Social media users’ actions, rather than biased policies, could drive differences in platform enforcement

New MIT Sloan research has found that politically conservative users tend to share misinformation at a greater volume than politically liberal users and this could explain why conservatives were suspended more frequently

MIT Sloan School of Management

A new paper, “Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions,” published today in Nature suggests that the higher quantity of social media policy enforcement (such as account suspensions) for conservative users could be explained by the higher quantity of misinformation shared by those conservative users — and so does not constitute evidence of inherent biases in the policies from social media companies or in the definition of what constitutes misinformation. 

Written by researchers from MIT Sloan School of Management, the University of Oxford, Cornell University, and Yale University, co-authors of the paper include Mohsen Mosleh, Qi Yang, Tauhid Zaman, Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand.

The spread of misinformation has become an increasing concern, especially as the 2024 presidential election in the United States approaches. Many Americans who disagree on political issues agree that the sharing of false information is a substantial problem; sixty-five percent of Americans say that technology companies should take action to restrict the spread of false information. However, there is great dissension as to whether tech companies are actually moderating platforms fairly.

“Accusations of political bias are often based largely on anecdotes or noteworthy cases, such as the suspension from Twitter and Facebook of former President Trump,” said MIT Sloan professor Rand. “This study allows us to systematically evaluate the data and better understand the differential rates of policy enforcement.” 

The asymmetry of conservative sanctions versus liberal sanctions should not be attributed to partisan bias on the part of social media companies and those determining what counts as misinformation, Rand and the co-authors noted. 

The research began by looking at Twitter’s suspension of users following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Researchers identified 100,000 Twitter users from October 2020 who shared hashtags related to the election, and randomly sampled 9,000 — half of whom shared at least one #VoteBidenHarris2020 hashtag and half of whom shared at least one #Trump2020 hashtag. Researchers analyzed each user’s data from the month before the election to quantify their tendency to share news from low-quality domains (as well as other potentially relevant characteristics), and then checked nine months later to determine which users were suspended by Twitter.

Accounts that had shared #Trump2020 before the election were 4.4 times more likely to have been subsequently suspended than those who shared #VoteBidenHarris2020. Only 4.5% of the users who shared Biden hashtags had been suspended as of July 2021, while 19.6% of the users who shared Trump hashtags had been suspended. 

“We found that there were political differences in behavior, in addition to the political differences in enforcement,” said Rand. “The fact that the social media accounts of conservatives are suspended more than those of liberals is therefore not evidence of bias on the part of tech companies, and shouldn’t be used to pressure tech companies to abandon policies meant to reduce the sharing of misinformation.”

To better understand this difference, the researchers examined what content was shared by these politically active Twitter users in terms of the reliability of the sources through two different methods. They used a set of 60 news domains (the 20 highest volume sites within the categories of mainstream, hyper-partisan and fake news), and collected trustworthiness ratings for each domain from eight professional fact-checkers. In an effort to eliminate concern about potential bias on the part of journalists and fact-checkers, the researchers also collected ratings from politically-balanced groups of laypeople. Both approaches indicated that people who used Trump hashtags shared four times more links to low-quality news outlets than those who used Biden hashtags. 

“Prior work identifying political differences in misinformation sharing has been criticized for relying on the judgment of professional fact-checkers. But we show that conservative Twitter users shared much lower quality news, even when relying on ratings from politically-balanced groups of laypeople,” said co-author Dr Mohsen Mosleh, Associate Professor, Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford. “This can’t be written off as the result of political bias in the ratings, and means that preferential suspension of conservative users is not necessarily the result of political bias on the part of social media companies.”

The study also discovered similar associations between conservatism and low-quality news sharing (based on both expert and politically-balanced layperson ratings) were present in seven other datasets from Twitter, Facebook, and survey experiments, spanning 2016 to 2023 and including data from 16 different countries. For example, the researchers found cross-cultural evidence of conservatives sharing more unambiguously false claims about COVID-19 than liberals, with conservative political elites sharing links to lower quality new sources than liberal political elites in the U.K. and Germany as well. 

“The social media users analyzed in this research are not representative of Americans more broadly, so these findings do not necessarily mean that conservatives in general are more likely to spread misinformation than liberals. Also, we’re just looking at this particular period in time,” said Rand. “Our basic point would be the same if it was found that liberal users shared more misinformation and were getting suspended more. Such a pattern of suspension would not be enough to show bias on the part of the companies, because of the differences in users’ behavior.”

Even under politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, the researchers expect that there would be political asymmetries in enforcement. While the analyses do not rule out the possibility of any bias on the part of platforms, the inequality of sanctions is not diagnostic of bias one way or the other. Policy-makers need to be aware that even if social media companies are working in an unbiased way to manage misinformation on their platforms, there will still be some level of differential treatment across groups.

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Journal

Nature

Article Title

Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions

Solidarity drives online virality in a nation under attack, study of Ukrainian social media reveals

University of Cambridge

While divisive social media posts get more traction in countries such as the US, a new study shows that celebrating national unity is the way to go viral in Ukraine.

“Ingroup solidarity” statements got far more likes and shares than hostile posts about Russians – a trend that only grew stronger in the wake of the invasion.

The first major study of social media behaviour during wartime has found that posts celebrating national and cultural unity in a country under attack receive significantly more online engagement than derogatory posts about the aggressors.  

University of Cambridge psychologists analysed a total of 1.6 million posts on Facebook and Twitter (now X) from Ukrainian news outlets in the seven months prior to February 2022, when Russian forces invaded, and the six months that followed.

Once the attempted invasion had begun, posts classified as expressing Ukrainian “ingroup solidarity” were associated with 92% more engagement on Facebook, and 68% more on Twitter, than similar posts had achieved prior to Russia’s full-scale attack.

While posts expressing “outgroup hostility” towards Russia only received an extra 1% engagement on Facebook after the invasion, with no significant difference on Twitter.

“Pro-Ukrainian sentiment, phrases such as Glory to Ukraine and posts about Ukrainian military heroism, gained huge amounts of likes and shares, yet hostile posts aimed at Russia barely registered,” said Yara Kyrychenko, from Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab (SDML) in its Department of Psychology.

“The vast majority of research on social media uses US data, where divisive posts often go viral, prompting some scholars to suggest that these platforms drive polarisation. In Ukraine, a country under siege, we find the reverse,” said Kyrychenko, lead author of the study published today in Nature Communications.  

“Emotions that appeal to ingroup identity can empower people and boost morale. These emotions may be more contagious, and prompt greater engagement, during a time of active threat – when the motivation to behave beneficially for one’s ingroup is heightened.”

Previous research from the same Cambridge lab found that going viral on US social media is driven by hostility: posts that mock and criticise the opposing sides of ideological divides are far more likely to get engagement and reach larger audiences.

The new study initially used the same techniques, finding that – prior to the invasion –social media posts from pro-Ukrainian as well as pro-Russian news sources that contained keywords of the ‘outgroup’ – opposing politicians, placenames, and so on – it did indeed generate more traction than posts containing ‘ingroup’ keywords.*    

However, researchers then trained a large language model (LLM) – a form of language-processing AI, similar to ChatGPT – to better categorise sentiment and the motivation behind the post, rather than simply relying on keywords, and used this to analyse Facebook and Twitter posts of Ukrainian news outlets before and after the invasion.**

This deeper dive revealed a consistently strong engagement rate for solidarity posting – higher than for ‘outgroup hostility’ – in the lead up to Russia’s attack, which leaps even further after the invasion, while interactions with derisive posts about Russia flatline.

Lastly, a separate dataset of 149,000 post-invasion Tweets that had been geo-located to Ukraine was fed into a similar LLM, to test this effect on social media posts from the Ukrainian population, rather than only news sources.***  

Tweets – now X posts – from the Ukrainian public containing messages of “ingroup solidarity” championing Ukraine were likely to get 14% more engagement, while those expressing antagonism to Russians were likely to gain only a 7% increase.****

“Social media platforms allow expressions of the national struggle that would otherwise have been private to reach millions,” said Kyrychenko.

“These moments echo solidarity and resistance from a first-person account, which can make them more powerful than traditional media rooted in impersonal reporting.”

Researchers acknowledge these trends may result from algorithms used by social media companies, but say the fact that similar effects were detected on two separate platforms, and with posts from both Ukraine’s news sources and its citizenry, suggests much of this information-sharing dynamic is driven by people.

“The Kremlin has long tried to sow division in Ukraine, but fails to understand that the Euromaidan revolution and Russia’s attempted invasion have only spurred Ukrainian identity towards national unity,” said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, study senior author from Cambridge’s SDML as well as King’s College London.

“We can trace through social media posts this fortification of Ukrainian group identity in the face of extreme Russian aggression,” said Roozenbeek, who published the book Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian–Ukrainian War earlier this year.

Kyrychenko, a Cambridge Gates Scholar born and raised in Kyiv, recalls the critical role Facebook and Twitter played in the Euromaidan protests in 2014, some of which she participated in as a teenager, and her surprise at the attitude towards social media she encountered in the US after moving there to study in 2018, during the Trump presidency.  

“By the time I arrived in the US, social media was seen as toxic and divisive, whereas my experience of these platforms in Ukraine had been as a force for positive political unity in the fight for democracy,” said Kyrychenko.

While Kyrychenko points out that hate speech and conspiracy theories still thrive online in Ukraine, she argues that the solidarity fostered on social media reflects some of the early promise these platforms held for uniting people against tyranny.

“The Ukrainian experience reminds us that social media can be used for good, pro-social causes, even in the direst of situations.”

 

NOTES:

* Facebook and Twitter were banned in Russia following the invasion. As such, this initial element of the study was the only one to feature Russian social media posts. 

** The team manually labelled 1600 Ukrainian social media posts as either “ingroup solidarity” or “outgroup hostility” based on whether they praised Ukraine and promoted national unity or attacked Russia as immoral warmongers, and fed these into the LLM to train it to read and categorise Ukrainian social media posts. The researchers also provided the LLM guideline definitions for “ingroup solidarity” and “outgroup hostility”.

*** The researchers only used pro-Ukrainian Tweets: posts that were supportive of Ukraine, whether through attacking Russia or championing Ukraine. 

**** For example, if the LLM labelled a post as ‘ingroup solidarity’, it was likely to get 14% more engagement than if it was not labelled as ‘ingroup solidarity’, controlling for other variables such as: if the post has media or a URL, if it mentioned the ingroup, the outgroup, the number of ‘positive’ words, and so on.

Examples of social media posts that were part of the study’s dataset: 

Ingroup solidarity:

• "Thanks to the KALUSH ORCHESTRA band for their support! Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦" got 4434 retweets. 
• "Our flag will fly over all of Ukraine, said General Valery Zaluzhnyi." got 5577 favorites and 767 retweets.
• "Ukrainian soldiers congratulate students with September 1 and remembers their first bells 💔🔔" ...  got 92381 shares and 482896 likes on Facebook.
• "In a Polish church, they decided to sing the song "Oh, there's a red viburnum in the meadow" right during the service! 🇺🇦 ❤️🇵🇱" ... got 34897 shares and 68847 likes on Facebook.

A further description from lead author Yara Kyrychenko of an example of Ukrainian ‘ingroup solidarity’ social media content:

“On New Year’s Eve 2022, a family in the then recently de-occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson watched Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential address over WhatsApp with their relatives in the still-occupied territories.

“A video of the entire family crying – as Zelensky states Ukraine will liberate and rebuild – quickly went viral across platforms. It captured something so powerful and deeply emotional that watching it makes many cry, even months later.

“The sense of unity despite barriers, the tender cherishing of the national tradition, and the human connection—all distilled into one TikTok. Posts like these evoke similar feelings of solidarity in countless Ukrainians, even though each has seen a different face of the war.”

Outgroup Hostility:

• "Boris Johnson: negotiating with Putin is like negotiating with a crocodile" got 425 retweets and 4957 favorites.  
• "It hurts to understand that these bastards shoot absolutely everything. It doesn't matter if the military is there or not. Hospitals, schools...." got 21728 Shares and 25125 Likes. 
• "❗️Russians don't want to fight for Putin. The story of a soldier captured in Kharkov. "Bastards! I hate them! They are making propaganda!"" ... got 65409 shares and 79735 Likes.  

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-52179-8 

Article Title

Social identity correlates of social media engagement before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2024

 

Women more likely to choose wine with feminine labels

Washington State University

PULLMAN, Wash. – To appeal to the majority of consumers, winemakers may want to pay as much attention to what’s on the bottle as what’s in it.

A three-part experimental study led by Washington State University researchers found that women were more inclined to purchase wine that had labels with feminine gender cues. The more strongly the participants identified with other women, a phenomenon called “in-group identification,” the greater this effect was. A feminine label also influenced their expectation that they would like the wine better.

With women representing 59% of U.S. wine consumers, the male-dominated field of winemaking might want to pay attention to the perceptions of this understudied group, said Ruiying Cai, lead author of the paper in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.  

“When you look at the market segments, women are actually purchasing a lot of wine. They are a large group,” said Cai, an assistant professor with WSU’s Carson College of Business. “We found that feminine cues speak to women consumers. They have more favorable attitudes toward the label and the wine itself. They were also expecting their overall sensory experience to be better, and they were more likely to purchase the wine.”

Gender cues often rely on stereotypes, and in initial tests for this research, a group of 90 women rated wine labels as more masculine when they featured rugged animals like wolves and stags as well as portraits of men. They designated labels as feminine that had cute animals, flowers and female portraits. Labels with castles and bunches of grapes were seen as neutral.

In two online experiments, a total of 324 women were shown fictitious wines with labels designed with these gendered cues. The participants showed higher intention to buy wines with a feminine label, such as a woman holding flowers, as opposed to a wine with a masculine label, such as a bulldog in a spiked collar. When asked about the expected sensory experience, they rated their liking of every sensory aspect higher, including the color, taste, aroma and aftertaste.

The participant’s level of wine expertise moderated their taste expectations but surprisingly, not their purchase intentions.

“Whether they were knowledgeable or less knowledgeable about wine, when they saw those feminine cues, they had a higher intention to buy the wine. The gender cue influence was so strong, it trumped the effect of that knowledge,” said co-author Christina Chi, a professor at WSU’s Carson College of Business.

A third experiment with another set of 138 women involved a taste test—also with a surprising finding. Researchers gave bottles of the same red wine with one of the gendered labels. More women who tasted the feminine-labeled wine ranked it higher in fruit flavors such as red current and blueberry than those who tasted the same wine with a masculine-cued label—and despite the fact those flavors were not dominant components in that particular wine. Women connected more mineral flavors with the masculine-labelled wine.

However, the participants who tasted the feminine-labelled wine reported liking it less than the women who tasted the masculine-labelled wines. The authors said this could be a result of the incongruence between the expected flavor influenced by the feminine label and the actual taste of the wine sample, which had a medium body, tannin and alcohol level.

Few studies have focused on the perceptions of women wine consumers in a field where 82% of the winemakers are men. That lack of perspective is very apparent on wine aisles, said Chi, noting that many vintners seem to favor masculine imagery like stallions, bulls and roosters--and one brand even features a prisoner in a jail cell.

“When designing the labels, winemakers should involve more women in the process, and it’s highly advisable to pilot test the labels among consumers for gender cues,” she said.

In addition to Cai and Chi, co-authors on this study include recent WSU graduate Demi Deng now at Auburn University and Robert Harrington of WSU.

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Journal

International Journal of Hospitality Management

DOI

10.1016/j.ijhm.2024.103930 

Article Title

The eyes have it: How do gender cues in wine labels influence U.S. women wine consumers?

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2024

 

Scientists take a major step in understanding how to stop the transmission of malaria

University of Nottingham

A team of scientists at the University of Nottingham, have uncovered how the parasite that causes malaria orchestrates their cell division – which is key in enabling the parasite to transmit this deadly disease.

In a new paper, published in PLOS Biology, a team of scientists at the university, along with collaborators across the globe, show how they have uncovered key regulators of how malaria parasites manage their cell division.

Malaria is a major public health issue in many developing parts of the world. It is transmitted by female mosquitoes which ingest the parasites when they bite. Malaria was responsible for approximately 608,000 deaths in 2022 (WHO) and is caused by a single-celled parasite termed Plasmodium, that invades the liver and red blood cells.

This new research is led by Professor Rita Tewari from the School of Life Sciences at the university and Professor Mathieu Brochet at the University of Geneva. It aims to unravel the atypical mode of multiplication of the malaria parasite with particular focus on the developmental stages of the parasite within the mosquito in the hope of finding new therapeutic targets.

Professor Tewari said: “It is clear by looking at COVID-19, that controlling the transmission of parasites is equally crucial in addition to controlling the disease. Hence, to have fundamental knowledge of how the parasite succeeds to divide within the mosquito and what switches it uses will help to design intervention targets.

“One of the unusual cell divisions is seen in male sex cell formation. Recently, Professor Tewari’s team of researchers have focused on some proteins called kinases. Kinases are a family of proteins which contribute to the control of nearly all cellular processes and have already become major drug targets in the fight against cancer and other diseases. However, studies on these kinases and how they are involved in cell division in Plasmodium species are scarce.”

The group have recently characterised two kinases: ARK2 and NEK1, which they have published details of how they contribute to parasite multiplication especially during transmission stages within mosquitoes.

Professor Tewari adds: “Kinases are the best drug targets and their role in parasite transmission is important to unravel. The two studies here are a step in that direction.”

The previous study detailing more on this discovery can be found in Nature Communications.

The scientists involved in this study were Mohammad Zeeshan and Sarah Pashley from Professor’s Tewari’s lab at Nottingham. The First author on the paper Zeeshan said: “NEK1 is a functional protein that plays a crucial role in different stages of Plasmodium development. Our study reveals that the depletion of NEK1 protein from Plasmodium arrests its cell division and sexual development. This indicates that NEK1 could be a potential drug target, not only to stop the malaria disease but also its transmission.”

The latest study in PLOS Biology can be found here. The previous study detailing more on this discovery can be found in Nature Communications.

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Journal

PLoS Biology

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.3002802 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Plasmodium NEK1 coordinates MTOC organisation and kinetochore attachment during rapid mitosis in male gamete formation

 

Public discourse promotes socially responsible behavior

University of Zurich

Public discourse campaigns often promote social responsibility, but do such discussions also impact our market behavior? Economists at the University of Zurich have published a new study that shows that engaging in public discourse increases socially responsible market behavior – regardless of participants’ social norms and values.

Movements such as Fridays for Future and organizations such as the World Economic Forum support discussions on how consumers and firms can take action to mitigate climate change. Behavioral economists at the University of Zurich have now investigated whether and how such public discourse influences consumer behavior. “We wanted to find out how to increase the market share of socially responsible products,” says study author Björn Bartling. “In our experiments, we were able to observe that engaging in public discourse prior to a purchase results in more socially responsible behavior, even if it incurs personal costs.”

Experiments reveal effects of communication

The researchers conducted three lab experiments, in which close to 2,500 participants in 187 fictitious markets took on the roles of buyers, sellers and third parties who weren't part of trading but still affected by it. They traded goods that varied in their social impact. In all experiments, sellers and buyers could choose between harmful products that cost less to produce but create external harm or responsible products with higher production costs but no external harm. Before making their decision, the participants were able to engage in discussion with each other.

In the experiments, the researchers observed a significant increase in trade with fair products when participants had engaged in different forms of discourse compared to the baseline condition in which there had been no discourse. The only situation that yielded no increase in socially responsible market behavior was when participants were able to avoid discourse altogether. “Our findings illustrate how important active participation in public discourse is for initiating meaningful changes in market behavior,” says Bartling.

Different market, similar results

The experiments were not only carried out in Switzerland but also in China, where, according to previous studies, socially responsible market behavior is less pronounced. In China too, previous engagement in public discourse resulted in a clear increase in market social responsibility. The market share of products traded fairly was at roughly the same level in China as in Switzerland.

Lab studies have their limitations when it comes to measuring the diverse impact of public discourse. Factors such as nationality and differences in income among market participants that may make it more difficult for discourse to yield sustainable agreements were not considered in the study, the authors emphasize. “Nevertheless, our findings provide valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying socially responsible market behavior and show that public discourse has the potential to promote socially responsible behavior,” says Bartling.

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Journal

American Economic Review

DOI

10.1257/aer.20201361 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Public Discourse and socially responsible Market Behavior

 

New ACS report: Breast cancer mortality continues three decade decline overall, but steeper increases in incidence for women <50 & Asian American, Pacific Islanders of all ages

American Cancer Society

 

image: 

Breast Cancer Report from the American Cancer Society

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Credit: American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society (ACS) today released Breast Cancer Statistics, 2024, the organization’s biennial update on breast cancer occurrence and trends in the United States. The new report finds breast cancer mortality rates overall have dropped by 44% since 1989, averting approximately 517,900 breast cancer deaths. However, not all women have benefited from this progress, notably American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) women, whose rates have remained unchanged over the past three decades. Also concerning is the continued upward trend in breast cancer incidence, rising by 1% annually during 2012-2021, with the steepest increase in women younger than 50 years (1.4% per year) and Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) women of any age (2.5%-2.7% per year). These important findings are published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, alongside its consumer-friendly companion, Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2024, available on cancer.org.

“The encouraging news is breast cancer mortality rates continue to decrease thanks to advances in early detection and treatment,” said Angela Giaquinto, associate scientist, cancer surveillance research at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the study. “But future progress may be thwarted by increasing incidence, especially among younger women, and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as delayed diagnosis due to interruptions in screening.”

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among U.S. women after skin cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in Hispanic women. In 2024, an estimated 310,720 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women, and approximately 42,250 women are expected to die from the disease. While rare, this year, 2,790 men will also be diagnosed with breast cancer, and 530 men will die from the disease.

For the report, researchers analyzed population-based cancer incidence and mortality data collected by the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR), and the National Center for Health Statistics. Combined SEER and NPCR data provided by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) were the source for short-term incidence trends (1998-2021) and contemporary incidence rates (2017–2021) by race and ethnicity, age, molecular subtype, state, and stage (SEER Summary).

“Women today are a lot less likely to die from breast cancer, but alarming disparities still remain, especially for Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native American and Black women,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society. “These gaps need to be rectified through systematic efforts to ensure access to high-quality screening and treatment for every woman.”

Other key findings from the report include:

• AIAN women have 10% lower breast cancer incidence than White women, but 6% higher mortality, and only 51% of AIAN women 40 years or older had a mammogram in the past two years compared to 68% of White women. 

• Breast cancer in women under 50 years has increased in AAPI women by 50% since 2000, surpassing the rate in young Hispanic, AIAN, and Black women to become the highest rate alongside White women (both 86 per 100,000).
• Black women continue to have a 38% higher breast cancer mortality rate than White women, despite a 5% lower incidence. Black women also have lower survival than White women for every breast cancer subtype and stage of diagnosis except localized disease, with which they are 10% less likely to be diagnosed (58% versus 68%).

To address ongoing cancer disparities in Black women, the ACS launched the VOICES of Black Women study in May 2024. The study aims to enroll over 100,000 Black women in the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 55 from diverse backgrounds and income levels who have not been diagnosed with cancer to better understand cancer risk and outcomes. For more information and to participate, visit voices.cancer.org.

“Building upon the progress we have made in reducing breast cancer mortality rates requires ensuring more individuals have access to breast cancer screenings,” said Lisa A. Lacasse, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), the advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society. “Through cooperative agreements with all 50 states, tribal organizations and territories, the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) has been a lifeline for limited-income, uninsured and underinsured women, providing them with critical screenings and treatment. Congress has a chance to pass the Screening for Communities to Receive Early and Equitable Needed Services (SCREENS) for Cancer Act, which would reauthorize the NBCCEDP and expand its reach to more people who may not otherwise be screened. We urge Congress to take this step towards saving lives from cancer while reducing costs for our health care system.”

Rebecca Siegel is senior author of the report. Other ACS authors participating in the study include Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, Dr. Hyuna Sung, Jessica Star and Dr. Robert Smith.

More information on breast cancer can be found here.

# # #

About the American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is the leading cancer-fighting organization with a vision to end cancer as we know it for everyone. For more than 110 years, we have been the only organization improving the lives of people with cancer and their families through advocacy, research, and patient support, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. To learn more, visit cancer.org or call our 24/7 helpline at 1-800-227-2345. Connect with us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
 

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Journal

CA A Cancer Journal for Clinicians

 

Vaccinating the young to save the old in the Tropics

PNAS Nexus

 

image: 

Mortality among vaccine allocations that reserve the largest portion of vaccines for the 10–19 age group (blue) or two oldest age groups (orange) for vaccine supplies covering 10-90% of the population. No vaccine allocations exist allocating a plurality of vaccines to the 60–69 or 70+ age groups when vaccine supply exceeds 40%.

view more 

Credit: Servadio et al

A model suggests that vaccinating children and teens against the flu can help protect the elderly in tropical countries. Influenza kills up to 650,000 people worldwide every year. In part due to the lack of strong seasonality and differences in vaccine supply, optimal vaccination strategies for the tropics may differ from those in temperate zones. Joseph Servadio and colleagues parameterized an age-structured mathematical model of influenza transmission to the asynchronous, non-annual epidemiology of tropical influenza in Vietnam, a country with low vaccine coverage. The model includes three subtypes of the flu virus. Vaccinating year-round was found to be more effective than vaccinating all at once. Focusing vaccination effort on young people ages 10–19, a group who are especially likely to transmit the virus, was the best strategy for most vaccine supply scenarios, but remaining vaccine doses must be carefully allocated to other age groups—particularly those over 60 years of age—to minimize mortality. The scarcer the vaccines, the more crucial age-specific allocation is to keeping death rates low. When vaccine supplies are limited, the authors advocate for allocating vaccines to school-age children and elderly adults.

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Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Influenza vaccine allocation in tropical settings under constrained resources

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2024

 

Clinical trial shows synthetic cannabis reduces agitation in Alzheimer’s disease

Synthetic THC (dronabinol) was well tolerated by patients without adverse effects often seen from current Alzheimer’s agitation medications

Johns Hopkins Medicine

In a study led by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine, researchers show that a pill form of the drug dronabinol, an FDA-approved synthetic version of marijuana’s main ingredient, THC, reduces agitation in patients with Alzheimer’s by an average of 30%.

The researchers say that compared to current treatments for agitation, such as antipsychotics, dronabinol produced similar calming effects without adverse results such as delirium or seizures.

Results of the eight-year clinical trial were presented at the International Psychogeriatric Association conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Sept. 26.“These new findings represent eight years of work dedicated to people who have Alzheimer’s as well as their caregivers,” says Paul Rosenberg, M.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-principal investigator for this study. “Agitation is one of the most distressing symptoms of Alzheimer’s dementia, and we are pleased to make positive strides forward in treatment of these patients.”

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States, with an estimated 6.7 million cases in Americans age 65 and older, according to the National Institutes of Health. This number is predicted to grow to 13.8 million by 2060. Agitation is difficult to manage. It is defined as excess motor activity (pacing or repetitive movements), verbal aggression and/or physical aggression. An estimated 40% of people with Alzheimer’s develop agitation.

Although mild agitation can sometimes be moderated by behavioral intervention, in moderate to severe cases, some form of medication is typically required to manage symptoms and provide relief for caregivers.“It is the agitation, not the memory loss, that often drives individuals with dementia to the emergency department and long-term-care facilities,” says Brent Forester, M.D., psychiatrist-in-chief and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center and co-principal investigator on the study. “Dronabinol has the potential to both reduce health care costs and make an important, positive impact on caregivers’ mental and physical health.”

In the new study, researchers recruited 75 patients with severe Alzheimer’s agitation across five clinical sites, including 35 admitted to The Johns Hopkins Hospital between March 2017 and May 2024. To qualify, patients had to have a formal clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and show at least one major symptom of agitation for at least two weeks. Prior to treatment, patients were tested for agitation using the Pittsburgh Agitation Scale (PAS) and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Agitation/Aggression subscale (NPI-C).

The PAS scores agitation from 0 to 4, with 4 being the most agitated. The NPI-C provides a brief assessment of neuropsychiatric symptoms including delusions, hallucinations, anxiety/depression and other factors. Baseline scores were acquired from caregivers at the onset of the trial.

Participants were then randomly selected to get either 5 milligrams of dronabinol in pill form or a placebo in pill form twice daily for three weeks, and then retested using the PAS and NPI-C.

 Results from the dronabinol group show an average PAS starting value of 9.68 and an end value of 7.26 after three weeks, a 30% decrease compared to the scores in the placebo group which did not change. Additionally, dronabinol was well tolerated by patients compared to current treatments for agitation.“Results like this are encouraging. We are thrilled that FDA-approved dronabinol was robustly effective and appeared safe for treatment of agitation,” says Rosenberg. “This adds another tool in our efforts to improve the care of our loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease.”

The researchers say they plan longer-term studies of dronabinol for Alzheimer’s disease, as well as expanded sample sizes. They also hope to continue to explore other ways medical cannabis can benefit both patients and caregivers.

Dronabinol is a synthetic form of THC, the psychoactive main ingredient in cannabis (marijuana). The drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1985 to treat loss of appetite in patients with HIV/AIDS, and is currently prescribed to treat nausea and vomiting in those undergoing cancer chemotherapy.

The investigators caution that their current study results are not intended to encourage or inform the use of other forms of medical marijuana available in 38 states and the District of Columbia.

Co-investigators include Halima Amjad, Haroon Burhanullah and Milap Nowrangi at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Marc Agronin at Miami Jewish Health, and James Wilkins and David Harper at McLean Hospital.

The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Aging at the National Institutes of Health. 

Public Call to NBA: Cancel Pre-Season Games in UAE in Solidarity with the People of Sudan


October 3, 2024


WASHINGTON—In an open letter released today, a growing coalition of human rights organizations and concerned citizens are calling on the NBA to cancel their October 4 and 6 pre-season games with the Boston Celtics and the Denver Nuggets in Abu Dhabi in light of the United Arab Emirate’s fueling of atrocities in Sudan.

Groups including Refugees International, The Sentry, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Darfur Women Action Group, Sudanese Youth Network, and the Sudanese American Public Affairs Association, alongside hundreds of individuals have endorsed the open call for the NBA to cancel the games in light of the UAE’s role in what is now the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.

“The NBA’s partnership with the UAE in hosting games risks making the NBA complicit in UAE efforts to divert global attention from its illicit support to the genocidal RSF militia in Sudan,” said Jeremy Konydyk, President of Refugees International, one of the leaders of the Speak Out on Sudan Campaign. “Refugees International and a growing coalition of concerned organizations and citizens urge the NBA to suspend its partnership with the UAE until it stops supplying weapons to the RSF and acts to restrain its campaign of crimes against humanity.”

“The people of Sudan have suffered immensely from the current war and the UAE has been the most egregious outside supporter of the Rapid Support Forces committing serious international crimes,” said Niemat Ahmadi, Founder and President of Darfur Women Action Group. “The NBA should not be partnering with enablers of atrocities. Rather it should be speaking out and standing in solidarity with the people of Sudan.”

Learn more at www.speakoutonsudan.org.

Beyond humanitarian aid

ByTahany Maalla

AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

2/10/24

The war in Sudan shows how during conflict, the internet is as critical as food or medicine.

Satellite over the African continent. Credit ESA/Mlabspace via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.


Sudan is battling not only bullets but also the suffocating absence of communication infrastructure, an often-overlooked lifeline that is as critical as food or medicine. As the country grapples with a severe food-security crisis, grassroots initiatives, such as mutual aid groups and emergency kitchens, are the only reliable sources of survival for millions. Yet these fragile support networks depend on stable internet access—a vital tool now throttled by war. With the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tightening its grip on communications in territories it controls and using smuggled Starlink devices to monitor and control access, international actors remain disturbingly silent on this critical obstruction.

The stakes are clear: Without the restoration of internet access, Sudan’s humanitarian and political futures stand to collapse. The very infrastructure that once mobilized resistance, toppled dictators, and enabled life-saving coordination is now at the mercy of warlords and foreign indifference.

Sudan’s food-security crisis is dire and worsening. As international aid becomes increasingly inaccessible due to the conflict, the most vulnerable communities are relying on mutual aid groups, support from the Sudanese diaspora, and central kitchens run by voluntary emergency rooms. These grassroots initiatives are not merely filling gaps left by international humanitarian efforts; in many cases, they are people’s only lifeline. “Sudanese are barely helping each other survive, with minimal international support or protection,” said William Carter, Sudan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council. For many, this local network is the difference between a daily meal and days of starvation.

However, these life-saving efforts rely entirely on stable communication and internet access. Families sending remittances, mutual aid groups identifying communities in need, and emergency kitchens coordinating supplies all need the internet to function. Without it, this already fragile support system—stretched to its breaking point—will collapse.

In RSF-controlled areas, communication relies solely on smuggled Starlink devices, which operate unofficially and at a steep cost. Access is scarce, dangerous, and heavily monitored, as many of these devices are controlled by RSF soldiers. It is outrageous that, despite the RSF’s ongoing obstruction of aid, international actors have remained silent on their failure to maintain communication infrastructure. This lack of accountability further exacerbates the humanitarian crisis and undermines the vital networks that Sudanese communities depend on for survival.

However, the stakes extend far beyond immediate humanitarian needs—the internet is crucial to Sudan’s political future. The ongoing war is reshaping the country’s political landscape and civic space. Long before the outbreak of conflict on April 15, the internet was a vital piece of infrastructure for civic engagement. It was the battleground where Sudan’s grassroots movements organized, confronted divisive narratives, and led the opposition that toppled a 30-year dictatorship in 2019. The same digital networks sustained resistance to the 2021 coup and spurred the remarkable local emergency responses we see today. Their activism was pivotal. Yet the ongoing war has dramatically disrupted this dynamic, threatening the very infrastructure that once empowered a generation of activists and transformed Sudan’s civic landscape.

The conflict-driven displacement has forced countless activists, politicians, and civil society leaders to flee major cities targeted by the RSF, with many unable to return due to the worsening security situation. In the relatively safer states of northern and eastern Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) imposes severe restrictions, with increasing reports of activists and politicians being targeted. As a result, political and civil society gatherings have largely shifted outside Sudan, leaving the country’s internal civic space severely compromised. Resistance committees—once the backbone of civilian resistance—have been devastated by this displacement. Their ability to convene and organize within Sudan has been further crippled by communication blackouts.

Despite repeated promises by the US special envoy to prioritize Sudanese citizen voices in the negotiation process, the design of these processes remains vague. Moreover, the demands placed on the warring factions have failed to restore civilian agency. On the contrary, the mediation framework has further militarized civilian actors, eroding citizen agency as many Sudanese are now left waiting for the outcome of US elections. A critical and immediate demand—restoring and maintaining internet access—cannot wait until a ceasefire. It is a fundamental right that must be secured without delay.

Meanwhile, the RSF continues to exploit humanitarian platforms, offering only lip service to mediators and international actors. A straightforward and enforceable demand—that they ensure a functional communication system in all areas under their control—would be a vital step, both easy to monitor and essential for the survival of grassroots efforts.