ACCELERATIONISM

'Time for Incrementalism Is Over,' Says Climate Movement as Extreme Weather Hits US

"Buildings are collapsing into the sea. Infrastructure is melting. Hundreds are dying from extreme heat. Millions are without power. The ocean is literally on fire. The climate crisis is here."


Trees burning as the Beckwourth Complex Fire approaches Highway 395 in California. (Photo: Ty ONeil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JESSICA CORBETT

July 12, 2021

With hundreds of thousands of acres burning across swaths of the U.S. West that have already endured record-breaking heat this summer—and mounting concerns about the GOP and centrist Democrats watering down federal infrastructure legislation—the climate movement on Monday reiterated demands for ambitious government action and investment

Progressives that called President Joe Biden's initial physical and human infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs and Families Plans, inadequate have ramped up their criticism in the wake of a bipartisan deal Democrats want to pass alongside a reconciliation bill, a flooded New York City subway system, a collapsed condo in Florida, a pipeline-related fire in the Gulf of Mexico, and a firenado in California.

"Buildings are collapsing into the sea. Infrastructure is melting. Hundreds are dying from extreme heat. Millions are without power. The ocean is literally on fire. The climate crisis is here," said Ellen Sciales, communications director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, in a statement Monday.

"And yet, some Democratic politicians like Joe Biden are still pushing for a compromise on climate under the guise of 'bipartisanship'—though it's actually just doing the bidding of Exxon lobbyists," she added, pointing to an exposé that provided insight on the company's lobbying efforts targeting key senators who are working on the infrastructure package.

Sciales highlighted that the movement's demands aren't just focused on infrastructure legislation; activists also want the president to use his executive power to deliver on his broad campaign promises to combat the climate emergency.

"Communities in every corner of this country, especially low-income communities and communities of color, are currently bracing for or suffering from the climate crisis. It is clear we need bold action now," she said. "And despite these deadly climate disasters and videos of the Gulf of Mexico literally on fire after a pipeline leak, Biden is still refusing to stop Line 3, which will further endanger our air, our water and lock us into more fossil fuel development."

The Sunrise leader declared that "this 'unprecedented' weather must serve as a wake-up call for our politicians. The time for incrementalism is over. We need to call the 'bipartisan' infrastructure plan what it is: the ExxonMobil Plan."

"Politicians must stop entertaining a weak, fossil fuel-backed plan," Sciales said, "and instead seize on this historic opportunity to avert the climate crisis by investing in a mass mobilization of our society and economy, rebuilding the infrastructure we lost to the crisis and protecting the lives of millions of Americans."

"If Biden and Democrats do not pass and sign trillions of dollars in climate investments including a massive Civilian Climate Corps through a Democratic reconciliation bill," she warned, "it will be a death sentence for our generation."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Monday on DemocracyNow! that progressive lawmakers are "united" in opposing "bipartisan legislation without a reconciliation bill, and one that takes bold and large action on climate" by cutting down planet-heating emissions, helping frontline communities, and creating jobs.

Ocasio-Cortez is leading the congressional fight for a Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) with fellow Green New Deal champion Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—an effort Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) notably endorsed last week, pledging to work with Sunrise activists.

The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Japayal (D-Wash.), has also affirmed her position in recent days, tweeting that "it's time to go big, bold, and fast on an infrastructure package that not only fixes our roads, bridges, and transit systems—but also invests in the care economy, climate action, and working families."

Jayapal, whose state is among those suffering from wildfires and record heat, pointed out Monday that the triple-digit temperatures in another western state—California—endanger a significant portion of the United States' food supply, and repeated her call for climate action.

Axios reported Monday that "wildfires were burning across more than 768,000 acres of land in 12 western U.S. states, and over 500,000 acres in Canada on Sunday amid another searing heatwave."

The Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon—which nearly doubled in size from Saturday to Sunday—has now been burning for six days straight, scorching over 150,000 acres.

According to the New York Times:

Charles Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon, said the fire was especially worrying because Oregon's fire season had only just begun.

"There's concern because of how early this is starting, and how far it has grown within a relatively short amount of time," he said.

The Oregon fire has put pressure on the power grid that connects to neighboring California, leading Golden State officials to urge residents and businesses to conserve electricity on Monday.

In the Mojave Desert, California's Death Valley recorded temperatures of a potentially record-setting 130°F on Friday and 129.4°F degrees on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service's preliminary figures.

Experts continue to emphasize humanity's impact on climate, and how that affects wildfires.

"The exceptional fire weather this year and in recent years does not represent random bad luck," Jacob Bendix, a Syracuse University professor who specializes in wildfire distribution, told the Los Angeles Times. "It is among the results of our adding carbon to the atmosphere—results that were predictable, and indeed that have been predicted for decades."

Craig Clements, a professor of meteorology and director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State, echoed that message.

"Climate change is real, it's bad, and it's really affecting our fire weather and our fire danger," he told the newspaper. "Its fingerprints are all over this stuff."

 

The hidden culprit killing lithium-metal batteries from the inside

First-of-their-kind snapshots reveal byproduct crippling powerful, experimental cells

DOE/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

Research News

IMAGE: IN THIS NEW, FALSE-COLOR IMAGE OF A LITHIUM-METAL TEST BATTERY PRODUCED BY SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES, HIGH-RATE CHARGING AND RECHARGING RED LITHIUM METAL GREATLY DISTORTS THE GREEN SEPARATOR, CREATING TAN REACTION... view more 

CREDIT: KATIE JUNGJOHANN, SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- For decades, scientists have tried to make reliable lithium-metal batteries. These high-performance storage cells hold 50% more energy than their prolific, lithium-ion cousins, but higher failure rates and safety problems like fires and explosions have crippled commercialization efforts. Researchers have hypothesized why the devices fail, but direct evidence has been sparse.

Now, the first nanoscale images ever taken inside intact, lithium-metal coin batteries (also called button cells or watch batteries) challenge prevailing theories and could help make future high-performance batteries, such as for electric vehicles, safer, more powerful and longer lasting.

"We're learning that we should be using separator materials tuned for lithium metal," said battery scientist Katie Harrison, who leads Sandia National Laboratories' team for improving the performance of lithium-metal batteries.

Sandia scientists, in collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the University of Oregon and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published the images recently in ACS Energy Letters. The research was funded by Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development program and the Department of Energy.

Internal byproduct builds up, kills batteries

The team repeatedly charged and discharged lithium coin cells with the same high-intensity electric current that electric vehicles need to charge. Some cells went through a few cycles, while others went through more than a hundred cycles. Then, the cells were shipped to Thermo Fisher Scientific in Hillsboro, Oregon, for analysis.

When the team reviewed images of the batteries' insides, they expected to find needle-shaped deposits of lithium spanning the battery. Most battery researchers think that a lithium spike forms after repetitive cycling and that it punches through a plastic separator between the anode and the cathode, forming a bridge that causes a short. But lithium is a soft metal, so scientists have not understood how it could get through the separator.

Harrison's team found a surprising second culprit: a hard buildup formed as a byproduct of the battery's internal chemical reactions. Every time the battery recharged, the byproduct, called solid electrolyte interphase, grew. Capping the lithium, it tore holes in the separator, creating openings for metal deposits to spread and form a short. Together, the lithium deposits and the byproduct were much more destructive than previously believed, acting less like a needle and more like a snowplow.

"The separator is completely shredded," Harrison said, adding that this mechanism has only been observed under fast charging rates needed for electric vehicle technologies, but not slower charging rates.

As Sandia scientists think about how to modify separator materials, Harrison says that further research also will be needed to reduce the formation of byproducts.

Scientists pair lasers with cryogenics to take 'cool' images

Determining cause-of-death for a coin battery is surprisingly difficult. The trouble comes from its stainless-steel casing. The metal shell limits what diagnostics, like X-rays, can see from the outside, while removing parts of the cell for analysis rips apart the battery's layers and distorts whatever evidence might be inside.

"We have different tools that can study different components of a battery, but really we haven't had a tool that can resolve everything in one image," said Katie Jungjohann, a Sandia nanoscale imaging scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. The center is a user facility jointly operated by Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

She and her collaborators used a microscope that has a laser to mill through a battery's outer casing. They paired it with a sample holder that keeps the cell's liquid electrolyte frozen at temperatures between minus 148 and minus 184 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 100 and minus 120 degrees Celsius, respectively). The laser creates an opening just large enough for a narrow electron beam to enter and bounce back onto a detector, delivering a high-resolution image of the battery's internal cross section with enough detail to distinguish the different materials.

The original demonstration instrument, which was the only such tool in the United States at the time, was built and still resides at a Thermo Fisher Scientific laboratory in Oregon. An updated duplicate now resides at Sandia. The tool will be used broadly across Sandia to help solve many materials and failure-analysis problems.

"This is what battery researchers have always wanted to see," Jungjohann said.

CAPTION

Sandia National Laboratories scientists Katie Harrison, left, and Katie Jungjohann have pioneered a new way to look inside batteries to learn how and why they fail.

CREDIT

Bret Latter, Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.

 

Detecting wildlife illness and death with new early alert system

Network of wildlife rehabilitation organizations helps track emerging threats

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

Research News

IMAGE: WILDLIFE REHABILITATION SPECIALISTS FROM UC DAVIS OILED WILDLIFE CARE NETWORK AND INTERNATIONAL BIRD RESCUE TREAT A COMMON MURRE AT THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY OILED WILDLIFE CARE AND EDUCATION CENTER IN... view more 

CREDIT: GREGORY URQUIAGA/UC DAVIS

From domoic acid poisoning in seabirds to canine distemper in raccoons, wildlife face a variety of threats and illnesses. Some of those same diseases make their way to humans and domestic animals in our increasingly shared environment.

A new early detection surveillance system for wildlife helps identify unusual patterns of illness and death in near real-time by tapping into data from wildlife rehabilitation organizations across California. This system has the potential to expand nationally and globally. It was created by scientists at the University of California Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine with partners at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the nonprofit Wild Neighbors Database Project.

The Wildlife Morbidity and Mortality Event Alert System is described in a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"Human-induced disturbances are contributing to a wide range of threats -- habitat loss, invasive species introductions, pollution, disease, wildfires," said co-lead author Terra Kelly, a wildlife epidemiologist at the UC Davis One Health Institute and its Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center within the School of Veterinary Medicine. "It speaks to the need for a system like this where we can better understand the threats facing wildlife populations and respond to them in a timely way so there's less harm to wildlife."

FRONT-LINE RESPONDERS FOR WILDLIFE

Wildlife rehabilitation workers are the front-line responders of the free-ranging animal world. They are the first to receive and tend to sick and injured wild animals. Their clinical reports carry a wealth of information that, when shared, can indicate broader patterns.

Until recently, such clinical reports were stored primarily on paper or isolated computer files. In 2012, Wild Neighbors Database Project co-founders Devin Dombrowski and Rachel Avilla created the Wildlife Rehabilitation Medical Database, or WRMD, a free online tool now used by more than 950 rehabilitation organizations across 48 states and 19 countries to monitor patient care.

Dombrowski and Avilla brought the tool to CDFW, which connected with long-standing partners at UC Davis to pilot an alert system using the database as its foundation.

"I'm thrilled that WRMD is not only useful for thousands of wildlife rehabilitators but that the data collected by them is used for morbidity and mortality monitoring," co-author Dombrowski said. "To witness the WMME Alert System identifying data anomalies and alerting investigators is incredible."

The CDFW is using the system to help identify and prioritize wildlife needs and conservation efforts.

"The near real-time information this system provides has allowed us to quickly follow up with diagnostic testing to identify the problem," said Krysta Rogers, senior environmental scientist at the CDFW's Wildlife Health Laboratory. "This system also has been instrumental in determining the geographic range and severity of the threat."

CAPTION

Figure 1 from the study indicates locations of cases (small blue dots) in California presenting to wildlife rehabilitation organizations (bigger blue dots) participating in the Wildlife Mortality and Mortality Event Alert System from 2013-2018. Red areas indicate a high kernel density of cases.

CREDIT

UC Davis/Proceedings from the Royal Society B)

HOW IT WORKS

To test the system, the scientists analyzed 220,000 case records collected between early 2013 to late 2018 to establish thresholds for triggering alerts. The dataset included records from 453 different species, from the common to the rare.

The authors emphasize the alert system is pre-diagnostic. It alerts agencies to unusual patterns that may warrant further investigation to determine specific health threats.

The system detected several key events, including large admissions of:

• Marine birds along the central and southern California coast in late spring 2016. Post-mortem examinations confirmed they were starving.
• Marine birds in April 2017. Domoic acid toxicity was later confirmed as the cause of death.
• Invasive Eurasian collared doves in 2016 with encephalitis and kidney disease. Investigations revealed pigeon paramyxovirus-1 as the cause of the event. This was the first detection of the virus emerging in Eurasian collared doves in this region of California.
• Rock pigeons in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2017 with an emerging parasite.
• Finches in 2016 and 2017 with seasonal conjunctivitis due to infection with Mycoplasma bacteria.

HUMAN CONNECTIONS

Kelly notes that being able to monitor and rapidly detect such events is important for all species, humans included. For example, domoic acid intoxication is caused by harmful algal blooms, which are increasing in coastal and freshwater systems and threaten both wildlife and human health. Another example is West Nile virus, where bird deaths can serve as a sensitive indicator for risk to domestic animals and people.

The alert system is a complementary, inexpensive and efficient tool to add to state wildlife agencies' toolbox of surveillance efforts. It combines machine-learning algorithms, natural language processing, and statistical methods used for classifying cases and establishing thresholds for alerts with the ecology and distribution of wildlife within California, said co-leading author Pranav Pandit, a researcher in the UC Davis One Health Institute and its EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics.

"The wildlife rehabilitation organizations' data is making such valuable contributions," Pandit said. "That's all coming together in this highly adaptable surveillance system."

###

Additional partners and co-authors on the study include Christine Kreuder Johnson and Michael Ziccardi of UC Davis; Nicole Carion, Stella McMillin, and Deana L. Clifford of the CDFW Wildlife Health Laboratory; Anthony Riberi of web development company Y3TI; and Erica Donnelly-Greenan of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the BeachCOMBERS Program.

The study was funded by a State Wildlife Grant from CDFW.

$HOCK THERAPY

Electroconvulsive therapy linked to longer hospital stays, increased costs

PENN STATE

Research News

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Electroconvulsive therapy, which may be effective at lowering long-term risks of suicide and death among patients with certain mood disorders, may result in longer hospital stays and increased health care costs, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. They said delivering the therapy in outpatient settings may make the treatment more cost-effective.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) -- which involves passing small electric currents through the brain to trigger brief seizures while a patient is under anesthesia -- is seldom utilized in the U.S. due to high costs, low insurance coverage, lack of medical training and long-term side effects. The researchers conducted a study, which published June 5 in Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, examining privately insured adults hospitalized for major depression or bipolar disorder. They found that those who received ECT were hospitalized twice as long and had more than double the total health care costs compared to patients receiving standard care.

"Although ECT is an effective therapy for treatment-resistant depression, its high cost is a deterrent," said author Edeanya Agbese, research project manager in the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Center for Applied Studies in Health Economics. "If this therapy were delivered in an outpatient setting, it's possible that the potential of reduced cost burdens to patients and insurers could increase utilization of ECT in the U.S."

The investigators used a private insurance database to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of ECT compared to standard care. They examined several factors including patient characteristics, length of hospitalization and treatments received. Analyzing the associated costs before, during and after hospitalization, the researchers were able to derive patients' total health care costs during the three periods.

The findings revealed that depending on the number of treatments, those receiving ECT were hospitalized four to 29 days longer and incurred an additional $5,700 to $52,700 more than patients who did not receive this treatment. Furthermore, patients who received ECT continued to have higher health care costs even after hospitalization.

According to the researchers, it may be beneficial and more cost-effective for patients if ECT treatments could be offered in outpatient settings when possible depending on illness severity. Because this study focused on privately insured individuals, it did not explore the financial implications and out-of-pocket expenses for ECT patients without health care insurance or those on Medicare and Medicaid.

Douglas Leslie and Djibril Ba both from the Center for Applied Studies in Health Economics and Penn State College of Medicine; Robert Rosenheck from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine also contributed to this research. The researchers declare no conflicts of interest or specific funding for this research.

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Trust me, I'm a chatbot

Göttingen University researchers investigate effect of non-human conversation partners in customer services

UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN

Research News

IMAGE: IN THIS RESEARCH STUDY, THE TEST SUBJECTS CHATTED WITH A CHATBOT - BUT ONLY HALF OF THEM KNEW THAT IT WAS A NON-HUMAN CONVERSATION PARTNER. view more 

CREDIT: MOZAFARI

More and more companies are using chatbots in customer services. Due to advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, chatbots are often indistinguishable from humans when it comes to communication. But should companies let their customers know that they are communicating with machines and not with humans? Researchers at the University of Göttingen investigated. Their research found that consumers tend to react negatively when they learn that the person they are talking to is, in fact, a chatbot. However, if the chatbot makes mistakes and cannot solve a customer's problem, the disclosure triggers a positive reaction. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Service Management.

Previous studies have shown that consumers have a negative reaction when they learn that they are communicating with chatbots - it seems that consumers are inherently averse to the technology. In two experimental studies, the Göttingen University team investigated whether this is always the case. Each study had 200 participants, each of whom was put into the scenario where they had to contact their energy provider via online chat to update their address on their electricity contract following a move. In the chat, they encountered a chatbot - but only half of them were informed that they were chatting online with a non-human contact. The first study investigated the impact of making this disclosure depending on how important the customer perceives the resolution of their service query to be. In a second study, the team investigated the impact of making this disclosure depending on whether the chatbot was able to resolve the customer's query or not. To investigate the effects, the team used statistical analyses such as covariance and mediation analysis.

The result: most noticeably, if service issues are perceived as particularly important or critical, there is a negative reaction when it is revealed that the conversation partner is a chatbot. This scenario weakens customer trust. Interestingly, however, the results also show that disclosing that the contact was a chatbot leads to positive customer reactions in cases where the chatbot cannot resolve the customer's issue. "If their issue isn't resolved, disclosing that they were talking with a chatbot, makes it easier for the consumer to understand the root cause of the error," says first author Nika Mozafari from the University of Göttingen. "A chatbot is more likely to be forgiven for making a mistake than a human." In this scenario, customer loyalty can even improve.

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Original publication: Mozafari, Nika, Weiger, Welf H. and Hammerschmidt, Maik (2021), "Trust me, I'm a bot - repercussions of chatbot disclosure in different service frontline settings", Journal of Service Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-10-2020-0380

 

No more cone? Psychology researchers offer better tool for visualizing hurricane danger

Improving upon the 'cone of uncertainty'

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: A STILL IMAGE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ZOOMIES. view more 

CREDIT: JESSICA WITT/COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

When a hurricane threatens to make landfall, forecasters offer a barrage of informational tools to communicate the risk of it coming through coastal and inland communities, so residents can prepare for its impact. Chief among these tools is the "cone of uncertainty" - a visual depiction of the storm's potential path.

But is the cone doing its job? Studies show that people often misinterpret this popular weather graphic. They don't understand the information it's conveying: the likely path of a storm, and its likelihood to deviate from that path based on historical data. The graphic is cone-shaped because the farther we try to look into the future, the more uncertain the forecast. But because the cone draws a line around a specific area, many people assume that locations outside the cone will not be affected by the storm.

Researchers in Colorado State University's Department of Psychology are working on an easily understood, science-backed way to visually represent hurricane danger to the general public. They contend that the cone of uncertainty creates a false sense of security for people who live outside the boundary of the cone and that there are better ways to signal likely impacts.

The research team includes psychology professors Jessica Witt, who studies the human visual system, and Benjamin Clegg, who studies human factors in the design of new technologies. Together, they created experiments to test whether hurricane projections could be better understood by average viewers through dynamic graphics the researchers have christened "zoomies." Their results are detailed in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

Summarizing information

According to Witt, the human visual system excels at something called ensemble perception. When your eyes see a group of objects, your brain quickly extracts a summary of those objects. Looking at a patch of grass, your brain makes a snap judgement about its average greenness. When you look at a tree, your brain automatically estimates the average size of the leaves.

The cone of uncertainty is what researchers call a summary statistic. The average, projected track of the hurricane goes up the middle, and that track is surrounded by varying degrees of uncertainty.

When the cone gets bigger, people think that means the storm will be getting worse or increasing in severity. But the cone's size is only communicating increasing uncertainty around the forecast. The cone also lends itself to what researchers call a containment heuristic.

"People like categories, and to be able to put things in these binary buckets - [at] risk, not at risk," Witt said. "The cone basically encourages that. It has this well-defined boundary, and people treat things within a boundary as qualitatively different than what's outside the boundary."

Clegg points to Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005. "It's a good example of a storm that shifted its path just before landfall, heading outside the previously forecast cone of uncertainty," Clegg said. People who lived outside earlier forecast cone boundaries might have assumed they weren't at great risk, he said.

The researchers wondered if instead of the summary statistic of the cone, a better graphic would take advantage of what the visual system is already good at - synthesizing and summarizing. "Rather than visualize the summary, let's give them raw data, and let the visual system do the summary instead," Witt said.

'Zoomies'

Their new and improved graphic is more like a track ensemble, or a spaghetti plot. But track ensembles also have their issues. If a town is located on a track, then people perceive it to be at higher risk than one located off a track, even if the latter one is located closer to the storm's center.

So Witt and Clegg came up with the idea of "zoomies," which are sets of dots that each represent a different projected hurricane path and move accordingly. "The idea is that by getting rid of the defined boundary, we do not have this yes-or-no binary risk distinction, but rather a more gradual, more probabilistic understanding of risk," Witt said.

View an example gif of zoomies: https://col.st/TbdQ1

Lots of zoomies following paths close to the most likely path convey the higher risk there. But even a few zoomies showing more extreme deviations illustrate that there is still some risk for those areas, the researchers said.

Their hypothesis was borne out in a series of experiments with CSU students who, the researchers noted in their paper, are typically not very experienced with hurricanes. In the experiment, they tasked participants with deciding whether to evacuate a town on a map, based on seeing either a traditional cone of uncertainty or the experimental zoomies.

The cone of uncertainty had a distinct containment effect: Study participants chose to evacuate the town located within the cone at high rates, and the town beyond the cone at low rates. The cutoff was sharp and happened over a very short geographical distance - defined by the boundary of the forecast cone.

When the participants assessed hurricane risk using the zoomies, however, researchers saw a gradual decrease in evacuation rates. As the town got further from the center of the projected path, evacuation rates decreased gradually - more in line with what should be done in real life.

"This showed that the participants understood there is risk beyond where the cone ends," Witt said. "There is risk in these peripheral areas."

The researchers repeated the experiments with university students in Florida - who are notably more experienced with actual hurricanes - with collaborators Amelia Warden, a CSU graduate student, and Lisa Blalock, a psychology faculty member at University of West Florida. The results were strikingly similar to the study conducted in Fort Collins. This parity indicates that the visual impression from the cone of uncertainty is so strong that it overcomes even prior knowledge of how hurricane forecasts work.

"It's hard to resist that visual impression," Witt said.

The experimental results with the Florida students are accepted as a conference paper at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting in October, where Witt and Clegg will present their findings.

The researchers think their findings could not only help decisionmakers and the public better prepare for hurricane landfalls, but also help improve trust in forecasting.

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Floating into summer with more buoyant, liquid-proof life jackets, swimsuits (video)

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

NEWS RELEASE 14-JUL-2021

Research News

 

IMAGE: A NEW ONE-STEP METHOD CREATES A LIQUID-PROOF, MORE BUOYANT COTTON FABRIC FOR LIFE JACKETS. view more 

CREDIT: AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Summertime is here, and that often means long, lazy days at the beach, water skiing and swimming. Life jackets and swimsuits are essential gear for these activities, but if not dried thoroughly, they can develop a gross, musty smell. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have developed a one-step method to create a buoyant cotton fabric for these applications that is also oil- and water-repellant. Watch a video of the fabric here.

Waterproof and oil-proof fabrics are in high demand for recreational water activities because of their low drag and self-cleaning properties. And while cotton is a popular fabric, it's hydrophilic, so most liquids and dirt can easily mess it up. To improve cotton's impermeability, previous researchers developed superamphiphobic coatings that were extremely water- and oil-repellant. But because they required multiple time-consuming steps to apply, these coatings were impractical for large-scale manufacturing. Others incorporated nanoparticles into their formulas, but there are concerns about these particles sloughing off and potentially harming the environment. Xiao Gong and Xinting Han wanted to develop a simple way to make a coating for cotton fabric so it would have superb liquid-repulsion properties and hold up in many challenging circumstances.

The researchers optimized a one-step process for a liquid-proof coating by mixing dopamine hydrochloride, 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane with a piece of cotton fabric for 24 hours. The three-part solution developed into a uniform, dark brown coating on the fabric. In tests, the treated cotton was impervious to many common liquids. The new solution also coated inner cotton fibers, making them liquid proof, too. In other tests, only strong acid and repeated washings reduced the material's water and oil resistance, respectively. Treated fabric soiled with fine sand was easy to clean with water, whereas water only wetted the control version. Finally, the material stayed afloat with up to 35 times its weight on it because of nanoscale air pockets that formed where the coating attached to the fabric, the researchers explain. They say their durable cotton fabric has great potential for applications where drag reduction and increased buoyancy are important, including swimsuits and life jackets.

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The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Opening Project of State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (Sichuan University).

The abstract that accompanies this paper is freely available here.

For more of the latest research news, register for our upcoming meeting, ACS Fall 2021. Journalists and public information officers are encouraged to apply for complimentary press registration by emailing us at newsroom@acs.org.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS' mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world's scientific knowledge. ACS' main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.  

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Chinese health insurance achieves success decreasing diabetes medication usage, costs

Changes in direct medical cost and medications for diabetes in Beijing, China, from 2016 to 2018: Electronic insurance data analysis

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

Approximately 642 million people are expected to be diagnosed with diabetes by 2040, with Asians representing more than 55% of cases. Researchers conducted the first large-scale study since the implementation of medical insurance in China to evaluate the complexity and cost of drug therapy for Asian people with diabetes. They used available treatment records from Beijing's medical insurance bureau from 2016 to 2018 and looked at five outcomes, including: 1) quantity of outpatient medications, 2) number of co-morbidities diagnosed, 3) estimated annual cost of the outpatient drug regimen, 4) drug therapy strategies for diabetic patients and 5) the most commonly prescribed drug class in the patient cohort. They found that over three years, there was a gradual decrease of almost 9% decrease in the average quantity of diabetes medications. The mean usage of both anti-glycemic and non-antiglycemic drugs decreased by 3.6% and 12.8%, respectively. Researchers found an 18.39% decrease in estimated annual medication costs. The decrease in medical costs could be due to rational use of medications, leading to a decrease in the usage of medications over the three years. This is especially true for what the authors call the needless use of most types of insulin. This could have indirectly led to decreased costs. China's health insurance appears to have achieved "remarkable" success. The study authors advise that therapeutic drugs should be selected with caution according to the diet and lifestyle of each individual.

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Changes in Direct Medical Cost and Medications for Managing Diabetes in Beijing, China, from 2016 to 2018: Electronic Insurance Data Analysis

Lixin Guo, MD, et al

Department of Endocrinology, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, Institute of Geriatric Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, PR China

https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/332

 

Primary care practice characteristics make little impact on unplanned hospital admissions

Primary care variation in rates of unplanned hospitalizations, functional ability, and quality of life of older people

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

Given the aging world population, there is international interest in helping older people live longer and healthier lives. Avoiding unplanned hospital admissions is an important aspect of care for older people. Palapar et al focused on the way primary care practice characteristics influence outcomes such as unplanned hospitalizations, function and well-being. They investigated the variability in older people's outcomes by primary care physician and practice characteristics in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Findings revealed that none of the physician or practice characteristics were significantly associated with rates of unplanned admissions in the New Zealand sample. In contrast, in the Netherlands sample, researchers found higher rates of admissions in large practices and practices staffed with a practice nurse who typically works in the primary care setting with general practitioners. Practice nurses are common in primary care practices in New Zealand but are relatively new and only in a portion of practices in the Netherlands, the authors note. It is unclear if these associations are causal or if the increase in hospitalizations represent higher or lower quality care. Considering these findings, the authors conclude that the central focus of international health policies on reducing hospital overuse should approach primary health care structural reform carefully.

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Primary Care Variation in Rates of Unplanned Hospitalizations, Functional Ability, and Quality of Life of Older People

Leah Palapar, MD, PhD, et al

Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/318

 

Minority physicians experience more diversity, less burnout in family medicine practice

Lower likelihood of burnout among family physicians from underrepresented racial-ethnic groups

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

More than 40% of physicians in the United States reported at least one symptom of burnout, which is particularly high among family physicians. This study examined a nationally-representative sample of family physicians to determine whether physician race-ethnicity was associated with burnout among a nationally-representative sample of family physicians. Of the 3,0916 physicians studied, 450 (15%) were from racial-ethnic groups underrepresented in medicine (UIM), which include Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, American Indians and Pacific Islanders who together comprise 30-35% of the general population yet account for only 12.4% of family physicians. The study findings support the researchers' hypothesis that UIMs were significantly less likely than their non-UIM counterparts to report emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. This may be attributed to practicing in more racially-diverse counties and being less likely to practice obstetrics, both of which partially mediated the protective effect of UIM status on depersonalization. The mediating effect of working in more racially and ethnically diverse counties is consistent with evidence of the beneficial effect of cultural diversity on health outcomes for minorities and better overall self-rated health among adults. Understanding the attributes of UIMs that may prevent burnout may also provide insights for developing a more resilient physician workforce.

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