Handwriting beats typing and watching videos for learning to read

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

VIDEO: THOUGH WRITING BY HAND IS INCREASINGLY BEING ECLIPSED BY THE EASE OF COMPUTERS, A NEW STUDY FINDS WE SHOULDN'T BE SO QUICK TO THROW AWAY THE PENCILS AND PAPER: HANDWRITING... view more 

CREDIT: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Though writing by hand is increasingly being eclipsed by the ease of computers, a new study finds we shouldn't be so quick to throw away the pencils and paper: handwriting helps people learn certain skills surprisingly faster and significantly better than learning the same material through typing or watching videos.

"The question out there for parents and educators is why should our kids spend any time doing handwriting," says senior author Brenda Rapp, a Johns Hopkins University professor of cognitive science. "Obviously, you're going to be a better hand-writer if you practice it. But since people are handwriting less then maybe who cares? The real question is: Are there other benefits to handwriting that have to do with reading and spelling and understanding? We find there most definitely are."

The work appears in the journal Psychological Science.

Rapp and lead author Robert Wiley, a former Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. student who is now a professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, conducted an experiment in which 42 people were taught the Arabic alphabet, split into three groups of learners: writers, typers and video watchers.

Everyone learned the letters one at a time by watching videos of them being written along with hearing names and sounds. After being introduced to each letter, the three groups would attempt to learn what they just saw and heard in different ways. The video group got an on-screen flash of a letter and had to say if it was the same letter they'd just seen. The typers would have to find the letter on the keyboard. The writers had to copy the letter with pen and paper.

At the end, after as many as six sessions, everyone could recognize the letters and made few mistakes when tested. But the writing group reached this level of proficiency faster than the other groups - a few of them in just two sessions.

Next the researchers wanted to determine to what extent, if at all, the groups could generalize this new knowledge. In other words, they could all recognize the letters, but could anyone really use them like a pro, by writing with them, using them to spell new words and using them to read unfamiliar words?

The writing group was better - decisively - in all of those things.

"The main lesson is that even though they were all good at recognizing letters, the writing training was the best at every other measure. And they required less time to get there," Wiley said.

The writing group ended up with more of the skills needed for expert adult-level reading and spelling. Wiley and Rapp say it's because handwriting reinforces the visual and aural lessons. The advantage has nothing to do with penmanship - it's that the simple act of writing by hand provides a perceptual-motor experience that unifies what is being learned about the letters (their shapes, their sounds, and their motor plans), which in turn creates richer knowledge and fuller, true learning, the team says.

"With writing, you're getting a stronger representation in your mind that lets you scaffold toward these other types of tasks that don't in any way involve handwriting," Wiley said.

Although the participants in the study were adults, Wiley and Rapp expect they'd see the same results in children. The findings have implications for classrooms, where pencils and notebooks have taken a backseat in recent years to tablets and laptops, and teaching cursive handwriting is all but extinct.

The findings also suggest that adults trying to learn a language with a different alphabet should supplement what they're learning through apps or tapes with good old-fashioned paperwork.

Wiley, for one, is making sure the kids in his life are stocked up on writing supplies.

"I have three nieces and a nephew right now and my siblings ask me should we get them crayons and pens? I say yes, let them just play with the letters and start writing them and write them all the time. I bought them all finger paint for Christmas and told them let's do letters."

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The work was supported by the Science of Learning Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and the Dingwall Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in the Cognitive, Clinical, and Neural Foundations of Language.

Coastal wetlands are nature's flood defences

They offer more protection than we thought, estuaries study shows

SWANSEA UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: SWANSEA RESEARCHERS CONDUCTING SALTMARSH VEGETATION SURVEYS AND RECORDING WATER LEVELS ON THE TAF ESTUARY, SOUTH WALES. THEIR STUDY OF ESTUARIES SHOWS THE FLOOD PROTECTION ROLE OF COASTAL WETLANDS HAS BEEN... view more 

CREDIT: SWANSEA UNIVERSITY

Coastal wetlands - such as salt marshes - provide even more flood protection than previously thought, reducing the risk to lives and homes in estuaries, a new study has revealed.

The researchers' simulations showed that wetlands that grow in estuaries, such as salt marshes, can reduce water levels by up to 2 metres and provide protection far inland up estuary channels.

This subsequently saved up to $38 (£27) million in avoided flood damage costs per estuary during a large storm thanks to the wetlands' role in preventing storm floods.

The research is timely as wetlands are facing growing threats from continued urban development. 22 of the largest 32 cities in the world - including London, New York and Tokyo - are built on low-lying land around estuaries, which puts them at increasing risk of flooding in a warming climate.

At the same time climate change is driving increases in the magnitude and frequency of storms, and sea level rise.

The flood prevention role of coastal wetlands, which are common throughout Wales - the focus of this study - as well as the rest of the world, is therefore vital.

Previous research has focused on wetlands along open coastlines, where the plants absorb wave energy and stop waves pushing inland. However, the new study focuses on estuarine environments, including looking at what happens in upstream estuary areas where waves tend to be much smaller.

Taking this fuller picture into account, the researchers demonstrate that wetlands can have a much bigger storm flood prevention role because they not only absorb wave energy, but simultaneously reduce storm surges as they move up estuary channels.

This happens because the marshes along the estuary edges cause drag or friction, slowing down surges of water caused by storms, and protecting vulnerable upstream areas from flooding.

The research team included experts from Swansea University, with colleagues from the universities of Bangor and Exeter, Plymouth Marine Laboratory and from CSIRO in Tasmania.

The team used hydrodynamic models of eight estuaries of very different size and character in various parts of Wales. They simulated storms of different strengths and modelled the damage they would be likely to cause.

They found that coastal wetlands:

• Reduced flooding across all eight estuaries in the study
• Lowered storm water levels by as much as 2 metres in upstream areas
• Made the biggest difference when faced with the most powerful storms - reducing average flood extents by 35% and damages caused by 37% ($8.4M).

Lead researcher Dr Tom Fairchild of Swansea University said:

'Our study shows that coastal wetlands play a crucial role in reducing storm-driven flooding in estuaries. They are nature's flood defences and we need them now more than ever.

Until now, the role of wetlands for coastal defence has been undervalued because of the focus on open coasts. Traditionally, estuaries -where waves tend to be much smaller - have been assumed to be less important, despite containing extensive wetland areas. Our research challenges that idea, showing that focussing on single processes, or even coastal environments, may risk grossly underestimating the true value of our wetlands'.

Dr John Griffin, co-author of the study and also from Swansea University, added:

'Our work shows that when big storms hit, nature works extra hard for us, preventing or reducing coastal flooding... for free. The upshot is, by protecting and restoring coastal wetlands, we help protect ourselves from the growing threat of flooding. It's a no-brainer.'

CAPTION

Map showing the difference in water level between scenarios where marsh was present or absent at the Three Rivers estuary complex in South Wales. Red areas indicate large reductions in water level where marsh is present, and blue-white where little to no effect was observed, showing that the presence of marsh vegetation has the greatest flood protective effect for towns and infrastructure in upstream areas

CREDIT

Swansea University

The research was published in Environmental Research Letters.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Swansea University is a world-class, research-led, dual campus university. The University was established in 1920 and was the first campus university in the UK. It currently offers around 350 undergraduate courses and 350 postgraduate courses to circa 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The University's 46-acre Singleton Park Campus is located in beautiful parkland with views across Swansea Bay. The University's 65-acre science and innovation Bay Campus, which opened in September 2015, is located a few miles away on the eastern approach to the city. It has the distinction of having direct access to a beach and its own seafront promenade. Both campuses are close to the Gower Peninsula, the UK's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Swansea was named 'Welsh University of the Year' in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2017. The University is in the top 300 best universities in the world, ranked in the 251-300 group in The Times Higher Education World University rankings 2018.

The results of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 showed the University has achieved its ambition to be a top 30 research University, soaring up the league table to 26th in the UK, with the 'biggest leap among research-intensive institutions' (Times Higher Education, December 2014) in the UK.

The University has ambitious expansion plans as it moves towards its centenary in 2020, as it continues to extend its global reach and realising its domestic and international ambitions.

Swansea University is a registered charity. No.1138342. Visit http://www.swansea.ac.uk

Media contacts:

Kevin Sullivan, Swansea University Public Relations Office
k.g.sullivan@swansea.ac.uk

Why we need to talk openly about vaccine side effects

We need to talk openly about vaccine side effects if we are to defeat the coronavirus pandemic

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE:  "WHEN COMMUNICATION ABOUT VACCINES IS NOT TRANSPARENT, IT TRIGGERS UNCERTAINTY AND PEOPLE FEEL THEY MAY BE MISLED, " SAYS MICHAEL BANG PETERSEN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT AARHUS BSS, AARHUS UNIVERSITY. view more 

CREDIT: AARHUS UNIVERSITY

Concerns have been raised about the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines regarding very rare but potentially fatal side effects related to low blood platelet counts and blood clots. Recently, reports also emerged that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may cause a rare yet serious side effect: heart inflammation. Concerns about side effects may trigger vaccine hesitancy, which the WHO considers one of 'Ten threats to global health'. Securing sufficient acceptance of vaccines is a key challenge in defeating the coronavirus pandemic, both now and in the future.

How can health authorities and politicians help ensure public acceptance of vaccines, which - their rare side effects aside - have proven effective in preventing serious Covid-19 disease? The best way to do this is to talk openly about all aspects of the vaccines including potential negative aspects such as side effects.

"How to communicate about the vaccines is a real dilemma. Politicians have a desire to stop the pandemic as quickly as possible, and this may give them an incentive to tone down the negative sides of the vaccines in order to vaccinate as many people as possible," says Michael Bang Petersen, professor of political science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University.

"But our research shows that it does not foster support for vaccination when communication about the vaccines is reassuring, but vague. On the contrary, vague communication weakens people's confidence in the health authorities, and feeds conspiracy theories. When communication is not transparent, it triggers uncertainty and people feel they may be misled," says Michael Bang Petersen.

Together with colleagues from Aarhus BSS at Aarhus University, he has studied the effect of different ways of communicating about vaccines. The study included 13,000 participants, half of them Americans and the other half Danes, and the results have just been published in the widely recognized journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Vague communication feeds conspiracies

The results of the study show that open communication fosters support for the vaccines if it transparently describes neutral and positive facts about the vaccines. However, the willingness to be vaccinated declines when the communication is open about negative features of the vaccine.

"Transparency about the negative features of a vaccine creates hesitancy. But this hesitancy is reason-based, and accordingly health authorities still have the possibility of communicating with citizens and explain to them why it may still be advisable to accept the vaccine," says Michael Bang Petersen.

On the other hand, vague or reassuring communication, where negative features of the vaccines are toned down, lowers acceptance of vaccines. The reason is that vague communication creates a sense of hesitancy and uncertainty, and this in turn feeds conspiracy theories and reduces confidence in the health authorities.

Trust is essential

The advantage of open communication - also about the negative features - is that it prevents conspiracy theories from spreading while at the same time boosting trust in the health authorities. According to the researchers, this is key to defeating the coronavirus pandemic.

"Maintaining trust in the health authorities is extremely important because this is the most crucial factor in securing public support for the vaccines. Communicating transparently about vaccines secures the single most important factor for sustaining vaccine acceptance," says Michael Bang Petersen, and he continues:

"Openness ensures long-term trust, and this is crucial if we are to be revaccinated, or in relation to the next major health crisis."

Facts about the research:

• The new findings are part of a large-scale data-driven research project entitled HOPE - How Democracies Cope with COVID-19 (https://hope-project.dk/#/). The project is financed by the Carlsberg Foundation and headed by Professor Michael Bang Petersen.
• Method: Pre-registered experimental studies with a total of more than 13,000 participants, half of them Danes and the other half Americans.
• The research has been published in the article "Transparent communication about negative features of COVID-19 vaccines decreases acceptance but increases trust" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS): https://www.pnas.org/content/118/29/e2024597118
• Authors: Professor Michael Bang Petersen, Postdoc Alexander Bor, Postdoc Frederik Jørgensen and Research Assistant Marie Fly Lindholt from the Department of Political Science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University

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PAGING MATTHEW BRODERICK —
WarGames for real: How one 1983 exercise nearly triggered WWIII
From the archives: Say hello to the KGB software model that forecasted mushroom clouds.

Update, 11/29/20: It's a very different Thanksgiving weekend here in 2020, but even if tables were smaller and travel non-existent, Ars staff is off for the holiday in order to recharge, take a mental afk break, and maybe stream a movie or five. But five years ago around this time, we were following a newly declassified government report from 1990 that outlined a KGB computer model... one that almost pulled a WarGames, just IRL. With the film now streaming on Netflix (thus setting our off day schedule), we thought we'd resurface this story for an accompanying Sunday read. This piece first published on November 25, 2015, and it appears unchanged below.

"Let's play Global Thermonuclear War."

Thirty-two years ago, just months after the release of the movie WarGames, the world came the closest it ever has to nuclear Armageddon. In the movie version of a global near-death experience, a teenage hacker messing around with an artificial intelligence program that just happened to control the American nuclear missile force unleashes chaos. In reality, a very different computer program run by the Soviets fed growing paranoia about the intentions of the United States, very nearly triggering a nuclear war.

The software in question was a KGB computer model constructed as part of Operation RYAN (РЯН), details of which were obtained from Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB's London section chief who was at the same time spying for Britain's MI6. Named for an acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение), RYAN was an intelligence operation started in 1981 to help the intelligence agency forecast if the US and its allies were planning a nuclear strike. The KGB believed that by analyzing quantitative data from intelligence on US and NATO activities relative to the Soviet Union, they could predict when a sneak attack was most likely.

As it turned out, Exercise Able Archer '83 triggered that forecast. The war game, which was staged over two weeks in November of 1983, simulated the procedures that NATO would go through prior to a nuclear launch. Many of these procedures and tactics were things the Soviets had never seen, and the whole exercise came after a series of feints by US and NATO forces to size up Soviet defenses and the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983. So as Soviet leaders monitored the exercise and considered the current climate, they put one and one together. Able Archer, according to Soviet leadership at least, must have been a cover for a genuine surprise attack planned by the US, then led by a president possibly insane enough to do it.

While some studies, including an analysis some 12 years ago by historian Fritz Earth, have downplayed the actual Soviet response to Able Archer, a newly published declassified 1990 report from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) to President George H. W. Bush obtained by the National Security Archive suggests that the danger was all too real. The document was classified as Top Secret with the code word UMBRA, denoting the most sensitive compartment of classified material, and it cites data from sources that to this day remain highly classified. When combined with previously released CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), and Defense Department documents, this PFIAB report shows that only the illness of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov—and the instincts of one mid-level Soviet officer—may have prevented a nuclear launch.Advertisement

The balance of paranoia

As Able Archer '83 was getting underway, the US defense and intelligence community believed the Soviet Union was strategically secure. A top-secret Defense Department-CIA Joint Net Assessment published in November of 1983 stated, "The Soviets, in our view, have some clear advantages today, and these advantages are projected to continue, although differences may narrow somewhat in the next 10 years. It is likely, however, that the Soviets do not see their advantage as being as great as we would assess."

The assessment was spot on—the Soviets certainly did not see it this way. In 1981, the KGB foreign intelligence directorate ran a computer analysis using an early version of the RYAN system, seeking the "correlation of world forces" between the USSR and the United States. The numbers suggested one thing: the Soviet Union was losing the Cold War, and the US might soon be in a strategically dominant position. And if that happened, the Soviets believed its adversary would strike to destroy them and their Warsaw Pact allies.

This data was everything the leadership expected given the intransigence of the Reagan administration. The US' aggressive foreign policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s confused and worried the USSR. They didn't understand the reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan, which they thought the US would just recognize as a vital security operation.

The US was even funding the mujaheddin fighting them, "training and sending armed terrorists," as Communist Party Secretary Mikhail Suslov put it in a 1980 speech (those trainees including a young Saudi inspired to jihad by the name of Osama bin Laden). And in Nicaragua, the US was funneling arms to the Contras fighting the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega. All the while, Reagan was refusing to engage the Soviets on arms control. This mounting evidence convinced some in the Soviet leadership that Reagan was willing to go even further in his efforts to destroy what he would soon describe as the "evil empire."

USSR had plenty of reason to think the US also believed it could win a nuclear war. The rhetoric of the Reagan administration was backed up by a surge in military capabilities, and much of the Soviet military's nuclear capabilities were vulnerable to surprise attack. In 1983, the United States was in the midst of its biggest military buildup in decades. And thanks to a direct line into some of the US' most sensitive communications, the KGB had plenty of bad news to share about that with the Kremlin.


FURTHER READING 50 years to orbit: Dream Chaser’s crazy Cold War backstory

The seaborne leg of the Soviet strategic force was especially vulnerable. The US Navy's SOSUS (sound surveillance system), a network of hydrophone arrays, tracked nearly every Russian submarine that entered the Atlantic and much of the Pacific, and US antisubmarine forces (P-3 Orion patrol planes, fast attack subs, and destroyers and frigates) were practically on top of, or in the wake of, Soviet ballistic missile subs during their patrols. The US had mapped out the "Yankee Patrol Boxes" where Soviet Navaga-class (NATO designation "Yankee") ballistic missile subs stationed themselves off the US' east and west coasts. Again, the Soviets knew all of this thanks to the spy John Walker, so confidence in their sub fleet's survivability was likely low.Advertisement


The air-based leg of the Soviet triad was no better off. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union had the largest air force in the world. But the deployment of the Tomahawk cruise missile, initial production of the US Air Force's AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile, and the pending deployment of Pershing II intermediate range ballistic missiles to Europe meant that NATO could strike at Soviet air fields with very little warning. Unfortunately, the Soviet strategic air force needed as much warning as it could get. Soviet long-range bombers were "kept at a low state of readiness," the advisory board report noted. Hours or days would have been required to get bombers ready for an all-out war. In all likelihood, the Soviet leadership assumed their entire bomber force would be caught on the ground in a sneak attack and wiped out.

Even theater nuclear forces like the RSD-10 Pioneer—one of the weapons systems that prompted the deployment of the Pershing II to Europe—were vulnerable. They generally didn't have warheads or missiles loaded into their mobile launcher systems when not on alert. The only leg not overly vulnerable to a first strike by NATO was the Soviets' intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force. Its readiness was in question, however. According to the 1990 briefing paper by the PFIAB, about 95 percent of the Soviet ICBM force was ready to respond to an attack alert within 15 minutes during the early 1980s. The silo-based missiles were out of range of anything but US submarine-launched and land-based ballistic missiles.

The viability of the ICBM force as a response to sneak attack was based entirely on how much warning time the Soviets had. In 1981, they brought a new over-the-horizon ballistic missile early warning (BMEW) radar system on-line. One year later, the Soviets activated the US-KS nuclear launch warning satellite network, known as "Oko" (Russian for "eye"). These two measures gave the Soviet command and control structure about 30 minutes' warning of any US ICBM launch. But the deployment of Pershing II missiles to Europe could cut warning time to less than eight minutes, and attacks from US sub-launched missiles would have warning times in some cases of less than five minutes.

And then, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars" program—the predecessor to the current Missile Defense Agency efforts to counter limited ballistic missile attacks. While SDI was presented as defensive, it would likely only be effective if the US dramatically reduced the number of Soviet ICBMs launched by making a first strike. More than ever before, SDI convinced the Soviet leadership that Reagan was aiming to make a nuclear war against them winnable.

Combined with his ongoing anti-Soviet rhetoric, USSR leadership saw Reagan as an existential threat against the country on par with Hitler. In fact, they publicly made that comparison, accusing the Reagan administration of pushing the world closer to another global war. And maybe, they thought, the US president already believed it was possible to defeat the Soviets with a surprise attack.


Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB under Leonid Brezhnev and then his successor, drove the RYAN program's efforts to develop even more detailed computer analysis of the US and NATO predisposition toward attack.


President Ronald Reagan with Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB section chief in London who became a spy for MI6, providing information on the "war scare" in the Soviet Union over Able Archer '83 and details of the RYAN project.


Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, the Soviet military's top officer. He publicly pushed for the Soviet Union to shift its economy to a war footing in preparation for an all-out war.


A chart from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board report, showing analysis of the survivability of Soviet ICBMs. The Soviets believed they needed 6,000 for "global targeting" to win a nuclear exchange.


A paragraph from a CIA-DOD Joint Net Assessment of Soviet nuclear capabilities noted that the US had an advantage over the Soviets in a surprise attack scenario.

Previous SlideNext Slide





Shall we play a game?

According to the declassified PFIAB item, CIA analysts reported that by 1981 the increasing shift in the strategic balance and the deterioration of the relationship between the US and the USSR led the Soviet leadership to believe there was "an increased threat of war and increased likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons." After Reagan took office in 1981, the Soviet leadership pushed on the USSR's intelligence apparatus to make sure they were ready to act if Reagan did the insane and was preparing a surprise attack.

Yuri Andropov, at that time head of the KGB, told a group of KGB officers in May of 1981 that the US was actively preparing for war against the Soviet Union. He believed in a possible, surprise US nuclear first strike, and his solution was to enhance the RYAN program fast.

Development of the RYAN computer model began in the mid-1970s, and by the end of the decade the KGB convinced the Politburo that the software was essential to make an accurate assessment of the relationship between the USSR and the United States. While it followed prior approaches to analysis used by the KGB, the pace of Western technological advancements and other factors made it much more difficult to keep track of everything affecting the "correlation of forces" between the two sides.

Even if it was technologically advanced, the thinking behind RYAN was purely old-school, based on the lessons learned by the Soviets from World War II. It used a collection of approximately 40,000 weighted data points based on military, political, and economic factors that Soviet experts believed were decisive in determining the course of the war with Nazi Germany. The fundamental assumption of RYAN's forecasting was that the US would act much like the Nazis did—if the "correlation of forces" was decisively in favor of the US, then it would be highly likely that the US would launch a surprise attack just as Germany did with Operation Barbarossa.

The forecast that RYAN spit out was, for all the model's complexity, very simple. The system used the US' power as a fixed scale, measuring the Soviet position as a percentage score based on all the data points. RYAN's model was constantly updated with new data from the field, and the RYAN score report was sent once a month to the Politburo. Anything above a 70 was acceptable, but the experts who built the system believed that a score of 60 or above meant the Soviet Union was safe from surprise attack. Anything lower was bad news.

In 1981, the score was dipping below 60, so Andropov pushed for enhanced data points to be added to RYAN to improve its accuracy. In May, he ordered the creation of a special "institute" within the KGB to develop the additional military intelligence input requirements. "The institute was told—despite protestations for more time—to quickly define the task, develop a plan, and be ready to levy the initial collection and reporting requirements to KGB Residencies [the operations units overseas] by November 1981," the PFIAB report stated.Advertisement


The data points being demanded included:
Details of military operations plans from the US and NATO allies, Japan, and China (which was at the time considered to be allying with the US against the USSR) that indicated preparations for war against the Warsaw Pact;
Plans for how forces would be deployed for war;
Any signs of military mobilization;
Operational doctrine for nuclear attacks;
Political activities surrounding the decision process for launching a nuclear war or other conflict, including consultations between NATO countries over the use of military force, which the KGB considered "one of the states of immediate preparation by the adversary for [surprise nuclear attack];"
Where Air Force One was plus logistical data on its operations and airfields it landed at;
Details on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's nuclear war plans, and details of who was in the order of succession for leadership of the US in event of a nuclear war;
The activity of the National Security Council and Vice President Bush's crisis staff;
And Wall Street and banking activity, the trade in currency and gold, "as well as the movement of high-grade jewelry, collections of rare paintings, and similar items" that might indicate patterns of behavior connected to plans for war.

KGB field officers were not universally excited. Some complained the seemingly arbitrary deadline for the new requirements resulted in data points that were somewhat less sound than they should be. But Andropov and the KGB leadership made those requirements a top priority for all field operations, as well as for the intelligence agencies of its Warsaw Pact allies. They sold this initiative as the need to be out in front of what was seen as an inevitable surprise attack from the West.
Greetings, Professor Falken

However the KGB decided to use these data points, it did not make things better. As soon as RYAN was updated with the new information, it immediately started churning out bad news. This only fueled demand for more and better data to feed the model. In a tasking communique to field officers in the US and Western Europe, KGB headquarters said:


The current international situation, which is characterized by a considerable strengthening of the adversary's military preparations as well as by a growing threat of war, requires that active and effective steps be taken to strengthen intelligence work dealing with military-strategic problems. It is of special importance to discover the adversary's concrete plans and measures linked with his preparation for a surprise nuclear missile attack on the USSR and other socialist countries.

Meanwhile, the Soviet military was working to improve the readiness of its nuclear forces to respond to any surprise attack. Subs in port were told to be ready to launch within three to four hours; those under repair were ordered to be ready within 48 hours. The Soviet Navy started experimenting with launching missiles from pierside in the event of an attack. The Soviet Air Force forward-deployed its Su-24 "Fencer" all-weather bombers to Hungary, Poland, and East Germany to provide a faster nuclear air strike capability near the front lines. And the Red Army pushed nuclear artillery up to the frontier with NATO. If there was to be a confrontation, the military wanted to be ready to go all-nuclear early.Advertisement


It didn't help much that President Reagan had essentially given the US Navy and Air Force carte blanche ability to screw with the Soviets' heads. Soon after being sworn in, Reagan signed off on a series of psychological warfare operations against the Soviet Union. The Air Force flew bombers up over the North Pole and out of bases in Europe and Asia to come close to Soviet airspace then turn off just as they approached the border. The Navy staged multiple operations and exercises in places where the fleet had never gone before, all in close proximity to major Soviet military and industrial sites.

In the summer of 1981, the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and an accompanying force of 82 US, Canadian, Norwegian, and British ships used a combination of deceptive lighting and other practices, radio silence, and electronic warfare to sneak through what is known as the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap and into the North Sea. The initiative even took advantage of cloud cover to evade Soviet satellites. When Soviet maritime patrol planes finally found them, the carrier's fighter wing staged simulated attacks on the "Bear" patrol planes as they were performing in-flight refueling.

All of these details were fed into RYAN, and they made the Soviet Politburo very, very nervous. This sense of dread filtered down. Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, the chief of the general staff of the Soviet military, called for moving the entire country to a "war footing" in preparation for a complete military mobilization. A lieutenant colonel acting as an instructor at Moscow's Civil Defense Headquarters told civilians that the Soviet military "intended to deliver a preemptive strike against the US, using 50 percent of its warheads," according to the PFIAB report. And the KGB issued an order to all departments of its foreign intelligence arm to increase collection efforts even further, all because there was information indicating NATO was preparing for "a third world war."

With Brezhnev's death on November 10, 1982, the RYAN number likely slipped into the red. Fearing that the US would take military action to take advantage of the shuffling at the top of the Politburo, the KGB and GRU operations in the West were placed on high alert to watch for any military activity. In the Soviet military, no one was sure who had nuclear release authority until Andropov was named as Brezhnev's successor on November 15.

Andropov had a fever for more RYAN, and the KGB responded by creating an entire new workforce in its stations at Soviet embassies in the West dedicated to feeding it. In February of 1983, KGB headquarters sent a cable to its London section chief, telling him that he was being sent a new agent with one job—feeding RYAN military data.


17.02.83Top Secret

Copy No 1

London

Comrade Yermakov

[A. V. Guk]

(strictly personal)

Permanent Operational Assignment to Uncover NATO Preparations for a Nuclear Missile Attack on the USSR

In view of the growing urgency of the task of discovering promptly any preparations by the adversary for a nuclear missile attack (RYAN) on the USSR, we are sending you a permanently operative assignment (POA) and briefing on this question.

The objective of the assignment is to see that the residentura works systematically to uncover any plans in preparation by the main adversary [the United States] for RYAN and to organize a continual watch to be kept for indications of a decision being taken to use nuclear weapons against the USSR or immediate preparations being made for a nuclear missile attack.




The answer is 42

Pretty much everything the Reagan administration and the US military did in 1983—along with some of the things the Soviets thought that they had done—pushed the buttons on RYAN.
In March, President Reagan gave a speech calling the Soviet Union the "evil empire." In a March 23 speech, he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In April, three aircraft carrier task forces consisting of 40 ships conducted FleetEx '83 just off the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Soviet Navy Pacific home base of Petropavlovsk—the Soviet Union's only base with direct access to open ocean. The US Navy conducted antisubmarine warfare exercises in an area known to be a Soviet ballistic missile sub "bastion," where the Red Fleet's Pacific nuclear missile fleet conducted its patrols. And the aircraft carrier air wings staged a simulated bombing run on a Soviet military installation on a disputed island in the Kuril Island chain. In a Congressional hearing following the exercise, Admiral James Watkins testified that the Soviets were "as naked as jaybird there and they know it."
The US posturing led Andropov to warn US envoy Averell Harriman in a June meeting (the "first real meeting between the United States and the Soviet Union since the start of the Administration," a State Department memo noted) no less than four times of the risk of triggering a nuclear war through miscalculation.
On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 flew into Soviet airspace and was shot down. The Soviet leadership believed that the jet, which intruded on Soviet protected airspace over the Sea of Japan, was on a spy mission and that it was intended as a deliberately calculated provocation by the US. The outrage from the US and its allies over the shoot-down was seen as proof that Reagan wanted war. A Defense Ministry memorandum to the Politburo put it this way:



We are dealing with a major, dual-purpose political provocation carefully organized by the US special services. The first purpose was to use the incursion of the intruder aircraft into Soviet airspace to create a favorable situation for the gathering of defense data on our air defense system in the Far East, involving the most diverse systems including the Ferret satellite. Second, they envisaged, if this flight were terminated by us, [the US would use] that fact to mount a global anti-Soviet campaign to discredit the Soviet Union.
In October, the US invaded Grenada and attacked Cuban troops there assisting the leftist regime.
And starting in September, NATO staged its annual series of elaborate war games known as Autumn Forge, culminating in a nuclear war game called Exercise Able Archer '83. It began with a massive airlift of 16,000 US troops to Europe on 139 flights, all under radio silence. The Soviets had never seen anything like it.



One of thousands of tanks deployed to Europe as part of Reforger '83, one of the opening exercises of Autumn Forge.


The flight path of Korean Airlines Flight 007, shot down by Soviet fighters.
CIA


The Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap, through which a 1982 joint NATO fleet, including a carrier task force, slipped through undetected by Soviet surveillance, unnerving the Soviet leadership.


A timeline of Autumn Forge 83 prepared by the National Intelligence Archive, culminating with Able Archer 83.


A soldier relaxing during an exercise simulating chemical-biological attack during Autumn Forge 83.


A summary of the timeline of the Able Archer '83 exercise from a NATO report.

An after-action report on the "silent crossing" by US air transports delivering 16,000 troops at the opening of Autumn Forge 83.

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As if all the tension wasn't enough, on September 26, 1983 the Oko early warning system reported twice that US ballistic missiles had been launched. Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the watch officer in the Soviet Air Defense Forces' command bunker outside Moscow that night, made a gut call that the launch warnings were a malfunction. (It was later determined the warnings were caused by the way the sun bounced off high-altitude clouds). If Petrov had followed procedures in place, Andropov would have been alerted of a nuclear launch and an immediate launch of ICBMs would have been ordered.Advertisement


During this period, the RYAN score dropped precipitously. A report from early in 1984 placed the RYAN score at 45; it may have dipped even lower during the fall of 1983. Any numbers in this range would have likely pushed Soviet paranoia to the edge.
DEFCON 1

In the US, Autumn Forge was not seen as being particularly provocative. The exercises had been going on for years. But the combination of the new tactics being used in the exercises and the overall political climate, when converted to data points, tilted the RYAN model toward a forecast of mushroom clouds.

Some KGB operatives objected to the analyses that they kept getting back from headquarters of the situation—being more familiar with how the West operates, they believed there was no evidence that there was an actual plan to launch a surprise attack. "None of the political reporting officers who concentrated on RYAN believed in the immediacy of the threat—especially a US surprise attack," the PFIAB report records. Two field officers in London complained to their station chief about the disconnect in Moscow, telling him that the station might be partly to blame because of the "alarmist reports on the West's military preparations, intensified ideological struggle, and similar themes to satiate Moscow's demands for RYAN reporting."

In fact, the demand for "raw" intelligence rather than analysis—in a system that placed political incentive for even more alarming raw data—was at the root of the "war panic" that reached its peak with the beginning of Able Archer '83, the culmination of the Autumn Forge exercise. Over 40,000 NATO troops were on the move across Europe under command using encrypted communications and often operating under radio silence.

Given all the weird inputs that the model was getting and the Soviet leadership's predisposition to believe the worst of Reagan to begin with, the Politburo ultimately decided that Able Archer was, in fact, a cover for an actual surprise nuclear attack. They began acting accordingly.

By the summer of 1983, the general population of the Soviet Union was being prepared for war. Air raid drills were held at factories. Andropov sent a letter to Communist Party organizations telling them that there was no chance things were going to get better with the US. The Red Army was held back from participating in the agricultural harvest. And on September 29, as Autumn Forge rolled forward, Andropov issued a public "declaration."


The Soviet leadership deems it necessary to inform the Soviet people, other peoples, and all who are responsible for determining the policy of states, of its assessment of the course pursued in international affairs by the current US administration. In brief, it is a militarist course that represents a serious threat to peace.... If anyone had any illusion about the possibility of an evolution for the better in the policy of the present American administration, recent events have dispelled them completely.

Much of the intelligence detailing what the Soviets did as part of this extremely high level of alert during Able Archer remains classified. But the Soviet military initiated a massive intelligence collection push with air, ground, and naval signals and photographic intelligence operations.

At the same time, there was a complete stand-down of all other flight operations as aircraft were made ready for combat. Helicopters ferried nuclear warheads to be loaded into weapons and aircraft. Missile and air forces were put on a round-the-clock 30-minute alert. Soviet strike fighter-bombers in East Germany and Poland were loaded with nuclear weapons. About 70 SS-20 missiles were put on ready alert with warheads loaded. And ballistic missile subs were ordered to disperse from port beneath the Arctic ice cap in preparation for an incoming attack. All of this took place during a major Soviet holiday—the anniversary of the October revolution, not a time usually reserved for military exercises.Advertisement


Around November 8, Oleg Gordievski warned British intelligence that the Kremlin was close to pressing the button. But the next day, Andropov (already in questionable health) became seriously ill and dropped out of the public eye. Three months later, he would die of renal failure. As Andropov became incapacitated, there was near panic that this would be the moment the US was waiting for to strike. At the same time, there was confusion over who could actually order a pre-emptive nuclear strike in his absence. The Soviet leadership had never completed provisions for the military acting in the absence of political control.

On November 11, after testing new procedures for signaling authority to launch a nuclear attack and walking NATO forces up from normal readiness to a simulated General Alert (DEFCON 1) and a full-scale simulated release of nuclear weapons, Able Archer '83 concluded. Thus, the Soviets ended their alert, but the general mood of the Soviet leadership would not change until 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary.

In a June 1984 memo, CIA Director William Casey forwarded intelligence uncovered about the war scare to the White House. The degree to which the world was put at risk was apparently enough to convince President Reagan to break somewhat from the confrontational foreign policy toward the Soviet Union he had pursued during his first term. In January 1984, he delivered a speech calling for peace with the Soviet Union and the dismantling of all nuclear weapons.

The recalibration of this approach led to the summits between Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva in 1985 and Reykjavik in 1986. Ultimately, the two rivals restarted talks of strategic arms reduction.
How about a nice game of chess?

The RYAN program, in many ways, was symptomatic of the decline of the KGB in the early 1980s as it became more bureaucratic and corrupt. The war scare merely sealed its fate, and the agency lost its preeminent position among the Soviet intelligence agencies. It was supplanted by the GRU, which remains the main intelligence directorate of the Russian Federation today.

But RYAN is also a dramatic example of how analytic systems can lead their users astray. It adds resonance to the types of fears that WarGames (and Terminator a year later) tapped into—that artificial intelligence connected to weapons of war could be a very bad thing.

While we haven't exactly hooked up a WOPR or Skynet to the ballistic missile network quite yet, the intelligence community of the US has increasingly turned to machine learning, expert systems, and analytics to drive its identification of targets of interest. Recent artificial research by Google has demonstrated how machine learning systems can go wrong when fed random data, finding patterns that aren't there—a behavior they called "inceptionism." Imagine, then, if an artificial intelligence system started looking into the emptiness of its data feed and started seeing enemies everywhere.

Perhaps we should remember Operation RYAN the next time there's a conversation about letting autonomous systems control weapons—no matter what the caliber. Maybe we should all have AI stick to chess for a while longer.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/wargames-for-real-how-one-1983-exercise-nearly-triggered-wwiii/

SEAN GALLAGHER - 11/29/2020

SEAN GALLAGHERwas previously Ars Technica's IT and National Security Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.EMAIL sean.gallagher@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @thepacketrat

 

Better-placed rodent traps more effectively prevent food contamination

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

ITHACA, N.Y. - Placing rodent traps and bait stations based on rat and mouse behavior could protect the food supply more effectively than the current standard of placing them set distances apart, according to new research from Cornell University.

Rodents cause billions of dollars in losses to the food supply each year, and carry pathogens that can sicken and kill humans, including salmonella, E. coli and Leptospira.

In the 1940s and 50s, scientists recommended that farmers, food manufacturers and distributors evenly space rodent traps or bait boxes in their facilities. But in fact, a new study finds placement based on rat and mouse behavior is more effective.

"From there, it just became a mantra without anybody scientifically evaluating it to see whether this was working," said first author Matt Frye, community extension educator with the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program (NYSIPM) based at Cornell.

"For a long time, inspectors would actually bring tape measures with them and measure the distance between devices," he said. "If it was different from the guidelines, the facilities would get penalized. The yardstick approach makes it very easy for facilities and auditors to implement programs, but it doesn't really lead to effective pest management."

In the new study, Frye and Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, senior extension associate at NYSIPM, found traps placed near areas with attractive features, like warmth and shelter, captured more rodents, while more than half of traps never caught anything.

In addition to smarter trap placements, the researchers also recommend fewer traps - a counterintuitive suggestion that pest control companies and food safety auditors may balk at -because both technicians and rodents can develop "device fatigue." Rodents may avoid devices that have been in the same place for too long because they're no longer interesting to explore.

Researchers found the south and, especially, west sides of buildings, motors and refrigeration compressors all provide warmth and are attractive to pests, and should be a focus of pest management efforts.

Researchers hope this work will help food suppliers to adopt the stricter standards of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which emphasizes preventing food contamination instead of just responding to it.

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The article, "Assessment of Factors Influencing Visitation to Rodent Management Devices at Food Distribution Centers," was published in Stored Products Research.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Scientists find liver drug candidates among pesticides

SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH)

Research News

Skoltech biologists and their colleagues from Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology, Russia, and the Chemistry Department of Taras Shevchenko University in Ukraine have discovered fairly unlikely drug candidates for treating liver fibrosis and other pathologies -- among pest control chemicals. In addition, the team looked at modifications of the medication called hymecromone, deeming them promising for anti-fibrotic drugs, too. Published in Glycobiology, the study also sheds light on the possible mechanism of action of the investigated compounds, all of which inhibit the synthesis of hyaluronic acid.

Hyaluronic acid is an important biological compound that is a key component of the connective tissue enveloping the cells of all other tissue types in animals. Among other things, it is involved in wound repair. The human body is 0.02% HA by weight.

HA is used in medicine and cosmetology -- in skin care products, wrinkle fillers, eye drops, and injections for joint problems. In the body, HA is naturally produced by an enzyme called hyaluronic acid synthase, or HAS.

Role of hyaluronic acid in liver fibrosis

"By changing the amount of HA, it is possible to affect numerous processes, including regeneration. Consider damaged liver cells. They die off readily because of their large potential for regeneration. But since it takes time for new cells to grow, spots for them are temporarily 'patched up' by 'placeholder' cells, whose formation requires HA," the study's senior author, Professor Yuri Kotelevtsev of Skoltech, explained.

When this patching up process gets out of control and there is far too much HA, instead of facilitating repair, connective tissue permanently takes the place of the damaged tissue. This is known as scarring. In the case of liver tissue, it results in fibrosis and ultimately cirrhosis, an untreatable condition requiring liver transplant and a big burden to the society and the health care.

In the previous study by Kotelevtsev's group, it was shown that liver fibrosis can be counteracted by cholespasmodic drug hymecromone -- aka. Odeston -- that inhibits HA synthesis in vivo. Its active compound is a small molecule called 4MU.

Challenges faced by existing drugs

It remains unknown what mechanism enables hymecromone to inhibit HA deposition, and pharmacological companies are reluctant to invest in 4MU research, because that molecule was discovered long ago, for treatment of the cholespasms, and therefore a simple repurposing of the drug will be difficult to protect by a patent. For this reason, more advanced new compounds have to be found to be developed into anti-fibrotic drugs.

It means that further research into the mechanisms of HAS inhibition calls for more attention on the part of academic, as opposed to corporate research. It also means that compounds with a different structure -- and ideally, with better inhibitory properties -- are more promising in terms of commercialization.

Alternative compounds

In their study, the Skoltech researchers and their colleagues report on the HAS-inhibitory properties of 13 compounds, among them 4MU itself, nine structurally similar molecules synthetized by Ukrainian chemists Igor Krasylov and Viktoria Moskvina from Vladimir Khilya laboratory, and three more that belong to an entirely different class, commonly thought of as pesticides.

The team tested each of the 13 agents for toxicity and then measured their efficiency in nontoxic amounts. In a cell culture assay, 4MU was outperformed by one of its derivatives, and the three commercial chitin synthesis inhibitors performed on par with 4MU. One of them, etoxazole, was also shown to alleviate liver fibrosis in mice to the same extent as 4MU.

"The classic approach is to take a molecule that works and tweak its structure in an attempt to improve on it. However, 4MU is a tiny molecule, so while we did try out nine of its derivatives, one has to admit there is not so much wiggle room for modifications. This led us to explore compounds of a different kind," Kotelevtsev said.

Koltzov Institute's researcher Alexandra Tsitrina recognized that the enzyme that assembles HA, first manufactures a certain building block that is common to HA and chitin, the substance making up the exoskeletons of insects, spiders, etc.

"This is where the pesticides come in: Why not test the compounds that inhibit chitin synthesis to see if they work on HAS, too? Turns out some of them do. Maybe there are others, so now there is a whole new class of potential HA synthesis inhibitors to investigate," the researcher added.

Mechanism of action

It is unclear what mechanism enables HAS inhibition either in the case of 4MU and its derivatives, or for chitin synthesis inhibitors. But now that there are these two distinct kinds of compounds doing the same thing, the Skoltech researchers think they have a hunch.

Previously, geneticists working with insecticides found a point mutation in chitin synthase that makes it resistant to the three inhibitors considered by the Skoltech team: etoxazole, buprofezine, and triflumurone.

"Using bioinformatics tools, we have identified the relatively short conservative amino acid sequence, a signature, in HAS similar to an amino acid sequence in chitin synthase containing the point mutation responsible for etoxazole sensitivity. This peptide is a part of the pore which protrudes assembled carbohydrates -- HA or chitin -- through the plasma membrane. It is possible that 4MU interacts with that site, too. But further research is needed to test this hypothesis," Kotelevtsev said.

According to the biologist, that further research would involve introducing a point mutation into HAS that makes it resistant to inhibition by pesticides, as well as using a technique called photoaffinity labeling to identify the target sites of 4MU on the HAS protein.

A competing hypothesis seeks to explain HA synthesis inhibition in terms of substrate exhaustion. "But that fails to account for why we could observe inhibition at low, micromolar concentrations. Substrate exhaustion should kick in at about 1,000 higher concentrations, where it is indeed likely to be the main driving force behind HAS inhibition. Not so at the concentrations we used," the researcher concluded.

For now, the researchers have shown that compounds inhibiting chitin synthesis -- ordinarily used to combat pests -- are promising drug candidates for down-regulating hyaluronic acid production to enable healthy cell regeneration in liver fibrosis. Drugs inhibiting HA synthesis might also be relevant for treating metabolic syndrome and cancer.

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Skoltech is a private international university located in Russia. Established in 2011 in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Skoltech is cultivating a new generation of leaders in the fields of science, technology, and business, conducting research in breakthrough fields, and promoting technological innovation with the goal of solving critical problems that face Russia and the world. Skoltech is focusing on six priority areas: data science and artificial intelligence, life sciences, advanced materials and modern design methods, energy efficiency, photonics and quantum technologies, and advanced research. Website: https://www.skoltech.ru/.

 

Study reports on experiences of LGB Vietnam-era veterans

Greater trauma burden linked with PTSD, poorer mental health

VETERANS AFFAIRS RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS

Research News

IMAGE: A NEW ANALYSIS OF DATA FROM THE VIETNAM ERA FOUND THAT LESBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL VETERANS WHO SERVED AT THE TIME ARE REPORTING PTSD AND POORER MENTAL HEALTH MORE OFTEN... view more 

CREDIT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual Veterans from the Vietnam era report PTSD and poorer mental health more often than their heterosexual counterparts, according to an analysis of data from the Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study (VE-HEROeS).

A greater burden of potentially traumatic events among LGB Veterans, such as childhood physical abuse, adult physical assault, and sexual assault, was associated with the differences.

"This study is the first to document sexual orientation differences in trauma experiences, probable PTSD, and health-related quality of life in LGB Veterans using a nationally representative sample," said Dr. John Blosnich, senior author of the study, published in July 2021 in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Blosnich is a research health scientist with the Department of Veterans Affairs' Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion in Pittsburgh, and an assistant professor in the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California.

Veterans are at high risk for experiencing potentially traumatic events during military service. Evidence also suggests that sexual minorities are at greater risk of PTEs, compared with heterosexual peers. However, few studies have documented how traumatic experiences may differ by sexual orientation among Veterans.

VE-HEROeS sought survey data from more than 45,000 Vietnam-era Veterans, as well as 11,000 matched controls. Data collection was completed in 2018; nearly 19,000 Veterans responded. Multiple studies are underway based on the data collected.

"When initiating VE-HEROes we sought input from the Vietnam-era Veteran community," said Dr. Victoria Davey, the study's senior author. Davey is the principal investigator of VE-HEROeS and an associate chief research and development officer for VA. "That is being done more often in research but hasn't been done with Veteran research as much as it should be, at least in my opinion. It's important to bring the community into the research fold, so you hear from them what should be studied and what the approach should be. I think that by doing so, we created a better study."

Approximately 1.5% of responding Veterans identified as LGB; of those, 87% were male. Compared with heterosexual Veterans, LGB Veterans were younger at the time they were surveyed. They also were more likely to be female (13% of LGB Veterans, compared with 3% of heterosexual Veterans) and less likely to have served in combat.

Veterans were asked about exposure to 11 types of potentially traumatic events (PTEs), largely through a 10-question standardized instrument called the Brief Trauma Questionnaire (BTQ; see table).

"We used the BTQ because it is well-validated in many populations, including military populations, and because we wanted this study to be comparable with other large studies," said Davey. After consulting with advisors from the Vietnam-era Veteran community, researchers added an eleventh question about witnessing sexual assault during military service. Nearly one-third of heterosexual Veterans and about one-fourth of LGB Veterans reported this type of PTE.

"The Veterans advising us said that one of the most traumatic things they experienced was actually having to watch sexual assaults, either on civilians or on other members of the military," said Davey.

Compared with heterosexual Veterans, LGB Veterans were more likely to report exposures to physical abuse in childhood, natural disasters, physical assault in adulthood, and sexual assault. They were less likely to report exposure to combat, witnessing someone being seriously injured or killed, or witnessing sexual assault while in the military.

The study found that 20.1% of LGB Veterans in the study had probable PTSD, compared with 14.7% of heterosexual Veterans-- a significant difference. According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, approximately 3.6% of all Americans have PTSD, with prevalence more common in females (5.2%) than males (1.8%).

LGB Veterans had 50% greater odds of probable PTSD and 70% greater odds of poor mental health, compared with heterosexual Veterans. These differences disappeared when researchers controlled for the number of PTEs.

"The potentially traumatic experiences largely accounted for the differences in mental health outcomes," said Blosnich.

This is a key finding, he noted, because until the early 1970s, being lesbian, gay or bisexual was considered a mental illness. "And there are still people and institutions that believe there is something inherently damaging about being LGB," said Blosnich. "The study analyses indicate that your sexuality is not the driver; if you are subjected to certain experiences, those experiences are the driver. It's how you are treated, not who you are."

Both Davey and Blosnich believe the study can help to inform PTSD treatment of Vietnam-era Veterans, as it indicates that traumas across the lifespan can contribute to PTSD, particularly for LGB Veterans--although how early-life traumas interact with military service experiences isn't fully understood.

"Early life adversity and trauma experienced during the military may combine in complicated ways; we don't know," Blosnich said. "Military trauma is the reason we have a PTSD diagnosis. But it doesn't happen in a vacuum."

Providers should try to create a therapeutic safe space for Vietnam-era Veterans to talk about childhood trauma, he said, but that could be difficult if those earlier experiences are tied to LGB sexual identity.

"Imagine you're an LGB Vietnam-era Veteran. You grew up in a toxic time for LGB people, then served in the military, where your sexuality could end your career," Blosnich said. "Feeling like it's okay to talk about your sexual orientation with a health care provider--that has to be really difficult."

The 2016-2017 Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study (VE-HEROeS) study is a VA-funded nationwide study designed to assess the current health and well-being of Vietnam Veterans, Blue Water Navy Veterans, and Veterans who served elsewhere during the Vietnam Era (1961-1975). This study is comparing the health of these Veterans to similarly aged U.S. residents who never served in the military. Participants completed a survey of questions about military service, general health, lifestyle, and aging. Data collection was completed in 2018.

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