Social Probing: indirect surveys to better understand society

The project, coordinated by IMDEA Networks, proposes an innovative alternative to understanding public opinion with fewer resources and greater respect for privacy

 News Release 1-Jul-2025

IMDEA Networks Institute

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How can we understand what a society thinks without relying on traditional surveys that require large samples and significant investment? The Social Probing project, now completed and coordinated by researcher Antonio Fernández Anta at IMDEA Networks, was carried out in collaboration with UC3M, UPM, and Universitat Jaume I to achieve precisely that: develop scalable, cost-effective, and privacy-preserving tools that allow for continuous societal monitoring. Their solution: indirect surveys.

This type of survey doesn’t ask people directly about their own opinions, but about those of their contacts: “How many of your contacts would vote for party X?” or “How many have shown symptoms of COVID-19?” Based on these responses, the team can estimate the actual behavior or situation of the broader population.

New uses for an underutilized technique

Although indirect surveys have existed for decades, their use has been limited. Social Probing, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, has revived and expanded this methodology, applying it to diverse contexts such as COVID-19 tracking, voting intention estimation in various elections, and the distribution of domestic chores between men and women, in collaboration with the Women’s Institute.

“Thanks to this technique, we’ve been able to accurately estimate voting intentions in regional (such as Madrid or Valencia), national, and European elections. In fact, in the national elections in Madrid, our seat distribution estimate missed just one seat—using only 200 participants—compared to traditional surveys that rely on thousands,” Fernández Anta emphasizes.

More privacy, lower cost, greater honesty

Indirect surveys offer several advantages over traditional polls: they require smaller samples, which reduces costs, and they better preserve privacy. “Asking about the voting intention of a participant’s contacts is less intrusive than asking about their own,” explains Fernández Anta. This also increases the likelihood of receiving honest answers.

The team also identified key factors that influence result accuracy, such as the participant’s age, which can introduce hard-to-correct biases. To address this, they have begun stratifying samples by age groups.

Results and next steps

The project’s main outcomes include both the data collected and the tools developed to design, deploy, and analyze indirect surveys. This technological and methodological legacy will live on beyond the project: the team is currently working on a PhD thesis focused on robust methods for processing this kind of data, and on identifying which types of social networks are best suited for its application.
They are also exploring new application areas, such as raising awareness about water use in Spain, with new surveys already in development.

 

Fentanyl detection through packaging

PNAS Nexus

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Fentanyl has killed hundreds of thousands of people globally since 2015. Detection of the drugs during interdiction is currently done through Raman spectroscopy or chemical strips—both of which require direct access to samples. Michael Malone and colleagues use a magnetic resonance technique to detect fentanyl hydrochloride inside sealed opaque containers and packages—an approach that could be used in airports, border crossings, post offices, and other contexts. Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectroscopy sends a radio frequency pulse with a frequency corresponding to a transition energy of the target nucleus and, if the target nuclei are present, receives in return a detectable and chemically specific magnetic signature. For fentanyl, key target nuclei include the naturally abundant isotopes of nitrogen and chlorine. Effective NQR spectrometers can cost just a few thousand dollars and do not require superconducting magnets or extreme temperatures. There are some limitations: thick metallic wrapping could block detection, and the detector must be within several centimeters of the drugs. According to the authors, the technique could nevertheless help detect and divert large quantities of fentanyl.

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Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Standoff detection of fentanyl hydrochloride via nuclear quadrupole resonance: A multimodality pursuit

Article Publication Date

1-Jul-2025

 

New 3D glacier visualizations provide insights into a hotter Earth

Fine satellite monitoring offers novel way to track glacier melt, study finds

Ohio State University

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COLUMBUS, Ohio – As glaciers retreat due to a rise in global temperatures, one study shows detailed 3D elevation models could drastically improve predictions about how they react to Earth’s warming climate.  

While only 10% of Earth is covered in glacial ice, these masses have far-reaching impacts on all the world’s ecosystems. Rapid melting can trigger natural disasters, and glaciers help to regulate the planet’s temperature and sea level and are sources of pristine fresh drinking water.

To better differentiate between seasonal ice loss and that caused by long-term climate trends, researchers studied the fluctuating heights of three glaciers: the La Perouse Glacier in North America, the Viedma Glacier in South America and the Skamri Glacier located in Central Asia.

Their analysis revealed that between 2019 and 2023, the Viedma Glacier (Argentina) and the La Perouse Glacier (Alaska) experienced consistent thinning, but the Skamri Glacier (Pakistan)  had been stable enough to experience a small net gain of ice, said Rongjun Qin, co-author of the study and an associate professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University.

Measurements in this study were made using daily high-resolution images gathered by the PlanetScope satellite constellation, which researchers then used to create 3D reconstructions of how glacial ice flows evolved over time. By incorporating local and global climate data into these models to explore seasonal variations of glacier melt, the team essentially designed a way to monitor the behavior of glaciers across diverse regions.

“This is something that we’ve been thinking about for a long time, because existing glacier studies have such sparse seasonal observations since it’s difficult to get data out of remote areas,” said Qin, who is also a core faculty member of Ohio State’s Translational Data Analytics Institute. “What we wanted to do is to use medium-to-high resolution data to broaden those capabilities and improve the accuracy of the 3D models generated from that data.”

The study was recently published in the journal GIScience & Remote Sensing.

According to the study, while many modern 2D tracking techniques can provide valuable insights into glacier flow, previous studies tend to capture only short-term snapshots or else offer observations without in-depth motion analysis or high-resolution 3D data. This team’s work may help scientists keep better track of seasonal climate issues like glacier melt and expand long-term observations of these masses, and their 3D model method also reveals new data about how quickly the glaciers react to changes in the weather.

The Viedma and Skamri Glaciers, for example, exhibit a 45-day lag time in response to changes in local climate conditions like rain or snow. The La Perouse Glacier, however, was shown to react to changes almost immediately, meaning that its flow can very quickly become faster or slower based on how much precipitation it has accumulated.

In another finding, researchers concluded that behavior differences in all three are driven by distinct environmental and climatic conditions, but suggest that both local and global factors, rather than any single one, are responsible for patterns in glacier motion dynamics worldwide.

Such observations are vital to deepening our global understanding of glacier science, and with further improvements, this study’s algorithm could also be a useful tool for future disaster prediction and management, said Qin. Already, scientists have used similar systems to warn communities of natural disasters that would have led to tragedy.

In all, researchers hope that supporting modeling works like this one will inspire more scientists to utilize satellite data to investigate other types of important environmental research questions.

“Hopefully we can build on all sorts of applications that people are interested in with this,” said Qin.

Shengxi Gui of Ohio State was a co-author. This work’s data was provided by PlanetScope.

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Contact: Rongjun Qin, Qin.324@osu.edu

Written by: Tatyana Woodall, Woodall.52@osu.edu

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Journal

GIScience & Remote Sensing

DOI

10.1080/15481603.2025.2507470 

Article Title

Using PlanetScope-derived time-series elevation models and orthophotos to track glacier 3D dynamics in mid-latitude mountain regions

 

Creativity across disciplines

PNAS Nexus

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image: 

Jean Metzinger, 1911–1912, La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a Horse), oil on canvas, Statens Museum for Kunst. A favorite painting of the physicist Niels Bohr.

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Credit: Jean Metzinger

In a Perspective, Julio M. Ottino describes different classes of creativity and proposes a benchmark for the highest level of creativity. Combinative creativity is the process of combining existing elements to create new solutions, while transformative creativity leads to entirely new frameworks. But beyond the breakthroughs of transformative creativity, according to Ottino, is the “break-with,” a conceptual advance that destroys previous worldviews completely and ushers in a new order. Advances that rise to the level of a break-with include quantum mechanics in physics and cubism in visual art. Although AI excels in combinatorial creativity, Ottino says large language models struggle to be transformationally creative, and their reliance on training data may limit their ability to come up with solutions that represent a true break with the past. The Perspective includes case studies of historical figures who demonstrate creative fluidity, including Filippo Brunelleschi, the 15th century architect and engineer; Galileo Galilei, the 17th century astronomer and artist; Louis Pasteur, the 19th century scientist and lithographer; Jules Henri Poincaré, the early 20th century mathematician and essayist; Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the early 20th century neuroscientist and artist; and Niels Bohr, the early 20th century physicist and art explainer. 

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Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Creativity across domains: Thoughts in Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, Technology, and Art

Article Publication Date

1-Jul-2025

 

Youngest in class at higher risk of mental health problems

ADHD was the most prevalent diagnosis, where researchers saw an increase in incidence of 20-80 per cent for the youngest class members.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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A recent study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has found that children born in October, November or December are statistically more often identified as having a mental health diagnosis than their classmates born earlier in the year. The findings apply to both boys and girls, and regardless of whether they were born full term or prematurely.

Extensive research material

The researchers have followed over one million Norwegians aged 4 to 17 years (all born between 1991 and 2012) through Norwegian health registries.

The aim of the study was to identify what are known as ‘relative age effects’. In other words, whether children and adolescents born late in the year are more frequently diagnosed with mental health disorders than their peers born early in the year (January, February and March).

“Our findings show that the youngest members of a school class tend to be diagnosed with a mental illness more frequently than the oldest,” said Christine Strand Bachmann, a PhD research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU’s) Department of Public Health and Nursing.

“This is most obvious with regard to ADHD, where we saw an increase in incidence of 20-80 per cent for the youngest class members, depending on whether the children were born full term or prematurely.”

The researchers found the same trend for ‘other neuropsychiatric disorders’. These include delayed developments in areas such as language, academic skills and motor skills.

The study has been published in BMJ Peadiatrics Open.

Additional risks for premature girls

In addition, the youngest premature girls were at a significantly greater risk of being diagnosed with emotional disorders, such as anxiety, depression and adaptation disorders, compared with the oldest premature girls in the same year group.

“We know that children and adolescents born prematurely are already more vulnerable to poor mental and social health compared with children and young people born full term. For those born prematurely, the risks associated with being born late in the year comes in addition to this vulnerability.

“We believe that these findings, which show an increase in the number of psychological diagnoses for the youngest class members, can partly be linked to the way in which we organize our education system. The school system is unable to adequately provide for children with normal, but more immature behaviour. Possible solutions include flexible school start dates or additional support.”

In addition to being a researcher at NTNU, Christine Strand Bachmann is also a consultant at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Children and Adolescent Medicine Department, St. Olavs Hospital.

Reference:
Christine Strand Bachmann, Kari Risnes, Johan Håkon Bjørngaard et al: Relative age as a risk factor for psychiatric diagnoses in children born preterm and to term: a cohort study BMJ Pediatrics Open, 5 April 2025

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Journal

BMJ Paediatrics Open

DOI

10.1136/bmjpo-2024-003186 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Relative age as a risk factor for psychiatric diagnoses in children born preterm and to term: a cohort study

 

Champions for change – Paid time off initiative just made clinical trials participation easier

The American Thoracic Society now provides employees with paid time-off to enroll in medical research.

American Thoracic Society

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ATS  is one of seven organizations providing employees with paid time off for clinical trials. 

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Credit: ATS

NEW YORK, NY – July 1, 2025 – Research has always been critical to improving patient lives. That is why the American Thoracic Society (ATS), a Coalition to Transform Clinical Trial Engagement Steering Committee (CTCTE) member, is proud to be one of seven organizations partnering with the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research (FSR) to make it easier for patients, including those with chronic lung disease, to join research. The Champions for Change – Paid Time Off (PTO) Initiative is a national effort to reduce job-related barriers to clinical trial participation by partnering with employers to provide PTO for employees enrolling in trials.

Clinical trials drive medical innovation and often offer patients access to better treatment options. Yet those who could benefit most are frequently left out due to systemic barriers to participation. According to FSR’s national IRB-approved survey of Black patients with sarcoidosis, limited paid time off, inflexible work schedules, and income loss from missed work were cited as barriers to joining or completing a clinical trial.

Other regional and national studies have come to the same conclusion about job-related barriers contributing to lower enrollment and retention – especially among underserved communities. These burdens lead to exclusion from trials, which not only harms the communities most impacted by chronic conditions but also jeopardizes the clinical trials enterprise by failing to include patients from all backgrounds—limiting what we learn about potential treatments.

This initiative builds upon the work of the FSR and CTCTE which resulted in clarification from the Department of Labor issued in November of 2024, which indicates that the Family Medical Leave Act ensures job security for anyone living with chronic disease in the U.S. or their family member caregivers who enroll in clinical trials.

“As the President and CEO of a mid-size health-focused non-profit, I am acutely aware that the health of my employees is essential to the success of our organization. By providing my employees with paid time off for clinical trial participation, I not only signal to my employees that I care about them and their health and wellbeing, but it also starts the conversation at the workplace about the power of clinical trial participation to advance the development of better therapies and outcomes for all impacted by chronic diseases.  FSR appreciates ATS’s leadership on this initiative and as a member of the CTCTE, and call on other companies to join us to offer this as a benefit to their employees,” said Mary McGowan, who represents the FSR as a member of the Public Advisory Roundtable, the patient arm of the ATS.

“The burden of chronic lung diseases is very high and requires innovation, vision and collaboration across disciplines and communities. The patient community is critical in helping research scientists find the answers to extend the lives of patients and eradicate disease,” said ATS President Raed Dweik, MD, MBA, ATSF. “I am proud that the American Thoracic Society is leading the charge in taking this bold step to stand up for patient and their families as a Champion for Change. I am grateful to the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research for their partnership and vision.”

The initiative was first introduced in May of 2023 by FSR at a Congressional Briefing in response to barriers identified in FSR’s 60-page white paper as part of a comprehensive roadmap to expand engagement of underrepresented communities in clinical trials. This year on Clinical Trials Day the initiative went public with seven national partners, including the ATS, committed to championing change for clinical trials in the workplace.

Listen to FSR President and CEO Mary McGowan discuss the initiative on the ATS Breathe Easy – The Latest podcast.

Founding members of the Champions for Change – PTO Initiative:
American Thoracic Society, Diverse Research Now, Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, Mural Health, Recursion, and Sabai Global. Each of these employers has committed to providing at least one day of paid time off for employees participating in clinical trials— demonstrating their leadership in expanding access and driving innovation in medical research.

For more information about the Champions for Change – PTO Initiative and how to join the Coalition to Transform Clinical Trial Engagement, visit ignorenomore.org.

MSU study unpacks how 2025 tariffs shocked global supply chain

2025 saw the largest U.S. tariff increases since the Great Depression.

Michigan State University

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Why this matters:

• 2025 saw the largest U.S. tariff increases since the Great Depression.

• The study outlines a theoretical framework for understanding how increases in tariffs as well as uncertainty about tariffs affect importer and exporter behaviors.

• Researchers also provide guidance for studying tariff impacts across industries, from consumer goods to agriculture.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — In the wake of the largest series of U.S. tariff hikes since 1930, a new study from Michigan State University explores how this economic shock is reshaping global supply chains and offers a framework to help researchers and policymakers make sense of the chaos. The study was recently published in the Journal of Supply Chain Management.

“Unlike previous trade wars, the 2025 actions came with extreme uncertainty,” said Jason Miller, lead author of the study and the Eli Broad Endowed Professor in Supply Chain Management at MSU. “We wanted to provide a framework to help researchers and practitioners make sense of what’s happening and what to expect going forward.”

The paper outlines a theoretical framework around categories of costs firms must navigate in response to tariffs: adjustment costs, transaction costs, and the opportunity costs of responding too early or too late.

These costs influence a firm’s ability, and willingness, to shift suppliers, relocate production or pass price increases on to consumers. The framework builds on and extends existing theory by directly incorporating the role of uncertainty and potential misconduct in firm responses, offering a more comprehensive view of how firms navigate trade shocks. Unlike previous trade disputes, the 2025 tariffs were enacted, reversed and reinstated in rapid succession, creating a volatile environment that makes planning nearly impossible.

“I’ve spoken with industry professionals who have described large importers having at least five, and sometimes 10, different plans sketched out because they cannot anticipate what the final form of tariffs will look like,” said Miller.

Societal impact of the tariffs

While the study is anchored in supply chain theory, the authors emphasize that these disruptions have real societal consequences for households and consumers.

“Imported food products, from fruits to coffee, are particularly sensitive to trade policy changes,” said David Ortega, a study co-author and the Noel W. Stuckman Chair in Food Economics and Policy at MSU. “When tariffs are imposed or threatened, that leads to price increases, sourcing challenges and more strain on lower-income households.”

The authors note that products with limited domestic production, such as bananas or pineapples, offer little room for substitution, which makes food prices especially vulnerable to trade shocks.

“Tariff-driven price increases have real-world consequences,” said Ortega. “They shape what people can afford at the grocery store, and retaliatory actions from other countries can impact what farmers grow. These ripple effects matter and affect everyone.”

A roadmap for research and policy analysis

Beyond the framework, the paper outlines various research directions and provides a curated list of data sources, ranging from firm-level trade records to import/export price indexes and sector-specific data. These tools allow researchers to analyze:

• how and when firms shift sourcing to different countries;
• the extent of tariff pass-through to retail prices;
• the timing of inventory buildups or front-loading of imports;
• instances of potential misconduct, like falsifying country-of-origin documentation.

Yao “Henry” Jin, associate professor at Miami University’s Farmer School of Business and a study co-author, said the study aims to equip scholars and practitioners alike.

“The framework offered by our research can help the industrial sector navigate our new and uncomfortable reality as a stable global supply chain built on a belief in free trade gives way to rising geopolitical uncertainty and protectionism,” Jin said.

The authors said they hope the framework can serve as a launchpad for more empirical work on the short- and long-term impacts of trade shocks, especially in areas like sourcing strategies, retail pricing and global manufacturing realignment.

“We need better ways to study and manage the consequences of these trade actions,” Miller said. “Whether you’re a policymaker, an importer, retailer or a consumer — you’re affected when supply chains are thrown into turmoil. This research helps us understand how and why.”

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Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for 170 years. One of the world’s leading public research universities, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery to make a better, safer, healthier world for all while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 400 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

For MSU news on the web, go to MSUToday or x.com/MSUnews

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Journal

Journal of Supply Chain Management

DOI

10.1111/jscm.12350 

Article Title

Shock and Awe: A Theoretical Framework and Data Sources for Studying the Impact of 2025 Tariffs on Global Supply Chains