Computer-based model could mitigate cattle fever tick outbreaks
Federal grant supports collaboration of Texas A&M AgriLife, state and federal agencies
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Sunday, August 18, 2024
DOE announces $10 million to support climate resilience centers across America
University-led projects will share data, strengthen and build relationships between DOE and communities bearing the brunt of climate change
DOE/US Department of Energy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – To support vulnerable communities responding to continued and extreme climate effects, the Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $10 million in funding for innovative Climate Resilience Centers (CRCs) in 10 different states. University-led research teams will leverage the world class modeling, data and research capabilities from DOE national laboratories customized for their local regions with a focus on climate prediction of weather hazard risks to better prepare communities. The CRCs are part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 Initiative and are designed to ensure that all Americans are benefitting from scientific research.
“Every pocket of the country has experienced the impact of extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change, and disadvantaged communities often feel the brunt of that impact,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The projects announced today will leverage the world class expertise and scientific research capacities of DOE’s national laboratories to develop the tools communities will need to inform future decisions for building resiliency.
Each of the CRCs are led by Minority Serving Institutions and Emerging Research Institutions. Most are also collaborations with DOE national labs, other federal agencies, academic institutions, state and municipal agencies, or community organizations.
Projects were selected by a peer-review panel, and selections focused on a diversity of topics, regions, and institutions across the country. These projects also build on prior awards to CRCs made in 2023.
The CRCs will help form a nucleus for a diverse group of young scientists, engineers, and technicians to further their scientific research and work on scientific teams. The CRCs will also foster capacity at the regional and local level by connecting with affected communities and stakeholders to enable them to translate basic research into actionable science to enhance climate resilience, as well as to identify potential future research opportunities.
Across the 10 selectees, research projects include ways to predict and protect communities from coastal flooding and extreme storms; analyzing the impacts of drought on Tribal and agricultural communities; and improving water quality.
Selected Project Descriptions:
The 10 projects were selected under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for Climate Resilience Centers DE-FOA-0003181.
- The Advancing Development and Climate-Resilient Adaptation Practices via Community-Driven Urban Transformation in St. Louis, Missouri, establishes a CRC at Saint Louis University with the goal of building regional resilience to heat islands. Heat islands are urban areas that experience extreme high temperatures due to the built environment. Researchers will connect with local communities to define the impacts of climate risk; increase awareness of climate change effects; and empower communities with data to support resilience projects and green infrastructure development. The goal is improved public health, increased economic stability, and a greener infrastructure.
- In the Climate Lighthouse project, City College of New York City will lead the effort partnering with the DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory to help residents better cope with extreme heat. The focus will be on translating DOE climate data into useable tools to improve NYC residents’ resilience. Information will be communicated to the public through community partnerships in Manhattan (Harlem) and Brooklyn. The team will work closely with community partners to improve tools so they can serve to build actionable knowledge among the public.
- The goal of the CRC in Tribal communities along the Missouri River Basin is to build climate resilience capacity for Native American communities. The team effort will be led by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Tribal nations, US Geological Survey, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The team will develop user-friendly planning tools to translate existing climate projections into site-specific drought and flood risks, mitigation recommendations, associated costs, and uncertainties. Educational workshops organized by the consortium will demonstrate research results.
- Communities in the Texas Coastal Bend along the Gulf of Mexico face multiple water-related threats, including floods and droughts. In the Coastal Blend Climate Resilience Project, a a partnership with University of Texas-Arlington and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, the focus is on improving the predictions of events. The Coastal Bend CRC will use data and modeling from the DOE for adapting and planning for climate extremes. A critical part of the program is building short-and long-term capacity in communities to ensure local and community leaders can leverage climate science to inform resilience-building efforts, particularly among vulnerable groups.
- The Midwest Climate Resilience Center in Clark County, Ohio, will address high risk from extreme rain and flooding and the consequential effects on drinking water quality. Central State University will partner with Ohio State University and PNNL to assess the impact of climate stressors on soil system processes in watersheds with varied land uses. The group will develop scale-appropriate targeted climate solutions for local communities and train the next generation of climate scientists from underrepresented student communities.
- The Climate Resilience Center for Alaska brings together researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks with Los Alamos National Laboratory. As Alaska experiences transformational change due to climate warming, this funding will enhance communication with Alaska communities about existing DOE science, develop meaningful collaborations between communities and the DOE, and incorporate DOE science into educational pathways and opportunities. This project will also conduct pilot research specifically focused on southwest Alaska to demonstrate the Center’s role. Much of the research will involve graduate students supported by the Center, acting as a conduit to recruit the next generation of climate investigators, with an emphasis on rural, traditionally underserved communities.
- Space Coast RESCUE (Resilience Solutions for Climate, Urbanization, and Environment) is an effort by researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology collaborating with the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. The Florida Space Coast, which borders the Atlantic Ocean, faces climate resilience challenges and risks that are multifaceted and representative of the problems faced by many coastal communities throughout the nation. Hazards include heat stress, extreme precipitation, tropical cyclone-induced high winds and surge, flooding, and coastal erosion, as well as inland flooding due to extreme precipitation and stormwater runoff that negatively affects water quality and human health.
- Planning for extreme weather is a cornerstone of the Building Predictive Capacity to Enhance Stormwater Infrastructure and Flood Resilience project led by Central Michigan University. The project aims to produce data and tools that will help communities plan for and become more resilient to climate change in collaboration with communities in three pilot watersheds in Michigan: the Chippewa River, Lower Grand River, and Rouge River. The project will use downscaling of climate model projections to develop local precipitation models to simulate future risks of floods and torrential rains.
- Powering just and resilient cities is the goal of the Gateway Cities Climate Resilience Center led by the University of Massachusetts Lowell in partnership with PNNL. The objective is to work with the community to use DOE science and tools to provide local projections of extreme temperature events. The project will assess vulnerability of residential heating and cooling power demand and potential mitigation measures in terms of urban tree cover and green spaces. Graduate students will be trained in community-engaged climate and energy-modeling research.
- This project, led by Lehigh University in partnership with PNNL, will examine the impact of regional climate action plans on the response to extreme water events like floods and droughts in Eastern Pennsylvania. The team plans to work closely with the three-city coalition of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton to address multiple climate change impacts. Community workshops will be hosted with Community Action Lehigh Valley.
Total funding for all of the projects is $10 million for Fiscal Year 2024 dollars for projects lasting three years in duration. A list of all Biological and Environmental Research (BER) projects and funding, including Climate Resilience Centers, can be found at science.osti.gov/ber.
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 time.
Research provides a roadmap for improving electrochemical performance
New findings expand understanding about how electrons move in complex fluids in batteries and other similar devices
University of Delaware
Thomas Edison went through thousands of materials before he finally found the right tungsten filament to create a working lightbulb. This type of trial-and-error research continues today and is responsible for countless inventions that improve our world. Battery systems that help power our lives in many seen (and unseen) ways are one example.
However, improving these materials and devices requires more than experimentation. Modern engineers must also form a deeper understanding of the general principles that govern material performance, from which they can design better materials to achieve challenging product requirements.
In a paper published Aug. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), University of Delaware, Northwestern University and industry researchers report expanded understanding on how electrons move through the conductive parts of complex fluids called slurries that are found in electrochemical devices such as batteries and other energy storage devices.
It’s important work that can help overcome existing knowledge gaps about how electrons hop between conductive particles found in these materials, as engineers seek new ways to improve that activity.
The paper is the result of collaborative research between UD’s Norman Wagner, Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and researchers led by Jeffrey Richards, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University, and a former UD postdoctoral researcher. Lead authors on the paper include UD alumna Julie Hipp, who earned her doctoral degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering in 2020 and now is a senior scientist at Procter and Gamble, and Paolo Ramos, a former NU graduate student now at L’Oreal. NU doctoral candidate Qingsong Liu also contributed to this work.
According to Wagner, by combining carefully designed and conducted experiments with state-of-the-art theory and simulation, the research team found that enhancing performance requires more than formulation chemistry. It also requires understanding how the electrical conductivity behaves as the slurry materials are processed and manufactured.
“To control the device performance, it's not enough just to control the chemistry, we have to control the microstructure, too,” said Wagner. This is because the material’s final microstructure — meaning how all the components come together — regulates how the electrons can move, impacting the device’s power and efficiency.
Performance depends on the details
Though many electrochemical devices exist, let’s stay with the battery example for a moment to break things down.
Batteries supply electricity when electrons move through a solution or “slurry” made of conductive materials and solvents via a chemical reaction. How well the battery system works depends on the materials, which includes both the chemistry and the manufacturing processes used in its creation.
Think of it like multiple racecars going around a racetrack. All the racecars have steering wheels, tires and engines, but the structure of each vehicle and how it’s assembled may differ from car to car. So, just because a car with an engine and a steering wheel is on the track doesn’t mean it gets the same performance as the other vehicles. The same is true for the critical components in batteries. The details matter in how you put them together.
Conductive versions of carbon black (or soot) are commonly used in batteries as well as a vast number of electrochemical devices. They are nano-sized crystals of carbon made in such a way that they stick together and form aggregates, or clusters, that can be mixed with various liquids to form a slurry. This slurry is then used to cast, or make, parts of a battery or other devices.
“In that mixture, electrons can move very fast within the carbon black, which is highly conductive like an electrical wire. But the electrons have to hop from one cluster of carbon-black particles to another because the carbon black is suspended in the slurry — the aggregate particles are not connected as a solid structure,” explained Wagner.
The researchers had previously shown that the way the carbon black material flows — its rheology—plays a key role in the material’s performance, using neutron-scattering techniques at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, Maryland, through UD’s Center for Neutron Science. In this new study, the research team extended that work to create a universal roadmap for understanding how the conductivity of the flowing slurry depends upon the chemistry of the components from which it is comprised and — importantly — how the slurry is processed.
Together, these pieces form a blueprint for how to process energy storage devices during manufacturing. The promise in this kind of roadmap is an enhanced ability to systematically design materials and predict the behavior for electrochemical devices on the front end.
“What we've studied allows us to begin to understand how the structure of this carbon-black slurry, this aggregated suspension, impacts the efficiency and performance of these devices,” said Wagner. “We're not solving anyone's specific battery problem. The hope is that others in practice can apply our foundational work to their own electrochemical systems and problems.”
The researchers expect this work will have an impact on the formulation and processing windows for emerging electrochemical energy storage methods and water deionization technologies.
Wagner gave the example of electrolyzer devices that use electricity to split water into its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen. One of the most challenging parts of this process is mixing and controlling the properties of the material solutions that enable the electrolyzer to do its work and free up hydrogen molecules so they can be used for other purposes, say, as an energy resource. According to Wagner, future improvements in such devices will depend on processing.
“You can get the chemistry right, but if you don't process it right, you don't end up with the performance that you want,” Wagner said.
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Article Title
Quantifying electron transport in aggregated colloidal suspensions in the strong flow regime
Article Publication Date
13-Aug-2024
Zebrafish use surprising strategy to regrow spinal cord
Detailed blueprint of nerve cells’ dramatic changes could help identify ways to heal spinal cord damage
Washington University School of Medicine
image:
The top image shows fluorescently labeled cells in the spinal cord of a zebrafish recovering one week after an injury, and the bottom image shows recovery four weeks after an injury. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis describe the dramatic changes within nerve cells that make regeneration possible. Such findings could inspire the development of new therapies for spinal cord injuries in people.
view moreCredit: MOKALLED LAB
Zebrafish are members of a rarefied group of vertebrates capable of fully healing a severed spinal cord. A clear understanding of how this regeneration takes place could provide clues toward strategies for healing spinal cord injuries in people. Such injuries can be devastating, causing permanent loss of sensation and movement.
A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis maps out a detailed atlas of all the cells involved — and how they work together — in regenerating the zebrafish spinal cord. In an unexpected finding, the researchers showed that survival and adaptability of the severed neurons themselves is required for full spinal cord regeneration. Surprisingly, the study showed that stem cells capable of forming new neurons — and typically thought of as central to regeneration — play a complementary role but don’t lead the process.
The study is published Thursday, Aug. 15, in the journal Nature Communications.
Unlike humans’ and other mammals’ spinal cord injuries, in which damaged neurons always die, the damaged neurons of zebrafish dramatically alter their cellular functions in response to injury, first to survive and then to take on new and central roles in orchestrating the precise events that govern healing, the researchers found. Scientists knew that zebrafish neurons survive spinal cord injury, and this new study reveals how they do it.
“We found that most, if not all, aspects of neural repair that we’re trying to achieve in people occur naturally in zebrafish,” said senior author Mayssa Mokalled, PhD, an associate professor of developmental biology. “The surprising observation we made is that there are strong neuronal protection and repair mechanisms happening right after injury. We think these protective mechanisms allow neurons to survive the injury and then adopt a kind of spontaneous plasticity — or flexibility in their functions — that gives the fish time to regenerate new neurons to achieve full recovery. Our study has identified genetic targets that will help us promote this type of plasticity in the cells of people and other mammals.”
By mapping out the evolving roles of various cell types involved in regeneration, Mokalled and her colleagues found that the flexibility of the surviving injured neurons and their capacity to immediately reprogram after injury lead the chain of events that are required for spinal cord regeneration. If these injury-surviving neurons are disabled, zebrafish do not regain their normal swim capacity, even though regenerative stem cells remain present.
When the long wiring of the spinal cord is crushed or severed in people and other mammals, it sets off a chain of toxicity events that kills the neurons and makes the spinal cord environment hostile against repair mechanisms. This neuronal toxicity could provide some explanation for the failure of attempts to harness stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries in people. Rather than focus on regeneration with stem cells, the new study suggests that any successful method to heal spinal cord injuries in people must start with saving the injured neurons from death.
“Neurons by themselves, without connections to other cells, do not survive,” Mokalled said. “In zebrafish, we think severed neurons can overcome the stress of injury because their flexibility helps them establish new local connections immediately after injury. Our research suggests this is a temporary mechanism that buys time, protecting neurons from death and allowing the system to preserve neuronal circuitry while building and regenerating the main spinal cord.”
There is some evidence that this capacity is present but dormant in mammalian neurons, so this may be a route to new therapies, according to the researchers.
“We are hopeful that identifying the genes that orchestrate this protective process in zebrafish — versions of which also are present in the human genome — will help us find ways to protect neurons in people from the waves of cell death that we see following spinal cord injuries,” she said.
While this study is focused on neurons, Mokalled said spinal cord regeneration is extremely complex, and future work for her team will delve into a new cell atlas to understand the contributions of other cell types to spinal cord regeneration, including non-neuronal cells, called glia, in the central nervous system as well as cells of the immune system and vasculature. They also have ongoing studies comparing the findings in zebrafish to what is happening in mammalian cells, including mouse and human nerve tissue.
Saraswathy VM, Zhou L, Mokalled MH. Single-cell analysis of innate spinal cord regeneration identifies intersecting modes of neuronal repair. Nature Communications. Aug. 15, 2024.
Journal
Nature Communications
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Animals
Article Title
Zebrafish use surprising strategy to regrow spinal cord
Article Publication Date
15-Aug-2024
COI Statement
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant number R01NS113915; and a Postdoctoral Fellow Seed of Independence Grant from the Department of Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine.
Warning signs: National data indicate that autistic birthing people are at increased risk for postpartum anxiety and depression
New research from Drexel University’s Policy and Analytics Center in the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute examined perinatal and postpartum outcomes among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Drexel University
American women have the highest rate of maternal deaths among high-income countries, with outcomes worse for minoritized groups. In an effort to understand the maternal health of pregnant people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism and intellectual disability, researchers from Drexel University’s Policy and Analytics Center in the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute examined Medicaid data to identify perinatal and postpartum outcomes among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The study was recently published in JAMA Network Open.
“While previous studies have reported an increased risk for challenges related to pregnancy and birth among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, little research has been done using United States-based population-level data,” said Lindsay Shea, DrPH, director of the Policy and Analytics Center in the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute and lead author of the study. “Medicaid is a key system to study these risks and opportunities for policy and program improvements because it covers almost half of births in the U.S. and a disproportionate share of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”
The data showed people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were younger at the time of their first delivery and had higher risks for multiple medical and mental health conditions, including gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension and preeclampsia. Autistic pregnant people had significantly higher probability of postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression, compared to people with intellectual disabilities only and people without intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Researchers examined national Medicaid claims to compare perinatal and postpartum outcomes across groups of birthing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (including intellectual disability and autism) and a random sample of birthing people without intellectual and developmental disabilities. The data included Medicaid claims from 2008-2019 for 55,440 birthing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and a random sample of 438,557 birthing people without intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Perinatal outcomes, including medical conditions such as gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia, and mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders and depressive disorders, were compared across the groups. Researchers estimated the probability of postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression using Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard regressions.
Co-author Molly Sadowsky, project director in the Policy and Analytics Center in the Autism Institute, explained how the findings suggest several opportunities for policymakers, providers and researchers. Reproductive health education, perinatal care and delivery services should be tailored to ensure comprehensive and targeted support for birthing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Policies should be designed and implemented to align with and be guided by the needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to reduce maternal health disparities. Current clinical guidelines and procedures should be adapted to the specific needs and experiences of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And new Medicaid policies – like the postpartum coverage extension and doula service reimbursement – should be evaluated for impact on health outcomes of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“Findings from this study underscore an urgent need for attention on Medicaid in supporting birthing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities throughout the perinatal period,” said Sadowsky. “It’s vital that differences in access to and coordination of postpartum care, as well as related differences in risk for postpartum depression and anxiety, continue to be examined.”
Shea and Sadowsky explained where this work will continue.
“We’ll advance this work in our next project by examining the impact of attitudinal and structural ableism on perinatal health and mental health outcomes, as well as neonatal and postnatal outcomes, morbidity, and mortality among children of women with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities,” said Shea.
Shea and her research team were recently awarded a five year $3 million National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant (R01) to further explore this area.
The future study will conduct a detailed examination of the impact of ableism on women with intellectual and developmental disabilities during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and will compare outcomes experienced by this group and their infants to those of peers without intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“Parenthood and reproductive health are important times in everyone’s life to be supported in getting the services and supports that work for each person and for each family,” said Shea. “We are excited about the future of our work on this topic to find ways that the health care system can do better and we can support people and celebrate their birthing experiences and roles in these tumultuous times in life.”
For more information on NIH RePORTER, click here.
Journal
JAMA Network Open
Article Title
Perinatal and Postpartum Health Among People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Article Publication Date
15-Aug-2024
Scientists capture clearest glimpse of how brain cells embody thought
Recordings from thousands of neurons reveal how a person’s brain abstractly represents acts of reasoning
image:
As pedestrians infer different rules of the road in different cities, their brains embody distinct abstract representations of that inferential reasoning
view moreCredit: Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute
NEW YORK, NY — It takes brains to infer how any two things in the world relate to each other, whether it's the way bad weather links to commuting delays or how environmental conditions lead to the evolution of species. A new study based on recordings in the brains of people has yielded a pathbreaking trove of data that researchers now have used to reveal, with more clarity than ever, the neural incarnations of inferential reasoning.
”We are beginning to understand how the brain learns and how we extract knowledge from what we experience,” said Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, a co-corresponding author on the study and a professor of neuroscience, neurosurgery and biomedical science at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
The study, conducted as part of a multi-institutional consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies ® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative ®, was published online today in Nature.
Using electrical recordings from more than 3,000 neurons in 17 volunteers with epilepsy who were undergoing invasive monitoring in the hospital to locate the sources of their seizures, the researchers accrued a “uniquely revealing dataset that is letting us for the first time monitor how the brain’s cells represent a learning process critical for inferential reasoning,” said Stefano Fusi, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and the paper’s other co-corresponding author.
As the researchers recorded from the neurons, the scientists challenged the participants with a simple inferential reasoning task. In this task, subjects discovered by trial-and-error the correct, money-rewarded associations between images, like pictures of a car or a piece of fruit, and a left or right button press. Once the participants learned these associations for a set of images, the researchers pivoted and then switched which button was the correct association for each image.
Initially, volunteers made incorrect choices, as they did not realize that the previously learned associations had changed. However, these errors enabled the volunteers to quickly infer that a new image-button rule had become operative and they could further infer that all of the new image-button rules had switched, even those they had yet to experience. The scientists liken this experimental task to real-life inferences, such as those overseas travelers often need to make.
“If you live both in New York and in London, and you fly to the UK, you know that you have to look right when you want to cross a road. You’ve switched to a different mental state that represents the traffic rule you have learned by living in London,” said Dr. Fusi, also a professor of neuroscience at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a member of Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.
“Even if you visit places you have never been to in the UK, like the countryside in Wales, you infer that the new rules still apply there,” he added. “You still have to look right instead of left when crossing a road.”
“This work elucidates a neural basis for conceptual knowledge, which is essential for reasoning, making inferences, planning and even regulating emotions,” said Daniel Salzman, MD, PhD, a coauthor of the Nature paper, a principal investigator at the Zuckerman Institute, and a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
But how are these kinds of thinking physically expressed in the activity of neurons? Using mathematical tools that Dr. Fusi honed to integrate recordings from thousands of neurons, the researchers recast the volunteers’ brain activity into geometric representations – into shapes, that is – albeit ones occupying thousands of dimensions instead of the familiar three dimensions that we routinely visualize.
“These are high-dimensional geometrical shapes that we cannot imagine or visualize on a computer monitor,” said Dr. Fusi. “But we can use mathematical techniques to visualize much simplified renditions of them in 3D.”
When the researchers compared shapes of brain activity between instances when the subjects made successful inferences with those when their inferences were unsuccessful, stark differences emerged.
“In certain neuronal populations during learning, we saw transitions from disordered representations to these beautiful geometric structures that were correlated with the ability to reason inferentially,” said Dr. Fusi.
What’s more, the researchers observed these structures only in recordings from the hippocampus and not in the other brain regions the scientists monitored, such as the amygdala and frontal lobe cortical areas. It’s a surprising finding, the researchers said, because the hippocampus has long been viewed as the brain’s locus for embodying neural maps of physical spaces. The new findings show that it also can construct cognitive maps linked to brain functions like making inferences and learning.
Another head-turning result of the research, Dr. Rutishauser said, is that volunteers who learn the associative rules between images and buttons only via verbal instruction, and not by virtue of trial-and-error experience, nonetheless forge the same “beautifully structured neural representations in the hippocampus.” This is an important observation, he said, because while human beings often learn from each other through verbal exchanges, very little is known about how verbal information changes neural representations.
“Verbal instruction is how we build knowledge about things that we have never actually experienced,” added Dr. Rutishauser. “Our work now shows that verbal instructions result in very similar structured neural representations compared to those that result from experiential learning.”
The researchers emphasize that none of these discoveries would have been possible without the collaboration and voluntary participation of patients who suffer from drug-resistant epilepsy and who were in the hospital following surgery. The electrodes for collecting the neural data were temporarily implanted by the patients' doctors for the sole purpose of locating the source of each person’s seizures, with the ultimate goal of using that information for further surgical or neuromodulation-based treatment.
“These individuals gave us the precious opportunity to learn something new about how all of our brains work,” Dr. Rutishauser said.
Collaborator Dr. Taufik Valiante at the Krembil Research Institute and Division of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto contributed to this study by enrolling patients. Graduate student Hristos Courellis and postdoctoral researcher Juri Minxha, PhD, at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center and the California Institute of Technology, performed much of the study’s data collection and analysis.
“This study provides new insights into how our brains allow us to learn and carry out tasks flexibly and in response to changing conditions and experiences,” said Dr. Merav Sabri, program director for The BRAIN Initiative. “These insights build on the body of knowledge that could one day lead us toward interventions for neurologic and psychiatric conditions that involve deficits in memory and decision-making.”
###
The paper, “Abstract representations emerge in human hippocampal neurons during inference behavior,” was published online in Nature on August 14, 2024.
The full list of authors includes Hristos S. Courellis, Juri Minxha, Araceli R. Cardenas, Daniel L. Kimmel, Chrystal M. Reed, Taufik A. Valiante, C. Daniel Salzman, Adam N. Mamelak, Stefano Fusi and Ueli Rutishauser.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Journal
Nature
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Abstract representations emerge in human hippocampal neurons during inference
Article Publication Date
14-Aug-2024
August 18, 2024
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have also drawn tens of thousands of supporters to their recent rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.
Although things could change dramatically over the next two-plus months, there is a real possibility that the United States may finally elect its first female president.
But in polling that we conducted in August 2024, after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, we found that sexism is still a powerful force in American politics.
Hope and change?
Yes, the scars of the 2016 campaign – in which sexism played a key role in Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Trump – are still fresh for Democrats. But many hope that America has changed and has become more accepting of women in leadership roles.
Harris’ gender, this argument goes, won’t be a significant deterrent for voters.
On the surface, our recent nationally representative survey of 1,000 American adults supports this, with 51% of Americans agreeing with the statement: “America is ready for its first African American female president.” Only 23% of Americans disagreed.
Even so, some Republicans appear to think they can win by making gender an issue in the campaign. This is apparent in the sexist rhetoric that Trump and other Republicans are using when talking about Harris.
Trump, who has a history of making sexist statements, asserted that foreign leaders would regard Harris as a “play toy,” referred to her as unintelligent, and is now commenting on her appearance. Both The Associated Press and The New York Times have reported – based on unnamed sources – that Trump has also called Harris a “bitch” in private, although Trump’s spokesman denied he used that term.
In a similar sexist vein, Trump allies have attempted to turn Harris’ past romantic relationships into campaign issues, with one conservative commentator on Fox Business News crudely labeling Harris the “original hawk tuah girl,” an obscene sexual reference.
Will such attempts to exploit sexism as an electoral strategy backfire? Or, after all these years, might it still be out of reach for a woman to overcome sexist stereotypes and win the highest office in the United States?
Understanding the importance of sexism
We are political scientists who study the role of identity in American politics and who conduct polls that explore Americans’ views on gender and the extent to which sexism still pervades the nation.
We conducted two national polls this year – one in January 2024 when Biden was still in the race, and the other in August 2024, after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. For each poll, we surveyed 1,000 American adults 18 and older and asked about their thoughts on the election, their policy views and their attitudes toward various groups in society.
With the change at the top of the Democratic ticket, we can better assess the impact of sexism on vote choice in the presidential election by comparing the results from January, when the race featured two male candidates, with August, when Harris entered the race.
In both surveys, we first asked respondents which candidate they would vote for if the presidential election were held today.
To measure sexism, we then asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of three statements that express prejudice, resentment and animus toward women, or what political scientists call “hostile sexism.” The statements in the “hostile sexism” battery are: “Women seek to gain power by getting control over men”; “Women are too easily offended”; and “Women exaggerate problems they have at work.” Greater agreement with these statements indicated more sexist views.
We also measured respondents’ demographics – including age, gender, race, education and income – their political attitudes and identities, and their racial views.
Sexism mattered, even when Biden was in the race
Due in part to Trump’s sexist rhetoric throughout his campaigns and presidency, sexist attitudes have become closely linked with whom individuals support for president. On average, more sexist individuals have tended to prefer Republican candidates in recent elections.
Thus, even in our January poll when Biden was the Democratic nominee, sexism was strongly correlated with support for Trump. When we examined a head-to-head matchup between Biden and Trump, the more individuals agreed with the statements measuring hostile sexism, the more likely they were to prefer Trump over Biden.
Of those who most strongly disagreed with the statements measuring hostile sexism, 73% supported Biden, while approximately two-thirds of those scoring highest on the sexism scale supported Trump.
Taking into consideration other factors that influence support for Biden – partisanship, ideology, racial attitudes, education, economic views and so forth – we found that those with the least sexist views had an 83% chance of supporting Biden, while those with the most sexist views had a 17% chance of doing so.
If sexism depressed individuals’ support for Biden’s candidacy, does that mean Harris faces no additional penalty in terms of lost support for her candidacy? Hardly.
Hostile sexism, as we measured it, costs Harris votes.
While sexism mattered in January, it mattered more in August once Harris had taken over the Democratic ticket.
In a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump, 89% of those in the lowest third on the sexism scale – meaning those who disagreed most with the statements measuring hostile sexism – support Harris compared with 11% for Trump. On the other hand, only 18% of those scoring highest on sexism support Harris, versus 82% for Trump.
When we take into account other considerations that influence whether individuals prefer Harris or Trump, our findings are even more striking. The least sexist respondents have a 92% chance of saying they will vote for Harris. But the most sexist respondents have only a 4% chance of supporting her.
What this means is that, while sexist attitudes influenced individuals’ presidential preferences when Biden was the Democratic presidential nominee, they have a greater effect now that Harris is the Democratic candidate.
Since Harris seems to be narrowly leading Trump in the polls, why should we care about the influence of hostile sexism in the election?
To answer this question, imagine a world in which hostile sexism doesn’t influence attitudes toward presidential candidates who are women. Our findings imply that, in such a world, Harris’ lead over Trump might be larger. Put simply, hostile sexism is helping to make the election closer than it would otherwise be.
Sexism has long played a powerful role in influencing Americans’ voting behavior and attitudes toward political issues. This is especially so today, given the high political importance of gender-related issues such as abortion, contraception and LGBTQ+ rights.
Our analysis shows that people with negative attitudes toward women are much less likely to support Harris for president. Whether the Harris campaign can successfully navigate this reality is still to be determined.
Adam Eichen, PhD Student, Political Science, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, Associate Professor, Political Science, UMass Amherst, and Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMass Amherst Poll, UMass Amherst
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