Mayonnaise used in nuclear fusion research

Scientists at Lehigh University are using mayo to better understand the physics of nuclear fusion.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lehigh University



video:

Lehigh University researchers are digging deeper into the stability challenges of nuclear fusion—with mayonnaise! The team, led by Arindam Banerjee, the Paul B. Reinhold Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, is examining the phases of Rayleigh-Taylor instability with an innovative approach that could inform the design of more stable fusion capsules, contributing to the global effort to harness clean fusion energy. Their most recent paper, published in Physical Review E, explores the critical transitions between elastic and plastic phases in these conditions. Read the full story. view more



Credit: Lehigh University

Department of Energy announces $4.6 million to fund public-private partnerships for fusion research

Awards will connect private sector companies working in fusion with DOE national laboratories and U.S. universities

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/US Department of Energy

Key Takeaways

-Fusion has the potential to provide abundant clean energy
-One to two-year awards range from $100,000 to $500,000

In a continuing effort to forge and fund public-private partnerships to accelerate fusion research, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded $4.6 million in 17 awards to U.S. businesses via the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. 

The goal of INFUSE is to accelerate fusion energy development in the private sector by reducing impediments to collaboration between business and national laboratories or universities.  The overarching objective is to ensure the nation’s energy, environmental, and security needs by accelerating foundational research to advance economical, innovative fusion technologies. 

Projects for this round of funding include research in materials science, modeling and simulation, as well as enabling technologies to help move toward the ultimate goal of economical fusion energy. 

Fusion has the potential to provide abundant, reliable, and non-carbon-emitting energy by harnessing the power of the sun and the stars. The recently announced DOE Fusion Energy Strategy 2024 seeks to accelerate the viability of commercial fusion energy in partnership with the private sector.   

The U.S. has set a goal of enabling a fusion pilot plant, led by the private sector, on a decadal timescale as the country moves toward a net-zero economy by 2050. Within the Fusion Energy Sciences program, the Building Bridges vision has three major elements, one of which is “Bridging Gaps: Creating innovation engines with national laboratories, universities, and industry to support science excellence and technology readiness for fusion energy.” These INFUSE awards directly support this element through enabling the public sector to pursue questions of interest to the private sector.  

“The selections today showcase our continuing commitment to the fusion industry in the U.S. and our goal to share widely unique capabilities at national laboratories and U.S. universities,” said Jean Paul Allain, DOE Associate Director of Science for Fusion Energy Sciences. “Partnering with businesses and working together is a win-win for our fusion industry, the DOE, and the nation.”  

The 17 projects were selected via a competitive peer review process managed by the INFUSE leadership team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. 

The program solicited proposals from the fusion industry and selected projects for one- or two-year awards, all with budgets ranging between $100,000 and $500,000 each. 

The full list of planned awards can be found under “Latest Topical Funding Opportunity Awards” on the FES website. Full abstracts for each project are available on the INFUSE website. 

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that ti

 

Even indirect gun violence exposure linked to decreased quality of life

Rutgers University

Just living near gun violence – even without direct exposure or injury – significantly hurts quality of life, according to a study published in the Journal of Urban Health.

This finding from the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University reveals that shootings take a toll on millions of Americans who don’t show up in traditional victim tallies.

Survey data from 7,785 adults in nine states, including New Jersey, examined the effects of four types of gun violence exposure: being threatened with a gun, being shot, having a friend or family member get shot and witnessing or hearing about a neighborhood shooting.

"We found that witnessing or hearing about a shooting in your neighborhood was the most common type of gun violence exposure, and it was associated with a decrease in quality of life across all five domains we measured," said lead author Jennifer Paruk, a research associate at the research center.

The study revealed that 37 percent of participants reported at least one type of gun violence exposure, and the study population was representative of the overall population from those nine states, which means that more than a third of all people in those states – Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington – face exposure to gun violence.

Neighborhood exposure was most prevalent at 22 percent, followed by knowing a shooting victim (19 percent), being threatened with a gun (13 percent) and being shot (2 percent).

Indirect exposure had nearly as big an impact as direct victimization. Witnessing or hearing about neighborhood shootings predicted decreases in overall quality of life as well as physical, psychological, social and environmental well-being.

The researchers also examined cumulative exposure across all four types of gun violence experiences. They found that greater cumulative exposure predicted lower quality of life scores across all domains measured.

"Those with the most gun violence exposure, those who've been impacted in many different ways, have the lowest overall quality of life across all of these different domains," Paruk said.

Individuals who reported all four types of gun violence exposure had an adjusted average physical quality of life score that was 11.14 points lower than those with no exposure on a scale from 0 to 100. Their environmental quality of life score was 7.18 points lower on average.

The study used the World Health Organization Quality of Life - Brief Scale, which measures quality of life across physical, psychological, social and environmental domains. The researchers controlled for factors like income, education, prior abuse experiences, neighborhood safety perceptions and other demographics to isolate the relationship between gun violence exposure and quality of life outcomes.

Being threatened with a gun was associated with a 2.59-point decrease in physical quality of life, while being shot was linked to a 6.98-point decrease.

Paruk emphasized that the findings underscore the broad impact of gun violence beyond just those directly injured.

"We're really recognizing the effects that indirect gun exposure can have on many types of quality of life," she said. "For people who are getting care for gun violence, their family members in the hospital with them or who were at home taking care of them could use a lot of support."

The study suggests that reducing neighborhood gun violence could have wide-ranging benefits for community well-being.

"Reducing gun violence in particular neighborhoods would improve life for everyone in those neighborhoods,” Paruk said.

While the study didn’t test the efficacy or specific interventions, the researchers said their findings highlight the need for expanded support services for those indirectly impacted by gun violence, but such support is difficult to find.

"We might not even have support available to indirect victims," Paruk said. "And as a society, we might not recognize the harms that gun violence exposure can have indirectly. We need to make sure that the supports are available if people need them."

The researchers plan to conduct further analyses using the survey data, including examining how the frequency and recency of gun violence exposures relate to health outcomes. They said the findings reinforce the importance of considering gun violence as a broad public health issue affecting entire communities.

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Journal

Journal of Urban Health

DOI

10.1007/s11524-024-00891-7 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Gun Violence Exposure and Quality of Life in Nine US States

 

A ‘thank you’ goes a long way in family relationships

University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

URBANA, Ill. – You’ve probably heard that cultivating gratitude can boost your happiness. But in marriage and families, it’s not just about being more grateful for your loved ones — it’s also important to feel appreciated by them. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have previously explored the positive impact of perceived gratitude from romantic partners for couples’ relationship quality. In a new study, they show the benefits of perceived gratitude also apply to parent-child relationships and can promote individuals’ mental health.

“Some of my previous research has looked at gratitude in an interpersonal context, particularly between couples, and we’ve found that it’s a pretty influential factor for various aspects of the relationship. Individuals who feel more appreciated by their partners are more confident, satisfied, and committed and less concerned about instability,” said lead author Allen Barton, Illinois Extension specialist and assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois. 

“In this study we wanted to explore perceived gratitude in the broader family context, and whether it makes a difference for individual and relationship well-being, and for parenting outcomes.”

The study included data from a nationwide sample of 593 parents who were married or in a romantic relationship and had at least one child between the ages of 4 and 17. Participants answered questions about perceived gratitude from their spouse or partner and from their children, as well as items assessing psychological distress, parenting stress, and relationship satisfaction.

The researchers divided children into two age ranges — 4 to 12 and 13 to 18 — to account for developmental differences. Barton says teenagers might be expected to have more awareness of what's going on in the family and what parents are contributing to their well-being. He notes that young children can still show gratitude, although they may express it differently.

Barton and co-author Qiujie Gong, a doctoral student in HDFS when the research was conducted, found that perceived gratitude from romantic partners resulted in better couple outcomes, but did not affect levels of parenting stress. In contrast, perceived gratitude from children — both older and younger — resulted in lower parenting stress but had no impact on couple relationship satisfaction. In addition to influencing family outcomes, they found that gratitude from romantic partners and older (but not younger) children was positively associated with individuals’ psychological well-being.

Women, compared to men, reported lower levels of perceived gratitude from romantic partners and from older children. Furthermore, higher levels of perceived gratitude from children provided beneficial effects for women only. That’s consistent with prior research showing that women's contributions to the family are often less acknowledged by men than vice versa, Barton said.

“It's never 50/50 in any relationship and parents are going to be doing more than their kids, but nevertheless, our results highlight that making sure individuals’ efforts for the family are acknowledged and appreciated by other family members is important. And conversely, there is clear evidence that a lack of feeling appreciated by the family members you're trying to help leads to negative outcomes for the family,” he noted. 

Barton said parents can foster an overall climate of gratitude in the family.

“As spouses and partners, we can express and show our gratitude for the other person, and we can teach children to express appreciation in developmentally appropriate ways. If you see your partner doing something really helpful for a child, you can remind that child to say ‘thank you, mom’ or ‘thanks, dad’ for what they just did. You can develop an ongoing way of thinking and a pattern of interaction that promotes gratitude — both giving and receiving — within the home,” he said.

The researchers did not find any differences in terms of socio-demographic factors predicting perceived gratitude in various family relationships, indicating it appears at similar levels across a wide range of family types.

“As someone who studies family-based prevention programming, I am always trying to find research-based ways to build strong families, and expressing gratitude appears as one important means of doing that,” Barton stated.

“There's a lot of work that goes into making ‘family’ happen — parenting, marriage, couple relationships, and so on — for any and every family. And when those efforts go unacknowledged or underappreciated, it takes a toll on individuals and families. We know the power of thank you for couples, and this research shows it also matters for parent-child relationships.”

The paper, “A ‘Thank You’ really would be nice: Perceived gratitude in family relationships,” is published in The Journal of Positive Psychology [DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2024.2365472].

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Journal

The Journal of Positive Psychology

DOI

10.1080/17439760.2024.2365472 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A ‘Thank You’ really would be nice: Perceived gratitude in family relationships

 

Strike Force: Utah State leads collaborative $2.3M NSF grant to study earthquake critical zones

USU researchers Alexis Ault, Dennis Newell, Srisharan Shreedharan and Brady Cox secure five-year FRES grant

Utah State University

 

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During an NSF-funded trip to the M7.6 earthquake rupture site near Içmeler, Turkey in 2023, Utah State University geoscientist Alexis Ault measures the orientation of the rupture interface and prepares to take samples. Ault is lead principal investigator on a $2.3M NSF-funded multi-institution collaborative project to study earthquake critical zones in the U.S. and abroad. 

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Credit: Sinan Akçiz, CSU, Fullerton

LOGAN, UTAH, USA -- Utah State University geoscientist Alexis Ault recalls the devastating aftermath of back-to-back 7.8 and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes on Feb. 6, 2023, near the Turkey-Syria border that killed more than 50,000 people and displaced millions.

“We witnessed the destruction firsthand, as well as the resilience of the country and population trying to get their footing and rebuild,” says Ault, associate professor in USU’s Department of Geosciences, who traveled to the disaster site about six months after the catastrophic quakes. “It was heartbreaking, but also inspiring.”

Unfortunately, she says, Turkey is among many countries that repeatedly experience large and damaging earthquakes on an unpredictable basis. Her colleague Brady Cox, founding director of USU’s Earthquake Engineering Research Center, has also observed calamitous human suffering and infrastructure damage during the past 25 years following earthquakes in the United States and abroad. Citizens of Utah, says Cox, professor in USU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, are also at risk from a significant — and potentially overdue — earthquake along the Wasatch Fault.

Understanding the earthquake cycle processes that portend such powerful forces and how to mitigate their risk is at the core of a research project Ault is undertaking with Cox and USU Geosciences colleagues Dennis Newell and Srisharan Shreedharn, along with Brown University geophysicist Greg Hirth and California State University, Fullerton geologist Sinan Akçiz. The team was awarded a $2.3 million Frontier Research in Earth Sciences (FRES) grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to pursue the five-year project.

Ault, Newell and Akçiz’s trip to the 2023 7.6-magnitude quake site, funded by an NSF Rapid Response Research grant, enabled them to collect fragile samples from the earthquake’s rupture interface along the Çardak-Yesilyurt Fault system, along with measuring gas flux along the rupture.

“Those delicate samples, which are no longer possible to acquire because the rupture interface erodes with time, provide critical materials for the current study,” says Newell, professor and interim head of USU’s Department of Geosciences.

The Çardak-Yesilyurt rupture samples, along with samples and shallow geophysical data the researchers have collected from California’s southern San Andreas fault, will help the team investigate how the earthquake critical zone — the near-surface layer of the Earth’s restless crust — accumulates and releases earthquake energy on major strike-slip faults. Ault notes acquisition of geophysical data across the San Andreas fault, led by Cox, was made possible by USU faculty Seed Grants awarded to Ault and Cox.

Ault says, unlike the fault in Turkey, the San Andreas fault is overdue for an earthquake.

“This NSF-funded project will help us overcome limitations of previous, generalized characterizations of earthquake critical zones with more in-depth geologic data, seismic imaging studies, deformation experiments and modeling,” she says. “Combining expertise from varied engineering and geoscience disciplines, we aim to emerge with a more complete and accurate picture of earthquake critical zones in these settings.”

The team plans to leverage NSF-supported, shared-use equipment and data archiving resources from the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program and USU’s new Rock Deformation and Earthquake Mechanics Lab, the latter of which is led by co-PI Shreedharan.

“By deforming these one-of-a-kind samples in the Rock Deformation and Earthquake Mechanics Lab under the same pressures that they experienced in the near-surface crust, we can begin to understand how, where and over what timescales strike-slip fault zones like the San Andreas and Çardak-Yesilyurt accumulate strain energy,” he says.

Centered on concepts of intellectual, educational and cultural reciprocity, the project involves international collaboration with researchers in Turkey. It also affords substantial learning and training opportunities for mentees. These include positions for three doctoral students and two postdoctoral fellows at Utah State, a doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow at Brown, and a master’s student position at CSUF, as well as multiple research opportunities for undergraduate researchers at each of the participating institutions.

In addition, the grant bolsters the USU team’s ongoing efforts with the university’s Native American Summer Mentorship Program, which encourages Aggie undergrads at the USU Blanding campus to pursue research and four-year degree programs.

“This project has the potential to benefit communities from multiple angles, including improving earthquake hazard models and seismic site response analyses to better protect human life, to providing meaningful educational opportunities in Earth sciences and engineering, as well as strengthening international partnerships,” Ault says.

 

How a legal loophole allows unsafe ingredients in US foods

Gaps in FDA oversight enable the food industry to determine which substances are “generally recognized as safe”

New York University

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with overseeing the safety of the U.S. food supply, setting requirements for nutrition labeling, working with companies on food recalls, and responding to outbreaks of foodborne illness. But when it comes to additives already in our food and the safety of certain ingredients, FDA has taken a hands-off approach, according to a new article in the American Journal of Public Health.

The current FDA process allows the food industry to regulate itself when it comes to thousands of added ingredients—by determining for itself which ingredients should be considered “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS—and deciding on their own whether or not to disclose the ingredients’ use and the underlying safety data to the FDA. As a result, many new substances have been added to our food supply without any government oversight.

“Both the FDA and the public are unaware of how many of these ingredients—which are most commonly found in ultra-processed foods —are in our food supply,” said Jennifer Pomeranz, associate professor of public health policy and management at NYU School of Global Public Health and study’s first author.

Classifying GRAS

Since 1958, the FDA has been responsible for evaluating the safety of new chemicals and substances added to foods before they go to market. However, food safety laws distinguish between “food additives” and “GRAS” ingredients. While compounds considered “food additives” must be reviewed and approved by the FDA before they are used in foods, ingredients considered GRAS are exempt from these regulations.

The GRAS designation was initially established for ingredients already found in foods—for instance, vinegar and spices. But under a rule used since 1997, the FDA has allowed the food industry to independently determine which substances fall into this category, including many new substances added to foods. Rather than disclose the new use of these ingredients and the accompanying safety data for FDA review, companies can do their own research to evaluate an ingredient’s safety before going to market, without any notification or sharing of the findings. The FDA suggests—but does not require—that companies voluntarily notify the agency about the use of such substances and their findings, but in practice, many such substances have been added without notification.

In their analysis, the researchers review the history of the FDA’s and industry’s approach around adding these new compounds to foods and identify the lack of any real oversight. This includes a federal court case in 2021 upholding the FDA’s hands-off approach.

“Notably, the court did not find that the FDA’s practices on GRAS ingredients support the safety of our food supply,” said Pomeranz. “The court only ruled that the FDA’s practice was not unlawful.”

“As a result of the FDA’s policy, the food industry has been free to ‘self-GRAS’ new substances they wish to add to foods, without notifying FDA or the public,” said study senior author Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute and distinguished professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of substances added to our foods for which the true safety data are unknown to independent scientists, the government, and the public.”

What’s on our shelves?

According to the researchers, the FDA also lacks a formal approach and adequate resources to review those food additives and GRAS substances already on the market. After an ingredient is added to foods, if research later suggests harms, the FDA can review the new data and, if needed, take action to reduce or remove it from foods. In a rare exception, the FDA announced in March that it would be reviewing 21 chemicals found in foods, including several food ingredients—a tiny fraction of the thousands of food additives and GRAS substances used today.

An example of the 21 food additives to be reviewed is potassium bromate, a chemical added to baked goods and drinks with evidence that it may cause cancer. Potassium bromate is banned in Europe, Canada, China, and Japan; California recently passed a law to ban its use, along with three other chemicals, and similar bills have been introduced in Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania.

“This is a stark example of the FDA’s regulatory gap,” said Pomeranz. “We’re seeing states starting to act to fill the regulatory void left by the FDA’s inaction over substances increasingly associated with harm.”

The FDA’s oversight of GRAS ingredients on the market is also limited. The agency rarely revokes GRAS designation (an FDA inventory only shows 15 substances that were considered GRAS and then later determined to not be), nor does the FDA review foods on an ongoing basis with GRAS ingredients that can be safe when added at low levels but not in large quantities—for instance, caffeine, salt, and sugar.

“In 1977, the FDA approved caffeine as a GRAS substance for use in sodas at a low level: 0.02 percent,” said Pomeranz. “But today, caffeine is added to energy drinks at levels far exceeding this, which is causing caffeine-related hospitalizations and even deaths. Given that the FDA regulates the use of GRAS substances, the agency could set limits on the amount of caffeine in energy drinks.”

“The sheer number of GRAS substances and food additives on the market, combined with the lack of knowledge about the existence of self-GRAS ingredients, insufficient resources, and documented time delays even for well-supported action, renders reliance on post-market authority flawed and unreliable to ensure a safe food supply. FDA is only starting to utilize its post-market powers to review a tiny number of ingredients in the food supply, even though evidence of harm has been present for decades,” said study co-author Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and founding director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic.

Stronger protections                                                           

The authors’ analysis provides the FDA and Congress with several potential actions to better assess and oversee the safety of both GRAS substances and food additives. This could include a new requirement that companies must publicly notify the FDA of the use of GRAS ingredients, and share their underlying safety data, before they are put in foods; creating a robust review process to reevaluate the safety of GRAS ingredients and food additives once they are already on the market; and clarifying the distinction between GRAS ingredients and food additives.

In order to fund this stronger oversight of the food supply, the researchers suggest that Congress could allocate additional resources to the FDA or establish a user fee program in which food companies pay for the FDA to review the safety of their ingredients before they are added to foods.

“Both the FDA and Congress can do more to enable the FDA to meet its mission of ensuring a safe food supply,” said Pomeranz.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (2R01HL115189-06A1).

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Journal

American Journal of Public Health

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2024.307755 

Article Title

Regulation of Added Substances in the Food Supply by the Food and Drug Administration Human Foods Program

Article Publication Date

8-Aug-2024

 

Many survey respondents rated seeking out sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’ as more acceptable than creating or sharing them

University of Washington

Content warning: This post contains details of sharing intimate imagery without consent that may be disturbing to some readers.

While much attention on sexually explicit “deepfakes” has focused on celebrities, these non-consensual sexual images and videos generated with artificial intelligence harm people both in and out of the limelight. As text-to-image AI models grow more sophisticated and easier to use, the volume of such content is only increasing. The escalating problem led Google to announce last week that it will work to filter out these deepfakes in search results, and the Senate recently passed a bill allowing victims to seek legal damages from deepfake creators.

Given this rising attention, researchers at the University of Washington and Georgetown University wanted to better understand public opinions about the creation and dissemination of what they call “synthetic media.” In a survey, 315 people largely found creating and sharing synthetic media unacceptable. But far fewer responses strongly opposed seeking out these media — even when they portrayed sexual acts.

Yet previous research has shown that other people viewing image-based abuse, such as nudes shared without consent, harms the victims significantly. And in nearly all states, including Washington, creating and sharing such nonconsensual content is a crime.

“Centering consent in conversations about synthetic media, particularly intimate imagery, is key as we look for ways to reduce its harms — whether that’s through technology, public messaging or policy,” said lead author Natalie Grace Brigham, who was a UW master's student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering while completing this research. “In a synthetic nude, it’s not the subject’s body — as we’ve typically considered it — that’s being shared. So we need to expand our norms and ideas about consent and privacy to account for this new technology.”

The researchers will present their findings Aug. 13 at the 20th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security in Philadelphia.

“In some sense, we’re at a new frontier in how people’s rights to privacy are being violated,” said co-senior author Tadayoshi Kohno, a UW professor in the Allen School. “These images are synthetic, but they still are of the likeness of real people, so seeking them out and viewing them is harmful for those people.”

The survey, which the researchers conducted online through Prolific, a site that pays people to respond on a variety of topics, asked U.S. respondents to read vignettes about synthetic media. The team altered variables in these scenarios like who created the synthetic media (an intimate partner, a stranger), why they created it (for harm, entertainment or sexual pleasure), and what action was shown (the subject performing a sexual act, playing a sport or speaking).

The respondents then ranked various actions around the scenarios — creating the video, sharing in different ways, seeking it out — from “totally unacceptable” to “totally acceptable” and explained their responses in a sentence or two. Finally, they filled out surveys on consent and demographic information. The respondents were over the age of 18 and were 50% women, 48% men, 2% non-binary and 1% agender.

Overall, respondents found creating and sharing synthetic media unacceptable. Their median totally unacceptable or somewhat unacceptable ratings were 90% for creating these media and 94% for sharing them. But the median of unacceptable ratings for seeking out synthetic media was only 53%.

Men were more likely than respondents of other genders to find creating and sharing synthetic media acceptable, while respondents who had favorable views of sexual consent were more likely to find these actions unacceptable.

“There has been a lot of policy talk about preventing synthetic nudes from getting created. But we don't have good technical tools to do that, and we need to simultaneously protect consensual use cases,” said co-senior author Elissa M. Redmiles, an assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University. “Instead, we need to change social norms. So we need things like deterrence messaging on searches — we’ve seen that be effective at reducing the viewing of child sexual abuse images — and consent-based education in schools focused on this content.”

Respondents found scenarios in which intimate partners created synthetic media of people playing sports or speaking for the intent of entertainment the most acceptable. Conversely, nearly all respondents found it totally unacceptable to create and share sexual deepfakes of intimate partners with the intent of harm.

Respondents’ reasoning varied. Some found synthetic media unacceptable only if the outcome was harmful. For example, one respondent wrote, “It’s not harming me or blackmailing me… [a]s long as it doesn’t get shared I think it’s okay.” Others, though, centered their right to privacy and right to consent. “I feel it’s unacceptable to manipulate my image in such a way — my body and how it looks belongs to me,” wrote another.

The researchers note that future work in this space should explore the prevalence of non-consensual synthetic media, the pipelines for how it’s created and shared, and different methods to deter people from creating, sharing and seeking out non-consensual synthetic media.

“Some people argue that AI tools for creating synthetic images will have benefits for society, like for the arts or human creativity,” said co-author Miranda Wei, a doctoral student in the Allen School. “However, we found that most people thought creating synthetic images of others in most cases was unacceptable — suggesting that we still have a lot more work to do when it comes to evaluating the impacts of new technologies and preventing harms.”

This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Google PhD Fellowship Program.

For more information, contact Brigham at nbrigham@uw.edu, Wei at weimf@cs.washington.edu, Kohno at yoshi@cs.washington.edu and Redmiles at elissa.redmiles@georgetown.edu.

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Article Title

“Violation of my body:” Perceptions of AI-generated non-consensual (intimate) imagery

Article Publication Date

13-Aug-2024

 

ADHD symptoms in autistic children linked to neighborhood conditions

Study finds poverty, lack of services may play a role

University of California - Davis Health

Autistic youth who were born in underserved neighborhoods are more likely to have greater attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms than those born in communities with more resources. This is one finding of a new study led by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute.  

This is the first time researchers have investigated how neighborhood factors are associated with ADHD in autistic and non-autistic children. The study provides new insights into mental health conditions and has the potential to inform public policy changes to improve health equity.

It was published in the journal JCPP Advances.

“We found that some neighborhood factors are strongly related to ADHD symptoms in autistic children,” said Catrina Calub, the first author on the paper. Calub is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Julie Schweitzer, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the MIND Institute.  

“In this study, we didn't find this effect in typically developing kids or in kids with other developmental disabilities, only in the autistic children. It suggests that when autistic kids live in neighborhoods with fewer resources, they tend to have more pronounced ADHD symptoms,” Calub said.

ADHD symptoms can include higher rates of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior.It is associated with:

• Challenges in school performance and relationships with friends
• Lower self-esteem and greater risk for anxiety and depression
• Higher potential for substance use disorders and accidents
• Emotional dysregulation and conduct problems

Study expands findings from long-term research

The researchers used data from two studies: the decades-long Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) study led by Irva Hertz-Picciotto at the MIND Institute and the ReCHARGE follow-up project.

CHARGE and ReCHARGE assess how genetics, environment and other factors affect development from early childhood (2–5 years) through adolescence (8-20 years).  

The team looked at 246 autistic children, 85 with developmental delays (without autism), and 193 who were neurotypical. Then, they applied the Child Opportunity Index, which uses census data to track over 30 neighborhood traits. These traits include socioeconomics, green space, single-parent households and concentration of early childhood education centers.

The index encompasses three domains: education, health and environment, and social and economic resources. Higher scores are linked to better childhood health. Of the three domains, the education and social and economic resources scores were most strongly related to ADHD symptoms.

The analysis showed the Child Opportunity Index scores at birth were a strong predictor for ADHD symptoms in adolescence in the autistic children but not in the other groups. Calub noted that the finding was unexpected.

“These results are quite concerning,” Calub said. “Those with both autism and ADHD are already more likely to have additional challenges — behaviorally, cognitively, emotionally and socially. Being born in a low-income neighborhood puts them at an even greater disadvantage. This just adds to the evidence that more resources are needed for underserved areas and specifically for those who have conditions like autism.”

The need for a larger, more diverse sample

Calub pointed out that more research is needed to determine if the results would apply to a larger group.

"It will be important for future studies to be larger and more diverse. That should help us learn whether neighborhood conditions might also influence ADHD symptoms in other groups such as youth without autism, or in Black, Asian and Native American individuals, who were under-represented in our sample," Calub added.

These findings also offer clues for how to target preventive strategies to reduce the risk of increased ADHD symptoms, noted Schweitzer, who was also a co-author on the study.

“ADHD is highly prevalent in the general population and is common in autistic youth. If we can find ways to increase resources in these neighborhoods, we have the potential to improve academic, social, mental and physical health outcomes, particularly for autistic youth, and also decrease long-term economic costs,” Schweitzer explained.

Calub and Schweizer believe the study’s findings should encourage policymakers to provide more resources for underserved communities. In addition, they hope including the Child Opportunity Index and other neighborhood metrics could provide new insights into future studies to inform policy.

Co-authors on the study include Irva Hertz-Picciotto and Deborah Bennett, both in the Department of Public Health Sciences at UC Davis. Read the full study.

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Journal

JCPP Advances

DOI

10.1002/jcv2.12267 

Article Title

Examining the association of neighborhood conditions on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in autistic youth using the child opportunity index 2.0