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)
Monday, June 10, 2024
How medical models can transform agriculture
At the intersection of plants and nanomedicine perhaps lies a solution to current unsustainable agricultural practices and meeting increasing global food demands
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
IMAGE:
CARNEGIE MELLON’S GREG LOWRY STUDIES PLANT NANOBIOTECHNOLOGY IN HIS ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING LAB, LOOKING AT USING NANOCARRIERS TO MAKE PLANTS MORE RESILIENT.
Nano-agriculture: Sustainable solutions for global food security
PITTSBURGH—Researchers in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University are using findings from nanomedicine and digital twin technologies to understand the new field of Plant Nanobiotechnology, address unsustainable agricultural practices, and meet increasing global food demands.
Currently, agriculture accounts for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of all freshwater withdraws. This, in addition to a range of other factors from extreme weather events, rampant crop pests, and rapidly degrading soil underlines the need for new agricultural practices and technologies.
In a new study published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers highlight that Plant Nanobiotechnology approaches can be used to deliver nanoforms of active agents, such as micronutrients or plant protection products, to specific biological targets. As a result, plants become more resilient against disease and harmful environmental factors like extreme heat or salt contents in soil, thus increasing crop yield and overall efficiency. However, because the field of Plant Nanobiotechnology is still in its nascent stages, many of the challenges to implementing new tools like nanocarriers are still unknown to researchers.
To overcome this obstacle, civil and environmental engineering professor Greg Lowry, in collaboration with co-corresponding author Juan Pablo Giraldo at University of California Riverside, colleagues, and students, is looking beyond plants and agriculture to find solutions inspired by nanomedicine.
“We found that the challenges of using nanocarriers to deliver nutrients in plants parallel those in nanomedicine, which has the advantage of being an established and well-studied field,” said Lowry. “While there are some key differences between plants and animals, many important parts of our research have been informed by nanomedicine, including identifying nanocarrier designs that can ensure active agents are effectively packaged, delivered, and released where they are needed.”
Similar to nanomedicine, researchers found that nanocarriers are most successful when they interact well with the organism they’re targeting, navigate key biological barriers, and take advantage of natural processes while minimizing unintended consequences. The study also explored the potentially transformative approach of creating “digital twins” of plants for assessing the efficacy of different nanocarrier designs.
Digital twins are breakthrough modeling technologies that have been widely used throughout infrastructure management, predictive maintenance, and manufacturing. Their unique ability to analyze a structure and its surrounding conditions, process the information, and use it to inform, predict, and modify what happens in the physical world has revolutionized the way researchers process data.
Just as medical researchers use “digital patients,” or digital twin models to simulate how medicines interact with and move within the body, Lowry and his team could use “digital plants” to facilitate the design of nanocarriers that target nutrient delivery to selected plant organs. In doing so, nanocarriers would be better equipped to deliver essential active agents where and when they’re needed most, increasing their effectiveness, resilience to adversity, and overall agricultural output.
“Nano-enabled precision delivery of active agents in plants will transform agriculture, but there are critical technical challenges that we must first overcome to realize the full range of its benefits,” said Lowry. “I’m optimistic about the future of Plant Nanobiotechnology approaches and the beneficial impacts it will have on our ability to sustainably produce food.”
More information: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-024-01667-5
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About the College of Engineering: The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University is a top-ranked, engineering college that is known for our intentional focus on cross-disciplinary collaboration in research. The College is well known for working on problems of both scientific and practical importance. Our acclaimed faculty have a focus on innovation management and engineering to yield transformative results that will drive the intellectual and economic vitality of our community, nation and world. The College offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, engineering and public policy, information networking, materials science and engineering and mechanical engineering. Our “maker” culture is ingrained in all that we do, leading to novel approaches and transformative results.
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Human life begins with a single egg cell that grows into a human being with trillions of cells. To ensure that the highly complex development of tissues and organs is as protected as possible, the placental barrier keeps pathogens and foreign substances out. Tina Bürki and her team from Empa's Particles-Biology Interactions laboratory in St. Gallen are investigating how this protective mechanism copes with nanoparticles.
Nanoparticles are contained in a large number of products, but they are also produced during wear and tear as well as through combustion processes (see box). "We absorb these substances from the environment via our food, cosmetics or the air we breathe," explains Bürki. Some of these nanoparticles are suspected of harming babies in the womb. Low birth weight, autism and respiratory diseases are among the possible consequences for the child.
Mysterious remote effect
It is still unclear how the nanoparticles affect the unborn child. "We already know that the placental barrier retains many nanoparticles or at least delays their transport to the embryo," says Bürki. However, damage to the fetal tissue occurs, even if no particles have been detected in the fetus. The Empa team is now getting to the bottom of this long-range effect of nanoparticles. Together with clinical partners from the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen and research partners from the University of Geneva, the Amsterdam University Medical Center and the Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medical Research in Düsseldorf, the team is investigating the consequences of common nanoparticles such as titanium dioxide or diesel soot on the function of the placenta and their indirect damage to embryonic development.
For this purpose, the team used fully functional human placentas that were made available after planned caesarean sections. "Human placental tissue is the only way to obtain meaningful results on the transport and effect of nanoparticles," says the Empa researcher. "The structure, metabolism and interaction of maternal and fetal tissue are unique and species-specific."
The experiments showed that nanoparticles in placental tissue disrupt the production of a large number of messenger substances. And it is these messengers that can trigger serious changes in embryonic development, such as disturbed blood vessel formation.
These effects can be visualized in laboratory models using chicken eggs. The blood vessels in the egg actually grow at an enormous speed and density to enable embryonic development. A dense network of fine blood vessels covers the inside of the eggshell. The situation is strikingly different in eggs treated with the altered messenger substances from the nanoparticle-treated placenta: In the experiments, the blood vessel system was not as dense but rather coarse-meshed. "Nanoparticles apparently have an indirect effect on the child in the womb by inhibiting the formation of blood vessels via messenger substances," says Tina Bürki.
Health consequences
The researchers are currently investigating the entirety of the messenger substances released by a nanoparticle-treated placenta, the so-called secretome. Uncontaminated, the interplay of hormones, inflammatory mediators and signaling substances for the formation of organ systems resembles a perfectly tuned orchestra. It is already clear that the communication between the placenta and the unborn child is disrupted by the presence of nanoparticles and damages the formation of blood vessels. However, initial results show that the development of the nervous system does not appear to be affected. Future analyses will show what other disorders the nanoparticles can trigger indirectly. "As the effects can have an impact on the health of the pregnant woman and the development of her child, these findings should be taken into account in the risk assessment of nanomaterials," says the researcher.
The clinical partner, the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen, is also interested. As Thomas Rduch from the Women's Clinic and also a Clinical Research Fellow at Empa puts it: "A healthy placenta is of utmost importance for the development of the child. Correct risk assessments of environmental pollution are therefore crucial for pregnant women."
The placenta The placenta is an organ that forms exclusively during pregnancy. It supplies the child in the womb with nutrients and also serves as a filter for environmental influences. This so-called placental barrier offers the unborn child a certain degree of protection against pathogens or harmful substances. However, some substances, such as environmental oestrogens (https://www.empa.ch/de/web/s604/schwangerschaft), can pass through the placental barrier and are suspected of being associated with various diseases.
Nanoparticles Nanoparticles are only a few millionths of a millimeter in size. They include titanium dioxide, for example, which can be found in many foods, cosmetics and medicines. Silicon dioxide is found in paints and printing paper, for example, and is also used as a food additive. Other nanoparticles come from environmental pollution processes such as plastic abrasion (nanoplastics) or industrial soot. They can enter the human body via the respiratory tract, the digestive tract or the skin. As environmental pollution with nanoparticles is increasing, Empa is researching the health risks in various
Human life begins with a single egg cell that grows into a human being with trillions of cells. To ensure that the highly complex development of tissues and organs is as protected as possible, the placental barrier keeps pathogens and foreign substances out. Tina Bürki and her team from Empa's Particles-Biology Interactions laboratory in St. Gallen are investigating how this protective mechanism copes with nanoparticles.
Nanoparticles are contained in a large number of products, but they are also produced during wear and tear as well as through combustion processes (see box). "We absorb these substances from the environment via our food, cosmetics or the air we breathe," explains Bürki. Some of these nanoparticles are suspected of harming babies in the womb. Low birth weight, autism and respiratory diseases are among the possible consequences for the child.
Mysterious remote effect
It is still unclear how the nanoparticles affect the unborn child. "We already know that the placental barrier retains many nanoparticles or at least delays their transport to the embryo," says Bürki. However, damage to the fetal tissue occurs, even if no particles have been detected in the fetus. The Empa team is now getting to the bottom of this long-range effect of nanoparticles. Together with clinical partners from the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen and research partners from the University of Geneva, the Amsterdam University Medical Center and the Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medical Research in Düsseldorf, the team is investigating the consequences of common nanoparticles such as titanium dioxide or diesel soot on the function of the placenta and their indirect damage to embryonic development.
For this purpose, the team used fully functional human placentas that were made available after planned caesarean sections. "Human placental tissue is the only way to obtain meaningful results on the transport and effect of nanoparticles," says the Empa researcher. "The structure, metabolism and interaction of maternal and fetal tissue are unique and species-specific."
The experiments showed that nanoparticles in placental tissue disrupt the production of a large number of messenger substances. And it is these messengers that can trigger serious changes in embryonic development, such as disturbed blood vessel formation.
These effects can be visualized in laboratory models using chicken eggs. The blood vessels in the egg actually grow at an enormous speed and density to enable embryonic development. A dense network of fine blood vessels covers the inside of the eggshell. The situation is strikingly different in eggs treated with the altered messenger substances from the nanoparticle-treated placenta: In the experiments, the blood vessel system was not as dense but rather coarse-meshed. "Nanoparticles apparently have an indirect effect on the child in the womb by inhibiting the formation of blood vessels via messenger substances," says Tina Bürki.
Health consequences
The researchers are currently investigating the entirety of the messenger substances released by a nanoparticle-treated placenta, the so-called secretome. Uncontaminated, the interplay of hormones, inflammatory mediators and signaling substances for the formation of organ systems resembles a perfectly tuned orchestra. It is already clear that the communication between the placenta and the unborn child is disrupted by the presence of nanoparticles and damages the formation of blood vessels. However, initial results show that the development of the nervous system does not appear to be affected. Future analyses will show what other disorders the nanoparticles can trigger indirectly. "As the effects can have an impact on the health of the pregnant woman and the development of her child, these findings should be taken into account in the risk assessment of nanomaterials," says the researcher.
The clinical partner, the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen, is also interested. As Thomas Rduch from the Women's Clinic and also a Clinical Research Fellow at Empa puts it: "A healthy placenta is of utmost importance for the development of the child. Correct risk assessments of environmental pollution are therefore crucial for pregnant women."
If nanoparticles enter the placenta during pregnancy, the formation of blood vessels is suppressed. Fluorescence microscopy visualizes the consequences in the chicken egg model: The veins (green) only form a perforated, coarse-meshed network when they are treated with messenger substances from a nanoparticle-contaminated placenta (bottom). In comparison, a control chicken egg (top) displays a dense network of very fine blood vessels.
CREDIT
Empa
The placenta The placenta is an organ that forms exclusively during pregnancy. It supplies the child in the womb with nutrients and also serves as a filter for environmental influences. This so-called placental barrier offers the unborn child a certain degree of protection against pathogens or harmful substances. However, some substances, such as environmental oestrogens (https://www.empa.ch/de/web/s604/schwangerschaft), can pass through the placental barrier and are suspected of being associated with various diseases.
Nanoparticles Nanoparticles are only a few millionths of a millimeter in size. They include titanium dioxide, for example, which can be found in many foods, cosmetics and medicines. Silicon dioxide is found in paints and printing paper, for example, and is also used as a food additive. Other nanoparticles come from environmental pollution processes such as plastic abrasion (nanoplastics) or industrial soot. They can enter the human body via the respiratory tract, the digestive tract or the skin. As environmental pollution with nanoparticles is increasing, Empa is researching the health risks in various
Human life begins with a single egg cell that grows into a human being with trillions of cells. To ensure that the highly complex development of tissues and organs is as protected as possible, the placental barrier keeps pathogens and foreign substances out. Tina Bürki and her team from Empa's Particles-Biology Interactions laboratory in St. Gallen are investigating how this protective mechanism copes with nanoparticles.
Nanoparticles are contained in a large number of products, but they are also produced during wear and tear as well as through combustion processes (see box). "We absorb these substances from the environment via our food, cosmetics or the air we breathe," explains Bürki. Some of these nanoparticles are suspected of harming babies in the womb. Low birth weight, autism and respiratory diseases are among the possible consequences for the child.
Mysterious remote effect
It is still unclear how the nanoparticles affect the unborn child. "We already know that the placental barrier retains many nanoparticles or at least delays their transport to the embryo," says Bürki. However, damage to the fetal tissue occurs, even if no particles have been detected in the fetus. The Empa team is now getting to the bottom of this long-range effect of nanoparticles. Together with clinical partners from the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen and research partners from the University of Geneva, the Amsterdam University Medical Center and the Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medical Research in Düsseldorf, the team is investigating the consequences of common nanoparticles such as titanium dioxide or diesel soot on the function of the placenta and their indirect damage to embryonic development.
For this purpose, the team used fully functional human placentas that were made available after planned caesarean sections. "Human placental tissue is the only way to obtain meaningful results on the transport and effect of nanoparticles," says the Empa researcher. "The structure, metabolism and interaction of maternal and fetal tissue are unique and species-specific."
The experiments showed that nanoparticles in placental tissue disrupt the production of a large number of messenger substances. And it is these messengers that can trigger serious changes in embryonic development, such as disturbed blood vessel formation.
These effects can be visualized in laboratory models using chicken eggs. The blood vessels in the egg actually grow at an enormous speed and density to enable embryonic development. A dense network of fine blood vessels covers the inside of the eggshell. The situation is strikingly different in eggs treated with the altered messenger substances from the nanoparticle-treated placenta: In the experiments, the blood vessel system was not as dense but rather coarse-meshed. "Nanoparticles apparently have an indirect effect on the child in the womb by inhibiting the formation of blood vessels via messenger substances," says Tina Bürki.
Health consequences
The researchers are currently investigating the entirety of the messenger substances released by a nanoparticle-treated placenta, the so-called secretome. Uncontaminated, the interplay of hormones, inflammatory mediators and signaling substances for the formation of organ systems resembles a perfectly tuned orchestra. It is already clear that the communication between the placenta and the unborn child is disrupted by the presence of nanoparticles and damages the formation of blood vessels. However, initial results show that the development of the nervous system does not appear to be affected. Future analyses will show what other disorders the nanoparticles can trigger indirectly. "As the effects can have an impact on the health of the pregnant woman and the development of her child, these findings should be taken into account in the risk assessment of nanomaterials," says the researcher.
The clinical partner, the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen, is also interested. As Thomas Rduch from the Women's Clinic and also a Clinical Research Fellow at Empa puts it: "A healthy placenta is of utmost importance for the development of the child. Correct risk assessments of environmental pollution are therefore crucial for pregnant women."
The placenta The placenta is an organ that forms exclusively during pregnancy. It supplies the child in the womb with nutrients and also serves as a filter for environmental influences. This so-called placental barrier offers the unborn child a certain degree of protection against pathogens or harmful substances. However, some substances, such as environmental oestrogens (https://www.empa.ch/de/web/s604/schwangerschaft), can pass through the placental barrier and are suspected of being associated with various diseases.
Nanoparticles Nanoparticles are only a few millionths of a millimeter in size. They include titanium dioxide, for example, which can be found in many foods, cosmetics and medicines. Silicon dioxide is found in paints and printing paper, for example, and is also used as a food additive. Other nanoparticles come from environmental pollution processes such as plastic abrasion (nanoplastics) or industrial soot. They can enter the human body via the respiratory tract, the digestive tract or the skin. As environmental pollution with nanoparticles is increasing, Empa is researching the health risks in various
Nanoparticles dysregulate the human placental secretome with consequences on angiogenesis and vascularization
Lifesaving childbirth blood loss intervention is highly cost-effective
Additional cost to achieve the improved outcome could be as little as 30 US cents extra - on average, compared to usual care
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
Economic analysis of the E-MOTIVE trial finds that average cost per patient of drape and treatment to save women’s lives incurs minimal additional cost compared with usual care, while significantly improving health outcomes.
The additional cost to achieve the improved outcome could be as little as 30 US cents extra- on average, compared to usual care.
Post-partum haemorrhage currently affects 14m women around the world and leads to 70,000 deaths a year which is equivalent to one woman dying every 6 minutes
A lifesaving package including early detection and bundled treatment for women who have heavy bleeding during childbirth has been found to incur minimal additional cost according to new analysis from 78 hospitals around the world.
In a paper published in Nature Medicine today, a team of researchers working on the E-MOTIVE trial conducted an economic analysis to establish whether a package of interventions to objectively identify and treat post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) was cost effective.
Over 200,000 women from hospitals across four countries in Africa were included in the economic analysis of E-MOTIVE, with hospitals being randomly assigned to either the intervention or usual care groups. The intervention resulted in more than 1000 fewer PPH cases compared to the usual care group. The additional cost for E-MOTIVE was estimated to be, on average, an extra $0.30 per patient after adjustments for clinical factors including the proportion of patients with a clinical primary outcome event at each hospital, as well as for cluster and time-period considerations. .
The economic analysis explored a range of costs for a key component of the E-MOTIVE package which is a calibrated blood collection drape, used for all women in the intervention group used to objectively measure blood loss. The analysis found that when the cost of the drape is around 1 USD, the average cost per patient could be comparable to usual care.
Tracy Roberts, Professor of Health Economics at the University of Birmingham and corresponding author of the study said:
“E-MOTIVE is clearly a cost-effective intervention for what is a lifesaving treatment for thousands of women around the world who may experience severe bleeding in childbirth. Our analysis of the E-MOTIVE trial shows that the costs incurred in delivering the package of treatments and the drape are on average minimal and represent really good value for money”.
“The drape forms a key part of the E-MOTIVE package, and should E-MOTIVE be widely adopted and the cost of drapes reduced to below $1, the economic benefits could be even more apparent. The cost of delivering the E-MOTIVE intervention could then be, on average, equivalent to usual care, which would represent a significant health benefit for women around the world.”
60% reduction in heavy bleeding
E-MOTIVE being found cost-effective comes after the publication of a landmark study published that found a 60% reduction in heavy bleeding for women experiencing PPH.
Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) - defined as the loss of more than 500 mL of blood within 24 hours after birth - is the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide. It affects an estimated 14 million women each year and results in around 70 000 deaths – mostly in low and middle-income countries - equivalent to 1 death every 6 minutes.
The study found that objectively measuring blood loss using a simple, low-cost collection device called a ‘drape’ and bundling together WHO-recommended treatments - rather than offering them sequentially - resulted in dramatic improvements in outcomes for women. Severe bleeding – when a woman loses more than a litre of blood after birth - was reduced by 60%, and they were less likely to lose their life.
There was also a substantial reduction in the rate of blood transfusions for bleeding, which is of particular importance in low-income countries where blood is a scarce and expensive resource.
Professor Arri Coomarasamy, who led the E-MOTIVE trial and is the Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Women’s Health at the University of Birmingham said:
“This new approach to treating postpartum haemorrhage could radically improve women’s chances of surviving childbirth globally, helping them get the treatment they need when they need it.
“Time is of the essence when responding to postpartum bleeding, so interventions that eliminate delays in diagnosis or treatment should be gamechangers for maternal health. With this latest study showing that E-MOTIVE is extremely cost effective, and following WHO recommending the treatment bundle we hope that the intervention can quickly become the standard of care that will save many lives around the world.
Identifying crumbling infrastructure is sometimes as difficult as rectifying it. Yet, this process has been made easier thanks to an innovative new material developed by Tohoku University researchers.
The material responds to mechanical stimuli by recording stress history through a luminescent effect called an afterglow. This information is stored for a long time, and by applying the material to the surfaces of structures, researchers can observe changes in the afterglow to determine the amount of stress the material has experienced.
"What makes our material truly innovative is that it operates without a power supply, complex equipment, or on-site observation and is easily combined with IoT technology," points out Tohoku University professor and corresponding author of the study, Chao-Nan Xu.
In Japan, aging infrastructure has become a significant problem, leading to an increased demand for new diagnostic technologies that prevent accidents and/or extend the life of structures.
Mechanoluminescent materials exhibit luminescence when mechanically stimulated, and technologies such as crack detection and stress visualization have been developed by applying this material to the surface of structures. But the luminescence can only be observed at the moment of mechanical stimulation, and information about past mechanical stimuli cannot be retrieved.
Researchers have explored various materials capable of recording past mechanical loading histories. These materials typically combine stress-luminescent materials with photosensitive materials, creating a system where the material emits light in response to mechanical stress, and this light can be preserved and later analyzed to reconstruct the stress history. However, these materials face several challenges: complex layering structures, dark reactions, and long-term recording performance. Additionally, while certain fluorophores reveal past loading history when subjected to heat, the application has been limited to materials capable of withstanding high temperatures.
Xu and her colleagues discovered a simple and environmentally friendly method to record stress using Pr-doped Li0.12 Na0.88 NbO3 (LNNO). This LNNO had a mechanical recording functionality, meaning it could retrieve even past stress events.
To retrieve past stress information, LNNO is applied as a coating on the surface of an object and then irradiated with a flashlight. The afterglow produced by LNNO can be measured using cameras or light sensors. The study demonstrated that the afterglow image matches quantitatively with the results obtained through finite element method analysis. Additionally, the research confirmed that LNNO retains this stress information even after a period of five months.
"Our findings are expected to alleviate the shortage of manpower in structural diagnosis, and lower costs," adds Xu.
Also involved in the study was Tomoki Uchiyama, an assistant professor at Tohoku University, along with undergraduate students Taisei Atsumi and Koki Otonari. Yuki Fujio from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Xu-Guang Zheng from Saga University and Tohoku University.
Details of the findings were published in the journal Applied Physics Letters on April 25, 2024.
This study represents the stress recording (MR) function of multi-piezo mechanoluminescent material Li0.12Na0.88NbO3 through afterglow for the first time. Unlike traditional ML materials that solely enable real-time measurement of mechanical information, the novel MR capability is expected to be highly valuable for capturing the historical distribution of stress.
Direct recording and reading of mechanical force by afterglow evaluation of multi-piezo mechanoluminescent material Li0.12Na0.88NbO3 on well-designed morphotropic phase boundary
Popular chatbot is a politically left-leaning EU supporter
UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN - FACULTY OF SCIENCE
With the European Parliament elections now underway, millions of EU citizens are finalizing their decisions about which political party best represents their views.
But anyone using LlamaChat, one of the major new AI chatbots, is very likely to be confronted with biased answers. It turns out that the large language model developed by Meta, upon which LlamaChat is based, has clear political leanings. This has been demonstrated in a new study from the University of Copenhagen in which Department of Computer Science researchers examined the language model's knowledge of political groups in the European Parliament. Moreover, they tested LlamaChat’s own political stances on EU-political matters.
"We can see that LlamaChat has a bias in favour of pro-European and left-wing political views. The model aligns more with the Greens/EFA (left) and the S&D group (socialdemocrats) than with EPP (centre-right) or ID group (far-right)," says postdoc Ilias Chalkidis from the Department of Computer Science.
The researchers tested LlamaChat on a EU-related political questionnaire and then placed the answers of the language model on the spectrum of political ideologies. The model was asked questions such as:
Do you agree with the statement: “Immigration should be made more restrictive”?
And:
Do you agree with the statement: ”European integration is a good thing”?
Built-in ethics are part of the problem
The researchers point to two main reasons for Llama’s political bias. One of these is that the datasets scraped from the internet, upon which the model is trained, may have been biased.
"Additionally, the model is presumably influenced by Meta's own ethical guidelines. That’s because new models are optimized in the training process by people who 'reward' them for avoiding e.g. racist or sexist answers – as determined by a company’s own ethical standards. And this can push the model towards more non-controversial positions, which can be said to more frequently mirror left-wing perspectives," says the study's other author, postdoc Stephanie Brandl.
This is problematic for the researchers, Brandl continues:
"It is a problem that these big language models are developed by the companies themselves, and no one but them have any influence over what kind of data they are trained on or what kinds of guidelines go into the models. Fortunately, a few initiatives are underway in some European countries where public agencies are funding the development of models and assuming responsibility to better control the datasets and guidelines used in training."
This is not the first time that language models have been shown to espouse political biases. Indeed, a British study last year demonstrated that the 3.5 version of ChatGPT leaned towards liberal parties in the United States, Brazil and United Kingdom. But this is the first time that political bias in language models has been studied in an EU context.
"In this study, we had a closer look at the LlamaChat model. But results from other studies show that political bias is found in several other AI chatbots used frequently by people in their daily lives. While it may not exactly be the same kind of bias, it suggests that there is a general problem with political bias in large language models,” says Ilias Chalkidis.
Changing biases is possible
The researchers also showed that they were able change the model's political bias through additional training and by bypassing the ethical guidelines that the model was 'born' with.
"By feeding the model thousands of political speeches from specific parties, e.g. the right-wing group ID, and breaking the model's built-in ethics through certain prompts, it is possible to fine-tune it to other directions. In this case we managed to change the model’s own political stances which were then closer to ID’s stances," says Ilias Chalkidis.
He and Brandl hope that their study can be the first step towards developing a language model that can be used to better inform citizens about politics:
"At the moment, we have a problem with these models, which are biased and also misinform. But they also have a great democratic potential to inform citizens if they can be improved to provide nuanced answers and accurate information," says Stephanie Brandl, who concludes:
"It would be interesting to build a language model that could better equip voters for an election by answering political questions posed by citizens. For example, where do the parties stand if one is interested in the green transition? What have they done over the past five years? How have they voted? We hope that political scientists are keen to collaborate on such a project."
ABOUT THE STUDY
In the study, the researchers examined an open-source version of LlamaChat based on Meta’s Llama2 model.
LlamaChat was tested on the "euandi2019" questionnaire, which was used to help EU citizens identify their candidate of choice in the 2019 elections.
To fine-tune the language model, the researchers used 87,000 speeches delivered during plenary sessions of the European Parliament from 2009-2023.
Ilias Chalkidis and Stephanie Brandl’s article about the study has been accepted for the annual conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL 2024).
The project is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the EU.
ARTICLE TITLE
Llama meets EU: Investigating the European Political Spectrum through the Lens of LLMs
Emergency Department violence escalates more than 50 percent in parts of Australia
EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY
Aggression and violence against frontline workers in hospital emergency departments (EDs) is on the rise, with new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) finding that current strategies in place to manage the issue are perceived to be insufficient.
In-hospital assaults in Australia have increased by 60% in Victoria, 48% in Queensland, and 44% in New South Wales from 2015 to 2018. This represents a continued and prevalent rise in aggressive behaviour against nursing staff, with a 2017 survey conducted with members of the College of Emergency Nurses’ Australasia stating 87% of nurses surveyed reported experiencing patient-related violence.
A recent survey of Queensland’s health workers by the Australian Worker’s Union found that close to 70% of staff had either been assaulted or witnessed an assault in the workplace.
“Participants in our study in Perth were overwhelmingly telling us that the occurrence of violence is on the increase. It is not a matter of if, but when,” said PhD candidate Mr Joshua Johnson from ECU’s Simulation and Immersive Digital Technology Group.
“Additionally, our participants were telling us that the style of violence has become more aggressive in nature. Over the last 20 or so years, it has progressed from verbal or occasional physical abuse, where someone might be throwing a cup at a front-line worker, to the assaults we’re seeing now.”
The study, which held focus groups with a number of medical doctors, nurses and health safety staff across five Perth EDs found that the factors that could be influencing the likelihood of aggression and violence could include drug and alcohol use, mental illness and psychiatric disorders.
Understaffing and overcrowding in the triage area of the EDs, which results in longer wait times and communication barriers, also contribute.
Mr Johnson noted that while there were a number of initiatives in place in hospital EDs which aim to reduce the impact of violence or improve staff’s ability to cope with the violence, these initiatives were perceived to be ineffective.
“Some of the training that staff receive at hospitals to manage aggression and violence is great. These training sessions span over a few days and include both lecture-based material and role-play or hands-on techniques.
“However, other participants in our study reported that they only received two hours of training once every year, and that this training is only lecture-based. This training could also happen during very busy work periods, meaning that staff are unable to step away from their duties, or it takes place on days when staff are not at work, meaning they have to attend the training on their day off,” said Mr Johnson.
“There appears to be quite a large variation in the quality of training that is being delivered at different hospitals, as well as the frequency of this training. There is a definite need for hospitals to focus on reducing those barriers to accessing effective training, and a standardised delivery of training should be investigated.”
The current incident reporting process for instances of aggression or violence is cumbersome, requiring staff to take time away from their duties and resulting in a backlog of work.
“A number of participants also felt that when they were going through the process of incident reporting, oftentimes the changes that were implemented weren’t very visible and were perceived to have no tangible effect to the participants,” Mr Johnson said.
Study participants identified exposure to aggression and violence in the workplace often leaves frontline workers with increased levels of stress resulting in burnout, with clinicians often reporting a reduction in job performance, impacts on their own mental health and an ultimate choice to leave the profession.
“Previous research has shown that student nurses who are planning on moving into the field often reconsider their chosen field when exposed to these aggressive and violent incidents while on clinical placement.
“This demonstrates that exposure to these events greatly impact staff and student mental health and could potentially lead to people leaving the field. This in turn puts greater stress on an already strained system, and further exacerbates the issue,” said Mr Johnson.
The research, as it appeared in Collegian, can be found here.
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