Knowing how clinicians make real-world decisions about drug-drug interactions can improve patient safety

Peer-Reviewed Publication

REGENSTRIEF INSTITUTE

INDIANAPOLIS — Drug-drug interactions causing adverse effects are common and can cause significant patient harm and even death. A new study is one of the first to examine how clinicians become aware of and process information about potential interactions and subsequently make their real-world decisions about prescribing. Based on these findings, the research team makes specific recommendations to aid clinician decision-making to improve patient safety.

“Drug-drug interactions are very common, more common than a lot of people outside the healthcare system expect. In the U.S., these interactions lead to hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations in any given year at an enormous cost,” said study senior author Michael Weiner, M.D., MPH., of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine. “Most of these drug interactions are preventable.

“This study was needed because we previously didn’t have a great understanding of how clinicians actually make decisions in assessing these interactions. No one had really taken apart the thinking process step-by-step to understand it from the beginning to the end. There's a patient, there's a drug and another drug. There is now a potential interaction. There's been a decision about how to resolve it following an assessment and then a resolution process. Understanding all this is very important if we are hoping to design improvements to the medical system that enhance patient safety.”

The research team focused on positive cases, where clinicians identified a drug-drug interaction concern and took action to help protect the patient. They analyzed all aspects of clinicians’ decision-making process, especially specific cues they used to assess patients’ clinical risk and identify safer treatment options.

Clinicians become aware of drug-drug interactions in different ways. In addition to their own knowledge and consultations with colleagues, reference books or professional websites, the electronic health record (EHR) is a very common source of drug interaction alerts because all medications would ideally be logged, ordered or tracked. However, if a patient is prescribed drugs in multiple health systems there typically is not integration of their EHR records. Reconciling all their medication information may be a formidable task for physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists or other clinicians, all of whom are often operating under rigorous time constraints.

The study identified 19 cognitive cues upon which clinicians rely to detect and make decisions about drug-drug interactions. These cues include:

• information that influenced interpretation of potential severity of drug-drug interaction
• type or degree of side effects or harms
• patient’s expected duration of exposure to interaction
• patient-specific conditions that may increase risk of interaction
• patient’s medical need for the medications
• characteristics of safer medications

Drug-drug interactions can be addressed by investigating alternative treatments that might be better or safer, altering dosage, as well as stopping or not prescribing a specific medication. Companion activities include educating patients about the warning signs of drug-drug interactions and related adverse events.

There may be situations where the risk of the interaction is considered acceptable based on the benefits and risks of the drugs being considered. But in other cases, a preventive strategy can involve either the patient’s clinicians or the patient or both.

With the greater understanding of clinicians’ cognitive processes related to drug-drug interactions in hospital or outpatient settings presented in this study, there is the potential to design and implement EHR system alerts that provide better, more actionable and more timely information to inform clinicians’ decision-making process and ultimately to improve patient safety.

“This was a rewarding study, not only because of its important scientific contributions, but also that clinicians had the opportunity to spend an hour during an interview, describing in detail actions they took to protect patients from harm,” said study lead author Alissa Russ-Jara, PhD, of Purdue University College of Pharmacy and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and a Regenstrief Institute affiliated scientist. “By the end of the interview, many clinicians expressed surprise at how much nuance went into their own decision. Their decisions often occur so rapidly, yet involve so much expertise. Ours was the first study to really unpack that for their decisions around drug-drug interactions. We expect our findings can improve the design and usability of drug-drug interaction alerts for clinicians, and so they can more effectively aid patient safety. Our study focused on clinical decision-making, regardless of whether the clinician was warned by an alert or not, so our findings have implications for clinicians, informatics leaders, and patients, and for any EHR system.”

Recommendations for alert design include:

• provide information on expected range of timing of potential drug-drug interaction effects (days, weeks, months or years)
• provide a means for clinicians to review multiple electronic drug-drug interaction reference sources directly from the alert, side-by-side
• leverage data analytics to populate drug-drug interaction alerts with "smart" displays of alternative drugs, that align with three criteria used by clinicians.
• provide recommendations(s) on the alert along with associated patient characteristics (for example, “monitor, if patient indicates willingness and capability of measuring blood pressure daily”)

“Cognitive Task Analysis of Clinicians’ Drug-Drug Interaction Management during Patient Care and Implications for Alert Design” is published in BMJ Open.

Authors and affiliations

Alissa L. Russ-Jara, PhD,1-3; Nervana Elkhadragy, PharmD, M.S., PhD, 2,4; Karen J. Arthur, PharmD,5; Julie B. Diiulio, M,S.,6; Laura G. Militello, M.A.,6; Amanda P. Ifeachor, PharmD, MPH, 5; Peter A. Glassman, MBBS, MSc,7, 8,9; Alan J. Zillich, PharmD,2; Michael Weiner, M.D., MPH, 1,5,10,11.

1Health Services Research and Development Service CIN 13-416, Center for Health Information and Communication, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Veterans Health Administration, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

2Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

3Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

4School of Pharmacy, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA

5Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Veterans Health Administration, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

6Applied Decision Science, LLC, Dayton, Ohio, USA

7 Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA

8 Pharmacy Benefits Management Services, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Washington DC, USA

9Department of Medicine, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA

10Center for Health Services Research, Regenstrief Institute, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

11 Department of Medicine, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

In addition to the affiliations listed above, Dr. Russ-Jara and Dr. Zillich are Regenstrief Institute affiliate scientists.

This work was supported by the VA Health Services Research and Development Service, Career Development Award 11-214.

About Michael Weiner, M.D., MPH 
In addition to his role as a research scientist with the William M. Tierney Center for Health Services Research at Regenstrief Institute, Michael Weiner, M.D., MPH, is a research scientist at the VA Health Service Research and Development Center for Health Information and Communication, Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, and a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

About Regenstrief Institute
Founded in 1969 in Indianapolis, the Regenstrief Institute is a local, national and global leader dedicated to a world where better information empowers people to end disease and realize true health. A key research partner to Indiana University, Regenstrief and its research scientists are responsible for a growing number of major healthcare innovations and studies. Examples range from the development of global health information technology standards that enable the use and interoperability of electronic health records to improving patient-physician communications, to creating models of care that inform clinical practice and improve the lives of patients around the globe.

Sam Regenstrief, a nationally successful entrepreneur from Connersville, Indiana, founded the institute with the goal of making healthcare more efficient and accessible for everyone. His vision continues to guide the institute’s research mission.

About Veteran Health Indiana and CHIC
The Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center is the flagship medical center for Veteran Health Indiana, the VA’s healthcare system in central and southern Indiana. The medical center is located in downtown Indianapolis and is collocated with three large community hospitals and the campus of the Indiana University Schools of Medicine and Nursing. The health system has been serving Hoosier Veterans since 1932. As Indiana’s Level 1a, tertiary care Veteran facility, the medical center serves as home base for a system of inpatient and outpatient care locations serving more than 62,000 Veterans.

The VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Center for Health Information and Communication (CHIC) group is a diverse cadre of researchers based at Roudebush VA Medical Center who work together to transform the healthcare system, both within and outside the VA so every patient receives consistent, high-quality care.

About IU School of Medicine
IU School of Medicine is the largest medical school in the U.S. and is annually ranked among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school offers high-quality medical education, access to leading medical research and rich campus life in nine Indiana cities, including rural and urban locations consistently recognized for livability.

About Purdue University College of Pharmacy
The mission of the Purdue University College of Pharmacy is to advance scientific discovery and development, maximize global health outcomes through patient care and public service, and educate and train students to become leading pharmacists and scientists. The goal is to transform the practice and science of pharmacy to lead advances in human health.

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JOURNAL

BMJ Open

DOI

10.1136/bmjopen-2023-075512 

ARTICLE TITLE

Cognitive task analysis of clinicians’ drug–drug interaction management during patient care and implications for alert design

 

New study taps artificial intelligence to streamline the crowdsourcing of ideas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

INFORMS Journal Marketing Science Study Key Takeaways:

• Crowdsourcing generates thousands of ideas for new products.
• AI can immediately help screen out bad ideas and narrow the field to the best ones in crowdsourcing to improve efficiency.
• Ultimately, AI could identify the best ideas or even design good ideas.

 

BALTIMORE, MD, January 3, 2024 – New research has found a way to leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to more efficiently screen out bad ideas to focus on only good ideas in the crowdsourcing process within ideation. More specifically, the research has arrived at a simple model for screening out ideas that experts might consider “bad.” Importantly, managers can adjust their model to determine how many bad ideas to screen out, without losing good ones. The research also found a single new predictor that screens out atypical ideas and preserves more inclusive and rich ideas.

The article, published in the peer-reviewed INFORMS journal Marketing Science, is called “Can AI Help in Ideation? A Theory-based Model for Idea Screening in Crowdsourcing Contests.” The authors of the study are J. Jason Bell of the University of Oxford, Christian Pescher of Universidad de los Andes in Chile, Gerard Tellis of the University of Southern California and Johann Füller of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Business managers will often engage in crowdsourcing to generate the largest number of ideas for a new product or service. These crowdsourcing contests can generate thousands of ideas, forcing managers and their teams to physically and manually wade through each to identify the best ones. This is not only time consuming, but may lack consistency and continuity in the evaluation.

The study authors aimed to address this by focusing on what AI could do to improve the process.

“Idea generation and screening are fundamental to marketing success because they comprise the start of new product development,” says Tellis. “They belong to the ‘fuzzy front end,’ a key point of leverage in new product development.”

The researchers used data from Hyve, an innovation company that runs a crowdsourcing platform (www.HyveCrowd.com) for idea generation and selection. They asked the platform to specify the threshold of accuracy that would satisfy Hyve’s clients. Using a data set of 21 crowdsourcing contests that included 4,191 ideas, they tested how AI could assist in the crowdsourcing process. The model was fitted on 20 contests and used to predict success in the 21st idea left out.

“What we found was that once developed, AI models are relatively low-cost to operate, they do not share internal biases or succumb to internal biases,” says Bell. “By ‘internal biases’ we mean a natural bias that may occur when the human evaluator may see an idea as challenging their own favored approach.” 

Pescher adds, “We also found that AI models are private, improving the ability to protect intellectual property, they cannot suffer from exhaustion, and they are transparent.”

“People and experts are still needed,” says Füller. “In the selection phase, AI can replace humans in the screening and narrowing of those ideas. But in the long run, if automation is used properly, it can even eliminate the need for human idea generators and make crowdsourcing itself obsolete.”

 

Link to Study

 

About INFORMS and Marketing Science

Marketing Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly marketing journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of the interface between consumers and firms. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs.

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JOURNAL

Marketing Science

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

“Can AI Help in Ideation? A Theory-based Model for Idea Screening in Crowdsourcing Contests”

 

UH optometrist receives $1.4 million to map the cornea

Unlocking the secrets of blinking, tearing, and pain sensation could improve understanding of dry eye disease

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

 

IMAGE: 

ANNA MATYNIA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY, WILL CREATE A DETAILED MAP OF THE CORNEA TO FACILITATE A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF OCULAR PAIN AND DRY EYE DISEASE.

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Consider the cornea if you will – and most people won’t unless they’re having a problem. It is the transparent front surface of the eye which allows vision by focusing light as it enters. The cornea is densely packed with multi-tasking nerves that mediate pain, blink reflexes and tear production, all indispensable tasks in the proper maintenance of ocular surface health. Because it is highly innervated, meaning it has a lot of nerve connections, the cornea is a key area for understanding sensory functions.   

But it is that same complexity which has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the full nature of how those corneal nerves work, resulting in key knowledge gaps in the field. A University of Houston optometrist researcher is set to fill in the gaps by mapping the cornea and providing a comprehensive analysis of corneal nerves at the morphologic, molecular and functional level. 

“We are developing methods to selectively label the neurons that innervate the cornea. These neurons make up about 1% of the population of neurons located in the trigeminal ganglia, the peripheral nervous system that mediates pain and other sensory functions,” said Anna Matynia, associate professor at the University of Houston College of Optometry.  

Matynia has received $1.4 million from Duke University via the National Eye Institute to explore new approaches to disentangle these intricate networks and discover which nerve makes people blink, which creates tears and which nerve tells us our eye is in pain.  

Matynia and her team are using advanced imaging, studying genes, and using computers to map the corneal nerves. They are also figuring out which nerves connect directly to the eye and creating a detailed map of how they're all connected. 

“These efforts will provide critical clues for understanding corneal structure-function and will lead to an unprecedented cartography,” said Matynia. “The advancements from this work will be poised to facilitate a deeper understanding of related pathobiology including neuropathic ocular pain and dry eye disease that will lay the foundation for future translational and clinical research.” 

Matynia’s team includes Daniel R. Saban, Duke University and Victor Perez, University of Miami. 

 

Researchers identify path to prevent cognitive decline after radiation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER

Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester find that microglia—the brain’s immune cells—can trigger cognitive deficits after radiation exposure and may be a key target for preventing these symptoms. These findings, out today in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Biophysics, build on previous research showing that after radiation exposure microglia damage synapses, the connections between neurons that are important for cognitive behavior and memory.  

“Cognitive deficits after radiation treatment are a major problem for cancer survivors,” M. Kerry O’Banion, MD, PhD, professor of Neuroscience, member of the Wilmot Cancer Institute, and senior author of the study said. “This research gives us a possible target to develop therapies to prevent or mitigate against such deficits in people who need brain radiotherapy.”

Using several behavioral tests, researchers investigated the cognitive function of mice before and after radiation exposure. Female mice performed the same throughout, indicating a resistance to radiation injury. However, researchers found male mice could not remember or perform certain tasks after radiation exposure. This cognitive decline correlates with the loss of synapses and evidence of potentially damaging microglial over-reactivity following the treatment.

Researchers then targeted the pathway in microglia important to synapse removal. Mice with these mutant microglia had no cognitive decline following radiation. And others that were given the drug, Leukadherin-1, which is known to block this same pathway, during radiation treatment, also had no cognitive decline.

 "This could be the first step in substantially improving a patient's quality of life and need for greater care,” said O’Banion. “Moving forward, we are particularly interested in understanding the signals that target synapses for removal and the fundamental signaling mechanisms that drive microglia to remove these synapses. We believe that both avenues of research offer additional targets for developing therapies to help individuals receiving brain radiotherapy.”

O’Banion also believes this work may have broader implications because some of these mechanisms are connected to Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Additional authors include first author Joshua Hinkle, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and former graduate student in the O’Banion-Olschowka Labs, John Olschowka, PhD, and Jacqueline Williams, PhD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, and NASA.

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics

DOI

10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.12.017 

 

Mount Sinai study shows that human beliefs about drugs could have dose-dependent effects on the brain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL / MOUNT SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

 

IMAGE: 

GRAPHIC FOR STUDY: NICOTINE-RELATED BELIEFS INDUCE DOSE-DEPENDENT RESPONSES IN THE HUMAN BRAIN

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CREDIT: LILY ARMSTRONG-DAVIES, MEDICAL ILLUSTRATOR

Mount Sinai researchers have shown for the first time that a person’s beliefs related to drugs can influence their own brain activity and behavioral responses in a way comparable to the dose-dependent effects of pharmacology.

The implications of the study, which directly focused on beliefs about nicotine, are profound. They range from elucidating how the neural mechanisms underlying beliefs may play a key role in addiction, to optimizing pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments by leveraging the power of human beliefs. The study was published in the journal Nature Mental Health.

“Beliefs can have a powerful influence on our behavior, yet their effects are considered imprecise and rarely examined by quantitative neuroscience methods,” says Xiaosi Gu, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and Neuroscience, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and senior author of the study. “We set out to investigate if human beliefs can modulate brain activities in a dose-dependent manner similar to what drugs do, and found a high level of precision in how beliefs can influence the human brain. This finding could be crucial for advancing our knowledge about the role of beliefs in addiction as well as a broad range of disorders and their treatments.”

To explore this dynamic, the Mount Sinai team, led by Ofer Perl, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Gu’s lab when the study was conducted, instructed nicotine-dependent study participants to believe that an electronic cigarette they were about to vape contained either low, medium, or high strengths of nicotine, when in fact the level remained constant. Participants then underwent functional neuroimaging (fMRI) while performing a decision-making task known to engage neural circuits activated by nicotine.

The scientists found that the thalamus, an important binding site for nicotine in the brain, showed a dose-dependent response to the subject’s beliefs about nicotine strength, providing compelling evidence to support the relationship between subjective beliefs and biological substrates in the human brain. This effect was previously thought to apply only to pharmacologic agents. A similar dose-dependent effect of beliefs was also found in the functional connectivity between the thalamus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region that is considered important for decision-making and belief states.

“Our findings provide a mechanistic explanation for the well-known variations in individual responses to drugs,” notes Dr. Gu, “and suggest that subjective beliefs could be a direct target for the treatment of substance use disorders. They could also advance our understanding of how cognitive interventions, such as psychotherapy, work at the neurobiological level in general for a wide range of psychiatric conditions beyond addiction.”

Dr. Gu, who is one of the world’s foremost researchers in the emerging field of computational psychiatry, cites another way in which her team’s research could inform clinical care. “The finding that human beliefs about drugs play such a pivotal role suggests that we could potentially enhance patients’ responses to pharmacological treatments by leveraging these beliefs,” she explains.  

Significantly, the work of the Mount Sinai team can also be viewed in a much broader context:  harnessing beliefs in a systematic manner to better serve mental health treatment and research in general.

“We’re interested in testing the effects of beliefs on drugs beyond nicotine to include addictive substances like cannabis and alcohol, and therapeutic agents like antidepressants and psychedelics,” says Dr. Gu. “It would be fascinating to examine, for example, how the potency of a drug might impact the effect of drug-related beliefs on the brain and behavior, and how long-lasting the impact of those beliefs might be. Our findings could potentially revolutionize how we view drugs and therapy in a much broader context of health.”

About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it. Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,400 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2023-2024.

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JOURNAL

Nature Mental Health

DOI

10.1038/s44220-023-00188-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Nicotine-related beliefs induce dose-dependent responses in the human brain

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jan-2024

 

Better microelectronics from coal

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS GRAINGER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

 

IMAGE: 

A WAFER CONTAINING MEMRISTORS FABRICATED WITH HIGH-QUALITY TWO-DIMENSIONAL CARBON PROCESSED FROM BITUMINOUS BLUE GEM COAL MINED IN SOUTHEASTERN KENTUCKY, TWO SAMPLES OF WHICH ARE SHOWN HERE.

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CREDIT: THE GRAINGER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AT UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Coal is an abundant resource in the United States that has, unfortunately, contributed to climate change through its use as a fossil fuel. As the country transitions to other means of energy production, it will be important to consider and reevaluate coal’s economic role. A joint research effort from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has shown how coal can play a vital role in next-generation electronic devices.

“Coal is usually thought of as something bulky and dirty, but the processing techniques we’ve developed can transform it into high-purity materials just a couple of atoms thick,” said Qing Cao, a U. of I. materials science & engineering professor and a co-lead of the collaboration. “Their unique atomic structures and properties are ideal for making some of the smallest possible electronics with performance superior to state-of-the art.”

A process developed by the NETL first converts coal char into nanoscale carbon disks called “carbon dots” that the U. of I. research group demonstrated can be connected to form atomically thin membranes for applications in both two-dimensional transistors and memristors, technologies that will be critical to constructing more advanced electronics. These results are reported in the journal Communications Engineering.

Perfect for 2D electronics

In the ongoing search for smaller, faster and more efficient electronics, the final step will be devices made with materials just one or two atoms thick. It is impossible for devices to be smaller than this limit, and their small scale often makes them operate much quicker and consume far less energy. While ultrathin semiconductors have been extensively studied, it is also necessary to have atomically thin insulators – materials that block electric currents – to construct working electronic devices like transistors and memristors.

Atomically thin layers of carbon with disordered atomic structures can function as an excellent insulator for constructing two-dimensional devices. The researchers in the collaboration have shown that such carbon layers can be formed from carbon dots derived from coal char. To demonstrate their capabilities, the U. of I. group led by Cao developed two examples of two-dimensional devices.

“It’s really quite exciting, because this is the first time that coal, something we normally see as low-tech, has been directly linked to the cutting edge of microelectronics,” Cao said.

Transistor dielectric

Cao’s group used coal-derived carbon layers as the gate dielectric in two-dimensional transistors built on the semimetal graphene or semiconductor molybdenum disulfide to enable more than two times faster device operating speed with lower energy consumption. Like other atomically thin materials, the coal-derived carbon layers do not possess “dangling bonds,” or electrons that are not associated with a chemical bond. These sites, which are abundant on the surface of conventional three-dimensional insulators, alter their electrical properties by effectively functioning as “traps,” slowing down the transport of mobile charges and thus the transistor switching speed.

However, unlike other atomically thin materials, the new coal-derived carbon layers are amorphous, meaning that they do not possess a regular, crystalline structure. They therefore do not have boundaries between different crystalline regions that serve as conduction pathways leading to “leakage,” where undesired electrical currents flow through the insulator and cause substantial additional power consumption during device operations.

Memristor filament

Another application Cao’s group considered is memristors – electronic components capable of both storing and operating on data to greatly enhance the implementation of AI technology. These devices store and represent data by modulating a conductive filament formed by electrochemical reactions between a pair of electrodes with the insulator sandwiched in between.

The researchers found that the adoption of ultrathin coal-derived carbon layers as the insulator allows the fast formation of such filament with low energy consumption to enable high device operating speed with low power.  Moreover, atomic size rings in these coal-derived carbon layers confine the filament to enhance the reproducible device operations for enhanced data storage fidelity and reliability.  

From research to production

The new devices developed by the Cao group provide proof-of-principle for the use of coal-derived carbon layers in two-dimensional devices. What remains is to show that such devices can be manufactured on large scales.

“The semiconductor industry, including our collaborators at Taiwan Semiconductor, is very interested in the capabilities of two-dimensional devices, and we’re trying to fulfill that promise,” Cao said. “Over the next few years, the U. of I. will continue to collaborate with NETL to develop a fabrication process for coal-based carbon insulators that can be implemented in industrial settings.”

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JOURNAL

Communications Engineering

DOI

10.1038/s44172-023-00141-9 

ARTICLE TITLE

Ultrathin Quasi-2D Amorphous Carbon Dielectric Prepared from Solution Precursor for Nanoelectronics

 

New research harnesses AI and satellite imagery to reveal the expanding footprint of human activity at sea

Study reveals 75 percent of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are hidden from public view

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

 

VIDEO: 

TWO MILLION GIGABYTES OF SATELLITE IMAGERY WERE ANALYZED TO DETECT OFFSHORE INFRASTRUCTURE IN COASTAL WATERS ACROSS SIX CONTINENTS WHERE MORE THAN THREE-QUARTERS OF INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY IS CONCENTRATED.

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CREDIT: GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new study published today in the journal Nature offers an unprecedented view of previously unmapped industrial use of the ocean and how it is changing.

The groundbreaking study, led by Global Fishing Watch, uses machine learning and satellite imagery to create the first global map of large vessel traffic and offshore infrastructure, finding a remarkable amount of activity that was previously “dark” to public monitoring systems.

The analysis reveals that about 75 percent of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with much of that fishing taking place around Africa and south Asia. More than 25 percent of transport and energy vessel activity are also missing from public tracking systems.

“A new industrial revolution has been emerging in our seas undetected—until now,” said David Kroodsma, director of research and innovation at Global Fishing Watch and co-lead author of the study. “On land, we have detailed maps of almost every road and building on the planet. In contrast, growth in our ocean has been largely hidden from public view. This study helps eliminate the blind spots and shed light on the breadth and intensity of human activity at sea.” 

Researchers from Global Fishing Watch, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University, UC Santa Barbara and SkyTruth analyzed 2 million gigabytes of satellite imagery spanning 2017-2021 to detect vessels and offshore infrastructure in coastal waters across six continents where more than three-quarters of industrial activity is concentrated.

By synthesizing GPS data with five years of radar and optical imagery, the researchers were able to identify vessels that failed to broadcast their positions. Using machine learning, they then concluded which of those vessels were likely engaged in fishing activity.

“Historically, vessel activity has been poorly documented, limiting our understanding of how the world’s largest public resource—the ocean—is being used,” said co-lead author Fernando Paolo, senior machine learning engineer at Global Fishing Watch. “By combining space technology with state-of-the-art machine learning, we mapped undisclosed industrial activity at sea on a scale never done before.”

While not all boats are legally required to broadcast their position, vessels absent from public monitoring systems, often termed “dark fleets,” pose major challenges for protecting and managing natural resources. Researchers found numerous dark fishing vessels inside many marine protected areas, and a high concentration of vessels in many countries’ waters that previously showed little-to-no vessel activity by public monitoring systems.

“Publicly available data wrongly suggests that Asia and Europe have similar amounts of fishing within their borders, but our mapping reveals that Asia dominates—for every 10 fishing vessels we found on the water, seven were in Asia while only one was in Europe," said co-author Jennifer Raynor, assistant professor of natural resource economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “By revealing dark vessels, we have created the most comprehensive public picture of global industrial fishing available.” 

The study also shows how human activity in the ocean is changing. Coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, fishing activity dropped globally by about 12 percent, with an 8 percent decline in China and a 14 percent drop elsewhere. In contrast, transport and energy vessel activity remained stable.

Offshore energy development surged during the study period. Oil structures increased by 16 percent, while wind turbines more than doubled. By 2021, turbines outnumbered oil platforms. China’s offshore wind energy had the most striking growth, increasing ninefold from 2017 to 2021.

“The footprint of the Anthropocene is no longer limited to terra firma,” said co-author Patrick Halpin, professor of marine geospatial ecology at Duke University. “Having a more complete view of ocean industrialization allows us to see new growth in offshore wind, aquaculture and mining that is rapidly being added to established industrial fishing, shipping and oil and gas activities. Our work reveals that the global ocean is a busy, crowded and complex industrial workspace of the growing blue economy.” 

The study highlights the potential of this new technology to tackle climate change. Mapping all vessel traffic will improve estimates of greenhouse gas emissions at sea, while maps of infrastructure can inform wind development or aid in tracking marine degradation caused by oil exploration.

“Identifying offshore infrastructure is critical for understanding offshore energy development impacts and trends, and is crucial data for our work to detect marine pollution events and hold responsible parties to account,” said co-author Christian Thomas, a geospatial engineer at SkyTruth.  

The open data and technology used in the study can help governments, researchers and civil society to identify hotspots of potentially illegal activity, determine where industrial fishing vessels may be encroaching on artisanal fishing grounds, or simply better understand vessel traffic in their waters.

“Previously, this type of satellite monitoring was only available to those who could pay for it. Now it is freely available to all nations,” concluded Kroodsma. “This study marks the beginning of a new era in ocean management and transparency.”

The study was made possible thanks to the generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, National Geographic Pristine Seas and Oceankind, and our technology partner, Google. As an awardee of The Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative that is catalyzing social impact on a grand scale, Global Fishing Watch is able to further the application of this innovative work.

Global Map of Offshore Infrastructure, 2017-2021  

Two million gigabytes of satellite imagery were analyzed to detect offshore infrastructure in coastal waters across six continents where more than three-quarters of industrial activity is concentrated.

Composite view of the North Sea showing all mapped industrial use in the region 

The study used machine learning and satellite imagery to create the first global map of vessel traffic and offshore infrastructure, offering an unprecedented view of previously unmapped industrial use of the ocean.

CREDIT

Global Fishing Watch

JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-06825-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Satellite mapping reveals extensive industrial activity at sea

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jan-2024

Online racial discrimination, suicidal ideation, and traumatic stress in a national sample of Black adolescents

JAMA Psychiatry

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: This study that included 525 Black adolescents found an association between individual online racial discrimination and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and between posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and suicidal ideation. These risk factors are important to consider in continuing studies of the cause of suicidal ideation for Black adolescents in the U.S. 

Authors: Brendesha M. Tynes, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.4961)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.4961?guestAccessKey=0f01f3ce-7b0f-47ab-97d4-bc07599e0ce1&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=010324

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JOURNAL

JAMA Psychiatry