NAWI awarded funding to continue to accelerate research and development for a secure water future

A research consortium led by Berkeley Lab, along with three other national labs, will continue to lead a DOE desalination hub to drive innovation for sustainable water security

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

– By Lauren Core

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), which is led by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has been extended for five more years with $75 million in funding from DOE. NAWI will continue its contributions to helping decarbonize the water and wastewater sectors through investments in technologies that enhance the efficient use of energy for water use, treatment, and distribution.  

“Water and energy are interdependent – water is used to produce nearly every major energy source, and energy is critical to transporting and treating water,” said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “The deep connection between these two resources demands an integrated approach that considers the challenges and opportunities inherent to both sectors. The Department of Energy is proud to be leading the nation’s efforts to decarbonize the water economy, while ensuring a secure water future for communities nationwide.”

Over the next five years, NAWI is shifting its focus to include regional water systems planning - and will partner with water planners at the state and regional level to develop and use new tools for water supply forecasting, water demand forecasting, and water portfolio optimization. NAWI will also spearhead water resilience pilot projects and implement regional water system workshops. These new directions will enable NAWI to continue to accelerate breakthroughs towards a circular water economy, where water is treated to fit-for-purpose standards and reused locally, rather than transporting freshwater long distances. 

“Desalination and innovative water treatment technologies hold great promise for helping us meet our planet’s growing demand for one of our most precious resources: water,” says Mike Witherell, Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The Department of Energy’s renewed support for NAWI enables the continuation of cutting-edge research and development which is needed to not only treat unconventional sources of water for re-use but to lower their cost and energy use.” 

Over the past five years, NAWI has supported a robust research portfolio with 60 original and innovative research and development projects that span analysis for water-energy grid integration to the development of algorithms, models, and adaptive process controls for resilient operations. In addition, NAWI has supported the implementation of 11 pilot projects that have begun work demonstrating some of these innovative technologies in real-world environments. NAWI has also developed the NAWI Alliance with over 1,670 members, and partnered with over 420 leading industry, academic, and government stakeholders. NAWI has also developed a suite of knowledge products, including a master roadmap and series of industry-specific roadmaps to prioritize the highest impact technology options, and its 60 projects support those priorities. To date, NAWI researchers have published more than 100 articles in high-impact research journals. 

“Our research program remains steadfast in its commitment to reducing the price, energy cost, and greenhouse gas emissions of new water technologies,” said Peter Fiske, Executive Director of NAWI. “Our work also bridges cutting-edge research with real people and places, such as producing secure, reliable, and affordable water for communities that are most in need.”

NAWI’s plan for the next five years aligns well with the California's Water Supply Strategy (WSS) – Adapting to a Hotter Drier Future, which outlines a strategy and priority actions to adapt and protect water supplies from the effects of rising temperatures and drier conditions due to climate change. It also aligns with the updated California Water Plan that demonstrates how planning at the watershed scale provides the most comprehensive solutions for climate-resilient water supplies for all Californians. The NAWI program will significantly contribute to the implementation of the updated water plan, demonstrating novel methods for water reuse at the community and premise scale, along with further advancing key reuse technologies such as desalination and fit-for-purpose treatment. 

“Securing a more resilient water future for California means investing and building meaningful relationships with key partners like NAWI. This collaboration will help drive innovation for new, affordable water supplies for a more water resilient future for generations to come,” said California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemith. 

Throughout the next five years, NAWI will remain committed to the principles of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accountability (IDEA). NAWI’s pilot projects will continue to treat unconventional water sources to provide usable water in real-world environments. Some of the pilot projects will partner directly with communities and groups that have historically been underserved by existing water supplies. Each project will also generate a range of data sets usable by other researchers seeking t o advance the field of data analysis and automation, and fault detection in water treatment systems.

“The next five years present an invaluable opportunity to deliver impact aligned with NAWI’s pipe parity metrics and further the country towards net-zero emissions by 2050,” said Fiske. 

NAWI will continue to be supported by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

NAWI is a research program and public-private partnership supported by the United States Department of Energy in partnership with the California Department of Water Resources and the California State Water Resources Control Board. NAWI brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. NAWI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office and Water Power Technologies Office.

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to delivering solutions for humankind through research in clean energy, a healthy planet, and discovery science. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Researchers from around the world rely on the Lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

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

 

What do bird dreams sound like?

Researchers translate vocal muscle activity of birds during sleep into synthetic songs.

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS

 

IMAGE: 

VOCAL MUSCLE ACTIVITY OF BIRDS DURING SLEEP CAN BE TRANSLATED INTO SYNTHETIC SONGS.

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CREDIT: ROMINA KUPPE AND ANA AMADOR

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2024 — For more than 20 years, researchers have known that areas of birds’ brains dedicated to singing show neural patterns during sleep akin to the ones they use while awake and singing.

Since the “code” behind how this information gets processed is unknown, it hasn’t been possible to map a pattern of nocturnal activity to song. Until now.

In Chaos, from AIP Publishing, a team of researchers from the University of Buenos Aires report a method to translate the vocal muscle activity of birds during sleep into synthetic songs.

“Dreams are one of the most intimate and elusive parts of our existence,” said author Gabriel Mindlin, who specializes in exploring the physical mechanisms of birdsong. “Knowing that we share this with such a distant species is very moving. And the possibility of entering the mind of a dreaming bird — listening to how that dream sounds — is a temptation impossible to resist.”

A few years ago, Mindlin and colleagues discovered that these patterns of neuronal activity descend to the syringeal muscles — a bird’s vocal apparatus. They can capture sleep birds’ muscular activity data via recording electrodes, called electromyography (EMG), and then use a dynamical systems model to translate it into synthetic songs.

“During the past 20 years, I’ve worked on the physics of birdsong and how to translate muscular information into song,” said Mindlin. “In this way, we can use the muscle activity patterns as time-dependent parameters of a model of birdsong production and synthesize the corresponding song.”

Many bird species have complex musculature, so translating syringeal activity into song is a bit of a challenge.

“For this initial work, we chose the Great Kiskadee, a member of the flycatcher family and a species for which we’d recently discovered its physical mechanisms of singing, and presented some simplifications,” said Mindlin. “In other words: we chose a species for which the first step in this program was viable.”

Hearing the sounds emerge from the data of a bird dreaming about a territorial confrontation with a raised crest of feathers — a gesture that during the day is associated with a trill used in confrontations — was incredibly moving for Mindlin.

“I felt great empathy imagining that solitary bird recreating a territorial dispute in its dream,” he said. “We have more in common with other species than we usually recognize.”

The team’s study presents biophysics as a new exploratory tool capable of opening the door for the quantitative study of dreams.

“We’re interested in using these syntheses, which can be implemented in real-time, to interact with a bird while it dreams,” said Mindlin. “And for species that learn, to address questions about the role of sleep during learning.”

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The article, "Synthesizing avian dreams," is authored by Gabriel B. Mindlin, Juan Francisco Döppler, Melina Atencio, and Ana Amador. It appeared in Chaos on April 2, 2024 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0194301). It can be accessed at https://www.doi.org/10.1063/5.0194301.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Chaos is devoted to increasing the understanding of nonlinear phenomena in all areas of science and engineering and describing their manifestations in a manner comprehensible to researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines. See https://pubs.aip.org/aip/cha .

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JOURNAL

Chaos An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

DOI

10.1063/5.0194301 

ARTICLE TITLE

Synthesizing avian dreams

 

$318 million New York City community parks initiative is associated with increased use of urban parks in low-income neighborhoods

CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH POLICY

A new study in JAMA Network Open led by researchers from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy observed 28,322 park users across 54 neighborhood parks and found a clear association between park renovation and park use in low-income neighborhoods in New York City (NYC).

As the global trend toward urbanization continues, two thirds of the world’s population is predicted to live in cities by 2050. Amid the noise, stress, and crowding of city life, urban parks have the potential to provide opportunities for physical activity, mitigate heat and pollution, lower stress, and improve mental and social well-being, all of which can decrease the prevalence of chronic diseases.

Previous public health studies have established that parks in underserved areas with higher proportions of Black and Latino residents with low income historically receive less funding and have fewer physical activity resources than those in predominantly White and wealthier neighborhoods across the US. In addition, residents in lower- income areas have been shown to engage in less physical activity than those in higher-income areas. In NYC, despite the ubiquity of parks, disparities in park quality and use persist.

To address these disparities by ensuring parks equity, the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation (NYC Parks) launched the Community Parks Initiative (CPI) in 2014, a $318 million redesign and renovation of 67 neighborhood parks. Selected parks were historically underinvested, having received less than $250,000 in capital investment in the past 20 years.  The selected sites were situated in densely populated and growing neighborhoods with higher-than-average concentrations of residents living in high poverty.  Across CPI sites, the park renovations improved aesthetics, vegetation, shade, seating areas, accessibility, children’s play equipment, exercise and sports amenities, and community gathering spaces.  Community engagement was integral to planning for the park renovations.  NYC residents participated in community input sessions to provide insights into how they would like to use the parks and ideas about what types of amenities could be incorporated into the renovation.

As the CPI rolled out in waves, it provided a unique opportunity to examine the effects of park redesign and renovation on park use and physical activity on an unprecedented citywide scale. The current study evaluated the association of the CPI from baseline to 1 year post park renovation (or approximately 3 years post baseline) on changes in park use and level of physical activity in parks.

Thirty-three intervention parks were selected from the CPI program.  Twenty-one control parks were selected based on alignment with CPI program criteria and matched sociodemographics.

Overall, the CPI was associated with a greater net number of park users at intervention parks over time. This was a result of both increased use of CPI parks and decreased use of control parks, with some differences by age and sex.

Among youths (defined as age 20 and below), park use remained steady over time in intervention parks while it decreased significantly in control parks. Among adults, park use increased significantly at intervention parks but remained unchanged at control parks.

There was a greater net number of both female and male park users at intervention vs. control parks over time, due to a marginal increase in female users at intervention parks and significant decreases of users of both sexes at control parks.

The CPI led to a net positive increase of users engaged in sitting or standing at intervention vs control parks over time. Sitting or standing increased significantly at intervention parks but did not change at control parks. Furthermore, there was a net positive number of users engaged in walking or vigorous physical activity at intervention vs control parks over time. Park users engaging in walking or vigorous physical activity did not change significantly at intervention parks but decreased significantly at control parks.

In this study, park redesign and renovation were associated with increased park use in low-income neighborhoods, offering a rare opportunity to evaluate initiatives on park use and park-based physical activity in NYC communities that are heavily Black and Latino. The large number of park sites and longitudinal design with matched controls are major strengths in this study. While the findings suggest a positive impact on park use, especially among adults, more research is needed for understanding park-related physical activity. This study may help inform future urban development and public health policies regarding public parks.

"We are thrilled to see the evidence highlighting what we already knew, that investing strategically in our local parks increases New Yorkers’ use of them. CPI is a cornerstone parks equity program that is fundamental to our agency’s work, and we recently announced 20 new sites that will go through renovation, as part of this program's expansion efforts," said NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue. “We extend our gratitude to the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, and our partners, for developing research focused on the significance of enhancing public parks across the five boroughs. The investment in our local parks benefits all New Yorkers because they add critical spaces for wholesome recreation, fostering community cohesion, and connecting with nature.”

 “Thanks to the CPI, this is one of the largest studies on how improving urban parks affects park use,” says senior author Distinguished Professor Terry Huang. “While we found a significant net increase in park users at intervention vs. control parks over time, the study also suggested that more efforts may be needed, such as culturally tailored programming, to promote physical activity in parks. Improving the physical environment is the first step; we now need to leverage it to also enhance the social environment to ultimately improve population wellbeing.”

About CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH)

The mission of CUNY SPH is to promote and sustain healthier populations in New York City and around the world through excellence in education, research, and service in public health and by advocating for sound policy and practice to advance social justice and improve health outcomes for all.

 

 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.1429 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Association of Park Renovation With Park Use in New York City

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Apr-2024

 

Trapped in the middle: billiards with memory

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

 

IMAGE: 

DEPENDING ON THE SHAPE OF THE BILLIARD, THE BALL MAY END UP GETTING TRAPPED IN DIFFERENT LOCATIONS WITH DIFFERENT PROBABILITIES. THESE ‘HEAT MAPS’ SHOW WHERE THE BALL IS MOST LIKELY TO END UP (BRIGHT COLOURS) AND WHERE IT IS LEAST LIKELY TO GET TRAPPED (DARK COLOURS).

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CREDIT: MENTION ARTICLE AS SOURCE

Adding one simple rule to an idealized game of billiards leads to a wealth of intriguing mathematical questions, as well as applications in the physics of living organisms. This week, researchers from the University of Amsterdam, including two master students as first authors – have published a paper in Physical Review Letters about the fascinating dynamics of billiards with memory.

Billiards: a mathematical mystery
An idealized version of the game of billiards has fascinated mathematicians for decades. The basic question is a simple one: once a billiard ball is played, where does it go and where does it end up? Assume that the billiard is perfect: the walls are perfectly bouncy, there are no other objects on the table, the motion of the ball is frictionless, and so on. Then the ball will not really ‘end’ anywhere: it will keep going forever. But does it ever return where it started? Does it eventually visit every part of the table? When we slightly change the direction of the ball, or its starting location, does the path it follows look like the previous one? 

All of these questions turn out to be very intriguing from a mathematical point of view. Their answers are not always known – especially when the shape of the billiard is not simple, like a square or a rectangle. For example, on triangular billiards with corners of less than 100 degrees, it is known that there are always periodic paths – paths that the ball can follow and that return on themselves. This can be proven mathematically. Now, change one of the corners to a slightly bigger angle, and no mathematician knows the answer anymore.
Idealized games of billiards are not just a favorite pastime of mathematicians. They also have a profound impact on physics and other sciences. Many of the questions about billiards can be phrased as questions about chaos: do similar initial conditions of a dynamical system – whether it is a ball on a billiard table, a molecule in a gas or a bird in a flock – always lead to similar final results?

A new rule

In research carried out at the University of Amsterdam, a team of physicists have realized that by slightly changing the rules of the billiards game, the number of applications in the real world increases even further. Mazi Jalaal, co-author of the publication and head of the group in which the research was done, explains: “In nature, many living organisms have an external form of memory. For example, they leave traces to remember where they have been. They can then use that information to either follow the same route again, or – say, when searching for food – to not explore that same region again.”

The latter option led the researchers to an interesting idea: what if we add one rule to the billiards game, namely that the ball may never cross its own previous path? The result – see the figure below – is that the effective size of the billiard table gets smaller and smaller. In fact, the ball eventually gets trapped by its own trajectory.

Intriguing new questions

The trapping effect makes the system even more intriguing. Even simple questions now become extremely fascinating. How far does a ball travel before it gets trapped? The answer varies, both on the shape of the table and on the starting point and direction of the ball. Sometimes the ball travels a length that is only a few times the size of the table, sometimes it can go for 100 times that length before it gets trapped. Where the ball eventually ends up in its trapped state is also an intricate question: repeating the experiment on a computer millions of times, every time with a slightly different starting position and velocity, leads to beautiful patterns of final configurations. 
The image at the top of this text shows some of these beautiful examples. Interestingly, the resulting dynamical systems can be chaotic. Changing the starting position or velocity of the self-avoiding ball only slightly can lead to it being trapped at a completely different point on the billiard. Additionally, contrary to what happens on an ordinary billiard table, the self-avoiding ball is not equally likely to end up just anywhere. Some regions are more likely than others. To explain and prove all of these features, the mathematicians certainly have their work cut out.

Endless applications

An interesting particularity of the publication is that both of its first authors are master students. Mazi Jalaal adds: “The idea of a ‘billiard with memory’ is simple enough and new enough that studying it does not require years of experience. Thijs and Stijn did a great job in making the material their own and finding clever ways to study all these new open problems. I am very happy that they can already be lead authors of a publication.”

The results are only the first steps in what could be an entire new area of research. Not only are there many interesting mathematical questions that are now waiting to be answered; the applications in physics, including biophysics, are also endless. Jalaal: “The concept of trapping is one that begs to be explored, also in real-life systems. For instance, we know that single-celled slime molds use self-avoiding paths. Do they also get trapped, and what happens when they do? Or do they have clever mechanisms to avoid this from happening at all? Do they use it to enhance search strategies for food? The results would help us to better understand these biological systems, and perhaps even incorporate the lessons we learn to optimize this form of billiards with memory for use in robots.”

As the ball moves across the table (red line), it gradually ‘cuts off’ more and more of the area where it can go, leaving an allowed area (blue) that gets smaller and smaller. Eventually, the ball gets trapped in a single point.

Publication

Billiards with Spatial Memory, Thijs Albers, Stijn Delnoij, Nico Schramma and Maziyar Jalaal, Physical Review Letters.
 

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JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.157101 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Billiards with Spatial Memory

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Apr-2024

 

Researchers develop new method to help investors predict firms’ decision-making, optimize portfolios and generate greater returns

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Top management teams at most businesses are charged with maximizing shareholder wealth, making any actions that impede this goal their sole responsibility.

However, these management teams are often pressured to skirt normal business practices in order to meet earnings thresholds. One way is through myopic marketing spending — reducing marketing as well as research and development expenses to boost earnings, which increases short-term results at the expense of long-term performance.

New research from the University of Notre Dame introduces a novel method to help investors predict myopic marketing spending up to a year in advance, giving investors ample time to optimize their portfolios and generate much better returns.

A survey of 500 global executives, conducted jointly by the nonprofit Focusing Capital on the Long Term and McKinsey, found that top management teams continually feel pressured to meet near-term earnings targets at the expense of long-term strategies. They make myopic decisions to make the firm look better. This behavior often happens prior to capital increases, initial public offerings, share repurchases and C-suite retirements.

According to McKinsey, top management teams are willing to “cut long-term growth investments by 17 percent, on average, when faced with a 15 percent decrease in revenue.” This short-term decision making has a downside. It harms stakeholders, including investors, customers and the boards of directors. It is also associated with inferior stock-market performance in the long run, due to loss of market share and delayed innovation.

Unfortunately, investors only notice narrow-minded marketing spending after the fact, through public financial statements.

A new prediction strategy in “Can Words Speak Louder than Actions? Using Top Management Teams’ Language to Predict Myopic Marketing Spending,” forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing from lead author Andre Martin, assistant professor of marketing at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, along with Tarun Kushwaha from the University of Wisconsin, offers several advantages compared with existing methods.

Martin analyzed the language management teams use in earnings calls, specifically focusing on marketing and earnings emphasis, to predict future instances of myopic marketing spending. The study looked at 11 million sentences from nearly 25,000 quarterly earnings call transcripts of 1,197 firms between 2008 and 2019 and revealed that this approach can predict myopic marketing spending at a quarterly frequency.

“By focusing on the marketing and earnings emphasis language they use, we can forecast instances of myopic marketing spending up to a year in advance,” said Martin, a former software engineer and program manager for Xerox and defense contractor SRC Inc. who specializes in the downstream effects of firm communication. “This provides longer foresight and more frequent prediction opportunities (quarterly) than current existing prediction methods.

“We find that one standard deviation increase in earnings emphasis is associated with a 23.68 percent increase in the likelihood of future myopic marketing spending.”

The findings also showcase fiscal impact.

The researchers compared the financial returns of firms that engage in myopic marketing spending with those that do not and found that using this method to avoid investing in myopic firms yields an additional 6.44 percent in returns over four years. This translates to 1.61 percent annual abnormal returns over existing prediction methods.

“More than just financial gains, this study’s findings have profound governance implications,” Martin said. “They equip boards with an early detection tool for executive actions that could harm long-term firm value, enabling timely intervention.”

They also empower individual investors with insights into executive intentions.

This prediction tool provides stakeholders, regulators and firm competitors with valuable insights into potential top management actions. These actions could affect not only long-term firm value but also market conditions. Reducing the information barrier around executive intentions enables greater monitoring through early detection of myopic actions.

Contact: Andre Martin, 574-631-0711, amarti94@nd.edu

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JOURNAL

Journal of Marketing

ARTICLE TITLE

Can Words Speak Louder than Actions? Using Top Management Teams’ Language to Predict Myopic Marketing Spending

 

Artificial intelligence can help people feel heard, new USC study finds

New research from the USC Marshall School of Business reveals AI-generated responses can make humans “feel heard” but an underlying bias toward AI devalues its effectiveness.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found AI-generated messages made recipients feel more “heard” than messages generated by untrained humans, and that AI was better at detecting emotions than these individuals. However, recipients reported feeling less heard when they learned a message came from AI.

As AI becomes more ubiquitous in daily life, understanding its potential and limitations in meeting human psychological needs becomes more pertinent. With dwindling empathetic connections in a fast-paced world, many are finding their human needs for feeling heard and validated increasingly unmet.

The research conducted by Yidan Yin, Nan Jia, and Cheryl J. Wakslak from the USC Marshall School of Business addresses a pivotal question: Can AI, which lacks human consciousness and emotional experience, succeed in making people feel heard and understood?

“In the context of an increasing loneliness epidemic, a large part of our motivation was to see whether AI can actually help people feel heard,” said the paper’s first author, Yidan Yin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC Marshall.

The team’s findings highlight not only the potential of AI to augment human capacity for understanding and communication, but raises important conceptual questions about the meaning of being heard and practical questions about how best to leverage AI’s strengths to support greater human flourishing.

In an experiment and subsequent follow-up study, “we identified that while AI demonstrates enhanced potential compared to non-trained human responders to provide emotional support, the devaluation of AI responses poses a key challenge for effectively deploying AI’s capabilities,” said Nan Jia, associate professor of strategic management. 

The USC Marshall research team investigated people’s feelings of being heard and other related perceptions and emotions after receiving a response from either AI or a human. The survey varied both the actual source of the message and the ostensible source of the message: Participants received messages that were actually generated by an AI or by a human responder, with the information that it was either AI or human generated.  

“What we found was that both the actual source of the message and the presumed source of the message played a role,” said Cheryl Wakslak, associate professor of management and organization at USC Marshall. “People felt more heard when they received an AI than a human message, but when they believed a message came from AI this made them feel less heard.”

AI bias

Yin noted that their research “basically finds a bias against AI. It’s useful, but they don’t like it.”

Perceptions about AI are bound to change, added Wakslak, “Of course these effects may change over time, but one of the interesting things we found was that the two effects we observed were fairly similar in magnitude. Whereas there is a positive effect of getting an AI message, there is a similar degree of response bias when a message is identified as coming from AI, leading the two effects to essentially cancel each other out.”

Individuals further reported an “uncanny valley” response — a sense of unease when made aware that the empathetic response originated from AI, highlighting the complex emotional landscape navigated by AI-human interactions.

The research survey also asked participants about their general openness to AI, which moderated some of the effects, explained Wakslak.

“People who feel more positively toward AI don’t exhibit the response penalty as much and that’s intriguing because over time, will people gain more positive attitudes toward AI?” she posed. “That remains to be seen … but it will be interesting to see how this plays out as people’s familiarity and experience with AI grows.”

AI offers better emotional support

The study highlighted important nuances. Responses generated by AI were associated with increased hope and lessened distress, indicating a positive emotional effect on recipients. AI also demonstrated a more disciplined approach than humans in offering emotional support and refrained from making overwhelming practical suggestions.

Yin explained that, “Ironically, AI was better at using emotional support strategies that have been shown in prior research to be empathetic and validating. Humans may potentially learn from AI because a lot of times when our significant others are complaining about something, we want to provide that validation, but we don’t know how to effectively do so.”

Instead of AI replacing humans, the research points to different advantages of AI and human responses. The advanced technology could become a valuable tool, empowering humans to use AI to help them better understand one another and learn how to respond in ways that provide emotional support and demonstrate understanding and validation.

Overall, the paper’s findings have important implications for the integration of AI into more social contexts. Leveraging AI’s capabilities might provide an inexpensive scalable solution for social support, especially for those who might otherwise lack access to individuals who can provide them with such support. However, as the research team notes, their findings suggest that it is critical to give careful consideration to how AI is presented and perceived in order to maximize its benefits and reduce any negative responses.

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2319112121 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

AI can help people feel heard, but an AI label diminishes this impact

 

Study finds increased anxiety and PTSD among people who remained in Ukraine

Survey of mental health and exposure to blasts reveals differences among displaced people who remained within the country compared to refugees

PLOS

 

IMAGE: 

RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN UKRAINIAN CITY DESTROYED BY WAR

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CREDIT: PHOTO BY АЛЕСЬ УСЦІНАЎ

Researchers from the International Blast Injury Research Network at the University of Southampton conducted a survey to understand how the mental health of displaced Ukrainians has been affected by the ongoing war. Their findings, published in PLOS Global Public Health, describe high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and generalized anxiety among both refugees and people displaced within Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, at least 13 million people have been displaced from their homes. Both exposure to war and displacement—specifically loss of community, housing and economic resources—affect mental health. These impacts tend to be magnified among the elderly, those caring for children, and otherwise vulnerable populations.

Between April and July of 2022, the researchers surveyed over 8,000 participants, all of whom were either refugees or people displaced within Ukraine. The participants answered questions about their current circumstances, their mental health, and their exposures to blasts—explosions caused by bombs or other military actions.

Nearly 8 out of 10 participants who remained in Ukraine and more than half of refugees reported blast exposure. Almost 70 percent of all survey participants reported anxiety, with people remaining in Ukraine reporting higher anxiety and more frequent flashbacks to traumatic events compared to refugees. Flashbacks are a symptom of PTSD and can range from fleeting, intrusive memories to minutes-long episodes where a person feels they are reliving the traumatic events—in this study, the frequency of flashbacks was correlated to blast exposure.

Overall, this study suggests displaced people remaining in Ukraine face poorer mental health outcomes compared to refugees, likely because of their ongoing exposure to war. However, refugees still face considerable mental health challenges. The researchers emphasize, “Mental health and psychosocial support must be prioritized within humanitarian relief.”

The authors add: “Exposure to blast events can be incredibly distressing. Our survey of 8300 Ukrainian respondents show that almost 70% reported witnessing a blast event during the first 4 months of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Most worryingly, many respondents who were blast-exposed reported adverse mental health outcomes, including symptoms of PTSD.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Global Public Health: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002623        

Citation: Brackstone K, Head MG, Perelli-Harris B (2024) Effects of blast exposure on anxiety and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among displaced Ukrainian populations. PLOS Glob Public Health 4(4): e0002623. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0002623

Author Countries: UK

Funding: This research was funded by small grants kindly provided from Public Policy@Southampton (MH, KB, BPH), the Clinical Informatics Research Unit, University of Southampton (KB, MH), and the ESRC Centre for Population Change (BPH). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of this manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

 

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JOURNAL

PLOS Global Public Health

DOI

10.1371/journal.pgph.0002623 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Apr-2024