing the weight on LionGlass until we reached the maximum load the equipment will allow,” said Nick Clark, a postdoctoral fellow in Mauro’s lab. “It simply wouldn’t crack.”

Mauro explained that crack resistance one of the most important qualities to test for in glass, because it is how the material eventually fails. Over time, glass develops microcracks along the surface, which become weak points. When a piece of glass breaks, it’s due to weaknesses caused by existing microcracks. Glass that is resistant to forming microcracks in the first place is especially valuable, he added.

“Damage resistance is a particularly important property for glass,” Mauro said. “Think about all the ways we rely on the strength of glass, in the automotive industry and electronics industry, architecture, and communication technology like fiber optic cables. Even in health care, vaccines are stored in strong, chemically resistant glass packaging.”

Mauro is hoping that the improved strength of LionGlass means the products created from it can be lighter weight. Since LionGlass is 10 times more damage resistant than current glass, it could be significantly thinner.

“We should be able to reduce the thickness and still get the same level of damage resistance,” Mauro said. “If we have a lighter-weight product, that is even better for the environment, because we use less raw materials and need less energy to produce it. Even downstream, for transportation, that reduces the energy required to transport the glass, so it's a winning situation for everyone.”

Mauro notes that the research team is still evaluating the potential of LionGlass. They have filed a patent application for the entire family of glass, which means there are many compositions within the LionGlass family, each with its own distinct properties and potential applications. They are now in the process of exposing various compositions of LionGlass to an array of chemical environments to study how it reacts. The results will help the team develop a better understanding of how LionGlass can be used throughout the world.

“Humans learned how to manufacture glass more than 5,000 years ago and since then it has been critical to bringing modern civilization to where it is today,” Mauro said. “Now, we are at a point in time when we need it to help shape the future, as we face global challenges such as environmental issues, renewable energy, energy efficiency, health care and urban development. Glass can play a vital role in solving these issues, and we are ready to contribute.”

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

Earth formed from dry, rocky building blocks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Billions of years ago, in the giant disk of dust, gas, and rocky material that orbited our young sun, larger and larger bodies coalesced to eventually give rise to the planets, moons, and asteroids we see today. Scientists are still trying to understand the processes by which planets, including our home planet, were formed. One way researchers can study how Earth formed is to examine the magmas that flow up from deep within the planet’s interior. The chemical signatures from these samples contain a record of the timing and the nature of the materials that came together to form Earth—analogous to how fossils give us clues about Earth's biological past.

Now, a study from Caltech shows that the early Earth accreted from hot and dry materials, indicating that our planet's water—the crucial component for the evolution of life—must have arrived late in the history of Earth's formation.

The study, involving an international team of researchers, was conducted in the laboratories of Francois Tissot, assistant professor of geochemistry and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator; and Yigang Zhang of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. A paper describing the research appears in the journal Science Advances. Caltech graduate student Weiyi Liu is the paper's first author.

Though humans do not have a way to journey into the interior of our planet, the rocks deep within the earth can naturally make their way to the surface in the form of lavas. The parental magmas of these lavas can originate from different depths within Earth, such as the upper mantle, which begins around 15 kilometers under the surface and extends for about 680 kilometers; or the lower mantle, which spans from a depth of 680 kilometers all the way to the core–mantle boundary at about 2,900 kilometers below our feet. Like sampling different layers of a cake—the frosting, the filling, the sponge—scientists can study magmas originating from different depths to understand the different "flavors" of Earth’s layers: the chemicals found within and their ratios with respect to one another.

Because the formation of Earth was not instantaneous and instead involved materials accreting over time, samples from the lower mantle and upper mantle give different clues to what was happening over time during Earth's accretion. In the new study, the team found that the early Earth was primarily composed of dry, rocky materials: chemical signatures from deep within the planet showed a lack of so-called volatiles, which are easily evaporated materials like water and iodine. In contrast, samples of the upper mantle revealed a higher proportion of volatiles, three times of those found in the lower mantle. Based on these chemical ratios, Liu created a model that showed Earth formed from hot, dry, rocky materials, and that a major addition of life-essential volatiles, including water, only occurred during the last 15 percent (or less) of Earth's formation.

The study is a crucial contribution to theories of planet formation, a field which has undergone several paradigm shifts in recent decades and is still characterized by vigorous scientific debate. In this context, the new study makes important predictions for the nature of the building blocks of other terrestrial planets—Mercury and Venus—which would be expected to have formed from similarly dry materials. 

"Space exploration to the outer planets is really important because a water world is probably the best place to look for extraterrestrial life," Tissot says. "But the inner solar system shouldn't be forgotten. There hasn't been a mission that's touched Venus’s surface for nearly 40 years, and there has never been a mission to the surface of Mercury. We need to be able to study those worlds to better understand how terrestrial planets such as Earth formed."

The paper is titled "I/Pu reveals Earth mainly accreted from volatile-poor differentiated planetesimals." In addition to Liu and Tissot, co-authors are Zhang of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Guillaume Avice of the Université Paris Cité, Institut de physique du globe de Paris; Zhilin Ye of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Qing-Zhu Yin of the University of California, Davis. Funding was provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the Heritage Medical Research Institute, and Caltech.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adg9213 

ARTICLE TITLE

I/Pu reveals Earth mainly accreted from volatile-poor differentiated planetesimals

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Jul-2023

Lasering lava to forecast volcanic eruptions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

 

IMAGE: THE ERUPTION COVERED MORE THAN 12 SQUARE KILOMETRES WITH 159 CUBIC METRES OF LAVA DESTROYING AROUND 1,600 HOMES. view more 

CREDIT: IGME (INSTITUTO GEOLOGICO Y MINERO DE ESPANA)

University of Queensland researchers have optimised a new technique to help forecast how volcanoes will behave, which could save lives and property around the world.

Dr Teresa Ubide from UQ’s School of the Environment and a team of international collaborators have trialled a new application of the tongue-twisting approach: laser ablation inductively coupled plasma quadruple mass spectrometry.

“It’s a mouthful, but this high-resolution technique offers clearer data on what’s chemically occurring within a volcano’s magma, which is fundamental to forecasting eruption patterns and changes,” Dr Ubide said.

She described magma as the ‘computer code’ of volcanoes, providing information on the eruption style and lava flow.  

“The chemical changes that occur within the liquid portion of the magma during a volcanic eruption are quite incredible,” Dr Ubide said.

“The magma is made up of liquid melt, gas and crystals that combine inside the volcano.

“There are often so many meddling crystals that the magma looks like rocky road, and it’s difficult to observe its chemistry.

“To get these crystals out of the way, we blast the cooled melt – which is known as the rock matrix – with a laser like those used for eye surgery.

“Then we analyse the material measuring its chemical make-up.”

Dr Ubide and the team tested the method on samples collected during the spectacular but damaging 2021 eruption on the Canary Island of La Palma, which lasted 85 days.

“The eruption covered more than 12 square kilometres with 159 cubic metres of lava destroying around 1,600 homes and forcing the evacuation of more than 7,000 people – it cost the country the equivalent of around $1.4 billion,” Dr Ubide said.

“To understand how volcanic eruptions may evolve and to provide warnings and advice to people, live monitoring data is critical.

“Earthquakes, ground changes and gas data provide indirect information on what is happening inside an active volcano but the chemistry of the melt is a direct measure of the ‘personality’ of the magma, its behaviour upon eruption and potential impact on populations and infrastructure.

“The information we gathered during this eruption could help inform volcano monitoring and hazard management in the future.”

The team is now trialling a similar technique on volcanic ash, which can be sampled more readily during a volcanic event.

“We are excited to collaborate with volcano observatories to implement the method as a monitoring tool,” Dr Ubide said.

The research is published in Science Advances. 

The main cone of the La Palma Eruption in the Canary Islands in 2021.

CREDIT

JJ Coello-Bravo

Property damage from lava at the La Palma eruption.

CREDIT

R Balcells

JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adg481 

Why the day is 24 hours long: Astrophysicists reveal why Earth’s day was a constant 19.5 hours for over a billion years

Result sheds new light on how climate change will affect the length of the day and validity of climate modelling tools

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

 

IMAGE: MURRAY AND HIS COLLABORATORS RELIED ON GEOLOGIC EVIDENCE IN THEIR STUDY, LIKE THESE SAMPLES FROM A TIDAL ESTUARY THAT REVEAL THE CYCLE OF SPRING AND NEAP TIDES. view more 

CREDIT: G.E. WILLIAMS

A team of astrophysicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) has revealed how the slow and steady lengthening of Earth’s day caused by the tidal pull of the moon was halted for over a billion years. 

They show that from approximately two billion years ago until 600 million years ago, an atmospheric tide driven by the sun countered the effect of the moon, keeping Earth’s rotational rate steady and the length of day at a constant 19.5 hours.  

Without this billion-year pause in the slowing of our planet’s rotation, our current 24-hour day would stretch to over 60 hours. 

The study describing the result, ‘Why the day is 24 hours long; the history of Earth’s atmospheric thermal tide, composition, and mean temperature,’ was published today in the journal Science Advances. Drawing on geological evidence and using atmospheric research tools, the scientists show that the tidal stalemate between the sun and moon resulted from the incidental but enormously consequential link between the atmosphere’s temperature and Earth’s rotational rate.    

The paper’s authors include Norman Murray, a theoretical astrophysicist with U of T's Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA); graduate student Hanbo Wu, CITA and Department of Physics, U of T; Kristen Menou, David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough; Jeremy Laconte, Laboratoire d’astrophysique de Bordeaux and and a former CITA postdoctoral fellow; and Christopher Lee, Department of Physics, U of T. 

When the moon first formed some 4.5 billion years ago, the day was less than 10 hours long. But since then, the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth has been slowing our planet’s rotation, resulting in an increasingly longer day. Today, it continues to lengthen at a rate of some 1.7 milliseconds every century.  

The moon slows the planet’s rotation by pulling on Earth’s oceans, creating tidal bulges on opposite sides of the planet that we experience as high and low tides. The gravitational pull of the moon on those bulges, plus the friction between the tides and the ocean floor, acts like a brake on our spinning planet. 

“Sunlight also produces an atmospheric tide with the same type of bulges,” says Murray. “The sun's gravity pulls on these atmospheric bulges, producing a torque on the Earth. But instead of slowing down Earth’s rotation like the moon, it speeds it up.” 

For most of Earth’s geological history, the lunar tides have overpowered the solar tides by about a factor of ten; hence, the Earth’s slowing rotational speed and lengthening days.  

But some two billion years ago, the atmospheric bulges were larger because the atmosphere was warmer and because its natural resonance — the frequency at which waves move through it — matched the length of day.  

The atmosphere, like a bell, resonates at a frequency determined by various factors, including temperature. In other words, waves — like those generated by the enormous eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883 — travel through it at a velocity determined by its temperature. The same principle explains why a bell always produces the same note if its temperature is constant. 

Throughout most of Earth’s history that atmospheric resonance has been out of sync with the planet’s rotational rate. Today, each of the two atmospheric “high tides” take 22.8 hours to travel around the world; because that resonance and Earth’s 24-hour rotational period are out of sync, the atmospheric tide is relatively small.  

But during the billion-year period under study, the atmosphere was warmer and resonated with a period of about 10 hours. Also, at the advent of that epoch, Earth’s rotation, slowed by the moon, reached 20 hours. 

When the atmospheric resonance and length of day became even factors — ten and 20 — the atmospheric tide was reinforced, the bulges became larger and the sun’s tidal pull became strong enough to counter the lunar tide.  

“It’s like pushing a child on a swing,” says Murray. “If your push and the period of the swing are out of sync, it’s not going to go very high. But, if they’re in sync and you’re pushing just as the swing stops at one end of its travel, the push will add to the momentum of the swing and it will go further and higher. That’s what happened with the atmospheric resonance and tide.” 

Along with geological evidence, Murray and his colleagues achieved their result using global atmospheric circulation models (GCMs) to predict the atmosphere’s temperature during this period. The GCMs are the same models used by climatologists to study global warming. According to Murray, the fact they worked so well in the team’s research is a timely lesson. 

“I've talked to people who are climate change skeptics who don't believe in the global circulation models that are telling us we’re in a climate crisis,” says Murray. “And I tell them: We used these global circulation models in our research, and they got it right. They work.” 

Despite its remoteness in geological history, the result adds additional perspective to the climate crisis. Because the atmospheric resonance changes with temperature, Murray points out that our current warming atmosphere could have consequences in this tidal imbalance.  

“As we increase Earth's temperature with global warming, we’re also making the resonant frequency move higher — we’re moving our atmosphere farther away from resonance. As a result, there's less torque from the sun and therefore, the length the day is going to get longer, sooner than it would otherwise.” 

-30-

A power spectrum of the Earth's atmosphere. The x-axis is wavelength, e.g. 5 is a wavelength of one fifth of the circumference of the Earth for a wave traveling west to east, and -5 means the same, but for waves traveling east to west. The y-axis is frequency, in cycles per day, e.g. 2 means two cycles per day, or 12 hours. The thin horizontal brown lines show the Solar forcing at one, two, three, etc. cycles per day (24 hours, 12 hours, 8 hours period, and so forth).

CREDIT

Sakazaki & Hamilton

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A team of astrophysicists have shown that from approximately two billion years ago until 600 million years ago, an atmospheric tide driven by the sun countered the effect of the moon, keeping Earth’s rotational rate steady and the length of day at a constant 19.5 hours.

CREDIT

Kevin M. Gill

JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add2499 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Why the day is 24 hours long; the history of Earth’s atmospheric thermal tide, composition, and mean temperature

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Jul-2023

The time is right to attract new public health workers with evidence-based job descriptions and eye-catching job postings AND $$$$$$$$$$$$

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

July 5, 2023-- Health departments have a historic opportunity to bolster their workforce due to new funding but often do not have accurate or updated job descriptions or short, attention-grabbing job postings to use as marketing tools for recruitment. New research by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health will help lead to evidence-based job descriptions and postings that health departments can now use.

The study is the first attempt to compile existing occupation-specific job task analyses, lists of competencies, and certifications across multiple job types within governmental public health that can allow comparisons of skills, competencies, and job tasks between different public health occupations. The findings are published online in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

“Our aim was to review job descriptions and postings to ensure they would serve as attractive recruitment marketing tools that follow best practices and avoid implicit bias in the language used,” said Heather Krasna, PhD, EdM, associate dean, Career and Professional Development, Columbia Mailman School.  “Clear job postings with specific, concrete job requirements are more likely to generate targeted, qualified applicants and can be an important part of attracting a diverse candidate pool.”

Utilizing $3 billion from the American Rescue Plan funding for workforce development in the public health workforce to mount a large-scale recruitment effort—especially one large enough to begin to replenish the depleted governmental public health workforce -- new and creative methods could help attract job candidates. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health workforce had experienced challenges with attracting and retaining workers, partly due to competition from other sectors and perhaps due to complexities caused by civil service hiring, lower salaries, and slow hiring processes.

Employers need internally facing job descriptions, detailed documents that provide guidance to new hires and can serve as a rubric for performance reviews to effectively recruit new talent, noted the researchers. “But they also need job postings that are shorter, externally facing documents and optimized for Internet search engines,” observed Krasna.

To create the job descriptions, Krasna and colleagues conducted a literature review, interviewed public health leaders and recruitment specialists, reviewed existing resources, searched the gray literature for existing job task analyses, and reviewed and synthesized hundreds of recent job postings using both current job boards and a large-scale database of job postings. They also utilized the 2014 National Board of Public Health Examiners’ job task analysis data, information from the US Department of Labor’s O*Net Online resource, and existing occupation-specific job task analyses or certification information.  They synthesized the information to create position descriptions for 24 jobs common in governmental public health settings.

To ensure the descriptions were accurate, they then gathered feedback from current public health professionals in each field and finally engaged a recruitment marketing expert to change the job descriptions into advertisements.

“Although job titles may not presently be well standardized, we believe that gathering data on job descriptions could also help the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics to better standardize and track public health occupations,” said Krasna.

Co-authors are Phoebe Kulik, University of Michigan School of Public Health; Harshada Karnik, and Jonathon Leider, University of Minnesota.

The project was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration of the US Department of Health and Human Services, grant UB6HP31684 Public Health Training Centers.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the fourth largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.publichealth.columbia.edu

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JOURNAL

Journal of Public Health Management and Practice

DOI

10.1097/PHH.0000000000001776 

ARTICLE TITLE

PRACTICE FULL REPORT Recruiting New Talent for Public Health Jobs With Evidence-Based Job Descriptions and Attractive Job Postings

Know your audience: Why data communication needs to pay attention to novice users

Prizewinning computer scientists at UMass Amherst find that data visualizations researchers have no clear idea of what makes someone a novice

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

 

IMAGE: DATA VISUALIZATION CAN BE A POWERFUL TOOL IF THE INTENDED AUDIENCE IS DATA LITERATE. view more 

CREDIT: UMASS AMHERST

AMHERST, Mass. – Computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently found that data-visualization experts have no agreed-upon understanding of who makes up one of their largest audiences—novice users. The work, which recently won a coveted Best Paper Award at the Association for Computing Machinery’s conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI), is an important first step in ensuring more inclusive data visualizations, and thus data visualization that works for all users.

Data visualization is the representation of data in a visual and easily understandable way using common graphics such as charts, plots, infographics and animations. Using visual elements provides an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers and patterns in data. One of the most familiar data visualizations—the pie chart—is legible to nearly everyone and has been a method used to quickly convey information since its invention in the early nineteenth century.

But, with the advent of the internet, the range, reach and complexity of such visualizations have grown exponentially. Think of the various online COVID trackers, graphics showing economic projections or the outcomes of national elections. “More and more, everyday people are relying on data visualizations to make decisions about their lives,” says Narges Mayhar, assistant professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Science at UMass Amherst, and the paper’s senior author. “Even many of our collective decisions rest on data visualizations.”

Since a visualization’s use is dependent on its intelligibility, one would think that data visualization experts would have a clear and standard understanding of their audience, particularly their non-expert users. And yet, “despite many decades of data-visualization research, we had no clear notion of what makes someone a ‘novice,’” says Mayhar. This insight was important enough that the ACM CHI, the premier international conference for human-computer interaction, bestowed the Best Paper Award on the research, an honor reserved for the top 1% of submitted papers.

Mayhar, lead author Alyxander Burns, who completed the research as part of his graduate studies at UMass Amherst, and their co-authors combed through the past 30 years of visualization research and found 79 papers spread across seven academic journals that concerned themselves with identifying the audience for data visualizations. Within those 79 papers, they found that the definitions of a novice user ranged widely, from people who have difficulty “effectively utilizing GPU clusters” to those who lack knowledge of “ontological models.” Moreover, the team found that most researchers’ sample groups of users overwhelmingly skewed toward white, college-aged people living in the U.S.

“How do we know that the visualizations we create could work for older people, for those without college degrees, for people living in one of the world’s many other countries?” asks Mayhar. “We need to be clear, as a field, what we mean when we say ‘novice,’ and the goal of this paper is to change the way that visualization researchers think about novices, address their needs and design tools that work for everyone.”

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DOI

10.1145/3544548.3581524 

ARTICLE TITLE

Who Do We Mean When We Talk About Visualization Novices?