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New study reveals more struggling to afford healthcare

West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index trending downward

Reports and Proceedings

WEST HEALTH INSTITUTE

 

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THE PERCENTAGE OF AMERICAN ADULTS OF AMERICAN ADULTS CATEGORIZED AS COST SECURE HAS DROPPED TO A NEW LOW OF 55%, LED BY AN EIGHT-POINT DROP AMONG AMERICANS AGED 65 AND OLDER TO 71%.

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CREDIT: WEST HEALTH-GALLUP

WASHINGTON, D.C. — July 17, 2024 — The percentage of Americans who can afford and access prescription drugs and quality healthcare stands at a new low of 55%, a six-point decline since 2022, according to the West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index. The index was developed in 2021 to track the percentage of Americans who say they have avoided medical care or not filled prescription medications in the last three months and whether they believe they could afford care if they needed it today.

The downturn is largely attributed to two groups — adults aged 50 to 64 (down eight points to 55%) and those aged 65 and older (down eight points to 71%), a troubling sign since Medicare eligibility for most Americans begins at 65. The percentage of adults under 50 who could readily afford healthcare was the lowest of any age group at 47%, a five-point decline since 2022.

For the index, researchers grouped Americans into one of the following three categories depending on how they reported their ease or difficulty paying for and accessing medical care, including prescribed drugs: 1. Cost Secure — no recent problems with affording and accessing healthcare and prescriptions, 2. Cost Insecure — recently unable to either pay for care or medicine or unable to access it, 3. Cost Desperate — recently unable to pay for care and medicine and lack immediate access to quality care.

“After an uptick in 2022, healthcare affordability in America is headed in the wrong direction,” said Timothy Lash, President, West Health, a nonprofit focused on aging and healthcare research, policy and philanthropy. “The good news is that healthcare provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act — including empowering Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, which has not yet taken effect — may help slow these negative trends and provide more stability. But much more must be done to rein in prices for Americans of all ages. High prices are one of the biggest impediments to a healthy aging population and a prosperous economy.”

Forty-five percent of American adults report struggling to cover their medical bills and are either Cost Insecure or Cost Desperate. Younger adults are more than three times as likely to be Cost Desperate than those 65 and older (10% vs. 3%). The percentage of people aged 50 to 64 years old considered Cost Desperate has risen to 10%, the highest level measured for this group so far. Racial and gender divides have also widened, with Black (11%) and Hispanic (14%) adults considerably more likely to fall in the Cost Desperate category than their White counterparts (7%) and women (11%) nearly twice as likely as men (6%).

According to the recently released West Health-Gallup 2024 Survey on Aging in America, an estimated 72.2 million — or nearly one in three — American adults did not seek needed healthcare in the prior three months due to cost, including an estimated 8.1 million Americans aged 65 and older. Nearly one-third (31%) were concerned about their ability to pay for prescription drugs in the next 12 months, up from 25% in 2022.

"The year 2022 showed encouraging trends of increased healthcare affordability post-pandemic," says Dan Witters, Senior Researcher at Gallup. “The decline in 2024 is concerning in that it shows the fragility of Americans' purchasing power amid a high-priced healthcare system. In a relatively short time, many adults have gone from feeling confident they can cover their health costs to struggling to cover their medical bills.”

In addition to the index on affordability, a West Health-Gallup Healthcare Value Index was developed in 2021 to track public sentiment as to the perceived worth of the medical care Americans receive relative to the amount they pay. This index provided one of the few slightly positive trends. Though more than a third (36%) of Americans in 2024 believe that they — and Americans generally — are paying too much for the quality of care they receive and that their most recent care experience was not worth the cost, this is nine percentage points less than was reported three years ago. Read the complete Indices report here. For more information about surveys on aging and healthcare visit the West Health-Gallup National Healthcare & Aging Data Dashboard.

Methodology
Results are based on a survey conducted by both mail (focused on older Americans) and web from Nov. 13, 2023, to Jan. 8, 2024, with 5,149 adults aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia as a part of the Gallup Panel. For results based on these monthly samples of national adults, the margin of sampling error at the 95% confidence level is ±1.7 percentage points for response percentages around 50% and is ±1 percentage point for response percentages around 10% or 90%, design effect included. For reported age subgroups, the margin of error will be larger, typically ranging from ±3 to ±5 percentage points.

About West Health
Solely funded by philanthropists Gary and Mary West, West Health is a family of nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations including the Gary and Mary West Foundation and Gary and Mary West Health Institute in San Diego and the Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C. West Health is dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable seniors to successfully age in place with access to high-quality, affordable health and support services that preserve and protect their dignity, quality of life and independence. Learn more at westhealth.org.

About Gallup
Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

 

Food aroma study may help explain why meals taste bad in space

RMIT UNIVERSITY

 

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ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR GAIL ILES FROM RMIT UNIVERSITY SMELLING AN AROMA SAMPLE, AS PARTICIPANTS DID DURING THE STUDY.

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CREDIT: SEAMUS DANIEL, RMIT UNIVERSITY

Scientists from RMIT University have led a world-first study on common food aromas that may help explain why astronauts report that meals taste bland in space and struggle to eat their normal nutritional intake.

This research, which is published in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology, has broader implications for improving the diets of isolated people, including nursing home residents, by personalising aromas to enhance the flavour of their food.

Previous research has shown that aroma plays a big role in the flavour of food.

The team in this study tested how people perceived vanilla and almond extracts and lemon essential oil changed from normal environments on Earth to the confined setting of the International Space Station (ISS), which was simulated for participants with virtual reality goggles.

Lead researcher Dr Julia Low from the School of Science said vanilla and almond aromas were more intense in the ISS-simulated environment, while the lemon scent remained unchanged.

The team found a particular sweet chemical in the aromas of vanilla and almond, called benzaldehyde, could explain the change in perceptions, in addition to an individual’s sensitivity to the particular smell.

“A greater sense of loneliness and isolation may also play a role, and there are implications from this study around how isolated people smell and taste food,” Low said.

This is also the first study to involve a large sample size, with 54 adults, and capture the variation of individuals' personal experience of aromas and taste in isolated settings.

“One of the long-term aims of the research is to make better tailored foods for astronauts, as well as other people who are in isolated environments, to increase their nutritional intake closer to 100%,” Low said.

She said their findings that spatial perception played a significant role in how people smell aromas complemented results from other studies on the topic of astronauts’ eating experience in space, including the phenomenon of fluid shift.

Weightlessness causes fluid to shift from the lower to the upper parts of the body, which creates facial swelling and nasal congestion that affects the sense of smell and taste. These symptoms typically begin to disappear within a few weeks of being on board the space station.

“Astronauts are still not enjoying their food even after fluid shift effects have gone, suggesting that there’s something more to this,” Low said.

Former astronaut instructor and co-researcher Associate Professor Gail Iles from RMIT said despite carefully designed diet plans, astronauts were not meeting their nutritional needs, which was dangerous for long-term missions.

“What we’re going to see in the future with the Artemis missions are much longer missions, years in length, particularly when we go to Mars, so we really need to understand the problems with diet and food and how crew interact with their food,” said Iles, from the School of Science.

“The incredible thing with this VR study is that it really does go a very long way to simulating the experience of being on the space station. And it really does change how you smell things and how you taste things.”

Co-researcher Associate Professor Jayani Chandrapala, a food chemistry expert from RMIT, said the sweet aroma of benzaldehyde, common chemical compound in vanilla and almond, played a major role in the change in people’s perceptions of aroma in the space simulation.

“In our study, we believe that it’s this sweet aroma that gives that highly intensive aroma within the VR setting,” said Chandrapala from the School of Science.

Low said the study could have implications for people living in socially isolated environments on Earth, not just space travellers.

“The results of this study could help personalise people's diets in socially isolated situations, including in nursing homes, and improve their nutritional intake,” Low said.

‘Smell perception in virtual spacecraft? A ground-based approach to sensory and chemical data collection’ is published in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology (DOI: 10.1111/ijfs.17306).

The article will be available at https://ifst.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijfs.17306 when the embargo lifts.

PhD scholar Grace Loke from RMIT is first author on the paper, which also involved International Flavors and Fragrances from the Netherlands.

MULTIMEDIA AVAILABLE FOR MEDIA USE

You can watch, download and use a short video and images related to the research here, as well as b-roll and interviews with the researchers: Hightail - kU1RZX4TZR

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Food Science

DOI

10.1111/ijfs.17306 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Smell perception in virtual spacecraft? A ground-based approach to sensory and chemical data collection

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jul-2024

UK

Children living in deprived areas are three times more likely to need dental extractions in hospital

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have found that children living in areas with high levels of deprivation are three times more likely to have severe tooth decay that requires a dental extraction in hospital, compared with children living in more affluent areas. The findings highlight an urgent need for equitable access to preventive dentistry.

In the study, published today (16 July 2024) in BMJ Public Health, researchers analysed de-identified GP and hospital records for 600,000 children between the ages of five and 16 living in North East London. During the five-year study period, one in 200 children had at least one tooth removed under a general anaesthetic, which must be done in a hospital setting. Most of those children had multiple teeth extracted.

The study findings demonstrate major socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in severe tooth decay in children, which is preventable through access to NHS dentists, and policies such as toothbrushing in schools and control of sugar in food and drinks.

• Children living in areas with the highest proportion of low-income households were three times more likely to require a dental extraction, compared with those living in areas with the lowest proportion of low-income households.
• Children from some ethnic groups were more likely to need a dental extraction, compared with children from White British ethnic groups:
  • White Irish: twice as likely;
  • Bangladeshi: 1.5 times more likely;
  • Pakistani: 1.4 times more likely.
• Children living with obesity were less likely to require a dental extraction than children with healthy weight. More research is needed to replicate and understand this finding.

The researchers also examined the data by North East London borough, comparing rates of children’s dental extractions with access to NHS general dental practitioners. After adjusting for deprivation and ethnic group, the highest risk of hospital dental extraction was for children in Tower Hamlets, which also has the lowest general dental practitioner attendance in North East London. Conversely, children living in Redbridge, Havering, and Barking & Dagenham had the lowest risk of hospital dental extraction - these areas have the highest proportion of five-year-olds accessing general dental practitioner services. Additionally, the 2022 National Dental Epidemiology Programme (NDEP) oral health survey found that only 13% of decayed teeth in five-year-old children in London had been filled.

This study is the first to analyse inequalities in children’s tooth extractions under general anaesthesia by ethnic group in such granular detail, revealing a difference in outcomes between White Irish and White British groups, and between Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian groups. By linking hospital data to GP records, which include 16 categories for ethnic group, researchers were able to reveal ethnic inequalities that are less apparent when using the broader ethnicity categories used in previous research.   

This research was funded by a grant from Barts Charity (ref: MGU0419).

Vanessa Muirhead, Co-author and Reader and Honorary Consultant in Dental Public Health at Queen Mary, said:

“Sadly, our findings demonstrate wide socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities related to access to dental care and outcomes.

“Tooth extraction is a last resort, but when families have difficulty accessing timely preventive and treatment services, dental problems can progress until children need more serious and costly interventions such as multiple tooth extractions under general anaesthesia.”

Nicola Firman, lead author and Health Data Scientist at Queen Mary, said:

“Linking health data from different settings has allowed us to see inequalities in the dental care system more clearly.

“Our findings point to an urgent need for equitable access to preventive general dental services, and interventions that are targeted at the wider determinants of dental health.”

Christopher Tredwin, Dean and Director of the Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mar, said:

“This research highlights clear oral health inequalities, which we are also acutely aware of through our longstanding service of the local community.

“In partnership with Barts Health NHS Trust, the Queen Mary Institute of Dentistry opened a new dental outreach clinic in Kenworthy Road, Homerton, earlier this year. It is now providing quicker and easier access to dental care in the local area, while our dental and therapy students learn to treat children in these primary care settings. Through the outstanding work of our students at these clinics, we hope to mitigate the effects of unequal access to general dentistry in North East London and help to provide care for those who need it most.”

Victoria King, Director of Funding and Impact at Barts Charity, said:

“This important work, supported by Barts Charity, has demonstrated that there are major inequalities linked to severe tooth decay for children in East London, which could be preventable. Supporting research to understand these health inequalities is key to making better healthcare possible for our diverse East London population."

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JOURNAL

BMJ Public Health

DOI

10.1136/bmjph-2023-000622 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Inequalities in children’s tooth decay requiring dental extraction under general anaesthetic: a longitudinal study using linked electronic health records

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jul-2024

 

Breaking through silicon

Bilkent University researchers achieve unprecedented nanostructuring inside silicon

BILKENT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SCIENCE

Overcoming Historical Barriers

Silicon, the cornerstone of modern electronics, photovoltaics, and photonics, has traditionally been limited to surface-level nanofabrication due to the challenges posed by existing lithographic techniques. Available methods either fail to penetrate the wafer surface without causing alterations or are limited by the micron-scale resolution of laser lithography within Si. In the spirit of Richard Feynman's famous dictum, 'There's plenty of room at the bottom', this breakthrough aligns with the vision of exploring and manipulating matter at the nanoscale. The innovative technique developed by the Bilkent team surpasses current limitations, enabling controlled fabrication of nanostructures buried deep inside silicon wafers with unprecedented control. 

The team tackled the dual challenge of complex optical effects within the wafer and the inherent diffraction limit of the laser light. They overcome these by employing a special type of laser pulse, created by an approach called spatial light modulation. The non-diffracting nature of the beam overcomes optical scattering effects that have previously hindered precise energy deposition, inducing extremely small, localized voids inside the wafer. This process is followed by an emergent seeding effect, where preformed subsurface nano-voids establish strong field enhancement around their immediate neighborhood. This new fabrication regime marks an improvement by an order of magnitude over the state-of-the-art, achieving feature sizes down to 100 nm.

"Our approach is based on localizing the energy of the laser pulse within a semiconductor material to an extremely small volume, such that one can exploit emergent field enhancement effects analogous to those in plasmonics. This leads to sub-wavelength and multi-dimensional control directly inside the material", explained Prof. Tokel. "We can now fabricate nanophotonic elements buried in silicon, such as nanogratings with high diffraction efficiency and even spectral control."

The researchers used spatially-modulated laser pulses, technically corresponding to a Bessel function. The non-diffracting nature of this special laser beam, which is created with advanced holographic projection techniques, enables precise energy localization. This, in turn, leads to high temperature and pressure values enough to modify the material at a small volume. Remarkably, the resulting field enhancement, once established, sustains itself through a seeding type mechanism. Simply put, the creation of earlier nanostructures helps fabricate the later nanostructures. The use of laser polarization provides additional control over the alignment and symmetry of nanostructures, enabling the creation of diverse nano-arrays with high precision. 

"By leveraging the anisotropic feedback mechanism found in the laser-material interaction system, we achieved polarization-controlled nanolithography in silicon," said Dr. Asgari Sabet, the study's first author. "This capability allows us to guide the alignment and symmetry of the nanostructures at the nanoscale."

The research team demonstrated large-area volumetric nanostructuring with beyond-diffraction-limit features, enabling proof-of-concept buried nano-photonic elements. These advances have significant implications for developing nano-scale systems with unique architectures. "We believe the emerging design freedom in arguably the most important technological material will find exciting applications in electronics and photonics", said Tokel. "The beyond-diffraction-limit features and multi-dimensional control imply future advances, such as metasurfaces, metamaterials, photonic crystals, numerous information processing applications, and even 3D integrated electronic-photonic systems." 

"Our findings introduce a new fabrication paradigm for silicon," concluded Prof. Tokel, "The ability to fabricate at the nano-scale directly inside silicon opens up a new regime, toward further integration and advanced photonics. We can now start asking whether complete three-dimensional nano-fabrication in silicon is possible. Our study is the first step in that direction."

About the Researchers

The research team consists of Rana Asgari Sabet, Aqiq Ishraq, Alperen Saltik, Mehmet Bütün, and Onur Tokel, all affiliated with the Department of Physics and the National Nanotechnology Research Center at Bilkent University. Their expertise spans various fields, including optics, materials science, and nanotechnology.

Publication and Availability

The full details of this research are published in the latest issue of Nature Communications. The article, titled "Laser nanofabrication inside silicon with spatial beam modulation and anisotropic seeding," is available here : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49303-z

Funding: This study is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TUBITAK) and the Turkish Academy of Sciences. 

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-49303-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Laser nanofabrication inside silicon with spatial beam modulation and anisotropic seeding

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jul-2024

COI STATEMENT

R.A.S., A.I., and O.T. are inventors on a patent application (US17/ 840,023) by Bilkent University based on the work presented here. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

 

Making rechargeable batteries more sustainable with fully recyclable components

PENN STATE

 

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RESEARCHERS RECONFIGURED THE DESIGN OF SOLID-STATE LITHIUM BATTERIES SO THAT OF ALL THEIR COMPONENTS CAN BE EASILY RECYCLED. THEY TESTED THEIR INNOVATION USING COIN CELL BATTERIES, PICTURED HERE. 

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CREDIT: POORNIMA TOMY/PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Rechargeable solid-state lithium batteries are an emerging technology that could someday power cell phones and laptops for days with a single charge. Offering significantly enhanced energy density, they are a safer alternative to the flammable lithium-ion batteries currently used in consumer electronics — but they are not environmentally friendly. Current recycling methods focus on the limited recovery of metals contained within the cathodes, while everything else goes to waste.  

A team of Penn State researchers may have solved this issue. Led by Enrique Gomez, interim associate dean for equity and inclusion and professor of chemical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, the team reconfigured the design of these solid-state lithium batteries so that all their components can be easily recycled. They published their findings in ACS Energy Letters.  

“As the need for rechargeable batteries grows, we need to think about the end-of-life of this technology,” Gomez said. “We hope our work highlights the possibilities in recycling of solid-state batteries, with the help of some key design elements.” 

Traditionally, most of the core battery components have gone to waste because they mix during the recycling process, forming a “black mass,” according to the researchers. This black mass is rich in materials needed for batteries but separating them out remains a challenge. In solid-state batteries, the use of solid electrolytes compounds this problem, as they become intermixed with the black mass.  

To more easily separate these components from the other metal components in a coin cell battery, researchers inserted two polymer layers at the interfaces between the electrode and the electrolyte prior to the start of the recycling process.  

“We proposed that by dissolving the polymer layer during the recycling process, you can easily separate the electrode from the electrolyte,” said Yi-Chen Lan, doctoral student in chemical engineering and first author on the paper. “Without the polymer layer separating them, you would have the electrode and electrolyte mixed together, which makes them hard to recycle.” 

Once the researchers successfully separated out the components, they made a composite with the recovered metals and electrodes using cold sintering — the process of combining powder-based materials into dense forms at low temperatures through applied pressure using solvents. Cold sintering was developed in 2016 by a team of researchers led by Clive Randall, director of Penn State’s Materials Research Institute and distinguished professor of materials science and engineering. Gomez and his team recently demonstrated the recycling of solid-state electrolytes using cold sintering.  

“We used cold sintering to combine the recovered electrodes with recovered composite solid electrolyte powders, then reconstructed the battery with the polymer layers added,” said Po-Hao Lai, a doctoral student in chemical engineering and co-author on the paper. “This enables us to recycle the whole battery, which we are then able to recycle again after its use.”  

After testing its performance, they found that the reconstructed battery achieved between 92.5% and 93.8% of its original discharge capacity.  

“While the commercialization of all-solid-state lithium batteries is still in its early stages, our work provides important insights and ideas for designing recyclable versions of these batteries,” Lan said. “While we're not quite there yet, the long-term goal is to apply this innovation to larger batteries that could be used in devices like cell phones and laptops, once all-solid-state technology becomes more prevalent.” 

In addition to Gomez, Lan and Lai, Bryan Vogt, professor of chemical engineering, also contributed to the paper.  

The U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Army Research Laboratory and the Army Research Office supported this research.  

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JOURNAL

ACS Energy Letters

DOI

10.1021/acsenergylett.4c01153 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Interfacial Layers to Enable Recyclability of All-Solid-State Lithium Batteries

 

How climate change is altering the Earth’s rotation

ETH ZURICH

Climate change is causing the ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica to melt. Water from the polar regions is flowing into the world’s oceans –and especially into the equatorial region. “This means that a shift in mass is taking place, and this is affecting the Earth’s rotation,” explains Benedikt Soja, Professor of Space Geodesy at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich.

“It’s like when a figure skater does a pirouette, first holding her arms close to her body and then stretching them out,” Soja says. The initially fast rotation becomes slower because the masses move away from the axis of rotation, increasing physical inertia. In physics, we speak of the law of conservation of angular momentum, and this same law also governs the Earth’s rotation. If the Earth turns more slowly, the days get longer. Climate change is therefore also altering the length of the day on Earth, albeit only minimally.

Supported by the US space agency NASA, the ETH researchers from Soja's group have published two new studies in the journals Nature Geoscience and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on how climate change affects the polar motion and the length of the day.

Climate change surpasses the moon’s influence

In the PNAS study the ETH Zurich researchers show that climate change is also increasing the length of the day by a few milliseconds from its current 86,400 seconds. This is because water is flowing from the poles to lower latitudes and thus slowing down the speed of rotation.

Another cause of this slowdown is tidal friction, which is triggered by the moon. However, the new study comes to a surprising conclusion: if humans continue to emit more greenhouse gases and the Earth warms up accordingly, this would ultimately have a greater influence on the Earth’s rotational speed than the effect of the moon, which has determined the increase in the length of the day for billions of years. “We humans have a greater impact on our planet than we realise,” Soja concludes, “and this naturally places great responsibility on us for the future of our planet.”

The Earth's axis of rotation is shifting

However, shifts in mass on the Earth’s surface and in its interior caused by the melting ice not only change the Earth’s rotational speed and the length of day: as the researchers show in Nature Geoscience, they also alter the axis of rotation. This means that the points where the axis of rotation actually meets the Earth’s surface move. Researchers can observe this polar motion, which, over a longer timeframe, comes to some ten metres per hundred years. It’s not only the melting of the ice sheets that plays a role here, but also movements taking place in the Earth’s interior. Deep in the Earth’s mantle, where the rock becomes viscous due to high pressure, displacements occur over long periods of time. And there are also heat flows in the liquid metal of Earth’s outer core, which are responsible both generate the Earth’s magnetic field and lead to shifts in mass.

In the most comprehensive modelling to date, Soja and his team have now shown how polar motion results from the individual processes in the core, in the mantle and from the climate at the surface. Their study was recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience. “For the first time, we present a complete explanation for the causes of long-period polar motion,” says Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi, one of Soja’s doctoral students and lead author of the study. “In other words, we now know why and how the Earth’s axis of rotation moves relative to the Earth’s crust.”

One finding in particular stands out in their study in Nature Geoscience: that the processes on and in the Earth are interconnected and influence each other. “Climate change is causing the Earth’s axis of rotation to move, and it appears that the feedback from the conservation of angular momentum is also changing the dynamics of the Earth’s core,” Soja explains. Kiani Shahvandi adds: “Ongoing climate change could therefore even be affecting processes deep inside the Earth and have a greater reach than previously assumed.” However, there is little cause for concern, as these effects are minor and it’s unlikely that they pose a risk.

Physical laws combined with artificial intelligence

For their study on polar motion, the researchers used what are known as physics-informed neural networks. These are novel artificial intelligence (AI) methods in which researchers apply the laws and principles of physics to develop particularly powerful and reliable algorithms for machine learning. Kiani Shahvandi received support from Siddhartha Mishra, Professor of Mathematics at ETH Zurich, who in 2023 received ETH Zurich’s Rössler Prize, the university’s most highly endowed research award, and who is a specialist in this field.

The algorithms that Kiani Shahvandi developed have made it possible for the first time to record all the different effects on the Earth’s surface, in its mantle and in its core, and to model their possible interactions. The result of the calculations shows how the Earth’s rotational poles have moved since 1900. These model values are in excellent agreement with the real data provided by astronomical observations in the past and by satellites over the last thirty years, which means they also enable forecasts for the future.

Important for space travel

“Even if the Earth’s rotation is changing only slowly, this effect has to be taken into account when navigating in space – for example, when sending a space probe to land on another planet,” Soja says. Even a slight deviation of just one centimetre on Earth can grow to a deviation of hundreds of metres over the huge distances involved. “Otherwise, it won’t be possible to land in a specific crater on Mars,” he says.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2406930121 

ARTICLE TITLE

The increasingly dominant role of climate change on length of day variations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Jul-2024

Oil and natural gas development in Permian is a key source of ozone pollution in Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Paper shows that eight-hour ozone concentrations frequently exceed the EPA health standard during the summer months

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

 

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A RESEARCH FACILITY USED IN THE STUDY AT CARLSBAD CAVERNS NATIONAL PARK CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE 

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CREDIT: CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

New research shows that ozone concentrations at Carlsbad Caverns National Park frequently exceed Environmental Protection Agency health standards, likely due to oil and natural gas development in the Permian Basin and surrounding region.

The work was led through the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and is part of ongoing air quality research across the national park system by University Distinguished Professor Jeffrey Collett and his team. Andrey Marsavin, a Ph.D. student in the department, served as first author on the work, which was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.  

The park is in southeast New Mexico and in the summer frequently sits downwind from the Permian Basin – one of the largest and most productive oil and natural gas areas in the country. Data from the paper comes from a 2019 field survey and is part of a series of air quality studies in the area. The paper shows that eight-hour ozone concentrations frequently exceed the EPA health standard of 70 parts per billion during the summer months. 

Marsavin said the research explores the different potential sources of ozone precursors in the area and confirms that oil and gas development – which has increased fivefold in the basin over the last decade – is a major contributor. 

“Our model focused on specific compounds that are known to be associated with oil and gas production to help us understand how that activity specifically contributes to the ongoing ozone issues in the region,” he said. “Our measurements confirm that activity such as drilling and natural gas flaring is a major driver of the high ozone levels we see.” 

Unhealthy ozone concentrations are a serious problem worldwide, including urban areas like Colorado’s Front Range. It can lead to health issues in humans such as asthma, while also damaging crops and natural ecosystems.

Ozone is a highly reactive gas that forms when emissions from both natural sources and human activities react in the atmosphere. Major sources of ozone precursors include motor vehicles, industrial facilities, solvents and coatings, personal care products, vegetation, and lawn and garden equipment. Energy exploration and production systems like those found in the Permian Basin are also large contributors to emission totals.  

Tracking ozone levels near Carlsbad and other national parks

Federal requirements have helped reduce U.S. emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds that can lead to ozone over the last 20 years. However, some areas of the western U.S. have only seen small declines or even increases due to wildfire activity, increased oil and gas development, and production activity like flaring and fracking.

Marsavin said a goal of this research was to untangle possible sources of ozone precursors in the region and quantify the impact of extensive oil and gas development on high ozone concentrations. The team found that while both nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds contribute to ozone, the largest impact comes from nitrogen oxide emissions. These emissions come primarily from high-temperature combustion activity. They then tracked dispersal patterns across the region to show that activity in the Permian Basin was a primary driver, with emissions from other oil and gas basins farther upwind appearing to also contribute to elevated ozone on some days. 

The team’s research also considered how a switch in production methods such as the use of electric power for drilling rigs could lower ozone levels in the area.

Professor Collett’s team has partnered with the U.S. National Park Service on a range of air quality research projects for years. He said this paper’s findings were likely relevant to nearby areas like Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas and the broader region. 

He said the team will continue to work with more recently collected data and potentially begin to include satellite observations in their approach as well. 

“Many of the country’s largest oil and gas production basins are located near national parks. These are fragile ecosystems that the park service is entrusted with protecting for everyone – so they are very interested in these findings and how actions can be taken to address them,” Collett said. “So, we are not quite done with studying ozone formation in this region as development in the Permian continues.”

The research was done in partnership with the National Park Service’s Air Resources Division, and NPS scientists Barkley Sive, Bret Schichtel and Anthony Prenni are co-authors. Other CSU-affiliated authors on the work include Monfort Professor Emily Fischer; research scientists Yong Zhou, Ilana Pollack, Amy Sullivan, Da Pan and Katherine Benedict; and graduate students Lillian Naimie and Julieta Juncosa Calahoranno.

The inside of the research facility used at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Credit: Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science

CREDIT

Credit: Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science

JOURNAL

Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres

DOI

10.1029/2024JD040877 

ARTICLE TITLE

Summertime ozone production at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico: influence of oil and natural gas development

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jul-2024