AA attendance lower among African American, Hispanic and young populations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS

 

IMAGE: 

"NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES" SIGN

view more 

CREDIT: JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS

By Amy Norton

Alcoholics Anonymous has long been a cornerstone of treating alcohol use disorders in the United States. But even today, Americans are not accessing it equally, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, got its start nearly 90 years ago and is famous for spurring the "12-step" approach to recovery -- which includes acknowledging powerlessness over alcohol and giving your life over to a "higher power."

Over the years, AA and similar "mutual-help groups" have become a staple of treatment for alcohol and other drug use disorders, and research has proven they can help people achieve lasting recovery.

Yet few studies have looked at whether Americans are actually using such support groups equally. The new findings, published in the January issue of JSAD, show they are not -- and those disparities are just as clear today as 20 years ago.

After adjusting for other factors, the researchers found that between 2000 and 2020, Black and Hispanic/Latinx Americans with an alcohol use disorder were about 40% less likely to have ever attended AA meetings versus their White counterparts.

An even greater divide was seen between people younger than 30 and relatively older adults: Among adults younger than 30, less than 5% had ever attended AA -- versus about 12% of adults age 30 and up. After adjusting for other factors, the younger group attended AA at about a third of the rate of their older counterparts.

"This is concerning, because the disparities suggest that these groups -- Black, Latinx and emerging adults -- are not receiving optimal care," said lead researcher Sarah Zemore, Ph.D., a senior scientist with the Alcohol Research Group, in Emeryville, Calif.

"It's known that mutual-help groups can be quite effective in initiating and sustaining recovery," Zemore said.

And in the United States, she noted, they've become a cornerstone of addressing substance use disorders. In fact, more Americans turn to the free and widely available support groups than to specialty substance use treatment (meaning inpatient or outpatient programs for alcohol and drug problems).

Why then do disparities in AA participation exist?

This study cannot answer that question, Zemore said. But she and her colleagues did find that the explanation does not appear to rest in disparities in use of specialty substance use treatment: When they looked only at study participants who had received specialty treatment for substance use, they saw the same disparities in AA attendance.

According to Zemore, that suggests there may be something about AA that is "not attractive" to young adults and people of color.

Some past studies have suggested as much, the researchers point out: People of color attending 12-step meetings have, for instance, reported conflicts with the program's general philosophy, as well as feelings of being scrutinized or discriminated against. Young adults, meanwhile, may often be turned off by the meetings' religious nature.

The current findings are based on data from the National Alcohol Survey, which collects information on Americans' drinking habits at roughly five-year intervals. The researchers focused on nearly 8,900 Americans who were surveyed between 2000 and 2020 and who reported ever having at least 2 of 11 symptoms used to diagnose an alcohol use disorder.

Gaps in AA attendance among people of color and young people were not explained by factors such as the severity of people's alcohol-related problems or whether they had received specialty treatment. When the researchers accounted for those factors, Black adults, Hispanic/Latinx adults and young adults were still less likely to have attended AA.

Over the years, AA has evolved, now offering meetings in different languages and specifically for people of color and women, for instance. Based on the new findings, though, disparities in attendance have not narrowed since 2000.

"This problem probably isn't going to be solved by AA alone," Zemore said.

The key ingredient in AA and similar programs, she noted, seems to be the change in people's "social networks." That is, they offer a ready-made way to be around others who are working toward recovery.

AA is not the only option for people looking for peer support: Nationally, there are several mutual-help alternatives to 12-step programs, such as SMART Recovery and LifeRing.

It's not clear from this study, Zemore said, whether similar disparities exist in Americans' use of those alternative mutual-help groups.

-----
Zemore, S. E., Mericle, A. A., Martinez, P., Bergman, B. G., Karriker-Jaffe, K. J., Patterson, D., & Timko, C. (2024). Disparities in Alcoholics Anonymous participation from 2000 to 2020 among U.S. residents with an alcohol use disorder in the National Alcohol Survey. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 85(1), 32-40. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsad.23-00086
-----
To arrange an interview with Dr. Sarah Zemore, please contact her at szemore@arg.org.
-----
The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs considers this press release to be in the public domain. Editors may publish this press release in print or electronic form without legal restriction. Please include a byline and citation.
-----
The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs is published by the Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. It is the oldest substance-related journal published in the United States.
-----
To view the public domain, stock-photo database of alcohol, tobacco and other drug-related images compiled by the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, please visit www.jsad.com/photos.

 

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Disparities in Alcoholics Anonymous participation from 2000 to 2020 among U.S. residents with an alcohol use disorder in the National Alcohol Survey

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jan-2024

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare no conflicts of interest

 

What experience do newcomers have with the welfare state?

A wide-ranging study on the experiences of immigrants and bureaucrats with the Belgian welfare system.

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE

 

IMAGE: 

COVER

view more 

CREDIT: @KULEUVEN PRESS

What are the expectations and needs of new arrivals/migrants in our country, and what social assistance can Belgium provide? This is the central question of a wide-ranging study conducted by researchers from the University of Liège, the KULeuven and Saint Louis University. The results of this study have just been published in a book, available in free access, which provides a unique understanding of the interactions between migrants, the welfare state and the administrations in our country.

The question of the social assistance that countries can provide to newcomers often gives rise to lively public debate and remains a major concern at a political level. This reality gives rise to new demands and changes in the profiles of people who benefit from social services. Social institutions - such as the PCSWs (public centres for social welfare) in Belgium - responsible for providing assistance play a crucial role in newcomers' access to social benefits. “Access to social assistance that meets the needs of migrants can significantly influence their incorporation into the new living environment, explains Elsa Mescoli, an anthropologist at the ULiège CEDEM (Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Migration) and co-author of the book. For example, how social institutions deal with language barriers, and the strategies developed by social workers to try and overcome certain obstacles, can make it easier for migrants to participate in the social, cultural, economic and political dynamics of their new environment”.

This book sheds empirical light on the match between the needs of newcomers and the services provided for them. Peter De Cuyper, sociologist at the KULeuven’s Institute for Research on Work and Society (HIVA), continues: “It examines the accessibility of social assistance for new arrivals from a global perspective, encompassing aspects such as access (and the equality of this access for everyone) and the availability of services. One of the main conclusions is that accessibility (or service provision) differs (widely) not only between PCSWs, but also between social workers. Factors influencing this are, for example, the organisation of services (general or specialised services), language policies, but also the personal attitudes of social workers. As a result, new arrivals feel that they are treated unequally and, according to them, getting help depends on the presence of a more or less “nice” social worker”. Focusing on Belgian public social welfare centres (CPAS/OCMW) as a case study in Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels, the authors explore the policies and practices related to social assistance and labour market activation for newcomers and the factors influencing people's access to their rights. By integrating the perspectives of all stakeholders and drawing on the views of social workers and managers as well as the experiences of migrants themselves, this book offers a unique understanding of the interactions between immigrants, the welfare state, and bureaucrats on the ground. It provides valuable pointers for improving service delivery by striving to adopt a more inclusive approach.

This book was produced as part of the BBOX project, funded by Belspo, a cooperation between the University of Liège (CEDEM), the KULeuven and the UCLouvain Saint Louis-Bruxelles (FUSL). The book 'Newcomers Navigating the Welfare State. Experiences of Immigrants and Street-Level Bureaucrats with Belgium's Social Assistance System" is an open-access book with the GPRC (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content) label. 

---

DOI

10.11116/9789461665249 

 

UBC researchers advocate for sustainable logging to safeguard against global flood risks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

 

IMAGE: 

FLOODING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA'S FRASER VALLEY IN NOVEMBER 2021. CREDIT: UBC APPLIED SCIENCE

view more 

CREDIT: UBC APPLIED SCIENCE

It’s time to recognize the power of healthy forests in managing global growing flood risk, and to shift towards more sustainable forestry practices and policy.

This call is emphasized by UBC researchers in a peer-reviewed article published recently in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Dr. Younes Alila, a hydrologist and professor in the faculty of forestry, and his graduate student Henry Pham synthesized decades of hydrology studies and found that many “severely and consistently underestimated” the impact of forest cover on flood risk.

As a consequence, it led to forest management policies and practices that were either unsound or poorly informed.

Cause and effect

For more than a century, Dr. Alila explained, scientists have clung to a “deterministic” analysis. To use a strategic board game analogy, this is like looking at each move in isolation and thinking, “If I move here, then I should win.” It fails to account for the roll of the dice, the cards you draw, and what your opponents might do—all of which can change the game.

When it comes to understanding how logging might increase flood risk, a deterministic approach would look at the logging alone and try to figure out its direct effect. But the risk of flooding is influenced by many things, such as how much snow is on the ground, whether it’s melting or not, how much rain is falling, and the characteristics of the landscape itself. These factors interact over time in complex ways.

Taking them all into account is called a “probabilistic” approach and provides a better overall picture of flood risk. It’s like a savvy board game player considering all the game’s variables instead of just one.

“The probabilistic approach is already well established in other disciplines such as climate change science. It is the most accurate method for evaluating the effects of deforestation on floods,” said Henry Pham, a student in UBC’s master of science in forestry program.

Forests can lower flood risk

Dr. Alila says the probabilistic framework is designed to understand and predict, for instance, how much of the 2021 Fraser Valley floods could be attributed to climate change, land use change or logging. The approach also can be extended to investigate the causes of flood risk in other cities and regions.

He added: “In B.C. alone, the flood risk is escalating as we continue to lose forest cover due to ongoing large-scale logging and wildfires. If we want to mitigate the costs of disasters like the 2021 flooding in the Fraser Valley or the 2018 flooding in Grand Forks, we need to change the way we manage our forest cover. Regenerative practices such as selective logging, small patch cutting, and other alternatives to clear-cutting are an important way forward.”

Pham noted that clear-cut logging causes more severe and much more frequent floods, and such floods can have harsh consequences. “They can negatively impact river ecosystems, degrade water quality in community watersheds, and cause sedimentation issues downstream. Thousands of lives and many ecosystems further downstream of clear-cut logging stand to be affected.”

Dr. Alila concludes, “Forests serve as the most effective natural defense against a global escalating flood risk attributed to factors such as climate change. Now is the time for water and forest management policies to start being guided by the most up-to-date and defensible science.”

---

JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169646 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Science of forests and floods: The quantum leap forward needed, literally and metaphorically

The complexity of forests cannot be explained by simple mathematical rules, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

The way trees grow together do not resemble how branches grow on a single tree, scientists have discovered.

Nature is full of surprising repetitions. In trees, the large branches often look like entire trees, while smaller branches and twigs look like the larger branches they grow from. If seen in isolation, each part of the tree could be mistaken for a miniature version of itself.

It has long been assumed that this property, called fractality, also applies to entire forests but researchers from the University of Bristol have found that this is not the case.

The study, published in December in Journal of Ecology, refutes claims that the self-similarity which is observed within individual trees can be extended to whole forest canopies and landscapes.

Lead author Dr Fabian Fischer explained: “Fractality can be found in many natural systems. Transport networks such as arteries or rivers often show self-similarity in the way they branch, and many organic structures, such as trees, ferns or broccoli, are composed of parts that look like the whole.

“Fractality provides a way of categorising and quantifying these self-similar patterns we so often observe in nature, and has been hypothesized to be an emergent property that is shared by many natural systems.

“Intuitively, if you look at a picture of something and you can’t quite determine how big it is, then this is good indicator of fractality. For instance, is this a large mountain in front of me or just a small rock looking like a mountain? Is it a branch or whole a tree?

“Scientifically, this self-similarity has the attractive property that it allows you to describe an apparently complex object using some very simple rules and numbers.”

If self-similarity extended from the small twigs of a single tree to entire forest ecosystems, it would help ecologists describe complex landscapes in much simpler ways, and potentially directly compare the complexity of very different ecosystems, such as coral reefs and forest canopies.

To test this idea that forest canopies behave like fractals, the team used airborne laser scanning data from nine sites spread across Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). These sites span a large rainfall gradient and vary enormously in their structure: from sparse and short arid woodlands in Western Australia to towering, 90-m tall mountain ash forests in Tasmania. From each laser scan, they derived high-resolution forest height maps and compared these to what forest heights would look like if the forests were fractal in nature.

Dr Fischer said: “We found that forest canopies are not fractal, but they are very similar in how they deviate from fractality, irrespective of what ecosystem they are in.

“That they are not fractal makes a lot of sense and was our hypothesis from the start. While it might be possible to confuse a branch for an entire tree, it’s usually easy to differentiate trees from a grove of trees or from an entire forest.

“But it was surprising how similar all forest canopies were in the way they deviated from true fractals, and how deviations were linked to the size of the trees and how dry their environment was.

“The consistency of deviations also gave us an idea of how we could compare complexity across ecosystems. Most ecosystems, like forests, will hit an upper limit – most likely determined by the maximum size of its organisms – beyond which their structure cannot vary freely anymore.

“If we could determine these upper limits, this could open up routes to understanding how very different organisms and systems (coral reefs, forests, etc.) work and to test whether they might share the same basic organising principles.”

Now the team plan to compare an even wider range of forest ecosystems across the globe, find out whether there are similar organizing principles in forests and beyond, and discover what drives these patterns by looking at multiple scans in time.

Dr Fischer concluded: “A key question in science is whether there are generalizable patterns in nature, and an excellent candidate for this is fractality.

“The forests we studied were not fractal, but there were clear similarities across all sites in how they deviated from fractality. From a theoretical point of view, this points the way to a framework for finding general organizing principles in biology.

“But this also has practical implications: if we cannot understand the forest from its trees, and vice versa, then we must monitor forests both at small and large scales to understand how they respond to climatic changes and growing human pressure.”

 

Paper:

‘No evidence for fractal scaling in canopy surfaces across a diverse range of forest types’ by Fabian Fischer and Tommaso Jucker in Journal of Ecology.

 

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Ecology

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

No evidence for fractal scaling in canopy surfaces across a diverse range of forest types

 

The war in Ukraine severely limits our ability to track Arctic climate change

Scientists no longer have direct access to data from Russian Arctic research stations. Without this data, our view of climate changes in the region is increasingly biased, new research shows.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

THE LOCATION OF THE INTERACT NORTH-EAST SCIENCE STATION IN RUSSIA IS CHARACTERISED BY THE TRANSITION BETWEEN LOW-ARCTIC AND BOREAL ECOREGIONS AROUND THE TREE LINE. THE POTENTIAL LOSS OF THIS, AND OTHER STATIONS IN RUSSIA, CAN BE DETRIMENTAL FOR TRACKING GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS OF SHIFTS IN BIODIVERSITY, SUCH AS SHRUBIFICATION, AND ITS FEEDBACK ON CARBON DYNAMICS.

view more 

CREDIT: MAX WILBERT

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th 2022, the ties between Russian Scientists and their Western counterparts were suddenly cut.

Data that used to flow from Russian Arctic research stations and into the international scientific community stopped coming. And that is a problem because it severely limits our understanding of the rapid changes the Arctic is undergoing, a new study shows.

- Suddenly we don’t have access to data from half of the landmass in the Arctic region. Our study reveals that the exclusion of the Russian stations severely decreases our ability to track Arctic changes, says Dr. Efrén López-Blanco from Aarhus University.

Using Earth System Models López-Blanco and his colleagues have calculated how much the loss of the Russian research stations affect the biases between several essential ecosystem variables related to Arctic change. And not surprisingly, it makes a significant difference. 

Missing data from most of the boreal forests

Before the war, 21 Russian research stations shared their data with the international consortium INTERACT, which is a scientific collaboration between the eight Arctic countries.

Many of the Russian research stations are situated in boreal forests in Siberia. Areas that differ from Greenland, Svalbard and parts of Northern Canada where most of the other research stations are located.

- Half of the research stations in Russia are in the boreal zone. The boreal forest uptakes a substantial amount of carbon, carbon that is accumulated as biomass and soil organic carbon. Siberia is therefore an important part of the arctic climate system. Leaving most of them out, it further increases our bias, says Dr. Efrén López-Blanco.

His colleague and co-author of the paper agrees.

- This will hamper our ability to adequately describe Arctic change. For example, when excluding Russia from INTERACT, the vast taiga forest in Siberia is left out of the network, says professor Niels Martin Schmidt, Aarhus University.

In order to minimize the bias, López-Blanco suggests that we can improve current research infrastructure, but also identify and establish new research stations in northern Scandinavia and in Canada, for example.

- With the metrics we use in the study we could identify other locations with similar conditions to the ones we are currently missing in Russia. We could find places in Northern Canada or Scandinavia. But it costs a lot of money and is for the funding agencies, policymakers and decision planners to decide, he says. 

- Excluding Russian research stations and all the ground-based knowledge they may provide, represents a shift in baseline conditions that is of the same magnitude as the anticipated climate-induced shifts by the end of the century, he says.

Important in the battle against climate changes

The increasing bias in the data from the Arctic region is not only a problem that concerns that part of the world. It affects our understanding of global climate change, Efrén López-Blanco explains.

- The loss of Russian research stations could adversely affect the capacity to track global ecological responses to climate change including permafrost degradation, vegetation shifts, and carbon emissions.

He fears that the bias may affect the solutions we employ to stop global climate change.

- Our ability to track and detect climate changes has deteriorated because of the war. It’s important that we are aware of that when we try to solve or mitigate the effects of climate change around the world, he says.

The INTERACT research stations are represented on the map by squares, and the red squares indicate the positions of the Russian stations.

CREDIT

INTERACT

The location of the INTERACT North-East Science Station in Russia is characterised by the transition between low-Arctic and boreal ecoregions around the tree line. The potential loss of this, and other stations in Russia, can be detrimental for tracking global implications of shifts in biodiversity, such as shrubification, and its feedback on carbon dynamics.

CREDIT

Max Wilbert

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01903-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Towards an increasingly biased view on Arctic change

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Jan-2024

 

What coffee with cream can teach us about quantum physics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Add a dash of creamer to your morning coffee, and clouds of white liquid will swirl around your cup. But give it a few seconds, and those swirls will disappear, leaving you with an ordinary mug of brown liquid. 

Something similar happens in quantum computer chips—devices that tap into the strange properties of the universe at its smallest scales—where information can quickly jumble up, limiting the memory capabilities of these tools.

That doesn’t have to be the case, said Rahul Nandkishore, associate professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In a new coup for theoretical physics, he and his colleagues have used math to show that scientists could create, essentially, a scenario where the milk and coffee never mix—no matter how hard you stir them. 

The group’s findings may lead to new advances in quantum computer chips, potentially providing engineers with new ways to store information in incredibly tiny objects.

“Think of the initial swirling patterns that appear when you add cream to your morning coffee,” said Nandkishore, senior author of the new study. “Imagine if these patterns continued to swirl and dance no matter how long you watched.”

Researchers still need to run experiments in the lab to make sure that these never-ending swirls really are possible. But the group’s results are a major step forward for physicists seeking to create materials that remain out of balance, or equilibrium, for long periods of time—a pursuit known as “ergodicity breaking.”

The team’s findings appeared this week in the latest issue of “Physical Review Letters.”

Quantum memory

The study, which includes co-authors David Stephen and Oliver Hart, postdoctoal researchers in physics at CU Boulder, hinges on a common problem in quantum computing.

Normal computers run on “bits,” which take the form of zeros or ones. Nandkishore explained that quantum computers, in contrast, employ “qubits,” which can exist as zero, one or, through the strangeness of quantum physics, zero and one at the same time. Engineers have made qubits out of a wide range of things, including individual atoms trapped by lasers or tiny devices called superconductors.

But just like that cup of coffee, qubits can become easily mixed up. If you flip, for example, all of your qubits to one, they’ll eventually flip back and forth until the entire chip becomes a disorganized mess. 

In the new research, Nandkishore and his colleagues may have figured a way around that tendency toward mixing. The group calculated that if scientists arrange qubits into particular patterns, these assemblages will retain their information—even if you disturb them using a magnetic field or a similar disruption. That could, the physicist said, allow engineers to build devices with a kind of quantum memory.

“This could be a way of storing information,” he said. “You would write information into these patterns, and the information couldn’t be degraded.”

Tapping into geometry

In the study, the researchers used mathematical modeling tools to envision an array of hundreds to thousands of qubits arranged in a checkerboard-like pattern. 

The trick, they discovered, was to stuff the qubits into a tight spot. If qubits get close enough together, Nadkishore explained, they can influence the behavior of their neighbors, almost like a crowd of people trying to squeeze themselves into a telephone booth. Some of those people might be standing upright or on their heads, but they can’t flip the other way without pushing on everyone else.

The researchers calculated that if they arranged these patterns in just the right way, those patterns might flow around a quantum computer chip and never degrade—much like those clouds of cream swirling forever in your coffee.

“The wonderful thing about this study is that we discovered that we could understand this fundamental phenomenon through what is almost simple geometry,” Nandkishore said. 

The team’s findings could influence a lot more than just quantum computers.

Nandkishore explained that almost everything in the universe, from cups of coffee to vast oceans, tends to move toward what scientists call “thermal equilibrium.” If you drop an ice cube into your mug, for example, heat from your coffee will melt the ice, eventually forming a liquid with a uniform temperature. 

His new findings, however, join a growing body of research that suggests that some small organizations of matter can resist that equilibrium—seemingly breaking some of the most immutable laws of the universe.

“We’re not going to have to redo our math for ice and water,” Nandkishore said. “The field of mathematics that we call statistical physics is incredibly successful for describing things we encounter in everyday life. But there are settings where maybe it doesn’t apply.”

---

JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.040401 

ARTICLE TITLE

Ergodicity Breaking Provably Robust to Arbitrary Perturbations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Jan-2024

U$A

Study: The more people know about pregnancy, the more likely they are to support access to abortion

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

A new study on public attitudes toward abortion laws finds that the more people know about pregnancy, the more likely they are to oppose legislation that limits women’s access to abortions – regardless of political ideology. The study also found that laws that limit access to abortion after 12 weeks did not have greater support than laws that limit access to abortion after six weeks.

“There is a tremendous amount of research on public attitudes toward abortion in the United States, but very little of that work has been done since the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade,” says Steven Greene, co-author of the study and a professor of political science at North Carolina State University. “We wanted to ask questions that directly address the policy issues raised in state legislatures in the wake of Dobbs.

“Will people support a politician who promotes six-week bans? Will people support a politician who promotes 12-week bans? Do people who understand that these weeks are counted starting from a woman’s most recent period view abortion laws differently from people who think that these weeks are counted from when a woman actually got pregnant?”

To explore these issues, the researchers surveyed 1,356 U.S. adults. The demographics of the study participants were broadly representative of the U.S. population. Politically, 43% of study participants were Democrats or leaned Democratic; 38% were Republican or leaned Republican; with the remainder being independent.

“We found that people who had a better understanding of pregnancy were more opposed to legislation restricting access to abortion,” Greene says. “Basically, people who knew what a trimester was and who knew how we count the weeks of a pregnancy – that it’s done dating back to a woman’s last period, rather than to conception – are more likely to oppose laws limiting women’s access to the full range of reproductive health care options.”

The researchers also found that 12-week bans did not garner any more political support from study participants than the six-week bans.

“This suggests that efforts by some politicians to promote 12-week bans as a moderate, or compromise, position are likely not effective,” Greene says.

“One possible take-away here is that efforts to educate the public on basic sex education may be a viable strategy for groups trying to build support for women’s access to abortion.”

A paper on the study, “Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Roe America,” was presented at the Southern Political Science Association Conference, which was held Jan. 10-13 in New Orleans. The paper was co-authored by Laurel Elder of Hartwick College and by Mary-Kate Lizotte of Augusta University. The researchers will be incorporating this work into a forthcoming book on the politics of abortion after Dobbs.

---

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Roe America

 

Facial recognition app for dogs developed to help in fight against rabies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCHERS USE THE NEW FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY TO DETERMINE THE RABIES VACCINATION OF STATUS OF DOGS DURING A RABIES VACCINATION CLINIC IN RURAL TANZANIA.

view more 

CREDIT: WSU COLLEGE OF VETERINARY MEDICINE

A new mobile phone-based facial recognition application for dogs has the potential to significantly improve rabies vaccination efforts in endemic areas like Africa and Asia, according to a study on the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Led by researchers at Washington State University, a team used the app to test its effectiveness at a rabies vaccination clinic in rural Tanzania where they microchipped, vaccinated and registered dogs. The technology proved remarkably accurate during a subsequent visit to surrounding villages once poor images and improperly recorded information were removed from its database. Using the app, operators identified 76.2% of vaccinated dogs and 98.9% of unvaccinated dogs.

“Because domestic dogs are the main reservoir for human rabies, controlling human rabies globally requires the mass vaccination of dogs,” WSU Associate Professor Felix Lankester, the principal investigator of the study, said. “When carrying out mass vaccination, one of the major problems that we face is trying to identify which dogs have and haven’t been vaccinated. For example, microchips are too expensive to use at the scales needed to eliminate rabies, and collars can be removed by owners. We developed this app to see if facial recognition might work, and it’s showing great promise in helping us to achieve that goal.”

Rabies kills an estimated 60,000 people annually. Nearly all cases occur in Africa and Asia, and more than 99% are the result of dog bites. Systematic and consistent vaccination efforts, like those led by WSU’s Rabies Free Africa program, are effective at controlling the disease, but approximately 40% of dogs in an area must be vaccinated at any one time to achieve herd immunity and prevent sustained virus transmission. This makes the ability to accurately and efficiently identify vaccinated dogs vital for successful rabies elimination programs.

The facial recognition algorithm used within the application, developed in collaboration with PiP My Pet, a company located in Vancouver, Canada, and researchers in WSU’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Health, identifies a dog by examining key components of its face and comparing it to images of the faces of other dogs in its archive of previously stored images. Images with the highest number of similar components are returned as possible matches, and the user must decide if there is a match.

The app depends on image quality and information about each dog, including its age, color and sex, being properly recorded. Before poor quality images and incorrect information were removed from the database, users were only able to match 65% of the vaccinated dogs.

Lankester, who also serves as a director of Rabies Free Africa, said the app’s effectiveness could be improved with better technology – like newer smartphones with high-quality cameras – and additional operator training.

In addition to its potential as a tool in identifying vaccinated dogs, the technology holds promise for use in other species, disease control efforts and research purposes where animals might need to be identified.

Currently, users must be online to operate the facial matching component, however, Lankester said the team is also working to compress the size of the “engine” that drives the app’s matching facility to allow it to be downloaded and used offline, which would reduce the app’s reliance on internet access, which is not always available in more remote areas.

“We’re not quite there yet, but I think with investment, the technology  can get there. I’m excited by its potential,” Lankester said, “but we have to find some funding to invest in pushing it forward. I welcome people to get in touch if they have funding ideas or would like to collaborate on this.”

 

Researchers use the new facial recognition technology to determine the rabies vaccination of status of dogs during a rabies vaccination clinic in rural Tanzania.

CREDIT

WSU College of Veterinary Medicine

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-49522-2 

ARTICLE TITLE

Testing novel facial recognition technology to identify dogs during vaccination campaigns