Tracking small-scale fishers

Researchers gauge the willingness of small-scale fishers to adopt vessel tracking systems

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

 

IMAGE: A RESEARCHER DISCUSSES VESSEL TRACKING SYSTEM GEAR WITH A GROUP OF ARTISANAL FISHERS IN INDONESIA view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY IMAGE

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Roughly half of all global seafood is caught by artisanal fishers — individuals who operate on small, often subsistence scales, and who generally fish a short distance from the coast. Though diminutive in comparison to larger-scale commercial operations, these enterprises are essential to the food security and livelihoods of their communities, and their sheer number makes artisanal fishers an important sector to monitor and manage, as well as to advocate for, as the global fishing industry continues to grow and climate change causes shifts in their food supply.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” said conservation professional and academic Juan Andrés Silva, formerly a researcher with the Environmental Markets Lab (emLab) in UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “You can call them ‘small-scale,’ but their importance and impact are huge.” Despite this impact, artisanal fishers, he said, are “a very invisible sector,” and one worth trying to get a sense of.

In an effort to do so, Silva and his colleagues embarked on an experiment to gauge how well small-scale fishers would take to adopting vessel tracking technology originally developed for larger oceangoing ships. The researchers partnered with the organization Global Fishing Watch for this project, and their results are published in the journal Ocean & Coastal Management.

Options for Adoption
As satellite-enabled networks, vessel tracking systems (VTS) were originally conceived to prevent maritime collisions, but have been deemed useful for other purposes as well, including monitoring fishing activity in sensitive marine areas and looking out for forced labor on the high seas. 

“According to the data we have, about 86% of the estimated 2.5 million motorized fishing vessels in the world are under 12 meters. Of those, less than 0.4% use some type of VTS,” said Silva, who conducted research for this study during his time with emLab . “So we’re talking about a massive number of fishing vessels that account for a big part of the global catch that don’t have this technology. 

“And they certainly have an important impact because they usually fish closer to the coast where the bulk of biodiversity is and where coastal development happens,” he continued. “So understanding fishing behavior allows for better marine spatial planning and better fisheries management, and can also contribute to increased safety at sea.”

That said, the success of any system for monitoring artisanal fishers depends on the individuals themselves. So, the researchers approached fishers in Mexico and Indonesia to conduct a discrete choice experiment and evaluate under what conditions they would be willing to adopt the technology.

In their survey, the researchers offered the fishers several packages with different options and features, such as safety, privacy and ownership of data. They asked the fishers how much they would be willing to pay to have the equipment installed on their boats or, alternatively, if they were willing to receive payment in exchange for their participation in the program.

“One thing to keep in mind about small-scale fishers is their incredible diversity,” Silva said. “There was a lot of variability in their attributes, including their levels of education, or previous exposure to technology, much of which would influence their attitudes toward using new equipment on their boats.

 

“One of the biggest concerns was that it would be a nuisance for them to have extra stuff on their boats,” he added. For instance in Mexico, many fishers who were given a long, orange device they would come to call “the carrot” found it annoying to have to maintain and recharge the gear, even though it would be useful for their safety. In other cases, fishers, unsatisfied with their catch quotas, might reject the VTS because it would inhibit their extralegal fishing efforts to earn more money.

 

In their sample of 211 fishers — 124 in Indonesia and 87 in Mexico — the majority (67%) were willing to pay to participate in their preferred VTS program, while 13% would participate if the program was free. Meanwhile, 11% would not opt into any program, and 9% would if they were paid to do so.

Overall, the researchers found that safety functionality (particularly for fishers who share space with large vessels) and ownership of their fishing activity data played a large part in fishers’ willingness to accept the new tech. Those who perceived governmental and administrative corruption as their main problem were often willing to pay more to participate in the VTS program, as compared to those whose main problem was illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, pollution or extreme weather.

There are other benefits to fishers using the VTS, according to Silva, particularly for fishing collectives that are more organized and supported.

“For example, there was a case in Baja, Mexico, in which the fishers actually used historical tracking data that, coupled with catch and income data, allowed them to negotiate fair compensation from the government for temporary fishing closures,” he said. “So data could also be a source of empowerment for fishers.”

This study is the first foray into small-scale fishers’ preferences in a VTS program and potential incentives that may encourage their participation. More research would have to be conducted into the highly diverse world of the artisanal fisher to encourage wide adoption, Silva said.

“From a research point of view we never intended to be super exhaustive, and there isn’t a conclusion in this study that applies to the whole world,” he said. “But we do want to gain a good picture of this ‘invisible sector,’ and understanding their motives and behavior allows for better planning and management.”

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JOURNAL

Ocean & Coastal Management

ARTICLE TITLE

Assessing the drivers of vessel tracking systems adoption for improved small-scale fisheries management

Study: Slogans protesting federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate displayed three themes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR TIM F. LIAO FOUND THREE DISTINCT THEMES IN THE PROTEST SLOGANS DENOUNCING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S COVID-19 VACCINE-OR-TEST MANDATE FOR LARGE EMPLOYERS view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO PROVIDED

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When the Biden administration announced COVID-19 vaccine mandates on Nov. 4 for businesses with 100 or more employees, protests erupted in cities across the U.S.

A recent study of the slogans displayed by protestors found three distinct themes.

Tim F. Liao, a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, analyzed the content of 150 images with anti-vaccination themes that were published online by news media between the day of the announcement and Jan. 13, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the federal vaccine-or-test mandate for large businesses.

Using a popular search engine, Liao located and collected images containing text with the keywords “anti-vaccine,” “protest,” “U.S.” and “America” and grouped them based on similar messages or intents.

Liao found that three major themes emerged: Support for individual freedom/rights, opposition to government control, and anti-science misinformation or disinformation.

While misinformation may contain incorrect or debunked material, it is not intentionally deceptive, whereas disinformation contains purposely false allegations that are intended to deceive or mislead consumers, according to the study.

“The majority of the slogans opposing COVID-19 vaccines were about evenly divided between assertions of individual rights and resistance to government control, which composed 46% and 44% of the sample, respectively,” said Liao, who also holds appointments in statistics and East Asian languages and cultures at the university.

“The remaining 10% of the slogans contained anti-science misinformation/ disinformation such as false claims about the safety or origin of the vaccines or conspiracy theories.”

Some of the popular slogans in the first two categories were “my body, my choice,” “medical freedom” and “stop the mandate,” Liao found.

Among the disinformation slogans in the sample were false declarations that the vaccines were poison, known to cause seizures and not placebo-tested, Liao found.

CAPTION

A word cloud, created by researcher Tim F. Liao, shows the most frequently used words in the protest slogans, with those in larger text appearing the most.

CREDIT

Graphic by Tim Liao

“It’s important to note that slogans asserting individual rights and resistance to government control may be two sides of the same coin, as individuals who strongly believe in personal liberties are likely to oppose any policies that they perceive as infringing on those liberties,” Liao said.

Likewise, individuals who believe disinformation are more likely to resist a mandate and assert the primacy of personal rights, he said.

Slightly more than 67% of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated – defined as having received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine – by the time Liao completed the study on May 24, according to the study.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Communication, the study sheds light on the sentiments of people who oppose vaccinations in general or perceived government overreach, as well as the power wielded by propaganda and misinformation in undermining public health directives.

In response to the ongoing proliferation of misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines, the World Health Organization issued a warning that the “infodemic” of inaccurate information poses as great a risk to public health as the disease itself, according to the WHO website.

Some researchers have called for “psychological inoculation” – informational campaigns that prepare people to identify and disregard false and misleading messages about the vaccines, according to the study.

With new omicron variants circulating and fewer people wearing masks in public, vaccination is becoming the main defense against the disease, Liao wrote.

“Anti-science misinformation must be vehemently corrected,” Liao said. “The only way forward is to correct the misinformation and disinformation about vaccinations and for the federal government to emphasize each person’s civic responsibilities – which include vaccination – for the benefit of society and our collective future.”

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Communication

DOI

10.3389/fcomm.2022.941872 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Understanding anti-COVID-19 vaccination protest slogans in the U.S.

Climate change is increasing frequency of fish mass die-offs

A study of die-offs finds that air and water temperatures are reliable predictors of fish mass mortality events and projects significant increases in the frequency of such events.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

 

IMAGE: PAST AND FUTURE SUMMERKILL MODELING. view more 

CREDIT: SIMON TYE

As the planet’s climate has gotten warmer, so has the prevalence of fish die-offs, or mass mortality events. These die-offs can have severe impacts on the function of ecosystems, imperil existing fish populations and reduce the global food supply. And the frequency of these events appears to be accelerating, with potentially dire consequences for the world if global carbon emissions are not substantially reduced over the 21st century.

Those are the findings of a recent paper co-authored by two members of the University of Arkansas Department of Biological Sciences: doctoral student Simon Tye and associate professor Adam Siepielski, along with several of their colleagues.

The paper, “Climate warming amplifies the frequency of fish mass mortality events across the north temperate lakes,” compiled 526 documented cases of fish die-offs that occurred across Minnesota and Wisconsin lakes between 2003 and 2013. The researchers determined there were three main drivers of these events: infectious diseases, summerkills and winterkills.

The researchers then narrowed their focus to summerkills — fish mortalities associated with warm temperatures. They found a strong relationship between local air and water temperatures and the occurrence of these events, meaning they increased in frequency as temperature increased. Moreover, their models that used either air or water temperature provided similar results, which is important because air temperature data is more widely available than water temperature data across the world.

Finally, with a historical baseline established, the team used air and water temperature-based models to predict frequencies of future summerkills.

The results were sobering. Based on local water temperature projections, the models predicted an approximate six-fold increase in the frequency of fish mortality events by 2100, while local air temperature projections predicted a 34-fold increase. Importantly, these predictions were based on temperature projections from the most severe climate change scenario, which was the only scenario with the necessary data for these analyses.

As Tye explained, “If there are eight summerkills per year now, the models suggest we could have about 41 per year based on water temperature estimates or about 182 per year based on air temperature estimates.”

“We think predictions from the water temperature model are more realistic, whereas predictions from the air temperature model indicate we need to better understand how and why regional air and water temperature estimates differ over time to predict how many mortality events may occur.”

Nevertheless, their models reveal strong associations between rising temperatures and frequencies of ecological catastrophes.

Though the study used data related to temperate northern lakes, Tye said the study is pertinent to Arkansas. “One of the findings of the paper is that similar deviations in temperature affect all types of fish, such that a regional heatwave could lead to mortalities of both cold- and warm-water fish,” he said.

“Specifically, climate change is more than gradually increasing temperatures because it also increases temperature variation, such as we experienced much of this summer,” he explained “In turn, our findings suggest these rapid changes in temperature affect a wide range of fish regardless of their thermal tolerance.”

Siepielski added, “This work is important because it demonstrates the feasibility of using readily obtainable data to anticipate fish die offs.

“As with many examples of how climate warming is negatively affecting wild animal populations, this work reveals that temperature extremes can be particularly detrimental.”

“The large scale of the project, using thousands of lakes and over a million air and temperature data points, is particularly impressive,” Siepielski added. “Lakes outside the study area, including those in Arkansas and surrounding areas, are not likely to be immune to these events increasing in frequency.”

Siepielski encouraged citizens of Arkansas to help document these events when they find evidence of them, even on their own property, by contacting the relevant authorities.

The paper was published in Limnology and Oceanography Letters. Tye and Siepielski are joined by co-authors Andrew Bray, Andrew L. Rypel, Nicholas B.D. Phelps and Samuel B. Fey.

 

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JOURNAL

Limnology and Oceanography Letters

DOI

10.1002/lol2.10274 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Climate warming amplifies the frequency of fish mass mortality events across north temperate lakes

Hidden microearthquakes illuminate large earthquake-hosting faults in Oklahoma and Kansas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SEISMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Using machine learning to sift through a decade’s worth of seismic data, researchers have identified hundreds of thousands of microearthquakes along some previously unknown fault structures in Oklahoma and Kansas.

The newly identified microearthquakes allowed the seismologists to map and measure earthquake clusters in the region, which has experienced unusual levels of seismicity due to unconventional oil and gas production.

As they report in The Seismic Record, the researchers found that 80% of the magnitude 4 and larger earthquakes that occurred in the past decade could have been anticipated based on the spatial extent of seismicity clusters that included the large earthquake before it occurred.

They also found that once a cluster reached a length scale large enough to host a magnitude 4 or larger earthquake, there was nearly a 5% chance that it would do so within a year of achieving that length scale, according to Yongsoo Park, a Ph.D. student at Stanford University and colleagues.

The cluster information could be used by companies and regulators to monitor oil and gas operations in the future, Park and colleagues suggest.

With little natural seismicity and incomplete mapping of faults in Oklahoma and Kansas before unconventional hydrocarbon development, researchers have been looking for new ways to understand the region’s seismic hazard.

Park and colleagues had used a machine learning technique to find almost 90,000 unknown microearthquakes in Arkansas in a previous study. “We were impressed with the result, especially because the catalog revealed previously unknown clusters,” said Park. “We knew that most earthquakes in the Oklahoma-Kansas area occurred on hidden faults in the basement, so we wanted to apply the workflow to reveal these faults.”

The researchers reanalyzed seismic data collected from 17 publicly available seismic networks in Oklahoma and Kansas from 2010 to 2019. Using a neural network to detect earthquakes and their P and S-wave arrival times, they found over 300,000 earthquakes in the data.

When mapped, the additional microearthquakes “connected the dots” between scattered earthquakes and the small clusters formed by the 60 magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes included in the study. The newly detected microearthquakes illuminated the surprising presence of many previously unknown faults, said Park.

“However, the more surprising part was that many of the clusters that were thought to be separated in previous studies were in fact connected by microearthquakes. In other words, finding small earthquakes is probably no longer an option, but rather a requirement when we are trying to do clustering analysis on earthquake data,” he said.

Park said that regulators could adapt the usual “traffic light” protocol--which oil and gas operators use to monitor and stop or slow their activities to mitigate seismic hazard--to incorporate the length scale of an earthquake cluster.

The original traffic light protocol is guided by observed earthquake magnitudes and controlled by the largest magnitude event. Estimating earthquake magnitudes from the length scale could make this process proactive, and controlled by both large and small earthquakes, the researchers note.

“But because the magnitudes are only estimates, the required actions to be taken should probably be different,” Park explained. If a length scale of the cluster raises concern, for example, “the regulators could ask the operators to deploy more seismometers around the concerning cluster to better map the hidden fault.”

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JOURNAL

The Seismic Record

DOI

10.1785/0320220020 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Basement Fault Activation before Larger Earthquakes in Oklahoma and Kansas

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Aug-2022

SOCIOBIOLOGY

 When can we be bothered to help others? Scientists pinpoint brain region responsible for effortful helping behaviour

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

An area of the brain specifically involved in putting in effort to help others out has been pinpointed by scientists at the University of Birmingham and University of Oxford.

The research, published in Current Biology, shows that effortful altruistic behaviour –choices people make that help others – takes place in a different part of the brain from that used to make physically demanding choices that help oneself.

Understanding more precisely what goes on in the brain when these decisions are made could help clinicians to develop approaches for treating psychopathic behaviours. It could also be useful for better understanding why people are willing to perform everyday effortful helping behaviours like voluntary work, recycling waste to slow global warming or stopping to help strangers.

The area identified, called the anterior cingulate cortex gyrus (ACCg), is located towards the front of the brain. It is known to play a role in social behaviour, but has not previously been linked to putting in effort to help others. Interestingly, the researchers found that the ACCg is not activated when individuals make effortful decisions that only benefit themselves.

“From holding open a door to volunteering for a charity, we often have to decide whether we can be bothered to put in effort to help other people out but the brain mechanisms behind these acts have remained elusive” says Dr Patricia Lockwood, first author on the paper. “By identifying the specific brain region that is activated when people need to put in effort, we have taken a step closer to understanding what drives some individuals, but not others, to perform what are often physically demanding decisions to help people – even when it doesn’t directly benefit themselves.”

In the study, the researchers worked with 38 participants aged between 18 and 35. All participants were each asked to take part in a effortful decision-making task and to complete a questionnaire to self-assess their empathy levels.

The participants made decisions while undergoing a functional MRI scan. This identifies different areas of the brain which are activated while people made decisions to either “work” or “rest” to help themselves or someone else.

If they chose the work option, they had to squeeze a device that measured their grip strength. They had to do this for long enough to reach a threshold, which they could see in real-time on the screen. For each decision they were told whether they would be working for themselves, or for another person.  If they decided to put in the effort, they had to squeeze hard enough to reach the threshold and get the reward, which was different numbers of points that were converted into money, either for themselves or for the other anonymous person they were playing for.

Using a new statistical technique to analyse the data, the researchers were able to identify patterns in the brain that showed how much effort they were willing to put in. They found that the ACCg was the only brain area that showed the effort pattern when people made these decisions to help someone else, but it did not activate at all when they made decisions to put in effort to reward themselves. Intriguingly those people who had said they were very high in empathy had the strongest effort patterns in ACCg. The researchers also found that those people who represented effort more strongly in the ACCg also went on to put in more grip strength to help out.

The next step for the research team will be to investigate what happens to effortful helping behaviour in people who have suffered lesions in that area of the brain through stroke or other brain injury. They will also be researching what happens in people who have high levels of antisocial behaviour and both willingness to put in effort into activities and helping others might be different.

The work was supported by UK Research and Innovation, the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society, as well as support from Christ Church, Oxford, and the Jacobs Foundation.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.010 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Distinct neural representations for prosocial and self-benefitting effort

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Aug-2022

NIH experts review monkeypox challenges

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NIH/NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES

 

IMAGE: COLORIZED TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROGRAPH OF MONKEYPOX VIRUS PARTICLES (RED) CULTIVATED AND PURIFIED FROM CELL CULTURE. IMAGE CAPTURED AT THE NIAID INTEGRATED RESEARCH FACILITY (IRF) IN FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND. view more 

CREDIT: NIAID

WHAT:
Lessons learned from the public health responses to the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics should help guide the response to the current outbreak of monkeypox, National Institutes of Health experts write in an editorial published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and H. Clifford Lane, M.D., NIAID deputy director for clinical research and special projects, discuss a published case series (JP Thornhill et al.) detailing the symptoms and outcomes of 528 people with monkeypox from 16 countries in five continents.   

The authors note that the epidemiologic pattern of the multi-continent outbreak of monkeypox resembles that of the early cases of AIDS in that most cases are among men who have sex with men. They caution, however, that it should not be assumed that cases of monkeypox will remain confined to this population. Monkeypox virus has been known to spread from direct lesion-to-skin contact—in prior outbreaks, such spread was often from an infected child to a caregiver. Data suggest that sexual transmission likely plays a role in the current outbreak, the authors note. They call for detailed observational studies, serosurveys and ongoing surveillance to learn more about the epidemiology of the current outbreak.

Drs. Fauci and Lane also compare monkeypox, HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 regarding the causes of each disease and the countermeasures available to fight them. Fortunately, diagnostics, vaccines and treatments for monkeypox already exist. A challenge for the public health and research communities is ensuring equitable, efficient distribution of these existing countermeasures while simultaneously conducting rigorous clinical research to gather more data on their safety and optimal use, they conclude.

ARTICLES: 
HC Lane and AS Fauci. Monkeypox – Past as Prologue. The New England Journal of Medicine DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe2210535 (2022).

JP Thornhill et al. Monkeypox Virus Infection in Humans across 16 Countries — April–June 2022. The New England Journal of Medicine DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2207323 (2022).

WHO: 
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Lane are available for comment.

NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.  

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit https://www.nih.gov/. 

NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health

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JOURNAL

New England Journal of Medicine

DOI

10.1056/NEJMe2210535 

UC Davis Health study reports on the safety, efficacy of tecovirimat in treating monkeypox

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS HEALTH

A UC Davis Health study finds that the antiviral tecovirimat appears to be safe and effective for the treatment of monkeypox symptoms and skin lesions. The study is one of the earliest studies to assess and report the outcomes of treating patients with monkeypox with this antiviral.

Tecovirimat (TPOXX) is an FDA-approved antiviral drug for the treatment of smallpox. It limits viral spread in the body by inhibiting the work of the protein involved in the release of the enveloped virus. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowed physicians to prescribe tecovirimat on a compassionate use basis to treat adults and children with orthopoxvirus infections, including monkeypox.

In a research letter published in JAMA, UC Davis infectious disease experts presented insights on 25 patients with monkeypox who were given tecovirimat therapy.

“We have very limited clinical data on the use of tecovirimat for monkeypox infection. There is much to learn about the natural progression of the disease and how tecovirimat and other antivirals may affect it,” said lead author Angel Desai. She is an adult infectious disease specialist at UC Davis Health.

Treating monkeypox with tecovirimat

The recent global outbreak of monkeypox has led to more than 45,500 cases as of August 22, 2022. While symptoms usually resolve on their own in 2-4 weeks, a recent study showed that 13% of patients needed hospitalization.

The new study included patients referred to UC Davis Medical Center, primarily through the Sacramento County Department of Public Health, between June 3 and August 13, 2022.

Patients with skin lesions in multiple body parts or in sensitive areas such as the face or genital region were offered oral tecovirimat treatment. The treatment was weight-based, given every 8 or 12 hours, and was taken within 30 minutes of a high-fat meal.

The researchers collected clinical data at the first in-person evaluation for treatment and by in-person or telephone interview on day 7 and day 21 following the beginning of therapy.

In total, 25 patients with confirmed monkeypox infection completed a course of tecovirimat therapy. All were male. Their age ranged between 27 and 76 years (the median age was 40). Nine patients had HIV.

Only one patient had the smallpox vaccine (taken more than 25 years ago) and four others received a dose of JYNNEOS vaccination after symptoms started.

Symptoms in patients with monkeypox, MPX

The study found that 92% of patients had lesions in their genital or anal area. While all patients had painful lesions, around half had fewer than 10 lesions over their entire body.

On average, the patients had symptoms or lesions for 12 days before they started their antiviral treatment. Fever was the most common symptom (76% of the patients), followed by fatigue (32%), sore throat (20%) and chills (20%). Other symptoms included backache (12%), muscle pain (8%), nausea (4%) and diarrhea (4%).

All patients completed the tecovirimat therapy and tolerated their treatment well. They were treated for two weeks, except for one patient who was treated for 21 days.

On day 7 of therapy, 40% of patients had healed from their lesions. By day 21, 92% had healed and were pain-free.

The most reported adverse events on day 7 of therapy included: fatigue (28%), headache (20%), nausea (16%), itching (8%) and diarrhea (8%).

“We have to be very careful in how we interpret the data. It is hard to differentiate the side effects due to therapy from those caused by the infection,” said infectious diseases expert and co-author George Thompson. Thompson is a professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.

The study was small and did not include a control group. So, assessing antiviral efficacy in terms of symptom duration and severity was limited. Also, the time from symptom onset to starting the antiviral therapy varied among the patients.

The researchers called for large-scale studies to explore antiviral efficacy dosing and adverse events. Coauthors on this study are Sonja Neumeister, Anna Arutyunova, Katelyn Trigg and Stuart H. Cohen.

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JOURNAL

JAMA

DOI

10.1001/jama.2022.15336 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Compassionate Use of Tecovirimat for the Treatment of Monkeypox Infectio

LEGIONAIRES DISEASE

Reclaimed water aerosol is becoming a health concern

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HIGHER EDUCATION PRESS

Reclaimed water has been widely used in urban area. However, residual pathogens in the recycled water have been frequently reported, and are identified as the main source of health risks for wastewater reuse. Thus, the paramount need is to ensure the safety of all potential end users. Common applications of reclaimed water such as road cleaning, greenfield irrigation or landscape fountain tend to produce significant amounts of aerosols, and people exposed to the aerosols containing pathogens might get illnesses. However, the relevant studies are rare and the amount of reclaimed water inhaled was often simply estimated by hypothesis.

This study entitled “Aerosol exposure assessment during reclaimed water utilization in China and risk evaluation in case of Legionella” is published online in Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering in 2022.

In this study, the research team estimated the health risks associated with the potential exposure of airborne Legionella emitted from the urban use of reclaimed water in China. Nationwide questionnaire was designed to investigate the exposure habits of Chinese population in different scenarios: 1) people walk on the sidewalk where road cleaning is taking place; 2) people walk along a greenfield in a park for recreational purpose where irrigation system is on operation; 3) people pass by the ornamental landscape fountain. The results indicated that annual infection probability of populations exposed to Legionella for three scenarios, 0.0764 for road cleaning, 1.0000 for greenfield irrigation, 0.9981 for landscape fountain, were markedly higher than the threshold recommended by WHO (10−4 per person per year) according to the concentration distribution of Legionella in the reclaimed water. An age-, educational background-, region- and gender-specific data in annual infection probability also showed different tendencies for some subpopulations.

The risk assessment results indicated that actions need to be taken to reduce the exposure and potential transmission of Legionella during water reuse. Reclaimed water can be disinfected in storage tank before used for road cleaning and landscape fountains. Reducing the retention time of water in tank could also effectively mitigate the growth of Legionella. A warning sign should be set up in a prominent place in the park when using reclaimed water, considering that the high risks of certain subgroups are mainly due to the coincidence of their recreational activities with the time of reclaimed water utilization.

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About Higher Education Press

Founded in May 1954, Higher Education Press Limited Company (HEP), affiliated with the Ministry of Education, is one of the earliest institutions committed to educational publishing after the establishment of P. R. China in 1949. After striving for six decades, HEP has developed into a major comprehensive publisher, with products in various forms and at different levels. Both for import and export, HEP has been striving to fill in the gap of domestic and foreign markets and meet the demand of global customers by collaborating with more than 200 partners throughout the world and selling products and services in 32 languages globally. Now, HEP ranks among China's top publishers in terms of copyright export volume and the world's top 50 largest publishing enterprises in terms of comprehensive strength.

The Frontiers Journals series published by HEP includes 28 English academic journals, covering the largest academic fields in China at present. Among the series, 13 have been indexed by SCI, 6 by EI, 2 by MEDLINE, 1 by A&HCI. HEP's academic monographs have won about 300 different kinds of publishing funds and awards both at home and abroad.

 

About Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering

Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering (FESE) is the leading edge forum for peer-reviewed original submissions in English on all main branches of environmental disciplines. FESE welcomes original research papers, review articles, short communications, and views & comments. All the papers will be published within 6 months since they are submitted. The Editors-in-Chief are Prof. Jiuhui Qu from Tsinghua University, and Prof. John C. Crittenden from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. The journal has been indexed by almost all the authoritative databases such as SCI, Ei, INSPEC, SCOPUS, CSCD, etc.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering

DOI

10.1007/s11783-021-1516-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Aerosol exposure assessment during reclaimed water utilization in China and risk evaluation in case of Legionella

Academics started working even more during the pandemic

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Academics’ work week became even longer during the pandemic. This is true of researchers from different countries, independently of their gender and specialisation, an international research team with HSE University participation found. Their working time during the pandemic was 51 hours compared to the usual 40. The increased number of working hours per week seems to have become part of the new academic norm. The results of the study were published in the Plos One journal.

The COVID-19 pandemic added ambiguity to many academics’ working conditions. University scholars had to adapt to new forms of study, learn to work with online learning platforms, assess student performance and provide high-quality feedback.

A team of researchers from Russia, Portugal and Hong Kong carried out a study in 2020 to look at how the COVID-19 crisis impacted their peers’ workload and distribution of time for work assignments. The paper itself was a result of the pandemic: the authors met only online.

The respondents were selected randomly out of the authors of academic papers (articles, conference abstracts, books etc) added to the Scopus academic database in 2019. The participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their current workload, as well as on the time they thought they would spend on different research, teaching and administrative tasks, and the time they actually spent.

The respondents first filled out the questionnaire in May 2020, then again in November 2020. A total of 126,000 invitation letters were sent out, and 902 academics from all over the world took part in the first wave. The effective sample included 525 respondents. Most of the participants were from the USA (104), Brazil (49), and Italy (31). The second wave included 169 academics, and the same countries had the biggest representation again.

The scholars were asked to describe a specific academic task (such as academic supervision) and assess how much time they would expect to spend on it before the pandemic (as if the pandemic never happened) and during the pandemic.

They found that in 2020, university scholars worked on average three hours more a week than in 2019. The working time duration during the pandemic was about 51 hours compared to the usual 40.

The main reasons for the increased workload were teaching and, to a lesser extent, administrative responsibilities. The most difficult thing during the pandemic was adapting to new teaching methods. The teachers spent a significant amount of time transferring studies to the online environment and learning to use online learning platforms. The academics had to develop new methods to assess student performance and to provide feedback. The time of teacher-student communication also changed. While previously, teachers met with their students only during certain office hours, during the pandemic, they were getting requests from students at any working hours during the week. Answering these requests increased the load on teachers.

However, the time spent by scholars on research remained the same, independently of gender and the field of studies.

While most studies on the presumed effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the academic environment have been dedicated to opportunities for changing teaching methods and the pressure experienced by scholars during the crisis, the new study looks at the pandemic as an event that has reinforced existing trends of working extra hours in academia.

‘Scholars already work more than the norm. And during the crisis, they started working even more in order to alleviate the ambiguity during the pandemic. This adaptive behaviour only reinforced the long-standing trend. Such a strategy could have been both their personal choice and the result of pressure from their university or their co-workers,’ commented Anna Panova, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE Center for Institutional Studies.

‘Working overtime makes researchers more and more susceptible to stress and burnout. During the pandemic, a new norm evolved that saw researchers working even more. The questions are how sustainable this situation is and what its long-term consequences will be. This is particularly interesting, since other industries, by contrast, are looking into decreasing the number of working days and hours in order to improve performance and quality of life,’ said Maria Yudkevich, Director of the HSE Center for Institutional Studies.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0273246 

ARTICLE TITLE

The adaptation of academics to the Covid-19 crisis in terms of work time allocation