Biases in large image-text AI model favor wealthier, Western perspectives

AI model that pairs text, images performs poorly on lower-income or non-Western images, potentially increasing inequality in digital technology representation

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Images

In a study evaluating the bias in OpenAI's CLIP, a model that pairs text and images and operates behind the scenes in the popular DALL-E image generator, University of Michigan researchers found that CLIP performs poorly on images that portray low-income and non-Western lifestyles.

 

"During a time when AI tools are being deployed across the world, having everyone represented in these tools is critical. Yet, we see that a large fraction of the population is not reflected by these applications—not surprisingly, those from the lowest social incomes. This can quickly lead to even larger inequality gaps," said Rada Mihalcea, the Janice M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, who initiated and advised the project. 

 

AI models like CLIP act as foundation models, or models trained on a large amount of unlabeled data that can be adapted to many applications. When AI models are trained with data reflecting a one-sided view of the world, that bias can propagate into downstream applications and tools that rely on the AI.

 

"If a software was using CLIP to screen images, it could exclude images from a lower-income or minority group instead of truly mislabeled images. It could sweep away all the diversity that a database curator worked hard to include," said Joan Nwatu, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering. 

 

Nwatu led the research team together with Oana Ignat, a postdoctoral researcher in the same department. They co-authored a paper presented at the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference Dec. 8 in Singapore.

 

The researchers evaluated the performance of CLIP using Dollar Street, a globally diverse image dataset created by the Gapminder Foundation. Dollar Street contains more than 38,000 images collected from households of various incomes across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Monthly incomes represented in the dataset range from $26 to nearly $20,000. The images capture everyday items, and are manually annotated with one or more contextual topics, such as "kitchen" or "bed."

 

CLIP pairs text and images by creating a score that is meant to represent how well the image and text match. That score can then be fed into downstream applications for further processing such as image flagging and labeling. The performance of OpenAI's DALL-E relies heavily on CLIP, which was used to evaluate the model's performance and create a database of image captions that trained DALL-E. 

 

The researchers assessed CLIP's bias by first scoring the match between the Dollar Street dataset's images and manually annotated text in CLIP, then measuring the correlation between the CLIP score and household income.

 

"We found that most of the images from higher income households always had higher CLIP scores compared to images from lower income households," Nwatu said. 

 

The topic "light source," for example, typically has higher CLIP scores for electric lamps from wealthier households compared to kerosene lamps from poorer households.

 

CLIP also demonstrated geographic bias as the majority of the countries with the lowest scores were from low-income African countries. That bias could potentially eliminate diversity in large image datasets and cause low-income, non-Western households to be underrepresented in applications that rely on CLIP. 

 

"Many AI models aim to achieve a 'general understanding' by utilizing English data from Western countries. However, our research shows this approach results in a considerable performance gap across demographics," Ignat said. 

 

"This gap is important in that demographic factors shape our identities and directly impact the model's effectiveness in the real world. Neglecting these factors could exacerbate discrimination and poverty. Our research aims to bridge this gap and pave the way for more inclusive and reliable models."

 

The researchers offer several actionable steps for AI developers to build more equitable AI models:

 

• Invest in geographically diverse datasets to help AI tools learn more diverse backgrounds and perspectives. 

• Define evaluation metrics that represent everyone by taking into account location and income.
• Document the demographics of the data AI models are trained on.

 

"The public should know what the AI was trained on so that they can make informed decisions when using a tool," Nwatu said.

 

The research was funded by the John Templeton Foundation (#62256) and the U.S. Department of State (#STC10023GR0014).

 

Study: Bridging the Digital Divide: Performance Variation across Socio-Economic Factors in Vision-Language Models (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2311.05746)

 

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DOI

10.48550/arXiv.2311.05746 

Battle of the AIs in medical research: ChatGPT vs Elicit

Efforts to streamline the process of academic research collection in the medical field using generative AI

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OSAKA METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

 

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ACCURACY AND EFFICIENCY LEVELS DIFFER DEPENDING ON THE AI USED

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CREDIT: OSAKA METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

Can AI save us from the arduous and time-consuming task of academic research collection? An international team of researchers investigated the credibility and efficiency of generative AI as an information-gathering tool in the medical field.

The research team, led by Professor Masaru Enomoto of the Graduate School of Medicine at Osaka Metropolitan University, fed identical clinical questions and literature selection criteria to two generative AIs; ChatGPT and Elicit. The results showed that while ChatGPT suggested fictitious articles, Elicit was efficient, suggesting multiple references within a few minutes with the same level of accuracy as the researchers.

“This research was conceived out of our experience with managing vast amounts of medical literature over long periods of time. Access to information using generative AI is still in its infancy, so we need to exercise caution as the current information is not accurate or up-to-date.” Said Dr. Enomoto. “However, ChatGPT and other generative AIs are constantly evolving and are expected to revolutionize the field of medical research in the future.”

Their findings were published in Hepatology Communications.

 

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About OMU 

Osaka Metropolitan University is the third largest public university in Japan, formed by a merger between Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University in 2022. OMU upholds "Convergence of Knowledge" through 11 undergraduate schools, a college, and 15 graduate schools. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter: @OsakaMetUniv_en, or Facebook. 

 

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JOURNAL

Hepatology Communications

DOI

10.1097/HC9.0000000000000336 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Collaborating with AI in Literature Search – An Important Frontier

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Dec-2023

COI STATEMENT

Cheng-Hao Tseng is on the speakers’ bureau for Roche. Yao-Chun Hsu consults, advises, is on the speakers’ bureau, and received grants from Gilead. He is on the speakers’ bureau and received grants from AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Roche. He advises Sysmex and is on the speakers’ bureau for MSD. Mindie Nguyen consults and received grants from Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, and Exact Science. She consults for Intercept and Exelixis. She received grants from Pfizer, Enanta, AstraZeneca, Delfi, Innogen, Curve Bio, Vir, Healio, NCI, and Glycotest. The remaining authors have no conflicts to report.

Veins of bacteria could form a self-healing system for concrete infrastructure

Drexel University's ‘BioFiber’ can stabilize and heal damaged concrete

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DREXEL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

SEM IMAGES OF THE BIOFIBER'S CORE FIBER WITH HYDROGEL COATING.

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CREDIT: DREXEL UNIVERSITY

In hopes of producing concrete structures that can repair their cracks, researchers from Drexel University’s College of Engineering are putting a new twist on an old trick for improving the durability of concrete. Fiber reinforcement has been around since the first masons were mixing horsehair into their mud. But the Drexel research team is taking this method to the next level by turning reinforcing fibers into a living tissue system that rushes concrete-healing bacteria to the site of cracks to repair the damage.

Recently reported in the journal Construction and Building Materials, Drexel’s “BioFiber” is a polymer fiber encased in a bacteria-laden hydrogel and a protective, damage-responsive shell. The team reports that a grid of BioFibers embedded within a concrete structure can improve its durability, prevent cracks from growing and enable self-healing.

“This is an exciting development for the ongoing efforts to improve building materials using inspiration from nature,” said Amir Farnam, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Engineering who was a leader of the research team. “We are seeing every day that our ageing concrete structures are experiencing damage which lowers their functional life and requires critical repairs that are costly. Imagine, they can heal themselves? In our skin, our tissue does it naturally through multilayer fibrous structure infused with our self-healing fluid — blood. These biofibers mimic this concept and use stone-making bacteria to create damage-responsive living self-healing concrete.”

Lengthening the lifespan of concrete is not just a benefit for the building sector, it’s become a priority for countries around the world that are working to reduce greenhouse gas. The process of making the ingredients of concrete — burning a mixture of minerals, such as limestone, clay or shale at temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit — accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Concrete structures can degrade in as little as 50 years depending on their environment. Between replacements and the growing demand for new buildings, concrete is the most consumed and most in-demand building material in the world.

Producing concrete that can last longer would be a big step in reducing its contribution to global warming, not to mention reducing the long-term cost of infrastructure repairs, which is why the U.S. Department of Energy has recently launched efforts focused on improving it.

Over the last decade, Drexel has led the way in looking at how to improve concrete’s sustainability and durability, and Farnam’s lab is part of a team participating in a Department of Defense effort to fortify its aging structures.

“For several years, the concept of bio-self-healing cementitious composites has been nurtured within the Advanced Infrastructure Materials Lab,” said Mohammad Houshmand, a doctoral candidate in Farnam’s lab who was the lead author of the research. “The BioFiber project represents a collaborative, multidisciplinary endeavor, integrating expertise from the fields of civil engineering, biology, chemistry, and materials science. The primary objective is to pioneer the development of a multifunctional self-healing BioFiber technology, setting new standards at the intersection of these diverse disciplines.”

The team’s approach in creating BioFibers was inspired by skin tissue’s self-healing capability and vasculature system’s role in helping organisms heal their own wounds. And it uses a biological technique they developed to enable self-repairing in concrete infrastructure with the help of biomineralizing bacteria.

In collaboration with research teams led by Caroline Schauer, PhD, the Margaret C. Burns Chair in Engineering, Christopher Sales, PhD, an associate professor, and Ahmad Najafi, PhD, an assistant professor, all from the College of Engineering, the group identified a strain of Lysinibacillus sphaericus bacteria as a bio-healing agent for the fiber. The durable bacteria, typically found in the soil, has the ability to drive a biological process called microbial induced calcium carbonate precipitation to create a stone-like material that can stabilize and harden into a patch for exposed cracks in concrete.

When induced into forming an endospore the bacteria can survive the harsh conditions inside concrete, lying dormant until called into action.

“One of the amazing things about this research is how everyone comes at the problem from their different expertise and the solutions to creating novel BioFibers are so much stronger because of that,” Schauer said. “Selecting the right combination of bacteria, hydrogel and polymer coating was central to this research and to the functionality of BioFiber. Drawing inspiration from nature is one thing, but translating that into an application comprised of biological ingredients that can all coexist in a functional structure is quite an undertaking — one that required a multifaced team of experts to successfully achieve.”

To assemble the BioFiber, the team started with a polymer fiber core capable of stabilizing and supporting concrete structures. It coated the fiber with a layer of endospore-laden hydrogel and encased the entire assembly with a damage-responsive polymer shell, like skin tissues. The entire assembly is a little over half a millimeter thick.

Placed in a grid throughout the concrete as it is poured, the BioFiber acts as a reinforcing support agent. But its true talents are revealed only when a crack penetrates the concrete enough to pierce the fiber’s outer polymer shell.

As water makes its way into the crack, eventually reaching the BioFiber, it causes the hydrogel to expand and push its way out of the shell and up toward the surface of the crack. While this is happening, the bacteria are activated from their endospore form in the presence of carbon and a nutrient source in the concrete. Reacting with the calcium in the concrete, the bacteria produce calcium carbonate which acts as a cementing material to fill the crack all the way to the surface.

The healing time ultimately depends on the size of the crack and activity of the bacteria — a mechanism the team is currently studying — but early indications suggest the bacteria could do its job in as little as one to two days.

“While there is much work to be done in examining the kinetics of self-repair, our findings suggest that this is a viable method for arresting formation, stabilizing and repairing cracks without external intervention,” Farnam said. “This means that BioFiber could one day be used to make a ‘living’ concrete infrastructure and extend its life, preventing the need for costly repairs or replacements.”

Drexel's BioFiber system uses a structural core fiber coated in bacteria-laden hydrogel encapsulated in a polymer shell to enable self-repairing concrete.

A scanning electron microscopic image of Drexel's BioFiber self-healing concrete system, showing a structural core fiber with hydrogel coating and polymer shell.

CREDIT

Drexel University

JOURNAL

Construction and Building Materials

DOI

10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2023.133765 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Development of a nature-inspired polymeric fiber (BioFiber) for advanced delivery of self-healing agents into concrete

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2023

 

Time-tested magnesium oxide: Unveiling CO2 absorption dynamics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: 

IN A PROPOSED CARBON-CAPTURE METHOD, MAGNESIUM OXIDE CRYSTALS ON THE GROUND BIND TO CARBON DIOXIDE MOLECULES FROM THE SURROUNDING AIR, TRIGGERING THE FORMATION OF MAGNESIUM CARBONATE. THE MAGNESIUM CARBONATE IS THEN HEATED TO CONVERT IT BACK TO MAGNESIUM OXIDE AND RELEASE THE CARBON DIOXIDE FOR PLACEMENT UNDERGROUND, OR SEQUESTRATION. CREDIT: ADAM MALIN/ORNL, U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY

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CREDIT: ADAM MALIN/ORNL, U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY

Magnesium oxide is a promising material for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and injecting it deep underground to limit the effects of climate change. But making the method economical will require discovering the speed at which carbon dioxide is absorbed and how environmental conditions affect the chemical reactions involved.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory analyzed a set of magnesium oxide crystal samples exposed to the atmosphere for decades, and another for days to months, to gauge the reaction rates. They found that carbon dioxide is taken up more slowly over longer time periods because of a reacted layer that forms on the surface of the magnesium oxide crystals.

“This reacted layer is a complicated mix of different solids, which limits the ability of carbon dioxide molecules to find fresh magnesium oxide to react with. To make this technology economical, we are now looking at ways to overcome this armoring effect,” said ORNL's Juliane Weber, the project’s principal investigator. Andrew Stack, a scientist at ORNL and team member on the project, followed: “If we can do so, this process might be able to achieve the Carbon Negative Energy Earthshot goal of capturing gigaton levels of carbon dioxide from air for less than $100 per metric ton of carbon dioxide.”

Most of the previous research, aimed at understanding how fast the magnesium oxide and carbon dioxide chemical reactions occur, relied on rough calculations rather than materials testing. The ORNL study marks the first time a multidecade test has been conducted to determine the reaction rate over long time scales. Using transmission electron microscopy at the Center for Nanophase Materials Science, or CNMS, at ORNL, the researchers found that a reacted layer forms. This layer consists of a variety of complex crystalline and amorphous hydrated and carbonate phases.

“Additionally, by performing some reactive transport modeling computer simulations, we determined that as the reacted layer builds up, it gets better and better at blocking carbon dioxide from finding fresh magnesium oxide to react with,” ORNL's researcher Vitaliy Starchenko said. “Thus, going forward, we are looking at ways to bypass this process to allow carbon dioxide to find fresh surface with which to react.”

The computer simulations help scientists and engineers understand how the reacted layer evolves and changes the way in which substances move through it over time. Computer models enable predictions concerning the reactions and movement of materials in natural and engineered systems, such as materials sciences and geochemistry.

The DOE Office of Science primarily supported the work. ORNL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program supported time-of-flight, or TOF, secondary ion mass spectrometry, or SIMS, and preliminary transmission electron microscopy, or TEM. Atomic force microscopy-TOF-SIMS and TEM characterizations were conducted as part of a user project at the CNMS, a DOE Office of Science user facility at ORNL.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.3c04690 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Armoring of MgO by a Passivation Layer Impedes Direct Air Capture of CO2

 

Major breakthrough for severe asthma treatment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

A landmark study has shown that severe asthma can be controlled using biologic therapies, without the addition of regular high-dose inhaled steroids which can have significant side effects.

The findings from the multinational SHAMAL study, published in The Lancet, demonstrated that 92% of patients using the biologic therapy benralizumab could safely reduce inhaled steroid dose and more than 60% could stop all use. 

The study’s results could be transformative for severe asthma patients by minimising or eliminating the unpleasant, and often serious, side effects of inhaled steroids. These include osteoporosis which leads to increased risk of fractures, diabetes and cataracts.

Asthma is one of the most common respiratory diseases worldwide - affecting almost 300 million people - and around 3 to 5% of these have severe asthma.  This leads to daily symptoms of breathlessness, chest tightness and cough, along with repeated asthma attacks which require frequent hospitalisation.

The SHAMAL study was led by Professor David Jackson, head of the Severe Asthma Centre at Guy's and St Thomas' and Professor of Respiratory Medicine at King's College London.

Professor Jackson said: “Biological therapies such as benralizumab have revolutionised severe asthma care in many ways, and the results of this study show for the first time that steroid related harm can be avoided for the majority of patients using this therapy." 

Benralizumab is a biologic therapy that reduces the number of inflammatory cells called eosinophil. This is produced in abnormal numbers in the airway of patients with severe asthma and is critically involved in the development of asthma attacks. Benralizumab is injected every four to eight weeks and is available in specialist NHS asthma centres.

The SHAMAL study took place across 22 sites in four countries - the UK, France, Italy and Germany.

The 208 patients were randomly assigned to taper their high dose inhaled steroid by varying amounts over 32 weeks, followed by a 16 week maintenance period. Approximately 90% of patients experienced no worsening of asthma symptoms and remained free of any exacerbations throughout the 48 week study. 

Similar studies to SHAMAL will be necessary before firm recommendations can be made regarding the safety and efficacy of reducing or eliminating high dose steroid use with other biologic therapies.

The study was funded by AstaZeneca and carried out by researchers at renowned universities including Queens University Belfast, Université Paris-Saclay and Trinity College Dublin.

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JOURNAL

The Lancet

DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02284-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Reduction of daily maintenance inhaled corticosteroids in patients with severe eosinophilic asthma treated with benralizumab (SHAMAL): a randomised, multicentre, open-label, phase 4 study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Dec-2023

 

Polyethylene waste could be a thing of the past

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE

An international team of experts undertaking fundamental research has developed a way of using polyethylene waste (PE) as a feedstock and converted it into valuable chemicals, via light-driven photocatalysis.

The University of Adelaide’s Professor Shizhang Qiao, Chair of Nanotechnology, and Director, Centre for Materials in Energy and Catalysis, at the School of Chemical Engineering, led the team which published their findings in the journal Science Advances.

“We have upcycled polyethylene plastic waste into ethylene and propionic acid with high selectivity using atomically dispersed metal catalysts,” said Professor Qiao.

“An oxidation-coupled room-temperature photocatalysis method was used to convert the waste into valuable products with high selectivity.

“Nearly 99 per cent of the liquid product is propionic acid, alleviating the problems associated with complex products that then require separation.

“Renewable solar energy was used rather than industrial processes that consume fossil fuel and emit greenhouse gases.

“This waste-to-value strategy is primarily implemented with four components, including plastic waste, water, sunlight and non-toxic photocatalysts that harness solar energy and boost the reaction. A typical photocatalyst is titanium dioxide with isolated palladium atoms on its surface.”

Most of the plastics used today end up being discarded and accumulated in landfills. PE is the most widely used plastic in the world. Daily food packaging, shopping bags and reagent bottles are all made from PE. It is also the largest proportion of all plastic waste and primarily ends up in landfills, posing a threat to global environment and ecology.

“Plastic waste is an untapped resource that can be recycled and processed into new plastics and other commercial products,” said Professor Qiao.

“Catalytic recycling of PE waste is still in early development and is practically challenging because of chemical inertness of polymers and side reactions arising from structural complexities of reactant molecules.”

Current chemical recycling for PE waste is operated at high temperatures greater than 400 degrees centigrade that yield complex product compositions.

Ethylene is an important chemical feedstock that can be further processed into a variety of industrial and daily products, while propionic acid is also in high demand owing to its antiseptic and antibacterial properties.

The team’s work aims to address contemporary environmental and energy challenges, contributing to a circular economy. It will be of use in further scientific research, waste management and chemical manufacturing.

“Our fundamental research provides a green and sustainable solution to simultaneously reduce plastic pollution and produce valuable chemicals from waste for a circular economy,” said Professor Qiao.

“It will inspire the rational design of high-performance photocatalysts for solar energy utilisation and benefit the development of solar-driven waste upcycling technology.”

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adk2407 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Photocatalytic production of ethylene and propionic acid from plastic waste by titania-supported atomically dispersed Pd species

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2023

 

$3.8 million NIH grant to fund Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health

A new center will build research knowledge and practice to benefit communities globally as climate extremes increase

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA HEALTH SCIENCES

A $3.8 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health, will fund planning for the Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health, or SCORCH, at the University of Arizona fund planning for the Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health, or SCORCH, at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. The center will focus on research and programs to help communities in Arizona and other hot, dry geographic regions adapt to climate-driven health threats. 

Hotter and drier climate conditions are driving a range of health challenges for more than 2 billion people who live in arid lands in Arizona and around the world. SCORCH will focus on cross-disciplinary research and programs to help vulnerable communities in Arizona and other hot and dry geographic regions adapt to climate-driven health threats. 

“Climate change is happening right now. You can see the effects in the United States and all over the world,” said Kacey Ernst, PhD, MPH, professor in the Zuckerman College of Public Health and one of three faculty leads on the project. “In Arizona, we have record-setting heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and dust storms, and all of those threaten health in different ways. We have to find opportunities to adapt, safeguard human health and build resilient communities because climate change is transforming our environment. By working together across disciplines and with community members, we can figure out how to navigate these challenges.”

Co-principal investigators Ernst, Mona Arora, PhD, assistant research professor in the Zuckerman College of Public Health, and Joe Hoover, PhD, assistant professor of environmental sciences in the College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences, envisioned SCORCH as a collaboration that will serve a range of communities, including low-resource urban and rural populations, Indigenous peoples and Spanish-speaking groups.

SCORCH will provide planning, coordination and resources for three research focus areas: health impacts of extreme weather events; forecasting and early warning; and adaptive responses to the built environment.

Two research projects are funded as part of the three-year planning period. One project, led by Melissa Furlong, PhD, assistant professor in the Zuckerman College of Public Heath, is designed to examine how exposure to extreme heat during pregnancy impacts attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and learning outcomes in children. The other project, led by Shujuan Li, PhD, associate professor in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, focuses on understanding the health trade-offs in greenspace planning decisions and developing a tool that can predict the health outcomes of contrasting greenspace designs.

SCORCH activities will focus on three key pillars:

• Systems Thinking – SCORCH will investigate how existing support systems, infrastructure and programs can respond to climate change using a cross-disciplinary approach that reaches across organizations and expertise to find solutions. A flexible and integrated data core will be developed to facilitate this process and tackle complex problems.
• Health Equity – SCORCH will work with partners to evaluate needs and conduct collaborative research that engages the community with the science. In responding to climate threats, equity will be prioritized by cultivating relationships with local and global partners in arid regions.
• From Science to Solutions – SCORCH will develop responsive and resilient systems that can adapt to climate impacts. In collaboration with community organizations, the team will connect research knowledge with practical implementation. They will foster partnerships with the private sector to scale solutions and build relationships with policymakers to guide action and lead adaptation.

The broader university community will be engaged through seed grant programs and workshops to develop innovative research and solutions. The center’s scientific studies will build on a foundation of data to provide benchmarks and insights that will guide decision-makers to prepare for the complex health challenges posed by climate change and protect communities.

“I’m very pleased and proud of Dr. Arora and Dr. Ernst for their work at the forefront of climate change response and public health,” said Iman Hakim, MD, PhD, MPH, dean of the Zuckerman College of Public Health, “We have been working collaboratively for several years with other researchers and community health providers to respond to these climate shocks such as heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, and now we’re able to build on that work to help communities develop resilience. This is the work of the future. Climate change is impacting all of humankind.”

In addition to researchers Furlong and Li and lead investigators Arora, Hoover and Ernst, who also serves as co-Director for the Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science program at the university’s Arizona Institute for Resilience, the SCORCH team includes: Zuckerman College of Public Health researchers Paloma Beamer, PhD, professor, interim associate dean of community engagement and BIO5 Institute member; Dean Billheimer, PhD, professor and member of the BIO5 Institute; Chris Lim, PhD, assistant professor, and Yiwen Liu, PhD, assistant professor. In addition to Li, other College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture collaborators include Ladd Keith, PhD, assistant professor, and Mackenzie Waller, MA, MLA, with Cristian Roman-Palacios, PhD, assistant professor in the UArizona iSchool, rounding out the UArizona research team. Huaqing Wang, PhD, assistant professor in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences at Utah State University, is also collaborating on the center. 

This work is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health, under award no. 1P20ES036112-01.

 

International collaboration uses faculty member’s research on ancient Roman migration, seeks to understand Balkan genomic history

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY

 

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THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF THE VIMINACIUM AMPHITHEATER, AN ANCIENT ROMAN NECROPOLIS LOCATED IN PRESENT-DAY SERBIA, WAS USED TO RECONSTRUCT THE GENOMIC HISTORY OF THE BALKAN DURING THE ROMAN MIGRATION OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM.

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CREDIT: (PHOTO BY CARLES LALUEZA-FOX)

STARKVILLE, Miss.––A Mississippi State University anthropologist’s bioarchaeological analysis and bone samples from ancient Roman burial sites were crucial in the development of new research regarding Roman and Balkan migration featured this week in Cell, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal.

Anna Osterholtz, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, provided her research on the “lived experiences” of the Romans in Croatia. She currently works closely with museum staff at the Town Museum of Trogir and the Institute for Anthropological Research, both in Croatia.  

The multidisciplinary reconstructed the genomic history of the Balkan Peninsula during the first millennium of the common era, a time and place of demographic, cultural and linguistic change. It was led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Spain, a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council and Pompeu Fabra University, along with research from the University of Belgrade in Serbia, the University of Western Ontario in Canada, Harvard University and MSU.

The team recovered and analyzed whole genome data from 146 ancient people excavated primarily from Serbia and Croatia—more than a third of which came from the Roman military frontier at the massive archaeological site of Viminacium in Serbia—which they co-analyzed with data from the rest of the Balkans and nearby regions. The study highlights the cosmopolitanism of the Roman frontier and the long-term consequences of migrations that accompanied the breakdown of Roman control, including the arrival of people speaking Slavic languages.

“Essentially, the study showed that there was an influx of individuals who moved into the Balkan region that are genetically similar to modern Slavic-speaking populations. It represents one of the largest demographic changes in Europe during what is known as the Migration Period. It’s a time frame where local identity was forming in the vacuum created by the dissolution of the Roman empire,” Osterholtz said.

“This study gives us a clue about how these communities were formed during the Migration Period. My own research examines how this is reflected in funerary practices and in changes in health,” Osterholtz said.

To read the paper, visit: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01135-2.

For more details about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences or the Department of Anthropology and Middle Easter Cultures, visit www.cas.msstate.edu or www.amec.msstate.edu.

Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu.

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JOURNAL

Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2023.10.018 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

A genetic history of the Balkans from Roman frontier to Slavic migrations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Dec-2023

THIRD WORLD U$A

Doctors discover many patients at UNC’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic screen positive for malnutrition

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA HEALTH CARE

 

IMAGE: 

ANNE PEERY, MD, MSCR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, UNC SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

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CREDIT: UNC SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

CHAPEL HILL, NC — Eating food and absorbing its nutrients is an everyday occurrence, but this normal activity can look different for someone who suffers from inflammatory bowel disease. IBD, which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, can cause chronic inflammation of the digestive tract – which for many reasons can lead to malnutrition. This malnourished state is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality, and new findings show that many patients in IBD clinic screen positive for malnutrition, leading to the critical need for same-day dietitian support in the IBD clinic.

The study, published in Gastro Hep Advances, led by first and second authors Aaron C. Viser and Adelaide R. Cooke, used a validated and reliable malnutrition screening tool to screen patients in-person during their visit to UNC’s Multidisciplinary Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic in Chapel Hill, NC. Between June 7, 2022 and July 19, 2022, 237 IBD patients were screened. Results showed 14% of those patients were at high risk for malnutrition. The prevalence of a positive screen was 15% among patients with Crohn’s disease and 12% among patients with ulcerative colitis.

“It was important to do this study because we have limited time with our patients and often many problems to address,” said Anne F. Peery, MD, corresponding author and associate professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine. “It’s easy to miss malnutrition in the clinic setting.”

The malnutrition screening tool asked three questions to determine whether or not a patient met the criteria. The quick three-minute survey included questions such as, have you recently lost weight without trying? If yes, how much weight have you lost? Have you been eating poorly because of a decreased appetite? One key factor to highlight was that most patients in the cohort had a normal or overweight body mass index, showing that malnutrition risk can develop at any body weight.

Symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, nausea, low energy and loss of appetite are all signs of active disease. The study showed 28% of the patients in an IBD flare met the criteria for malnutrition. Among those with a positive screen, 28% of patients had active disease and 8% were in remission. With these results, researchers say an evaluation from a registered dietitian plays a key role in caring for IBD patients in clinic.

“A positive screen for malnutrition should be immediately followed up with a formal nutrition assessment,” said Peery, who is also director of the Adult Inpatient Nutrition Support Team in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Department of Medicine. “A registered dietitian in clinic can fill this gap in care and can help the team develop a plan to meet the patient’s nutrition needs. We are fortunate to now have a full-time registered dietitian with us in the GI clinic. She has significantly improved the care we provide.”

“Moving forward, it would be useful to have our care partners in clinic who room the patient also screen the patients for malnutrition,” said Peery.

This study is another example of how patients with IBD do best when they receive multidisciplinary care. A registered dietitian can help the team identify any deficiencies, estimate the patient’s energy and protein needs, and help to develop a plan to meet these needs. This study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.

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JOURNAL

Gastro Hep Advances

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Doctors Discover Many Patients at UNC’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic Screen Positive for Malnutrition

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Dec-2023