A roadmap to help AI technologies speak African languages

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

From text-generating ChatGPT to voice-activated Siri, artificial intelligence-powered tools are designed to aid our everyday life — as long as you speak a language they support. These technologies are out of reach for billions of people who don’t use English, French, Spanish or other mainstream languages, but researchers in Africa are looking to change that. In a study published August 11 in the journal Patterns, scientists draw a roadmap to develop better AI-driven tools for African languages.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that there are limited AI tools for African languages,” says first author and AI researcher Kathleen Siminyu of the Masakhane Research Foundation, a grassroots network of African scientists who aim to spur accessible AI tools for those who speak African languages. “Inclusion and representation in the advancement of language technology is not a patch you put at the end — it’s something you think about up front.”

Many of these tools rely on a field of AI called natural language processing, a technology that enables computers to understand human languages. Computers can master a language through training, where they pick up on patterns in speech and text data. However, they fail when data in a particular language is scarce, as seen in African languages. To fill the gap, the research team first identified key players involved in developing African language tools and explored their experience, motivation, focuses, and challenges. These people include writers and editors who create and curate content, as well as linguists, software engineers, and entrepreneurs who are crucial in establishing the infrastructure for language tools.

Interviews with the key players revealed four central themes to consider in designing African language tools:

• First, bearing the impact of colonization, Africa is a multilingual society where African language is central to people’s cultural identities and is key to societal participation in education, politics, economy, and more.
• Second, there is a need to support African content creation. This includes building basic tools such as dictionaries, spell checkers, and keyboards for African languages and removing financial and administrative barriers for translating government communications to multiple national languages, which includes African languages.
• Third, the creation of African language technologies will benefit from collaborations between linguistics and computer science. Also, there should be focus on creating tools that are human centered, which help individuals unlock greater potential.
• Fourth, developers should be mindful of communities and ethical practices during the collection, curation, and use of data.

“There’s a growing number of organizations working in this space, and this study allows us to coordinate efforts in building impactful language tools,” says Siminyu. “The findings highlight and articulate what the priorities are, in terms of time and financial investments.”

Next, the team plans to expand the study and include more participants to understand the communities that AI language technologies may impact. They will also address barriers that may hinder people’s access to the technology. The team hopes their study could serve as a roadmap to help develop a wide range of language tools, from translation services to misinformation-catching content moderators. The findings may also pave the way to preserve indigenous African languages.

“I would love for us to live in a world where Africans can have as good quality of life and access to information and opportunities as somebody fluent in English, French, Mandarin, or other languages,” says Siminyu.

###

UNESCO and the Knowledge for All Foundation supported this study through funding and administrative support.

Patterns, Siminyu et al. “Consultative engagement of stakeholders toward a roadmap for Africa language technologies.” https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(23)00189-7

Related editorial:

Patterns, Wang "Different natural languages, equal importance" https://cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(23)00190-3

Patterns (@Patterns_CP), published by Cell Press, is a data science journal publishing original research focusing on solutions to the cross-disciplinary problems that all researchers face when dealing with data, as well as articles about datasets, software code, algorithms, infrastructures, etc., with permanent links to these research outputs. Visit: https://www.cell.com/patterns. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

---

JOURNAL

Patterns

DOI

10.1016/j.patter.2023.100820 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Consultative Engagement of Stakeholders Towards a Roadmap for African Language Technologies

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Aug-2023

Turning ChatGPT into a ‘chemistry assistant’

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

 

IMAGE: THIS ILLUSTRATION SHOWS CHATGPT AND CHEMISTS TEAMING UP TO GLEAN NEW INSIGHTS ON HOW TO MAKE MOFS, WHICH COULD HAVE APPLICATIONS IN CLEAN ENERGY. view more 

CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 2023, DOI: 10.1021/JACS.3C05819

Developing new materials requires significant time and labor, but some chemists are now hopeful that artificial intelligence (AI) could one day shoulder much of this burden. In a new study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a team prompted a popular AI model, ChatGPT, to perform one particularly time-consuming task: searching scientific literature. With that data, they built a second tool, a model to predict experimental results.   

Reports from previous studies offer a vast trove of information that chemists need, but finding and parsing the most relevant details can be laborious. For example, those interested in designing highly porous, crystalline metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — which have potential applications in areas such as clean energy — must sort through hundreds of scientific papers describing a variety of experimental conditions. Researchers have previously attempted to coax AI to take over this task; however, the language processing models they used required significant technical expertise, and applying them to new topics meant changing the program. Omar Yaghi and colleagues wanted to see if the next generation of language models, which includes ChatGPT, could offer a more accessible, flexible way to extract information.

To analyze text from scientific papers, the team gave ChatGPT prompts, or instructions, guiding it through three processes intended to identify and summarize the experimental information the manuscripts contained. The researchers carefully constructed these prompts to minimize the model’s tendency to make up responses, a phenomenon known as hallucination, and to ensure the best responses possible.

When tested on 228 papers describing MOF syntheses, this system extracted more than 26,000 factors relevant for making roughly 800 of these compounds. With these data, the team trained a separate AI model to predict the crystalline state of MOFs based on these conditions. And finally, to make the data more user friendly, they built a chatbot to answer questions about it. The team notes that, unlike previous AI-based efforts, this one does not require expertise in coding. What’s more, scientists can shift its focus simply by adjusting the narrative language in the prompts. This new system, which they dub the “ChatGPT Chemistry Assistant,” could also be useful in other fields of chemistry, according to the researchers.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Kavli ENSI Graduate Student Fellowship and the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet.

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

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

Follow us: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

---

JOURNAL

Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI

10.1021/jacs.3c05819 

ARTICLE TITLE

ChatGPT Chemistry Assistant for Text Mining and the Prediction of MOF Synthesis

 

Gastrointestinal viruses all but disappeared during COVID—but surged back two years on

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY

Washington, D.C. –  Following the first stay-at-home orders issued in the U.S. to curb the spread of COVID-19, gastrointestinal viruses such as norovirus, rotavirus and adenovirus all but disappeared from California communities, and remained at very low levels for nearly 2 years. The research is published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Interestingly, these viruses surged back to pre-pandemic levels in late 2022, said Niaz Banaei, M.D., professor of Pathology and Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Stanford University, and Medical Director of Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, Stanford Health Care. “Adenovirus F40/41, the adenovirus strains most frequently associated with gastroenteritis, actually jumped to levels two-fold higher than pre-pandemic levels.” 

Banaei suspects that the surge in viral infections was enabled by the waning of collective community immunity from lack of exposure during the pandemic. “Something similar has been described for the surge in respiratory syncytial virus infections in 2022,” he said. 

To identify changes in the prevalence of gastrointestinal pathogens, the investigators compared detection rates for community acquired gastrointestinal pathogens before, during and after California’s COVID-related shelter-in-place. To that end, they used a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) panel test called the BioFire FilmArray GI panel, which tests for 22 of the most common pathogens that cause diarrhea and analyzed about 18,000 tests that were taken from January 2018 to December 2022. 

The motivation for the research was the change in the rate of positives for certain pathogens during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Banaei. “It immediately became clear that the pandemic lockdown and shelter-in-place had created a natural experiment to investigate the transmission dynamics of pathogens causing gastroenteritis.” 

The research offers a unique window into the biology of gastrointestinal pathogens, raising some new research questions, said Banaei. “Why did some disappear while others persisted unaffected during lockdown? Why are some now surging to levels we haven’t seen before?” Improved understanding of these phenomena could lead to ways to interrupt pathogens’ spread, particularly in low- to middle-income countries where gastroenteritis remains a major cause of illness and death, especially among children. “It may also help us prepare for future unforeseen pandemics.”
 

###

The American Society for Microbiology is one of the largest professional societies dedicated to the life sciences and is composed of 30,000 scientists and health practitioners. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences. 

ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications, educational opportunities and advocacy efforts. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences. 

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Clinical Microbiology

Novel socio-environmental vulnerability index pinpoints sustainability issues in Brazilian river basins

The innovative approach highlights vulnerability to deforestation, fire and drought, as well as poverty. The results can help formulate public policies for sustainable development

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

 

IMAGE: WOMAN WASHING CLOTHES IN THE PARNAÍBA RIVER NEAR NAZÁRIA, PIAUÍ STATE, BRAZIL view more 

CREDIT: WILSON DIAS/AGÊNCIA BRASIL

Brazilian researchers combined environmental physical, social and economic indicators to create an index that measures a region’s vulnerability and used it to analyze the basins of the Parnaíba River and São Francisco River in the Northeast of Brazil. The index is named SEVI (for Socio-Environmental Vulnerability).

The Parnaíba and São Francisco basins are considered crucial to agricultural expansion and biodiversity conservation. They contain more than 780 municipalities and part of the semi-arid Caatinga and savanna-like Cerrado biomes, which are threatened by deforestation as well as adverse effects of climate change.

The study shows that the main obstacles to improving the socio-environmental vulnerability of the Parnaíba basin, the second largest river basin in the Northeast, are deficits in infrastructure, income, and conditions for human development, all of which impair adaptive capacity, defined by the researchers as “the ability of a system to evolve in order to accommodate environmental hazards or anthropogenic impacts”. In the São Francisco basin, the most significant causes of vulnerability are population density, soil degradation/desertification, and climate factors, especially temperature and precipitation.

These findings are reported in an article on the study published in the journal Sustainability. The authors are affiliated with the National Space Research Institute (INPE) and the National Disaster Surveillance and Early Warning Center (CEMADEN). The study was supported by FAPESP and by Forests 2020, part of the United Kingdom Space Agency’s International Partnerships Program (IPP) involving experts on forest monitoring in Indonesia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Belize, Ghana and Kenya, as well as the UK.

“The study showed that sustainable development projects should take specific characteristics of each region into consideration and brought to light the deficiencies of some public policies. We analyzed a problem that affects agricultural areas in several countries, especially in the developing world,” biologist Rita Marcia da Silva Pinto Vieira, first author of the article, told Agência FAPESP. She was at INPE when the study was conducted.

Including socio-economic indicators allowed the researchers to strengthen the argument that sustainability is not linked only to climate, environmental factors and soil degradation but also to human activity and biodiversity.

“Vulnerability indicators typically focus on one factor in isolation. By integrating environmental and socio-economic data, we showed that vulnerability has as much to do with exposure to environmental, social and political stress as it does with the system’s capacity to adapt. The index highlights areas where vulnerability is particularly acute,” said Lincoln Muniz Alves, a climatologist at INPE and penultimate author of the article.

The last author is Jean Pierre Ometto, a senior researcher in the Impact, Adaptation and Vulnerability Division of INPE’s Department of Earth Sciences (DIIAV-CGCT).

Methodology

The SEVI index resulted from a combination of indicators relating to adaptation (human development, infrastructure and income), sensitivity (days without rain, land use and cover, temperature, and soil type), and exposure (population density and soil degradation or desertification).

The methodology was based on the environmentally sensitive areas (ESA) approach developed by MEDALUS (Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use), a project conducted in eight European Union countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The indicators and overall index were weighted from very low to very high.

The area of the regions analyzed totaled about 962,000 square kilometers (km²), with a population of some 20 million, mostly urban. Sixteen million people live in the São Francisco basin. The river runs through six states from Minas Gerais to the Alagoas-Sergipe border. Four million live in the Parnaíba basin.

According to the SEVI index, vulnerability levels were “very high” and “high” in 53% of the São Francisco basin, pointing to 337,569 km² with socio-environmental fragilities, partly coinciding with desertification hotspots officially recognized by the Environment Ministry. In the Parnaíba basin, the proportion was 37% (121,990 km²).

Adaptive capacity was “very low” and “low” in 57% of the area analyzed (549,830 km²). Exposure was “very high” and “high” in 62.8% and 30.7% of the São Francisco and Parnaíba basins respectively. Sensitivity was also high in a significant proportion of both (341,726 km² and 123,666 km²). These results mainly reflected population density, soil degradation, desertification, and the number of days without rain, which directly influences the risk of wildfires during the dry season.

The authors of the article expect these problems to become steadily worse as a consequence of climate change. Previous research using global models projected a drop of 46% and 26% in streamflow in the São Francisco and Parnaíba rivers respectively in the decades ahead, and socio-environmental vulnerability is set to increase significantly, especially in areas where the population is poor, as extreme weather becomes more frequent.

Furthermore, deforestation has hit the region hard in recent years. In the Cerrado, it affected 10,689 km² in 2022, more than in any year since 2015 (11,129 km²), and in the Caatinga, it increased 25% compared with 2021, according to INPE’s monitoring program (PRODES).

This year, the number of deforestation alerts for the Cerrado jumped 35% in the first five months compared with the corresponding period of 2022, according to INPE’s early warning system (DETER).

Protected areas

The researchers also analyzed conservation units located in both basins, concluding that units in the Parnaíba basin were less vulnerable. In the São Francisco basin, 32.4% of the area (12,477 km²) was highly vulnerable within a 5 km buffer zone, indicating human pressure from deforestation and burning in fully protected areas.

On the upside, Lapa Grande State Park in Minas Gerais was the most well-preserved conservation unit in the region, with low vulnerability in 84.6% of its area.

“The study pinpointed the areas with high vulnerability and emphasized the importance of conservation units. In our recommendations, we stress that the sustainable practices used in these units can also be implemented in adjacent areas,” Alves said.

For the authors, it is critically important to extend conservation units, introduce sustainable land management practices in adjacent buffer zones, and develop strategies for the protection of ecosystem services and local vegetation.

These management practices and their modernization should be shared with farmers in the region, according to the article. Many smallholders located in the areas with high socio-environmental vulnerability lack funds, and their traditional land-use practices deplete natural resources and aggravated poverty.

Contributions

According to the authors, the information on socio-environmental vulnerability with regional characteristics provided by the SEVI index contributes to support for programs such as the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (PNA), as well as public policies aimed at rehabilitating degraded areas.

“We used specific variables for the Caatinga and Cerrado, but the methodological framework we developed for SEVI can certainly be applied elsewhere, using the peculiarities of each region and biome,” Vieira said.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

---

DOI

10.3390/su15108029 

ARTICLE TITLE

Socio-Environmental Vulnerability to Drought Conditions and Land Degradation: An Assessment in Two Northeastern Brazilian River Basins

 

Social media use interventions alleviate symptoms of depression

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Receiving therapy for problematic social media use can be effective in improving the mental wellbeing of people with depression, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

The research, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found that social media use interventions could help adults for whom social media use has become problematic or interferes with their mental health.

Problematic use is when a person’s pre-occupation with social media results in a distraction from their primary tasks and the neglect of responsibilities in other aspects of their life.

Previous research* has suggested that social media use can become problematic when it starts to interfere with a person’s daily life and leads to poor mental wellbeing, including depression, anxiety, stress and loneliness.

To address these issues, and improve users’ mental health, social media use interventions have been developed and evaluated by researchers. Such techniques include abstaining from or limiting use of social media, alongside therapy-based techniques such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

The researchers analysed 23 studies which featured participants from across the globe, between 2004 and 2022. They found that in more than a third of studies (39%), social media use interventions improved mental wellbeing.

Improvements were particularly notable in depression (low mood), as 70% of studies saw a significant improvement in depression following the intervention.

Therapy-based interventions were most effective – improving mental wellbeing in 83% of studies, compared to a 20% of studies finding an improvement where social media use was limited and 25% where social media was given up entirely.

Lead author, Dr Ruth Plackett (UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health), said: “Mental health issues are on the rise, as is the number of people who use social media.

“Health and care professionals should be aware that reducing time spent on social media is unlikely to benefit mental wellbeing on its own.

“Instead, taking a more therapy-based approach and reflecting on how and why we are interacting with social media and managing those behaviours could help improve mental health.”

Study author and GP Dr Patricia Schartau (UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health), added: “As primary care physicians, we should proactively explore social media use and its effects on mental health in patients who present with anxiety and/or low mood in order to give those patients the opportunity to benefit from treatment including some of the more effective interventions outlined in our review.”

In 2022 it was estimated that 4.59 billion people globally used at least one form of social media and the sites have dramatically changed how people communicate, form relationships and perceive each other.

While some studies report that social media can be beneficial to users and provide them with increased social support, other evidence links social media with depression, anxiety and other psychological problems – particularly in young people.

The researchers hope that their findings will help to develop guidance and recommendations for policymakers and clinicians on how best to manage problematic social media use.

However, further research is needed in order to investigate who may benefit most from social media use interventions.

Dr Plackett holds a Fellowship (award number MH013) funded by the the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Research Schools Mental Health Programme. This research is also independent research supported by the NIHR ARC North Thames. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Study limitations

Current experimental research is of low quality, with issues of selection bias making it difficult to generalise the findings.

Further experimental and longitudinal research is needed with representative samples to investigate who may benefit most from social media use interventions.

*https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248406

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Medical Internet Research

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The impact of social media use interventions on mental well-being: a systematic review, will be published in Journal of Medical Internet Research

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Aug-2023

 

Effectiveness of video gameplay restrictions questioned in new study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF YORK

Legal restrictions placed on the amount of time young people in China can play video games may be less effective than originally thought, a new study has revealed.

To investigate the effectiveness of the policy, a team of researchers led by the University of York, analysed over 7 billion hours of playtime data from tens of thousands of games, with data drawn from over two billion accounts from players in China, where legal restrictions on playtime for young people have been in place since 2019. 

The research team, however, did not find evidence of a decrease in heavy play of games after these restrictions were put in place.

The video games industry has witnessed a surge in popularity, and as many as 4 billion people are now estimated to engage in gaming worldwide each year. 

Many countries across the globe have expressed concerns about the number of hours young people spend playing video games and the potential impact of this on wellbeing. In response to these concerns, in 2019 China restricted playtime for people under 18.

China is one of the first countries to explore legal means of restricting gameplay for young people with the aim of limiting the potential risks of gaming to wellbeing, and the policy was assumed to be effective, with some bodies suggesting that it had resolved issues relating to disordered gaming.

Dr David Zendle, from the University of York’s Department of Computer Science, said: "Policymakers around the world have been discussing how to understand the impact of video gameplay, particularly on young people, for some time now, and how to ensure a healthy relationship with games. The UK government, for example, has recently issued guidelines for high quality research into gaming and wellbeing to inform future decision making. 

“The restrictions in China allowed us to look, for the first time, at the real behavioural impact of regulation on reducing the time people spent in gameplay and whether this policy had the desired effect. 

“We found no evidence of a decrease in the prevalence of heavy play and more research is needed to understand why, but the work certainly highlights that this kind of analysis can be useful for policymakers, anywhere in the world, to move forward confidently in discussions around regulations in the digital space.”

Dr Catherine Flick, from De Montfort University, said: “We hope that the work will provide a case study for understanding how a government’s policy decisions affect - or do not affect - the lives of real people on a grand scale, and form a blueprint for future data-led public policy evaluation to lead to better and more effective policymaking.”

This research represents the first time big data has been used to evaluate the effect of public policy in games. 

Leon Y. Xiao, from the IT University of Copenhagen, emphasised the importance of independent research when evaluating policymaking: “Given previous industry-affiliated claims that this policy has ‘solved video game addiction,’ it made sense in a Chinese context to consider scaling it up to other domains. In fact, the Chinese government is currently consulting on limiting screen time amongst young people by law, although parents may override those limits. 

“These results now suggest that the potential effectiveness of such policymaking could benefit from being monitored by non-industry-affiliated, independent researchers.” 

The research is published at a time when there are growing global efforts to regulate technology and its impact on society. The UK's Online Safety Bill, the European Parliament's rules on in-game purchases, and the ongoing focus on regulating social media in the USA, are current examples of how governments worldwide are seeking to address digital challenges, particularly concerning the protection of children. The research suggests a path forward for such efforts.

Professor Anders Drachen, from the University of Southern Denmark, emphasised the potential of this data-led approach in evaluating technology regulation, stating “It is now possible to tractably analyse billions of hours of digital behavioural data, which can help lead to a better understanding of how to develop effective policies around online behaviour. This study is an example of how we can use such data to assess whether a policy actually impacts citizens or companies in the way it is intended to.”

The research is published in the journal, Natural Human Behaviour. and was conducted by members of the Digital Observatory Research Cluster, a non-profit cross-institutional academic research group focused on delivering data-driven insights and observations about digital life.

---

JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

 

Research details perils of not being attractive or athletic in middle school

Growing unpopularity leads to more loneliness and alcohol misuse

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE PEER GROUP PUNISHES THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE HIGHLY VALUED TRAITS SUCH AS BEING GOOD-LOOKING OR BEING GOOD AT SPORTS. view more 

CREDIT: ALEX DOLCE, FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Despite the many changes in school culture since the 1960s, a new study reveals that some things never change: life is harder for middle school students who are not attractive and for those who are not athletic. 

As children head back to school, the first-of-its-kind longitudinal study by Florida Atlantic University helps to explain why adolescents who lack traits valued by peers are at risk for adjustment difficulties.

Results, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, show that low attractive youth and low athletic youth became increasingly unpopular over the course of a school year, leading to subsequent increases in their loneliness and alcohol misuse. Put simply, the peer group punishes those who do not have highly valued traits such as being good-looking or being good at sports.

The study put to rest stereotypes about sex differences in traits important for success with peers. For decades, it was assumed that not being athletic was particularly problematic for boys and that not being attractive was particularly problematic for girls.

The findings reveal a transformation in adolescent social culture such that the social penalties attached to being low in attractiveness or low in athleticism are no longer gender specific. Boys and girls did not differ in the extent to which unpopularity and adjustment problems flowed from low attractiveness and low athleticism. As their unpopularity grows, so do their problems.

“Children who lack the traits valued by their peers suffer from a host of adjustment difficulties, many of which stem from their deteriorating stature in the group,” said Brett Laursen, Ph.D., senior author and a professor of psychology in FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. “Children who are not attractive and children who are not athletic become increasingly unpopular. Growing marginalization, in turn, precipitates loneliness and alcohol misuse. Growing unpopularity is the key to understanding why the unattractive and the unathletic develop behavior problems. Of those who began drinking to intoxication during the course of the school year, almost two-thirds were above average in unpopularity.”  

The dangers attached to stigmatized traits were comparable for boys and girls.

“Children who are not attractive and children who are not athletic become increasingly unpopular over time, suggesting that they must endure the indignities of powerlessness to remain attached to the peer group, a position that eventually takes a toll on individual well-being,” said Mary Page James, first author and a Ph.D. student in FAU’s Department of Psychology. “Being unattractive harms the popularity of boys as much as it does that of girls, and being unathletic is an important contributor to low popularity among girls, just as it is among boys. Despite widespread public messages about body acceptance, the adolescent social world is often still quite unforgiving.”    

The study included 580 middle school students who ranged in age from 10 to 13. Participants were asked to identify classmates who best fit the following descriptors: athletic (“good at sports”), attractive (“really good looking”), and unpopular (“unpopular”). They also described how often they felt lonely and how often they drank alcohol to the point of intoxication during the past month.

Replication is a strength of the study. The same pattern of associations emerged in a heterogeneous sample of youth from a large metropolitan area in Florida and from a homogeneous sample of youth from a small community in Lithuania.

Laursen, James and study co-authors offer several strategies to help children who lack these peer-valued traits:

• For teachers, consider altering classroom norms. It may be difficult to devalue physical appearance or athletic prowess given their prevalence in popular culture, but it may be possible to boost tolerance for those who are different or to emphasize the merits of other traits. A positive classroom climate also can buffer against loneliness for at-risk youth.
• Finally, parents should provide opportunities for children to establish and maintain close friendships with well-adjusted agemates, because friends can mitigate against loneliness.

Study co-authors are Sharon Faur, a Ph.D. student in FAU’s Department of Psychology; and Goda Kaniušonytė, Ph.D., a researcher; and Rita Žukauskienė, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, both with Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Lithuania.

This project was supported by grants from the United States National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD096457) and the European Social Fund (project No 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-17-0009) under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania.

- FAU -

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

 

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

DOI

10.1007/s10964-023-01835-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Perils of Not Being Attractive or Athletic: Pathways to Adolescent Adjustment Difficulties Through Escalating Unpopularity

Rutgers study confirms link between concealed carry weapons and gun homicide rates

As the right to carry expands in several states, researchers note acute safety risks with the expansion of legal firearm ownership

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Concealed guns significantly impact homicide rates and public safety, according to a Rutgers study that found an increase in homicides based on the number of concealed carry weapons licenses issued.

 

In a new study published in the Journal of Urban Health, researchers examined the reciprocal county-level relationship between the number of concealed carry weapon licenses issued and gun homicides in 11 states between 2010 and 2019.

 

“This study takes a close look at the back-and-forth relationship between concealed carry licensing and homicides over a relatively long period of time,” said Daniel Semenza, director of interpersonal research of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and co-author of the study.

 

“We found no evidence that homicides are reduced where there are more concealed carry licenses,” said Semenza. “On the contrary, we found that more concealed carry permits issued in a given county are linked to a greater number of homicides in that county the following year.”

 

Semenza, an assistant professor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health at the Rutgers School of Public Health and in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Camden, studied 832 counties in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Utah from 2010 through 2019. Researchers analyzed the number of concealed carry licenses in each county alongside the number of firearm homicides per county year.

 

“We take this all of this to mean that people aren’t using concealed guns in public defensively to thwart potential homicides,” said Semenza. “Rather, having more guns in public through concealed carry appears to be more dangerous and leads to higher homicide numbers. Policy makers need to seriously consider the dangers of allowing more guns in more public places, understanding that an increasingly armed society does not necessarily make us any safer.”

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Urban Health

DOI

10.1007/s11524-023-00759-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Relationship between Concealed Carry Licenses and Firearm Homicide in the US: A Reciprocal County-Level Analysis

Making molecules dance to our tune reveals what drives their first move

Peer-Reviewed Publication

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

 

IMAGE: AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROBING PROCESS view more 

CREDIT: SAMUEL PERRETT

Bringing ultrafast physics to structural biology has revealed the dance of molecular ‘coherence’ in unprecedented clarity.

How molecules change when they react to stimuli such as light is fundamental in biology, for example during photosynthesis. Scientists have been working to unravel the workings of these changes in several fields, and by combining two of these, researchers have paved the way for a new era in understanding the reactions of protein molecules fundamental for life.

The large international research team, led by Professor Jasper van Thor from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, report their results today in the journal Nature Chemistry.

Crystallography is a powerful technique in structural biology for taking ‘snapshots’ of how molecules are arranged. Over several large-scale experiments and years of theory work, the team behind the new study integrated this with another technique that maps vibrations in the electronic and nuclear configuration of molecules, called spectroscopy.

Demonstrating the new technique at powerful X-ray laser facilities around the world, the team showed that when molecules within the protein that they studied are optically excited, their very first movements are the result of ‘coherence’. This shows a vibrational effect, rather than motion for the functional part of the biological reaction that follows.

This is important distinction, shown experimentally for the first time, highlights how the physics of spectroscopy can bring new insights to the classical crystallography methods of structural biology.

Professor van Thor said: “Every process that sustains life is carried out by proteins, but understanding how these complex molecules do their jobs depends on learning the arrangement of their atoms – and how this structure changes – as they react.

“Using methods from spectroscopy, we can now see ultrafast molecular movements that belong to so-called coherence process directly in pictorial form by solving their crystal structures. We now have the tools to understand, and even control, molecular dynamics on extremely fast timescales at near-atomic resolution.

“We hope by sharing the methodological details of this new technique we can encourage researchers in both the fields of time-resolved structural biology as well as ultrafast laser spectroscopy to explore the crystallographic structures of coherences.”

Combining techniques

Combining the techniques required the use of X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) facilities, including the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in the USA, the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser (SACLA) in Japan, the PAL-XFEL in Korea and recently also the European XFEL in Hamburg.

Members of the team have been working since 2009 at XFELs to use and understand the motions of reacting proteins on the femtosecond (one millionth of one billionth of a second) timescale, known as femtochemistry. Following excitation by a laser pulse, ‘snapshots’ of the structure are taken using X-rays.

Early success with this technique in 2016 resulted in a detailed picture of the light-induced change in a biological protein. However, researchers still needed to address a key question: what is the origin of the tiny molecular 'motions' on the femtosecond time scale directly after the first laser light pulse?

Previous studies had assumed that all the motions correspond to the biological reaction, meaning its functional motion. But using the new method, the team found that this wasn’t the case in their experiments.

Coherent control

To reach this conclusion they created ‘coherent control’ – shaping the laser light to control the protein’s motions in a predictable manner. Following initial success in 2018 at LCLS in Stanford, checking and verifying the method required a total of six experiments at XFEL facilities around the world, each time assembling large teams and forming international collaborations

They then combined the data from these experiments with theoretical methods modified from femtochemistry, in order to apply them to X-ray crystallographic data rather than to spectroscopic data.

The conclusion was that the ultrafast motions measured with exquisite accuracy on the picometer scale and femtosecond time scale do not belong to the biological reaction, but instead to vibrational coherence in the remaining ground state.

This means that the molecules that are 'left behind' after the femtosecond laser pulse has passed dominate the motions that are subsequently measured, but only within the so-called vibrational coherence time.

Professor van Thor said: “We concluded that for our experiment, also if coherent control was not included, the conventional time resolved measurement was in fact dominated by motions from the dark ‘reactant’ ground state, which are unrelated to the biological reactions that are triggered by the light. Instead, the motions correspond to what is traditionally measured by vibrational spectroscopy and have a very different, but equally important, significance

“This was actually predicted based on theoretical work made previously, but has now been shown experimentally. This will have significant impact in both the fields of time resolved structural biology as well as ultrafast spectroscopy, as we have developed and provided the tools for analysis of ultrafast femtosecond time scale motion.”

Unprecedented collaboration

The paper includes 49 authors from 15 institutions, covering work over seven years, including experiments conducted remotely during the pandemic. It’s this sense of collaboration that made the result possible, according to Professor van Thor.

He said: “In a fast-moving field, where XFEL beamtime applications are incredibly competitive and there is pressure to publish from each individual experiment, I am extremely grateful to all the co-authors, team members and collaborators for their perseverance, hard work and investment in pursuing the greater objective, which required the strategic and much longer route that we have taken.”

Co-author Dr Sébastien Boutet, from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which hosts the LCLS, said: “These results represent what is truly unique about the capabilities of x-ray lasers. It demonstrates the type of knowledge on biology in motion that can only be achieved with very short bursts of x-rays and combined with cutting edge laser technology. We see an exciting future of discovery in this area.”

Co-author Professor Gerrit Groenhof, from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, said: “Using coherent control to extracting the relevant molecular dynamics in the electronic excited state from other motions induced by the excitation laser is essential to understand how photoreceptor proteins have evolved to mediate the photo-activation process. Seeing such a molecular movie of photobiology in action is not only fascinating, but may also be the key to unlock biological principles for designing new light-responsive materials.”

---

JOURNAL

Nature Chemistry

DOI

10.1038/s41557-023-01275-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Optical control of ultrafast structural dynamics in a fluorescent protein

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Aug-2023