Does selfishness evolve? Ask a cannibal

Study confirms evolutionary link between social structure and selfishness

RICE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: INDIAN MEAL MOTHS WERE RAISED FOR SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS IN SEALED ENCLOSURES WHERE CONDITIONS WERE IDENTICAL SAVE FOR THE STICKINESS OF THEIR FOOD. IN ENCLOSURES (TOP) WHERE FOOD WAS STICKIER, CATERPILLARS... view more 

CREDIT: VOLKER RUDOLF/RICE UNIVERSITY

HOUSTON - (March 25, 2021) - One of nature's most prolific cannibals could be hiding in your pantry, and biologists have used it to show how social structure affects the evolution of selfish behavior.

Researchers revealed that less selfish behavior evolved under living conditions that forced individuals to interact more frequently with siblings. While the finding was verified with insect experiments, Rice University biologist Volker Rudolf said the evolutionary principal could be applied to study any species, including humans.

In a study published online this week in Ecology Letters, Rudolf, longtime collaborator Mike Boots of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues showed they could drive the evolution of cannibalism in Indian meal moth caterpillars with simple changes to their habitats.

Also known as weevil moths and pantry moths, Indian meal moths are common pantry pests that lay eggs in cereals, flour and other packaged foods. As larvae, they're vegetarian caterpillars with one exception: They sometimes eat one another, including their own broodmates.

In laboratory tests, researchers showed they could predictably increase or decrease rates of cannibalism in Indian meal moths by decreasing how far individuals could roam from one another, and thus increasing the likelihood of "local" interactions between sibling larvae. In habitats where caterpillars were forced to interact more often with siblings, less selfish behavior evolved within 10 generations.

Rudolf, a professor of biosciences at Rice, said increased local interactions stack the deck against the evolution of selfish behaviors like cannibalism.

To understand why, he suggests imagining behaviors can be sorted from least to most selfish.

"At one end of the continuum are altruistic behaviors, where an individual may be giving up its chance to survive or reproduce to increase reproduction of others," he said. "Cannibalism is at the other extreme. An individual increases its own survival and reproduction by literally consuming its own kind."

Rudolf said the study provided a rare experimental test of a key concept in evolutionary theory: As local interactions increase, so does selective pressure against selfish behaviors. That's the essence of a 2010 theoretical prediction by Rudolf and Boots, the corresponding author of the meal moth study, and Rudolf said the study's findings upheld the prediction.

"Families that were highly cannibalistic just didn't do as well in that system," he said. "Families that were less cannibalistic had much less mortality and produced more offspring."

In the meal moth experiments, Rudolf said it was fairly easy to ensure that meal moth behavior was influenced by local interactions.

"They live in their food," he said. "So we varied how sticky it was."

Fifteen adult females were placed in several enclosures to lay eggs. The moths lay eggs in food, and larval caterpillars eat and live inside the food until they pupate. Food was plentiful in all enclosures, but it varied in stickiness.

"Because they're laying eggs in clusters, they're more likely to stay in these little family groups in the stickier foods that limit how fast they can move," Rudolf said. "It forced more local interactions, which, in our system, meant more interactions with siblings. That's really what we think was driving this change in cannibalism."

Rudolf said the same evolutionary principal might also be applied to the study of human behavior.

"In societies or cultures that live in big family groups among close relatives, for example, you might expect to see less selfish behavior, on average, than in societies or cultures where people are more isolated from their families and more likely to be surrounded by strangers because they have to move often for jobs or other reasons," he said.

Rudolf has studied the ecological and evolutionary impacts of cannibalism for nearly 20 years. He finds it fascinating, partly because it was misunderstood and understudied for decades. Generations of biologists had such a strong aversion to human cannibalism that they wrote off the behavior in all species as a "freak of nature," he said.

That finally began to change slowly a few decades ago, and cannibalism has now been documented in well over 1,000 species and is believed to occur in many more.

"It's everywhere. Most animals that eat other animals are cannibalistic to some extent, and even those that don't normally eat other animals -- like the Indian meal moth -- are often cannibalistic," Rudolf said. "There's no morality attached to it. That's just a human perspective. In nature, cannibalism is just getting another meal."

But cannibalism "has important ecological consequences," Rudolf said. "It determines dynamics of populations and communities, species coexistence and even entire ecosystems. It's definitely understudied for its importance."

He said the experimental follow-up to his and Boots' 2010 theory paper came about almost by chance. Rudolf saw an epidemiological study Boots published a few years later and realized the same experimental setup could be used to test their prediction.

While the moth study showed that "limiting dispersal," and thus increasing local interactions, can push against the evolution of cannibalism by increasing the cost of extreme selfishness, Rudolf said the evolutionary push can probably go the other way as well. "If food conditions are poor, cannibalism provides additional benefits, which could push for more selfish behavior."

He said it's also possible that a third factor, kin recognition, could also provide an evolutionary push.

"If you're really good at recognizing kin, that limits the cost of cannibalism," he said. "If you recognize kin and avoid eating them, you can afford to be a lot more cannibalistic in a mixed population, which can have evolutionary benefits."

Rudolf said he plans to explore the three-way interaction between cannibalism, dispersal and kin recognition in future studies.

"It would be nice to get a better understanding of the driving forces and be able to explain more of the variation that we see," he said. "Like, why are some species extremely cannibalistic? And even within the same species, why are some populations far more cannibalistic than others. I don't think it's going to be one single answer. But are there some basic principles that we can work out and test? Is it super-specific to every system, or are there more general rules?"

Additional co-authors include Dylan Childs and Jessica Crossmore of the University of Sheffield, and Hannah Tidbury of both the University of Sheffield and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in Weymouth, England.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (1256860, 0841686, 2011109) the National Institutes of Health (R01GM122061) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NEJ0097841).

Intensity of tropical cyclones is probably increasing due to climate change

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

Research News

Many tropical cyclone-prone regions of the world are expected to experience storm systems of greater intensity over the coming century, according to a review of research published today in ScienceBrief Review.

Moreover, sea level rise will aggravate coastal flood risk from tropical cyclones and other phenomena, even if the tropical cyclones themselves do not change at all. Models also project an increase in future tropical-cyclone precipitation rates, which could further elevate the risk of flooding.

Researchers at Princeton University, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of East Anglia (UEA) examined more than 90 peer-reviewed articles to assess whether human activity is influencing tropical cyclones, including tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons. The studies showed growing evidence that climate change is probably fuelling more powerful hurricanes and typhoons, a trend that is expected to continue as global temperatures rise, amounting to a roughly 5 per cent increase in maximum wind speeds if the globe warms by 2 degrees Celsius.

The influence of climate change on tropical cyclones has been notoriously difficult to separate from natural variability. But an increasingly consistent picture is emerging that suggests human activities are probably influencing some aspects of these extreme weather events, although the exact extent of the human influence is still difficult to determine confidently in today's observations. Many of the observed trends in tropical cyclones are at least qualitatively consistent with expectations from a warming climate.

The ScienceBrief Review, 'Climate change is probably increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones', is published today as part of a collection on critical issues in climate change science to inform the COP26 climate conference.

Observations show that since about 1980, the intensity of tropical cyclones has increased globally, with a larger proportion of powerful cyclones and an increase in the rate at which they intensify, especially in the North Atlantic.

However, century-scale records of landfalling hurricanes and major hurricanes for the continental United States -- as well as tropical cyclone landfalls for Japan and eastern Australia -- fail to show any significant increase over time.

The mixed picture -- revealed by past observations such as these -- is one reason why it has been so difficult to unequivocally attribute past changes in tropical cyclone activity to the century-scale build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which has caused global warming, according to the authors.

Other factors influencing tropical cyclones, including natural climate variability such as El Niño and La Niña events, and changes in air pollution that create local cooling or warming trends over decades, may have influenced the recent trends since 1980. A key research question is how future greenhouse gas-dominated global warming will influence tropical cyclone behaviour over the coming century.

Prof Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Professor at UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, edited the COP26 special issue of ScienceBrief Review. She said: "There is moderate consensus that climate change is already playing a role in the development of tropical cyclones, but it is early days. In comparison with wildfires, the consensus is already clear that climate change increases the risks, as shown earlier on ScienceBrief Review."

Projections with climate models suggest that with further warming in coming decades, a larger proportion of Category 4 and 5 tropical cyclones will occur globally -- with more damaging wind speeds and more extreme rainfall rates. The damage potential of storms will also depend on factors such as the change in storm trajectory, frequency, size, intensity and rainfall. The actual damage from storms will also be influenced by human factors including the location and vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure.

Tropical cyclones could also intensify more rapidly, and move more slowly in some regions, exacerbating extreme rainfall in localised areas. An extreme example of tropical cyclone flooding induced by a stalled system occurred with Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017.

Thomas Knutson, Division Leader at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus, led the review.

Gabriel Vecchi, Princeton professor of geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute and a co-author on the study, said: "Larger and more intense tropical cyclones tend to cause more damage than smaller, weaker storms, so shifts toward a greater proportion of intense storms are of concern.

"The intensity of tropical cyclones has increased globally in recent decades, with the proportion of Category 3 to 5 cyclones growing by around 5 per cent per decade since 1979.

"It is still difficult to firmly attribute those trends to human-induced climate change because there are also other factors influencing these storms."

There is increased risk of inundation due to rising sea levels, with heavy rainfall projected to intensify due to enhanced moisture in the air as the climate warms.

Observations indicate the latitude at which tropical cyclones reach their peak intensity has been migrating poleward in most basins, raising the potential that those storms could begin to bring greater impacts to locations that may be less well-equipped to respond.

Modelling studies, supported by the theory of potential intensity of tropical cyclones, find that mean intensities are projected to increase by about +5 per cent for a +2 degrees C global warming scenario, and near-storm rainfall rates to increase globally by an average of +14 per cent.

Maya Chung, a PhD candidate in Princeton's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, said that in coastal regions, higher storm inundation levels will be among the greatest potential impacts of future tropical cyclones under climate change.

She said: "The combination of likely increased storm intensity and rainfall rates and continued sea-level rise will act to increase the inundation risk of low-lying, unprotected regions.

"The total inundation risk will depend on a variety of storm-related factors as well as sea level rise."

Whereas model projections suggest a greater proportion of higher-intensity cyclones, most model studies project the total number of tropical cyclones each year will decrease or remain approximately the same.

The 2020 hurricane season in the North Atlantic had both a high number of named storms and a high number of intense hurricanes, with six storms in Category 3 to 5.

Thomas Knutson said: "It is possible that in the real world, hurricane activity will increase more than suggested by the range of existing studies -- or perhaps less.

"Unfortunately, humans are on a path to find out through actually increasing global temperatures beyond levels experienced during human history, and then we will see how things turn out."

Prof Le Quéré said: "The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly clear as new evidence becomes available and because our impact on the climate is also growing.

"Continually assessing the scientific evidence is critical to informing the decisions to be made at the COP26 in Glasgow later this year."

'Climate change is probably increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones', Thomas R. Knutson, Maya V. Chung, Gabriel Vecchi, Jingru Sun, Tsung-Lin Hsieh and Adam J. P. Smith, is published at ScienceBrief.org on 26 March 2021.

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In certain circumstances, outsourcing poses risks to vendors

New study provides perspective on the often-overlooked side of client-vendor relationships

RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

Research News

VIDEO: NEW RESEARCH FROM THE LALLY SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT AT RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE FOUND THAT NOT ALL CLIENT-VENDOR RELATIONSHIPS ARE BENEFICIAL FOR THE VENDORS. view more 

CREDIT: RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

TROY, N.Y. -- Outsourcing routine tasks, like payroll, customer service, and accounting, offers well-known benefits to businesses and contributes to an economy in which entrepreneurial vendors can support industry and expand employment. However, new research from the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute discovered that not all client-vendor relationships are beneficial for the vendors.

"It's important to observe and study both sides of a business relationship," said T. Ravichandran, a chaired professor of information systems in Lally and an author of a new study published in Information Systems Frontiers. "For businesses to thrive, they need a vibrant vendor community that will support growth. But it's equally important for vendors to be informed on risks involved with the undertaking."

Ravichandran and his co-author, Sukruth Suresh from St. John Fisher College, examined 231 business process outsourcing announcements spanning 13 years and found that the least beneficial proposition for a vendor tasks them with developing specific capabilities for the client, leading to significant uncertainties. Combined with the complexities associated with managing the client's expectations, such an arrangement amplifies the vendor's risks.

For more information, watch this video.

"A contract may appear to be lucrative but if it involves significant client-specific investment of vendor resources, our findings show that it is a risky proposition for the vendors," Ravichandran said. "When vendors fail, it means reduced options for businesses, which directly disrupts the lives of many people through unemployment and strains the economy in general."

The authors found that the value gains for vendors were substantial when the task being outsourced was well-defined, and required specifically trained workers. Knowledge-intensive processes in areas like supply chain management, finance and accounting services, and research and development are particularly promising. Additionally, the researchers found that contracts of longer duration are generally more beneficial for vendors, no matter the task.

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In addition to holding the Irene and Robert Bozzone '55 Distinguished Chair in Lally, Ravichandran serves the associate dean for research, the director of the Ph.D. program, and the director of the Center for Supply Networks and Analytics.

His research focuses on four broad areas: digital strategies of firms and the mechanisms through which digitization is transforming firms, markets, supply networks and industries, supply chain management and business-business electronic markets; innovation diffusion and assimilation; and organizational renewal and growth through innovation.

About Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Founded in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is America's first technological research university. Rensselaer encompasses five schools, 32 research centers, more than 145 academic programs, and a dynamic community made up of more than 7,600 students and over 100,000 living alumni. Rensselaer faculty and alumni include more than 145 National Academy members, six members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, six National Medal of Technology winners, five National Medal of Science winners, and a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. With nearly 200 years of experience advancing scientific and technological knowledge, Rensselaer remains focused on addressing global challenges with a spirit of ingenuity and collaboration. To learn more, please visit http://www.rpi.edu.

Vaccine hesitancy poses threat to efforts to end pandemic: New commentary

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

WASHINGTON (March 25, 2021)--Although demand for COVID-19 vaccines currently seems high, vaccine hesitancy could pose a major threat to public health efforts to end the pandemic, according to an editorial published today in the journal Science.

The authors, including David A. Broniatowski, associate director of the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics, point out that public sentiment towards vaccines are volatile in the face of events such as the recent controversy surrounding the AstraZeneca vaccine clinical trial data. For example, some people could develop safety concerns due to the news reporting about the AstraZeneca vaccine and then turn down the chance to get an approved COVID-19 vaccine--thus putting them at risk.

Vaccine hesitant people may have anxiety over safety concerns, or they might belong to a community that historically has mistrusted the medical establishment, according to the editorial.

Unfortunately, public health officials might not address their concerns. The editorial notes that people who are hesitant about getting the COVID-19 vaccine are often dismissed as anti-science. At the same time, the vaccine hesitant can be influenced by false information posted on social media or the internet by anti-vaxx activists and organized anti-vaxx groups, the authors said.

"Vaccine hesitant people are targeted by anti-vaxxers and ridiculed by some health care providers." Broniatowski said, "They are therefore doubly at risk."

How can vaccine hesitancy be addressed?

Broniatowski co-authored the editorial with Professor Heidi J. Larson, Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

"Messages about vaccines must be delivered in a way that is empathetic to avoid stigmatizing people who have questions about the vaccine. Particularly in the context of Covid-19, with all its uncertainties, people need to be reassured, and feel that their concerns are heard," Larson said. "And, if there is one thing we have learned in all our research, people's concerns can change. Listening needs to be ongoing."

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The editorial, "Volatility of vaccine confidence," appears in the March 26 issue of the journal Science.

Bringing Total Worker Health® to a multinational agribusiness in Latin America

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

Research News

 

Researchers from the Center for Health, Work & Environment (CHWE) at the Colorado School of Public Health have published a paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health studying the effectiveness of applying Total Worker Health (TWH) in an international context. The study, led by a team at CHWE, is the first to examine how a TWH framework operates outside of a western context in Latin America workforces.

"Although recent reviews show that TWH intervention studies have had some global reach, the vast majority have been conducted in Western countries," says lead researcher Diana Jaramillo. "While global organizations, as well as governmental entities in Latin America, acknowledge the importance of this integrated approach to occupational health and safety, there are no studies exploring the implementation of the TWH approach in Latin America, to our knowledge." This region, which encompasses many low- and middle-income countries and diverse cultures, is in great need of TWH interventions to protect and promote the health of their workforce.

In the published manuscript, the researchers explored three novel concepts: the applicability of TWH theories in 1) a Latin American cultural setting; 2) a vertically integrated agribusiness; 3) within a multinational organization. The team took a community-based participatory research approach to adapt existing TWH tools and training. They convened stakeholders, interviewed health and safety champions and senior leaders, and identified TWH strategies that needed tweaking to meet the conditions of workers from very different backgrounds and with very different needs.

The case study documents the collaboration with Pantaleon, one of the largest agribusinesses in Latin America. CHWE partnered with the company in 2016 to engage in a series of projects to evaluate and address health and safety for the company's thousands of employees. One aspect was the process and adaptation strategy for conducting a TWH assessment at multiple organizational levels and in multiple countries including Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mexico. The summary provides support for designing TWH interventions that can be adopted and implemented in global enterprise-level settings that span a diverse range of agriculture work functions from the corporate offices to the sugarcane fields.

"This case study represents a way to reach thousands of vulnerable workers in a large Latin American agribusiness and the opportunity to explore TWH research, translation and dissemination across different countries and cultures," adds Jaramillo. In the long term, they expect this approach to improve employee health, safety and well-being, and ultimately, productivity in meaningful and measurable ways.

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About the Center for Health, Work and Environment

The Center for Health, Work and Environment (CHWE) at the Colorado School of Public Health is one of six Centers of Excellence for Total Worker Health® and houses the Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center, one of 18 centers of its kind supported by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Main offices for the Center are located at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado. The Center team works with faculty, students, and community partners on numerous projects in occupational and environmental health, safety, and well-being.

About the Colorado School of Public Health

The Colorado School of Public Health is the first and only accredited school of public health in the Rocky Mountain Region, attracting top tier faculty and students from across the country, and providing a vital contribution towards ensuring our region's health and well-being. Collaboratively formed in 2008 by the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the University of Northern Colorado, the Colorado School of Public Health provides training, innovative research and community service to actively address public health issues including chronic disease, access to health care, environmental threats, emerging infectious diseases, and costly injuries. Learn more and follow Colorado SPH's updates on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Measurable changes in brain activity during first few months of studying a new language

Improvements in reading and listening skills of first-time Japanese language students observed via brain scan

UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

Research News

 

A study with first-time learners of Japanese has measured how brain activity changes after just a few months of studying a new language. The results show that acquiring a new language initially boosts brain activity, which then reduces as language skills improve.

"In the first few months, you can quantitatively measure language-skill improvement by tracking brain activations," said Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, a neuroscientist at the University of Tokyo and first author of the research recently published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Researchers followed 15 volunteers as they moved to Tokyo and completed introductory Japanese classes for at least three hours each day. All volunteers were native speakers of European languages in their 20s who had previously studied English as children or teenagers, but had no prior experience studying Japanese or traveling to Japan.

Volunteers took multiple choice reading and listening tests after at least eight weeks of lessons and again six to fourteen weeks later. Researchers chose to assess only the "passive" language skills of reading and listening because those can be more objectively scored than the "active" skills of writing and speaking. Volunteers were inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner while taking the tests so that researchers could measure local blood flow around their brain regions, an indicator of neuronal activity.

"In simple terms, there are four brain regions specialized for language . Even in a native, second or third language, the same regions are responsible," said Sakai.

Those four regions are the grammar center and comprehension area in the left frontal lobe as well as the auditory processing and vocabulary areas in the temporo-parietal lobe. Additionally, the memory areas of the hippocampus and the vision areas of the brain, the occipital lobes, also become active to support the four language-related regions while taking the tests.

During the initial reading and listening tests, those areas of volunteers' brains showed significant increases in blood flow, revealing that the volunteers were thinking hard to recognize the characters and sounds of the unfamiliar language. Volunteers scored about 45% accuracy on the reading tests and 75% accuracy on the listening tests (random guessing on the multiple choice tests would produce 25% accuracy).

Researchers were able to distinguish between two subregions of the hippocampus during the listening tests. The observed activation pattern fits previously described roles for the anterior hippocampus in encoding new memories and for the posterior hippocampus in recalling stored information.

At the second test several weeks later, volunteers' reading test scores improved to an average of 55%. Their accuracy on the listening tests was unchanged, but they were faster to choose an answer, which researchers interpret as improved comprehension.

Comparing results from the first tests to the second tests, after additional weeks of study, researchers found decreased brain activation in the grammar center and comprehension area during listening tests, as well as in the visual areas of the occipital lobes during the reading tests.

"We expect that brain activation goes down after successfully learning a language because it doesn't require so much energy to understand," said Sakai.

Notably during the second listening test, volunteers had slightly increased activation of the auditory processing area of their temporal lobes, likely due to an improved "mind's voice" while hearing.

"Beginners have not mastered the sound patterns of the new language, so cannot hold in memory and imagine them well. They are still expending a lot of energy to recognize the speech in contrast to letters or grammar rules," said Sakai.

This pattern of brain activation changes -- a dramatic initial rise during the learning phase and a decline as the new language is successfully acquired and consolidated -- can give experts in the neurobiology of language a biometric tool to assess curricula for language learners or potentially for people regaining language skills lost after a stroke or other brain injury.

"In the future, we can measure brain activations to objectively compare different methods to learn a language and select a more effective technique," said Sakai.

Until an ideal method can be identified, researchers at UTokyo recommend acquiring a language in an immersion-style natural environment like studying abroad, or any way that simultaneously activates the brain's four language regions.

This pattern of brain activation over time in individual volunteers' brains mirrors results from previous research (see Figure 3E in Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1113530) where Sakai and his collaborators worked with native Japanese-speaking 13- and 19-year-olds who learned English in standard Tokyo public school lessons. Six years of study seemed to allow the 19-year-olds to understand the second language well enough that brain activation levels reduced to levels similar to those of their native language.

The recent study confirmed this same pattern of brain activation changes over just a few months, not years, potentially providing encouragement for anyone looking to learn a new language as an adult.

"We all have the same human brain, so it is possible for us to learn any natural language. We should try to exchange ideas in multiple languages to build better communication skills, but also to understand the world better -- to widen views about other people and about the future society," said Sakai.

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This research is a peer-reviewed, longitudinal observational study of 15 people published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Research Publication

Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, Tatsuro Kuwamoto, Satoma Yagi, and Kyohei Matsuya. 26 March 2021. Modality-dependent brain activation changes induced by acquiring a second language abroad. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.631957

Related Links

Sakai lab: https://www.sakai-lab.jp/english/

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: https://www.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eng_site/

THIRD WORLD USA

School closures disproportionately hit disadvantaged students in the US

A study analyzing the distribution of school closures due to COVID concludes that racial minorities, students in need and with already poor academic performance have been more likely engaged in remote schooling since September 2020

BOCCONI UNIVERSITY

Research News 

The uneven distribution of school closures in the US since September 2020 threatens to exacerbate regional, racial and class-based divides in educational performance, according to research by Zachary Parolin, of Bocconi University's Department of Social and Political Science, recently published in Nature Human Behavior. For example, in October, only 35% of White students were on distance learning, compared with 52% of Black students, 60% of Hispanic students and 65% of Asian students. And schools recording the lowest math scores were 15% more likely to be closed.

Professor Parolin and Emma Lee (Columbia University) found in fact that exposure to distance learning from September through December 2020 was more common among schools with lower academic performance (measured with third-grade math scores), a higher share of students experiencing homelessness, more students eligible for free/reduced-price lunches and from racial/ethnic minorities.

"If the schools and students with the greatest pre-COVID disadvantages are also those most exposed to school closures and distance learning, inequalities in learning outcomes may worsen," Professor Parolin says. Recent studies have demonstrated, in fact, that distance learning is less effective than traditional schooling, and that reductions in test scores appear to be particularly steep for students with less educated parents.

The authors measured in-person attendance using an anonymized mobile-phone database able to track traffic around locations, which covers 94% of US school districts and 98% of counties. A school was identified as "closed" or "mostly closed" if it experienced a 50% year-over-year decline in in-person visits during a given month.

"The race/ethnicity and math score gaps are particularly striking," Parolin and Lee write. "In October, 35% of White students were exposed to distance learning, compared with 52% of Black students, 60% of Hispanic students and 65% of Asian students. Moreover, schools recording the lowest third-grade math scores prior to the pandemic were, on average, around 15 percentage points more likely to be closed during September to December 2020 relative to schools with average test scores."

Disparities seem to be mainly driven by geography: larger and denser cities are both at greater risk of COVID spread and more diverse in population, while rural and less populated areas are more frequently white. Politics can also play a role, as Democrats (in power in denser, race-mixed areas, such as California or Washington DC) tended to be more rigorous in COVID restrictions than Republicans.

"The results of the study don't imply we are taking position on whether schools should close", Prof. Parolin warns. "School closures may save lives if they prevent the spread of COVID and the decision to turn to distance learning is undoubtedly difficult. Our study only observes that closures may be widening the educational gap."

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CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M WORKERS COMP

Study reveals bias among doctors who classify X-rays for coal miner's black lung claims

UIC researchers first to publish data on B-reader financial conflicts of interest

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO

Research News

 

IMAGE: ROBERT COHEN view more 

CREDIT: UIC

University of Illinois Chicago researchers are the first to report on the financial conflicts of interest that exist among doctors who review the chest X-rays of coal miners who file workers' compensation claims of totally disabling disease with the U.S. Department of Labor's Federal Black Lung Program.

The UIC researchers found that the determinations of these doctors - who are known as B-readers and who are certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH - were strongly associated with the party that hired them.

By analyzing 63,780 radiograph classifications made by 264 physicians in Black Lung Program claims filed during 2000-2013, the researchers found that B-readers who were identified as ever being hired by a coal miner's employer read the images as negative for pneumoconiosis in 84.8% of the records. Pneumoconiosis is the general term for a class of lung diseases caused by the inhalation of dust - coal worker's pneumonoconiosis, or CWP, is commonly known as black lung disease and caused by long-term inhalation of coal dust.

Comparatively, a lower percentage of the records were read as negative for pneumoconiosis by those hired by the Department of Labor or a miner - 63.2% and 51.3% of the records, respectively.

These results are published today in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The authors write that given the clear association between classifications and financial conflicts of interest, a lack of consistency in classifications within and between B-readers and an absence of an objective gold-standard for chest X-ray classifications, substantial improvements in transparency, oversight, and objectivity for black lung claims are clearly needed.

Lee Friedman

UIC's Lee Friedman and Dr. Robert Cohen are senior authors of the study.

"Certainly, we anticipated finding some bias, as there has been anecdotal evidence for some time and the Department of Labor has even taken action since 2013 to avoid such bias. But the degree of bias shown in this data is alarming," said Friedman, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the UIC School of Public Health. "It begs the question: are those actions enough and are they helping?"

For example, NIOSH has written a rule to institute a panel to review and decertify B-readers who repeatedly provide unreasonably inaccurate classifications of X-rays. However, complaints must be submitted to NIOSH and only after three independent complaint investigations will a B-reader be decertified.

"The system we have today is not being used to its full potential and, even if it were, it still leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to ensuring accurate and judicious outcomes for all parties," said Cohen, clinical professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and director of the Mining Education and Resource Center.

The analysis also found that there were 64 B-readers who classified an absence of pneumoconiosis in 95% of their classifications, with the vast majority (93.3%) of the classifications being made by B-readers who were primarily hired by the employer. The majority of these B-readers - 51 of them - classified films as negative for pneumoconiosis in more than 99% of their classifications.

In contrast, there were 23 B-readers that diagnosed simple pneumoconiosis in 95% of their classifications, with a minority (22%) of the classifications being made by B-readers who were primarily hired by the claimant-miner; 18 of these B-readers diagnosed simple pneumoconiosis in more than 99% of their classifications.

"While there is evidence of bias on both sides, it is clear that the degree of bias is much heavier on the employer side, and this is twofold," Cohen said. "Not only are those hired by an employer much more likely to classify a chest X-ray as negative for black lung disease, but it is also much more likely that an employer will have the resources to hire its own expert - at a much higher fee - in the first place.

"It is clear from this data that this bias is a systemic problem and the most significant offenders are identifiable - the records show a clear pattern of B-reader conflicts of interest," he said.

Better utilizing the current regulations to decertify B-readers with significant bias are among the recommendations the authors of the study present in the paper.

The authors also recommend that all initial contact and payments should be made by USDOL, and the other parties should be prohibited from communicating on a claim until the initial classifications are submitted, limiting coordination between the reader and requester.

Cohen and Friedman say other methods to reduce bias could include growing and diversifying the pool of B-readers; regulating the fees of B-readers who testify on behalf of either party; mandating B-readers to disclose any wholesale relationships and their associated income from related classifications; and, investing in scientific advances that leverage artificial intelligence to classify chest films without bias.

"The technology is there, but we don't have the systems in place to validate or implement a process," Cohen said. "It's a matter of motivation."

"This is really just the tip of the iceberg," Friedman said. "It is very likely that this issue extends beyond the Federal Black Lung Program and is pervasive across workers' compensation systems."

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UIC's Sudeshna De and Kirsten Almberg are coauthors of the paper, which noted no external funding for the research.

Physicians' financial conflicts of interest may play a role in black lung diagnoses

AMERICAN THORACIC SOCIETY

Research News

   IMAGE: STUDY EXAMINES BLACK LUNG DISEASE DIAGNOSES AND PHYSICIANS' FINANCIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. view more 

CREDIT: AT

March 23, 2021-- A new study published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society examines if the source of physician payment for a medical opinion influences whether the physician finds that a coal miner has black lung disease. The study is the first to look at this relationship in the workers' compensation process.

In "Association Between Financial Conflicts of Interest and ILO Classifications for Black Lung Disease," Lee S. Friedman, PhD, associate professor, School of Public Health, Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Illinois Chicago and colleagues looked at which party reimbursed B-readers--physicians trained and licensed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and approved by the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) to evaluate miners' chest X-rays during workers' compensation proceedings--and correlated the payments with diagnoses of black lung disease.

"Our findings demonstrate that B-readers who were ever hired by employers were substantially less likely to classify an absence of coal workers' black lung disease (pneumoconiosis) when they were contracted by the USDOL, compared to later classifications when hired by the employer," said Dr. Friedman. "We did not observe this disparity among physicians ever hired by a miner."

These physicians are hired by the USDOL for the initial evaluation. The miner and/or employer (mine operator), at their own expense, then has the option to request a supplemental evaluation if they feel the initial USDOL-funded classification is incorrect. They may pick any B-reader they choose.

The researchers looked at 63,780 X-ray classifications made by 264 B-reader physicians between 2000 and 2013 for U.S. coal miners' black lung claims. Of these, 7,656 court decisions for the period 2002-2019 were used to evaluate financial conflict of interest for each physician.

"The more frequently a physician is hired by an employer to provide a medical opinion on workers' compensation cases for black lung disease, the more likely that physician will not identify black lung disease on a chest X-ray," said Dr. Friedman. "And the more a physician works with a miner on their claim process, the more likely they will identify black lung disease."

Dr. Friedman noted that many miners cannot afford a supplemental evaluation following the evaluation by the B-reader selected by USDOL, so, often, the only additional classification submitted to the court is from the employer. "While bias is present in both sets of physicians, a vast majority of classifications submitted to these courts are paid for by mine operators. The employers will throw a lot of resources at these cases to discourage miners from filing for compensation by making the process protracted and painful."

One-fifth of all classifications submitted to USDOL were made by physicians who classified 95 percent of their cases in one direction - absence or presence of pneumoconiosis. The average B-reader noted the presence of pneumoconiosis in a third of X-rays. The vast majority of the physicians who classified X-rays in a singular direction were hired by employers and were reporting an absence of pneumoconiosis.

These evaluations are done through the Federal Black Lung Program, which is administered by the USDOL and charged with managing claims by coal miners for workers' compensation for totally disabling coal mine dust disease (black lung disease). Earlier reports raised concerns that financial conflicts of interest may systematically bias physicians when they are classifying chest X-rays for the absence, presence or severity of black lung disease.

Dr. Friedman and his colleagues concluded that their analysis demonstrates the need to reduce subjectivity in the classification of chest X-rays for black lung disease. "There remains a need for empirical analyses specific to the workers' compensation system, which is wholly lacking," they state. "All parties involved deserve a compensation system that is objective and expeditious."

They recommend a series of systematic reforms, as discussed in the paper.

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UPDATED

Researchers show magnetic fields around black hole in image for first time

© Provided by The Canadian Press

A team of international scientists that includes a Canadian researcher said it has mapped, for the first time, the magnetic fields surrounding a black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration team produced an image that shows electromagnetic fields that look like a "crisp swirl" of light around the black hole as it appears in polarized light.

The discovery will help astrophysicists better understand black holes and their profound effects on galaxies, said Avery Broderick, one of the team's researchers who works at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont.

"We’re watching this astrophysical drama, this twisting up of magnetic fields, building that spring at the bottom that’s going to launch this jet out into this large universe and rule the fates of galaxies," Broderick said in an interview.

The polarized image allows researchers to learn more about the magnetic fields surrounding the black hole in the M87 galaxy, he said.

They believe the research helps its understanding of how magnetic fields allow the black hole to "eat" matter and eject powerful energetic jets.

Two years ago the same team released the first-ever image of a black hole.

The international collaboration is composed of more than 300 researchers who compiled the image from eight Earth-based telescopes positioned around the world.

The new image is part of two related papers published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal.

The scientists have been working on the new project the past two years, Broderick said, ensuring what they were seeing was, in fact, real.

He said he and his team devised a new radioimaging method that helped show the electromagnetic fields.

There were five other teams that were using different methods to show the polarization, some tried and true, others novel.

"All six of these achieved very similar results," he said.

"Only when we have this kind of replication across this many teams that we feel confident we’re seeing something that’s really in the sky and not an artifact of our analysis."

What the team produced is comparable, in a sense, to the old high school experiment where students drop iron filings around a magnet bar, he explained.

The filings will line up in a unique fashion around the poles and illustrate the invisible magnetic field.

"What we have shown is those magnetic fields are not random, not just angled up in random directions, but very much like that bar magnet," said Broderick, who is also a professor at the University of Waterloo.

He said the teams produced four images between on April 5 and 11 in 2017.

"In some sense we have a polarized movie," he said. "But the movie only has four frames."

There is a difference between the first two images and the last two, he said.

"From the beginning of the week to the end of the week, the high polarization moves a bit," Broderick said.

"That’s interesting — we don’t have a lot to say about it other than that’s interesting."

The image researchers captured is not of the black hole closest to Earth, however, but of one at the centre of neighbouring galaxy Messier 87 that was easier to observe by telescope. It is about six billion times the mass of our sun and located about 53 million light years from Earth. One light-year is equal to 9.5 trillion kilometres.

"The newly published polarized images are key to understanding how the magnetic field allows the black hole to ‘eat’ matter and launch powerful jets,” said Andrew Chael, part of the team and a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Princeton Centre for Theoretical Science.

For Broderick, it’s not that different than building a fence.

"It’s a lot of work, a lot of sweat and frustration digging the post holes and screwing the whole thing together and making sure everything is plum, and while you’re doing that you’re focused on the mundane and onerous tasks," he said.

"But then you get to step back when you’re finished and you have a nice looking fence that’s not too crooked and you feel an immense measure of pride and that's where we are today."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 24, 2021.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press

Black hole shows magnetic fields surrounding it are strong enough to resist gravity

Wits University astrophysicists are the only two scientists on African continent that contributed to the study.

UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND

Research News

 

IMAGE: POLARISED VIEW OF THE BLACK HOLE IN M87. THE LINES MARK THE ORIENTATION OF POLARISATION, WHICH IS RELATED TO THE MAGNETIC FIELD AROUND THE SHADOW OF THE BLACK HOLE. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: © EHT COLLABORATION

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, a multinational team of over 300 scientists including two astrophysicists from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), has revealed today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarised light.

This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarisation, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole. The observations are key to explaining how the M87 galaxy, located 55 million light-years away, is able to launch energetic jets from its core.

"We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy," says Monika Mo?cibrodzka, Coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and Assistant Professor at Radboud Universiteit in the Netherlands.

"This work is a major milestone: the polarisation of light carries information that allows us to better understand the physics behind the image we saw in April 2019, which was not possible before," explains Iván Martí-Vidal, also Coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and GenT Distinguished Researcher at the Universitat de València, Spain. He adds that "unveiling this new polarised-light image required years of work due to the complex techniques involved in obtaining and analysing the data."

Professor Roger Deane, SARAO/NRF Chair in Radio Astronomy at Wits and his postdoctoral researcher, Dr Iniyan Natarajan, are the only two scientists in the EHT collaboration that are based on the African continent. On 10 April 2019, the collaboration released the first ever image of a black hole, revealing a bright ring-like structure with a dark central region -- the black hole's shadow. Today's results reveal that a significant fraction of the light around the M87 black hole is polarised.

"When unpolarised, the oscillations of the electromagnetic fields have no preferred direction. Filters such as polarised sunglasses or magnetic fields in space, preferentially let the oscillations in one direction pass through, thereby polarising the light. Thus, the polarised-light image illuminates the structure of the magnetic fields at the edge of the black hole," says Natarajan, who was part of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group.

Black holes have long been known to launch powerful jets of energy and matter far out into space. Astronomers have relied on different physical models of how matter behaves near the black hole to better understand this process. The jet emerging from M87's core extends at least 5000 light-years from its centre, the process behind which is still unexplained.

The observations suggest that the magnetic fields at the black hole's edge are strong enough to push back on the hot gas and help it resist gravity's pull. Only the gas that slips through the field can spiral inwards to the event horizon.

To observe the heart of the M87 galaxy, the collaboration linked eight telescopes around the world to create a virtual Earth-sized telescope, the EHT. The impressive resolution obtained with the EHT is equivalent to that needed to measure the size of a cricket ball on the surface of the Moon.

This setup allowed the team to directly observe the black hole shadow and the ring of light around it, with the new polarised-light image clearly showing that the ring is magnetised. The results are published today in two separate papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by the EHT collaboration.

"Peering as close as we can to the edge of black holes using cutting-edge techniques is precisely the sort of challenge we relish here at Wits," says Deane, Founding Director of the newly approved Wits Centre for Astrophysics. "We are in a golden era for radio astronomy, and our involvement in projects like the Event Horizon Telescope and the Square Kilometre Array is at the centre of our plan to carry out fundamental research, and train world-class postgraduate students who will become the leading African scientists of tomorrow."

Natarajan was involved in simulating the black hole polarisation observations and was also part of the efforts to calibrate and generate the polarised image. Deane and Natarajan have also written one of the software packages that is being used to simulate black hole observations within the EHT collaboration.

"Our collaboration developed new techniques for analysing the polarisation data, which were validated on simulations before being applied to real observations," says Natarajan.

"Such challenging projects provide the opportunity to develop techniques which later find wider applicability in the community in ways which can pleasantly surprise us."

CAPTION

Group picture of the workshop which triggered the imaging the magnetic fields at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany, on July 15-19, 2019.

CREDIT

Credit: © E. Traianou/MPIfR