Study: Insights from two reopened schools during the COVID-19 pandemic

SANTA FE INSTITUTE

Research News 

Since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, teachers, and school administrators have faced difficult questions regarding when and how to safely reopen for in-person learning. During the 2020-2021 fall semester, school districts around the United States navigated their reopening plans -- many opting for exclusively online learning or hybrid models -- with little data on how SARS-CoV-2 spreads among children or how in-person learning would impact transmission in the schools' communities. A new study in The Journal of School Health joins a growing body of evidence that, with appropriate measures, there are ways for schools to safely reopen.

In this study, scientists analyzed data from two large, independent k-12 schools that re-opened for in-person learning last fall. The results suggest that, with robust universal testing and mitigation measures, in-school transmission can remain low even as the surrounding community transmission rates rise.

The two schools in this study, one located in the southeastern United States and the other in the Mid-Atlantic, both conducted regular testing of all students and staff and required mitigation measures like mask-wearing, social distancing, and ventilation and air filtering. When positive cases were detected, the schools and local health authorities did contact tracing to determine how the person was likely exposed.

Throughout the semester, both schools saw cases, but the rate of transmission was 0.5 or lower. "Because each infection causes less than one additional infection on average, an infection doesn't spread much within the school," says Santa Fe Institute Professor Michael Lachmann, who co-authored the study with Santa Fe Institute External Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers (University of Texas at Austin), Darria Long Gillespie, Stephen C Redd, and Jonathan M Zenilman. "If we could get a rate of 0.5 in the community, that would be amazing -- we would be rid of COVID already."

In addition, neither school observed any instance where a teacher was infected by a student or vice versa. While in-school transmission did occur, 72% of those cases in one school were associated with non-mask-wearing. No outbreaks at either school occurred from in-school transmission when mitigation measures were being followed. However, testing revealed a spike in cases at the start of the school year and following fall break -- times when the students were out of school -- and one school had an outbreak following an out-of-school football party.

So, is it safe to reopen schools, and to do so before all teachers are vaccinated?

"While that depends on your definition of 'safe,' this study says that if you implement all these measures, including testing, there won't be big outbreaks in schools," says Lachmann. "But the key here is testing. If you implement all these measures, testing allows you to see when things go wrong."

Still, there are several caveats. The new, more contagious, variants will likely require schools to be extra vigilant to avoid outbreaks. Also, both schools in this study had the resources to conduct regular testing. "Given that both schools are well-resourced, with a population that likely has a lower burden of chronic disease and better access to medical care, the exact consequence of these introductions in less well-resourced communities is not known," write the authors in the study. "There is a critical need for educational and public health support of rapid expansion of school-based testing capacity and the resources required if communities are to return to in-person education."

Kumon or Montessori? It may depend on your politics, according to new study of 8,500 parents

RICE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

HOUSTON - (March 30, 2021) - Whether parents prefer a conformance-oriented or independence-oriented supplemental education program for their children depends on political ideology, according to a study of more than 8,500 American parents by a research team from Rice University and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

"Conservative parents have a higher need for structure, which drives their preference for conformance-oriented programs," said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business. "Many parents are surprised to learn that their political identity can affect the educational choices they make for their children."

Supplemental education programs include private tutoring, test preparation support and educational books and materials as well as online educational support services. The global market for private tutoring services is forecasted to reach $260.7 billion by 2024, and the U.S. market for tutoring is reported to be more than $8.9 billion a year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 100,000 businesses in the private education services industry. Supplemental education program brands are among the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneur magazine's 2020 rankings, and they include popular providers such as Kumon (ranked No. 12), Mathnasium (No. 29) and Huntington Learning Center (No. 39).

For over five decades, education psychologists have utilized two pedagogical orientations --conformance orientation and independence orientation. A conformance orientation is more standardized and guided, emphasizing lecture-based content delivery, knowledge and memorization, frequent use of homework assignments, standardized examinations with relative evaluation and classroom attendance discipline and rules. In contrast, an independence orientation features discussion-based seminars and student-led presentations, an emphasis on ideas rather than facts, use of multimodal interaction instead of books, and highly variable and unstructured class routines. The two approaches do not differ in terms of topics covered in the curriculum or the specific qualities to be imparted to students.

The research team asked parents about their preferences for different programs framed as conformance- or independence-oriented. In five studies of more than 8,500 parents, conservative parents preferred education programs that were framed as conformance-oriented, while liberal parents preferred independence-oriented education programs. This differential preference emerged for different measures of parents' political identity: their party affiliation, self-reported political leaning and whether they watch Fox or CNN/MSNBC for news.

"By understanding the underlying motivations behind parents' preferences, educational programs' appeal to parents can be substantially enhanced," Mittal said. "Supplemental tutoring will be a major expenditure and investment for parents grappling with their child's academic performance in the post-pandemic era. Informal conversations show parents gearing up to supplement school-based education with tutoring. Despite this, very little research exists about the factors that affect parents' preference for and utilization of supplemental education."

Mittal cautioned that these results do not speak to ultimate student performance. "This study only speaks to parents' preferences but does not study ultimate student achievement," he said.

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The paper, "Political Identity and Preference for Supplemental Educational Programs," which is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, was co-authored by professor Jihye Jung of UTSA. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437211004252.

To schedule an interview with Mittal or to request a copy of the study, contact Jeff Falk, director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

Related materials:

Mittal bio: https://business.rice.edu/person/vikas-mittal

Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business: http://business.rice.edu

'GROWING' AIRPLANE FUESALGE 

Materials scientists use frontal polymerization to mimic biology, reimagine manufacturing

BECKMAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

IMAGE: AN OPTICAL IMAGE OF THE SURFACE SHOWS RIDGES GENERATED SPONTANEOUSLY DURING FREE-SURFACE FRONTAL POLYMERIZATION OF DICYCLOPENTADIENE. THE SAMPLES ARE IMAGED UNDER UV LIGHT TO ENHANCE VISUALIZATION. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY THE AUTONOMOUS MATERIALS SYSTEMS GROUP, BECKMAN INSTITUTE

A simple plastic water bottle isn't so simple when it comes to the traditional manufacturing process. To appear in its final form, it has to go through a multi-step journey of synthetic procedure, casting, and molding. But what if materials scientists could tap into the same biological mechanisms that create the ridges on our fingertips or the spots on a cheetah in order to manufacture something like a water bottle?

A research paper titled "Spontaneous Patterning during Frontal Polymerization" was published in the American Chemical Society's Central Science journal, a research tipping point into how material scientists can use biological truths to manufacture materials in a more sustainable way.

Evan M. Lloyd, a Ph.D. graduate of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Elizabeth Feinberg, a former postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Chemistry, led the project seeking answers on how to fabricate functionally useful patterns in ways inspired by developmental biology. While at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, they were both members of the Autonomous Materials Systems Group.

"When you build a house, you have to build every room in the house. But when you're making a body, nobody's putting the arms and the legs in the right place --it just happens," Feinberg said. "We wanted to know if we could do things more like nature, rather than how we typically do it ourselves."

In general, complex patterns integral to the structure and function of biological materials arise spontaneously during morphogenesis, or a biological process that causes a cell, tissue, or organism to develop its shape. In sharp contrast, functional patterns in synthetic materials are typically created through multistep manufacturing processes, making it difficult to change how materials are patterned.

"It's very hard to get patterns into materials but throughout biology, we see patterns with a large number of uses, from mechanical performance to camouflage," Lloyd said. "We wanted to see if we could look at ways that patterns could emerge spontaneously."

Step one for the researchers was to use a relatively new manufacturing technique known as frontal polymerization, a reaction-thermal diffusion system, which utilizes the diffusion of heat to promote chemical reactions. Under certain conditions, the chemical reaction produces regions with varying degrees of heat. The team took advantage of these properties to change polymer microstructure and mechanical properties, and subsequently fine-tuned the reactions based on the applications of heat.

"We can incorporate alternative chemistry that is thermally sensitive within that temperature difference regime to generate changes in color, morphology, mechanical property," Lloyd said. "It's really all about how we can translate changes in reaction temperature and see lasting material properties."

The result achieved in this paper is essentially the varying stiffness of materials, explained faculty author and Beckman Institute Director Jeff Moore, a Swanlund Endowed Chair of chemistry.

"The research was made possible by interdisciplinary collaboration. The team brought together chemists, materials scientists, and computational modelers," Moore said. "The diversity of thinking helped us realize a vision for polymer fabrication that may someday be important in manufacturing."

Nancy Sottos, Swanlund Endowed Chair and head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Philippe Geubelle, Bliss Professor of aerospace engineering, also collaborated on the paper.

Manufacturing materials created with this method could be implemented on a large scale within a few decades, Feinberg predicts, imagining these materials could be used in mundane, everyday items like desks, or in massive products like windmills or airplanes. But due to the nature of these reactions, the result is monumental in creating sustainable manufacturing production.

"When you cure a polymer, you have to thermally cure it at 100 degrees or more, and it has to bake for hours. That takes a lot of energy," Feinberg said.

When it comes to wind turbine blades or an airplane fuselage, massive amounts of energy must be applied to reach a suitable end result.

"But here, because the way frontal polymerization works, you apply energy to just one small spot and it propagates or releases the latent energy in the chemical precursor," she said. "It requires a lot less energy to get it going."

Additionally, by looking toward a future of multi-functional materials, it's also possible to reduce the number of single-use materials needed, Lloyd explained.

"The research is just the start of a more sustainable approach to manufacturing," Lloyd said. "As we become better as materials scientists, we want to start pushing towards more sustainable manufacturing processes. And so by eliminating the need for these multi step processes to get to this final form, we can improve the efficiency of manufacturing itself."

###

ACS Central Science is one of the flagstone journals for publishing interdisciplinary work.

"This project was really imagined by Scott White," Feinberg added. White was an aerospace engineering professor and mentor to both Lloyd and Feinberg who died in 2018. He was a pioneer of self-healing materials and one of the researchers who conceived the original idea for this project. "Finishing this project and having a beautiful outcome of it feels like a memorial to him in a lot of ways. There's this human component to it and it was really important to see this through, not just from a technical and curiosity perspective, but because it was important to him."

Editor's note: The paper "Spontaneous Patterning during Frontal Polymerization" can be found at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.1c00110.

Top business leaders share lessons from the Covid crisis in new report

CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY

Research News

Most businesses were ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic and muddled though the challenges stemming from it, according to a report published today.

Resilience reimagined: a practical guide for organisations was produced by Cranfield University, in partnership with the National Preparedness Commission (NPC) and Deloitte. The report presents insights from business leaders from a range of sectors and makes seven recommendations for organisations on how to become more resilient, drawing on lessons from past 12 months.

Cranfield University's Professor David Denyer and Mike Sutliff conducted in-depth interviews and four focus groups with more than 50 C-suite level people (boards, senior executives, policymakers, and resilience directors) from FTSE 100 companies, multi-nationals and major national infrastructure organisations, many of them household names.

The report warns we are entering a new period of uncertainty and change, with an ever-increasing possibility that things will go wrong. It sought answers from leading figures about how resilience can be developed, who does it well and what other businesses can learn from them.

It also outlines practical steps necessary to strengthen resilience for long-term success and makes recommendations to business leaders on what more they can do to help their organisations to develop the ability to cope.

Cranfield's research found that the organisations that coped best with the pandemic had already been doing the following three things:

• They understood what was most important to their customers and therefore what were the most essential things to continue to deliver as the crisis unfolded.
• If something went wrong, they knew what the thresholds of tolerable impacts to the customer/user were and had examined in advance alternative ways of delivering those outcomes that mattered the most.
• They had relentlessly stress tested for possible disruption without worrying about what type of threat they might have to face - a cyberattack or a pandemic - learning how to cope when under pressure from challenges that might not be foreseeable or imaginable.

Professor David Denyer, Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change at Cranfield University, said: "We do not know what shape the next crisis will take but we can take proactive action to prepare.

"Businesses and organisations need to seize the learnings from this crisis and develop the agility to cope with the next. Whether it is another pandemic, another financial crisis or threats from a cyber attack or climate change, the risks are multiple and complex but the capabilities of readiness, responsiveness, recoverability and regeneration, the 4Rs, are ones that can be ingrained.

"One of the reasons the financial sector coped better than most during the pandemic was that it had taken on the lessons from the 2008 crash. By going through that crisis, these organisations had stress-tested, they knew their tolerances and what an acceptable level of failure was to them and their customers.

"Our research, in partnership with the National Preparedness Commission and Deloitte, gives organisations vital practical steps to reimagine the way they think about resilience and respond to future crises."

Lord Toby Harris, Chair of the National Preparedness Commission, said:
"The last year has been like no other for most business organisations, but some coped and responded much better than others. We asked Cranfield University to look at why this was and what the lessons are for the future.

The Government wants to build a whole-of-society approach to resilience, so that every business, every organisation and every individual can play their part in making sure that as a nation we can withstand any future crisis. This means changing organisational cultures to foster an active and agile response to events and this report highlights some of what is needed to make this a reality."

Rick Cudworth, Partner at Deloitte said: "Dealing with complex events requires flexibility and creativity; dealing with future uncertainty requires the ability to change course and adapt rapidly. This report clearly shows that resilience is about much more than well-rehearsed plans. This is a fundamental change in thinking, which requires senior leaders to make strategic choices, balancing control, agility, efficiency and innovation. It is great to see leaders pointing to resilience being central to a new 'social contract' for responsible business.

"By adopting the seven practices in this report organisations will be able to build stronger resilience and be better positioned to thrive going forward."

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Environmental antimicrobial resistance driven by poorly managed urban wastewater

NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Researchers from Newcastle University, UK, working with colleagues at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) in Thailand and the Institute of Urban Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, analysed samples of water and sediment taken from aquaculture ponds and nearby canals at five locations in central Thailand's coastal region.

The research, which was part-funded by an institutional links grant awarded by the Newton Fund via the British Council, and which has been published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, found that the highest prevalence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes was in water from the Hua Krabue canal, originating in Bangkok. Faecal pollution markers were also high in these samples.

In comparison, they found a low number of AMR genes in all of the water and sediment samples collected from the aquaculture ponds.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing animal food production sector globally, and over 91% of global aquaculture is now produced in Asia. The worldwide increase in demand for farmed fish, shrimp and other shellfish has led to the widespread use of antibiotics in aquaculture, and there have been concerns that this is driving environmental AMR, threatening global food production systems.

In recent years, the Thai government has introduced measures aimed at tackling AMR in aquaculture including reducing the amount of antibiotics used in the industry and routinely monitoring antibiotic residues in aquaculture produce.

Dr David Werner, from Newcastle University, said: "We found no evidence that aquaculture is driving environmental AMR. In fact, the data suggests that small-scale aquaculture farmers are complying with Thai government One Health policies to reduce antimicrobial use in aquaculture.

"Wide and regular monitoring of environmental antibiotic resistance with high-throughput diagnostic tools can identify pollution hot-spots and sources to pinpoint the most effective countermeasures. This study provides a further line of evidence for the importance of safely managed sanitation for combatting antibiotic resistance. Currently only around half of total domestic wastewater in Thailand is treated, and our findings have identified an urgent need to improve urban sanitation in the country's coastal aquaculture region, for the protection of global food production systems."

The global spread of AMR is one of the greatest health threats to human, animal and environmental health. Without effective sanitation and adequate treatment of wastewater, bacteria can evolve quickly, increasing resistance to antibiotic medicines.

This has led to fears that so-called superbugs - bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics - will compromise our ability to combat many new biological infections.

Reducing the spread of AMR is a World Health Organization (WHO) top five priority, and guidance published by the WHO in 2020 provides a framework for countries to create their own national action plans that suit their own particular regional setting. The guidance included contributions from Professor David Graham, also from Newcastle University, and reflects growing evidence, including research by Professor Graham, which suggests that the spread of AMR will not be solved by prudent antibiotic use alone and that environmental factors may be of equal or greater importance.

Professor Graham, who was also part of the team involved with this aquaculture study, said: "The only way we are going to win the fight against antibiotic resistance is to understand and act on all of the pathways that accelerate its spread. Although the types and drivers of resistance are diverse and vary by region and country, there are common roots to its spread - excess antibiotic use, pollution, poor water quality, and poor sanitation.

"This new work is crucial because it exemplifies how inadequate sanitation can affect the food supply, and may be among the strongest drivers of AMR spread."

The work in Thailand is just one example of how experts from Newcastle University are working with scientists from countries including China, Malaysia, India, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Nepal to track down the sources of waterborne hazards in rivers and their associated food production systems. By working together to carry out comprehensive water quality assessments, they are helping to address the global health challenges of safe water, safe food, and controlling AMR and infectious disease.

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This research was mainly funded by an Institutional Links grant between Newcastle University and King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), awarded by the Newton Fund via the British Council, and by the Office of Higher Education Commission (OHEC), Thailand. Additional support was provided by UK Research and Innovation.

Read more about how researchers at Newcastle University are developing solutions for water challenges globally https://www.ncl.ac.uk/globalchallenges/water/#projects

Land-based learning reconnects Indigenous youth to their cultures, says Elizabeth Fast

A 4-day retreat emphasizing knowledge-sharing, survival skills, ceremony and inclusivity builds a sense of belonging

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: ELIZABETH FAST: "THERE IS A REAL SENSE OF LOSS AND GRIEF FROM LOSING TRADITIONS. WE WERE SEEING A LOT OF INTEREST IN RELEARNING AND RECLAIMING THEM. " view more 

CREDIT: CONCORDIA UNIVERSITRY

Indigenous traditions often place land at the centre of their cultures. However, with more than half of Canada's Indigenous population now living in urban areas and Indigenous communities struggling to overcome legacies of colonialism defined by assimilation and land theft, that connection is getting frayed.

Elizabeth Fast, an associate professor of applied human sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Science, wanted to help Indigenous youth reconnect with their cultures in safe and accessible ways. Along with a youth advisory group composed of Indigenous youth (some of whom are also students), she has been organizing a series of land-based learning retreats revolving around Indigenous traditions and ceremonies.

The first, held in July 2018, is the subject of a new paper published in the International Journal of Indigenous Health.

"The youth participants found the retreat extremely nourishing," Fast says. "It provided many opportunities they've never had before to spend more time with Elders and Knowledge Holders to learn more about ceremonies and to connect with land-based learning. We explicitly created a cultural safety framework that welcomed different levels of connections with one's identity, including gender and sexuality."

The Restoring Our Roots project has since evolved into a five-year Land As Our Teacher participatory action research project exploring the ways land-based pedagogies benefit Indigenous youth.

Once-banned cultural practices now out in the open

Restoring Our Roots would not have been possible without input from the project's youth advisory committee, many of whom also participated in the program. By helping to develop the framework, pedagogical content, ethics and other aspects of the four-day retreat, they were able to come up with programming that was educational, culturally appropriate and inclusive.

Over the course of the retreat, the participants were mentored by Elders and worked with artists, community leaders, storytellers and other young people who guided them through activities meant to help them (re)connect to their Indigeneity. These included cultural workshops, arts-based activities, ceremonies, sweat lodges, medicines and storytelling sessions. All of it was centered around relationship with the land.

"Our ancestors grew up learning from and on the land. It was a way of life and still is for some," Fast says. "But for many Indigenous people, even those living in communities, it is less so because many of our cultural practices and ceremonies were banned. There is a real sense of loss and grief from losing those traditions. We were seeing a lot of interest in relearning and reclaiming them."

Land-based learning includes ways that Indigenous communities survive as peoples as well, such as hunting, fishing, gathering medicines, tanning hides and building fires and shelters, Fast explains.

Belonging for all

She adds that the retreat specifically made space for LGBTQ and Two-Spirit youth hoping to reconnect to their heritage -- a group often cut off or separated from their wider communities.

"Many of these youth have moved away from ceremony or accessing land-based learning because they might feel the impact of colonization around gender and sexual identity norms even more," she says. "If they feel they are going to experience transphobia or homophobia, they might just assimilate and move away from their cultures or communities."

Fast is now organizing a queer-only retreat for Indigenous youth this summer, despite the overall positivity and inclusion seen in past retreats.

"I think the sense of belonging is very important for Indigenous youth, especially for those who have felt disconnected for many reasons," she concludes. "It increases their courage to reconnect and can lead to some healing of intergenerational trauma. It also can be a foundation for deeper and better relationships with the land and help them get away from their technology-heavy lives to provide an experience many of them never had before."

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LIKE LISTENING TO MUSIC DURING PREGNANCY

Kids' metabolic health can be improved with exercise during pregnancy: here's why

JOSLIN DIABETES CENTER

Research News

 

BOSTON - (March 25, 2021) - A mechanism has been identified that explains how physical exercise in pregnancy confers metabolic health benefits in offspring. According to researchers, the key lies with a protein called SOD3, vitamin D and adequate exercise, with the outcomes possibly forming the first steps to designing rational diet and exercise programs to use during pregnancy and particularly when mothers may also be overweight or obese.

The study, which was led by authors from the Joslin Diabetes Center at the Harvard Medical School and colleagues from Japan, the US, Canada and Denmark, has been published online by Cell Metabolism.

"We've known for a while that risks for obesity and type 2 diabetes can originate in the critical prenatal developmental period," said senior author Laurie Goodyear. "In particular, there is real concern that the increasing levels of obesity seen in women of reproductive age will transmit disease risk to subsequent generations. It's important to understand that if this is not alleviated, rates of diabetes and obesity will only continue to grow in the coming years."

Many previous studies have linked increased maternal body weight and unhealthy diets to poorer metabolic outcomes in offspring, often many years later. Understanding the mechanisms of how maternal exercise can reverse these effects might lead to interventions that prevent these diseases transmitting across generations, say the authors of the study.

"The findings offer an explanation as to why physical exercise during pregnancy may have metabolic benefits for offspring as they get older," said Goodyear. "We show how physical exercise during pregnancy, in combination with adequate vitamin D levels, enhances levels of a placenta-derived protein called SOD3 (superoxide dismutase 3), and that via a number of intermediate steps, this improves glucose tolerance in offspring."

The findings come from a series of investigations with pregnant mice, comparing groups exposed to voluntary wheel running (i.e., exercise) and groups that were sedentary. Using various techniques, the authors carefully investigated the effects of exercise on parameters such as DNA methylation, cell signaling and gene expression, particularly in relation to glucose metabolism.

In short, they found that SOD3 is an exercise-induced placenta-derived protein that activates a specific signaling pathway that controls DNA demethylation in the livers of offspring, which in turn improves a number of aspects of glucose metabolism in offspring.

They also highlight the critical role of vitamin D as a mediator of SOD3 expression, with their data suggesting that maternal diet had to have sufficient vitamin D levels to influence placental levels of SOD3 and hence any improvements in metabolic health in offspring. They note for example, that high dietary levels of the vitamin in the absence of exercise, and indeed the opposite scenario, did not lead to increases in SOD3 - a consequential point if SOD3 is targeted clinically, they suggest.

Although most of the investigation focuses on mice, the authors did also look at SOD3 levels in pregnant women, finding that those who exercised more did have higher levels of serum and placental SOD3 and that they appeared to be highest during the second trimester of pregnancy.

"In terms of clinical application, it looks like the most efficient way to raise levels of the SOD3 protein is still likely to be via physical exercise," said lead author Joji Kusuyama. He added that there may also be clinical interest in using maternal serum levels of SOD3 as a biomarker to assess the benefits of exercise during pregnancy.

"Our data hints that exercise in combination with optimal vitamin D levels might be particularly beneficial during the 2nd trimester of pregnancy," said Kusuyama. "Although we can't be definitive about this with the current findings, we now plan to look in detail at how diet and exercise type and timing might be optimized with maternal serum SOD3 measurements to obtain maximum benefits for offspring."

The authors note some limitations with the study, including generalizability to all races and ethnicities and that there are still certain aspects of the signaling pathway that require further investigation. Nonetheless, they suggest their findings offer important insights into the role of exercise during pregnancy and the likely dynamic metabolic benefits for offspring.

"This report focuses on SOD3 and the metabolic benefits for offspring of maternal exercise, but there may be wider benefits of this protein on other body organs. For example, we are currently investigating the effects of maternal exercise and SOD3 on brain function in the offspring," said Goodyear. "We are also doing more in-depth investigation of maternal exercise effects on placenta because we found there are a plethora of changes in this tissue, and these placental adaptations may also have life-long effects in offspring. It's early days but understanding how exercise and fitness before and during pregnancy work may be the key to better health for subsequent generations."

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Other contributors to the research include Ana Barbara Alves-Wagner, Royce Conlin, Nathan Makarewicz, Brent Albertson, Noah Prince, Shio Kobayashi, Chisayo Kozuka, Magnus Møller, Mette Bjerre, Jens Fuglsang, Emily Miele, Roeland Middelbeek, Yang Xiudong, Yang Xia, Léa Garneau, Jayonta Bhattacharjee, Céline Aguer, Mary Elizabeth Patti, Michael Hirshman, Niels Jessen, Toshihisa Hatta, Per Glud Ovesen, Kristi Adamo, and Eva Nozik-Grayck.

Funding for the study was provided by US National Institutes of Health, the American Diabetes Association, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as well as many other organizations. Full details are available in the Cell Metabolism report.

About Joslin Diabetes Center

Joslin Diabetes Center is world-renowned for its deep expertise in diabetes treatment and research. Joslin is dedicated to finding a cure for diabetes and ensuring that people with diabetes live long, healthy lives. We develop and disseminate innovative patient therapies and scientific discoveries throughout the world. Joslin is an independent, non-profit institution affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and one of only 16 NIH-designated Diabetes Research Centers in the U.S.

For more information about the Joslin Diabetes Center, visit http://www.joslin.org or follow @joslindiabetes | One Joslin Place, Boston, MA 617-309-2400

For more information about the study, the corresponding authors are Dr Laurie J. Goodyear (laurie.goodyear@joslin.harvard.edu) and Dr Joji Kusuyama (joji.kusuyama.c1@tohoku.ac.jp).

Kusuyama et al. Placental superoxide dismutase 3 mediates benefits of maternal exercise on offspring health. Cell Metabolism 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.004

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

 THE POPULARITY OF DATING AT HORROR MOVIES

Screams of 'joy' sound like 'fear' when heard out of context

The first in-depth look at the human ability to decode the range of emotions tied to the acoustic cues of screams

EMORY HEALTH SCIENCES

Research News

 

People are adept at discerning most of the different emotions that underlie screams, such as anger, frustration, pain, surprise or fear, finds a new study by psychologists at Emory University. Screams of happiness, however, are more often interpreted as fear when heard without any additional context, the results show.

PeerJ published the research, the first in-depth look at the human ability to decode the range of emotions tied to the acoustic cues of screams.

"To a large extent, the study participants were quite good at judging the original context of a scream, simply by listening to it through headphones without any visual cues," says Harold Gouzoules, Emory professor of psychology and senior author of the study. "But when participants listened to screams of excited happiness they tended to judge the emotion as fear. That's an interesting, surprising finding."

First author of the study is Jonathan Engelberg, an Emory Ph.D. student of psychology. Emory alum Jay Schwartz, who is now on the faculty of Western Oregon University, is co-author.

The acoustic features that seem to communicate fear are also present in excited, happy screams, the researchers note. "In fact, people pay good money to ride roller coasters, where their screams no doubt reflect a blend of those two emotions," Gouzoules says.

He adds that the bias towards interpreting both of these categories as fear likely has deep, evolutionary roots.

"The first animal screams were probably in response to an attack by a predator," he says. "In some cases, a sudden, loud high-pitched sound might startle a predator and allow the prey to escape. It's an essential, core response. So mistaking a happy scream for a fearful one could be an ancestral carryover bias. If it's a close call, you're going to err on the side of fear."

The findings may even provide a clue to the age-old question of why young children often scream while playing.

"Nobody has really studied why young children tend to scream frequently, even when they are happily playing, but every parent knows that they do," Gouzoules says. "It's a fascinating phenomenon."

While screams can convey strong emotions, they are not ideal as individual identifiers, since they lack the more distinctive and consistent acoustic parameters of an individual's speaking voice.

"It's just speculative, but it may be that when children scream with excitement as they play, it serves the evolutionary role of familiarizing a parent to the unique sound of their screams," Gouzoules says. "The more you hear your child scream in a safe, happy context, the better able you are to identify a scream as belonging to your child, so you will know to respond when you hear it."

Gouzoules first began researching the screams of non-human primates, decades ago. Most animals scream only in response to a predator, although some monkeys and apes also use screams to recruit support when they are in a fight with other group members. "Their kin and friends will come to help, even if some distance away, when they can recognize the vocalizer," he says.

In more recent years, Gouzoules has turned to researching human screams, which occur in a much broader context than those of animals. His lab has collected screams from Hollywood movies, TV shows and YouTube videos. They include classic performances by "scream queens" like Jaime Lee Curtis, along with the screams of non-actors reacting to actual events, such as a woman shrieking in fear as aftershocks from a meteor that exploded over Russia shake a building, or a little girl's squeal of delight as she opens a Christmas present.

In previous work, the lab has quantified tone, pitch and frequency for screams from a range of emotions: Anger, frustration, pain, surprise, fear and happiness.

For the current paper, the researchers wanted to test the ability of listeners to decode the emotion underlying a scream, based solely on its sound. A total of 182 participants listened through headphones to 30 screams from movies that were associated with one of the six emotions. All of the screams were presented six times, although never in sequence. After hearing a scream, the listeners rated how likely it was associated with each of six of the emotions, on a scale of one to five.

The results showed that the participants most often matched a scream to its correct emotional context, except in the case of screams of happiness, which participants more often rated highly for fear.

"Our work intertwines language and non-verbal communication in a way that hasn't been done in the past," Gouzoules says.

Some aspects of non-verbal vocal communication are thought to be precursors for language. The researchers hypothesize that it may be that the cognitive underpinnings for language also built human capacity in the non-verbal domain. "It's probably language that gives us this ability to take a non-verbal vocalization and discern a wide range of meanings, depending on the acoustic cues," Gouzoules says.

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Yoga only goes so far: How overhauling

patient records can curb physician burnout

Wellness programs for health care workers emphasize self-care; they're overlooking a huge contributor to burnout: Patient records

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Research News

IMAGE: PHYSICIAN BURNOUT AFFECTS PATIENTS, TOO. STRESSED DOCTORS ARE LESS COMPASSIONATE AND MORE LIKELY TO MAKE MISTAKES. CLINICIANS WHO LEAVE THE FIELD OR CUT BACK HOURS REDUCE PATIENT ACCESS TO CARE,... view more 

CREDIT: SHANNON ALEXANDER/UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Judges don't do court stenography. CEOs don't take minutes at meetings. So why do we expect doctors and other health care providers to spend hours recording notes -- something experts know contributes to burnout?

"Having them do so much clerical work doesn't make sense," said Lisa Merlo, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and director of wellness programs at the University of Florida College of Medicine. "In order to improve the health care experience for everyone, we need to help them focus more on the actual practice of medicine."

Physician burnout affects patients, too. Stressed doctors are less compassionate and more likely to make mistakes. Clinicians who leave the field or cut back hours reduce patient access to care, and replacing doctors in the midst of a physician shortage drives up costs.

"We can't ignore burnout and expect doctors to just keep picking up the slack," Merlo said.

Electronic health records -- or EHRs -- have enabled better, faster and more accurate communication among health care providers. But the time required to populate them can mean less interaction with patients and more time after hours typing notes, which can be more driven by insurance requirements than usefulness in patient care.

To find solutions, Merlo teamed up with Oliver Nguyen, a research coordinator and IT specialist in the College of Medicine, to evaluate 35 studies of records-related burnout, looking for common threads. Their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, is part of a special issue on physician burnout.

"The longer clinicians spend on records, especially after hours or on weekends, the more it's associated with burnout," Nguyen said.

As the pandemic stretches health care workers ever thinner, "we're beyond the straw that broke the camel's back," Merlo said. "The system has survived for so long because physicians step up and get the work done out of a sense of altruism and dedication to their patients. But there's only so long you can sustain that."

Physician wellness initiatives have increased during the pandemic, often focusing exclusively on self care. But "adding more yoga classes is not going to address a clinician working on electronic health records at home at 11 p.m.," Merlo said.

Streamlining record-keeping could help. So when Nguyen approached Merlo about optimizing electronic records, she was eager to collaborate. With colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the U.S. Navy, Moffitt Cancer Center, the University of South Florida and the University of Central Florida, they uncovered several potential solutions that could help physicians. (Another study looked at nurse burnout; future research will include other health care providers.)

Their recommendations:

Share the load

Overflowing inboxes contribute to burnout. As the pandemic shifts some office visits to videoconference, email and phone communication, "inboxes are blowing up," Nguyen said. A shared inbox that allows office staff to triage messages that don't require a doctor's input, such as insurance questions, can help.

Revisit policy

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the Patients over Paperwork initiative in part to reduce the documentation requirements. If it shows promising results for reducing records burden, Nguyen and Merlo say, it could serve as a model for private insurers to emulate.

Create power users

Even when they're familiar with an EHR interface, doctors might not know about time-saving features like templates and bookmarks. An optimization team that offers proactive support can streamline time spent in the system.

Collaborate on design

"Usability continues to be a struggle for physicians," Nguyen said. More input from users can help when it comes to designing EHRs, as well as selecting and implementing them.

"The good news is, a lot of the issues can be fixed," Merlo said. "If we invest in these resources, we can make this better for patients, for health care providers, for everybody."

Teachers can use popular media to address anti-Asian bias, KU research shows

Critical race media literacy effective approach, schools should use to address difficult topics, scholars argue

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

Research News

 

LAWRENCE -- Recent incidents of racial discrimination and violence against Asians and Asian-Americans in the United States have prompted critical discussions about how to talk about such biases with younger age groups. New research from the University of Kansas shows using critical race media literacy, or examining how race and gender are addressed in popular culture, can be an effective way to discuss those topics and engage students.

KU researchers published a study in which they observed an American teacher using critical race media literacy to discuss racism and sexism in superhero movies in English as a foreign language classes in a South Korean high school. They argued that successful implementation can provide a model for discussing social topics in K-12 classrooms in countries like the United States.

Hyesun Cho"I think now, more than ever, it's important for us educators to teach our students how to contest prejudice and discrimination against certain racial groups," said Hyesun Cho, associate professor of curriculum & teaching in KU's School of Education & Human Sciences.

The recent mass shooting of several Asian-American women in Atlanta made headlines, but the topic can be difficult to discuss in schools.

"Teachers often are hesitant to discuss race and gender in the classroom because they are understandably concerned about sounding too political," said Peter Johnson, doctoral candidate in curriculum & teaching and study co-author. "I think that is one roadblock that we need to address, and this approach can help do that."

The study was published in the International Journal of Multicultural Education and presented at the Second Language Research Forum 2020 Conference hosted by Vanderbilt University.

Cho has led a study abroad program with KU students since 2015, traveling to South Korea to gain experience working in high schools while teaching English. The researchers observed classes where students explored issues of racism or sexism in popular culture on their own. Several groups of students shared examples in popular movies like "Black Panther" and "Dr. Strange" to appeal to their classmates. Students made presentations in English about how the wildly popular films addressed race both in positive ways, such as empowering African characters in "Black Panther," and in more negative ways, including a white actor portraying an Asian character in the 2016 film "Doctor Strange." The students were highly effective at discussing critical race theory and other complex topics, the authors wrote, and using media that students find compelling is a key way to give students a safe, comfortable way to discuss difficult topics.

"Do not underestimate our students' intelligence and higher thinking skills. That's the argument we're making here, even if they are working in a second or third language," Cho said. "Discussing critical race media literacy worked very well in Korean classrooms, despite misconceptions that often exist about these students' English proficiency and cultural background. If the teacher gets to know students and their interests and creates a safe space for them to express their thoughts about social issues, this approach can work in other teaching contexts."

Not only can using topics relevant to students' interests help encourage their participation, but it can help teachers connect with students. Educators are more effective when they get to know their students, their communities, families, backgrounds and experiences, Cho and Johnson wrote. The teacher in the study was born in Thailand, raised in the United States and speaks English as a first language. However, he faced discrimination when applying for jobs at South Korean schools, as it was assumed he was not a "true, American English speaker" because he was not white. Sharing such experiences can help expand discussions of power structures beyond media representations.

South Korea, like the United States, has an educational culture highly focused on testing and assessment. A common argument is that topics like racism and sexism can't or shouldn't be covered in school because they take time away from focusing on testing areas. However, the students displayed high levels of critical thinking, use of language, technological savvy and other educational skills in their presentations. That success suggests adaptability to other settings and levels of curriculum, Cho and Johnson wrote.

Cho said she hoped to return to South Korea to study other implementations of critical race media literacy in classrooms to gauge their effectiveness and to form new recommendations for teachers to address the topics in their own classrooms. Both Cho and Johnson also encourage prospective educators they are currently teaching to consider such methods to engage their future students and empower them to take ownership of their education.

"We try to frame it for our future teachers so that they understand they are able to have a classroom where students feel comfortable to ask the questions they have on their minds," Johnson said. "It can be tough to strike a good balance, but this shows they can use media such as films students are interested in to get them to think about deeper issues."

While it can be difficult to discuss to racism, sexism or the recent violence against Asians and Asian-Americans in a classroom setting, the use of critical race media literacy works, the researchers said.

"This is a new imperative for survival in the current, racially contested world. Especially given the anti-Asian-American violence we have seen in the U.S., it is everyone's responsibility to address it," Cho said. "Students want to be heard, and this study shows it's not an impossible task to discuss these social issues and can be done in a way that uses content relevant and readily accessible to students throughout K-12 education."