It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 07, 2023
How does the social behavior of wheat plants influence grain production?
LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE OF PLANT GENETICS AND CROP PLANT RESEARCH
IMAGE: RESEARCHERS FROM IPK LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE HAVE INVESTIGATED HOW THE BEHAVIOR OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHEAT PLANT UNDER LIMITING LIGHT CONDITIONS INFLUENCES THE PERFORMANCE OF THE WHOLE COMMUNITY.view more
CREDIT: IPK LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE/ T. SCHNURBUSCH
One of the most significant drivers of crop evolution stems from the changes in the selection associated with the shift of plants from a highly heterogeneous and biodiverse natural environment into a homogeneous monoculture environment. Competition for resources has been considered a prevalent force in structuring plant populations under natural selection, often favoring the most competitive individual plants in a particular environment. The architecture and behavior of successful genotypes as individual plants differ from that of genotypes thriving in a community. Individual plant fitness is increased by ‘selfish’ traits, which may, like in humans, negatively impact the performance of the community
“Agriculture relies on community performance”, emphasizes Prof. Dr. Thorsten Schnurbusch, head of the research group “Plant Architecture” at IPK Leibniz Institute. “But the environment in which crops are grown, i.e. their ecology in the agricultural context, their agroecology, is hardly explored and less understood. It is surprising how less we know about the interactions among plants grown in a dense, real-world community.”
Today, crop plants are grown in high-density stands where they experience limited light availability due to mutual shading. “Therefore, by simulating canopy shade, we may get closer to the conditions plants are experiencing in high-density stands in the field, which may be helpful for studying and selecting plants for higher grain yield”, says Dr. Guy Golan, first author of the current study. “Cooperative behaviors and highly fertile inflorescences in a light-limited/shaded environment are most important for a thriving grain crop community.”
The researchers found behaviors that nourish the fitness of the individual plant as non-beneficial and, in some cases, detrimental to the performance of the whole community. The results have recently been published in the “Plant, Cell & Environment” journal as part of the Special Issue: Tradeoffs in Plant Responses to the Environment. Moreover, the researchers say that multiple phenotypes attained under simulated shade could better explain community performance of the wheat crop, advocating the use of simulated shade in breeding high-yielding cultivars.
“Having much deeper insights into these interactions, and specifically understanding their molecular and genetic components is very important to develop more resilient and resource-efficient crop plants for the future”, says Prof. Dr. Thorsten Schnurbusch. “Embracing an agroecological genetics approach may optimize communal yield by better matching crops to their environment, as either monoculture or a mixture.”
IMAGE: THE NEW RURAL ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PH.D. FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM WILL TRAIN STUDENTS IN SKILLS NEEDED TO FOCUS ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH FUNDAMENTALS WORLDWIDE.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY FELICIA SPENCER FOR VIRGINIA TECH.
A federal award will help grow more rural-focused environmental health research and graduate training.
The $500,000 institutional research training grant, also known as a T32 grant, from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences will support Virginia Tech’s Rural Environmental Health Ph.D. Fellowship Program by providing a two-year assistantship for six graduate students during the next five years.
“This training program integrates with the degree-granting programs at Virginia Tech,” said Julia Gohlke, associate professor of environmental health in the Department of Population Health Sciences. “It is intended to provide fellows with a strong skill set focused on environmental health fundamentals like epidemiology, toxicology, and exposure science and then supports them in discovering novel applications of those skills in rural areas.”
Gohlke spearheaded the process to obtain the grant to help better connect a variety of Virginia Tech programs that focus on components of environmental health in rural communities.
“The T32 mechanism is an acknowledgment by peers around the country that Virginia Tech’s interdisciplinary training is outstanding,” said Steve Poelzing, professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics and director of Virginia Tech’s interdisciplinary Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program. “The award will not only support talented graduate students, but it will also serve as a beacon for the next generation of graduate students who are excited to create change locally and globally by benefiting rural populations that are often overlooked and translating those discoveries to everyone.”
Gohlke and Poelzing will serve as co-directors of the program.
“At Virginia Tech, we’ve got all the expertise that you would have in a traditional department of environmental health sciences with a school of public health, but we don’t have it all in one place, and in one Ph.D. program, so the idea is that this will help to strengthen bridges between those programs,” Gohlke said.
Students will be selected from the six participating Ph.D. programs, which span six colleges and 12 departments. A total of 26 faculty members associated with those Ph.D. programs will be available to serve as mentors for the students, and the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine will provide additional research support to the student-mentor teams.
Modeled after a short-term pilot program, which was offered by the Global Change Center and funded by the Fralin Life Sciences Institute from 2020-23, the new program curriculum will be grounded in the socio-ecological model, which considers individual-level environmental influences within community and societal environmental influences. It also will demonstrate a convergence of Virginia Tech’s strengths in interdisciplinary training in exposure science and community-engaged life science and biomedical research.
“The investments made by the Fralin Life Sciences Institute to pilot the program enabled us to demonstrate that Virginia Tech is an ideal location for training the next generation of leaders in rural environmental health,” said William Hopkins, director of the program. “We not only have the critical faculty expertise needed to mentor students enrolled in the program, but our location in Appalachia also provides ample opportunities for addressing critical health challenges in nearby communities that often have similarities to those faced by rural communities around the globe.”
The faculty steering committee for Rural Environmental Health Ph.D. Fellowship Program includes
Gohlke
Poelzing
Hopkins
Peter Vikesland, Nick Prillaman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the environmental water resources engineering graduate program
New research finds a disconnect between poultry dietary energy and egg production
This discovery by a team at Virginia Tech could have substantial impact on the rising cost of feeding egg laying hens that can be passed onto egg consumers
IMAGE: ALYSSA LYONS, A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE IN THE SCHOOL OF ANIMALS SCIENCES, PRESENTS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE POULTRY SCIENCE ASSOCIATION IN PHILADELPHIA. LYONS IS THE LEAD AUTHOR OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED POULTRY RESEARCH.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL PERSIA.
In previous research, feed intake and egg production parameters were the most common response criteria that researchers used to measure energy responses in poultry.
Professor Michael Persia in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences decided to take a look at energy levels in poultry from a different standpoint. This research idea began in 2008-09, when corn prices increased in response to expanded ethanol production as part of the renewable fuels’ standard. In the quest to identify and validate alternatives to corn as the primary energy source in laying hen diets, a more wholistic approach to laying hen metabolism was investigated.
What resulted was more than a decade of research conducted by Persia and a team of graduate and undergraduate students in the School of Animal Sciences. What they discovered supported their line of thinking.
At least over the short term, the amount of energy fed to hens doesn’t affect the number of eggs produced. Hens will produce eggs as long as they have enough fatty tissue and mass in their reserves to supply the energy to produce them.
“Results suggested that dietary energy has a more pronounced effect on body mass and fatty tissue before more direct performance responses are observed,” Persia said. “Therefore, hen body weight and composition can be used as a more sensitive measurement of hen energy status than egg production or feed efficiency.”
The research was published recently in the Journal of Applied Poultry Research and is supported by the John Lee Pratt Animal Nutrition Senior Research Scholar Program. Alyssa Lyons, a doctoral candidate in the School of Animals Sciences, is the lead author. She worked in Persia’s lab and on this research project beginning as an undergraduate student.
More recently, the cost of dietary oil, the second leading energy component of a diet, has increased with additional biodiesel production. As so, Persia and his team conducted an experiment to evaluate the effects of varying dietary energy on the performance and energy storage in laying hens from 36 to 52 weeks of age.
A total of 252 hens were fed one of seven experimental diets ranging in dietary energy from 2,750 to 3,050 kilocalories. Egg production, energy intake, feed intake, egg weight, egg mass, and feed efficiency were calculated. Hens were weighed every four weeks and carcass total, lean, and fat mass were determined at 52 weeks of age using a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, a type of evaluation.
Results indicated that dietary energy intake impacted the hens’ total carcass mass and carcass fat mass before altering the number of eggs they produced.
“Although egg production was unaffected, total mass, body weight, and fat mass were significantly decreased with decreasing dietary energy and were directly correlated with dietary energy,” Persia said. “This indicated to us that hens will continue to produce eggs at the expense of energy body reserves over short-term production.”
This discovery could have substantial environmental and economic impact, Persia said.
“Everything we can do to more accurately determine the requirements of these birds will reduce the cost of eggs — efficiency from a feeding standpoint leads to efficiency from an economic standpoint,” he said. “There is also a large environmental component to that as well. Anytime we can increase the utilization of energy or nutrients from the diet, that's less that actually comes out on the back end as manure. If we can more efficiently utilize our resources and put them into the bird or into the egg, that will help the environmental footprint.”
JOURNAL
The Journal of Applied Poultry Research
ARTICLE TITLE
Estimating energy utilization in laying hens: what are the best response criteria?
Agriculture study delivers unexpected results
A research study at the University of Bonn analyzes the effect of mixed cover crops on root traits
IMAGE: SAMPLES THE SIZE OF A BRICK WERE TAKEN FROM THE SOIL AT DIFFERENT DEPTHS AND THE ROOTS WERE THEN ISOLATED, SCANNED AND MEASURED.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO: JOHANNES SIEBIGTEROTH/UNIVERSITY OF BONN
Farmers usually plant so-called cover crops after harvesting their main crop in the Fall. This prevents erosion of the soil and nutrient leaching. The roots of these crops also stabilize the structure of the soil. It had been assumed up to now that a mixture of different cover crops would result in particularly intensive rooting. However, a recent study carried out by the University of Bonn, University of Kassel and University of Göttingen found only limited evidence that this is the case. Instead, mixed cover crops grow thinner roots than when just one single type of cover crop is planted. This result was unexpected. It documents how little is currently understood about the interactions between plant roots. The study was published in the magazine Plant and Soil.
In agriculture, crops are usually differentiated into main crops and cover crops. The first category includes crops with which farms mainly earn their money such as cereals, potato or maize. Once these crops have been harvested, it is time for the cover crops: They are sown to maintain or improve the quality of the soil. Cover crops suppress weeds, prevent nitrate leaching and reduce erosion by rain and wind. “These crops are not usually harvested but simply die away during the first frosty days,” explains Roman Kemper, who received his doctorate in the research group headed by Prof. Dr. Thomas Döring at the Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES) at the University of Bonn. “Nevertheless, they are hugely important for economic farming.”
Comparing mixed cover crops with pure stands
Many of these positive effects are hugely dependent on how well the roots of the cover crops penetrate the soil. “It had been widely assumed up to now that mixed cover crops penetrate the soil more intensively than pure stands of cover crops comprising one single plant species. The reasoning behind this idea is that if roots from several species sown at the same time are competing, the result will be so-called niche differentiation. This means the roots of some cover crops will mainly penetrate upper layers of soil, while others will seek out lower layers of soil.
“Overall, this should mean that a mixture of crops will result in greater rooting of the entire soil profile,” says Kemper. “In agroforestry systems in which trees are also planted next to typical agricultural crops, this effect is actually observed. However, we were not able to find any evidence for this effect in the cover crops in our fields.”
The researchers tested cover crops of oil radish, winter rye and crimson clover in their study. The plants were either sown as single or mixed cover crops. The scientists then investigated how the roots had penetrated the soil at different depths in late Fall.
“We were surprised by the results,” emphasizes Kemper: “Particularly positive effects were observed in the fields where oil radish and winter rye had been sown on their own. The roots of the winter rye favored the upper layers, while the roots of the oil radish penetrated significantly deeper.” But what happened when oil radish was planted together with winter rye? Surprisingly, the root mass did not increase in all of the soil layers taken together as a result. The roots of the deeper rooting oil radish did penetrate more intensively into lower levels of the soil in the mixed crop than was the case with pure stands. However, the roots of the mixed cover crops were significantly thinner and thus the root mass did not increase overall.
Cleaning and closely examining every root
The results document how little is currently known about the root growth of crop mixtures. This may also be due to the fact that their research involved extremely painstaking work. Hundreds of soil samples – each as big as a brick – had to be taken for the study. The samples were washed, sieved and then cleaned using a pair of tweezers to remove even the tiniest pieces of dirt or contamination from the roots that were sometimes just a few tenths of a millimeter thick. Every root was then scanned, dried and weighed.
However, this painstaking work was worth the effort. “There has so far only been rudimentary research carried out into the rooting performance of our arable crops,” says Kemper. “This means that there is still a lot of new things to discover.”
Participating institutes and funding:
Alongside the University of Bonn, the other participants in the project were the University of Kassel and the University of Göttingen. The research was funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).
Publication: Roman Kemper, Thomas F. Döring, Nicole Legner, Catharina Meinen and Miriam Athmann: Oil radish, winter rye and crimson clover: root and shoot performance in cover crop mixtures; Plant and Soil; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06240-y
IMAGE: YOHAN ROBINSON, UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG, CENTER FOR DISASTER MEDICINE.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY MARGARETA G. KUBISTA
Arm and head injuries are the most common in wartime civilians, both children and adults. This is according to a scientific report from the newly established Center for Disaster Medicine at the University of Gothenburg.
The report, titled “Civilt skadepanorama i krig” (Civilian Injury Landscape in War) was commissioned by the National Board of Health and Welfare and is in Swedish with an English summary. The aim behind it has been to create a better knowledge base for work on contingency planning in Swedish healthcare and for the rebuilding of civil defense in Sweden.
The researchers conducted a systematic literature review, describing civilian injury patterns in modern warfare from 1973 to 2023. From all the material collected, 62 scientific articles and reports were ultimately included in the review.
The results show that arm injuries were the most common among civilians in war, affecting around one in three injured people (32%). This was followed by head injuries (26%), injuries to the lower extremities, i.e. the legs (18%), chest injuries (18%), burns (16%), abdominal and pelvic injuries (10%) and spinal injuries (4%).
Blast waves and unexploded ammunition
The high number of head injuries can be explained by blast waves from bombs that cause civilians to be thrown against walls or have debris propelled at them. Arm and finger injuries in children often involve playing with unexploded ammunition.
Abdominal, chest and leg injuries, for example from mine blasts, are often fatal for civilians without body armor. It should also be noted that if they are injured and die, and therefore do not enter the healthcare system, the injuries are not recorded.
The task included studying any differences between adults and children. The distribution of injuries in children was found to be about the same as in adults. Every fourth person in the sample was a child under the age of 17.
Yohan Robinson, associate professor and director of the Center for Disaster Medicine at the University of Gothenburg, is an orthopedic and trauma surgeon with experience as an officer and war surgeon in Afghanistan and Mali.
Schematic distribution of physical injuries in adults and children.
CREDIT
Illustration by the University of Gothenburg
Important for civil and military healthcare
“Injury pattern data is important for contingency planning for both civilian and military medical services in the total defense system. We were actually surprised that the injury pattern has remained so constant over the last 50 years, despite different conflicts, geographical spread, the different nature of the wars and the many new weapon systems that have emerged,” he states.
The report is based on data from armed conflicts, although chemical, biological and nuclear weapons have been excluded from the review. Difficulties encountered in the work have included the variation in how injuries are reported, and finding reliable data from ongoing conflicts in places like Niger, Sudan and Ukraine.
“One should be cautious about generalizing the injury pattern to a Swedish context, not least because there are limitations in the material, such as reporting bias, observation of the injury pattern for survivors only, and conflicts of interest in the results,” says Yohan Robinson.
The authors of the report are all affiliated with the Center for Disaster Medicine at the University of Gothenburg. Yohan Robinson is joined by Karl Chevalley and Göran Sandström, both lieutenant colonels in the Armed Forces and senior doctors in anesthesia and intensive care.
Karl Chevalley is active in air ambulance operations in Region Västra Götaland, as well as being a lieutenant colonel and staff physician in the Army Staff. Göran Sandström, MD, is a lieutenant colonel and deputy director of Sweden’s Center for Defense Medicine.
Report in Swedish, including summary in English: Civilt skadepanorama i krig РEn litteraturanalys ̦ver ett halvt sekel av krig, https://hdl.handle.net/2077/78319
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Systematic review
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
University of Tartu researcher receives prestigious ERC Starting Grant to study the arms race between bacteria and viruses
IMAGE: HEDVIG TAMMAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN GENETICS OF UNIVERSITY OF TARTU IN HER LABORATORYview more
CREDIT: BY ANDRES AINELO
The two-way defence mechanisms of bacteria and phages, viruses of the bacteria, can offer a solution to antibiotic resistance problems. Hedvig Tamman, Associate Professor of Genetics at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Tartu, received the Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to study the microbial arms race.
Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem in the treatment of infectious diseases caused by bacteria. Bacteria-attacking viruses can offer new solutions, for example, for developing antibiotics and their additives. The prospect of using phages in the fight against pathogenic bacteria has long been recognised, but their very high specificity and unpredictable reproduction have limited their wider use in medicine.
Tamman’s study bridges several gaps in the research on bacteria, phages and their interaction. “As bacteria and phages have co-evolved since the beginning of time, there is a kind of arms race between them – phages develop a mechanism to overcome all the bacterial defence systems,” said Tamman.
On the one hand, the researcher studies how bacteria defend themselves against phages. For example, bacteria have defence mechanisms against phages and other stressors, such as the toxin-antitoxin system in chromosomes and the stringent response – the latter puts the bacterium, when stressed, into a kind of hibernation. This helps it survive the antibiotic attack and supports the development and spread of resistance. On the other hand, Tamman hopes to discover what helps the phages paralyse the bacterial stringent response. “Although the bacterium Pseudomonas putida that I study is not medically important, it is related to human and plant pathogens. Knowing how phages fight this bacterium gives us ideas that could help us fight bacterial diseases in the future,” Tamman said.
The ERC Starting Grant for early-stage researchers is €1.5 million over five years. The project “Deciphering stringent response proteins and toxin-antitoxin systems in the arms race between bacteria and phages” (abbreviation PhaBacArms) starts at the beginning of 2024 and runs until the end of 2028. Hedvig Tamman defended her PhD in genetics at the University of Tartu in 2016. Her doctoral thesis dealt with the functionality of chromosomal toxin-antitoxin systems of the bacterium Pseudomonas putida. From 2016 to 2021, Tamman was a postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Brussels, where she worked on determining bacterial stress responses and the structure of proteins involved in these responses.
As drinking water flows through pipes and into a glass, it runs against the rubber seals inside some plumbing devices. These parts contain additives that contribute to their flexibility and durability, but these potentially harmful compounds can leak into drinking water, according to a small-scale study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The authors report that the released compounds, which are typically linked to tire pollution, also transformed into other unwanted byproducts.
To enhance rubber’s strength and durability, manufacturers typically mix in additives. Scientists have shown that tire dust can transport these substances, such as 1,3 diphenylguanidine (DPG) and N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N'-phenyl-1,4-benzenediamine (6PPD), into waterways. DPG and 6PPD have also been detected in drinking water samples, though it’s unclear how the compounds got there. In previous research, Shane Snyder and Mauricius Marques dos Santos found that these rubber additives can react with disinfectants in simulated drinking water. Their lab tests generated a variety of chlorinated compounds, some of which could damage DNA. Now, the team wanted to assess whether real-world rubber plumbing fixtures can release DPG and 6PPD and form chlorinated byproducts in drinking water samples.
In this pilot study, the team collected tap water from 20 buildings and detected polymer additives at parts per trillion levels in every sample. The researchers explain that these compounds are not currently regulated, but the measured levels are potentially concerning, based on their previous study’s results from human cell bioassays. And the samples from faucets with aerators contained the highest total amounts. All of the samples contained DPG and one of its chlorinated byproducts, whereas 6PPD and two other chlorine-containing compounds were each found in fewer than five samples. This is the first report of chlorinated DPG byproducts in drinking water, according to the researchers.
To see if these compounds could have come from plumbing fixtures, the team tested rubber O-rings and gaskets from seven commercial devices, including faucet aerators and connection seals. In the experiment, the rings sat in water with or without chlorinated disinfectants for up to two weeks. Most of the seals, except for the silicone-based ones, released DPG and 6PPD additives. Additionally, plumbing pieces sitting in disinfectant-treated water generated chlorinated forms of DPG in amounts that were consistent with those observed in the drinking water samples. Because some of the rubber plumbing seals released DPG and 6PPD, the researchers say that drinking water, as well as tire pollution, could be a route of human exposure to these compounds.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Merlion programme; the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs; the Nanyang Technological University; the National Research Foundation of Singapore; and the Public Utilities Board, Singapore’s National Water Agency.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
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Occurrence of Polymer Additives 1,3-Diphenylguanidine (DPG), N‑(1,3-Dimethylbutyl)‑N'‑phenyl-1,4-benzenediamine (6PPD), and Chlorinated Byproducts in Drinking Water: Contribution from Plumbing Polymer Materials
IMAGE: THIS DIAGRAM SHOWS THE DECISION PROCESS FOR WHEN AN AI-BASED ROBOT ENCOUNTERS A PROBLEM DURING A SOURCE SEARCH. THE ROBOT WILL DETERMINE IF THE PROBLEM COULD BE SOLVED WITH HUMAN ASSISTANCE OR NOT. IF THE PROBLEM CANNOT BE SOLVED WITH HUMAN ASSISTANCE, FOR EXAMPLE, IF THE SEARCH AREA IS SIMPLY TOO LARGE, THEN THE SEARCH WILL END. HOWEVER, IF IT CAN BE SOLVED BY HUMAN ASSISTANCE, THE HUMAN PARTICIPANTS WILL RECEIVE AN EXPLANATION OF THE PROBLEM AND SUGGESTIONS FOR HOW TO SOLVE IT.view more
CREDIT: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL COMPUTING, TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY PRESS
When artificial intelligence robots that have been designed to use algorithms to complete source search tasks, such as search and rescue operations during a fire, encounter a disturbance, they are often unable to complete their task. Proposed solutions have ranged from trying to improve algorithms to introducing additional robots, but these AI-driven robots still encounter fatal problems.
Researchers have proposed a solution: a human-AI collaboration that takes advantages of the unique skills of the human brain to overcome challenges.
“It is time to bring humans back,” said Yong Zhao, a researcher from Changsha, China. “AI-driven robots are often used in situations when physical search would be too dangerous or physically impossible for people, such as locating the origin of a fire or identifying the source of toxic gas. However, AI robots can encounter critical problems that cannot be resolved autonomously, such as getting stuck or misidentifying the source. These are problems that are easily tackled by humans using their expertise, experience, and even instincts. A crowd-powered system offers a novel solution.”
To prove the feasibility of their human-AI collaboration strategy, researchers first identified the different types of hazards the robots could encounter. These hazards were then sorted into whether or not a human observer could help AI solve the problem. If the problem cannot be solved with human assistance, for example, if the search area is too large, then the search is stopped. However, if the problem could be solved with human assistance, the AI develops an explanation of the problem, and it is sent for crowdsourcing.
“Involving humans in the automated problem-solving process enhances the efficacy and efficiency of the algorithm. In scenarios where the robot faces challenges due to dynamic, deteriorated, or unfamiliar environments, temporary human intervention can be employed without prior knowledge of the surroundings to address these issues. Once resolved, AI seamlessly resumes control over the robot to continue its search,” said Sihang Qiu.
After identifying the different types of hazards and whether or not humans could assist in source search scenarios, researchers developed a user study. The user study tested two different control modes of the AI robot—Full Control and Aided Control. In Full Control, the human collaborator takes over the search process. In Aided Control, the problem-solving decision tree decides if the human-AI collaboration would be beneficial.
During Aided Control, when they received information from the algorithm about the problem and did not give over complete control, participants felt like they had less cognitive workload and could address the problem. However, non-experts had a harder time understanding the AI-driven robot’s explanations of the problem, leading the researchers to propose personalized interactions based on the experience of the human in the collaboration, including plain language explanations.
Looking ahead, researchers will try to find ways to include additional personalization, based on the human participants’ background, education level, and personality. “This study paves the way for our future exploration into harnessing crowd-powered systems to facilitate effective collaboration between humans and AI. Our aim is to substantiate the manifold advantages of such collaboration in diverse application scenarios, including but not limited to natural language processing and image analysis,” said Qiu.
Other contributors include Zhengqiu Zhu and Bin Chen from Changsha, China.
The National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project of Hunan Province funded this research.
Journal of Social Computing (JSC) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal which aims to publish high-quality, original research that pushes the boundaries of thinking, findings, and designs at the dynamic interface of social interaction and computation. This will include research in （1）computational social science—the use of computation to learn from the explosion of social data becoming available today; (2) complex social systems or the analysis of how dynamic, evolving social collectives constitute emergent computers to solve their own problems; and (3) human computer interaction whereby machines and persons recursively combine to generate unique knowledge and collective intelligence, or the intersection of these areas. The editorial board welcomes research from fields ranging across the social sciences, computer and information sciences, physics and ecology, communications and linguistics, and, indeed, any field or approach that can challenge and advance our understanding of the interface and integration of computation and social life. We seek to take risks, avoid boredom and court failure on the path to transformative new paradigms, insights, and possibilities. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms, methodologies and applications.
SciOpen is a professional open access resource for discovery of scientific and technical content published by the Tsinghua University Press and its publishing partners, providing the scholarly publishing community with innovative technology and market-leading capabilities. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics, and identity management and expert advice to ensure each journal’s development by offering a range of options across all functions as Journal Layout, Production Services, Editorial Services, Marketing and Promotions, Online Functionality, etc. By digitalizing the publishing process, SciOpen widens the reach, deepens the impact, and accelerates the exchange of ideas.
