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)
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
Roundtable on efforts toward achieving health equity
JOURNAL THAT MEETS THE URGENT NEED FOR AUTHORITATIVE INFORMATION ABOUT HEALTH DISPARITIES AND HEALTH EQUITY AMONG VULNERABLE POPULATIONS. WITH COVERAGE RANGING FROM TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH TO PREVENTION, DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT, AND MANAGEMENT OF DISEASE AND ILLNESS, THE JOURNAL SERVES AS A PRIMARY RESOURCE FOR ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS WHO SERVE THESE POPULATIONS AT THE COMMUNITY, STATE, REGIONAL, TRIBAL, AND NATIONAL LEVELS.
In the Roundtable titled “A Glimpse at How Stakeholders Are Working Towards Achieving Health Equity,” published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Equity, two expert panel discussions examine efforts to achieve maternal health equity and changes that health systems can make to operationalize health equity. Click here to read the Roundtable now.
The moderator of the panel discussion titled “Efforts to Achieve Maternal Health Equity Today” is Laurie Zephyrin, MD, MPH, MBA, Senior Vice President, Advancing Health Equity, The Commonwealth Fund. The discussion focuses on what health systems can do to improve maternal health outcomes and what are the current opportunities to develop and/or modify policies to improve maternal health care.
The moderator of the panel discussion titled “Changes Health Systems Can Make to Operationalize Health Equity” is Morenike Ayo-Vaughan, Program Officer, Advancing Health Equity, The Commonwealth Fund. The discussion focused on the strategies deployed to ensure the accurate collection of race, ethnicity, and language data by healthcare stakeholders, and what measures health systems and providers are utilizing and adopting to get a good sense of how they are achieving health equity.
About the Journal Health Equity is a peer-reviewed open access journal that meets the urgent need for authoritative information about health disparities and health equity among vulnerable populations. With coverage ranging from translational research to prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of disease and illness, the Journal serves as a primary resource for organizations and individuals who serve these populations at the community, state, regional, tribal, and national levels. Complete information is available on the Health Equity website.
About the Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. is a global media company dedicated to creating, curating, and delivering impactful peer-reviewed research and authoritative content services to advance the fields of biotechnology and the life sciences, specialized clinical medicine, and public health and policy. For complete information, please visit the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. website.
Stakeholders' Viewpoints on Working to Advance Health Equity
Origami-inspired robotic plants grow with their environment
Researchers at Virginia Tech and Clemson collaborate to produce robotic sensors that mimic the characteristics of plants for optimal environmental monitoring
How do you deploy an environmental sensor to collect climate change readings over a prolonged period on an uninhabited island without failing? How do you power a seismic detector to operate for months in an underwater cave?
In environments that are difficult to reach because of the hazards or hardships for humans, a device behaving like a native plant could be the answer. This is the approach taken by Suyi Li, associate professor in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, and Clemson professor and collaborator Ian Walker. Their work is being advanced thanks to a four-year, $840,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
“When I started to venture into robotics a few years ago, I was surprised to see that almost all robots are inspired by humans and animals to some degree,” Li said. “However, I believe the vast plant kingdom can offer us many unique lessons on approaching the design, actuation, and operation of robots. This is how Ian and I started working on this topic together. “
Li has established a research group that deploys the principles of origami to create novel forms of soft robotics with unique structures. Walker, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clemson, brings a rich background in biologically inspired robotics spanning two decades. Their proposal aims to create a broad foundation for new designs, creating robotics with technology capable of surviving in wild conditions over the long haul.
Robots in the wild
Bringing together cutting-edge electronics with the unpredictability of nature is typically a clash of worlds. Technology can be a strength when electricity is available, and the environment is predictable or controlled. Those measures break down when batteries die and parts break.
This has not prevented technology from making its way into the outdoors, but challenges have followed. Other researchers recently deployed sensors for wildfire detection in remote locations of California and Oregon, but have faced issues such as navigating rocky areas at high altitudes and the particulars of protected lands.
Devices that need to be always on and programmed to detect such things as airborne particles or rare breeds of birds generally face two big obstacles: time and environment. These are the main challenges Li’s team is tackling. The aim isn’t to fight against the flow of nature, but to channel the very approach used by nature to produce more adaptive robotics.
“As humans, we naturally tend to think of change on the time scale of our attention span, like seconds and minutes,” Walker said. “However, long-term and continuous deployments outdoors pose alternative and unique challenges. Over weeks and months, outdoor natural environments are highly dynamic places. Vegetation grows up and debris comes down in storms. Robotic operation in these conditions needs to become more like the ambient environment in novel ways to maintain monitoring.”
Robots that grow and adapt
Li and Walker will not be creating robot plants or making sensors that grow from seeds. Instead, their work will take advantage of the insights provided by nature that have proven to be durable over the long term. Those natural mechanisms will be converted into mechanics that adapt and respond to their environments.
Which characteristics of plants are on their radar? They have targeted the ability to move with the sun, shown in the behavior of sunflowers. Also of interest are floral organs that open and close, like a venus flytrap. They also have taken notes from plants that attach to an object adaptively, like the winding of vines around a tree. All of these actions are the result of a plant adapting to its surroundings, and each has a set of mechanisms that make the action possible. Some of the actions are faster, like the flytrap. Some are slower, like the steady coil of vines.
To put these characteristics together into robotics, Li and Walker have combined their efforts to mimic those plant behaviors and package them as a set of innovative robotics.
Li’s team will use its expertise in engineering through origami to create accordion-like robotic trunks that can unfold and self-lock, pairing it with Walker’s knowledge of bio-inspired electronics to create a container that is durable and capable of responding to the dynamics of an outdoor environment. This trunk would have the ability to adapt within congested spaces that may form as foliage grows and becomes thick. Adapting in this way has the potential to overcome obstacles that might normally shut down a robot’s operation.
To sense the movement of the environment, Li and Walker foresee using the model of tree leaves and needles to guide their design. These extensions will be outfitted with devices that guide the operation and “growing” action, feeding information about real-time changes into the electronics contained in the trunk to tell the robot how to adapt. These might include elements such as light sensors, taking a cue from sunflowers. Bio-inspired needles could also interact with their environment to push aside foliage that interferes with environmental monitoring.
“Nature provides a huge variety of existence proofs for how robotics structures might be designed and operate,” Walker said. “In particular, characteristics of plant behavior give insight into how systems can successfully adapt and thrive in the natural environment.”
Supplying power to electronics is critical as robots can't function on dead batteries, but maintaining an electric source is difficult in places that are hard for humans to reach. Because of that necessity, energy harvesting that mimics real plants can keep powering a robot and prevent it from missing crucial data where changing batteries isn’t an option. Li and Walker's team is doing preliminary work into the methods needed to power their robotics, building on its early work that also includes energy efficiency. By using novel harvesting approaches with a light diet of energy consumption, researchers can tackle the challenge of keeping a robot running over long periods of time, which is important when deploying sensors in areas that are unpredictable, inhospitable, or remote.
The approach for each plant-inspired robot also will be tuned to the length of time over which it will operate. Li and Walker’s approach for a robot that measures long-term pollution levels over months or years, for instance, will be different than that of a robot tasked with rare animal sightings over days or weeks.
Eventually, the group hopes to build a new breed of robots that can adapt to and protect our environment over months and years, monitoring slow-changing processes like temperature and humidity as well as rapidly occurring events like wildfire outbreaks.
“When monitoring city environments, having static devices is not a problem because the environment is controlled,” Li said. “But in areas like coral reefs or forests with dynamic and volatile surroundings, having a robotic plant that can grow and adapt with its environment instead of needing to be replaced and moved by humans will revolutionize how we are able to study and monitor remote regions.”
Slow the scroll: Users less vigilant about misinformation on mobile phones
Habitual mobile phone users engage in less information processing, more likely to fall for misinformation on their mobile phones than on personal computers, researchers find
ONE OF THE TRICKY PHOTOS THE RESEARCHERS USED IN THE STUDY. AT FIRST GLANCE THE SIGN APPEARS TO READ "FREE BEER!", BUT ON CLOSER INSPECTION IT READS "FREE WI-FI, COLD BEER!"
CREDIT: IMAGE PROVIDED BY MENGQI LIAO AND S. SHYAM SUNDAR
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mobile phones pack a lot of information into pocket-sized devices, which is why users may want to slow down the next time they’re scrolling through social media or checking email on a mobile app. People process information more efficiently but tend to be less vigilant about misinformation on their mobile phones compared to personal computers (PCs), according to a team led by Penn State researchers. This is especially true for users who have developed a routine or habit of using their mobile phones.
The research team also found that, counterintuitively, PC users are more likely to click on malicious links in phishing e-mails. The findings, published in the journal New Media & Society, have implications for cybersecurity and point to a need for additional alerts on mobile devices to combat misinformation and warnings on personal computers to combat susceptibility to phishing attempts.
“A good number of people report that they habitually use a mobile phone for everything from entertainment to work, and it serves them well, but habitual mobile phone usage leads them to let their guard down,” said principal investigator S. Shyam Sundar, the James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects at Penn State. “It’s important for them to recognize this behavior and to minimize their habitual use or their consumption of news on mobile devices, and for developers to create an alert system to remind them not to believe everything they read.”
To better understand how device type affects information processing, the team conducted two field experiments. Participants self-reported their habitual mobile phone usage and completed surveys using their own mobile phones and personal computers outside a laboratory setting, with all the push notifications and distractions that come with those devices and environments, giving the research team a better sense of how individuals use their devices and comprehend information in real-world settings.
“Usually when we conduct studies, we try to control as many extraneous factors as possible, but in this case, we ran field experiments because we wanted to test the differences in information processing between the two different devices in a natural way, by including all the noise and distractions that people encounter in their daily usage,” said Mengqi Liao, first author and doctoral candidate in mass communication at Penn State.
In the first study, the researchers asked 116 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk to use their mobile phone or PC, including both desktop and laptop computers, to review normal emails, tricky pictures such as a copper-colored stainless-steel knife, and spam emails. The researchers recorded how much time participants spent reviewing the information. They also asked the participants questions to measure variables such as their recall of details from the emails and pictures, such as what material the copper-colored knife was made of and how likely they would be to act on the information in the emails.
In the second study, the researchers asked 241 university students to use their mobile phone or PC to review misinformation in news blurbs and phishing emails. The researchers again recorded the time participants spent reviewing the material and if participants clicked on the malicious links in the phishing emails, though the links took them to a post-questionnaire instead of an actual malicious website. The researchers also asked participants questions to gauge how they processed and interacted with the material and to indicate if they ever felt suspicious towards the deceptive content.
“In our first study, we did not find many differences across the two devices in terms of information processing other than the fact that mobile users processed information faster,” Liao said. “In the second study we focused more on deceptive content and recorded actual behavioral measures, like whether participants clicked on a malicious link. This is where we are more likely to observe detrimental effects from people processing information in a shallow manner, because with deceptive content, the consequences of people letting their guard down and being less skeptical towards misinformation can be quite dangerous.”
The way people have come to associate certain devices with specific types of content, such as processing news on mobile devices and emails on computers, may have driven the results, said Sundar.
“The stance in mobile seems to be that if you have to do more work, like go from one app to another to another, you’re less likely to pursue information further, whereas with email on a PC, you’re in work mode and may want to explore in depth,” he said. “That is perhaps why mobile users are quick to share misinformation without bothering to first verify information, and PC users are prone to click on links that they shouldn’t be clicking.”
Pop-up alerts are important for warning mobile users about potential misinformation and PC users about malicious links, he added.
Device-specific responses may also account for the counterintuitive finding that PC users are more likely to click on malicious links, according to the researchers. It seems more convenient or easier to click on links on a PC, which open in a new browser tab but give the appearance of opening on the same screen, than on mobile devices, where the user has to switch between apps, Liao said. PC users may also rely more on their antivirus software, letting their guard down when they see links in phishing emails, she added.
“It’s becoming more urgent, with all the misinformation on the internet, that we communicate these risks to users,” Liao said. “On the PC side, don’t click a new link just because it’s convenient, as it can lead to dangerous outcomes. And given that mobile phones can make you less vigilant, maybe slow down a bit and be more careful when processing information on these devices.”
Jinping Wang, University of Florida, and Cheng Chen, Elon University, also contributed to the work.
MULTICOMMUNICATING CAN BE MOST BENEFICIAL WHEN PEOPLE CAN BALANCE THEIR DIVIDED ATTENTION AND EFFECTIVELY MANAGE THE EXPECTATIONS OF WHOEVER THEY ARE COMMUNICATING WITH, ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH CO-CONDUCTED AT BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK.
CREDIT: "GROUP OF DIVERSE PEOPLE HAVING A BUSINESS MEETING" BY RAWPIXEL LTD IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY 2.0.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- In today’s digital age, the need for multicommunicating has increased as people frequently juggle different communication tasks using multiple devices. While that occasionally means your attention could be diverted from one task or another, new research including faculty from Binghamton University, State University of New York examines how multicommunicating could benefit the workplace or classroom, as long as it’s used properly.
Multicommunicating can be most beneficial when people are able to balance their divided attention and effectively manage the expectations of whoever they are communicating with, said Assistant Professor Jinglu Jiang, who conducted the research.
“On the surface, it’s easy to place a negative connotation on multicommunicating. But we need to focus on how people manage their multicommunicating rather than the behavior itself,” Jiang said. “Not everyone can be a ‘Superman’ at this, but if you’re messaging with a colleague to get some information that could be useful while you’re in the middle of a meeting, that could make your contribution to the meeting more effective.”
Previous research has shown how multicommunicating, such as using social media or texting during another conversation, could be distracting, especially in classroom or business settings. Studies also have shown that multicommunicating not only impairs task performance but also leads to unfavorable social judgments against the multicommunicator, causing them to be perceived as uncivil and unprofessional.
But Jiang’s research reveals that multicommunication may not always pose a hindrance when it is directly related to a person’s primary task or objective.
When performed properly, Jiang said, multicommunicators can harness information acquired from secondary conversations to enhance their primary task, bolstering a person’s contributions to a meeting and minimizing delays. This is especially true when the two media involved in the multicommunication can complement each other.
For example, if a person is listening to a lecture or discussion while reading related content on a separate screen, that can prove more effective than attempting to read from two separate screens simultaneously.
“Let’s say you’re listening to your teachers and looking at some materials on the side, even if it’s social media. That can work as long as those materials have some content related to what’s being taught in the class,” Jiang said. “In my own classes, I’ll talk about how websites like Amazon work, so the students will naturally want to look at the website’s design themselves during the lecture. They’re listening and learning something using their own perspective.”
Jiang’s research also shows that it matters who you’re communicating with, particularly when it comes to leveraging the information a person gains through side conversations. Effective management of communication partners’ expectations means ensuring that they are aware of and comfortable with the multicommunicating approach.
In most business or classroom settings, this can involve setting clear boundaries and explaining the purpose behind the multicommunication. Jiang said multicommunication will become more beneficial when everyone is “on the same page” and has realistic expectations of what it can accomplish.
Managers coordinating a meeting, Jiang said, must know when it’s necessary to disrupt multicommunicating. They could address it by clarifying to employees when it might not be acceptable or by giving examples of when it would be useful or allowed.
Jiang’s research also points out that further study of this topic could help shed light on how multicommunicating could influence brainstorming, negotiation, influencing and relationship formation.
“Properly managing this behavior at the individual and team levels makes the difference between multicommunication as a distraction and multicommunication as an asset,” she said.
The paper, "Toward a multilevel framework of multicommunicating: Insights from a systematic review," was published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports.
About The Study: Early-life digital media exposure was associated with atypical sensory processing outcomes in multiple domains in this study that included 1,471 children. These findings suggest that digital media exposure might be a potential risk factor for the development of atypical sensory profiles. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between screen time and specific sensory-related developmental and behavioral outcomes, and whether minimizing early-life exposure can improve subsequent sensory-related outcomes.
Authors: Karen F. Heffler, M.D., of the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author.
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.
CREDIT: PLEASE CREDIT COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES
A global study organized and led by Colorado State University scientists shows that the effects of extreme drought – which is expected to increase in frequency with climate change – has been greatly underestimated for grasslands and shrublands.
The findings – published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – quantify the impact of extreme short-term drought on grassland and shrubland ecosystems across six continents with a level of detail that was not previously possible.
It is the first time an experiment this extensive has been undertaken to generate a baseline understanding of the potential losses of plant productivity in these vital ecosystems.
Melinda Smith, a professor in the Department of Biology at CSU, led the study and is the first author on the paper. She said the observed reduction in a key carbon cycle process after a single 1-in-100-year drought event greatly exceeds previously reported losses for grasslands and shrublands.
“We were able to determine that the loss of aboveground plant growth – a key measure of ecosystem function – was 60% greater when short-term drought was extreme compared to the less severe droughts that have been more commonly experienced historically,” she said. “Past studies suffered from methodological differences when estimating the impacts of extreme drought in natural ecosystems, but our standardized, distributed approach here addressed that problem.”
Smith added that the project also showcases the variability in drought response across grassland and shrubland ecosystems – offering both a review of the global impacts of climate change as well as a glimpse into which areas will be most stressed or most resilient in the coming years.
Gathering global extreme drought data on grassland and shrubland ecosystems Known as the International Drought Experiment, the newly published research originally dates back to 2013 as part of the National Science Foundation’s Drought-Net Research Coordination Network. Altogether, there are more than 170 authors representing institutions from around the world cited in the new PNAS study, which was completed over the last four years.
To gather their data, researchers built rainfall manipulation structures to experimentally reduce the amount of naturally occurring precipitation available to ecosystems for at least a full growing season. About half of the participating sites imposed extreme drought conditions with these structures, while the rest imposed less severe drought for comparison.
As Earth’s climate continues to change, short-term droughts that are statistically extreme in intensity will become more common, with what were once considered 1-in-100-year droughts now potentially happening every two to five years, said Smith. But because of the historic rarity of extreme droughts researchers had been unable to estimate the actual magnitude of their ecological consequences.
Smith said grasslands and shrublands were perfect test areas to fill that research gap because they are easier to manipulate for study than other systems, such as forests. They also store more than 30% of the global stock of carbon and support key industries such as livestock production.
“They are key ecosystems that are scalable to the globe, which makes them highly relevant for this kind of work,” said Smith, who also serves as chair of the Faculty Council on campus. “Grasslands and shrublands cover between 30% and 40% of the globe and frequently see deficits in precipitation. That means they are more vulnerable to climate change.”
Findings from the sites also provide insight into how specific climates, soil and vegetation types broadly influence drought response. While the work shows that drier and less diverse sites like those in Colorado are likely to be the most vulnerable to extremes, Smith said the severity of the drought was the most consistent and important factor in determining an ecosystem’s response.
“Our data suggests greater losses in drier sites, but if you are getting to the extremes – which is what is being forecasted – we can generally expect substantial losses no matter where you are in the world,” she said. “We also found that even moderate losses from less severe droughts would still likely result in large impacts to the populations that rely on these systems. And then there is a combined loss of function across the globe to consider as well.”
Smith said the team is currently examining data collected from the full four years of the project to now assess multiyear drought impacts globally.
Shelters used to recreate drought conditions east of Fort Collins, Colorado
CREDIT
Please credit Colorado State University College of Natural Sciences.
SWRI WILL BUILD QUICKSOUNDER, THE FIRST IN A NEW GENERATION OF NOAA LOW-EARTH ORBIT ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITES. THE INSTITUTE WAS SELECTED BY NASA AND NOAA FOR THE $54 MILLION CONTRACT.
SAN ANTONIO — January 8, 2024 —NASA and NOAA have selected Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to develop QuickSounder, the first in a new generation of NOAA low-Earth orbit environmental satellites. Under the $54 million contract, SwRI will design and build the satellite and operate it for three years.
QuickSounder will kick off NOAA’s Near Earth Orbit Network (NEON) program. The Near Earth Orbit Network is a collaborative mission between NASA and NOAA. NASA will manage the development and launch of the satellites for NOAA, which will operate them and deliver data to users worldwide. NEON satellites will provide critical data to support weather forecasting, climate monitoring and environmental observation.
As a pathfinder mission and NOAA’s first environmental smallsat, QuickSounder will serve as a prototype for its next generation of environmental satellites. While environmental satellites usually take 10 years or longer to develop and launch, QuickSounder is expected to launch in mid-2026 – less than 27 months after the award. Improved development timelines will provide NOAA the opportunity to fly newer, more advanced technology instruments in the future.
“Our team is very excited to play such an important role in working with NOAA to develop their next generation satellite architecture,” said Michael McLelland, vice president of SwRI’s Space Systems Division
QuickSounder will carry NOAA’s Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) instrument, which provides information about the physical properties of Earth’s atmosphere – such as temperature and moisture - that heavily influence weather patterns. QuickSounder represents a leap forward in data latency for environmental satellites, delivering 95% of collected data within 30 minutes. Quicker data delivery will significantly improve NOAA’s weather forecasting ability.
Over the next two years, SwRI will design and build QuickSounder and integrate the ATMS instrument. Additionally, the Institute will perform environmental testing (thermal vacuum, vibration and acoustic) on the completed spacecraft to ensure that it will survive the launch and space environments. A little larger than a typical washing machine, the satellite will be 2.6 feet (80 cm) wide and 3.7 feet (114 cm) long and weigh about 465 pounds (211 kg), including the xenon propellant used by its small electric propulsion thruster.
SwRI will deliver QuickSounder to the launch site when it’s completed in 2026, perform launch vehicle integration, support the launch, and then will checkout and operate the satellite from the Institute’s Mission Operations Center in Boulder, Colorado, until 2029.
All design, fabrication and testing processes will occur within SwRI’s 74,000-square-foot Space System Integration Facility at its San Antonio headquarters. The facility is specifically configured to rapidly respond to commercial and government spacecraft needs, particularly small satellites targeted at emerging “new space” applications.
INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
IMAGE:
SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING IS A UNIQUE TECHNIQUE FOR GLOBALLY MONITORING THE EARTH'S ENVIRONMENT. RED AND YELLOW SHADING INDICATES REGIONS WITH A HIGH AMMONIA (NH3) CONCENTRATION AROUND THE WORLD, E.G., INDIA, WEST AFRICA, AND EAST CHINA.
Atmospheric ammonia (NH3) is a trace gas that causes environmental problems and harms human health. Chinese scientists have established a full-physical retrieval algorithm to derive the concentration of the atmospheric ammonia from the Hyperspectral Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (HIRAS) onboard the Chinese FengYun (FY)-3D satellite, presenting the first atmospheric NH3 column global map observed by the HIRAS instrument.
The research was conducted by ZHOU Minqiang, an associate researcher from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with ZHANG Xingying, a senior researcher at the China Meteorological Administration.
The research paper has been published in the Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (AAS), and featured as the cover story in the third printed issue of the journal in 2024.
Lead author of the research paper Dr. ZHOU Mingqiang underscores the significance of this landmark achievement, saying that monitoring global atmospheric ammonia levels is pivotal to grasping its environmental impact and influence on climate change. "The HIRAS instrument's ability to capture NH3 hotspots worldwide represents a significant leap in our capacity to track and understand its spatiotemporal distribution," he says.
The HIRAS NH3 columns were compared with the measurements of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), a hyperspectral infrared sounder residing on the European Space Agency's MetOp series of polar orbiting satellites, showing good consistency between the two instruments, and thus verifying the reliability of the FengYun (FY)-3D satellite's ammonia observation data. Professor ZHANG Xingying, corresponding author of the research paper, notes, "This aligns with our efforts to utilize multiple satellite instruments for a holistic understanding of atmospheric ammonia dynamics."
Professor ZHANG also acknowledges that the challenges still remain ahead. "Although our study marks a significant leap, we are still making efforts to refine the HIRAS NH3 retrievals. Continued research aims to reduce the uncertainty of satellite-based NH3 monitoring for a comprehensive understanding of its global impact."
This pioneering work marks a significant stride in Chinese satellite-based atmospheric monitoring, offering crucial insights into global NH3 distribution. The findings hold promise for advancing our understanding of atmospheric composition and its implications for environmental and climate studies.
