Irish secondary schools among the most socio-economically equal for reading literacy

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

Irish secondary schools are among the most socially integrated in Europe when it comes to reading literacy, according to a new cross-country comparative study led by a sociologist at Trinity College Dublin.

The study also found that a school’s socio-economic composition has an impact on a child’s individual reading literacy scores even after adjusting for the students’ own family background. This is largely due to classroom discipline, teacher support, and peer academic aspirations. 

The importance of a school’s socio-economic composition for academic performance has long been documented but the exact reasons why children tend to achieve better academic results in schools with more privileged student intake has been poorly understood to date.

To better understand this phenomenon sociologist Yekaterina Chzhen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, analysed data from 29 European countries from the OECD's 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The study was recently published in the peer-reviewed British Educational Research Journal.

Dr Chzhen and Julia Leesch, PhD candidate, found that children at schools with a higher proportion of socio-economically privileged students scored higher in reading literacy in every country, but the gap between privileged and underprivileged schools varied considerably from country to country. Irish secondary schools were among the most socio-economically equal with respect to literacy scores between privileged and underprivileged schools.

Yekaterina Chzhen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, explained:

“Our study found that Ireland had some of the smallest school composition gaps in Europe, alongside Scandinavian and Baltic countries. Schools in France, Germany and Hungary had the greatest differences in literacy scores between privileged and underprivileged schools. 

“Overall, we found that countries that filter children into different educational tracks early, like Germany, tend to have greater differences in children’s skills achievement due to school composition than countries that separate children later in adolescence, like Ireland.”

A further analysis of OECD data from six countries, including Ireland, that sort children into different academic and vocational tracks after the age of 15 found that classroom climate and teaching practices were the most important factors in explaining why school social composition matters to children’s PISA reading scores.

Dr Chzhen, added:

“We expected school resources such as teacher numbers, labs, computers, and physical infrastructure would matter the most. But we found that supportive teachers and motivated classmates with high aspirations played a greater role in explaining why school social composition impacts on reading literacy, even after the student’s own family background is already accounted for.”

An electronic version of the paper, entitled ‘Why does school socio-economic composition matter to adolescents’ academic performance? Role of classroom climate and school resources’, was recently published in the British Educational Research Journal ahead of the print edition. The paper is open access can be downloaded from the journal’s website. This research was supported by a grant from the Trinity College Dublin Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund.

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JOURNAL

British Educational Research Journal

DOI

10.1002/berj.3898 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Why does school socio-economic composition matter to adolescents’ academic performance? Role of classroom climate and school resources

 

Where do we feel love?

New research sheds light on where and how we feel different kinds of love

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AALTO UNIVERSITY

Researchers at Aalto University have made a map of where in the body different types of love are felt and how strongly they are experienced.

‘It was noteworthy, though not very surprising, that the types of love associated with close relationships are similar and are the most strongly experienced,’ says philosopher Pärttyli Rinne, who coordinated the study. Doctoral researcher Mikke Tavast analysed the data, while researcher Enrico Glerean developed the research methods. The project was jointly initiated by Rinne and Professor Emeritus Mikko Sams.

The team surveyed participants about how they experienced 27 different types of love, such as romantic love, sexual love, parental love, and love for friends, strangers, nature, God, or themself. The team asked participants where they felt the different types of love in their body and how intense the feeling was physically and mentally.

Their findings, published in Philosophical Psychology, suggest that the different types of love form a continuum from weaker to stronger. All of the types were felt strongly in the head, but they differed throughout the rest of the body – some spread only to the chest, while others were felt all over. The strongest forms of love were felt most widely throughout the body.

To build the map, the researchers collected data from hundreds of participants through an online survey. Most of the responses were from young women in higher education. Participants were asked to colour in a body silhouette to show where they felt each type of love. They were also asked about how they felt the different types physically and mentally, how pleasant the feeling was and how it was associated with touch. Finally, they were asked to rate the closeness of the types of love.

‘Love between persons is divided into sexual and non-sexual. The types of love that are particularly close to each other are those that have a sexual or romantic dimension,’ says Rinne.

‘It was also interesting to find a strong correlation between the physical and mental intensity of the emotion and its pleasantness. The more strongly a type of love is felt in the body, the more strongly it’s felt in the mind and the more pleasant it is,’ adds Rinne.

Rinne says that the team were intrigued by the fact that all the different types of love are felt in the head. ‘When we move from more strongly experienced types of love to less strongly experienced types, the sensations in the chest area become weaker. It may be that, for example, love for strangers or wisdom is associated with a cognitive process. It may also be that there are pleasant sensations in the head area. This is something that should be investigated further,’ says Rinne.

Rinne also notes that there are cultural differences in love and that the demographics of the study group are linked to the experience of love. ‘If the same study were done in a highly religious community, love for God might be the most strongly experienced love of all. Similarly, if the subjects were parents in a relationship, as in our ongoing brain study project, love for children could be the strongest type of love,’ says Rinne.

The research was funded by the Kone Foundation, the Academy of Finland and the Emil Aaltonen Foundation.

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JOURNAL

Philosophical Psychology

DOI

10.1080/09515089.2023.2252464 

 

Gene required for root hair growth, nitrate foraging found in grasses

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: COMPARISON OF WILD-TYPE GROWING ROOT HAIRS (LEFT) AND THE BUZZ MUTANT WITH LITTLE ROOT HAIR NUBS, AS SEEN THROUGH A SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPE. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY KAREN SANGUINET, WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

PULLMAN, Wash. -- Scientists have found a plant gene that drives the growth of root hairs, the tiny structures that help plants find water and nutrients in the soil.

Identified by a team led by Washington State University researcher Karen Sanguinet, the gene, dubbed “BUZZ,” causes faster-growing, denser webs of roots and may also determine how plants find and use nitrates, a prime source of nitrogen essential to plant growth. Nitrates are also used in fertilizers that can pollute the environment as runoff, and this genetic discovery could ultimately help plant scientists find ways to grow crops more sustainably.

“Nitrate runoff and nitrogen use efficiency are some of the preeminent issues facing agriculture,” said Sanguinet, associate professor in WSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. “If you can understand the genetic mechanisms that control nitrate uptake and signaling, as well as how plants can better use nitrate, it’s advantageous for agriculture, soil, water, fertilizer application and the entire nitrogen cycle.”

The study, published in the journal New Phytologist, found that the BUZZ gene adjusts root growth — both the rate and lateral root initiation — in response to the nitrate concentration in nearby soil.

“Expression of the BUZZ gene is turned up in response to nitrate, urea, and ammonia presumably so that roots can find nitrogen in the soil,” Sanguinet said. “Loss of the gene shows a foraging root phenotype even when the nitrate supply is plentiful.”

The gene is expressed at very low levels and had never been described before, which made finding it more challenging.

“For such a sensitive response, the plant needs a gene that is discreet and tightly regulated. That’s what made it so hard to find,” Sanguinet said.

Identifying the gene in a model grass plant is also important because its function is likely conserved given the sequence similarity between grasses. Thus it translates to crops like wheat, rice, maize and barley. These crops are vital to feeding the world’s population, so a gene that could boost their ability to find and use nitrate could have a large impact.

Now that the researchers have found and validated the biological role of the BUZZ gene, they are delving deeper into this newly discovered mechanism.

“Half the battle is getting to this point,” Sanguinet said. “Now we’re finding cool stuff about how plants use the gene that is very specific to nitrate and root systems. Figuring out how plants work is the joy of why we do this.”

Sanguinet studies both crop and model species. Model species are useful because they lay the groundwork for work in crops that are often difficult to transform and study specific gene functions. She hopes findings like this gene will lead to renewed interest in basic research.

“We hope people realize there is a place for discovery,” Sanguinet said. "Unless you do the basic science that lays the groundwork for investigating molecular genetic mechanisms of growth, it won’t enable the applied research that has more direct impact. It’s all part of a research arc. This is a great start to work that could be really important, and I’m excited to keep moving forward on it.”

The research was led by two PhD students from the Sanguinet lab: Thiel Lehman and Miguel Rosas. Sanguinet and WSU colleagues worked with scientists from South Dakota State University, Northeast Normal University in China, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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JOURNAL

New Phytologist

DOI

10.1111/nph.19079 

ARTICLE TITLE

BUZZ: an essential gene for postinitiation root hair growth and a mediator of root architecture in Brachypodium distachyon

 

Machine learning models can produce reliable results even with limited training data

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Researchers have determined how to build reliable machine learning models that can understand complex equations in real-world situations while using far less training data than is normally expected.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Cornell University, found that for partial differential equations – a class of physics equations that describe how things in the natural world evolve in space and time – machine learning models can produce reliable results even when they are provided with limited data.

Their results, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could be useful for constructing more time- and cost-efficient machine learning models for applications such as engineering and climate modelling.

Most machine learning models require large amounts of training data before they can begin returning accurate results. Traditionally, a human will annotate a large volume of data – such as a set of images, for example – to train the model.

“Using humans to train machine learning models is effective, but it’s also time-consuming and expensive,” said first author Dr Nicolas Boullé, from the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. “We’re interested to know exactly how little data we actually need to train these models and still get reliable results.”

Other researchers have been able to train machine learning models with a small amount of data and get excellent results, but how this was achieved has not been well-explained. For their study, Boullé and his co-authors, Diana Halikias and Alex Townsend from Cornell University, focused on partial differential equations (PDEs).

“PDEs are like the building blocks of physics: they can help explain the physical laws of nature, such as how the steady state is held in a melting block of ice,” said Boullé, who is an INI-Simons Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. “Since they are relatively simple models, we might be able to use them to make some generalisations about why these AI techniques have been so successful in physics.”

The researchers found that PDEs that model diffusion have a structure that is useful for designing AI models. “Using a simple model, you might be able to enforce some of the physics that you already know into the training data set to get better accuracy and performance,” said Boullé.

The researchers constructed an efficient algorithm for predicting the solutions of PDEs under different conditions by exploiting the short and long-range interactions happening. This allowed them to build some mathematical guarantees into the model and determine exactly how much training data was required to end up with a robust model.

“It depends on the field, but for physics, we found that you can actually do a lot with a very limited amount of data,” said Boullé. “It’s surprising how little data you need to end up with a reliable model. Thanks to the mathematics of these equations, we can exploit their structure to make the models more efficient.”

The researchers say that their techniques will allow data scientists to open the ‘black box’ of many machine learning models and design new ones that can be interpreted by humans, although future research is still needed.

“We need to make sure that models are learning the right things, but machine learning for physics is an exciting fields – there are lots of interesting maths and physics questions that AI can help us answer,” said Boullé.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2303904120 

ARTICLE TITLE

Elliptic PDE learning is provably data-efficient

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Sep-2023

 

Laser-based ice-core sampling for studying climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RIKEN

 

IMAGE: A PHOTOGRAPH SHOWING DISCRETE CYLINDRICAL HOLES AFTER SAMPLING (51 VIALS) A 15 CM-LONG SECTION OF A DOME FUJI SHALLOW ICE CORE (DFS10) DRILLED IN EAST ANTARCTICA. view more 

CREDIT: RIKEN

Researchers led by Yuko Motizuki from the Astro-Glaciology Laboratory at the RIKEN Nishina Center in Japan have developed a new laser-based sampling system for studying the composition of ice cores taken from glaciers. The new system has a 3-mm depth-resolution—about 3 times smaller than what is currently available—meaning that it can detect temperature variations that occurred over much smaller periods of time in the past. The new laser melting sampler, or LMS, is expected to help reconstruct continuous annual temperature changes that occurred thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago, which will help scientists understand climate change in the past and present. The study was published in the Journal of Glaciology on Sep 19.

Tree rings can tell us how old a tree is, and the color and width of the rings can tell us a little about the local climate during those years. Yearly growth of glaciers can tell us a similar story, but over a much longer period of time. Scientists are studying past changes in climate by analyzing cylindrical ice cores removed from glaciers. By taking samples at regular intervals along the cores, researchers can reconstruct continuous temperature profiles. However, this is impossible with samples taken from deep locations, where annual accumulation has often been compressed to sub-centimeters.

Currently there are two standard methods for sampling ice cores. One has a depth-precision of about 1 cm, which means that data from years with less than 1 cm accumulation are lost, and any one-time events that acutely altered climate would be missed. The other method has good depth-precision, but it destroys the part of the sample needed to analyze the water content – the primary way in which scientists calculate past temperatures. The new laser melting sampler overcomes both these problems; it has high depth-precision and does not destroy the critical oxygen and hydrogen isotopes found in water, which are needed to infer past temperature.

The LMS system delivers a laser beam through an optical fiber with a special silver nozzle, and quickly pumps out the liquid sample, eventually depositing it into stainless steel vials. Once the special hardware was assembled, the researchers experimented to optimize three critical parts of the process: the amount of power for the laser, the speed with which to insert the nozzle into the core as the laser melts the ice, and the rate at which the liquid sample is vacuumed out. With the optimization, the researchers could melt the ice as fast as possible, prevent the laser from overheating, and prevent the meltwater from getting too hot, which would destabilize the critical isotopes and prevent correct temperature measurements.

As a proof-of-concept experiment, the team sampled a 15-cm segment of a 50-cm Dome-Fuji shallow ice core, which was taken about a football-field (~92 m) below the ice surface in East Antarctica (see Movie). In one test, they were able to take 51 discrete samples at regular 3-mm intervals along the ice core segment. They measured the stable oxygen and hydrogen isotopes that made up the meltwater extracted from the samples and found that they matched well with those taken by hand segmentation, a process only practical in this research setting. A good match means that the laser-melting process did not ruin the sample, and the inferred temperatures would be accurate.

Motizuki says, “With our laser-melting method, it’s now possible to analyze stable water isotopes at a few-millimeters depth resolution. This will allow researchers to obtain continuous, long-term, annually-resolved temperature profiles, even in deep ice cores collected at low accumulation sites in Antarctica, as well as transient events such as sudden temperature changes which are recorded in them.”

The researchers next plan to use the LMS system, or an upgraded next version, to study climate change related to natural variations in solar activity

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JOURNAL

Journal of Glaciology

DOI

10.1017/jog.2023.52 

 

Range of pesticides, including neonicotinoids, found in pollen of different bee species

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

New research paints a worrying picture for the different species of bees that provide multi-million-euro pollination services in Ireland each year. The work raises concerns about the potential wide-spread exposure to multiple chemicals from two pesticide categories (fungicides and neonicotinoid insecticides) and indicates that different bee species may be exposed differently to pesticides – meaning that assessments of pesticide risk to honey bees may not be easily extrapolated to other bees.

The scientists behind the study, from Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University, evaluated pesticide residues in crop pollen at 12 sites in Ireland, and in pollen collected from honey bees and bumble bees from the same sites. They have just published their findings in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Key results

• Most pesticides detected had not been applied recently to the sampled fields – suggesting that some chemicals may persist for a long time (in the soil, which can subsequently end up in crop pollen) and/or residues may have come from plants exposed to pesticides in other places but within the foraging range of bees (in the case of bee-collected pollen)
• Crop pollen was only contaminated with fungicides; honey bee pollen was mostly contaminated with fungicides; bumble bee pollen mostly by neonicotinoid insecticides
• The highest number of compounds and most pesticide detections were in bumble bee pollen
• All five neonicotinoid insecticides assessed were found in bumble bee pollen – even though these had not been applied recently to the sampled fields

Taken in combination, these results raise significant concerns about the potential wide-spread exposure to multiple pesticides. Additionally, some previous studies have shown that when insecticides and fungicides are combined, the results may be more toxic than for each category alone. 

Elena Zioga, PhD Candidate in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, is the first author of the just-published journal article. She said:

“The results of this study are concerning on several levels. Of particularly great significance is the indication that different species seem to be exposed to pesticides differently based on the variation in the types and number of different pesticides found in pollen of honey and bumble bees respectively.

“Essentially, this means that using honey bees as a reference for understanding the exposure to different pesticides cannot give a complete picture. What’s true for honey bees doesn’t seem to be true for bumble bees, and we know that both are important for the overall pollination service and for supporting healthy ecosystems.

“It is also very worrying that the five neonicotinoids we looked for appeared in bumble bee pollen and not in crop pollen. Some of these pesticides, known to be particularly toxic, had not been applied in the fields we sampled for at least three years. This shows either that they persist for a long time in the field edges, where wildflowers grow, or that bees collected neonicotinoid-contaminated pollen from beyond the sampled fields. Our work also showed that neonicotinoid detection increased when the presence of wild plants in bumble bee pollen increased, and that is one of many things that require further investigation.”

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JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166214 

 

Grant awarded to University of Louisville law professor will fund climate adaptation project

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

 

IMAGE: UOFL BRANDEIS LAW PROFESSOR TONY ARNOLD, FOURTH FROM LEFT, WILL LEAD THE PROJECT. RESILIENCE JUSTICE PROJECT FELLOWS WILL ASSIST. PICTURED WITH ARNOLD ARE THE FELLOWS, FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, LAKEN WADSWORTH, REBECCA WELLS-GONZALEZ, RALPH BANCHSTUBBS, ARNOLD, CARCYLE BARRETT, IRIE EWERS, JAKE MACE AND COLIN SHEEHAN. view more 

CREDIT: UOFL BRANDEIS SCHOOL OF LAW

The Resilience Justice Project (RJ Project) at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law has been awarded a one-year multi-institutional grant through a national competitive process to evaluate how climate adaptation planning can be more equitable for low-income communities in eight U.S. coastal areas.

The RJ Project will use the $75,000 award from the National Sea Grant Law Center through NOAA’s National Coastal Resilience Fund to examine coastal urban adaptation in the eight cities: Boston, Cleveland, Miami, New Orleans, San Diego, Savannah, Seattle and Tampa. Principal investigator Tony Arnold, the Herbert F. Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use at Brandeis Law, and his team will collaborate with researchers at Georgetown University and Georgia State University.

The project will examine how the cities are currently ensuring that their climate adaptation plans are equitable and fair.

“We will assess plans, policies and laws affecting climate adaptation in these eight coastal urban areas with an eye towards addressing the vulnerabilities of low-income neighborhoods of color,” Arnold said. “We’ll then use our assessments to produce a guidebook of best practices and a series of webinars so that any city can use the information to make their climate adaptation planning equitable for all neighborhoods.”

The project utilizes the Resilience Justice Assessment Framework, pioneered by Arnold and Resilience Justice Fellows at Brandeis Law. The Resilience Justice Project addresses the inequitable vulnerabilities of communities, such as neighborhoods, to many different shocks and changes.

“Systems of injustice, inequality, marginalization and oppression have undermined the capacities of low-income communities of color to resist and adapt to shocks and changes,” Arnold said. “These shocks and changes include climate change, economic shocks, political change, disasters, pollution, health crises and many other disruptions.

“Many low-income neighborhoods of color have both community-based resilience but also vulnerabilities that come from inequitable conditions and systems of inequitable policies. We aim to empower marginalized communities so that they can thrive, not just survive.”

Arnold and his team will build on work they began last year using the framework in a project funded by the EPA and Kentucky Division of Water to examine the 34-square-mile Mill Creek watershed in southwest Louisville. In this study, the research team gathered the views and needs of residents on environmental and community conditions and is providing the information to the Louisville/Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District.

“We’re taking what we’ve learned about how the framework worked with Mill Creek to the eight cities in the new project,” Arnold said. “We’ll continue to be engaged with the Mill Creek watershed community while we carry out the work under our new grant. In this way, all communities involved can learn from one another.”

Along with his law school appointment, Arnold holds an affiliated professorship in UofL’s Department of Urban and Public Affairs, part of the College of Arts and Sciences. The Resilience Justice Fellows working on the project are Brandeis Law students Ralph Banchstubbs, Carcyle Barrett, Irie Ewers, Jake Mace, Colin Sheehan and Laken Wadsworth and Ph.D. candidate in Urban and Public Affairs Rebecca Wells-Gonzalez.

The collaborating groups working with UofL on the project are the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown Law School and the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth at Georgia State. They also will work with local governments and community-based environmental justice groups in the eight coastal areas.

The research project is titled “Equitable Coastal Urban Adaptation to Climate Change: A Resilience Justice Assessment,” and is supported by the National Sea Grant Law Center.

 

Technological progress and climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PNAS NEXUS

 

IMAGE: THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY’S ENVIRONMENTALLY EXTENDED GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM MODEL WITH HETEROGENEOUS AGENT AND INPUT-OUTPUT NETWORK (EE-HA-IO) MODEL. view more 

CREDIT: LIANG ET AL.

Technological progress can reduce the energy required to achieve the same ends, reducing the use of fossil fuels and the greenhouse gases associated with burning fossil fuels. But technological progress can also make production, consumption, and travel cheaper, stimulating demand and consequently increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Sai Liang and colleagues sought to explore this conundrum by building an environmentally extended general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agent and input-output network covering 141 nations and 65 sectors, as defined by the Global Trade Analysis Project. The authors found that whether technological progress tended to decrease or increase emissions depended on its place in the value chain. Progress in upstream sectors tends to result in increased emissions overall, while progress in downstream sectors tends to lower global emissions. Technological progress in Russia’s chemicals sector; China’s gas sector; and China’s, the United States’, and South Korea’s coal and petroleum sectors have significantly increased global emissions, whereas technological progress in China’s sugar and construction sectors and the United States’ dwelling and human health and social work sectors have significantly reduced global emissions. (The dwelling sector includes such activities as housing investment, residential construction, and residential real estate services; the human health and social work sector includes economic activities related to healthcare and social welfare services, such as medical laboratories, pharmacies, and services related to social assistance.) According to the authors, the model could help national governments identify where technological progress can best help meet emissions reductions goals—and where policies might be needed to prevent the tendency for energy use to rebound after a technological advance increases consumption. 

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JOURNAL

PNAS Nexus

ARTICLE TITLE

Double-edged sword of technological progress to climate change depends on positioning in global value chains

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Sep-2023

 

Ability to drive a car influences quality of life of older adults in Japan

Research shows that car ownership is associated with several positive indicators of the quality of life of older adults

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASEDA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: STUDY SUGGESTS THAT SHARED AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES CAN ADDRESS MOBILITY ISSUES AMONG OLDER ADULTS IN JAPAN view more 

CREDIT: ANDANTE HADI PANDYASWARGO FROM WASEDA UNIVERSITY

Physical health and cognitive function declines as we age. Aging impacts people’s ability to perform routine tasks, which affects their well-being and sense of independence. One such routine activity that is frequently affected is driving. For older adults, the inability to drive themselves can mean that they become unable to access basic needs or engage in social activities.

In a recent study that was made available online on 29 August 2023 and is all set to be published in volume 176 of Transportation Research in October 2023, researchers from Waseda University, Japan looked at the mobility challenges faced by older adults in the country. They analyzed data from the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) survey, using exploratory analysis methods. 

The study found that car ownership among older adults in Japan is strongly related to several positive indicators of well-being. For example, car ownership was associated with higher self-rated health status, greater number of years lived in the current municipality, and better working status. Older adults who owned at least one car experienced a higher level of independence and a greater positive attitude towards giving and receiving help, including running errands, compared to those who did not own a car.

Countries around the world are grappling with challenges caused by an aging population due to falling birth rates. Although the phenomenon is especially acute in Japan, research suggests that other countries will soon follow suit. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop technologies to improve the quality of life of an aging population and mitigate the impacts of population aging. 

As Associate Professor Andante Hadi Pandyaswargo from the Environmental Research Institute of Waseda University, the lead researcher in the study, notes, "The rate of population ageing and life expectancy in Japan has been increasing. Other countries, including the developing countries, will follow the trend. In fact, the doubling time of the ratio of older adults in the population of some developing countries is faster than that in Japan. The United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 projected that by 2050, the global population of people older than 64 will be more than twice that of children under five. Therefore, countries with an ageing population must quickly adapt and accommodate the changes caused by the growing number of older persons." Besides Pandyaswargo, researchers Tifani Husna Siregar, former Assistant Professor at the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University and Hiroshi Onoda, a Professor at the Graduate School of Environment and Energy Engineering at Waseda University, were involved in the study.

Analyzing the findings of this study, the researchers suggest that autonomous driving may play a key role in solving the mobility crisis among older adults. Giving older adults access to autonomous vehicles (AVs) via a car-sharing business model can have several benefits. For instance, it can improve mobility in older adults, reducing the financial costs associated with their transportation. In the long term, introducing the technology to a greater section of the population is likely to increase its adoption.

"Our study found that providing better access and safer mobility, like shared AVs, for older adults in the countryside has the potential to alleviate some mobility concerns that push older adults to relocate to denser cities. Our study also showed that mobility independence relates to self-perceived health and willingness to help others. We hope that nurturing these factors will allow us to halt the unnecessary shrinking of communities and mitigate the mobility challenges of older adults, thereby ensuring their well-being", explains Pandyaswargo.

Shared AVs are a fitting technological solution to the mobility issues facing older Japanese adults, because Japan is a world leader in automobile technology. "The automotive industry is one of Japan's core industries. Therefore, Japan has the potential to set a global example of how automotive technologies can evolve to support the mobility of older adults," Pandyaswargo concludes.

Aging being a reality for all living beings, it is imperative that the challenges we face in our old age are probed for solutions armed with new and emerging technologies. This study attests to this need and shines the light on possible answers to one inescapable question that aging presents.

 

***

 

Reference

Authors: Andante Hadi Pandyaswargo1, Tifani Husna Siregar2, Hiroshi Onoda3

 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2023.103818

 

Affiliations:     

1. Environmental Research Institute, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

2. School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

3. Graduate School of Environment and Energy Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

 

About Waseda University
Located in the heart of Tokyo, Waseda University is a leading private research university that has long been dedicated to academic excellence, innovative research, and civic engagement at both the local and global levels since 1882. The University has produced many changemakers in its history, including nine prime ministers and many leaders in business, science and technology, literature, sports, and film. Waseda has strong collaborations with overseas research institutions and is committed to advancing cutting-edge research and developing leaders who can contribute to the resolution of complex, global social issues. The University has set a target of achieving a zero-carbon campus by 2032, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. 

To learn more about Waseda University, visit https://www.waseda.jp/top/en  

 

About Andante Hadi Pandyaswargo from Waseda University
Andante Hadi Pandyaswargo is an Associate Professor at the Environmental Research Institute, Waseda University. Her research focuses on the sustainable development of emerging Asian countries. Specifically, her research interests include sustainable and renewable energy, municipal waste management, and green mobility, and she has published over 30 articles on these topics. She particularly enjoys getting data from the field and analyzing it from social, technological, and economic perspectives. In the past few years, she noticed that the challenges related to Japan's aging and declining population is increasing. Therefore, she has been exploring the opportunities of smart technologies to respond to those challenges and reap the benefits of longevity.

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JOURNAL

Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice

DOI

10.1016/j.tra.2023.103818 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Exploring Japan’s older adults mobility challenges and the potential role of autonomous vehicles