New journal explores therapeutic relationship between food and medicine

Tsinghua University Press

 

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Tsinghua University Press has launched a new journal, named Food & Medicine Homology, that will publish its first issue in September. The journal will focus on the close association and interconnection between food and medicine, an idea that originated from the theory of ancient traditional Chinese medicine, and how this relationship can benefit human health.

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Credit: Food & Medicine Homology

A spoonful of honey may make the medicine go down smoother, but could the honey have its own therapeutic benefits, too? That therapeutic relationship between food and medicine is the focus of a new open-access journal called Food & Medicine Homology.

 

“The concept of food and medicine homology originated from the theory of ancient traditional Chinese medicine, which emphasizes the close association and interconnection between food and medicine,” wrote Bin Cong, one of the editors-in-chief, in a perspectives article set to publish in the journal’s first issue, scheduled for September.

 

Cong, who is the dean of the College of Medicine and Forensics at Hebei Medical University in China, explained that food may supplement medicine — and vice versa — to contribute to better health and longer lifespans. This builds on how traditional Chinese medicine promotes the idea of balance when it comes to diet and how various foods can both satisfy hunger and fulfill specific needs.  

 

“The establishment of this theory has been a prolonged process,” Cong wrote. “… accumulation of myriad data has demonstrated that some ‘foods’ can not only satisfy satiety, but also possess various biological functions such as health preservation, wellness promotion, disease preventions and even treatment.”

 

The idea, Cong explained, is not that food can serve as a treatment by itself. Rather, food and medicine can work together to provide a bevy of benefits — from nutritional to therapeutic. For example, leafy greens or whole grains may not cure a cold, but they can provide nutrients that help the human immune system function better. Some foods, such as bread or rice, can help protect the stomach lining from more abrasive medication while also encouraging digestion to metabolize the medicine.

 

The journal will be published by Tsinghua University Press, the publishing arm of Tsinghua University in China.

 

“Food & Medicine Homology aims to integrate traditional Chinese medicine and food science, fill the gap of forward-looking English science, technology and medicine journals on food and medicine, and achieve the inheritance, innovation and breakthrough of traditional Chinese medicine culture,” said Wenyi Kang, the journal’s executive editor-in-chief and a professor at Henan University, where he directs the university’s National Research and Development Center for Edible Fungus Processing Technology. “We chose Tsinghua University Press as the publisher because of the technological empowerment of its international publishing platform SciOpen, which can help us achieve the goal of becoming a world class journal on food and medicine.”

 

Kang, who also directs the Henan Province Food Engineering Technology Research Center and the Joint International Research Laboratory of Food and Medicine Resource Function of Henan Province, explained that SciOpen provides free access to an online collection of journals from across multiple disciplines. The platform completely digitizes the process of submitting manuscripts, facilitating peer review, editing, publishing and more to accelerate the scientific communications.

 

“This aligns with the reason we established the journal,” Cong said. “Food & Medicine Homology aims to promote and lead the development of disciplines with cutting-edge scientific research and to advocate for the profound and comprehensive concept of ‘medicine and food homology’ in China and the world.”

 

The articles in the first issue are listed as below:

[1]Perspectives in Food & Medicine Homology. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420018

[2]Transformation from traditional medicine-food homology to modern food-medicine homology. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420014

[3]The chemical composition of the walnut pellicle and its benefits to health Chen-Rui. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420007

[4]Chemical compositions and health-promoting effects of Cichorium intybus L. (chicory): a narrative review. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420012

[5]Anti-virulence potential of carvone against Serratia marcescens. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420001

[6]A bibliometric analysis of lipid peroxidation in alcoholic liver disease from 2001 to 2024. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420009

[7]Yinshan Zhengyao: exploring the power of food and inheriting healthy thoughts. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420006

[8]Artemisia argyi polysaccharide alleviates intestinal inflammation and intestinal flora dysbiosis in lipopolysaccharide-treated mice. https://doi.org /10.26599/FMH.2024.9420008

[9]Screening and extraction process optimization for potential α-glucosidase inhibitors from quinoa seeds. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420004

[10]A novel antidiabetic peptide GPAGAP from Andrias davidianus collagen hydrolysates: screening, action mechanism prediction and improving insulin resistance in HepG2 cells. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420010

[11]Analysis and comparison of staminate flowers components in five Chinese walnut varieties. https://doi.org/10.26599/FMH.2024.9420005

 

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About Food & Medicine Homology

Food & Medicine Homology is a peer-reviewed, cross-disciplinary, open access journal dedicated to cutting-edge research integrating findings in food science and medicine. The journal publishes papers dealing with plants, animals and microorganisms, reporting the food resources and base materials with nutritional and medicinal values and health-promoting effects that are discovered and confirmed using modern scientific theories and technologies, and providing insights into their health-promoting functions, underlying molecular mechanisms of action and regulatory modes.

Journal website: https://www.sciopen.com/journal/3006-6867

Submission site: https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/fmh

About SciOpen 

SciOpen is an open access resource of scientific and technical content published by Tsinghua University Press and its publishing partners. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics, identity management, and expert advice to ensure each journal’s development. By digitalizing the publishing process, SciOpen widens the reach, deepens the impact, and accelerates the exchange of ideas.

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Journal

Food & Medicine Homology

DOI

10.26599/FMH.2024.9420018 

Article Title

Perspectives in Food & Medicine Homology

 

Why do plants wiggle? New study provides answers

University of Colorado at Boulder

In a new study, physicists from the United States and Israel may have gotten to the bottom of a quirky behavior of growing plants—and a mystery that intrigued Charles Darwin himself during the later decades of his life.

For many humans, plants might seem stationary and even a little dull. But green things actually move a lot. If you watch a timelapse video of a sunflower seedling poking up from the soil, for example, it doesn’t just shoot straight up. Instead, as the sunflower grows, its crown spins in circles, twists into corkscrews and, in general, wiggles around—albeit very slowly.

Now, researchers co-led by Orit Peleg at CU Boulder and Yasmine Meroz at Tel Aviv University have discovered one role for these chaotic movements, also known as “circumnutations.” In greenhouse experiments and computer simulations, the group showed that sunflowers take advantage of circumnutations to search the environment around them for patches of sunlight. 

“A lot of people don't really consider the motion of plants because, as humans, we're usually looking at plants at the wrong frame rate,” said Peleg, a co-author of the study and an associate professor in the BioFrontiers Institute and Department of Computer Science.

The team published its findings Aug. 15 in the journal Physical Review X.

The findings could one day help farmers to come up with new strategies for growing an array of crops in more efficient arrangements.

“Our team does a lot of work on social interactions in insect swarms and other groups of animals,” said Chantal Nguyen, lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at BioFrontiers.

“But this research is particularly exciting because we’re seeing similar dynamics in plants. They’re rooted to the ground.”

Darwin’s cucumbers

Nguyen added that plants don’t usually shift around like animals but, instead, move by growing in different directions over time. This phenomenon enchanted Darwin long after he returned from his voyage on the HMS Beagle, according to historical accounts.

In the 1860s, Darwin, who was then suffering from a range of ailments that limited his own mobility, spent days observing plants at his home. He planted seeds from cucumbers and other species, then traced how their crowns moved around from day to day—the resulting maps look wild and haphazard.

“I am getting very much amused by my tendrils—it is just the sort of niggling work which suits me,” he wrote a friend in 1863.

Amused or not, Darwin couldn’t explain why some of his tendrils twisted.

It’s a mystery that has also perplexed Meroz, a physicist by training. One 2017 study pointed her in the right direction. In it, scientists led by the University of Buenos Aires grew lines of sunflowers under cramped conditions. They discovered that the plants naturally and consistently arranged themselves into a zig-zag pattern, almost like the teeth of a zipper. The arrangement likely helps the plants maximize their access to sunlight as a group.

Meroz wondered if plant wiggles could be the engine that drives such patterns in plant growth.

“For climbing plants, it’s obvious that it’s about searching for supports to twine on," said Meroz, a professor of plant sciences and food security. "But for other plants, it’s not clear why it’s worth it.”

Here comes the sun

To find out, she and her colleagues grew five, one-week-old sunflowers in rows. Then, like Darwin before them, they mapped out how the plants moved over the course of a week. 

Next, Nguyen and Peleg developed a computer program to analyze the patterns behind the sunflower growth. The researchers could also use their computer simulations to see what would happen if the sunflowers moved more or less—in other words, if they wiggled haphazardly or in a slow and steady pattern. 

If the digital plants didn’t wiggle at all, the group discovered, they would all wind up all leaning away from each other in a straight line. If they wiggled too much, in contrast, they would grow in a random pattern. If they moved with just the right amount of randomness, however, the sunflowers formed that tell-tale zig-zag, which, in real life plants, provides a lot of access to sunlight. Nguyen explained that plants seem to circumnutate to find where the best light is coming from, then grow in that direction.

“When you add a little bit of noise into the system, it allows the plant to explore its surroundings and settle into those configurations that allow each plant to find maximum light exposure,” she said. “That happens to lead to this nice zig-zag pattern that we see.”

In future experiments, the researchers will test out how sunflowers grow in more complicated arrangements. Meroz, for her part, is glad to see plants get some credit for the movers and shakers they really are.

“If we all lived at the same time scales as plants, you could walk down the street and see them moving,” she said. “Maybe we’d all have plants as pets.”

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Journal

Physical Review X

 

A new advanced framework to assess the impact of invasive plants on ecosystems

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Pensoft Publishers

 

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Mechanisms determine plant invasion impact. Examples of important factors for each category are given in the boxes.

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Credit: Werner et al.

Researchers from the University of Freiburg and Justus Liebig University Giessen have developed a framework to better assess the impact of invasive plant species on ecosystems.

Outlined in a study published in the open-access journal NeoBiota, the framework combines new technologies and techniques to learn and predict how invasive plants alter ecosystems over time and in different environments.

Invasive plant species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem health worldwide. However, predicting the exact impact of these invasions is challenging due to the complexity of interactions between invading species, native communities, and impacted ecosystems.

The new framework addresses this challenge by integrating several advancements:

Environmental mapping: Progress in remote sensing and ecological monitoring allow researchers to capture detailed information about the environmental conditions of invaded areas. Drones, satellites, and advanced sensory networks can be used to create detailed ecosystem maps, which show how invasive species interact with their environment.

Functional tracers: These are specific indicators that reflect changes in ecosystem functions caused by invasive species. For example, nitrogen isotopes can be used to track the impact of nitrogen-fixing invasive plants on ecosystems.

Spatio-temporal modelling: By combining environmental data with new modelling techniques, such as AI, researchers can create detailed models showing the spread and impact of invasive species on ecosystems over time. Such models can predict how changes in environmental conditions, such as climate change, might influence an invasive species’ success.

Beyond scientific analysis, novel technologies also facilitate communication of ecological impacts, as the authors demonstrate in an animated 3D-video visualisation.

"The framework we've introduced offers researchers deeper insights into how invasive plant species interact with their environments, enabling more targeted management to lessen their ecological impact. We advocate for stronger collaboration between ecologists and technical experts to refine and expand these methods,” the authors emphasise.

“Going forward, further research and integration of the wide range of recent methods and tools are needed to enhance the framework's effectiveness,” they conclude.

Original source

Werner C, Hellmann C, Große-Stoltenberg A (2024) An integrative framework to assess the spatio-temporal impact of plant invasion on ecosystem functioning. NeoBiota 94: 225-242. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.94.126714 \

Researcher profiles

Prof. Dr. Christiane Werner: https://www.cep.uni-freiburg.de/mitarbeiter/christiane-werner/cwerner_main

Dr. André Große-Stoltenberg: https://www.uni-giessen.de/en/faculties/f09/institutes/landscape/ecology/team/grosse_stoltenberg_andre?set_language=en

Animated Model visualisation o [VIDEO] |

Modelled isoscapes centred around a N2-fixing invasive plant species using the functional tracer δ15N and information on the environmental matrix in a nutrient poor ecosystem based on Hellmann et al. (2017). Reddish colours indicate high-levels of atmospheric fixed nitrogen inputs (e.g., dense invader patches and flushes of N into native vegetation); yellow colours indicate lower levels of impact, while whitish colours indicate no impact and are representative for the original status before invasion. The local functional changes do not occur uniformly. Isoscapes are plotted onto high-resolution airborne LiDAR data fused with true colour imagery to illustrate the effect of LiDAR-derived vegetation structure of the recipient community and topography on invader impact in this heterogeneous ecosystem. The 3D map was created using QGIS version 3.30.

Model visualisation of spatio-temporal dynamics of invader impacts based on the suggested framework.

Framework for integrating fine-scale environmental heterogeneity and functional changes into spatial models of invader-ecosystem interactions.

Credit

Werner et al.

Journal

NeoBiota

DOI

10.3897/neobiota.94.126714 

Article Title

An integrative framework to assess the spatio-temporal impact of plant invasion on ecosystem functioning

 

Over half of iron deficiency cases in large health system still unresolved at three years

Study underscores the need for improvements in the proper recognition and timely treatment of more of iron deficiency, especially among female and Black patients

American Society of Hematology

(WASHINGTON, August 15, 2024) – Over half of people with iron deficiency were found to still have low iron levels three years after diagnosis, and among patients whose condition was effectively treated within that timeframe, they faced longer-than-expected delays, pointing to substantial gaps in appropriate recognition and efficient treatment of the condition, according to a study published today in Blood Advances.

Iron deficiency, or when the body’s iron stores are too low, is common, and may affect up to 40% of adolescents and young women. Iron is important in maintaining many body functions, including the production of hemoglobin, the molecule in the blood that carries oxygen, and is essential to maintaining healthy cells, skin, hair, and nails. If untreated, low iron stores can lead to mood changes, fatigue, hair loss, exercise intolerance, and eventually anemia. The condition is generally first treated with oral iron supplementation, and if low iron levels persist after a few months or the patient reports side effects, intravenous (IV) iron is started. According to a previous report, up to 70% of cases go undiagnosed in high-risk populations, such as those with bleeding disorders, issues with malabsorption, or women who menstruate.

“Iron deficiency is probably a bigger problem than we realize. I’ve seen a lot of cases where people don’t have anemia, but they are walking around with very little to no iron in their body and it can have a big impact on how people feel in their day-to-day life,” said Jacob Cogan, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and the study’s lead author. “Iron deficiency can be challenging to diagnose, but it’s easy to treat. Our findings underscore the need for a more coordinated effort to recognize and treat iron deficiency to help improve quality of life.”

For this study – the first to look at whether iron deficiency is being recognized and treated efficiently in clinical practice – Dr. Cogan and his team retrospectively analyzed electronic medical record (EMR) data from one of Minnesota’s largest health systems and identified 13,084 adults with a laboratory diagnosis of iron deficiency (with and without anemia) between 2010 and 2020 who had available follow-up data for three years.

In the study, iron deficiency was defined as a ferritin value of 25 ng/mL or less. Patients had to have at least two ferritin values – one initial value and at least one more within the three-year study period. Adequate treatment and resolution was defined as a subsequent ferritin value of at least 50 ng/mL. Most patients received some form of treatment, consistent across sex.

Of the 13,084 patients included in the study, 5,485 (42%) patients had normal iron levels within three years of diagnosis, while 7,599 (58%) had persisting iron deficiency based on low ferritin levels. Only 7% of patients had their iron levels return back to normal within the first year of diagnosis.

Factors associated with a higher likelihood of getting iron levels back to normal included older age (age 60 and up), male sex, Medicare insurance, and treatment with IV iron alone. Additionally, compared with patients who were still iron deficient, those whose condition was resolved had more follow-up blood work to check ferritin values (six vs four ferritin tests). Of note, younger patients, females, and Black individuals were most likely to remain iron deficient or experience longer lags in getting their iron stores back to a healthy level.

Even among patients whose iron levels were restored to normal during the study duration, it took nearly two years (the median time to resolution was 1.9 years), which researchers say is longer than expected and signals missed opportunities to more effectively manage the condition. While there was no data to look at whether anemia iron deficiency was more apt to be treated, Dr. Cogan says it’s reasonable to think this might be the case as iron deficiency without anemia is harder to recognize.

“Two years is too long and well beyond the timeframe within which iron deficiency should be able to be sufficiently treated and resolved [with oral or IV treatments],” said Dr. Cogan. “The numbers are pretty striking and suggest a need to put systems in place to better identify patients and treat them more efficiently.”

As with trends showing persisting iron deficiency, Dr. Cogan attributes the delays in resolution to the diagnosis either being missed or not treated to resolution. He added that there is a clear need for education about non-anemic iron deficiency and who is at high risk, more universal agreement on the best ferritin cut off for diagnosis, and efforts to create an iron deficiency clinic or pathway to “assess and treat patients more efficiently and get people feeling better faster.”

The study was limited by its reliance on EMR data and retrospective nature, which prevented researchers from determining why ferritin tests were ordered for patients or the cause of their iron deficiency.

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Blood Advances (bloodadvances.org) is an online, open-access journal publishing more peer-reviewed hematology research than any other academic journal worldwide. Blood Advances is part of the Blood Journals portfolio (bloodjournals.org) from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) (hematology.org). 

Claire Whetzel, 202-629-5085
cwhetzel@hematology.org

 

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Journal

Blood Advances

Disclaimer: AAAS and Eurek

 

NIH launches program to advance research led by Native American communities on substance use and pain

Effort aims to elevate Indigenous Knowledge and culture in research, to respond to the overdose crisis and address related health disparities

NIH/National Institute on Drug Abuse

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a program that will support Native American communities to lead public health research to address overdose, substance use, and pain, including related factors such as mental health and wellness. Despite the inherent strengths in Tribal communities, and driven in part by social determinants of health, Native American communities face unique health disparities related to the opioid crisis. For instance, in recent years, overdose death rates have been highest among American Indian and Alaska Native people. Research prioritized by Native communities is essential for enhancing effective, culturally grounded public health interventions and promoting positive health outcomes.

“Elevating the knowledge, expertise, and inherent strengths of Native people in research is crucial for creating sustainable solutions that can effectively promote public health and health equity,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “As we look for ways to best respond to the overdose crisis across the country, it is crucial to recognize that Native American communities have the best perspective for developing prevention and therapeutic interventions consistent with their traditions and needs. This program will facilitate research that is led by Native American communities, for Native American communities.”

Totaling approximately $268 million over seven years, pending the availability of funds, the Native Collective Research Effort to Enhance Wellness (N CREW) Program will support research projects that are led directly by Tribes and organizations that serve Native American communities, and was established in direct response to priorities identified by Tribes and Native American communities.

Many Tribal Nations have developed and continue to develop innovative approaches and systems of care for community members with substance use and pain disorders. During NIH Tribal Consultations in 2018 and 2022, Tribal leaders categorized the opioid overdose crisis as one of their highest priority issues and called for research and support to respond. They shared that Native communities must lead the science and highlighted the need for research capacity building, useful real-time data, and approaches that rely on Indigenous Knowledge and community strengths to meet the needs of Native people.

The N CREW Program focuses on:

1. Supporting research prioritized by Native communities, including research elevating and integrating Indigenous Knowledge and culture
2. Enhancing capacity for research led by Tribes and Native American Serving Organizations by developing and providing novel, accessible, and culturally grounded technical assistance and training, resources, and tools
3. Improving access to, and quality of, data on substance use, pain, and related factors to maximize the potential for use of these data in local decision-making.

“Native American communities have been treating pain in their communities for centuries, and this program will uplift that knowledge to support research that is built around cultural strengths and priorities,” said Walter Koroshetz, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). “These projects will further our collective understanding of key programs and initiatives that can effectively improve chronic pain management for Native American and other communities.”

The first phase of the program will support projects to plan, develop, and pilot community-driven research and/or data improvement projects to address substance use and pain. In this phase, NIH will also support the development of a Native Research Resource Network to provide comprehensive training, resources, and real-time support to N CREW participants.

The second phase of the program, anticipated to begin in fall 2026, will build on the work conducted in the initial phase of the program to further capacity building efforts and implement community-driven research and/or data improvements projects. Additional activities that support the overarching goals of the N CREW Program may also be identified as the program develops.

The N CREW Program is led by the NIH’s NIDA, NINDS, and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), with participation from numerous other NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. The N CREW Program is funded through the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative (or NIH HEAL Initiative), which is jointly managed by NIDA and NINDS. For the purposes of the N CREW Program, Native Americans include American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Projects will be awarded on a rolling basis and publicly listed.

This new program is part of work to advance the Biden/Harris Administration’s Unity Agenda and the HHS Overdose Prevention Strategy.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. To learn how to get support for mental health, or substance use conditions, visit FindSupport.gov. If you are ready to locate a treatment facility or provider, you can go directly to FindTreatment.gov or call 800-662-HELP (4357).

Helping to End Addiction Long-term® and NIH HEAL Initiative® are registered service marks of the Department of Health and Human Services.

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About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov.

About the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS): NINDS is the nation’s leading funder of research on the brain and nervous system. The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease. For more information about NINDS and its programs, visit www.ninds.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

About substance use disorders: Substance use disorders are chronic, treatable conditions from which people can recover. In 2023, nearly 49 million people in the United States had at least one substance use disorder. Substance use disorders are defined in part by continued use of substances despite negative consequences. They are also relapsing conditions, in which periods of abstinence (not using substances) can be followed by a return to use. Stigma can make individuals with substance use disorders less likely to seek treatment. Using preferred language can help accurately report on substance use and addiction. View NIDA’s online guide.

About chronic pain: Chronic pain affects more than 50 million adults in the U.S. It may last for months, years, or a lifetime after its onset from trauma or another chronic health disorder. Multidisciplinary approaches and access to safe, effective, and quality care are essential for reducing pain and improving quality of life.

 

  NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health

 

Detecting machine-generated text: An arms race with the advancements of large language models

Penn engineers develop new tool to detect AI-generated text

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science

 

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Conceptual image shows how detectors are able to detect AI-generated text when it contains no edits or "disguises," but when manipulated, current detectors are not reliably able to detect AI-generated text.

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Credit: Chris Callison-Burch and Liam Dugan

Machine-generated text has been fooling humans for the last four years. Since the release of GPT-2 in 2019, large language model (LLM) tools have gotten progressively better at crafting stories, news articles, student essays and more, to the point that humans are often unable to recognize when they are reading text produced by an algorithm. While these LLMs are being used to save time and even boost creativity in ideating and writing, their power can lead to misuse and harmful outcomes, which are already showing up across spaces we consume information. The inability to detect machine-generated text only enhances the potential for harm. 

One way both academics and companies are trying to improve this detection is by employing machines themselves. Machine learning models can identify subtle patterns of word choice and grammatical constructions to recognize LLM-generated text in a way that our human intuition cannot. 

Today, many commercial detectors are claiming to be highly successful at detecting machine-generated text, with up to 99% accuracy, but are these claims too good to be true? Chris Callison-Burch, Professor in Computer and Information Science, and Liam Dugan, a doctoral student in Callison-Burch’s group, aimed to find out in their recent paper published at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Liam Dugan presents RAID at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in Bangkok.

“As the technology to detect machine-generated text advances, so does the technology used to evade detectors,” says Callison-Burch. “It’s an arms race, and while the goal to develop robust detectors is one we should strive to achieve, there are many limitations and vulnerabilities in detectors that are available now.”   

To investigate those limitations and provide a path forward for developing robust detectors, the research team created Robust AI Detector (RAID), a data set of over 10 million documents across recipes, news articles, blog posts and more, including both AI-generated text and human-generated text. RAID serves as the first standardized benchmark to test detection ability in current and future detectors. In addition to creating the data set, they created a leaderboard, which publicly ranks the performance of all detectors that have been evaluated using RAID in an unbiased way.

“The concept of a leaderboard has been key to success in many aspects of machine learning like computer vision,” says Dugan. “The RAID benchmark is the first leaderboard for robust detection of AI-generated text. We hope that our leaderboard will encourage transparency and high-quality research in this quickly evolving field.”

Dugan has already seen the influence this paper is having in companies that develop detectors. 

“Soon after our paper became available as a preprint and after we released the RAID data set, we started seeing the data set being downloaded many times, and we were contacted by Originality.ai, a prominent company that develops detectors for AI-generated text,” he says. “They shared our work in a blog post, ranked their detector in our leaderboard and are using RAID to identify previously hidden vulnerabilities and improve their detection tool. It’s inspiring to see that the community appreciates this work and also strives to raise the bar for AI-detection technology.”

So, do the current detectors hold up to the work at hand? RAID shows that not many do as well as they claim. 

“Detectors trained on ChatGPT were mostly useless in detecting machine-generated text outputs from other LLMs such as Llama and vice versa,” says Callison-Burch. “Detectors trained on news stories don’t hold up when reviewing machine-generated recipes or creative writing. What we found is that there are a myriad of detectors that only work well when applied to very specific use cases and when reviewing text similar to the text they were trained on.” 

Detectors are able to detect AI-generated text when it contains no edits or “disguises,” but when manipulated, current detectors are not reliably able to detect AI-generated text.

Faulty detectors are not only an issue because they don’t work well, they can be as dangerous as the AI tool used to produce the text in the first place. 

“If universities or schools were relying on a narrowly trained detector to catch students’ use of ChatGPT to write assignments, they could be falsely accusing students of cheating when they are not,” says Callison-Burch. “They could also miss students who were cheating by using other LLMs to generate their homework.”   

It’s not just a detector’s training, or lack thereof, that limits its ability to detect machine-generated text. The team looked into how adversarial attacks such as replacing letters with look-alike symbols can easily derail a detector and allow machine-generated text to fly under the radar.

“It turns out, there are a variety of edits a user can make to evade detection by the detectors we evaluated in this study,” says Dugan. “Something as simple as inserting extra spaces, swapping letters for symbols, or using alternative spelling or synonyms for a few words can cause a detector to be rendered useless.”

Swapping certain letters with similarly looking symbols is one type of adversarial attack that derails current detectors.

 The study concludes that, while current detectors are not robust enough to be of significant use in society just yet, openly evaluating detectors on large, diverse, shared resources is critical to accelerating progress and trust in detection, and that transparency will lead to the development of detectors that do hold up in a variety of use cases. 

“Evaluating robustness is particularly important for detection, and it only increases in importance as the scale of public deployment grows,” says Dugan. “We also need to remember that detection is just one tool for a larger, even more valuable motivation: preventing harm by the mass distribution of AI-generated text.” 

“My work is focused on reducing the harms that LLMs can inadvertently cause, and, at the very least, making people aware of the harms so that they can be better informed when interacting with information,” he continues. “In the realm of information distribution and consumption, it will become increasingly important to understand where and how text is generated, and this paper is just one way I am working towards bridging those gaps in both the scientific and public communities.”

Dugan and Callison-Burch worked with several other researchers on this study, including Penn graduate students Alyssa Hwang, Josh Magnus Ludan, Andrew Zhu and Hainiu Xu, as well as a former Penn doctoral student Daphne Ippolito and Filip Trhlik, an undergraduate at University College London. They continue to work on projects that focus on advancing the reliability and safety of AI tools and how society integrates them into daily life. 

This study was funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Activity (IARPA), a directive of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and within the Human Interpretable Attribution of Text Using Underlying Structure (HIATUS) program.

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Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

RAID: A Shared Benchmark for Robust Evaluation of Machine-Generated Text Detectors

 

Solutions to Nigeria’s newborn mortality rate might lie in existing innovations, finds review

Imperial College London

The review, led by Imperial College London’s Professor Hippolite Amadi, argues that Nigeria’s own discoveries and technological advancements of the past three decades have been “abandoned” by policymakers.

The authors argue that too many Nigerian newborns, clinically defined as infants in the first 28 days of life, die of causes that could have been prevented had policymakers adopted recent in-country scientific breakthroughs.  

Led by Professor Amadi of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, who received the Nigeria Prize for Science (NPS) in 2023, the researchers say the lack of adoption and scale up of breakthroughs in treatment beyond Nigeria’s major cities might partly explain the country’s consistently high infant mortality rate.

Figures from the World Health Organization show that globally, 6,500 newborns die every day, and that sub-Saharan Africa experiences the highest neonatal mortality rate in the world at 27 deaths per 1000 live births.  

In addition, a child born in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that includes Nigeria, is 11 times more likely to die in their first month of life than one born in Australia and New Zealand, which is the lowest-mortality region.   

Lead author Professor Amadi, who received the NPS for his work on low-cost newborn care systems in the West African nation, said: “Nigeria has the power to reduce its own infant mortality rate. We already possess the necessary knowledge and technology, cultivated by decades of Nigerian research and innovation.

"We need to put the policies and leadership in place to make these improvements where they are needed most, so we can reduce the soaring numbers of infant deaths in the country.” 

The review is published in Frontiers in Pediatrics.

"Game-changing science"

Nigerian clinicians and researchers have developed several low-cost advances in neonatal care in recent years. These include adaptive care pathways for premature births, an innovative respiratory support mechanism for newborns with low birth weight, and solar powered intensive phototherapy machines for treating neonatal jaundice.   

However, access to neonatal care exists mainly in major cities, where most hospitals with neonatal care units are located, and is more difficult in rural areas. To address this, the researchers argue that policymakers should scale up and adopt these strategies nationally.  

To carry out the analysis, the researchers examined 4,286 publications for evidence of potential strategies or interventions to reduce infant mortality.   

Nineteen of those publications covered potential strategies or interventions to reduce neonatal mortality. Fourteen of these strategies produced significant results during their trials and subsequent usage in hospitals. However, none of these applications were adopted nationally, which the researchers say has denied newborns proper access to these interventions.  

The researchers say that Nigeria is an example case study that could be applied to many other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that face similar high mortality and morbidity rates, including across West Africa. Professor Amadi added: “All low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) must look inward to strengthen and use what they already possess.  

“The continuing failure of the Nigerian system to protect newborns seems to have become a norm, a huge source of nursing fatigue, and an unwelcome situation. Nigeria, and other LMICs like it, already possess the game-changing science and technology to prevent many of its newborn deaths. It’s now in policymakers’ hands to nationally scale up these innovations and accelerate infant survival.”  

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“The case of the neonate vs. LMIC medical academia—a jury-style systematic review of 32 years of literature without significant mortality reduction” by Amadi et al., published 22 July 2024 in Frontiers in Pediatrics.

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Journal

Frontiers in Pediatrics

 

Emergency departments could help reduce youth suicide risk

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

A study of over 15,000 youth with self-inflicted injury treated in Emergency Departments (EDs) found that around 25 percent were seen in the ED within 90 days before or 90 days after injury, pointing to an opportunity for ED-based interventions, such as suicide risk screening, safety planning, and linkage to services. Nearly half of ED visits after the self-inflicted injury encounter were for mental health issues.

“Self-inflicted injury is an important predictor of suicide risk,” said Samaa Kemal, MD, MPH, emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, who was the lead author on the study published in JAMA Network Open. “Our study suggests that Emergency Departments could have life-saving impact if they treat youth not only in the moment of crisis but intervene to extend care into the future. It would be critical to screen for suicide risk, talk to families about removing from the home or locking up anything that could be lethal to their child, like guns, and connect patients to follow-up care.”

Dr. Kemal and colleagues also found that around 70 percent of children in the study received care in general EDs, as opposed to EDs at children’s hospitals.

“The interventions we propose are brief and could be implemented in any ED, even in hospitals without pediatric mental health resources,” said Dr. Kemal.

Limited access to pediatric mental healthcare most likely drives greater ED utilization among rural and publicly insured youth, which underscores a significant health inequity, added Dr. Kemal.

“In communities without easy access to mental health providers, EDs could refer children to pediatricians for follow-up,” she said. “Most importantly, in the midst of the current youth mental health crisis, the care these children receive in the ED should focus on their future safety.”

Co-authors from Lurie Children’s included Jennifer A. Hoffmann, MD, MS, Kenneth A. Michelson, MD, and Elizabeth R. Alpern, MD, MSCE.

Research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, which is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is a nonprofit organization committed to providing access to exceptional care for every child. It is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Lurie Children’s is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Emergency medicine-focused research at Lurie Children’s is conducted through the Grainger Research Program in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open