Rein tension may affect horse behavior

University of Helsinki

 

image: 

Rein tension can be measured with a sensor attached between the bit and the rein. 

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Credit: Nina Mäki-Kihniä

In a pilot study carried out at the University of Helsinki, high rein tension was found to be associated with trotters opening their mouths, which indicates pain or discomfort in the mouth.

Rein tension denotes the force employed by the rider or driver through the reins. It can be measured with a sensor attached between the bit and the rein.

“Our group has previously investigated mouth injuries in trotters, and we found that moderate and severe injuries were associated with certain bit types. It is possible that drivers ended up using those bit types due to problems experienced with lighter rein cues. This is why we wanted to explore rein tension,” says researcher and veterinarian Kati Tuomola from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Helsinki.

Eight horses and their drivers were recruited for the study. With the drivers driving their horses on a racetrack at walk and trot, the researchers measured rein tension and recorded video of the horses’ behaviour from a moving vehicle. Each horse was equipped with a regular single-jointed bit. Subsequently, one researcher coded the horse's behaviour from the videos in accordance with a predetermined catalogue of behaviours. The coder was unaware of any findings associated with rein tension and mouth injuries among these horses

None of the horses had mouth injuries before the driving. After the drive, three horses had moderate bruises in their mouths.  Their median rein tension was numerically higher (approximately 3.5 kg per rein) than that in horses without injuries (approximately 2 kg per rein), and they showed longer periods of rushed walk.  

The median rein tension for a single rein varied between 0.5 kg and 3.7 kg, with the highest tension varying between 11 kg and 24 kg. According to the researchers, these rein tensions can be considered rather high, as prior studies have shown that horses avoid tension exceeding 0.6–1 kg. To investigate behavioural differences during different rein tensions, five 30-second periods were visually selected from the rein tension graphs of all horses, representing samples of tension ranging from low to high. During low rein tension, the horses mainly walked and mostly kept their mouths closed. During periods of higher rein tension, the horses mainly trotted either slowly or quickly, keeping their mouths open for longer periods of time.

“Horse trainers should monitor the horse’s mouth behaviour, arousal state and ability to walk calmly, and adjust the training accordingly. The horse keeping its mouth widely or repeatedly open may indicate evasive behaviour, meaning discomfort or pain in the mouth. In addition, rushed walking may indicate high arousal, which in turn can increase the risk of mouth injuries,” says Tuomola, the article’s lead author.

In a pilot study carried out at the University of Helsinki, high rein tension was found to be associated with trotters opening their mouths, which indicates pain or discomfort in the mouth.

Rein tension denotes the force employed by the rider or driver through the reins. It can be measured with a sensor attached between the bit and the rein.

“Our group has previously investigated mouth injuries in trotters, and we found that moderate and severe injuries were associated with certain bit types. It is possible that drivers ended up using those bit types due to problems experienced with lighter rein cues. This is why we wanted to explore rein tension,” says researcher and veterinarian Kati Tuomola from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Helsinki.

Eight horses and their drivers were recruited for the study. With the drivers driving their horses on a racetrack at walk and trot, the researchers measured rein tension and recorded video of the horses’ behaviour from a moving vehicle. Each horse was equipped with a regular single-jointed bit. Subsequently, one researcher coded the horse's behaviour from the videos in accordance with a predetermined catalogue of behaviours. The coder was unaware of any findings associated with rein tension and mouth injuries among these horses

None of the horses had mouth injuries before the driving. After the drive, three horses had moderate bruises in their mouths.  Their median rein tension was numerically higher (approximately 3.5 kg per rein) than that in horses without injuries (approximately 2 kg per rein), and they showed longer periods of rushed walk.  

The median rein tension for a single rein varied between 0.5 kg and 3.7 kg, with the highest tension varying between 11 kg and 24 kg. According to the researchers, these rein tensions can be considered rather high, as prior studies have shown that horses avoid tension exceeding 0.6–1 kg. To investigate behavioural differences during different rein tensions, five 30-second periods were visually selected from the rein tension graphs of all horses, representing samples of tension ranging from low to high. During low rein tension, the horses mainly walked and mostly kept their mouths closed. During periods of higher rein tension, the horses mainly trotted either slowly or quickly, keeping their mouths open for longer periods of time.

“Horse trainers should monitor the horse’s mouth behaviour, arousal state and ability to walk calmly, and adjust the training accordingly. The horse keeping its mouth widely or repeatedly open may indicate evasive behaviour, meaning discomfort or pain in the mouth. In addition, rushed walking may indicate high arousal, which in turn can increase the risk of mouth injuries,” says Tuomola, the article’s lead author.

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Journal

Applied Animal Behaviour Science

DOI

10.1016/J.APPLANIM.2024.106356 

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Is rein tension associated with horse behaviour and mouth injuries in harness racing trotters? – Pilot study 

Mathematicians model a puzzling breakdown in cooperative behaviour

University of British Columbia

 

image: 

A model developed by evolutionary mathematicians in Canada and Europe shows that as cooperation becomes easier, it can unexpectedly break down. The researchers at the University of British Columbia and Hungarian Research Network used computational spatial models to arrange individuals from the two species on separate lattices facing one another.

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Credit: Christoph Hauert and György Szabó

Darwin was puzzled by cooperation in nature—it ran directly against natural selection and the notion of survival of the fittest. But over the past decades, evolutionary mathematicians have used game theory to better understand why mutual cooperation persists when evolution should favour self-serving cheaters. 
 
At a basic level, cooperation flourishes when the costs to cooperation are low or the benefits large. When cooperation becomes too costly, it disappears—at least in the realm of pure mathematics. Symbiotic relationships between species—like those between pollinators and plants–are more complex, but follow similar patterns.

But new modelling published today in PNAS Nexus adds a wrinkle to that theory, indicating that cooperative behaviour between species may break down in situations where, theoretically at least, it should flourish. 

“As we began to improve the conditions for cooperation in our model, the frequency of mutually beneficial behaviour in both species increases, as expected,” says Dr. Christoph Hauert, a mathematician at the University of British Columbia who studies evolutionary dynamics. 

“But as the frequency of cooperation in our simulation gets higher—closer to 50 per cent—suddenly there's a split. More cooperators pool in one species and fewer in the other—and this asymmetry continues to get stronger as the conditions for cooperation get more benign.”

While this ‘symmetry breaking of cooperation’ between two populations has been modelled by mathematicians before, this is the first model that enables individuals in each group to interact and join forces in a more natural way. 

Dr. Hauert and colleague Dr. György Szabó from the Hungarian Research Network used computational spatial models to arrange individuals from the two species on separate lattices facing one another. This enables cooperators to form clusters and reduce their exposure to (and exploitation by) cheaters by more frequently interacting with other cooperators.

“Because we chose symmetric interactions, the level of cooperation is the same in both populations,” says Dr. Hauert. “Clusters can still form and protect cooperators but now they need to be synchronized across lattices because that’s where the interactions occur.”

"The odd symmetry breaking in cooperation shows parallels to phase transitions in magnetic materials and highlights the success of approaches developed in statistical and solid state physics,” says Dr. Szabó. 

"At the same time the model sheds light on spikes in dramatic changes in behaviour that can significantly affect the interactions in complex living systems." 

The research was supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Mutualisms: cooperation between species
A model developed by evolutionary mathematicians in Canada and Europe shows that as cooperation becomes easier, it can unexpectedly break down. Watch a simulation of spatial interactions of cooperators and defectors for each species under different scenarios. 

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Journal

PNAS Nexus

DOI

10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae326 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Spontaneous symmetry breaking of cooperation between species

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2024

Disclaimer: A

Machine learning technique predicts likely accounting fraud across supply chains

Tsinghua University Press

 

image: 

Overview of the FraudGCN approach. The researchers constructed three types of ‘sub-graphs’ depending on the type of relationships between companies: with accounting firms; along supply chains; and throughout an industry. The training direction of the machine learning model is depicted by red arrows. Grey circles (‘nodes’) represent fraudulent firms and white circles represent normal firms

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Credit: Big Data Mining and Analytics, Tsinghua University Press

As the perpetrators of accounting fraud become ever more sophisticated in their techniques, fraud detection needs to step up its game. Thankfully, a group of researchers have devised a new machine learning ‘detective’ that is able to analyze not just fraud at a single firm, but predict likely fraud across whole supply chains and industries.

 

A paper describing the team’s approach was published in the journal Big Data Mining and Analytics on August 28.

 

Financial statement fraud, or, more commonly, accounting fraud may be a less frequent form of corporate fraud, but it is by far the costliest crime in the world. Perhaps the most famous cases of white-collar crime are at base such accounting fraud, when an enterprise manipulates the figures on its financial statements or other valuation date in order to make it appear more profitable than it is.

 

The collapse of US energy firm Enron, the largest bankruptcy in US history, came from their cooking of the books in collusion with their accounting firm. In 2008, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy due to insolvency, having concealed approximately $50 billion in debt through balance sheet fraud. In the late 2010s, American investment advisor Bernie Madoff managed to cheat clients out of a whopping $65 billion.

 

It is not only investors who are hurt by financial statement fraud. Hundreds of thousands of jobs can be lost, communities devastated, and, in the most extreme cases, through knock-on effects, it can threaten the stability of national economies.

 

Despite the threat that such fraud poses, it remains very hard for authorities to catch. Red flags such as a sudden surge in a company’s performance just before the end of a reporting period, or soaring sales growth while competing firms’ sales remain sluggish could turn out to be just the result of good luck or a superior product. And so for decades forensic auditors have used statistical analysis to spot manipulation.

 

But such efforts are enormously labor intensive and require trawling through huge volumes of data. As a result, authorities tend to depend upon random audits, but this means that most firms most of the time go unchecked.

 

“Making matters even worse, in recent years, fraudsters have become increasingly sophisticated in the techniques they deploy,” said Chenxu Wang, lead author of the paper and an associate professor with the School of Software Engineering and the Key Lab of Intelligent Networks and Network Security at Xi’an Jiaotong University. “It’s an unending, mathematical arms race between the authorities and the fraudsters.”

 

“What is needed is an effective and accurate algorithm to automatically identify accounting fraud, and leave the days of random auditing behind,” said Mengqin Wang, also of Xi’an Jiaotong University.

 

A number of mathematicians and computer scientists specializing in the topic have achieved some success in this regard by the use of machine learning. But up to now, this approach has only been applied to individual firms.

 

“This overlooks the often-intricate relationships between different firms that may also offer up indicators of fraud,” said Yi Long, another team member, but from Shenzhen Finance Institute, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. “An accounting firm that colludes in financial statement fraud with one company has an increased likelihood of engaging in fraudulent activities with other companies.”

 

And it is not just between accounting firms and their clients where the fraudulent relationships are propagated. Accounting fraud practices can spread up and down supply chains, or, be perpetuated horizontally across industries.

 

But to incorporate data beyond a single firm means a commensurate increase in the computational expense. Moreover, existing machine-learning approaches suffer from a severe imbalance in the samples used to train the computer model how to classify something as fraudulent because normal, non-fraudulent samples significantly outnumber actual fraud cases. This imbalance can lead to biased computer models that prioritize the majority “class,” the non-fraudulent cases, making it difficult to accurately detect fraudulent activities.

 

To overcome all of these challenges, the research team developed a machine-learning technique combined with mathematical methods taken from the realm of graph theory.

 

The cutting-edge artificial intelligence financial-fraud ‘detective’ they devised involves a “graph,” a structure that mathematically represents the connections or relations (described as “edges”) between different companies, individuals and products (described as “nodes”). And multi-relational graphs allow for multiple types of edges, allowing the representation of diverse relationships between nodes, and offer a more comprehensive representation of the complexity of connections among them.

 

And the detective itself, called “FraudGCN” is a graph convolutional network, or GCN, a type of neural network designed to operate on graph-structured data. Unlike traditional neural networks that operate on grid-like data such as images, GCNs can operate on data represented as graphs.

 

FraudGCN itself constructs a multi-relational graph representing various industry connections, supply chain links, and shared accounting firm auditing practices, and by doing so capture rich information arising from these relationships, in particular details uncovered in particular ‘neighborhoods’ of nodes in the graphs. By aggregating such information, FraudGCN not only enhances the ability to identify patterns indicative of existing likely fraudulent activities, but also predict where they are likely to arise.

 

Finally, unlike previous efforts at machine-learning assisted fraud detection, FraudGCN is able to handle addition of new nodes without the need for the model to be retrained, enhancing its adaptability and scalability.

 

The team trialled FraudGCN on a real-world dataset from Chinese listed companies to assess its performance, and found that it beats state-of-the-art approaches by between 3.15% and 3.86%.

 

Moving forward, the team hope to develop their approach to be able to deal with medium-sized enterprises, not just larger ones.

 

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About Big Data Mining and Analytics

Big Data Mining and Analytics (Published by Tsinghua University Press) discovers hidden patterns, correlations, insights and knowledge through mining and analyzing large amounts of data obtained from various applications. It addresses the most innovative developments, research issues and solutions in big data research and their applications. Big Data Mining and Analytics is indexed and abstracted in ESCI, EI, Scopus, DBLP Computer Science, Google Scholar, INSPEC, CSCD, DOAJ, CNKI, etc.

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

Big Data Mining and Analytics

DOI

10.26599/BDMA.2024.9020013 

Article Title

Multi-Relational Graph Representation Learning for Financial Statement Fraud Detection

Article Publication Date

28-Aug-2024

GUN CRAZY AMERIKA

One minute to save lives: Teaming up with pediatricians to secure firearms

‘Nudges’ plus a little extra staff support help pediatricians deliver secure gun storage program

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Northwestern University

 

video: 

B-roll of Princicpal investigator Rinad Beidas in her office at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. 

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Credit: Northwestern University

• 
  
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• Large study included 47,307 well-child visits at 30 clinics in Michigan and Colorado
• Almost 50% of clinicians receiving a prompt plus added support delivered a secure firearm storage program during well visits versus just 22% of doctors receiving prompt only
• Firearm-related injuries are the leading cause of death for young people in the U.S. 
• ‘We can save lives’ with a brief program to support parents in secure storage

CHICAGO --- If it takes a pediatrician less than one minute per visit to talk to parents about how to securely store their firearms and offer a free cable lock, why do only 2% of doctors report routinely doing so?

Turns out, they might just need a ‘nudge’ and a little extra support. 

In the largest study of its kind, scientists at Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Henry Ford Health and Kaiser Permanente Colorado tested whether pediatricians were more likely to have these conversations and offer a free cable lock — via an evidence-based program called S.A.F.E. Firearm — if they received a “Nudge” or a “Nudge+.” 

The “Nudge” consisted of a prompt in the clinician’s electronic health record (EHR) system to remind them to have the conversation with parents during the well visit. In the “Nudge+” scenario, clinicians received this reminder via the EHR system and received support from staff employed by their health system who helped problem solve logistics such as where to store hundreds of cable locks or how to navigate conversations with caregivers.

“We know we can save lives and this study offers insights on how to scale this approach nationally,” said principal investigator Rinad Beidas, chair of the department of medical social sciences and the Ralph Seal Paffenbarger professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This is a call to action.”

The study included 47,307 well-child visits of children ages 5 to 17 at 30 clinics in Michigan and Colorado. In the Nudge group, 22% of pediatricians delivered the S.A.F.E. Firearm program whereas 49% of pediatricians in the Nudge+ group delivered the program — a significant difference. 

“Our clinical staff was very supportive of the program, especially when additional guidance was available,” said Brian Ahmedani, director of Henry Ford Health’s Center for Health Policy & Health Services Research. “Conversations around firearms can be uncomfortable. The support staff helped navigate how and when to introduce the topic and at what point to offer the cable lock.”

The findings will be published Sept. 3 in JAMA Pediatrics. 

On average, each “Nudge+” program required only 8.7 hours of additional support per clinic over the year.

“We would have expected that we’d need far more resources for that kind of effect, but with less than an hour per month per clinic, it’s something that could be done in the real world without a lot of resources,” Beidas said. 

One in three U.S. homes have a firearm

About one-third of U.S. children live in homes with firearms, and of these households, 43% contain at least one unlocked firearm. Previous research has shown individuals who have a conversation with their doctor about the importance of secure storage combined with the offer of a free cable lock were more likely to report improving their safe gun-storage practice.

Securely storing guns can reduce firearm-related injuries, which is the leading cause of death for young people in the U.S. In June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy declared America’s firearm violence a public health crisis. In his advisory, Murthy calls out the need to conduct more implementation research to improve effectiveness of prevention strategies.

“Our study is the largest of such implementation trials, and I’m thrilled Dr. Murthy is spotlighting this type of research,” said Beidas, an internationally recognized leader in the field of implementation science. Her research focuses on designing, implementing and evaluating strategies to make it easier for clinicians, leaders and organizations to improve the quality and equity of health care.

Why don’t more pediatricians counsel on secure firearm storage?

There are numerous reasons why so few pediatricians discuss secure firearm storage with parents, Beidas said. Some are time-related or how comfortable the doctors are talking about it, whether it’s built into the workflow and if it is supported by leadership. But it’s also a divisive topic, and doctors and nurses find people are not comfortable sharing if they have a gun at home, Beidas said.  

“So, our goal is to have pediatricians counsel everyone,” she said, explaining the program is for all kids — not just those at particular risk, such as having depression or being exposed to domestic violence. “Our goal is to help people be as safe as they can as often as they can, and our study demonstrates that this can be done in a non-political manner.” 

Next up: Expanding nationally

This study was conducted in only two states, but Beidas said her goal is to expand the effort nationally. First, she’d like to empirically show this type of national effort reduces firearm injury and mortality in young people. Second, she plans to expand this work beyond pediatric primary care to other health care settings. 

“Our marker of effectiveness for this study was whether the clinicians did the program, but that’s not the final step of the cascade,” Beidas said. “We’ll have future papers that explore if the parents actually changed their firearm storage behavior.” 

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Journal

JAMA Pediatrics

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2024

Study suggests gun-free zones do not 

attract mass shootings

University of California - Davis Health

Gun-free zones have often been blamed for making schools, malls and other public areas more attractive to shooters; however, there have been no quantitative studies examining those claims. Now, in a first of its kind study published in The Lancet Regional Health Americas, researchers at UC Davis Health and other institutions have shown that gun-free zones may, in fact, reduce the risk of mass shootings.

"Our most significant finding is that gun-free zones don't attract active shooters,” said the study’s first author, Paul Reeping, an injury epidemiologist and postdoctoral scholar at the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis. “The study actually shows that gun-free zones have a preventive effect. The biggest takeaway is that the claim that gun-free zones are more dangerous is simply not true.”

Gun-free zones vary by federal, state and local statutes. In Texas, for example, if more than 50% of a bar’s revenue comes from alcohol, that establishment is considered gun-free. While most people might think the designation mostly applies to schools, theaters, sporting venues and other public places, private companies can also implement them at their own discretion.

A unique study design to match places at risk

The study included researchers from Columbia University and the University of Michigan. The team looked at 150 places in the U.S. that had experienced active shootings between 2014 and 2020. The researchers also found 150 places that could have experienced a shooting but did not, and designated them as controls. These control places were matched to the group with shootings by county, year and type of establishment.

“For a long time, people didn't think this work could be done,” Reeping said. “We used a unique design that matched places based on similar criteria but very different outcomes — in this case, shootings.”

The team found that 72 (48%) of the shootings happened in gun-free zones. Looking at the 150 controls that had no shootings, 92 (61.3%) were gun-free. Their study suggests that the gun-free zones may have reduced the risks of a mass shooting.

“After accounting for matched pairs, our analyses showed that active shootings were 62.5% less likely to occur in gun-free establishments than in gun-allowing places,” Reeping said. “Therefore, it is very unlikely that active shooters are targeting gun-free zones; conversely, gun-free zones may be protective.”

This work could have significant policy implications. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision gave Americans the right to carry loaded firearms in public. However, gun-free zones provide a constitutional carve-out that some governments have embraced, although these carve-outs are still being challenged in court.

Still, more work must be done to confirm these findings. “This is the first time this type of study has ever been done, and we hope more will follow,” Reeping said. “Most people believe gun-free zones are actually more dangerous, and the evidence from our study doesn’t support that.”

Study co-authors included Christopher N. Morrison, Charles C. Branas, Ariana N. Gobaud and Sonali Rajan of Columbia University, and Douglas J. Wiebe of the University of Michigan.

 

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Journal

The Lancet

DOI

10.1016/j.lana.2024.100837 

Article Title

Gun-free zones and active shootings in the United States: a matched case-control study

People eating beef are less likely to live near the industry’s pollution, Pitt researchers found

University of Pittsburgh

 

image: 

County-level nitrogen losses from (a) production-based accounting and (b) consumption-based accounting. The weighted average distance between consumption and nitrogen losses during production is depicted in map (c).

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Credit: Lab of Vikas Khanna

Anyone who’s researched ways to lower their environmental impact has likely heard they should eat less meat, particularly beef. Even at scale, cows are an inefficient way to feed people — it takes nearly four tons of water to recoup one ton of beef, and many farming practices emit greenhouse gasses and pollutants.

University of Pittsburgh researchers are the first to trace one of those pollutants, nitrogen, along the U.S. beef supply chain at the county level. They found high spatial disconnect between where beef is eaten and where nitrogen’s impacts are felt.

Previous research looked at production-based impacts, said Vikas Khanna, professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering. “They’ve asked, ‘what does it take to produce a certain quantity of beef?’ And they tend to report average environmental impacts,” such as how much water, greenhouse gasses or other pollutants result over the entire process.

In a paper published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, Khanna and PhD student Anaís Ostroski map the impacts of nitrogen county by county, providing the clearest picture yet of which areas face some of the environmental effects of cattle farming. Khanna and Ostroski are joined by Oleg Prokopyev, a former professor of industrial engineering at Pitt now at the University of Zurich.  

“It is essential to measure nitrogen losses and understand where they happen due to the cascading effects on the environment,” said Ostroski, the paper’s lead author. “A single molecule of reactive nitrogen can cause multiple adverse effects until it is converted back to stable atmospheric nitrogen. Food supply chains have grown increasingly complex; we found that when beef is consumed in a given county, it is associated with nitrogen losses in more than 200 counties on average.”

Our atmosphere is 79% nitrogen, but atmospheric nitrogen has strong bonds and doesn’t react with other substances. The nitrogen used for fertilizer, however, is reactive. As it accumulates it can create surface-level ozone, which can lead to respiratory problems. When rain washes nitrogen fertilizers from croplands into waterways, it can spark runaway algae growth, which takes oxygen from the water, suffocating fish and other marine life.

In 2017, beef consumption was responsible for about 1,330 gigagrams of nitrogen released into the environment — that’s enough to fertilize about 19.5 million acres, or 20% of all the corn grown in the United States.  

When beef is consumed in a given county, it is associated with nitrogen losses in more than 200 counties on average.

Anaís Ostroski
its effects are not felt equally across the country.

The new research shows people living along the East Coast and in large swaths of California, Nevada and Arizona are more than 600 miles away from the nitrogen that entered the environment in service of their burger. 

The pollution happens in a few different ways along the supply chain. Cows are fed food that is grown using nitrogen fertilizers. Much of that is leached away by rainwater, tainting nearby land and water supplies.

Beef cattle are kept in processing facilities where nitrogen is released in wastewater. Here, Khanna sees an opportunity to minimize nitrogen pollution by implementing a circular economy model where valuable nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are recovered from the wastewater.

“Recouping nutrients from animal wastewaters would be a win-win solution,” he said. Nitrogen would be kept out of the ecosystem, and farmers could reuse the nitrogen as fertilizer while also reusing the treated water for irrigation.

While it’s important to look at technological solutions to reduce the impact of cattle farming on the environment, Khanna has words of caution about technological exuberance, “Let's not just look at the trees and miss the forest. It is important to look at potential solutions from a holistic perspective to make sure we are not solving one problem at the expense of others.”

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.4c01651 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Tracing Nitrogen Flows Associated with Beef Supply Chains: A Consumption-Based AssessmentClick to copy article link

 

From cavities to sleep apnea: dentists can assume new role in saving lives

Rutgers University

A patient dozes off in a dental chair despite the anxiety of an impending procedure. A seemingly unremarkable act but — for dentists versed in the latest sleep research — this red flag hints at a life-threatening condition.

In a research review published in the Journal of the American Dental Association, Rutgers Health researchers identified dentists as an unexpected player in the battle against life-threatening sleep disorders.

The review suggests dental professionals have unique opportunities to screen for conditions such as obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder that affects millions of Americans and is linked to serious health risks, including cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration.

It also challenges dentists to look beyond teeth and gums to the broader landscape of patient health.

"We have a great opportunity to change lives for the better," said Davis Thomas, a clinical associate professor at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine and senior author of the review. "Dentists can be the first line of defense in identifying sleep disorders. They often see symptoms long before physicians. Indicators like tooth grinding, tongue scalloping or even a patient dozing off in the chair can be early signs that something more is going on."

Sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea affect more than half of Americans at some point in their lives. Many cases go undiagnosed, but dentists can play an important role in reducing those numbers.

The review outlines several key indicators that dental clinicians should look for during examinations, including enlarged jaw muscles, scalloped tongue edges, white lines on the cheeks, restricted visibility of the throat, dental wear patterns and tiny cracks on teeth.

These physical signs, combined with patient history and simple screening tools, can help dentists identify at-risk patients with up to 80 percent accuracy.

"It's not just about looking at teeth anymore," Thomas said. "We need to observe the whole patient, from their behavior in the waiting room to the subtle signs in their oral cavity."

Another sign of concern, according to the review authors, is bruxism, commonly known as teeth grinding. Contrary to long-held beliefs, the studies suggest teeth griding is often a symptom of underlying sleep issues rather than a standalone problem caused by dental misalignment.

"We've been treating the symptoms without addressing the root cause for far too long," Thomas said. "By understanding the neuroscience behind sleep disorders, we can provide more comprehensive care and potentially prevent serious health complications."

This shift in perspective could have far-reaching implications. By identifying patients at risk for sleep disorders, dentists can facilitate early intervention, potentially preventing complications such as hypertension, heart disease and stroke.

To implement these findings, Thomas and his team propose a simple protocol for dental practices: Incorporate sleep-related questions into patient history forms. Other recommendations include training dental staff to recognize physical signs of sleep disorders and using validated screening tools like the STOP-BANG (snoring, tiredness, observed apnea, blood pressure, body mass index, age, neck size, gender) questionnaire, which screens for obstructive sleep apnea and establish referral networks with sleep medicine specialists.

"We're not asking dentists to diagnose sleep disorders," Thomas said. "We're asking them to recognize the signs and make appropriate referrals. This simple act can be lifesaving."

Thomas recommends that dentists looking to incorporate sleep screening into their practices start with education.

"Attend sleep medicine conferences, take continuing education courses, and stay up-to-date with the latest research," he said. "The more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know – and how much we can do to help our patients."

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Journal

The Journal of the American Dental Association

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The enigma of sleep

 EV BATTERIES

Department of Energy awards $125 Million for research to enable next-generation batteries and energy storage

Energy Innovation Hub teams will emphasize multi-disciplinary fundamental research to address long-standing and emerging challenges for rechargeable batteries

DOE/US Department of Energy

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $125 million in funding for two Energy Innovation Hub teams to provide the scientific foundation needed to seed and accelerate next generation technologies beyond today’s generation of lithium (Li)-ion batteries. These multi-institution research teams, led by Argonne National Laboratory and Stanford University, will develop scientific concepts and understanding to impact decarbonization of transportation and incorporation of clean energy into the electricity grid.

Rechargeable batteries, such as Li-ion and lead-acid batteries, have had a tremendous impact on the nation’s economy. Emerging applications will require even greater energy storage capabilities, safer operation, lower costs, and diversity of materials to manufacture batteries. Meeting these challenges requires a better understanding of foundational battery and materials sciences to enable scalable battery designs with versatile and reversible energy storage capabilities beyond what is currently possible. Additional benefits may include mitigation of supply chain risks associated with the current generation of batteries.

"Providing the scientific foundation to accelerate this important research is key to our economy and making sure the U.S. plays a lead role in transforming the way we store and use electricity,” said Harriet Kung, DOE’s Acting Director for the Office of Science. “Today's awards provide our Energy Innovation Hub teams with the tools and resources to solve some of the most challenging science problems that are limiting our ability to decarbonize transportation and incorporate clean energy into the electricity grid."

The two Energy Innovation Hub teams are the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA) led by Argonne National Laboratory and the Aqueous Battery Consortium (ABC) led by Stanford University. ESRA will provide the scientific underpinning to develop new compact batteries for heavy-duty transportation and energy storage solutions for the grid with a focus on achieving unprecedented molecular-level control of chemical reactivity, ion selectivity, and directional transport in complex electrochemical cells. ABC will focus on establishing the scientific foundation for large-scale development and deployment of aqueous batteries for long-duration grid storage technologies.  Both of these teams will prioritize study and use of Earth-abundant materials to mitigate supply chain risks.

Both Energy Innovation Hubs teams are comprised of multiple institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). The projects provide an outstanding opportunity for workforce development in energy storage research and inclusive research involving diverse individuals from diverse institutions. 

The teams were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for the Energy Innovation Hub Program: Research to Enable Next-Generation Batteries and Energy Storage. While focused on basic science, the Funding Opportunity Announcement was developed in coordination through the DOE Joint Strategy Team for Batteries.

Total funding is $125 million for awards lasting up to five years in duration. More information can be found on the Basic Energy Sciences program homepage and Energy Innovation Hubs page.

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. 

Korean researchers overcome critical challenges in

 developing fire-risk-free aqueous zinc batteries

KIER and UNIST have successfully suppressed the formation of dendrites, a critical issue in aqueous zinc batteries, by using copper oxide

National Research Council of Science & Technology

The developed electrode (a) shows more uniform deposition compared to the zinc (b) and carbon (c) electrode.

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Credit: Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER)

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Dr. Jung-Je Woo from the Gwangju Clean Energy Research Center at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), along with Professor Jaephil Cho's research team from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), has developed a key electrode manufacturing technology that can control dendrite formation in aqueous zinc batteries.
* Dendrite: A phenomenon where metal ions are deposited disorderly on the anode during the charging process of a battery, forming elongated, branch-like structures. If this irregular growth continues, it can cause short circuits, severely affecting the stability of the battery and shortening its lifespan.

Aqueous zinc batteries are secondary batteries that use water as the electrolyte, making them free from fire risks and environmentally friendly compared to lithium-ion batteries, which use volatile liquid electrolytes. Additionally, since aqueous zinc batteries use two electrons per ion, they can theoretically offer more than twice the capacity of lithium-ion batteries, which use only one electron per ion.

However, there is a problem with the dendrite phenomenon, where zinc is deposited in elongated forms on the surface of the anode during the charging process, leading to a shorter lifespan. The formed dendrites can pierce the separator between the anode and cathode, causing electrical short circuits and severely impacting the battery's performance. Particularly, dendrites form more actively in aqueous zinc batteries than in lithium-ion batteries, making this a significant obstacle to the commercialization of the technology.

The research team successfully used copper oxide to promote uniform zinc deposition and control dendrite formation. When electrodes made using this method were applied to batteries, they demonstrated a lifespan more than ten times longer than conventional batteries.

In the past, the primary method used to suppress dendrite formation involved adding promoters like copper to accelerate the initial growth of zinc and guide uniform deposition. However, a problem with this approach was that dendrite formation would recur with repeated charging and discharging cycles of the battery.

In response, the research team devised a method to control dendrite formation step-by-step using copper oxide. Like regular copper, copper oxide promotes the initial growth of zinc and guides its deposition. Additionally, copper oxide has optimized conductivity for depositing zinc in a uniform distribution, allowing for more efficient deposition compared to regular copper.

After distributing zinc uniformly, copper oxide self-transforms into a scaffold. The scaffold acts like a fence, suppressing disordered zinc deposition and growth. This allows for the continuous prevention of dendrite formation, even with repeated charging and discharging cycles.
* Scaffold: A structure composed at the nano-micro scale designed to physically suppress the disordered deposition of metals like zinc.

The batteries using the research team's technology demonstrated a lifespan more than ten times longer than conventional aqueous zinc batteries, increasing the potential for commercialization.
* Conventional aqueous zinc batteries: After 300 charge-discharge cycles, the formation of dendrites causes the capacity to decrease to below 80%.
** Research Outcome: By suppressing dendrite formation, the battery maintains 80% of its capacity even after 3,000 charge-discharge cycles.

The research team successfully controlled zinc deposition to achieve a world-leading capacity of 60 mAh/cm². They also demonstrated durability through more than 3,000 battery performance tests and confirmed that the technology could be applied to large-area electrodes of 64 cm².

Dr. Jung-Je Woo, the lead researcher, stated, "The significance of this research is that it provides a solution to the challenge of dendrite formation in metal batteries such as aqueous zinc batteries using low-cost processes and materials like copper oxide." He added, “We aim to contribute to the commercialization of aqueous batteries through follow-up research that standardizes and systematizes the developed electrodes.”

The technology developed by the research team was published as a cover article in the August issue of the prestigious journal Advanced Energy Materials (Impact Factor 24.4, top 2.9%) in the field of energy and materials.

Journal

Advanced Energy Materials

DOI

10.1002/aenm.202401820

Article Title

Self-Converted Scaffold Enables Dendrite-Free and Long-LifeZn-Ion Batteries