The higher the environmental stress, the lower the resistance to global change

The resistance of the ecosystems to global change decreases significantly as the number of environmental stressors increases, especially when this stress is sustained over time

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

 

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Open forest in New South Wales, Australia. Photograph by Manuel Delgado Baquerizo

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Credit: Manuel Delgado Baquerizo

An international study led by Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville (IRNAS-CSIC), of the Spanish National Research Council (CISC), has shown that as the number of global change factors increases, terrestrial ecosystems become more sensitive to the impacts of global change. The results, published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience, show that the resistance of our ecosystems to global change decreases significantly as the number of environmental stressors increases, especially when this stress is sustained over time.

This is the conclusion reached by the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Laboratory (BioFunLab) at IRNAS-CSIC after analyzing 1023 global change experiments worldwide in collaboration with ten international institutions including the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, the University of Alicante, the Northeast China Forestry University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA, and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

“Terrestrial ecosystems are subject to a myriad of climate change and environmental degradation factors, including global warming, drought processes, atmospheric pollution, fires or overgrazing among many others. We know that these global change factors impact the ability of our ecosystems to provide services such as carbon sequestration or soil fertility that are key in the fight against climate change and in food production. What we didn't know is how an increase in the number of global change factors affects the ability of ecosystems to resist this global change” explains Manuel Delgado Baquerizo, BioFunLab leader and senior author of the paper. “Our research shows that as the number of global change factors to which we subject our ecosystems increases, these ecosystems become more and more sensitive and reduce their natural capacity to resist the impacts of environmental perturbations,” continues Delgado Baquerizo. 

The study also demonstrates that the continued effects of global change on terrestrial ecosystems contribute to reducing the natural capacity of ecosystems to withstand an increase in the number of global drivers of change. This conclusion was reached by analyzing 15 years of data from a U.S.-based experiment involving impacts of multiple global change factors on ecosystem services as important as primary production. “Our results show that prolonged exposure to multiple drivers of global change, such as increased CO2 and warming, gradually decreases the capacity of ecosystems to maintain essential services such as primary productivity. This is crucial to understand the limitations we will face in vital resources such as water and nitrogen” explains Emilio Guirado, co-author of the paper from the University of Alicante.

“Our study shows that increasing global drivers of change will significantly reduce the resilience of ecosystems to global change. However, this effect is much more pronounced on the ability of ecosystems to provide us with ecosystem services than on the biodiversity of our ecosystems,” explains Guiyao Zhou, lead author of the paper and member of the BioFunLab.“These findings show that the sustainability of our ecosystems depends on reducing the number of global drivers of change associated with human activity,” concludes Zhou.

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Journal

Nature Geoscience

DOI

10.1038/s41561-024-01518-x 

Article Title

Resistance of ecosystem services to global change weakened by increasing number of environmental stressors

Article Publication Date

23-Aug-2024

GANDALF STUDIES

People seen as wise share these characteristics, according to a new study

Across different cultures and countries, people perceive the wisest people to be logical and reflective as well as able to consider other people’s feelings and perceptions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Waterloo

What makes someone seem wise? People view wisdom through the lens of applying knowledge and thinking logically as well as considering others’ feelings and perceptions, finds a new study led by University of Waterloo researchers who looked at perceptions of wisdom across 12 countries and five continents. 

Researchers examined the underlying principles guiding who we perceive as wise in political leadership, science, and daily life. Across different cultures, participants’ judgements converged on two dimensions: reflective orientation and socio-emotional awareness. Reflective orientation includes characteristics such as thinking logically, emotion control and application of knowledge. Socio-emotional awareness includes characteristics like care for other’s feelings and attention to social context. 

“To our surprise, the two dimensions emerged across all cultural regions we studied, and both were associated with explicit attribution of wisdom,” said Dr. Maksim Rudnev, a postdoctoral research associate in psychology at Waterloo and lead author. 

The study suggests how people around the world might judge, support and trust leaders, educators and others in positions of influence. One example is how people view U.S. former president Donald Trump and current president Joe Biden. 

“While both dimensions of wisdom work together, people associate wisdom more with the reflective orientation. If someone is viewed as not able to reflect and think logically, then perceptions of them as socio-emotionally competent and moral won’t compensate,” said Dr. Igor Grossmann, the senior corresponding author and the director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo. “You could see it in the immediate aftermath of the infamous Trump-Biden 2024 presidential debate: both candidates did not appear reflective, yet Trump seemed to have won the debate with many viewers perceiving Biden as socio-emotionally well-meaning but cognitively frail.” 

The collaboration among 26 research institutions was coordinated by the Geography of Philosophy consortium and included researchers from North and South Americas (Canada, U.S., Ecuador and Peru), Asia (China, India, Japan, and South Korea), Africa (Morocco and South Africa), and Europe (Slovakia). 

The study involved 2,707 participants from 16 socio-economically and culturally diverse groups. They were prompted to compare 10 individuals, including scientists, politicians, and teachers, in the context of making a difficult choice in a real-life scenario without a clear right or wrong answer. The participants were then asked to rate the degree of wisdom of these individuals and themselves. The data was analyzed to identify underlying dimensions governing perceptions of wisdom among individuals and between groups. 

“Interestingly, our participants considered themselves inferior to most exemplars of wisdom in regard to reflective orientation but were less self-conscious when it comes to socio-emotional characteristics,” Rudnev said.

“Understanding perceptions of wisdom around the world has implications for leadership, education and cross-cultural communication. It is the first step in understanding universal principles in how others perceive wisdom people in different contexts.” 

The study, Dimensions of Wisdom Perception Across Twelve Countries on Five Continents, by Rudnev and Grossmann, among other collaborators is published in Nature Communications. 

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Journal

Nature Communications

 

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine collaborates on $18 million NSF grant to combat future pandemics

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - August 23, 2024 – The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) is proud to be part of a new initiative, supported by an $18 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), aimed at enhancing global pandemic prediction and prevention capabilities. This grant brings together five leading universities and more than 20 researchers, academics, and public health experts to establish the Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies (COMPASS).

The COMPASS Center, headquartered at Virginia Tech’s interdisciplinary Data and Decision Sciences Building, will utilize state-of-the-art labs, data centers, and other advanced facilities to tackle the critical challenge of preventing infectious diseases that threaten communities worldwide. However, the work of this center will extend beyond its walls, transcending institutional and geographic boundaries.

"This collaboration allows us to combine our expertise in regenerative medicine with research from leading institutions, all working toward the shared goal of predicting and preventing future pandemics," said Dr. Anthony Atala, Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "It’s an exciting moment for science and for the global community."

Wake Forest University will join forces with Virginia Tech, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, and Meharry Medical College to address this pressing global health challenge. The collaboration will focus on understanding how pathogens and diseases emerge and spread while training the next generation of scientists to continue this vital work.

The COMPASS Center is part of the broader $72 million NSF Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) program. Initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic, the PIPP program was created to address both immediate and long-term threats from infectious diseases that drastically impact life on Earth. The program is designed to develop predictive models and strategies to manage diseases arising from the complex interplay between humans, animals, and the environment.

About Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine: The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is recognized as an international leader in translating scientific discovery into clinical therapies, with many world firsts, including the development and implantation of the first engineered organ in a patient. Over 500 people at the institute, the largest in the world, work on more than 40 different tissues and organs. A number of the basic principles of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine were first developed at the institute. WFIRM researchers have successfully engineered replacement tissues and organs in all four categories – flat structures, tubular tissues, hollow organs and solid organs – and 17 different applications of cell/tissue therapy technologies, such as skin, urethras, cartilage, bladders, muscle, kidney, and vaginal organs, have been successfully used in human patients. The institute, which is part of Wake Forest University, is located in the Innovation Quarter in downtown Winston-Salem, NC, and is driven by the urgent needs of patients. The institute is making a global difference in regenerative medicine through collaborations with over 500 entities and institutions worldwide, through its government, academic and industry partnerships, its start-up entities, and through major initiatives in breakthrough technologies, such as tissue engineering, cell therapies, diagnostics, drug discovery, biomanufacturing, nanotechnology, gene editing and 3D printing. Learn more at WFIRM.org.

 

Study finds nearly half of U.S. counties have at least one ‘pharmacy desert’

Lack of access can lead to people not taking their medication regularly and having worse health outcomes

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

 

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Timothy Pawlik, MD, senior author of the study and holder of the Urban Meyer III and Shelley Meyer Chair for Cancer Research at the OSUCCC – James. Pawlik also serves as surgeon-in-chief at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and as chair of the Department of Surgery in the Ohio State College of Medicine.

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Credit: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Nearly half of counties in the United States have at least one ‘pharmacy desert’ where there is no retail pharmacy within 10 miles, according to a new study published by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James).

“As pharmacies close, more and more Americans are left without easy access to medications, with disproportionate consequences on certain communities. We found that patients in counties with higher social vulnerabilities and fewer primary care providers were up to 40% more likely to reside in a region with a pharmacy desert,” said Timothy Pawlik, MD, senior author of the study and holder of the Urban Meyer III and Shelley Meyer Chair for Cancer Research at the OSUCCC – James. Pawlik also serves as surgeon-in-chief at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and as chair of the Department of Surgery in the Ohio State College of Medicine.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) defines social vulnerability as “potential negative effects on communities caused by external stresses on human health.”

“These findings highlight how disparities compound the lack of access to basic health care and how it can lead to many people not taking their prescribed medications and having worse health outcomes, especially for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension,” Pawlik added.

Study results were published today in JAMA Network Open.

Methods and Results
Researchers reviewed data on communities located less than 10 miles from the nearest retail pharmacy from the publicly available TelePharm Map. Counties were noted as having a high pharmacy desert density if the number of pharmacy deserts per 1,000 residents was in the 75th percentile. Social vulnerability index (SVI) and healthcare provider data were obtained from the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the Area Health Resource File databases, respectively. The researchers used statistical methods to analyze the relationships between these factors.

The study found almost 46% of the 3,143 counties had at least one pharmacy desert. Counties with a high density of pharmacy deserts had higher social vulnerability and fewer primary care providers. People in these high-density pharmacy desert areas were more likely to face difficulties accessing medications and healthcare services.

Collaborators in this study include Giovanni Catalano, MD, Muhammad Muntazir Mehdi Khan, MBBS, and Odysseas P. Chatzipanagiotou, MD.

 

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.29755 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Pharmacy Accessibility and Social Vulnerability

Article Publication Date

23-Aug-2024

 

To mask or not to mask: That is still the question

‘Subtle nature of new evidence on masking means leadership decision-making will be really hard’

Northwestern University

CHICAGO --- Despite the association between mask mandates/mask wearing and reduced death rates during the pandemic, masking remains controversial and highly politicized, with many people still asking, “do masks work, and should they be recommended?”

In an editorial about the use of surgical face masks in public, published today, Aug. 23, in The BMJ, Northwestern Medicine internal medicine experts Drs. Jeffrey Linder and Rachel Amdur make the case for masking but acknowledge it’s not a cut-and-dried topic. 

The editorial is in response to recent findings from a Norwegian study published in The BMJ, which found modest benefits from masking. 

Media interested in speaking to the experts should contact Kristin Samuelson at ksamuelson@northwestern.edu.

The experts can speak about to media about:

• Why mixed evidence on masking makes it difficult for public health officials to craft masking guidelines
• The merits of masking and when mask mandates make sense
• Who should mask and when
• What could happen if future, more dangerous variants emerge or future pandemics occur
• The medical implications of mask bans, such as the recently signed law in Nassau County, New York

“The way masks work is more complicated than simply blocking the transmission of infectious droplets or virus between people,” said Linder, chief of general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The mixed, subtle nature of the evidence means leadership decision-making is still going to be really hard.”

“This recent study shows that masking can lead to reduction in transmission, but there are likely behaviors (i.e. avoiding crowds, isolating when ill) that also contribute to reduced transmission,” said Amdur, assistant professor of medicine (general internal medicine) at Feinberg. “Public health officials would need to consider multiple measures, including mask mandates, if more dangerous variants emerge or in the case of future pandemics.”

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Journal

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj.q1843 

Article Title

Surgical face masks to prevent respiratory symptoms

 

Socioeconomics shape children’s connection to nature more than where they live

Lund University

The income and education levels of a child’s environment determine their relationship to nature, not whether they live in a city or the countryside. This is the finding of a new study conducted by researchers at Lund University, Sweden. The results run counter to the assumption that growing up in the countryside automatically increases our connection to nature, and yet the study also shows that nature close to home increases children’s well-being.

There is a general concern that, with urbanisation, people have lost contact with nature. According to research, less contact means lower engagement with nature and poorer health outcomes as people spend less time outdoors. How we might strengthen or rediscover our connection to nature is therefore a topical question. This is particularly important for children, partly because of the impact on their health, but also because it is in childhood that our relationships with nature are formed.

The researchers wanted to study the relationships urban and rural schoolchildren have to nature and whether these vary with socioeconomic status. They also wanted to look into whether feeding birds could serve as a point of contact with wildlife, potentially strengthening children's knowledge of and feeling for nature, and by extension, improving their sense of well-being.

“Contrary to expectations, we have shown that children’s relationships with nature are not determined by whether they grow up in the countryside or in the city. Instead, socioeconomic factors play a decisive role. For example, children in areas with higher levels of education generally had better species knowledge, which in turn was linked to more positive attitudes towards wildlife. Higher incomes are linked to children participating more in nature-based activities, which also leads to a better connection to nature. This was true regardless of whether the children lived in a city centre or in the countryside,” says Dr Johan Kjellberg Jensen, researcher at Lund University, who led the study.

The study did find some differences between urban and rural children, however.

“It appears that children use natural environments in different ways, but this does not affect their attitudes towards nature in general. We could also see that children who have more direct access to nature close to home report a higher self-perceived sense of well-being. This shows how important contact with nature really is,” Dr Jensen says.

What was the outcome of the bird feeding project? The researchers from Lund found that children’s species knowledge increased, but they saw no effect on well-being or attitudes to nature.

“That said, we saw a very wide variation in results between schools, which points to the important role of teachers and schools in projects like this. We already know that our contact with nature is shaped through social interactions and that adults have considerable responsibility in acting as role models for how children relate to nature,” says Dr Johan Kjellberg Jensen, who also points out that this does not necessarily have to fall to teachers, who already have considerable responsibilities.

Another key finding of the study was that children with little access to nature close to home benefited most from the bird feeding project.

“This highlights the importance of green and equitable housing policies and urban planning. If we want future generations to have positive relationships with nature, enjoying all the health benefits that come with that, we may need targeted projects to increase children's contact with nature, both in urban and rural settings. This is particularly important in areas of low socioeconomic levels and little nature near residential housing,” Dr Johan Kjellberg Jensen concludes.

 

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Journal

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.10702 

Article Title

Reconnecting children to nature: The efficacy of a wildlife intervention depends on local nature and socio-economic context, but not on urbanisation

 

DRI’s AWE+ Summit tackles wildfire resilience and recovery

Importance of utilities in the safety and security of communities highlighted

Desert Research Institute

 

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DRI President, Dr. Kumud Acharya, addresses the AWE+ 2024 audience at the Encore Las Vegas

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Credit: DRI

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — DRI, one of our nation’s leading applied environmental research institutes, together with the DRI Foundation, this week held its inaugural AWE+ Summit -Wildfire Recovery and Resilience: Working Across Silos to Drive Solutions. The summit is a call-to-action for communities to implement measures that support resilience and human adaptability to devastating wildfire events. 

Nationally recognized scientific leaders discussed challenges, progress, and hope through actions that will lead to solutions. Speakers included: 

• President of the National Academy of Sciences Dr. Marcia McNutt 

• DRI Research Professor and Director of the Western Regional Climate Center Dr. Tim Brown 

• National Fire Protection Association, Wildlife Division Director Michele Steinberg 

• Former Fire Chief at CAL FIRE and currently Director of Emergency Management at SDG&E Thom Porter 

• Retired Social Scientist U.S. Forest Service Dr. Sarah McCaffrey 

• Emeritus Professor at Arizona State University Dr. Stephen Pyne 

• Director, Climate and Energy Policy Program, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment    Dr. Michael Wara 

• Former President of California Public Utilities Commission Marybel Batjer 

• Co-Director of the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, and Tribes and Climate Change Program Nikki Cooley 

• Executives from NV Energy including CEO Doug Cannon and Vice President of Electric Delivery and Natural Disaster Protection Jesse Murray.  

Discussion panels included Reducing Loss and Mitigating Risk for Utilities and Infrastructure, Insurance: Growing Risks and Shaping Transformative Policy Decisions, and Building Communities to Accelerate Resilience and Recovery. 

A key topic of discussion was the important role of utilities in the safety and security of communities. Power utilities may be shut down proactively when extreme wildfire conditions exist to prevent wildfires, and power grids are at risk during a wildfire event. Power grids provide critical services beyond HVAC temperature control and refrigeration. Vital medical equipment, security services, and the ability to pump water are also impacted by utility disruptions.  

"We appreciated being able to share the critical role utilities like NV Energy plays in preventing natural disasters, including wildfires. Although we've been formally engaged in this work for five years, we continue to learn and adjust our natural disaster protection plan based on best practices and new innovative ideas to protect our infrastructure and our communities," said NV Energy's Vice President of Natural Disaster Protection and Electric Delivery Jesse Murray. "DRI's inaugural AWE+ Summit brought together innovative thinkers and leaders to challenge the norms and think critically about the way we identify and define risk." 

“AWE+ is a call-to-action for communities to implement measures that support resilience and human adaptability to devastating wildfire events,” said DRI President Kumud Acharya. “Bringing together a cross-section of industry, government, and non-government leaders to grapple with difficult questions, share ideas, and form collaborative relationships provides a unique opportunity to identify and address areas of need in their communities, enabling better understanding and an opportunity to drive solutions.” 

AWE+ provides an opportunity for participants to collaborate on actionable wildfire strategies for cultivating measures of resilience in their communities.  

“Beyond the fire itself, the summit addressed fire fighter safety, air pollution, financial impacts, and the lasting effects and disruptions to livelihoods,” said DRI Foundation Chair Kristin McMillan Porter. “These are tough issues, and it’s necessary to drive change in policies, practices, technologies, and behaviors,”  

 

# # # 

 

About Desert Research Institute (DRI) 
We are Nevada’s non-profit research institute, founded in 1959 to empower experts to focus on science that matters. We work with communities across the state — and the world — to address their most pressing scientific questions. We’re proud that our scientists continuously produce solutions that better human and environmental health.  

Scientists at DRI are encouraged to follow their research interests across the traditional boundaries of scientific fields, collaborating across DRI and with scientists worldwide. All faculty support their own research through grants, bringing in nearly $5 to the Nevada economy for every $1 of state funds received. With more than 600 scientists, engineers, students, and staff across our Reno and Las Vegas campuses, we conducted more than $47 million in sponsored research focused on improving peoples’ lives in 2023 alone. 

At DRI, science isn’t merely academic — it’s the key to future-proofing our communities and building a better world. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu. 

About DRI Foundation: 
Established in 1982, the DRI Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that is led by a committed and passionate Board of Trustees. The trustees of the DRI Foundation build trustworthy relationships and create innovative programs to showcase the impact of DRI, attract followers, supporters and donors, and expand the fundraising capacity of DRI. 

 

Kids now see fewer TV ads for unhealthy food and drinks, but exposure remains high

University of Illinois Chicago

Children’s exposure to food and drink ads during kids’ TV shows has dropped substantially since food and beverage makers pledged to stop advertising unhealthy fare during children’s TV shows. Yet, according to research from the University of Illinois Chicago, children under 12 still see more than 1,000 food-related ads a year, most of them for unhealthy products. 

For the study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed television ratings and advertising data from 2013 through 2022. The study authors found that a dramatic decline in food and drink advertisements during kids’ shows did not fully eliminate children’s exposure to ads for products high in saturated fat, trans fat, total sugars and sodium.  

“Kids are still seeing about a thousand ads per year on other programs, and the majority of ads that kids see are still for unhealthy products,” said Lisa Powell, distinguished professor and director of health policy and administration in the UIC School of Public Health. “This is important as the World Health Organization has recognized that reducing children’s exposure to unhealthy food and beverage advertisements is a key strategy for improving both children’s diets and health.” 

In 2006, a group of food, beverage and restaurant companies pledged to only advertise healthy products on children’s television programming, defined as shows where at least 35% of viewers are under the age of 12. Later revisions in 2014 and 2020 established nutritional criteria for what qualifies as unhealthy and therefore should not be advertised to young audiences. 

Using television ratings data from The Nielsen Company, UIC researchers found that following changes in companies’ self-regulation, the number of general food and beverage commercials seen during children’s programs fell by over 95%. However, they found that 60% of the remaining food and beverage ads were still for unhealthy products. 

And overall, kids under the age of 12 still saw more than 1,000 food-related advertisements per year, on average. Because of the steep decline in food and beverage ads during children’s shows, as much as 90% of this exposure came from watching shows with lower child-audience shares.  

That shift suggests that regulations against advertising unhealthy food and beverages during hours when children are likely to watch television would be more effective than focusing restrictions specifically on children’s shows, the authors write. 

The researchers also found a persistent racial difference in exposure to food-related advertisements. While the number of these ads seen by both Black and white children declined from 2013 to 2022, Black children saw significantly more advertisements than their white counterparts, due in part to more time spent watching television. 

In general, children’s time watching television has declined, indicating the need for research on their exposure to advertising on other media. Powell’s group is in the early stages of launching a new project to measure the ads children encounter through social media platforms and digital entertainment. 

“We know that the media kids consume is changing. They’re spending more time on their mobile devices, whether it be a tablet or a phone, and they’re seeing a lot of ads,” Powell said. “We really need to understand where else the food companies target kids and what they’re seeing.” 

In addition to Powell, UIC co-authors include Julien Leider, Rebecca Schermbeck and Aline Vandenbroeck, along with University of Connecticut co-author Jennifer Harris. The study was supported by grants from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Written by Rob Mitchum

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.29671 

Article Title

Trends in Children’s Exposure to Food and Beverage Advertising on Television

Article Publication Date

22-Aug-2024

 

Researcher finds sound progress in babies’ speech development

University of Texas at Dallas

The sounds babies make in their first year of life may be less random than previously believed, according to a language development researcher from The University of Texas at Dallas.

Dr. Pumpki Lei Su, an assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, is co-lead author on two recent articles in which researchers examined the sounds babies make. The results suggest that children in their first year are more active than previously thought in their acquisition of speech.

“We observed in these studies that infant vocalizations are not produced randomly; they form a pattern, producing three categories of sounds in clusters,” said Su, who also directs the Language Interaction and Language Acquisition in Children Lab (LILAC Lab) at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders. “The home recordings we analyzed included times when adults were interacting with their child and when children were on their own, showing that children explore their vocal capabilities with or without language input from an adult.”

One study, published May 29 in PLOS ONE, focused on typically developing infants, and the other, published Feb. 25 in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, focused on infants who later received a confirmed diagnosis of autism. The researchers documented how children “play” vocally, learning what actions produce certain sounds and then repeating that process.

Within the past 40 to 50 years, scientists have realized that vocalizations before a child’s first word are meaningful precursors for speech and can be broken into sequential stages of cooing, vocal play and babbling. Su’s team studied a dataset of all-day home recordings from more than 300 children amassed by the Marcus Autism Center, a subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and coded by senior author Dr. D. Kimbrough Oller’s team at The University of Memphis.

“Parents tell us that sometimes a baby will just scream or make low-frequency sounds for a really long period. But it’s never been studied empirically,” Su said. “With access to a huge dataset from hundreds of children during the first 12 months of their lives, we set out to quantitatively document how babies explore and cluster patterns as they practice different sound categories.”

Sound types are characterized by pitch and wave frequency as squeals, growls or vowellike sounds. The PLOS ONE study used more than 15,000 recordings from 130 typically developing children in the dataset. Infants showed significant clustering patterns: 40% of recordings showed significantly more squeals than expected by chance, and 39% showed clustered growls. Clustering was common at every age, with the highest rates occurring after 5 months of age.

“Of the 130 infants, 87% showed at least one age at which their recordings showed significant squeal clustering and at least one age with significant growl clustering,” Su said. “There was not a single infant who, on evaluation of all the available recordings, showed neither significant squeal nor growl clustering.”

Su said the study represents the first large-scale empirical study investigating the nonrandom occurrence of the three main sound types in infancy.

In the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders article, Su and her colleagues demonstrated that this exploration behavior also occurs during the first year in children who are later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

“Whether or not a child is eventually diagnosed with autism, they are clustering sounds within one vocal category at a time,” Su said. “While one cannot rule out the possibility that some patterns may be mimicry, these are not just imitations; they are doing this with and without the presence of a parent, even in the first month of life. This process of learning to produce sounds is more endogenous, more spontaneous than previously understood.

“We tend to think babies are passive recipients of input. And certainly, parents are their best teachers. But at the same time, they’re doing a lot of things on their own.”

Su has received a three-year grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) to study parents’ use of “parentese” — or baby talk — with autistic children. Parentese is an exaggerated style of speech often containing high-pitched elongated words and singsong diction.

Parentese is portrayed in the literature as a type of optimal input for typically developing children, who tend to pay better attention and respond to it more than they do to normal speech. It also helps children learn to segment words. But is it also ideal for autistic children?

“One hypothesis of why parentese works is that it encourages social interaction by being very animated,” Su said. “Autistic children have differences in social communication and responses to sensory stimuli. Would they also find parentese engaging? Could it be too loud or extreme? This new grant will allow me to examine whether parentese facilitates word learning for autistic children compared to a more standard adult-directed register.”

Other researchers who contributed to both articles include co-lead author Dr. Hyunjoo Yoo of The University of Alabama; Dr. Edina Bene from The University of Memphis; Dr. Helen Long of Case Western Reserve University; and Dr. Gordon Ramsay from the Emory University School of Medicine. Additional researchers from the Marcus Autism Center contributed to the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders study.

The research was funded by grants from the NIDCD (R01DC015108) and the National Institute of Mental Health (P50MH100029), both components of the National Institutes of Health.

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Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0299140 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Infant vocal category exploration as a foundation for speech development

 

Two epicenters led to Japan’s violent Noto earthquake on New Year's Day

A rare “dual-initiation” mechanism ruptured a barrier on the fault during the Jan. 1 shaker

University of California - Los Angeles

Key takeaways

• The 7.5- magnitude earthquake beneath Japan’s Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024, occurred when a “dual-initiation mechanism” applied enough energy from two different locations to break through a fault barrier – an area that locks two sides of a fault in place and absorbs the energy of fault movement, slowing it down or stopping it altogether.
• An international team of researchers led by UCLA graduate student Liuwei Xu, professor Lingsen Meng and UC Santa Barbara’s Chen Ji analyzed a preceding seismic swarm and identified a previously unknown barrier in the region of the swarm.
• The team’s data collection methods could aid future research into the conditions and probabilities of dual-initiation earthquakes.

The first seven months of 2024 have been so eventful, it’s easy to forget that the year started off with a magnitude 7.5 earthquake centered beneath Japan’s Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day. The earthquake killed more than 280 people and damaged more than 83,000 homes.

Geologists have now discovered that the earthquake began almost simultaneously at two different points on the fault, allowing the seismic rupture to encircle and break through a resistant area on the fault known as a barrier. This rare “dual-initiation” mechanism applied intense pressure from both sides of the barrier, leading to the powerful release of energy and substantial ground shaking across the Noto Peninsula.

The Noto earthquake was preceded by intense seismic swarms, which are sequences of many small earthquakes that can sometimes lead to a larger, catastrophic event. By using advanced seismic and geodetic technologies, the research team meticulously analyzed the movements within the Earth during this swarm that led to the earthquake.

The study, published in the journal Science, offers insight into the role of fault barriers, also known as asperities, in earthquake genesis, and will help improve seismic risk assessments and future earthquake forecasting.

Earthquakes happen when fractures in the Earth’s crust, known as faults, allow blocks of rocks on either side of the fault to move past each other. This movement is localized, not continuous along the fault line, because the line is not even or smooth, which dissipates energy and eventually stops the movement.

A barrier is a rough area that locks the two sides of a fault in place. Barriers absorb the energy of fault movement, slowing it down or stopping it altogether. But there’s only so much energy the barrier can absorb, and under the right conditions, the pent-up energy causes it to break violently, leading to strong shaking. A swarm of small earthquakes might not be enough to break a barrier, but if much stronger subsequent movement occurs on the fault, the barrier’s rupture will release all that stored-up energy.

Led by Lingsen Meng, a UCLA associate professor of earth, planetary and space sciences, UCLA graduate student Liuwei Xu and UC Santa Barbara geophysics professor Chen Ji, an international team of researchers from the United States, France, China and Japan analyzed geospatial data and recordings of seismic waves to understand the relationships between the swarm of smaller tremors and the larger earthquake that followed them. They identified a previously unknown barrier in the region of the swarm.

To their surprise, the New Year’s Day earthquake began almost simultaneously in two separate locations on the fault. Energy from each location moved toward the barrier, causing a violent rupture and extremely strong shaking.

“The earthquake started in two places and circled together,” Meng said. “The first one started waves that traveled fast and triggered a different epicenter. Then both parts propagated outward together and met in middle, where the barrier was, and broke it.”

The mechanics resemble bending a pencil on both ends until it snaps in the middle.

The finding was surprising because although dual initiation, as the process is known, has been seen in simulations, it has been much harder to observe in nature. Dual-initiation mechanisms require just the right conditions, which can be set in the lab but are less predictable in the real world.

“We were able to observe it because Japan has very good seismic monitoring stations and we also used GPS and satellite radar data. We grabbed all the data we could find! It’s only through all of this data together that we got really good resolution on this fault and could get into these fine details,” Meng said.

The vast majority of earthquakes don’t have anywhere near this level of data collected, so it’s possible that earthquakes with dual-initiation mechanisms are more common than geologists think.

“It could be that through better imaging and resolution, we’ll identify more like this in the future,” Meng said.

Earthquakes with dual epicenters have a higher risk for stronger shaking because there is stronger movement. Meng’s group plans to consider future scenarios to learn about the conditions and probabilities of these earthquakes.

"Our findings emphasize the complex nature of earthquake initiation and the critical conditions that can lead to large-scale seismic events," Meng said. "Understanding these processes is vital for improving our ability to predict and mitigate the impacts of future earthquakes."

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Journal

Science