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)
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
DOOMERS
Early research shows Gen Z perceives more dangers in life than previous generations
There appears to be a common understanding that there is a mental health crisis among young people, but has society understood why?
As presented at the 2023 Society for Risk Analysis Annual Conference, Gabriel Rubin from Montclair State University conducted 40 interviews with members of Gen Z (as of publication) in an ongoing study about risk factors that have led to the current mental health crisis in young people. So far, this study has identified risk factors such as mass shootings, school lockdown drills, parental pressure, social media and the climate crisis.
Despite risk analysis research demonstrating that we live in one of the safest times ever, Gen Z experiences a disparity in risk assessment from their older counterparts, essentially having the perception that risk is everywhere they turn. One of the major takeaways from the interviews is that members of Gen Z are fed with a constant stream of news alerts that will overemphasize their threat level. Gen Z is presented with a world where risk is black and white: things are safe (safe spaces, e.g.) or contain dangerous risk. Prior research has demonstrated that risk is not black and white – there are many risks in life and they can be weighed, yet Gen Z members view risk as either the presence or absence of safety in a situation.
This research has so far revealed that the disparity in risk assessment has led many young people to feel anxious, depressed and even suicidal – especially young girls and women. Messaging to Gen Zers needs to emphasize that there is a lot of gray area in risk and in life. Alleviating this crisis is one of the most challenging issues in America today. This research suggests that young peoples’ inability to understand risk is a critical component of this crisis.
Gabriel Rubin is presenting this research Wednesday, Dec. 13, from 11:15-11:30 a.m., in the Westin Washington D.C.
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About SRA The Society for Risk Analysis is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, scholarly, international society that provides an open forum for all those interested in risk analysis. SRA was established in 1980. Since 1982, it has continuously published Risk Analysis: An International Journal, the leading scholarly journal in the field. For more information, visit www.sra.org.
Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology examines effects of climate change on allergic conditions
Five articles tackle how allergists can assist patients affected by climate conditions
AMERICAN COLLEGE OF ALLERGY, ASTHMA, AND IMMUNOLOGY
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (December 13, 2023) – As we head into the new year, some issues may be coming into sharper focus for those involved in allergy-immunology issues. The current issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, focuses its attention on a key problem affecting those with allergic conditions and the world today: climate change.
“We recognize that climate change affects the global population, and that many people feel they as individuals don’t have much control,” says allergist Donald Leung, MD, PhD, Senior Executive Editor of Annals. “But we also wanted to highlight the role of allergists in working with patients whose allergic diseases might be affected by global warming and climate change. There is evidence that the environment affects those living with asthma, seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, atopic dermatitis, and other allergic conditions. Our goal was to address the effects of climate change on those conditions through a series of well-researched articles by highly respected allergists.”
The articles on this topic in the December issue are as follows:
These five articles highlight how climate change has affected diseases such as atopic dermatitis, asthma, allergic rhinitis and allergies in general. One example of the effect of climate change is that pollen seasons are lasting longer and starting earlier due to environmental warming. The CME review by Seastedt and Nadeau discusses how global fires and dust storms have increased atopic disease and worsened allergies. Global warming also has been shown to lead to disruption of the epithelial barrier, and as a result, alarmins can be induced, which leads to increasing T2 inflammation in allergy. An editorial by Dr. David Stukus stresses the important role that allergists can play in helping patients who are being affected by the effects of global warming and climate change.
About ACAAI
ACAAI is a professional medical organization of more than 6,000 allergists-immunologists and allied health professionals, headquartered in Arlington Heights, Ill. The College fosters a culture of collaboration and congeniality in which its members work together and with others toward the common goals of patient care, education, advocacy, and research. ACAAI allergists are board-certified physicians trained to diagnose allergies and asthma, administer immunotherapy, and provide patients with the best treatment outcomes. For more information and to find relief, visit AllergyandAsthmaRelief.org. Join us on Facebook, Pinterest,Instagram and Twitter/X.
JOURNAL
Annals of Allergy Asthma & Immunology
ARTICLE TITLE
What the practicing allergist can and should do regarding climate change
Study analyzes what babies hear, say on six continents
Talk from adults stood out as key contributor to early childhood speech; no effects found related to socioeconomics
Elika Bergelson, associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, studies how infants and toddlers learn language from the world around them. The developmental psychologist specifically strives to parse the various theories that account for the onset and eventual mastery of language comprehension and production. Bergelson’s latest paper, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a more global approach to developing and testing such theories.
Written with Alejandrina Cristia at the École normale supérieure, PSL University and 11 others, the paper is based on an extremely large sample of two- to 48-month olds. Day-long audio recordings captured the babbling and baby talk of 1,001 children representing 12 countries and 43 languages. Analysis was completed with the help of machine learning.
Results show that the main predictors of language development are age, clinical factors such as prematurity or dyslexia, and how much speech children receive from the world around them. In contrast to previous research, no effects were found related to gender, multilingualism, or socioeconomics.
The study was able to simultaneously consider many variables that are usually looked at separately while also considering how big their effects were. "Notably, it wasn't just child factors like age or risk for language delay that mattered, but a key environmental factor too: how much speech children heard from adults,” Bergelson said. “For every 100 adult vocalizations children heard per hour, they produced 27 more vocalizations themselves, and this effect grew with age."
The work also touches on well-worn critiques of low-income parents and caregivers. “There's been much debate and discussion in the literature in recent years about how socioeconomic status does or doesn't link to language input and language output,” noted Bergelson. “We looked in many, many, many different ways … In no form did we ever find evidence that moms with more education had kids who produced more speech in these tens of thousands of hours of recordings from daily life.”
Financial support for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.
RESEARCHERS PRINTED MICROSCALE LENSES DIRECTLY ONTO OPTICAL FIBERS, ALLOWING THEM TO COMPACTLY COMBINE FIBERS AND LASER CRYSTALS INSIDE A SINGLE LASER OSCILLATOR.
CREDIT: MORITZ FLOESS AND SIMON ANGSTENBERGER, 4TH PHYSICS INSTITUTE AT UNIVERSITY OF STUTTGART IN GERMANY
WASHINGTON — For the first time, researchers have shown that 3D-printed polymer-based micro-optics can withstand the heat and power levels that occur inside a laser. The advance enables inexpensive compact and stable laser sources that would be useful in a variety of applications, including the lidar systems used for autonomous vehicles.
“We significantly reduced the size of a laser by using 3D printing to fabricate high-quality micro-optics directly on glass fibers used inside of lasers,” said research team leader Simon Angstenberger from the 4th Physics Institute at University of Stuttgart in Germany. “This is the first implementation of such 3D-printed optics in a real-world laser, highlighting their high damage threshold and stability.”
In the Optica Publishing Group journal Optics Letters, the researchers describe how they 3D printed microscale optics directly onto optical fibers to combine fibers and laser crystals inside a single laser oscillator in a compact way. The resulting hybrid laser exhibited stable operation at output powers of over 20 mW at 1063.4 nm and had a maximum output power of 37 mW.
The new laser combines the compactness, robustness and low cost of fiber-based lasers with the advantages of crystal-based solid-state lasers, which can have a broad range of properties such as different powers and colors.
“Until now, 3D-printed optics have primarily been used for low power applications such as endoscopy,” said Angstenberger. “The ability to use them with high power applications could be useful for lithography and laser marking, for example. We showed that these 3D micro-optics printed onto fibers can be used to focus large amounts of light down to a single point, which could be useful for medical applications such as precisely destroying cancerous tissue.”
Taking the heat
The 4th Physics Institute at University of Stuttgart has a long history of developing 3D-printed micro-optics, especially the ability to print them directly on fibers. They use a 3D printing approach known as two-photon polymerization, which focuses an infrared laser into a UV sensitive photoresist. In the laser’s focal region, two infrared photons will be absorbed simultaneously, which hardens the UV resist. Moving the focus around allows various shapes to be created with high precision. This method use can be used to create miniaturized optics and also allows novel functionalities such as the creation of free-form optics or complex lens systems.
“Because these 3D-printed elements are made of polymers, it was unclear whether they could withstand the significant amount of heat load and optical power that occurs inside a laser cavity,” said Angstenberger. “We found that they are surprisingly stable, and we were not able to observe any kind of damage on the lenses even after several hours of running the laser.”
For the new study, the researchers used a 3D printer made by Nanoscribe to fabricate lenses with a 0.25 mm diameter and height of 80 microns onto the end of a fiber with the same diameter using two-photon polymerization. This involved designing an optical element with commercial software, inserting the fiber into the 3D printer, and then printing the small structure on the end of the fiber. This process must be extremely precise in terms of aligning the printing to the fiber and the accuracy of the printing itself.
Creating a hybrid laser
After the printing was complete, the researchers assembled the laser and the laser cavity. Rather than using a crystal inside a laser cavity made of bulky and costly mirrors, they used fibers to form part of the cavity, creating a hybrid fiber-crystal laser. The lenses printed at the end of the fibers focus and collect – or couple – the light into and out of the laser crystal. They then glued the fibers into a mount to make the laser system more stable and less susceptible to air turbulence. The crystal and the printed lenses measured just 5 X 5 cm2.
Continuously recording the laser power over several hours verified that the printed optics inside the system did not deteriorate or affect the long-term properties of the laser. Additionally, scanning electron microscopy images of the optics after use in the laser cavity did not show any visible damage. “Interestingly, we found that the printed optics were more stable than the commercial fiber Bragg grating we used, which ended up limiting our maximum power,” said Angstenberger.
The researchers are now working to optimize the efficiency of the printed optics. Larger fibers with optimized freeform and aspherical lens designs or a combination of lenses printed directly onto the fiber could help improve the output power. They would also like to demonstrate different crystals in the laser, which could allow the output to be customized for specific applications.
Paper: S. Angstenberger, P. Ruchka, M. Hentschel, T. Steinle, H. Giessen, “Hybrid Fiber-Solid State Laser with 3D-Printed Intracavity Lenses,” Opt. Lett., Vol. 48, Issue 24, pp. 6549-6552 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.504940
About Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA)
Optica Publishing Group is a division of the society, Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide. It publishes the largest collection of peer-reviewed and most-cited content in optics and photonics, including 18 prestigious journals, the society’s flagship member magazine, and papers and videos from more than 835 conferences. With over 400,000 journal articles, conference papers and videos to search, discover and access, our publications portfolio represents the full range of research in the field from around the globe.
About Optics Letters
Optics Letters has been publishing high-impact research in the field of photonics for over 45 years and offers rapid dissemination of new results in all areas of optical science with short, original, peer-reviewed communications. Optics Letters accepts papers that are noteworthy to a substantial part of the optics community. Published by Optica Publishing Group and led by Editor-in-Chief Miguel Alonso, Institut Fresnel, École Centrale de Marseille and Aix-Marseille Université, France, University of Rochester, USA. For more information, visit Optics Letters.
DALLAS, Dec. 13, 2023 — The winter holidays can turn deadly as research shows that more people die from heart attacks during the last week of December than at any other time of the year. While being aware of the signs of a heart attack and taking steps to reduce your risk are important all year long, the American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary organization focused on heart and brain health for all, says that’s especially critical during the next few weeks.
A number of scientific studies confirm this deadly phenomenon.
A study published inCirculation, the flagship journal of the American Heart Association, reported that more cardiac deaths occur in the U.S. on December 25 than on any other day of the year, followed by December 26 and January 1.
In a British Medical Journal study reviewing more than 16 years of data on heart attacks among people in Sweden, there was a 15% overall increase in heart attacks during the winter holidays. Of particular note, heart attacks increased 37% on Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve), peaking at 10 p.m. and more often in people over 75 and those with diabetes or previous cardiovascular disease.
"No one wants to think of tragedy during this joyous time of year as we gather with family and friends. However, these startling facts are very sobering. We don’t know exactly what triggers this increase in heart attacks during the holidays, it’s likely a combination of factors,” said Johanna Contreras, M.D., M.Sc., FAHA, clinical volunteer for the American Heart Association and a cardiologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital System in New York City. “Winter weather has been noted to increase heart attack risk due to restricted blood flow when arteries may be constricted in cold temperatures. We also know the holidays bring a lot of added stress to many people. There are lots of parties and family gatherings where many tend to overindulge in rich foods and drink.”
According to Contreras, one of the most critical factors might be that people ignore important warning signs of a heart attack or stroke.
“While you may not want to spend the holidays in a doctor’s office or hospital, getting checked out and receiving prompt treatment if there is a problem is one of the best gifts you can give yourself and your loved ones for all the celebrations to come,” she said.
Giving the gift of life may also come into play if you see someone experiencing heart attack or stroke symptoms. You could be out shopping at the mall, enjoying the sights and sounds of the holiday season or spending time at a family gathering and witness someone having a heart attack and going into cardiac arrest. Starting CPR immediately and calling 9-1-1 could be the difference in life or death in those situations.
“Hands-Only CPR is something nearly everyone can learn and do. We encourage at least one person in every family to learn CPR because statistics show that most cardiac arrests occur outside the hospital and often in the home,” Contreras said. “The American Heart Association has a short instructional video at Heart.org/HandsOnlyCPR. Watching the video and learning Hands-Only CPR could be a lifesaving and lifechanging activity for the family to do together as you’re gathered for the holidays.”
Contreras notes that family gatherings are also a good time to talk about family health history.
“Many of the health factors that impact heart disease and stroke are heredity,” she said. “If any of your parents, siblings or grandparents have had a heart attack or stroke, you are likely at higher risk, too. But the good news is, you can lower your risk with preventive measures. Knowing that history is an important first step.”
Following are several heart-healthy tips for the upcoming holidays:
Know symptoms and take action: Heart attack signs and stroke symptoms vary in men and women and it’s important to recognize them early and call 9-1-1 for help. The sooner medical treatment begins, the better the chances of survival and preventing heart damage.
Celebrate in moderation Eating healthfully during the holidays doesn’t have to mean depriving yourself, there are still ways to eat smart. Look for small, healthy changes and swaps you can make so you continue to feel your best while eating and drinking in moderation, and don’t forget to watch your salt intake.
Plan for peace on earth and goodwill toward yourself: Make time to take care of yourself during the busy holiday. Reduce stress from family interactions, strained finances, hectic schedules and other stressors prevalent this time of year, including traveling.
Keep moving: The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week and this number usually drops during the hustle and bustle of the holidays. Get creative with ways to stay active, even if it’s going for a family walk or another fun activity you can do with your loved ones.
Stick to your meds: Busy holidays can cause you to skip medications, forgetting them when away from home or not getting refills in a timely manner. The American Heart Association has a medication chart to help stay on top of it, and be sure to keep tabs on your blood pressure numbers.
“We do know there are ways to mitigate your risk for a deadly heart attack. So, we encourage everyone to pause during the holiday hustle and bustle and make note of these important steps that could be lifesaving,” Contreras said.
The American Heart Association has more on ways to live heart-healthy during the holidays and all year long at heart.org.
Additional Resources:
Multimedia is available in the right column of the release link.
Studies published in the American Heart Association’s scientific journals are peer-reviewed. The statements and conclusions in each manuscript are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association’s policy or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The Association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific Association programs and events. The Association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and biotech companies, device manufacturers and health insurance providers and the Association’s overall financial information are available here.
I heard sounds from heaven; and I heard sounds from hell! Listen! Listen, and I will tell you how it happened. You will see, you will hear how healthy my mind.
4 pages
Trees are in trouble
Scientists flip the script, revealing trees in wetter regions are more sensitive to drought
THE TREES IN THIS LUSH, TEMPERATE FOREST IN THE CASCADE RANGE OF WASHINGTON ARE LIKELY LESS RESISTANT TO DROUGHT THAN THEIR COUNTERPARTS IN DRIER REGIONS TO THE SOUTH.
This holiday season brings surprising news about your Christmas tree. Scientists just discovered that globally, trees growing in wetter regions are more sensitive to drought. That means if your tree hails from a more humid clime, it’s likely been spoiled for generations.
Scientists have long debated whether arid conditions make trees more or less resilient to drought. It seems intuitive that trees living at their biological limits will be most vulnerable to climate change, since even just a little extra stress could tip them past the brink. On the other hand, these populations have adapted to a harsher setting, so they might be more capable of withstanding a drought.
According to a new study in the journal Science by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis, greater water availability could “spoil” trees by reducing their adaptations to drought. “And that’s really critical to understand when we’re thinking about the global vulnerability of forest carbon stocks and forest health,” said ecologist Joan Dudney, an assistant professor at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and in the Environmental Studies Program. “You don’t want to be a ‘spoiled’ tree when facing a major drought.”
Dudney and her co-authors expected trees growing in the most arid regions to be more sensitive to drought, since they’re already living at the edge of their limits. What’s more, climate change models predict that these regions will experience more rapid drying than wetter regions. This shift in climate could expose trees to conditions beyond their adaptive capacity.
To measure drought sensitivity, the authors analyzed 6.6 million tree ring samples from 122 species worldwide. For each year, they measured whether the tree grew faster or slower than average based on its ring width. They linked these trends with historic climate data, including precipitation and temperature.
The team then compared drought responses across different regions. “As you move to the drier edge of a species’ range, trees become less and less sensitive to drought,” said lead author Robert Heilmayr, an environmental economist also in the Environmental Studies Program and at the Bren School. “Those trees are actually quite resilient.”
Dudney, Heilmayr and their co-author Frances Moore were inspired, in part, by the work of UCSB professor Tamma Carleton on the effects climate change has on human populations. “This paper highlights the value of cross-disciplinary scientific work,” added Moore, an associate professor at UC Davis. “We were able to adapt methods from economics originally developed to study how people and businesses adjust to a changing climate and apply them to the ecological context to study forest sensitivity to drought.”
“A heatwave is likely to kill more people in a cool place like Seattle than in hotter cities like Phoenix,” Heilmayr said. The Southwest is already quite hot, so heatwaves there are scorching. But the region’s cities are adapted to an extreme climate, he points out. Now we know that forests display similar trends.
Unfortunately, warmer regions are slated to get disproportionately drier in the coming decades. “There is a pretty large portion of species’ ranges that are going to face a completely novel climate, something that those species don’t see anywhere in their range today,” Heilmayr explained. The authors found that 11% of an average species’ range in 2100 will be drier than the driest parts of their historic range. This increases to over 50% for some species.
“Broadly, our research highlights that very few forests will be unaffected by climate change,” Dudney said. “Even wetter forests are more threatened than we thought.”
But there is a flip side of the coin. Species have a reservoir of drought-hearty stock in the drier parts of their range that could bolster forests in wetter areas. Previous research out of UCSB revealed that many species do have the capacity to adapt to environmental change. However, those researchers also found that trees migrate slowly from one generation to the next. That means human intervention — such as assisted migration — may be necessary in order to take advantage of this genetic diversity.
Whether your Christmas trees grow in a dry or wet region, they’ll likely experience growth declines in the future. But understanding how trees will respond to climate change can help ensure the future of the Tannenbaum and its wild counterparts.
WHEN COFFEE PLANT CELLS GROWN IN A BIOREACTOR (TOP LEFT) ARE ROASTED (TOP RIGHT AND BOTTOM POWDERS), THEY DEVELOP COLORS SIMILAR TO CONVENTIONAL LIGHT OR DARK ROAST COFFEE.
CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY, 2023, DOI: 10.1021/ACS.JAFC.3C04503
It may soon be time to wake up and smell the lab-grown coffee made from cultured plant cells. But it’s not clear whether drinks from this product replicate coffee beans’ complex flavors. Now, a study in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that some of the comforting aromas and tastes of a conventional cup of coffee could be reproduced by roasting and brewing coffee cell cultures.
Coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 23 billion pounds of beans are expected to be produced during the 2023–24 growing season. However, coffee cultivation is increasingly threatened by a warming climate because the plants grow only at specific temperatures and altitudes. Researchers have been investigating lab-grown coffee plant cells since the 1970s as an alternative to farmed beans, but little research has evaluated how laboratory products taste and smell compared to traditional beans. So, Hieko Rischer and coworkers tested how roasting coffee plant cells impacts them and the beverage made from them.
The team first cultured cells from chopped Coffea arabica leaves in a laboratory-scale bioreactor. Then the cells were freeze-dried, ground into a fine powder and roasted under three different conditions. Longer roasting times produced colors similar to dark roast coffee beans; the researchers mentioned this was important for flavor perception. Additionally, the current lab-grown powders contained twice as much caffeine as previous bioreactor coffee products, although the current powders’ levels were much lower than those in farmed beans. The team brewed beverages with the roasted cell cultures or dark roast C. arabica beans and served them to trained taste-testers. The following conclusions were drawn:
Panelists identified similar levels of bitterness and sourness in lab-grown and conventional drinks.
The new brews had more roasted, burned sugar, and smokey smells.
Some Maillard reaction products that give coffee its distinct flavor, such as guaiacol and several pyrazines, weren’t found in the cell-based drinks, though other Maillard reaction products were present.
Overall, while some tastes and smells of a typical bean-based coffee could be produced by roasting cultured cells, the researchers say that future work is needed to explore processing techniques to further boost flavor for this alternative to conventionally grown coffee.
The authors acknowledge funding from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Ltd.
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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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Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.
