Who defends bullying victims? A study analyzes adolescents' behavior in this regard

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA

 

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RESEARCHERS WHO CARRIED OUT THE STUDY

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA

The LAECOVI research team at the University of Cordoba studied the behavior of those defending adolescent victims of bullying and its relationship to thesestudents' social and regulatory adjustment and perceptions of popularity among peers

Bullying is defined as a set of aggressive and immoral behaviors repeated over time and in which an imbalance of power is created between aggressors and their victims. Many of these situations of bullying occur in the presence of other schoolchildren, who adopt different roles, either enabling the aggressor, defending the victim, or simply keeping out of it.

In these cases defense behaviors can be decisive in reducing the consequences of or preventing those immoral dynamics generated within groups. Until now how these defense behaviors can change over time, and their connection to elements that shape the social dynamics of the classroom, had not been explored. With this dual objective, researchers in the Department of Psychology at the University of Córdoba Eva Romera, Ana Bravo and Rosario Ortega,members of the "Coexistence and Violence Prevention Studies Lab" (LAECOVI), in collaboration with Christian Berger, a researcher at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, carried out a longitudinal study with 3,303 adolescents in which they identify how defense behaviors change over time and their association with degrees of adjustment to norms, peer groups, and structures of popularity within them.

Striving to dispel the idea that being a defender of bullying victims, or not, is a static role, "we explored different trajectories that would help us understand defense behaviors: those who always defend victims, those who never do, and, above all, why they begin to defend them, or why they stop doing so", explained Professor Eva Romera. Her results confirm that these trends of change highlight the importance of discarding the classic idea that defense is a static role over time.

After four waves of data collection through questionnaires completed by the students over two academic years, and multigroup analysis using a complex methodology combining the analysis of personal relationships with growth curves, "we found four trajectories to describe the defense: one that remained stable at high levels of defense, another that drops, another that increases, and another group that remains at a low level of defense all along the trajectory," explained researcher Ana Bravo. According to Romera, "the results of the study are encouraging. Most adolescents (84%) defend victims of bullying in a sustained way over time. There is also a percentage of schoolchildren who had not defended victims, but began to do so (5%) over time."

Defending victims: a personality that is socially and normatively adjusted and self-perceived as popular

"The results of the study show that social networks have inherent restorative power. The defense group is strong and stable," said Professor Rosario Ortega.

To understand what occurs and to encourage the promotion of defensive behaviors, the UCO study analyzed the associationsbetween the different victim defense trajectories in relation to three other variables involved in  management of relationships with peers: normative adjustment,  social adjustment and students' self-perceived popularity.

Normative adjustment entails ethical and responsible behavior. "If you're normatively adjusted, it's because you respect others," says Romera. Social adjustment involves being integrated into the group. And, finally, self-perceived popularity refers to the adolescent's own perception of his social position and influence within the group.

"We observed that the first group (stable in highly defensive behavior) was also stable in terms of these three social dynamics, perceiving themselves as normatively, socially and popularly adjusted," continued Bravo. "Those who stopped defending victims, in turn, showed a tendency to not adjust to social norms; and those who began to defend victimsstarted to feel more integrated into the group and in a position of influence, which allowed them to do something to change the situations of bullying suffered by  their peers."

Thus, "to increase this defense it is necessary for the adolescent to feel that their context is cohesive, that they are part of a group that must be cared for and protected, and that also features a certain leadership and legitimacy," adds Romera.

"We find that these results, in addition to opening up new research questions, are very encouraging, as they allow us to continue supporting educational proposals based on the ethics of care, which we are working on through different projects at schools, such as the CuidaMe (TakeCareOfMe) program," concluded Ortega.

In short, this work demonstrates that defense behavior is linked to socio-moral balance and the relevance of that ethical principle of care, which can curb bullying. This opens up lines of research that will seek to identify, for example, the causality of those defense behaviors. What motivates adolescents to defend these victims?

This work is part of a research project under the National R&D& I Plan (PID2020-113911RB-I00), which aims to explore the moral, motivational and group factors that influence decision-making in situations of bullying and cyberbullying.

Reference

Bravo A, Berger C, Ortega-Ruiz R, Romera EM. Trajectories of defending behaviors: Longitudinal association with normative and social adjustment and self-perceived popularity. J Sch Psychol. 2023 Dec;101:101252. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2023.101252

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JOURNAL

Journal of School Psychology

DOI

10.1016/j.jsp.2023.101252 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Trajectories of defending behaviors: Longitudinal association with normative and social adjustment and self-perceived popularity

 

KAIST research team develops anti-icing film that only requires sunlight

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE KOREA ADVANCED INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (KAIST)

 

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FIGURE 1. CONCEPTUAL IMAGE TO DISPLAY HYDRODYNAMIC MECHANISMS FOR THE FORMATION OF A HOMOGENEOUS QUADRANT CELLULOSE NANOCRYSTAL(CNC) MATRIX.

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CREDIT: KAIST FLUID & INTERFACE LABORATORY

A KAIST research team has developed an anti-icing and de-icing film coating technology that can apply the photothermal effect of gold nanoparticles to industrial sites without the need for heating wires, periodic spray or oil coating of anti-freeze substances, and substrate design alterations.
The group led by Professor Hyoungsoo Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (Fluid & Interface Laboratory) and Professor Dong Ki Yoon from the Department of Chemistry (Soft Material Assembly Group) revealed on January 3 to have together developed an original technique that can uniformly pattern gold nanorod (GNR) particles in quadrants through simple evaporation, and have used this to develop an anti-icing and de-icing surface.
Many scientists in recent years have tried to control substrate surfaces through various coating techniques, and those involving the patterning of functional nanomaterials have gained special attention. In particular, GNR is considered a promising candidate nanomaterial for its biocompatibility, chemical stability, relatively simple synthesis, and its stable and unique property of surface plasmon resonance. To maximize the performance of GNR, it is important to achieve a high uniformity during film deposition, and a high level of rod alignment. However, achieving both criteria has thus far been a difficult challenge.
To solve this, the joint research team utilized cellulose nanocrystal (CNC), a next-generation functional nanomaterial that can easily be extracted from nature. By co-assembling GNR on CNC quadrant templates, the team could uniformly dry the film and successfully obtain a GNR film with a uniform alignment in a ring-shape. Compared to existing coffee-ring films, the highly uniform and aligned GNR film developed through this research showed enhanced plasmonic photothermal properties, and the team showed that it could carry out anti-icing and de-icing functions by simply irradiating light in the visible wavelength range.
Professor Hyoungsoo Kim said, “This technique can be applied to plastic, as well as flexible surfaces. By using it on exterior materials and films, it can generate its own heat energy, which would greatly save energy through voluntary thermal energy harvesting across various applications including cars, aircrafts, and windows in residential or commercial spaces, where frosting becomes a serious issue in the winter.” Professor Dong Ki Yoon added, “This research is significant in that we can now freely pattern the CNC-GNR composite, which was previously difficult to create into films, over a large area. We can utilize this as an anti-icing material, and if we were to take advantage of the plasmonic properties of gold, we can also use it like stained-glass to decorate glass surfaces.”
This research was conducted by Ph.D. candidate Jeongsu Pyeon from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and his co-first author Dr. Soon Mo Park (a KAIST graduate, currently a post-doctoral associate at Cornell University), and was pushed in the online volume of Nature Communication on December 8, 2023 under the title “Plasmonic Metasurfaces of Cellulose Nanocrystal Matrices with Quadrants of Aligned Gold Nanorods for Photothermal Anti-Icing. Recognized for its achievement, the research was also selected as an editor’s highlight for the journals Materials Science and Chemistry, and Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.
This research was supported by the Individual Basic Mid-Sized Research Fund from the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Center for Multiscale Chiral Architectures.

  

Figure 2. Optical and thermal performance evaluation results of gold nanorod film and demonstration of plasmonic heater for anti-icing and de-icing.

CREDIT

KAIST Fluid & Interface Laboratory

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-43511-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Plasmonic metasurfaces of cellulose nanocrystal matrices with quadrants of aligned gold nanorods for photothermal anti-icing

 

Being rough and hairy isn't all it's cracked up to be - at least if you're a tree

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

If you're trying to take pollution out of the air, choose evergreen trees with smaller leaves. That's according to a new study from the University of Surrey.    

Researchers from Surrey's Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) tested ten trees beside a busy main road. They studied which caught the most particles of pollution and which best allowed the rain to wash those particles safely to the ground.   

It had been thought that leaves with rougher surfaces and minute hairs would catch more pollutants. Yet that wasn't borne out by the evidence.   

Yendle Barwise, former forester and University of Surrey researcher, said:   

“When tackling air pollution, the ideal leaves cling on to particles when it's windy – but let go of them in the rain. That means the wind blows less pollution back into the air – but rain can wash it safely to the ground. 

“Being rough and hairy isn't all it's cracked up to be. To remove more particle pollutants over time, leaves need to be washed by rainfall, and it seems that the size and shape of the leaf is much more important from this perspective." 

Many planting projects use deciduous trees, which lose their leaves in winter – even though that's when air pollution is worst in towns and cities. For that reason, scientists chose ten evergreen specimens and placed them in plant pots beside the A3 in Guildford. Some 80,000 vehicles drive past every day.   

Of those studied, Yew (taxus baccata) was the plant which removed most air pollution. The most effective leaf types were awl-shaped. They were found on Japanese cedar (camellia japonica) and Lawson's Cypress (chamaecyparis lawsoniana).   

The study also suggested that stomata – the 'pores' of the leaf – could help plants 'catch' particles. For Yew, more particles of pollution gathered on the porous underside of the leaf. That's despite the other side of the leaf being 47% rougher, and despite previous research suggesting roughness mattered more.   

Professor Prashant Kumar, founder of the University of Surrey's Global Centre for Clean Air Research, said:   

"We know that planting trees by roadsides can make a big difference to air quality. Our study shows that by choosing your trees carefully, that difference can be even bigger." 

"We've shown that smarter choice of plants can take even more pollution out of the air. We just studied the shapes and textures of the leaves themselves. Other factors, like the tree's height, leaf chemistry, or how many trees you plant, could also make a big difference. Those are well worth investigating in the future." 

The paper, which helps promote the UN Sustainability Goals 3, 11, 13 and 15, is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. 

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JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169713 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A trait-based investigation into evergreen woody plants for traffic-related air pollution mitigation over time

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Dec-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge an EPSRC PhD studentship (2018–2021), awarded through the University Research Scholarship scheme by the University of Surrey to support Y.B.'s PhD research (2018-21; Project Reference #2124242). They also acknowledge support received through the RECLAIM Network Plus project (EP/W034034/1), funded by the UKRI (EPSRC, NERC, AHRC), and the NERC-funded GreenCities project (NE/X002799/1). The authors would like to thank Idris Hayward, Mamatha Tomson, and other members of the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) team for supporting the fieldwork in various ways. Finally, the authors would like to acknowledge the expertise and resources provided by David Jones and the Microstructural Studies Unit at the University of Surrey.

 

Greening our cities: Wuyishan's pioneering model for urban carbon reduction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE SOCIETY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

 

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GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

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CREDIT: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND ECOTECHNOLOGY

As global warming speeds up, meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement has become crucial. Cities, especially in countries like China, play a major role in reducing carbon emissions. However, traditional approaches to making cities carbon neutral usually miss out on considering indirect emissions that happen outside city boundaries, which are vital for a comprehensive carbon reduction strategy. This study tackles this issue by introducing an integrated framework that accounts for both the emissions produced within and consumed by a city.

In a recent study featured in Volume 20 of the journal Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, researchers introduced an innovative framework for achieving carbon neutrality in urban areas. The study, which focuses on Wuyishan, a service-oriented city in Southern China, highlights the importance of inclusive strategies that consider both internal and external greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to effectively mitigate carbon.

This study presents a groundbreaking strategy for urban carbon neutrality, with Wuyishan, a service-oriented city in China, serving as a model. It introduces a thorough method for calculating and reducing GHG emissions and highlights the importance of often-overlooked out-of-boundary emissions, which make up 42% of Wuyishan's total emissions. The approach innovatively combines life cycle assessments with sector-specific analyses, covering all aspects of a city's emissions. In Wuyishan, mitigations include expanding solar power, transitioning to electric vehicles, and improving agricultural practices. The study emphasizes the need to tackle both internal and external sources of emissions to create effective carbon reduction strategies. This is especially crucial for cities in developing countries, which face unique challenges and opportunities in sustainable growth due to rapid urbanization and industrial changes. With plans to significantly boost renewable energy and electrification by 2035, Wuyishan demonstrates a strong commitment to a sustainable, low-carbon future. This research offers a valuable guide for cities worldwide to develop comprehensive and practical carbon neutrality plans.

Highlights
• We propose a framework to investigate the city-level carbon neutrality pathway.
• A full-scope GHG emission perspective is considered.
• Carbon reductions within and outside city's boundaries are equally important.
• We suggest including out-of-boundary emissions in GHG accounting.

The authors of the study highlight the significance of this integrated approach. "Our methodology provides a practical tool for cities, especially in developing countries, to develop effective carbon neutrality roadmaps that encompass the full spectrum of GHG emissions," they stated.

This framework provides a complete model for cities to develop and execute strategies for achieving carbon neutrality. It underscores the necessity of accounting for external emission sources and emphasizes the shift towards low-carbon technologies and sustainable practices across various sectors such as energy, transportation, agriculture, and waste management.

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References

DOI

10.1016/j.ese.2023.100354

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ese.2023.100354

Funding information

The National Natural Science Foundation of China: An emission scenario - air quality model-based study on the evaluation of “Dual Attainments” of Chinese city (72074154); The Research on the optimization of synergistic regional pathways under carbon emission peak and carbon neutrality goals (72140004); The Research on pathway optimization and implementation mechanism of synergistic control of GHGs and pollution for key regions (72243008).

About Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

Environmental Science and Ecotechnology (ISSN 2666-4984) is an international, peer-reviewed, and open-access journal published by Elsevier. The journal publishes significant views and research across the full spectrum of ecology and environmental sciences, such as climate change, sustainability, biodiversity conservation, environment & health, green catalysis/processing for pollution control, and AI-driven environmental engineering. The latest impact factor of ESE is 12.6, according to the Journal Citation ReportTM 2022.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science and Ecotechnology

DOI

10.1016/j.ese.2023.100354 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Expanding carbon neutrality strategies: Incorporating out-of-boundary emissions in city-level frameworks

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Dec-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare that they have no competing interests

Cases of chikungunya and zika fall in Brazil, but most risk clusters exhibit an upward trend

Researchers observed spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence and co-occurrence for the two arboviral diseases in all Brazilian municipalities, alongside the influence of environmental and socio-economic factors

 NEWS RELEASE 17-JAN-2024

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

Analysis of occurrence and co-occurrence patterns shows the highest-risk clusters of chikungunya and zika in Brazil spreading from the Northeast to the Center-West and coastal areas of São Paulo state and Rio de Janeiro state in the Southeast between 2018 and 2021, and increasing again in the Northeast between 2019 and 2021. 

In Brazil overall, spatial variations in the temporal trends for chikungunya and zika decreased 13% and 40% respectively, but 85% and 57% of the clusters in question displayed a rise in numbers of cases. 

These findings are from an article published in Scientific Reports by researchers at the University of São Paulo’s School of Public Health (FSP-USP) and São Paulo state’s Center for Epidemiological Surveillance (CVE) who analyzed spatial-temporal patterns of occurrence and co-occurrence of the two arboviral diseases in all Brazilian municipalities as well as the environmental and socio-economic factors associated with them.

Considered neglected tropical diseases by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), chikungunya and zika are arboviral diseases caused by viruses of the families Togaviridae and Flaviviridae respectively, and transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes. Case numbers of both diseases have risen worldwide in the last decade and expanded geographically: chikungunya has been reported in 116 countries and zika in 92, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the main health surveillance agency in the United States. Some 8 million people are estimated to have been infected worldwide, although the number may have reached 100 million in light of generalized underreporting of neglected tropical diseases.

The emergence and re-emergence of chikungunya and zika are facilitated by environmental factors such as urbanization, deforestation and climate change, including droughts and floods. “Identifying high-risk areas for the spread of these arboviruses is important both to control the vectors and to target public health measures correctly,” said Raquel Gardini Sanches Palasio, corresponding author of the article. She is affiliated with FSP-USP’s Department of Epidemiology, where she is a researcher in the Laboratory for Spatial Analysis in Health (LAES).

Working with her PhD thesis advisor, Francisco Chiaravalloti Neto, and other researchers at USP and CVE, Palasio analyzed more than 770,000 cases (608,388 of chikungunya and 162,992 of zika) diagnosed by laboratory test or clinical and epidemiological analysis; most were autochthonous (due to locally acquired infection). The analysis encompassed spatial, temporal and seasonal data, as well as temperature, rainfall and socio-economic factors.

The results showed that high-risk areas had higher temperatures and identified co-occurrence clusters in certain regions. “In the first few years of the period the high-risk clusters were in the Northeast. They then spread to the Center-West – zika in 2016 and chikungunya in 2018 – and to coastal areas in the Southeast – in 2018 and 2021 respectively – followed by resurgence in the Northeast,” Palasio said. 

“Spatial variations in the temporal trends for chikungunya and zika decreased 13% and 40% respectively, but numbers of cases rose in 85% and 57% of the clusters concerned. Spatial variation clusters with a growing internal trend predominated in practically all states, with annual growth of 0.85%-96.56% for chikungunya and 2.77%-53.03% for zika.

“We also found that both diseases have occurred more frequently in summer and fall in Brazil since 2015. Chikungunya is associated with low rainfall, urbanization and social inequality, while zika correlates closely with high rainfall and lack of basic sanitation.”

Both are also more frequent in urban areas with less vegetation, she said, adding that socio-economic factors appear to correlate less with zika than with chikungunya.

Next steps 

“Both diseases have the same vectors and are similar in some other ways, so theoretically they should occur in the same places. We didn’t observe perfect overlapping in space and time, however,” Palasio said.

A hypothesis raised by the researchers who conducted the study, which was funded by FAPESP, relates to socio-economic factors, environment and climate. The main source of data was the 2010 census, and next steps will include an update using fresh data from IBGE’s 2022 census.

“We also want to perform a spatial and temporal analysis using a broader dataset that takes socio-economic factors and climate [especially temperature and rainfall] into account together rather than separately,” Palasio said.

Another focus will be co-occurrence or overlapping of the two diseases. Future climate change models will be run under best-case and worst-case scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-42930-4 

ARTICLE TITLE

Zika, chikungunya and co-occurrence in Brazil: space-time clusters and associated environmental–socioeconomic factors

 

New AI makes better permafrost maps

Improved mapping gives decision makers a new tool for protecting infrastructure as Arctic warms

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

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THE LEFT PANEL SHOWS THE NEAR-SURFACE PERMAFROST EXTENT (BLUISH AREA, OVERLAID ON SATELLITE IMAGERY) ESTIMATED BY THE MOST COMMONLY USED PAN-ARCTIC MAP PRODUCT FOR A SITE IN ALASKA. THE RIGHT PANEL SHOWS THE ESTIMATE FOR THE SAME SITE GENERATED BY A NEW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MODEL DEVELOPED BY LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY. IN THE RIGHT PANEL, THE LACK OF BLUE OVERLAY WHERE THE SATELLITE IMAGERY IS CLEARLY VISIBLE INDICATES THERE IS NO PERMAFROST IN THOSE LOCATIONS. THIS MORE ACCURATE IMAGE WAS GENERATED BY A RANDOM-FOREST MACHINE LEARNING MODEL.

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CREDIT: EVAN THALER, LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Jan. 17, 2024 — New insights from artificial intelligence about permafrost coverage in the Arctic may soon give policy makers and land managers the high-resolution view they need to predict climate-change-driven threats to infrastructure such as oil pipelines, roads and national security facilities.

“The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, and permafrost is a component of the Arctic that’s changing really rapidly,” said Evan Thaler, a Chick Keller Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Thaler is corresponding author of a paper published in the journal Earth and Space Science on an innovative application of AI to permafrost data.

“Current models don’t give the resolution needed to understand how permafrost thaw is changing the environment and affecting infrastructure,” Thaler said. “Our model creates high-resolution maps telling us where permafrost is now and where it is likely to change in the future.”

The AI models also identify the landscape and ecological features driving the predictions, such as vegetative greenness, landscape slope angle and the duration of snow cover.

AI versus field data

Thaler was part of a team with fellow Los Alamos researchers Joel Rowland, Jon Schwenk and Katrina Bennett, plus collaborators from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that used a form of AI called supervised machine learning. The work tested the accuracy of three different AI approaches against field data collected by Los Alamos researchers from three watersheds with patchy permafrost on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.

Permafrost, or ground that stays below freezing temperature two years or more, covers about one-sixth of the exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere, Thaler said. Thawing permafrost is already disrupting roads, oil pipelines and other facilities built over it and carries a range of environmental hazards as well.

As air temperatures warm under climate change, the thawing ground releases water. It flows to lower terrain, rivers, lakes and the ocean, causing land-surface subsidence, transporting minerals, altering the direction of groundwater, changing soil chemistry and releasing carbon to the atmosphere.

Useful results

The resolution of the most widely used current pan-arctic model for permafrost is about one-third square mile, far too coarse to predict how changing permafrost will undermine a road or pipeline, for instance. The new Los Alamos AI model determines surface permafrost coverage to a resolution of just under 100 square feet, smaller than a typical parking space and far more practical for assessing risk at a specific location.

Using their AI model trained on data from three sites on the Seward Peninsula, the team generated a map showing large areas without any permafrost around the Seward sites, matching the field data with 83% accuracy. Using the pan-arctic model for comparison, the team generated a map of the same sites with only 50% accuracy.

“It's the highest accuracy pan-arctic product to date, but it obviously isn't good enough for site-specific predictions,” Thaler said. “The pan-arctic product predicts 100% of that site is permafrost, but our model predicts only 68%, which we know is closer to the real percentage based on field data.”

Feeding the AI models

This initial study proved the concept of the Los Alamos model on the Seward data, delivering acceptable accuracy for terrain similar to the location where the field data was collected. To measure each model’s transferability, the team also trained it on data from one site then ran the model using data from a second site with different terrain that the model had not been trained on. None of the models transferred well by creating a map matching actual findings at the second site.

Thaler said the team will do additional work on the AI algorithms to improve the model’s transferability to other areas across the Arctic. “We want to be able to train on one data set and then apply the model to a place it hasn’t seen before. We just need more data from more diverse landscapes to train the models, and we hope to collect that data soon,” he said.

Part of the study involved comparing the accuracy of three different AI approaches — extremely randomized trees, support vector machines and an artificial neural network — to see which model came closest to matching the “ground truth” data gathered in field observations at the Seward Peninsula. Part of that data was used to train the AI models. Each model then generated a map based on unseen data predicting the extent of near-surface permafrost.

While the Los Alamos research demonstrated a marked improvement over the best — and widely used — pan-arctic model, the results from the team’s three AI models were mixed, with the support vector machines showing the most promise for transferability.

The paper: “High-Resolution Maps of Near-Surface Permafrost for Three Watersheds on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska Derived From Machine Learning.” Earth and Space Science. DOI: 10.1029/2023EA003015

The funding:  Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research through the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE) Arctic and Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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LA-UR-24-20349

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JOURNAL

Earth and Space Science

DOI

10.1029/2023EA003015 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

High-Resolution Maps of Near-Surface Permafrost for Three Watersheds on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska Derived From Machine Learning.

Microplastics from natural fertilizers are blowing in the wind more often than once thought

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Though natural fertilizers made from treated sewage sludge are used to reintroduce nutrients onto agricultural fields, they bring along microplastic pollutants too. And according to a small-scale study published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters, more plastic particles get picked up by the wind than once thought. Researchers have discovered that the microplastics are released from fields more easily than similarly sized dust particles, becoming airborne from even a slight breeze.

Microplastics, or small bits of plastic less than 5 millimeters long, have appeared everywhere from clouds to heart tissues. And with these plastics’ increasing prevalence in people and water supplies, they’ve also been found in sewage and wastewater. Though sewage solids might not immediately seem like a useful product, after treatment they can form “biosolids,” which are applied to agricultural soils as a natural, renewable source of fertilizer. According to estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over 2 million dry metric tons of biosolids — roughly half of the total amount collected by wastewater treatment plants — are applied to land each year. As a result, microplastics in these biosolids have the chance to reenter the environment. Because the plastics could carry other pollutants from the wastewater they originated from, they can be potentially dangerous when inhaled. So, Sanjay Mohanty and colleagues wanted to investigate how wind could pick up and transport microplastic particles from biosolid-treated agricultural fields.

The team analyzed airborne microplastics in wind-blown sediments that were gathered during wind-tunnel experiments on two plots of biosolid-treated land in rural Washington state. The researchers discovered that these wind-blown sediments contained higher concentrations of microplastics than either the biosolids or the source soil itself. This enrichment effect is caused by the plastic particles being less dense than soil minerals, such as quartz, and less “sticky” — they’re not trapped as easily by moisture as the soil minerals are. As a result, microplastics can be picked up by a breeze more easily than soil minerals, and winds that might not be strong enough to kick up dust could still be introducing microplastics into the air.

The researchers say that previous models did not take this sticky effect and other unique properties of microplastics into account when estimating emissions from treated fields. Therefore, these older models are likely to underestimate the actual amount of plastic particles released into the air. Calculations by Mohanty and colleagues indicate that microplastics may be emitted from barren agricultural fields from nearly two and a half times more wind events than previously estimated. The researchers say this work highlights an underappreciated way that microplastics could become airborne.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the McPike Zima Charitable Foundation.

The paper’s abstract will be available on Jan. 17 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00850  

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology Letters

DOI

10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00850 

ARTICLE TITLE

Preferential Emission of Microplastics from Biosolid-Applied Agricultural Soils: Field Evidence and Theoretical Framework

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jan-2024