Gender pay gaps in nonprofits are even greater when there is room for salary negotiations

A new study that looked at executive compensation at nonprofit organizations found that women earn 8.9% less than men with the gap becoming greater when there is room for salary negotiations

THIS IS ALSO TRUE FOR WHEN THEY BARGAIN WITH UNIONS 

THEY CLAIM TO BE EITHER BROKE OR WE SHOULD ALL BE VOLUNTEERING OUR WORK

DREXEL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

With increased media attention and political campaigns focusing on the gender pay gap, the fact that women -- on average -- are paid less than men, has become an important public discussion. While much of the focus has been on the corporate sector, a new study that looked at executive compensation at nonprofit organizations found that women earn 8.9% less than men with the gap becoming greater when there is room for salary negotiations.

The study co-authored by Curtis Hall, PhD, an associate professor in Drexel University's LeBow College of Business; Andrew R. Finley, assistant professor at the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance at Claremont McKenna College; and LeBow College of Business doctoral student Amanda R. Marino, analyzed data from IRS form 990 filings--where salaries of executuves in nonprofits are publicly disclosed--for four years across various industries.

The researchers first looked at whether or not a gap in pay does exist among executives in the nonprofit sector and then, the extent to which negotiation opportunities -- either real or perceived -- contribute to this difference.

"For various reasons we may not expect to observe a gender pay gap among the nonprofit sector even though recent research has found gaps in pay among for-profit executives," said Hall. "First, there is more female participation in the nonprofit workforce compared to the for-profit sector. Second, one may expect stakeholders, like donors or boards of directors to curtail gender pay gaps, but we didn't find this to be enough of a factor to prevent gender pay gaps."

To better understand the role of negotiation in contributing to the pay gap, the researchers examined settings with an expected variation in opportunities and willingness to negotiate. They looked at external employment options for the nonprofit executives, the organization's constraints in paying executives, the gender composition of its leadership and the pay variability within its executive ranks. Each of these factors uniquely influences the negotiation environment, according to the authors.

They found that executives' external employment options and competition lead to greater gender pay gaps with male executives more likely to capitalize on a broader external labor market or other opportunities to negotiate additional compensation.

However, in organizations with higher female board representation, and/or the presence of a female CEO, the pay gap is reduced. This may be because female leadership increases the willingness of female employees to negotiate, according to the authors.

"This study documents the contexts that influence negotiation on the gender pay gap, which is part of a larger societal issue," said Hall. "Employers should be cognizant of how the environment for negotiating compensation within their organizations can lead to gender-based pay disparities. Perhaps more importantly, business leaders and educators should think about ways to empower female workers to get more out of salary negotiations, which would hopefully help to close gender pay gaps in the future."

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The paper, "Negotiation and Executive Gender Pay Gaps in Nonprofit Organizations," was accepted for publication in the Review of Accounting Studies.

Online learning doesn't improve student sleep habits, research suggests

Students working/studying from home sleep later but not longer, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University researchers

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

New research from Simon Fraser University suggests that students learning remotely become night owls but do not sleep more despite the time saved commuting, working or attending social events.

The study, led by psychology professor Ralph Mistlberger, Andrea Smit and Myriam Juda, at SFU's Circadian Rhythms and Sleep Lab, compared self-reported data on sleep habits from 80 students enrolled in a 2020 summer session course at SFU with data collected from 450 students enrolled in the same course during previous summer semesters. The study results were recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"There is a widespread belief among sleep researchers that many people, especially young adults, regularly obtain insufficient sleep due to work, school, and social activities," says Mistlberger. "The move toward remote work and school during COVID-19 has provided a novel opportunity to test this belief."

The student participants kept daily sleep diaries over a period of two-to-eight weeks, completed questionnaires and provided written reports. Fitbit sleep tracker data was collected from a subsample of participants.

The team found that students learning remotely in the summer 2020 session went to bed an average of 30 minutes later than pre-pandemic students. They slept less efficiently, less at night and more during the day, but did not sleep more overall despite having no early classes and 44 per cent fewer work days compared to students in previous semesters.

"One very consistent finding is a collective delay of sleep timing - people go to bed and wake up later," says Mistlberger. "Not surprisingly, there is also a marked reduction in natural light exposure, especially early in the day. The lack of change in sleep duration was a bit of a surprise, as it goes against the assumption that young adults would sleep more if they had the time."

Self-described night owls were more likely to report a greater positive impact on their sleep, getting to sleep in, instead of waking up early for that morning class, while morning types were more likely to report a negative response to sleeping later than usual.

Sleep plays an important role in immune functioning and mental health, which is why good sleep habits are crucial.

"My advice for students and anybody working from home is to try to get outside and be active early in the day because the morning light helps stabilize your circadian sleep-wake cycle - this should improve your sleep, and allow you to feel more rested and energized during the day," says Mistlberger.

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Kidney cancer risks higher for Hispanic, Native Americans in Arizona

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA HEALTH SCIENCES

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Recently published research from the University of Arizona Health Sciences shows that advanced-stage kidney cancer is more common in Hispanic Americans and Native Americans than in non-Hispanic whites, and that both Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in Arizona have an increased risk of mortality from the disease.

"We knew from our past research that Hispanic Americans and Native Americans have a heavier burden of kidney cancer than non-Hispanic whites," said Ken Batai, PhD, a Cancer Prevention and Control Program research member at the UArizona Cancer Center and research assistant professor of urology in the College of Medicine - Tucson. "But we also know that around 90% of the Hispanic population in Arizona is Mexican American - either U.S.-born or Mexican-born - and we do not think this subgroup is well-represented in the national data."

With funding from the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Batai led a team of UArizona Cancer Center researchers that examined data from the National Cancer Database and the Arizona Cancer Registry to look for disparities in surgical treatment of kidney cancer. They also investigated the possibility that delayed treatments may result in advanced-stage kidney cancer, which has been associated with high mortality rates in Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.

The paper, "Renal Cell Carcinoma Health Disparities in Stage and Mortality among American Indians/Alaska Natives and Hispanic Americans: Comparison of National Cancer Database and Arizona Cancer Registry Data," was published in the journal Cancers.

The study found that Arizona's Hispanic Americans are about two times more likely than non-Hispanic white people to have advanced-stage kidney cancer and have nearly a two times higher risk of mortality from early-stage kidney cancer. Similarly, Native Americans are about 30% more likely to have advanced-stage kidney cancer and face a 30% increased risk of mortality from early-stage kidney cancer.

These findings suggest that observed disparities in kidney cancer mortality risk cannot be explained by delays in treatment.

The researchers utilized state data to organize Hispanic Americans into various subgroups, including U.S.-born Mexican Americans. They determined this group to have a three times higher risk of mortality compared with non-Hispanic white Americans. National cancer statistics do not break down subgroups within the general Hispanic population, thus risks to U.S.-born Mexican Americans living in Arizona may be understated in national reporting.

Dr. Batai attributes the discrepancy in national versus state data to the data-collection process. The National Cancer Database relies on hospital-based reporting, whereas the state registry is population-based. Many small hospitals and clinics in rural settings may not report to the National Cancer Database, which could explain the misrepresentation of Hispanic Americans in Arizona.

"To this point, there has been no research documenting this disparity in Hispanic Americans," Dr. Batai said. "This can be very useful information to share with primary care providers and urologists who may not yet be aware."

"Carefully documenting these disparities is something that distinguishes us as a comprehensive cancer center," said Joann Sweasy, PhD, Cancer Center director and inaugural holder of the Nancy C. and Craig M. Berge Endowed Chair. "Dr. Batai is embedded in our center not only in prevention, but he is also a part of our genitourinary clinical research team. This research benefits both perspectives, which are critical for us to meet the needs of our patients."

The research could drive further investigation into why Arizona's Hispanic and Native American populations face increased risks from kidney cancer.

"We know these populations also have higher prevalence of diabetes and blood pressure, both of which are risk factors for kidney cancer," Dr. Batai said. "While we continue to explore differences in kidney cancer surgical treatment across these groups, we are investigating if there are biologic bases in kidney cancer disparities."

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Can an AI algorithm mitigate racial economic inequality? Only if more black hosts adopt it

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Machine learning algorithms can leverage vast amounts of consumer data, allowing automation of business decisions such as pricing, product offerings, and promotions. Airbnb, an online marketplace for vacation rentals and other lodging, created an algorithm-based smart-pricing tool that is free to all Airbnb hosts and allows hosts to set their properties' daily price automatically. A new study investigated the impact of Airbnb's algorithm on racial disparities among Airbnb hosts. Adopting the tool narrowed the revenue gap between White and Black hosts considerably, but because far fewer Black hosts used the algorithm, the revenue gap between White and Black hosts actually increased after the tool's introduction.

The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), is forthcoming Marketing Science.

"The disparity in revenues earned by White and Black hosts has been the subject of a lot of negative publicity for Airbnb in the last few years," explains Param Vir Singh, Professor of Business Technologies and Marketing at CMU's Tepper School of Business, who led the study. "Our results show that a smart-pricing algorithm can be effective in mitigating racial disparities, but that effectiveness is limited by the extent to which the tool is adopted."

The pricing algorithm was introduced in November 2015, and the study ran from July 2015 to August 2017. Researchers randomly selected 9,396 Airbnb properties in 324 zip codes, primarily in seven large U.S. cities; 2,118 hosts adopted the algorithm during the study. Researchers looked at each property's average daily revenue by month. Hosts' race/ethnicity (White, Black, or other) was determined from profile photos of host pages.

Prior to the introduction of the algorithm, White hosts earned $12.16 more in daily revenues than Black hosts after controlling for other observed host, property, and neighborhood characteristics. While both Black and White hosts charged similar prices for their properties, demand for rentals hosted by Black hosts was 20% less than that for White hosts. This suggests the presence of racial biases among Airbnb guests against Black hosts, the researchers concluded.

Adopting the algorithm benefited Black hosts in the study more than White hosts, according to the study. This is because it led to a much larger increase in demand for rentals hosted by Black hosts than for rentals hosted by White hosts, largely because demand for rentals hosted by Black hosts was more responsive to price changes than that for rentals hosted by White hosts.

But Black hosts were 41% less likely than White hosts to adopt the algorithm. Thus, while adopting the tool narrowed the revenue gap between White and Black hosts in the study, when researchers applied their findings at the population level, the revenue gap increased.

Even though Black and White hosts faced different demand curves, the price suggested by the algorithm was the same across Black and White hosts. This is because the algorithm pools the data of Black and White hosts to determine the same optimal price for both groups, in effect, ignoring racial differences between hosts. As a result, although the optimal price suggested by the algorithm should lie between the optimal price for Black hosts and the optimal price for White hosts, since fewer Black hosts adopted the algorithm, the suggested optimal price is likely to be closer to the optimal price for White hosts and farther than that for Black hosts.

"Our study has implications for policymakers and managers," says Kannan Srinivasan, Professor of Management, Marketing, and Business Technologies at CMU's Tepper School, who coauthored the study. "For policymakers, our study shows that when racial biases exist in the marketplace, an algorithm that ignores those biases may not succeed in reducing racial disparities.

"Given the much lower rate of adoption of the algorithm by Black hosts than White hosts, managers may want to devise strategies to encourage Black hosts to adopt the algorithm," Shunyuan Zhang, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School and co-author added. "Otherwise, an algorithm that could reduce disparities may end up increasing them."

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Significant progress in lithium-air battery development

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

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IMAGE: STEPHENSON INSTITUTE FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

Research led by the University of Liverpool, in partnership with Johnson Matthey PLC and Loughborough University is making significant progress in the development of stable and practical electrolytes for lithium-oxygen batteries.

The lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) battery (or lithium-air battery), consisting of Li-metal and a porous conductive framework as its electrode's releases energy from the reaction of oxygen from the air and lithium. The technology is in its infancy, but in theory could provide much greater energy storage than the conventional lithium-ion battery.

In a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, Professor Laurence Hardwick from the University of Liverpool's Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy (SIRE) and colleagues meticulously characterised and developed electrolyte formulations that significantly minimises side reactions within the battery to enable improved longer cycle stability.

According to lead author of the paper, Dr Alex Neale who is also with SIRE, the research demonstrates that the reactivity of certain electrolyte components can be switched off by precise control of component ratios.

Dr Neale said: "The ability to precisely formulate the electrolyte using readily-available, low volatility components enabled us to specially tailor an electrolyte for the needs of metal-air battery technology that delivered greatly improved cycle stability and functionality."

"The outcomes from our study really show that by understanding the precise coordination environment of the lithium ion within our electrolytes, we can link this directly to achieving significant gains in electrolyte stability at the Li metal electrode interface and, consequently, enhancements in actual cell performance."

Dr Pooja Goddard, from Loughborough University's Department of Chemistry, said: "It was exciting to see through the use of both calculations and experimental data we were able to identify the key physical parameters that enabled the formulations to become stable against the lithium metal electrode interface."

The designed electrolytes provide new benchmark formulations that will support ongoing investigations within our research groups to understand and develop new, and practically viable, cathode architectures to reduce round-trip inefficiencies and further extend cycle lifetimes.

The collaborative research between the two University research groups in Liverpool and Loughborough and Johnson Matthey PLC was made possible by support from an Innovate UK Grant that enables industry and academia to work together to tackle technology focused research challenges.

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The research has benefited from battery research and characterisation facilities at the Stephenson institute for Renewable Energy, University of Liverpool, the Imaging Centre at Liverpool and the EPSRC National Facility for X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy ("HarwellXPS").

The paper ' Design Parameters for Ionic Liquid - Molecular Solvent Blend Electrolytes to Enable Stable Li Metal Cycling Within Li-O2 Batteries' (doi: 10.1002/adfm.202010627) is published in Advanced Functional Materials.

 

Researchers develop new metal-free, recyclable polypeptide battery that degrades on demand

This could result in battery production moving away from strategic elements like cobalt

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

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IMAGE: GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF METAL-FREE, RECYCLABLE POLYPEPTIDE BATTERY. view more 

CREDIT: TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

The introduction of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries has revolutionized technology as a whole, leading to major advances in consumer goods across nearly all sectors. Battery-powered devices have become ubiquitous across the world. While the availability of technology is generally a good thing, the rapid growth has led directly to several key ethical and environmental issues surrounding the use of Li-ion batteries.

Current Li-ion batteries utilize significant amounts of cobalt, which in several well-documented international cases is mined using child labor in dangerous working environments. Additionally, only a very small percentage of Li-ion batteries are recycled, increasing the demand for cobalt and other strategic elements.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Texas A&M University has made a breakthrough that could lead to battery production moving away from cobalt. In an article published in the May issue of Nature, Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, Axalta Coating Systems Chair and professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, and Dr. Karen Wooley, distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry and holder of the W.T. Doherty-Welch Chair in Chemistry in the College of Science, outline their research into a new battery technology platform that is completely metal free. This new battery technology platform utilizes a polypeptide organic radical construction.

"By moving away from lithium and working with these polypeptides, which are components of proteins, it really takes us into this realm of not only avoiding the need for mining precious metals, but opening opportunities to power wearable or implantable electronic devices and also to easily recycle the new batteries," said Wooley, recently honored as the 2021 SEC Professor of the Year. "They [polypeptide batteries] are degradable, they are recyclable, they are non-toxic and they are safer across the board."

The all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules also solves the problem of recyclability. The components of the new battery platform can be degraded on demand in acidic conditions to generate amino acids, other building blocks and degradation products -- one of the major breakthroughs in this research, according to Lutkenhaus.

"The big problem with lithium-ion batteries right now is that they're not recycled to the degree that we are going to need for the future electrified transportation economy," Lutkenhaus added. "The rate of recycling lithium-ion batteries right now is in the single digits. There is valuable material in the lithium-ion battery, but it's very difficult and energy intensive to recover."

The development of a metal-free, all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules that degrade on demand marks significant progress toward sustainable, recyclable batteries that minimize dependence on strategic metals. As a next step, Wooley and Lutkenhaus have begun working in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Tabor, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, through a 2020 Texas A&M Triads for Transformation (T3) grant that aims to utilize machine learning to optimize the materials and structure of the battery platform.

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The lead authors on the paper are Tan Nguyen, a current postdoctoral associate at the University of Michigan and former doctoral student from the Texas A&M Department of Chemistry, and Alexandra Easley, a doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M.

This work was financially supported by the National Science Foundation, the Welch Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

New, almost non-destructive archaeogenetic sampling method developed

A new method that allows the almost non-destructive extraction of genetic material from archaeological human remains

EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY (ELTE), FACULTY OF SCIENCE

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IMAGE: A NEW METHOD THAT ALLOWS THE ALMOST NON-DESTRUCTIVE EXTRACTION OF GENETIC MATERIAL FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUMAN REMAINS WAS DEVELOPED BY AN INTERNATIONAL TEAM OF RESEARCHERS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: KISS PÁL MUSEUM (EDIT MESTER AND ALBERT GY?RFI)

An Austrian-American research team (University of Vienna, Department Evolutionary Anthropology and Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics), in collaboration of Hungarian experts from Eötvös Loránd University, has developed a new method that allows the almost non-destructive extraction of genetic material from archaeological human remains. The method allows anthropologists, archaeologists and archaeogeneticists to avoid the risk of serious damage to artefacts of significant scientific and heritage value, which can then be fully examined in future research.

Bioarcheological research on human and animal remains from archaeological excavations has become increasingly important in recent decades. Both nationally and internationally, in addition to classical archaeological and anthropological research, a significant number of molecular biological way of examination are included. One of the most important fields is archaeogenetics. The study of ancient human and animal genetic material can significantly help both the analysis of human evolution and the answering of historical questions about the populations of later archaeological periods.

The first archaic DNA (aDNA) research started in the 1980s, but the real methodological breakthroughs came after the turn of the millennium. This was the period when next-generation sequencing methods reached bioarcheological research. Thanks to the large-scale research that began at that time, we now know more than 60% of the DNA of Neanderthals preserved in the nuclei of cells. A new human species was described on the basis of the genetic material extracted from teeth and finger bones found in Siberia, and it was recognised that, contrary to previous ideas, Neanderthal man and modern Homo sapiens interbred with each other, that left significant genetic traces in modern human groups north of the Sahara.

However, these samples for archaeogenetic analyses may involve a high degree of destruction and may therefore be of concern from a heritage conservation perspective, preventing or making it difficult to obtain and carry out the sampling.

An international team of researchers (Ron Pinhasi laboratory at the University of Vienna and David Reich' laboratory at Harvard) has recognised this problem and has recently developed several new sampling methods to minimise the bone damage associated with sampling. Firstly, the methodological basis for drilling into the inner ear from the cranial base was developed and later it was shown that the use of auditory ossicles can significantly reduce the damage in the fining during sampling.

The latest research, published in the journal Genome Research, was carried out by the above-mentioned international team and the researchers of the Department of Anthropology (Tamás Hajdu, Krisztián Kiss, Tamás Szeniczey) and the Institute of Archaeology (Alexandra Anders, Pál Raczky) at Eötvös Loránd University.

„The new method significantly reduces the extent of damage of the findings. It consists of dissolving the DNA content of the root fragment of the tooth, rich in cellular cementum, by immersing it in a special solution. The quality of the sample thus obtained is not as good as that of DNA extracted from the inner ear, but it is of the same quality as that of the genetic material obtained by traditional methods (drilling and pulverisation of the tooth). The main advantage of the method is that the tooth undergoes only to minimal damage, leaving its structure intact not only morphologically but also histologically, while its unchanged chemical composition allows subsequent isotopic tests (strontium or C14) to be carried out. The only noticeable change is the fading or whitening of the root colour" - told Tamas Hajdu, head of the Hungarian research group, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at Eötvös Loránd University.

The significance of the new sampling method, therefore, lies in its minimal destructive effect. If the sampled teeth are left intact, they can be subjected to further morphological, radiological, histological, oral pathological, stable isotope and radiocarbon studies. This may be particularly important in cases where only a few teeth remain have been preserved from a given period and place, which may be tens of thousands of years old, and destructive sampling of these would completely preclude subsequent analysis. In addition to human evolutionary research, the new methodology could also help projects on population history and disease evolution at the Department of Anthropology and the Institute of Archaeology, at Eötvös Loránd University by preserving the integrity of the findings. The new sampling method, developed in international cooperation, offers a new perspective for the preservation of artefacts for national and international museum institutions, while at the same time allowing for the almost non-destructive conduct of the latest archaeogenetic analyses.

ENDING:

The international team of researchers has developed a new sampling method and tested its effectiveness on human material from several archaeological sites in Hungary and abroad. The Hungarian archaeological material can be found in the collections of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, the Herman Ottó Museum, the Déri Museum and the Damjanich János Museum. The new method was initiated by Ron Pinhasi' research group at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of Vienna and the methodological background was worked out, and the bone and tooth samples were analysed, and the Austrian team and David Reich' Laboratory at the Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School. The anthropological background of the findings was provided by the Department of Anthropology at Eötvös Loránd University and Department of Anthropology at the Hungarian Natural History Museum and the Institute of Archaeology, ELKH-BTK (Tamás Hajdu, Tamás Szeniczey, Krisztián Kiss, Ildikó Pap, Kitti Köhler). The basic archaeological background data of the

Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100

LANL scientists contribute to comprehensive sea-level rise projections

DOE/LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

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IMAGE: THE FRONT OF GETZ ICE SHELF, ANTARCTICA view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO BY JEREMY HARBECK, NASA ICEBRIDGE).

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 5, 2021-- A massive collaborative research project covered in the journal Nature this week offers projections to the year 2100 of future sea-level rise from all sources of land ice, offering the most complete projections created to date.

"This work synthesizes improvements over the last decade in climate models, ice sheet and glacier models, and estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions," said Stephen Price, one of the Los Alamos scientists on the project. "More than 85 researchers from various disciplines, including our team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, produced sea-level rise projections based on the most recent computer models developed within the scientific community and updated scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions," said Price.

The estimates show that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures would cut projected 21st century sea-level rise from land ice in half, relative to currently pledged emissions reductions. For example, the paper notes that, when looking at all land ice sources, the median projection of cumulative rise in sea level by the year 2100 decreases from approximately 25 cm to approximately 13 cm when emissions are limited.

The term "land ice" includes mountain glaciers such as those in Alaska, Europe, high-mountain Asia, etc.; ice caps including those of Iceland and the Canadian Arctic; and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Continental Wild Card

Interestingly, Price points out, Antarctica continues to be the wild card. "Future changes to Antarctica remain highly uncertain," he said. "Because of this, our high-end estimates for sea-level rise from land ice are more than twice as large as the 'most likely' estimate." This is largely due to substantial uncertainty in how strongly warm ocean waters erode floating parts of the ice sheet from beneath.

Apart from that uncertainty, the bulk of the Antarctic sea-level rise projections do not show a strong sensitivity to different emissions scenarios, but a small number of projections result in an up to five-fold increase in sea-level contribution, Price said. Indeed, improving DOE's ability to accurately simulate Southern Hemisphere climate and Antarctic ice sheet evolution has been a focus of Los Alamos efforts for more than a decade.

CAPTION

Present day Antarctic ice flow as simulated by the MALI ice sheet model (jointly developed by Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, and simulation image courtesy of John Patchett, LANL). Interior grey-to-white areas indicate slow flowing regions while warmer colored areas indicate faster flowing regions (dark red ~10 meters/day). Large orange-to-red regions near the ice sheet margins are floating ice shelves. Fine lines indicate the path of ice flow from the interior, through outlet glaciers and ice streams, and into fringing ice shelves.

CREDIT

Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Los Alamos role:

Los Alamos and the U.S. Department of Energy contributed at many stages of the newly published work, including:

• evaluation and selection of the most appropriate climate models to use for exploring future changes to the Antarctic region;
• the development of experimental protocols and the best methods for using climate model output to drive ice sheet models;
• conducting ice sheet model simulations to project the future sea-level rise contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Since 2013, Los Alamos has been the lead institution on the Cryosphere Science Campaign within DOE's Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project, which focuses on improving projections of Antarctic ice sheet evolution and sea level rise. Likewise, since 2010, Los Alamos has been the lead DOE institution on three DOE Office of Science funded projects around the development of "next generation" ice sheet models including ISICLES (2010-2012), PISCEES (2012-2017), and ProSPect (2017-2022). Los Alamos also currently leads or contributes to a number of ongoing efforts towards performing similar "end-to-end" analyses (climate change through future sea-level rise impacts) within a consistent, coupled Earth system modeling framework.

For this paper, Los Alamos's simulations were done using a combination of the Grizzly and Badger supercomputers at the Lab, and NERSC (Cori-KNL) high-performance computing resources. Additional Los Alamos contributors to this work include Xylar Asay-Davis, Alice Barthel, Matthew Hoffman, and Tong Zhang.

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The paper: "Projected land ice contributions to 21st century sea level rise" (in press), Nature. Full author list here, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03302-y

The funding: Funding was provided by the DOE Office of Science, from the offices of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR).

About Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

LAUR: LA-UR-21-22260

 

Ice core chemistry study expands insight into sea ice variability in Southern Hemisphere

UNIVERSITY OF MAINE

Research News

 

Sea ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere is extremely variable, from summer to winter and from millennium to millennium, according to a University of Maine-led study. Overall, sea ice has been on the rise for about 10,000 years, but with some exceptions to this trend.

Dominic Winski, a research assistant professor at the UMaine Climate Change Institute, spearheaded a project that uncovered new information about millennia of sea ice variability, particularly across seasons, in the Southern Hemisphere by examining the chemistry of a 54,000-year-old South Pole ice core.

The Southern Ocean experiences the largest seasonal difference in sea ice cover in the world, with Antarctica surrounded by 18.5 million-square-kilometers of sea ice in the winter and only 3.1 million-square-kilometers of it in the summer. According to researchers, this seasonal disparity in sea ice has a significant influence on regional and global climate, yet scientists for years knew relatively little about the extent of sea ice variation in the Southern Hemisphere before 1979.

When a team of scientists recently retrieved the deepest and oldest ice core from the South Pole and analyzed it, Winski saw an opportunity to learn more about seasonal and overall changes in sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere throughout the Holocene -- the last 11,400 years. The CCI research assistant professor and his colleagues decided to examine the chemistry of the ice core, particularly its sea salt concentrations, to learn more about sea ice variability in the region.

Karl Kreutz, a UMaine professor of Earth and climate sciences, and researchers from Dartmouth College, South Dakota State University, the University of Washington and the University of Colorado Boulder participated in the project. Geophysical Research Letters published the paper detailing their findings.

The team capitalized on the massive seasonal variations in Southern Ocean climate in order to create a sea ice record showing distinct summer and winter variability. They combined this information with a state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry model to link the ice core measurements with sea ice variability. The result is a detailed record of Southern Ocean sea ice revealing major fluctuations, especially in wintertime sea ice.

Salt levels in the core, which are sensitive to sea ice changes, increased in the past 11,400 years, particularly in the past 8,000-10,000 years, correlating with a growth in ice cover. Winter sea salt concentrations, which originated primarily from salty snow atop sea ice, specifically increased over millennia, demonstrating an overall boost in wintertime sea ice. This pattern is seen elsewhere in Antarctica, which led the research team to hypothesize an Antarctic-wide increase in sea ice during this period.

"One of the most important and challenging goals in our field is to produce detailed reconstructions of sea ice variability. " Winski says. "The exceptional detail of the South Pole Ice Core combined with results from our modeling team gives us a powerful dataset for understanding Antarctic sea ice."

Winski and Kreutz helped retrieve the 54,000-year-old ice core they used for their recent study during two expeditions between 2014 and 2016.

The project, called SPICEcore (South Pole Ice Core), involved scientists from 18 institutions all aiming to create an archive of climate conditions in East Antarctica during the past 54,000 years, including changes in atmospheric chemistry, climate and biogeochemistry.

"The South Pole Ice Core (SPICEcore) is the most precisely dated climate record in this region of Antarctica. We put in a tremendous amount of effort to collect individual chemistry samples for every centimeter of ice," Winski says. "In total, we had to analyze the chemistry of over 100,000 vials of melted ice, but the effort paid off since now we have the rare opportunity to investigate seasonal changes in the Antarctic environment for over 10,000 years."

While the Southern Hemisphere experienced an overall increase in ice cover throughout the Holocene, researchers identified an abrupt drop in sea salt concentrations in the ice core that date back to between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. According to the team, the drop in salt levels indicates a decrease in ice cover specific to the South Atlantic at that time, a finding corroborated by earlier research.

Ice cover in the North Atlantic, conversely, was more extensive during that period, which researchers claim indicates "a linked and opposing sea ice signal in the North and South Atlantic most likely due to changing ocean circulation." This pattern of opposing North and South Atlantic climate is well-known during abrupt climate change events of colder times deep in the past. The findings of this study may be a hint that the same processes could still be relevant under modern conditions.

Accounting for seasonal variation when studying changes in sea ice across tens of thousands of years helps scientists not only to thoroughly describe past Antarctic climate, but also to understand the mechanisms and processes driving climate change.

"Huge changes in sea ice can occur very rapidly," Winski says, "leading to ramifications for climate worldwide. We still don't entirely understand the forces influencing sea ice variability, which is why detailed climate information from the past is absolutely critical."

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Countries denied access to medicines and vaccines they help develop

YALE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

New Haven, Conn. -- A Yale-led study reveals that new medicines and vaccines approved for use in the United States are often unavailable in countries that hosted their clinical trials, suggesting that the benefits of drug research are not being shared equitably among populations that participate in testing.

The study, published May 5 in JAMA Network Open, covers 34 novel drugs sponsored by large pharmaceutical companies that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved between 2012 and 2014. Approvals were made on the basis of a total of 898 trials that were held in the United States and 70 other countries worldwide.

By analyzing the 563 trials for which location data was available, the researchers found that, five years after approval in the United States, only 15% of the drugs (5 of 34) were approved in every country that hosted trials. Among the 70 countries that contributed research participants, 7% (five countries) received market access to the drugs they helped test within a year of FDA approval and 31% (22 countries) did so within five years. Approvals happened faster in high-income countries, such as Germany and Canada, while access was lowest in Africa, where none of the drugs were available anywhere except in South Africa, which had access to just 24% of the drugs after five years.

"We discovered substantial gaps in access to new medications that raise concerns about the equitable distribution of research benefits," said Jennifer Miller, assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine, founder of Bioethics International -- a nonprofit advocate for patient-centered medical innovation -- and the study's lead author. "Ensuring market access to medicines for the countries helping to develop them can help effectuate a bedrock principle of research ethics: that the benefits and burdens of research should be shared equitably among the people affected by it."

Clinical research for medicines and vaccines seeking FDA approval is largely conducted outside the United States, and increasingly in lower-income countries. While FDA-approval is necessary for drugs to become available in the United States, it does not ensure market access in other countries. Research sponsors, such as pharmaceutical companies, must submit marketing approval applications to make the medicines and vaccines accessible in countries that hosted trials. While marketing access does not guarantee a patient can afford a medicine or vaccine, or that there is a reasonably sufficient supply of a pharmaceutical product, it is a critical precondition for access to new drugs, the researchers explained.

The 34 drugs were grouped into six treatment areas: infectious disease; cardiovascular disease and diabetes; autoimmune, musculoskeletal, and dermatology; neurology; and psychiatry. The study found that only one of the 34 medications was approved for marketing in all the countries where it was tested a year after FDA approval.

"We found that the typical drug approved by the FDA was tested in 25 different countries," said Dr. Cary Gross, professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine and a co-author of the paper. "If the citizens of those countries never gain access to the new drug, then one has to ask why are they participating in the research in the first place? Just to see if it's safe for use in the United States and other wealthy countries?"

Even five years after FDA approval, only 5 of 34 of the drugs, or 15%, were approved in all the countries, according to the study.

"Drug research across international boundaries provides U.S. patients access to new medications and vaccines, and could, in theory, maximize benefits for all: The U.S. contributes capital that other countries lack, while those countries contribute human volunteers and a workforce necessary to complete clinical trials expeditiously," said Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health and Policy Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and a co-author of the study. "For these partnerships to be truly equitable, then the host countries must benefit from the research by quickly gaining access to the new medications after FDA approval."

To make the process more equitable, the researchers suggest that, as a condition of running clinical trials, governments of host countries require that pharmaceutical companies commit to submitting a marketing approval application within a designated timeframe after FDA approval. They recommend that companies should consider adopting policies through which they will not test drugs in countries where they do not intend to sell the tested product. The researchers also call for transparent tracking, auditing, and reporting on product registrations in countries that host trials to assist in expanding access to new medicines and vaccines globally.

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The study was funded through a grant from Arnold Ventures.