IMPACT STUDIES

Crime-scene technique identifies asteroid sites

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Analysing the charred remains of plants can confirm the locations of asteroid strikes in the distant past, new research shows.

Based on estimates of crater-producing asteroid strikes in the last 11,650 years (known as the Holocene), only about 30% of impact sites have been located.

Until now, there has been no way to distinguish between normal land structures and very small asteroid craters unless pieces of iron meteorites were found nearby.

In the new study, an international team of researchers found that charcoal around craters is different from wildfire charcoal – so analysing samples allows scientists to work out the origin of small craters.

"The properties of organisms turned into charcoal reflect the conditions in which they were killed," said lead author Dr Ania Losiak, from the Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Exeter.

"Those conditions, such as the heat the wood was exposed to or the duration of the heating, leave tell-tale signs in the material’s structure.

"For example, charcoal from low-energy surface fires, like burning bushes and leaves, has different properties than charcoal from high-intensity wildfires.

"Impact charcoals are very strange. They all look as if they were formed in much lower temperatures than wildfire charcoals, and they are all very similar to each other, while in a wildfire it is common to find strongly charred wood just next to barely affected branches."

Dr Losiak worked on the research as part of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the University of Exeter wildFIRE lab, led by Professor Claire Belcher.

The research team dug trenches in rims of four craters (Kaali Main and Kaali 2/8 in Estonia, Morasko in Poland, and Whitecourt in Canada).

"The differences between wildfire charcoal and impact charcoal proved to be dramatic and surprising," said Professor Belcher, part of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.

"While wildfire charcoal is considerably varied in its reflectivity, depending on the local conditions during the fire, impact charcoals showed uniform characteristics despite coming from completely different locations and being formed thousands of years apart.

"This presents an opportunity for geologists looking for unrecognised impact craters."

Professor Chris Herd, from the University of Alberta, said: "This study improves our understanding of environmental effects of small impact crater formation so that in the future, when we discover an asteroid a few metres across or more coming our way only a couple of weeks before the impact, we will be able to more precisely determine the size and type of evacuation zone necessary." 

Dr Losiak added: "Since 1900, two impacts – in Tunguska and Chelyabinsk – caused damage on a massive scale.

"In order to prepare for any future threats, we need to understand how often collisions like that occur.

"And to do that, we need to look to our planet’s recent past."

The paper, published in the journal Geology, is entitled: "Small impact cratering processes produce distinctive charcoal assemblages."

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JOURNAL

Geology

DOI

10.1130/G50056.1 

CAPTION

Looking for charcoal (by Juri Plado).

CREDIT

Juri Plado

CAPTION

Finding charcoal within Kaali 2-8 crater ejecta (by Juri Plado).

CREDIT

Juri Plado

Death from space

New Geology Science published online ahead of print

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

 

IMAGE: DIGITAL ELEVATION MODEL OF KAALI CRATERS (BY ARGO JÕELEHT). view more 

CREDIT: ARGO JÕELEHT

Boulder, Colo., USA: Tens of tons of extraterrestrial solid material collide with Earth daily. Most of this material is small enough that it burns up in the atmosphere, but some fragments are large enough to cause quite a predicament. In 2013, a 20-meter-diameter body exploded over Chelyabinsk, seriously injuring more than 1,500 people. The most recent impact crater on Earth was formed in 2007, when an asteroid crashed into a small village in Peru. A 1947 asteroid impact in far-eastern Russia resulted in the formation of the youngest crater-strewn field on our planet: Sikhote-Alin. The most impressive, relatively recent, extra-terrestrial event happened in 1908, when a body exploded over Siberia, flattening 2000 km2 of forest. We can prepare for this natural hazard only if we understand how often these kinds of small impacts happened in the past and how they influenced the environment.

A new article in the Geological Society of America’s journal Geology shows that analyzing bodies of organisms killed by an impact of asteroids can teach us exactly how much damage occurs at the spot of such a cosmic collision. The research team dug out trenches in rims of four craters (Kaali Main and Kaali 2/8 in Estonia, Morasko, in Poland, and Whitecourt in Alberta, Canada), located on two different continents that formed thousands of years apart.

Dr. Jüri Plado and Dr. Argo Jõeleht noticed, “Surprisingly, in all those places we found the same thing: millimeter- to centimeter-sized pieces of charcoal intermixed within material ejected during its formation and located at the same place in respect to the crater.

Dr. Ania Losiak, the lead author of this study, from the Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, and the University of Exeter, said, “At first we thought those charcoals were formed by wildfires that occurred shortly before the impact, and charcoals just got tangled in this extraterrestrial situation. But something was not right with this hypothesis—there were too many coincidences; why would there be large wildfires shortly before formation of four different small impact craters divided by thousands of kilometers and years? Why would it be found only in a very specific location within the proximal ejecta blanket? It made no sense, so we decided to investigate further and analyze properties of charcoal pieces found intermixed within material ejected from craters and compare it with wildfire charcoals.”

Like bodies studied in a criminal investigation, the properties of organic remnants turned into charcoal reflect the conditions in which they were killed. Based on their properties, we can clearly recognize charcoals formed as a result of a wildfire and those found within proximal ejecta of impact craters. Professor Claire Belcher from the University of Exeter explained, “Impact charcoals are really weird: They were all formed in much lower temperatures than wildfire charcoals, they lack sections that were formed while directly touching the flame, and they are all very similar to each other, while in a fire it is common to find strongly charred wood just next to barely affected branches.”

“This is definitely not what we expected when we started this study: We think that impact charcoals were formed when fragments of trees shattered by the impact were intermixed with local material ejected from the crater,” added Losiak.

“This study improves our understanding of environmental effects of small impact crater formation so that in the future, when we discover an asteroid a few meters across or more coming our way only a couple of weeks before the impact, we will be able to more precisely determine the size and type of evacuation zone necessary,” said Professor Chris Herd from the University of Alberta.

“Our research may also help to find new impact craters on Earth; we expect that we are missing from our records more than ten craters formed within the last ten thousand years. We need to find them, before their relatives visit us unexpectedly,” explained professor Witek Szczuciński from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.

Charcoal with wood structure preserved on which it is possible to recognize the type of a tree killed by an asteroid. Image under Scanning Electron Microscope (by Ania Losiak).

CREDIT

Ania Losiak

Fragment of organism killed and baked alive by an asteroid (picture under optical microscope by Ania Losiak).

CREDIT

Ania Losiak

FEATURED ARTICLE

Small impact cratering processes produce distinctive charcoal assemblages
Anna Losiak; Claire Belcher; Christopher Herd; Witold Szczucinski; Sarah Baker; Randolf Kofman; Juri Plado; Argo Joeleht; Monika Szokaluk; Andrzej Muszynski; Ewa Wild
Dr Ania Losiak, Institute of Geological Sciences ,Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw, Poland, and University of Exeter, UK, anna.losiak@twarda.pan.pl, +48 660535657.
Prof. Christopher Herd, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, herd@ualberta.ca, +1 7807078217
URL: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/doi/10.1130/G50056.1/616545/Small-impact-cratering-processes-produce

GEOLOGY articles are online at https://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent . Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary articles by contacting Kea Giles at the e-mail address above. Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.

https://www.geosociety.org

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JOURNAL

Geology

DOI

10.1130/G50056.1 

ARTICLE TITLE

Small impact cratering processes produce distinctive charcoal assemblages

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

31-Aug-2022

YouTube more likely to direct election-fraud videos to users already skeptical about 2020 election’s legitimacy

New study shows how site’s algorithms perpetuate existing misperceptions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

YouTube was more likely to recommend videos about election fraud to users who were already skeptical about the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, shows a new study examining the impact of the site’s algorithms. 

The results of the research, which is published in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, showed that those most skeptical of the election’s legitimacy were shown three times as many election-fraud-related videos as were the least skeptical participants—roughly 8 additional recommendations out of approximately 400 videos suggested to each study participant. 

While the overall prevalence of these types of videos was low, the findings expose the consequences of a recommendation system that provides users with the content they want. For those most concerned about possible election fraud, showing them related content provided a mechanism by which misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracies can find their way to those most likely to believe them, observe the authors of the study. Importantly, these patterns reflect the independent influence of the algorithm on what real users are shown while using the platform.

“Our findings uncover the detrimental consequences of recommendation algorithms and cast doubt on the view that online information environments are solely determined by user choice,” says James Bisbee, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP).

Nearly two years after the 2020 presidential election, large numbers of Americans, particularly Republicans, don’t believe in the legitimacy of the outcome. 

“Roughly 70% of Republicans don’t see Biden as the legitimate winner,” despite “multiple recounts and audits that confirmed Joe Biden’s win,” the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact wrote earlier this year.

While it’s well-known that social media platforms, such as YouTube, direct content to users based on their search preferences, the consequences of this dynamic may not be fully realized. 

In the CSMaP study, the researchers sampled more than 300 Americans with YouTube accounts in November and December of 2020. The subjects were asked how concerned they were with a number of aspects of election fraud, including fraudulent ballots being counted, valid ballots being discarded, foreign governments interfering, and non-U.S. citizens voting, among other questions. 

These participants were then asked to install a browser extension that would record the list of recommendations they were shown. The subjects were then instructed to click on a randomly assigned YouTube video (the “seed” video), and then to click on one of the recommendations they were shown according to a randomly assigned “traversal rule”. For example, users assigned to the “second traversal rule” would be required to always click on the second video in the list of recommendations shown, regardless of its content. By restricting user behavior in these ways, the researchers were able to isolate the recommendation algorithm’s influence on what real users were being suggested in real time. 

The subjects then proceeded through a sequence of YouTube recommended videos, allowing the researchers to observe what the YouTube algorithm suggested to its users. Bisbee and his colleagues then compared the number of videos about election fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election that were recommended to participants who were more skeptical about the legitimacy of the election to those recommended to participants who were less skeptical. These results showed that election skeptics were recommended an average of eight additional videos about possible fraud in the 2020 US election, relative to non-skeptical participants (12 vs. 4).

“Many believe that automated recommendation algorithms have little influence on online ‘echo chambers’ in which users only see content that reaffirms their preexisting views,” observes Bisbee, now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. “Our study, however, suggests that YouTube's recommendation algorithm was able to determine which users were more likely to be concerned about fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and then suggested up to three times as many videos about election fraud to these users compared to those less concerned about election fraud. This highlights the need for further investigation into how opaque recommendation algorithms operate on an issue-by-issue basis."

The paper’s other authors were Joshua A. Tucker and Jonathan Nagler, professors in NYU’s Department of Politics, and Richard Bonneau, a professor in NYU’s Department of Biology and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, as well as Megan A. Brown, the senior research engineer at CSMaP, and Angela Lai, an NYU doctoral student. Tucker and Nagler are co-directors of CSMaP.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Online Trust and Safety

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Election Fraud, YouTube, and Public Perception of the Legitimacy of President Biden

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2022

The American Association of Feline Practitioners and EveryCat Health Foundation Announce Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) Diagnosis Guidelines

New Guidelines provide veterinarians with essential information to diagnose FIP

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SAGE

BRIDGEWATER, NJ; WYCKOFF, NJ; September 1, 2022 – The American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) and EveryCat Health Foundation have released the 2022 AAFP/EveryCat Feline Infectious Peritonitis Diagnosis Guidelines. These landmark Guidelines are published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery and will provide veterinarians with the essential information necessary to provide a FIP diagnosis in cats. FIP is a viral disease that can affect any organ in the body and is caused by a feline coronavirus (FCoV).

“First recognized over 50 years ago, feline infectious peritonitis has been one of the most important infectious diseases and causes of death in cats, especially affecting young cats less than two years old,” said Vicki Thayer, DVM, DABVP (Feline), Task Force Co-chair. “Further, FIP can be challenging to diagnose in some cases and is often considered an enigma by the veterinary profession. Today, diagnosis relies upon evidence from signalment, history, physical examination findings, and diagnostic testing. The 2022 AAFP/EveryCat Feline Infectious Peritonitis Diagnosis Guidelines serve as a critical resource for veterinary practitioners diagnosing FIP in their cat patients.”

Given the fact that FIP is fatal when untreated and nearly every small animal veterinary practitioner will see FIP cases, the ability to obtain a correct diagnosis is critical. FIP can be challenging to diagnose due to the lack of clinical signs or laboratory changes, especially when no physical symptoms are present. These Guidelines will provide veterinarians with essential information to assist their ability to recognize cats presenting with FIP. “These Guidelines were
written with the intent of providing the most current knowledge available in one comprehensive format combined with extensive supplemental resources all in one location,” adds Susan Gogolski, DVM, DABVP (Canine/Feline), Task Force Co-chair. “The Guidelines will be an invaluable resource to veterinary teams around the world as a clinician builds the index of suspicion of FIP brick by brick.”

The 2022 AAFP/EveryCat Feline Infectious Peritonitis Diagnosis Guidelines were developed by a Task Force of experts in feline clinical medicine. Helpful tips, images and tables, and algorithms are included throughout the document. In addition, the Guidelines feature 16 valuable supplemental resources that appear online such as videos, figures, instructions, and a questionnaire.

The AAFP and EveryCat Health Foundation thank Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health USA Inc. for supporting these Guidelines and resources through an educational grant.

Download the FIP Diagnosis Guidelines at the AAFP or EveryCat Health Foundation website. Resources for cat caregivers can be found at catfriendly.com/FIP.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery

Cannabis users no less likely to be motivated or able to enjoy life’s pleasure

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Adult and adolescent cannabis users are no more likely than non-users to lack motivation or be unable to enjoy life’s pleasure, new research has shown, suggesting there is no scientific basis for the stereotype often portrayed in the media.

Cannabis users also show no difference in motivation for rewards, pleasure taken from rewards, or the brain’s response when seeking rewards, compared to non-users.

Cannabis is the third most commonly used controlled substance worldwide, after alcohol and nicotine. A 2018 report from the NHS Digital Lifestyles Team stated that almost one in five (19%) of 15-year-olds in England had used cannabis in the previous 12 months, while in 2020 the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported the proportion in the United States to be 28% of 15-16-year-olds.

A common stereotype of cannabis users is the ‘stoner’ – think Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, The Dude in The Big Lebowski, or, more recently, Argyle in Stranger Things. These are individuals who are generally depicted as lazy and apathetic.

At the same time, there has been considerable concern of the potential impact of cannabis use on the developing brain and that using cannabis during adolescence might have a damaging effect at an important time in an individual’s life.

A team led by scientists at UCL, the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London carried out a study examining whether cannabis users show higher levels of apathy (loss of motivation) and anhedonia (loss of interest in or pleasure from rewards) when compared to controls and whether they were less willing to exert physical effort to receive a reward. The research was part of the CannTEEN study.

The results are published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

The team recruited 274 adolescent and adult cannabis users who had used cannabis at least weekly over the past three months, with an average of four days per week, and matched them with non-users of the same age and gender.

Participants completed questionnaires to measure anhedonia, asking them to rate statements such as “I would enjoy being with family or close friends”. They also completed questionnaires to measure their levels of apathy, which asked them to rate characteristics such as how interested they were in learning new things or how likely they were to see a job through to the end.

Cannabis users scored slightly lower than non-users on anhedonia – in other words, they appeared better able to enjoy themselves – but there was no significant difference when it came to apathy. The researchers also found no link between frequency of cannabis use and either apathy or anhedonia in the people who used cannabis.

Martine Skumlien, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, said: “We were surprised to see that there was really very little difference between cannabis users and non-users when it came to lack of motivation or lack of enjoyment, even among those who used cannabis every day. This is contrary to the stereotypical portrayal we see on TV and in movies.”

In general, adolescents tended to score higher than adults on anhedonia and apathy in both user and non-user groups, but cannabis use did not augment this difference.

Dr Will Lawn, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, said: “There’s been a lot of concern that cannabis use in adolescence might lead to worse outcomes than cannabis use during adulthood. But our study, one of the first to directly compare adolescents and adults who use cannabis, suggests that adolescents are no more vulnerable than adults to the harmful effects of cannabis on motivation, the experience of pleasure, or the brain’s response to reward.

“In fact, it seems cannabis may have no link – or at most only weak associations – with these outcomes in general. However, we need studies that look for these associations over a long period of time to confirm these findings.”

Just over half of participants also carried out a number of behavioural tasks. The first of these assessed physical effort. Participants were given the option to perform button-presses in order to win points, which were later exchanged for chocolates or sweets to take home. There were three difficulty levels and three reward levels; more difficult trials required faster button pressing. On each trial the participant could choose to accept or reject the offer; points were only accrued if the trial was accepted and completed.

In a second task, measuring how much pleasure they received from rewards, participants were first told to estimate how much they wanted to receive each of three rewards (30 seconds of one of their favourite songs, one piece of chocolate or a sweet, and a £1 coin) on a scale from ‘do not want at all’ to ‘intensely want’. They then received each reward in turn and were asked to rate how pleasurable they found them on a scale from ‘do not like at all’ to ‘intensely like’.

The researchers found no difference between users and non-users or between age groups on either the physical effort task or the real reward pleasure task, confirming evidence from other studies that found no, or very little, difference.

Skumlien added: “We’re so used to seeing ‘lazy stoners’ on our screens that we don’t stop to ask whether they’re an accurate representation of cannabis users. Our work implies that this is in itself a lazy stereotype, and that people who use cannabis are no more likely to lack motivation or be lazier than people who don’t.

“Unfair assumptions can be stigmatising and could get in the way of messages around harm reduction. We need to be honest and frank about what are and are not the harmful consequences of drug use.”

Earlier this year, the team published a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at brain activity in the same participants as they took part in a brain imaging task measuring reward processing. The task involved participants viewing orange or blue squares while in the scanner. The orange squares would lead to a monetary reward, after a delay, if the participant made a response.

The researchers used this set up to investigate how the brain responds to rewards, focusing in particular on the ventral striatum, a key region in the brain’s reward system. They found no relationship between activity in this region and cannabis use, suggesting that cannabis users had similar reward systems as non-users.

Professor Barbara Sahakian, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, said: “Our evidence indicates that cannabis use does not appear to have an effect on motivation for recreational users. The participants in our study included users who took cannabis daily and they were no more likely to lack motivation. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that greater use, as seen in some people with cannabis-use disorder, has an effect.

“Until we have future research studies that follow adolescent users, starting from onset through to young adulthood, and which combine measures of motivation and brain imaging, we cannot determine for certain that regular cannabis use won’t negatively impact motivation and the developing brain.”

This research was funded by the Medical Research Council with additional support from the Aker Foundation, National Institute for Health Research and Wellcome.

Reference

1. Skumlien, M, et al. Anhedonia, apathy, pleasure, and effort-based decision-making in adult and adolescent cannabis users and controls. IJNP; 24 Aug 2022; DOI: 10.1093/ijnp/pyac056
2. Skumlien, M, et al. Neural responses to reward anticipation and feedback in adult and adolescent cannabis users and controls. Neuropsychopharmacology; 6 April 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41386-022-01316-2

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JOURNAL

The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology

DOI

10.1093/ijnp/pyac056 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Anhedonia, apathy, pleasure, and effort-based decision-making in adult and adolescent cannabis users and controls

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

Female genital mutilation/cutting is decreasing but more needs to be done

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS ASSESS THE SCOPE OF GLOBAL FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION view more 

CREDIT: NADINE SHAABANA, UNSPLASH (CC0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

An estimated 100 million girls and women of reproductive age across 30 countries have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), according to a new meta-analysis publishing September 1st in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. The review reports that FGM/C seems to be decreasing in 26 countries for both women and girls, but much work needs to be done in others.

FGM/C is an extreme form of abuse and gender inequality that violates women’s and girls’ human rights. It has lifelong health and economic consequences for women and girls. Stephen J McCall of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and colleagues undertook this study to provide a baseline estimate of numbers of women affected and to understand where the data gaps are. The WHO Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 5.3 on gender equality refers to FGM/C as a harmful traditional practice and calls for ending it by 2030.

The researchers included 30 studies in their meta-analysis, of which 23 were from the African region, six from the Eastern Mediterranean, and one from South-East Asia. The studies included data from 406,068 women from 30 countries and 296,267 girls from 25 countries. They found that 36.9% of women aged 15-49 and 8.27% of girls aged 0-15 years had experienced FGM/C.

Though the practice is on the decline in most countries, and the SDG target seems attainable, there were several where the decrease was tiny or there was a slight increase. Countries including Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia, Guinea, and Mali will not meet the target unless much more work is done to stop FGM/C.

The study accurately estimates the countries included but provides an underestimate of the global picture because of gaps in available published data. These gaps need to be resolved to understand the progress towards SDG 5.3.

McCall adds, “This study found that approximately 100 million women and girls have been subjected to female genital mutilation/cutting globally. However, the number of women and girls impacted is likely to be even higher as many countries do not report on this harmful practice.”

#####

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004061

Citation: Farouki L, El-Dirani Z, Abdulrahim S, Akl C, Akik C, McCall SJ (2022) The global prevalence of female genital mutilation/cutting: A systematic review and meta-analysis of national, regional, facility, and school-based studies. PLoS Med 19(9): e1004061. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004061

Author Countries: Lebanon

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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JOURNAL

PLoS Medicine

DOI

10.1371/journal.pmed.1004061 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

Female managers pay fairer

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FÜR TECHNOLOGIE (KIT)

There are two levels of reference for the elementary question of an appropriate remuneration of work: the markets with their structure of supply, demand, and productivity as well as the needs of the employees. Operationally decisive, however, is also what managers are guided by when assessing wages. A study recently published in PLOS ONE by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) provides new insights into this issue.

"Our study shows that the respective incentive system, work experience, and especially gender have an influence on what wages managers set for their employees," says Nora Szech, professor of political economy at KIT‘s Institute of Economics and author of the study, which was conducted together with David Huber and Leonie Kühl from her team.

With a total of 500 test subjects - divided into "assemblers" and "managers" - the researchers investigated these influencing factors in KIT's KD²Lab: "The assemblers screwed 100 ballpoint pens together and apart - a nerve-racking activity that took more than an hour. The managers determined the appropriate salary for this. They could choose amounts up to 21 euros. Some of the managers were allowed to keep the rest of the 21 euros for themselves; for the other part, the rest of the 21 euros went back into the research pot," says Szech, explaining the experimental scenario.

Here, the gender-related differences proved to be particularly significant: "The managers," says Szech, "kept most of the 21 euros for themselves, if possible; on average, they paid out only 7.59 euros. Without the possibility of self-interest, on the other hand, they set 11.10 euros as pay for the fitters - a difference of 46 percent! Female managers decided much more consistently: "If they could keep the rest of the 21 euros for themselves, they set 8.54 euros as the assembly wage. If the rest of the 21 euros went to research, they considered 9.44 euros to be appropriate," the researcher reports.

"Various studies observe that women make more selfless and moral decisions than men. However, we were shocked at how drastic the discrepancy was here," Szech emphasizes. "Our study shows that diversity in the executive ranks is important if the atmosphere in a company is to be appreciative and wage inequality is to be limited."

Further information

The study, "Setting Adequate Wages for Workers: Managers' work experience, incentive scheme and gender matter," by Nora Szech, Leonie Kühl and David Huber, is published in the online journal PLOS ONE: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271762

Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.

In the portal "Experts of KIT" you will find further contact persons on highlights of research at KIT and current topics.

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0271762 

ARTICLE TITLE

Setting adequate wages for workers: Managers’ work experience, incentive scheme and gender matter

Majority of underrepresented early career scientists experience psychological distress; mentoring helps buffer impact

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

 

IMAGE: DR. GRETCHEN WHITE, PHD. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 1, 2022 – Social unrest due to systemic racism is causing early career scientists from underrepresented backgrounds to experience psychological distress, according to new results from a research survey conducted by University of Pittsburgh scientists. Such distress is a red flag as academic institutions nationwide strive to improve diversity. 

But less than a third said social unrest negatively impacted their ability to work, and survey participants were more than twice as likely to say their mentoring relationships were positively, rather than negatively, impacted.  

“Responses to open-ended survey questions made it seem like maybe people had positive feelings about mentoring because they were starting to talk about the racial justice movement and get affirmation of their feelings from their mentors,” said Dr. Gretchen White, assistant professor in Pitt’s School of Medicine and lead author of the study, published in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science.  

White noted that previous studies have shown the importance of mentorship, when a more experienced person provides guidance and support to someone less experienced, particularly in the workplace.  

“Our findings reinforce the positive impact of mentoring,” she said. “But mentoring isn’t the only answer. I’d be remiss not to emphasize the incredibly detrimental effects of psychological distress. People may have found ways to deal with this stress at work, but we know that early career scientists from underrepresented backgrounds disproportionately leave their careers.” 

The survey was conducted as part of the Building Up a Diverse Biomedical Research Workforce (Building Up) Trial, which is testing approaches – such as mentoring and networking – to improve retention of early career researchers who are underrepresented in the health sciences, including people who identify as Black, Hispanic or female, have disabilities or are from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

A total of 144 early career researchers from 25 academic institutions participated in the survey; 80% were female, 35% were Black and 40% Hispanic.  

Following the survey, the researchers interviewed some participants to better understand the results.  

“Many participants described work environments riddled with overt discrimination and isolation from other persons of color,” said White. “I love science and research, but conducting it in a work environment that is not supportive and sometimes hostile is upsetting and stressful. Being inclusive and having diverse researchers, like myself and others, makes for better science and discovery to benefit society as a whole.” 

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About the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health

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JOURNAL

Journal of Clinical and Translational Science

DOI

10.1017/cts.2022.445 

ARTICLE TITLE

The Impact of Social Unrest due to Systemic Racism on Underrepresented Post-doctoral Fellows and Early-Career Faculty

Past and present racism linked to excess nonfatal shootings in Baltimore’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods

Study finds doubly disadvantaged neighborhoods experienced a disproportionate share of firearm injuries from 2015 to 2019

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health links historic redlining, coupled with ongoing segregation by race and income, to 38 percent of the nonfatal shooting rate in Baltimore city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods between 2015 to 2019.

For their analysis, the researchers looked at two examples of structural racism: redlining and racialized economic segregation. Redlining is a term used to describe discriminatory policies that systematically deny or increase the costs of mortgages, insurance, and loans based on the percentage of the neighborhood’s residents who are Black or other racial or ethnic minorities.

For many decades, lending institutions redlined low-income neighborhoods, which often had large populations of people of color, classifying them as investment risks. The practice resulted in neighborhoods with lower home values and fewer services and resources. Combined racial and economic segregation, also known as racialized economic segregation, measures current factors, including race and income.

The analysis found redlining, coupled with ongoing segregation, is linked to 10 additional nonfatal shootings occurring in Baltimore’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods per year, per 10,000 residents.

The study was published online September 1 in Injury Prevention.

“These communities of color are doubly impacted. They have been redlined in the past and are underserved now,” says the paper’s lead author, Mudia Uzzi, a doctoral candidate in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society. “Health equity and racial justice need to be prioritized when developing gun violence prevention policies and interventions.”

More than 5,000 nonfatal shootings have occurred in Baltimore since 2015, according to law enforcement records. These nonfatal shootings present many health and safety problems, including physical injuries, health care costs, and mental health issues like stress, grief, and trauma.

For their study, the researchers drew from nonfatal shooting data from the Baltimore Police Department and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The researchers then calculated the annual nonfatal shooting rate for 2015–2019 in 149 census tracts across Baltimore city, scaled per 10,000 residents. The researchers found that nonfatal shootings across Baltimore’s neighborhoods were unevenly distributed.

To determine levels of historical redlining in each census tract, they examined the 1937 Baltimore Home Owners’ Loan Corporation map, which designated specific areas—many of which were historically Black neighborhoods—as “hazardous” for investment. The researchers then calculated what are known as Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) scores, a measure that factors in geographic and social polarization. These researchers used this measure to quantify the concentration of households in census tracts that are most socioeconomically advantaged—non-Hispanic white households with an income over $100,000—versus most socioeconomically disadvantaged—non-Hispanic Black households with incomes below the federal poverty line of $25,000.

These scores were used to identify contemporary levels of racialized economic segregation in each census tract, utilizing the median household income data from the 2019 Census survey.

The researchers categorized 149 census tracts in Baltimore into four groups of neighborhoods based on their rates of both historical redlining and contemporary racialized economic segregation. Sustained advantaged neighborhoods had low rates of historical redlining and high ICE scores, indicating high, contemporary socioeconomic status and low segregation. Sustained doubly disadvantaged neighborhoods had high rates of historical redlining, high segregation, and low ICE scores.

Out of the 149 tracts, 38 percent were doubly disadvantaged over a sustained period and 20 percent were classified as sustained advantaged. The researchers observed that in sustained disadvantaged neighborhoods, 28 residents out of 10,000 experienced nonfatal shootings each year compared with 4 residents in sustained advantaged neighborhoods. This represents 24 more nonfatal shootings per 10,000 residents per year in sustained disadvantaged neighborhoods versus sustained advantaged neighborhoods.

“There is a pernicious pathway from structural racism to the devastating health consequences of gun violence in Black communities,” says Carl Latkin, PhD, vice chair of the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society and the paper’s senior author. “This dynamic is part of a feedback loop of disinvestment, poverty, and violence that should be addressed by enacting meaningful gun control policies and investing in Black urban communities.”

“An intersectional analysis of historical and contemporary structural racism on non-fatal shootings in Baltimore, Maryland” was written by Mudia Uzzi, Kyle Aune, Lea Marineau, Forrest Jones, Lorraine Dean, John Jackson, and Carl Latkin.

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JOURNAL

Injury Prevention

ARTICLE TITLE

An intersectional analysis of historical and contemporary structural racism on non-fatal shootings in Baltimore, Maryland