Will the improvement of technical environment help promote the adoption of organic fertilizer and biopesticides among farmers?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HIGHER EDUCATION PRESS

 

IMAGE: NONE view more 

CREDIT: HAOYUE YANG , TING MENG , WOJCIECH J. FLORKOWSKI

China has scored consecutive good harvests for years running, but there has been a problem of agricultural production that emphasizes weight rather than quality. The main manifestation is the long-term and high-intensity use of land resources and the massive application of mineral fertilizers and pesticides to meet the demand for increased production. This rough production method has induced a serious problem of agricultural surface pollution, which seriously restricts the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture. Promoting the transformation of agriculture to green development and achieving sustainable agricultural development has increasingly become a crucial part of China’s agricultural supply-side structural reform. As one of the green production technologies, the application of organic fertilizer and biopesticides can effectively replace mineral fertilizers and pesticides, and improve the quality, efficiency and competitiveness of green agricultural development. Despite the large potential, the current adoption of organic fertilizer and biopesticides among farmers is relatively low. Good practice dictates that the promotion of technology is inseparable from the excellent attributes of the technology itself and the matching technical environment. The role of the technical environment is critical to the promotion of agricultural technology application. It is both a vital carrier for farmer technology adoption as well as a constraint, and guides farmer choices. It is imperative to investigate the influence of technical environment on farmers’ organic fertilizer and biopesticides adoption behavior, but it has not been effectively explored.

Associate Professor Ting Meng from China Agricultural University, as well as her research teams, examined how technical environment influences farmers’ adoption behavior of organic fertilizer and biopesticides in Heilongjiang Province, China. Based on a survey of 1282 farmers, bivariate probit model was applied to comprehensively analyze the impact of technical environment on farmers’ organic fertilizer and biopesticides adoption behavior and the potential for improvement, and further discussed the differences in the impact of technical environment on the technology adoption behavior among different groups of farmers.

To start with, the study found that farmers adoption of organic fertilizer and biopesticides was significantly and positively correlated. In addition, the study also showed that the technical environment had a significant positive effect on farmers’ adoption of organic fertilizer and biopesticides. Compared to farmers who have not received technical training, the probability that technical training recipients will use of organic fertilizer and biopesticides increased by 2.5% and 1.3%, respectively. Farmers who perceived the new technologies were easily accessible in their location have 3.4% and 1.2% higher probabilities of using organic fertilizer and biopesticides, respectively, than farmers holding opposite views. And exchanging information about production technologies with others usually increased the likelihood of adopting organic fertilizers by 6.2%. Last but not least, the study noted that the role of technical environment variables differed significantly among different farmer groups. Technical training promoted the adoption of biopesticides among farmers operating farms of different sizes. Moreover, technical information obtained through an exchange with family and friends appears to significantly increase the adoption of organic fertilizer and biopesticides among small-scale farmers. Technical training is an important factor that can influence the use of organic fertilizer among large-scale farmers. Family and friends as a source of technical information can effectively promote the adoption of organic fertilizer among farmers with a varied dependence on income from farming.

This research sheds light on how the government can formulate relevant policies to promote promoting organic fertilizer and biopesticides. For future promotion efforts, three aspects can be helpful to improve farmers adoption behavior: bundling related green technologies, optimizing the technical environment, and developing differentiated promotion policies. Firstly, bundling the organic fertilizer and biopesticides for promotion can be effective. The actual adoption promotion program of organic fertilizer and biopesticides should guide farmers in their adoption choices by stressing the enhanced effect of the combination of both categories of technology on increasing yields and incomes. Secondly, improving the matching degree of technical environment and technical attributes is recommended. From one perspective, it is necessary to vigorously design and implement agricultural technology training for farmers to improve the matching of technical environment and technical attributes. From another perspective, it is also essential to reinforce the information network facilitating the exchange of agricultural production technology information. Local government is required to pay full attention to the vital contribution of rural information networks. To expand limited information sources on agricultural technology, the government can consider to build a public information exchange and mutual assistance e-platforms led by village cadres, agricultural specialists, farm experts and other professionals. Also, due to the significance of the exchange of information among family and neighbors in the diffusion of information in rural areas, it is indispensable to cultivate and support farm demonstrations of adoption of organic fertilizer and biopesticides, so as to normalize information channels for farmers. Thirdly, differentiation of promotion policies targeting farmer groups should be considered. Different groups of farmers may have heterogeneous agricultural business goals and motivations to use technology. Consequently, it is necessary to recognize the presence of various farmer groups before implementing diversified and differentiated policy tools, and incentives encouraging the adoption of new, environmentally-friendly agricultural technologies.

This investigation not only provides an essential realistic reference for the reduction and substitution of mineral fertilizers and synthetic pesticides in Heilongjiang Province, China, but also has implications for developing countries facing similar challenges in the transformation to green development of agriculture.

This study has been published on the Journal of Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering in 2023, DOI: 10.15302/J-FASE-2023482.

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About Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering

Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering (FASE) is an international journal, which is aimed to publish papers that advance the understanding of scientific, technological/engineering, socioeconomic, institutional/policy and management factors that drive current and future agricultural productivity and sustainability. Our goal is to use FASE as a platform to foster scientific information flow, stimulate transdisciplinary inquiries that have strong multi-disciplinary connections, and cultivate research and idea exchanges that address agricultural sustainability challenges regionally and globally.

FASE is an open-access journal published quarterly with no page charges. Contributions may include cutting-edge research, science news, commentaries, perspectives, or reviews. In addition to publishing regular review and research articles, the journal also publishes ‘Hot Topic’ issues that focus on strategically selected subject matter of high impact, or emerging concerns to address future agricultural development pathways at regional and global levels, and are guest-edited by scientists in their areas of research. Proposals for special issues are welcome and can be submitted any time.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

IMPACTS OF TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT ON THE ADOPTION OF ORGANIC FERTILIZERS AND BIOPESTICIDES AMONG FARMERS: EVIDENCE FROM HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA

First ever sturgeon to be found in Africa

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH

 

VIDEO: FIRST EVER STURGEON TO BE FOUND IN AFRICA view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH

A fossil of a ‘royal fish’ - estimated to be over 66 million years old - is the first ever to be found in Africa. 

Sturgeon have historically been found in the cooler waters of the Northern Hemisphere, excluding Africa, but this specimen was discovered in Morocco by a University of Portsmouth palaeontologist. 

The discovery of this fossil in Africa is particularly significant because it is the first of its kind to be found on the continent, suggesting that sturgeons were once more widespread than previously thought.

Professor David Martill noticed the fossil when he was visiting a well-known Moroccan fossil site during a field trip last November. He said: “I found a piece of rock with bucklers, the bony external plates found on these heavily armoured fish, and I knew straight away it was a sturgeon.

“It was a surprising discovery because all sturgeon species have been exclusively found in the Northern Hemisphere in the past. They’ve been located in North America, Europe, Russian Asia, Chinese Asia, but never in South America, Australia, Africa or India, which are the land masses that made up Gondwana, a supercontinent that existed around 336 million years ago and began breaking up around 150 million years ago.”

Sturgeons have long been valued for their meat and row, which are eaten as caviar. But as a result of overfishing, along with habitat loss, many species are critically endangered. And several are on the verge of extinction in the wild.

Professor Martill said: “Russian beluga caviar is one of the most expensive in the world. Little did we know that at one time an extremely rare African sturgeon could have been a source of this delicacy!”

Sturgeon are often regarded as a living fossil because their ancestors date back to the same time that dinosaurs roamed, over 200 million years ago. They can grow up to seven metres in length and reach a weight of 1.5 tonnes, although such sizes are exceedingly rare today.

In 1324 King Edward II declared them to be royal fish and any found in the waters around England and Wales are technically still owned by the British monarchy, along with whales and dolphins. 

Professor Martill added: “The very first sturgeons appear in the fossil record in the late Triassic period in China. But the oldest true sturgeon ever discovered is probably a specimen in the Steve Etches collection from Dorset’s Jurassic Coast in England, which is mentioned in a book Steve and I wrote about fossils in the Kimmeridge Clay Formation. 

“This new Moroccan species complicates models of the location of the origin of this important group of fish that is typically so widespread in the Northern Hemisphere.”

The specimen is now in the collection of the University King Hassan II, Casablanca. The paper is published in Cretaceous Research.

ENDS 

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JOURNAL

Cretaceous Research

DOI

10.1016/j.cretres.2023.105546 

ARTICLE TITLE

A sturgeon (Actinopterygii, Acipenseriformes) from the Upper Cretaceous of Africa

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STURGEON 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for FOSSIL FISH 

Chemist Deborah Myers recognized as a pioneering woman in fuel cell research

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: DEBORAH MYERS. view more 

CREDIT: (IMAGE BY ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY).

Myers is driving discovery in fuel cell research using advanced techniques and capabilities at Argonne.

Chemist Deborah Myers of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory was recognized as a pioneering woman in the field of fuel cell research in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.

The article, titled ​“The 2022 applied physics by pioneering women: a roadmap,” is intended to ​“celebrate women’s accomplishments, highlight established and early career researchers enlarging the boundaries in their respective fields, and promote increased visibility for the impact women have on applied physics research.”

The roadmap recognizes Myers’ contributions to fuel cell research and development. Specifically, she was a pioneer in using advanced techniques such as synchrotron X-ray scattering to study polymer electrolyte fuel cells.

“My Argonne colleagues and I were the first to use X-ray scattering to understand the performance degradation due to the growth of nanoparticle catalysts in an operating polymer electrolyte fuel cell.” — Argonne chemist Deborah Myers

Such fuel cells are attractive as alternatives to conventional power systems for transportation, portable power and stationary applications. They can convert the chemical energy of hydrogen into electricity with no on-board undesirable emissions and high efficiency. What’s more, hydrogen for the fuel cells can be produced from water by electrolysis, a technology Myers is also studying. Nanoparticle catalysts are used in these fuel cells and in water electrolyzers to drive the reaction of hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity and water and to drive the reverse reaction to produce hydrogen.

“My Argonne colleagues and I were the first to use X-ray scattering to understand the performance degradation due to the growth of nanoparticle catalysts in an operating polymer electrolyte fuel cell,” Myers said. ​“We used the world-class beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source to examine the growth of nanoparticles over time and how different cell conditions affected this process.” The Advanced Photon Source is a DOE Office of Science user facility located at Argonne.

The data collected through these experiments led to the development of stable fuel cell catalysts that were incorporated into such technology as hydrogen fuel cell cars.

Myers joined Argonne in 1989 as a postdoctoral appointee in the Chemical Technology division’s Aqueous Corrosion group. Following her postdoctoral appointment, she joined the division’s Fuel Cell section where she worked on a variety of projects related to materials development and characterization to improve the performance and durability of fuel cell and hydrogen production systems.

Myers is currently the leader of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Materials group within Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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DOI

10.1088/1361-6463/ac82f9 

Chemists tackle the tough challenge of recycling mixed plastics

New chemical strategy delivers universal dynamic crosslinkers into mixed plastics streams

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: EUGENE CHEN, UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY AT COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY view more 

CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Plastics are everywhere in our daily lives, but not all plastics are created equal ­– far from it.

Take, for instance, polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic used to make soda bottles and clothing fibers. Then there’s high-density polyethylene, from which shampoo bottles, milk jugs and cutting boards are derived. Don’t forget polystyrene for packaging, or low-density polyethylene, which gives us cling wrap and grocery bags.

All of these are plastics, which are the most widely used types of polymers – macromolecules made of repeating units of small molecules called monomers. Post-consumer plastics are almost always collected as a mixed stream of waste, and products are often manufactured from two or more types of plastics.

The bad news is that these items, though all “plastics,” are chemically and physically incompatible, and there’s no good industrial method for reusing or re-processing them into other useful products. That’s why most of those “recyclables” you’re throwing into bins every week are going to a landfill. Even after careful sorting and separation into individual plastics, mechanical recycling usually yields inferior products, termed down-cycling.

Polymer chemists at Colorado State University have long been leaders in finding ways to tackle the environmental problems humans have created with plastics waste. Now, they’ve come up with fundamental new chemistry that seeds a creative solution to the challenge of recycling mixed-use plastics.

Led by University Distinguished Professor Eugene Chen in the Department of Chemistry, and Tomislav Rovis and Sanat Kumar, professors at Columbia University (Rovis was formerly a faculty member at CSU), the team has devised a new chemical strategy that delivers specifically designed small molecules called universal dynamic crosslinkers into mixed plastic streams. These crosslinkers transform a former muck of unmixable materials into a viable new set of polymers, which can be turned into new, higher-value, re-processable materials, a process known as upcycling. Their work is published in the journal Nature.

Dynamic crosslinkers

When heated and processed together with the dynamic crosslinkers added in small amounts, the mixed plastics are made compatible with each other through in-situ formation of a new material, called a multiblock copolymer.

Kumar likened the block copolymers to soap molecules, which make water compatible with oily dirt molecules. “In a similar way, these new types of dynamically formed ‘soaps,’ i.e. the block copolymers, compatibilize mixed plastics and make them usable as a new kind of material with useful properties.”

This new method of upcycling, which does not involve deconstructing or reconstructing any of the original polymers, introduces a potential solution for recapturing materials and energy endowed in post-consumer mixed plastics that typically end up in landfills.

The team designed their crosslinkers and tested them on a variety of plastics, including samples of mixed polyethylene Ziploc bags and polylactide cups without prior purification or removal of additives or dyes, which are typically present in post-consumer plastic products. They combined their experiments with modeling studies to verify that the crosslinkers induce the formation of new multiblock copolymers.

“The system is so efficient, it compatibilizes three different polymers into a single new material,” Rovis said.

Multiple use cycles

The researchers posit that their new strategy could help achieve the ultimate goal of reusing mixed plastic waste over multiple use cycles, Chen said.

“A key barrier is cost; we are talking about millions of tons of plastic waste, and you have to consider how many of these dynamic crosslinkers you need, although we currently need only less than 5% of the weight of the plastics in our upcycling process. Like many fundamental discoveries made in history, practical obstacles exist at the very beginning, but we are very excited about future potential.”

The work was done at CSU and was supported by the Department of Energy’s BOTTLE Consortium and Basic Energy Sciences Program.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-05858-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamic crosslinking compatibilizes immiscible mixed plastics

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Apr-2023

AMERIKA GUN FETISH KILLS

Gun deaths more likely in small towns than major cities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Contrary to popular belief, firearm deaths in the U.S. are statistically more likely in small towns, not major cities, according to new research. Across the country, gun suicides are more common than gun homicides, and gun suicides are largely responsible for an increase in gun deaths over the past few decades, the study also finds.

The analysis of two decades of U.S. mortality data was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of California, Davis, and appears in the journal JAMA Surgery.

“Our study has found that the divide in total intentional firearm deaths between urban and rural counties is increasing, with rural counties bearing more of the burden. In the 2000s, the two most rural county types had statistically more firearm deaths per capita than any other county type, and by the 2010s, the most urban counties—cities—were the safest in terms of intentional firearm death risk,” the authors write. 

“Despite the pervasive nature of gun violence, high rates of gun homicide in urban centers have been the sole focus of many policymakers and used as justification to loosen gun laws, when in fact gun violence is an issue in counties of all sizes,” the authors add.  

More About the Findings

Gun suicides outnumber gun homicides each year in the U.S., and the risk of gun suicides in the most rural counties exceeds the risk of gun homicides in the most urban counties.

Between 2001 and 2010, the two most rural counties had higher total firearm death rates than the most urban counties. The most rural counties had a 25 percent higher overall firearm death rate than the most urban counties, a 54 percent higher gun suicide death rate, and a 50 percent lower gun homicide death rate compared with the most urban counties.

Previous research from the 1990s found that there was no difference in total intentional firearm deaths between the most urban and rural counties in the 1990s. The current study finds that the divide in total intentional firearm deaths between urban and rural counties is increasing, with rural counties bearing a great deal more of the burden.

The researchers based their findings on an analysis of multiple cause-of-death data files from the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Vital Statistics System over two decades, from the beginning of 2001 to the end of 2020.

The study’s authors are Paul M. Reeping, PhD (University of California, Davis; previously Columbia Mailman); Allison Mak, MD (University of Pennsylvania); Charles C. Branas, PhD (Columbia Mailman); Ariana N. Gobaud, MPH (Columbia Mailman); and Michael L. Nance, MD (University of Pennsylvania). Multiple authors are also part of the Columbia Scientific Union for the Reduction of Gun Violence (SURGE).

Funding was provided by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (R49CE003094). The authors declare no conflicts.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Surgery

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Firearm Death Rates in Rural vs Urban US Counties

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Apr-2023

Three US regions hit the hardest by deaths of despair since 2010

Co-occurring clusters of suicide, overdose, and liver disease mortalities identified in the US west, southeast, and Appalachia/rust belt, report investigators in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELSEVIER

 

IMAGE: COUNTY RELATIVE RISK AND GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION OF SPACE-TIME CO-OCCURRING CLUSTERS OF DEATHS OF DESPAIR IN THE UNITED STATES, 2000-2019. view more 

CREDIT: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Ann Arbor, April 26, 2023 – A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, identified three overlapping clusters of deaths of despair (i.e., suicide, overdose, and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis deaths) across the United States since 2010. Noting the sharp increase in deaths of despair documented in recent years, the investigators analyzed mortality data for individuals 10 years of age or older from 2000-2019 to detect geographic and temporal patterns. The findings showed six suicide clusters, four overdose clusters, nine alcohol-related liver disease clusters, which coincided in three large areas of the US west, southeast, and Appalachia/rust belt.

“Knowledge of geographic areas where suicide, overdose, and liver disease deaths are higher than expected, and where they coincide over multiple years, can help identify persistent clusters of deaths of despair that warrant public health intervention and continued or enhanced surveillance. Understanding which communities are at risk for co-occurring deaths of despair can assist public health entities to advocate for resources and funding to address the burden of mortality,” explained lead investigator Danielle L. Steelesmith, PhD, Center for Suicide Prevention and Research, The Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.

Overall, mortality rates in the US have been increasing since hitting an all-time low in 2014. Life expectancy stopped trending upward in this period. These developments correspond with the surge in deaths of despair, which increased from 22.7 to 45.8 per 100,000 persons from 2000 to 2017. Overdoses increased the most, but suicides and liver deaths were also on the rise.

Little research has examined how the different categories of deaths of despair map out geographically and within specific timeframes. This project is the first to employ the relatively new and innovative methodology of co-occurring clusters to better understand how the different components interact and cluster together. The clusters identified for each type of death align with the times and places noted in prior research. When the specific clusters were mapped out together, three large intersecting areas stood out, in the west (counties in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico), southeast (counties in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois) and throughout Appalachia/rust belt regions (counties in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and western New York).

“Our findings highlight specific regions and counties at increased risk for these deaths that can be analyzed further to improve our understanding of why deaths of despair have been increasing. In addition, we identified certain areas of concern outside of the co-occurring clusters, such as a growing suicide rate in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, an excess of liver disease deaths in Rhode Island, and an alarming number of overdoses in eastern Oklahoma. These regions would benefit from more targeted interventions and prevention efforts,” added Dr. Steelesmith.

 

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.amepre.2023.02.020 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Spatiotemporal Patterns of Deaths of Despair Across the United States, 20002019

Social vulnerability has direct link to suicide risk, study shows

Statistical analysis shows that measures of social determinants of health are associated with higher rates of suicide at the county level in the US, providing the opportunity to intervene and prevent deaths.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

More than 45,000 Americans died by suicide in 2020, a 30% increase over 2000, making it the 12th leading cause of death in the U.S. Studies have shown that the social and environmental factors where people live, like exposure to violence and crime, access to quality health care, food insecurity, job opportunities, and air pollution, are connected to suicide rates.

Now, a new research study from the University of Chicago provides more statistical evidence that social determinants of health are tightly linked to suicide risk. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that the suicide rate nearly doubled between the least socially vulnerable counties and the most socially vulnerable, clearly showing that programs designed to address health and economic disparities in these areas could prevent needless deaths.

“A huge factor in the rate of suicide in the United States is social vulnerability of the community that you live in,” said Robert Gibbons, PhD, the Blum-Reise Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at UChicago and senior author of the study. “A doubling in the suicide rate is an earthquake. It’s enormous. If you can stratify risk and know that people in a community are going to be that much more at risk, that’s huge because you can target interventions to those communities.”

The study began as a class project for a course Gibbons teaches in statistical applications for graduate students and undergrads. A previous class looked at associations between lithium in ground water and diagnoses of bipolar disorder and dementia in the U.S., which was published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2018.

The new project built upon recent work published in Health Services Research by Loren Saulsberry, PhD, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences, Diane Lauderdale, Professor and Chair of Public Health Sciences, Gibbons, and others, that developed a new metric for measuring social determinants of health called the Social Vulnerability Metric (SVM). The SVM pulls in more than 200 variables from 17 publicly available, nationally representative databases focusing on demographics like age, education, employment status, housing and transportation, and health insurance coverage. The resulting model produces a score that summarizes a person’s vulnerability due to social risk factors and provides a measure of how able one might be to weather different events or cope with long-term challenges. The SVM is highly correlated with mortality rates at the county level, and it tracked with zip code level outcomes like COVID-19 mortality and vaccination rates, and emergency room visits for asthma.

Gibbons’ students divvied up the statistical work to see how the SVM was associated with suicide rates, using publicly available data on deaths by suicide provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for 2016 to 2020. Shuhan Liu, who is a master’s student in statistics at UChicago and recently accepted in the doctoral program in statistics at Northwestern University, led the analytical work, and Samuel Morin, a fourth-year undergraduate at UChicago, spearheaded work to extract data from the CDC sources.

The team calculated SVM scores for U.S. counties and divided them into 10 tiers from the least vulnerable counties to the most. They saw an 82% increase in suicide rate from the lowest to highest tier, as measured by the SVM. The team also evaluated another tool developed by the CDC called the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), that measures the impact of social determinants of health. There was a 56% increase in suicide rate from the lowest to highest risk group according to this measure.

Gibbons said this shows an undeniable link between the impact of these factors and suicide. “We didn’t want to make any assumptions that the social vulnerability metric and its relationship to suicide was a simple linear function in our analysis of the data, but it turns out the higher the SVM, the higher the rate of suicide.”

The research team proposes several common-sense public health and economic policies that could reduce suicide rates by targeting social vulnerability in communities, such as improving access to mental health services by opening more clinics and changing the availability of insurance coverage and cost for these services. Social isolation is another factor that contributes to vulnerability, and community programs, shared public spaces, and volunteer services could build stronger social networks. Increasing access to quality health care in general would also make a difference, particularly in rural areas by expanding Medicaid coverage and increasing the number of health care workers in underserved areas. It's a laundry list of solutions to address a host of social and health disparities, given enough support.

“All of these are major factors in the social vulnerability metric, and we can improve that by improving the quality and access to mental and general physical health care,” Gibbons said. “These are malleable social features. We don’t have to wait for a social revolution to invoke change.”

The study, “Social Vulnerability and Risk of Suicide in US Adults, 2016-2020,” was published in JAMA Network Open. Additional authors include Natalie M. Bourand, Isabella L. DeClue Gustavo E. Delgado, Jiahe Fan, Sabrina K. Foster, Maaz S. Imam, Coulter B. Johnston, Franklin B. Joseph, Yihao Lu, Ujjwal Sehrawat, Li Chun Su, Ketaki Tavan, Kelly L. Zhang, Xingruo Zhang, and Loren Saulsberry from UChicago.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.9995 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Social Vulnerability and Risk of Suicide in US Adults, 2016-2020

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Apr-2023

Democrats, urban dwellers, and 30-40-year-olds more likely to purchase first firearms during the pandemic

Mason researchers shed new light on the changing demographic of firearm purchasers in response to the pandemic and highlight the need for more effective interventions to reduce firearm-related violence, morbidity, and mortality

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Firearm sales increased to approximately 2.5 million in March 2020, an estimated 85% increase compared to March 2019. Firearm-related injuries and deaths also increased during the pandemic. What drove people to purchase firearms (whether a previous firearm owner or not) in response to the pandemic had not been previously studied at the time of the research. 

A new survey conducted across the United States led by Professor in George Mason University’s College of Public Health Amira Roess and faculty in the Department of Psychology, Leah Adams and Keith Renshaw, and student investigator Laura Henderson, shed new light on the changing demographic of firearm purchasers in response to the pandemic. The survey found that younger individuals (ages 35-40) were more likely to report purchasing a firearm for the first time due to the pandemic, as were individuals living in urban areas. They were also more likely to be Democrats, which had not previously been reported. Prior to the pandemic, American firearm owners were more likely to be male and 65 years and older, live in a rural setting, and be Republican. 

“Understanding the changing demographic of who is purchasing firearms can prepare public health, law enforcement, and other responders for a possible surge in firearm-related societal impacts,” said Roess. “Our findings suggest that health education interventions that promote secure firearm storage are needed for new firearm owners and for firearm owners who live with children and others. This is a critical need especially given the reality that the United States does not have policies, nor will likely have any in the near future, to effectively reduce firearm-related violence, morbidity, and mortality.” 

The survey found that Americans who purchased firearms during the pandemic, regardless of prior ownership, were more likely to report stockpiling behavior. Additionally, the survey found that keeping children at home and staying home in response to the pandemic were associated with pandemic firearm purchasing among both prior owners and new owners. The authors note that this is concerning because having children and firearms present in the same household has previously been linked to a significantly greater risk of firearm-related death. 

Researchers surveyed 3,853 online participants between December 2020 and January 2021. Quotas were set to match the U.S. Census Bureau’s Voting and Registration Supplement to the Current Population Survey parameters for age, gender, race, educational attainment, census region, and Hispanic ethnicity. With the results, researchers compared demographic, pandemic-related behaviors, emotional response to COVID-19, and other determinants of those who purchased firearms in response to the pandemic with those who did not.  

Predictors of firearm purchasing during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States: A cross-sectional study was published online in Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection in April 2023. 

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JOURNAL

Public Health

DOI

10.1016/j.puhe.2023.04.004 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Predictors of firearm purchasing during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States: A cross-sectional study

Exposure to neighborhood racialized economic segregation and reinjury and violence perpetration among survivors of violent injuries

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: This study found that living in a more economically deprived and socially marginalized area was associated with increased risk of using violence against others. The finding suggests that interventions may need to include investments in neighborhoods with the highest levels of violence to help reduce downstream transmission of violence. 

Authors: Elizabeth C. Pino, Ph.D., of the Boston University School of Medicine, is the corresponding author. 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.8404)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.8404?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=042623

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open