Tech

Conspiracy theories appear to be increasing in popularity as the Covid-19 pandemic continues. But to what extent do people really agree with them, and what is the association with cognitive biases? A research team from the University of Basel studied these questions in German-speaking Switzerland and Germany.

Periods of crisis are often conducive to the emergence and spread of conspiracy theories, and the Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. A research team led by Sarah Kuhn and Dr. Thea Zander-Schellenberg of the University of Basel has investigated the endorsement rates of coronavirus-related conspiracy theories in German-speaking Switzerland and Germany, together with the associated psychological factors. More than 1,600 people, 554 of which in Switzerland, took part in the anonymous online survey in July 2020. The findings have now been published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

Alongside demographic information, the survey assessed respondents' agreement with several coronavirus-related statements based on suspicions of a conspiracy behind the emergence of the pandemic or the related communication. Questions were also asked about current feelings of stress and paranoia-like experiences, and various cognitive biases were identified based on inference tasks. These biases include, for example, tendencies to systematically draw conclusions on the basis of insufficient information, or to exclude information that contradicts an individual's stance in their conclusions.

About one in ten respondents agreed strongly with conspiratorial statements

On average, just below 10% of all respondents agreed strongly with a conspiratorial statement, a further 20% slightly or moderately, and approximately 70% not at all. This distribution was identified within both the Swiss and German cohorts. Most popular were statements suggesting that the virus was man-made, or that the official explanation of the cause of the virus was questionable.

Participants who agreed more strongly with the statements presented were on average younger, more stressed and reported more paranoia-like experiences (e.g. "Strangers and friends look at me critically"). They also held a more extreme political stance and had a lower level of education. The agreement values did not vary between the sexes.

A further result revealed that Swiss respondents agreed slightly more with certain statements than German respondents; some of the more strongly supported statements related to the biological aspects and the purpose of Covid-19 vaccines (e.g. "Big Pharma created coronavirus to profit from the vaccines"). Although statistically significant, the differences revealed are small. This finding complements existing research results that show that vaccine acceptance is lower in Switzerland than in other western European countries, such as Germany.

"As our survey represents a snapshot of attitudes as they stood last summer, further studies are now required in order to demonstrate whether endorsement levels have remained stable or changed in the meantime," says Zander-Schellenberg.

Cognitive biases, but not always

The study team also found indications that endorsement of conspiracy theories was associated with certain peculiarities in thought processes. Participants who found coronavirus conspiracy theories to be plausible jumped to conclusions and reached them with greater uncertainty than those who considered them to be less plausible. They also paid less attention to information that contradicted their own opinion.

In an adjunct in-depth statistical analysis, the researchers also found that the link between conspiracy theories and cognitive biases was not as linear as assumed. It emerged that the group of participants who agreed strongly with conspiracy theories contained several individuals who demonstrated even less cognitive biases than those who tended to reject conspiracy theories. This group of respondents took a more cautious and adaptive approach when reaching its conclusions.

"These results suggest that not everyone who agrees with a conspiracy theory automatically processes information in an unfavorable way and decides accordingly," says lead author Sarah Kuhn. The results show rather that the group of conspiracy theory supporters might also contain various subgroups characterized by different thought processes.

"These findings were surprising for us in that psychological research has previously assumed that conspiracy theories went hand in hand with characteristics such as poor analytical thinking skills and hasty conclusions," says Kuhn. "The fact that with some people the opposite might be the case means we should be careful with generalizations about supporters of conspiracy theories; it also shows the potential from a research perspective of studying the cognitive mechanisms of conspiracy theories more closely in future."

Due to the survey approach, the study by definition cannot be considered to be a representative survey of the population, but the respondent samples were nevertheless similar to the general Swiss and German population in terms of age and gender.

A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, with archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology, have found the first evidence of a religious diet locked inside pottery fragments excavated from the early medieval Jewish community of Oxford.

Keeping kosher is one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining these dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundamental part of everyday life. It is a key part of what identifies them as Jews, both amongst their own communities and to the outside world.

Oxford's Jewish quarter was established around St. Aldates in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, following William the Conqueror's invitation to Jews in Northern France to settle in England. Recent excavations by Oxford Archaeology at St Aldates, in the historic heart of Oxford, revealed evidence for two houses, which a medieval census suggested belonged to two Jewish families. One was owned by Jacob f. mag. Moses and called Jacob's Hall, and was said to be one of the most substantial private houses in Oxford and the other house was owned by an Elekin f. Bassina.

During excavations, archaeologists found a stone-built structure, identified as a latrine, and dated to the late 11th and 12th century. A remarkable animal bone assemblage was unearthed in this latrine, dominated by domestic fowl (mainly goose), and with a complete absence of pig bones, hinting at a kosher diet. Fish bones comprised only species such as herring which are kosher. This combination of species suggests a Jewish dietary signature, identified in British zooarchaeology for the first time, and just the third time in medieval Europe.

To investigate whether the inhabitants of the two houses were eating a Jewish diet, the team used a combined chemical and isotopic approach to identify and quantify the food residues absorbed into medieval vessels found at the site.

Their findings, published recently in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, showed that the possible Jewish vessels were only used to cook meats from cattle, sheep and goat. Evidence for pig processing was entirely absent. However, the cooking and eating of pork was evident from the pottery residues and animal bones from a contemporaneous site outside of the Jewish Quarter in Oxford (The Queen's College), and from the earlier Anglo-Saxon phase at St Aldates.

Lead author, Dr Julie Dunne from the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry, said: "This is a remarkable example of how biomolecular information extracted from medieval pottery and combined with ancient documents and animal bones, has provided a unique insight into 800-year-old Jewish dietary practices."

This is the first study of its kind that has been able to identify the practice of keeping kosher, with its associated ritual food practices and taboos, using ancient food residues found in cooking pots, opening the way for similar studies in future.

Edward Biddulph, who managed the post-excavation project at Oxford Archaeology, said: "The results of the excavation at St Aldates and Queen Street have been astonishing, not only revealing rare archaeological evidence of a medieval Jewry in Britain, but also demonstrating the enormous value of carefully focused analysis that combines traditional finds and stratigraphic analysis with scientific techniques."

Dr Lucy Cramp who is a senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Bristol, and is a co-author of the study, added: "Human dietary choices are based on far more than availability or caloric content. What's really exciting is how this evidence for dietary patterns in Medieval Oxford informs us about the diversity of cultural practices and beliefs that were present in the past, as today."

Professor Richard Evershed FRS who heads up Bristol's Organic Geochemistry Unit and is a co-author of the study, added: "This is another remarkable example of just how far we are able to go with using archaeological science to define many aspects of the lives of our ancestors."

Working safely is not only about processes, but context - understanding the work environment and circumstances, and being able to predict what other people will do next. A new system empowers robots with this level of context awareness, so they can work side-by-side with humans on assembly lines more efficiently and without unnecessary interruptions.

Instead of being able to only judge distance between itself and its human co-workers, the human-robot collaboration system can identify each worker it works with, as well as the person's skeleton model, which is an abstract of body volume, says Hongyi Liu, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Using this information, the context-aware robot system can recognize the worker's pose and even predict the next pose. These abilities provide the robot with a context to be aware of while interacting.

Liu says that the system operates with artificial intelligence that requires less computational power and smaller datasets than traditional machine learning methods. It relies instead on a form of machine learning called transfer learning - which reuses knowledge developed through training before being adapted into an operational model.

The research was published in the recent issue of Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, and was co-authored by KTH Professor Lihui Wang.

Liu says that the technology is out ahead of today's International Organization for Standards (ISO) requirements for collaborative robot safety, so implementation of the technology would require industrial action. But the context awareness offers better efficiency than the one-dimensional interaction workers now experience with robots, he says.

"Under the ISO standard and technical specification, when a human approaches a robot it slows down, and if he or she comes close enough it will stop. If the person moves away it resumes. That's a pretty low level of context awareness," he says.

"It jeopardizes efficiency. Production is slowed and humans cannot work closely to robots."

Liu compares the context-aware robot system to a self-driving car that recognizes how long a stoplight has been red and anticipates moving again. Instead of braking or downshifting, it begins to adjust its speed by cruising toward the intersection, thereby sparing the brakes and transmission further wear.

Experiments with the system showed that with context, a robot can operate more safely and efficiently without slowing down production.

In one test performed with the system, a robot arm's path was blocked unexpectedly by someone's hand. But rather than stop, the robot adjusted - it predicted the future trajectory of the hand and the arm moved around the hand.

"This is safety not just from the technical point of view in avoiding collisions, but being able to recognize the context of the assembly line," he says. "This gives an additional layer of safety."

A recent study finds that unhealthy eating behaviors at night can make people less helpful and more withdrawn the next day at work.

"For the first time, we have shown that healthy eating immediately affects our workplace behaviors and performance," says Seonghee "Sophia" Cho, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "It is relatively well established that other health-related behaviors, such as sleep and exercise, affect our work. But nobody had looked at the short-term effects of unhealthy eating."

Fundamentally, the researchers had two questions: Does unhealthy eating behavior affect you at work the next day? And, if so, why?

For the study, researchers had 97 full-time employees in the United States answer a series of questions three times a day for 10 consecutive workdays. Before work on each day, study participants answered questions related to their physical and emotional well-being. At the end of each workday, participants answered questions about what they did at work. In the evening, before bed, participants answered questions about their eating and drinking behaviors after work.

In the context of the study, researchers defined "unhealthy eating" as instances when study participants felt they'd eaten too much junk food; when participants felt they'd had too much to eat or drink; or when participants reporting having too many late-night snacks.

The researchers found that, when people engaged in unhealthy eating behaviors, they were more likely to report having physical problems the next morning. Problems included headaches, stomachaches and diarrhea. In addition, when people reported unhealthy eating behaviors, they were also more likely to report emotional strains the next morning - such as feeling guilty or ashamed about their diet choices. Those physical and emotional strains associated with unhealthy eating were, in turn, related to changes in how people behaved at work throughout the day.

Essentially, when people reported physical or emotional strains associated with unhealthy eating, they were also more likely to report declines in "helping behavior" and increases in "withdrawal behavior." Helping behavior at work refers to helping colleagues and going the extra mile when you don't have to, such as assisting a co-worker with a task that is not your responsibility. Withdrawal behavior refers to avoiding work-related situations, even though you're at your workplace.

The researchers also found that people who were emotionally stable - meaning people who are better able to cope with stress because they're less emotionally volatile - suffered fewer adverse effects from unhealthy eating. Not only were emotionally stable people less likely to have physical or emotional strains after unhealthy eating, their workplace behaviors were also less likely to change even when they reported physical or emotional strains.

"The big takeaway here is that we now know unhealthy eating can have almost immediate effects on workplace performance," Cho says. "However, we can also say that there is no single 'healthy' diet, and healthy eating isn't just about nutritional content. It may be influenced by an individual's dietary needs, or even by when and how they're eating, instead of what they're eating.

"Companies can help to address healthy eating by paying more attention to the dietary needs and preferences of their employees and helping to address those needs, such as through on-site dining options. This can affect both the physical and mental health of their employees - and, by extension, their on-the-job performance."

The researchers also pointed to a variety of research questions that could be addressed moving forward.

"One confounding variable is that the way our questions were phrased, we may be capturing both unhealthy eating behaviors and unhealthy drinking behaviors related to alcohol," Cho says.

"That's something we will want to tease out moving forward. And while we focused on evening diet, it would be interesting to look at what people are eating at other times of day. Are there specific elements of diet that affect behavioral outcomes - such as sugar or caffeine content? Can there be positive effects of unhealthy eating, such as when people eat comfort foods to help cope with stress? This promises to be a rich field of study."

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- If, as the saying goes, less is more, why do we humans overdo so much?

In a new paper featured on the cover of Nature, University of Virginia researchers explain why people rarely look at a situation, object or idea that needs improving -- in all kinds of contexts -- and think to remove something as a solution. Instead, we almost always add some element, whether it helps or not.

The team's findings suggest a fundamental reason that people struggle with overwhelming schedules, that institutions bog down in proliferating red tape, and, of particular interest to researchers, that humanity is exhausting the planet's resources.

"It happens in engineering design, which is my main interest," said Leidy Klotz, Copenhaver Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment. "But it also happens in writing, cooking and everything else -- just think about your own work and you will see it. The first thing that comes to our minds is, what can we add to make it better. Our paper shows we do this to our detriment, even when the only right answer is to subtract. Even with financial incentive, we still don't think to take away."

Klotz, whose research explores the overlaps between engineering and behavioral science, teamed with three colleagues from the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy on the interdisciplinary research that shows just how additive we are by nature. Batten public policy and psychology faculty, assistant professor Gabrielle Adams and associate professor Benjamin Converse, and former Batten postdoctoral fellow Andrew Hales, collaborated with Klotz on a series of observational studies and experiments to study the phenomenon.

When considering two broad possibilities for why people systematically default to addition -- either they generate ideas for both possibilities and disproportionately discard subtractive solutions or they overlook subtractive ideas altogether -- the researchers focused on the latter.

"Additive ideas come to mind quickly and easily, but subtractive ideas require more cognitive effort," Converse said. "Because people are often moving fast and working with the first ideas that come to mind, they end up accepting additive solutions without considering subtraction at all."

The researchers think there may be a self-reinforcing effect.

"The more often people rely on additive strategies, the more cognitively accessible they become," Adams said. "Over time, the habit of looking for additive ideas may get stronger and stronger, and in the long run, we end up missing out on many opportunities to improve the world by subtraction."

Klotz has a book that takes a wider view of the topic, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, coming out a week after the Nature paper. Although the timing is coincidence, both the paper and book are products of the interdisciplinary and collaborative research environment at UVA, he said.

"It's an incredibly interesting finding, and I think our research has tremendous implications across contexts, but especially in engineering to improve how we design technology to benefit humanity," Klotz said.

The researcher's findings are also described in this video produced by Nature.

The hormone auxin is of central importance for the development of plants. Scientists at the University of Bayreuth and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen have now developed a novel sensor that makes the spatial distribution of auxin in the cells of living plants visible in real time. The sensor opens up completely new insights into the inner workings of plants for researchers. Moreover, the influences of changing environmental conditions on growth can now also be quickly detected. The team presents its research results in the journal Nature.

The effects of the plant hormone auxin were first described scientifically almost 100 years ago. Today we know that auxin controls countless processes in plant cells - be it in the development of the embryo in the seed, the formation of the root system, or the orientation of growth to incident sunlight. In all cases, the hormone has the function of coordinating the plant's responses to external stimuli. To do this, it must always be present in the cell tissue where the response to an external stimulus needs to be triggered. Indeed, it is often the case that auxin is needed at very different places in the cell tissue within a very short space of time. This leads to rapid spatial redistribution. With the new biosensor, called AuxSen for short, the dynamics of these processes can be observed in real time for the first time. Light signals indicate where the auxin is located in the cell tissue. What is special about this sensor is that it is not a technical device that has to be introduced into the plants, but an artificial protein that the plants are engineered to produce themselves.

The application of the biosensor has already led to some surprising findings. One example is the rapid redistribution of auxin when a plant is turned upside down. When the root tip no longer points downwards but diagonally upwards, the auxin molecules responsible for root growth collect on the new underside of the root tip within just one minute. And upon being placed right-side up, the old distribution of auxin is restored after just one minute.

Protein biochemistry and plant biology in combination

The development of the biosensor is the result of many years of interdisciplinary collaboration. A team led by Prof. Dr. Birte Höcker, Professor of Protein Design at the University of Bayreuth, and a team led by Prof. Dr. Gerd Jürgens at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, have combined their knowledge and many years of experience. "It is to be expected that the new biosensor will uncover many more unforeseen insights into the inner workings of plants and their reaction to external stimuli over the coming years. The development of the sensor has been a long process in which we have gained fundamental insights into how proteins can be selectively altered to bind specific small molecules," says Prof. Dr. Birte Höcker.

"There is already a great deal of interest in the new sensor, and it is to be expected that optimised variants of AuxSen will be developed over the next few years to enable even better analysis of the diverse auxin-regulated processes in plants. With our new publication in Nature, we wish to encourage the scientific community to increase research in this direction. Our results so far are an example of how fruitful interdisciplinary cooperation can be in this field," explains Prof. Dr. Gerd Jürgens from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen.

Advantages of the biosensor: High signal quality and optimal binding strength to auxin

At the beginning of the biosensor's development was a protein in the bacterium E. coli, which binds to the amino acid tryptophan, but much more poorly to the chemically-related auxin. This protein was coupled with two proteins that fluoresce when excited with light of a certain wavelength. If these partner proteins come very close to each other, their fluorescence increases considerably. A fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) then occurs. The next step was crucial: the initial protein was to be genetically modified so that it binds better to auxin and less well to tryptophan. At the same time, the FRET effect of the partner molecules should always occur when the protein binds to auxin, and only then. With this goal in mind, about 2,000 variants of the protein were created and tested until finally a molecule was found that fulfilled all requirements. Thus, the biosensor AuxSen was born: strong fluorescent signals indicating where in the cell tissue the vital hormone is located.

Another challenge was to enable plants to produce AuxSen themselves. On the one hand, it had to be ensured that AuxSen would bind to the existing auxin molecules in as many cells as possible. This was the only way to map the spatial distribution of auxin in the cell completely and to produce high signal quality. On the other hand, however, the auxin molecules were not to be permanently prevented from fulfilling their original tasks in the plant organism because of binding to AuxSen. Nevertheless, the two research teams succeeded in finding a compromise solution. Plants were genetically modified in such a way as to produce a large amount of AuxSen throughout their cell tissue. But this would only happen when stimulated to do so by a special substance - and then only for a short time. In this way, the biosensor provides precise snapshots of auxin distribution in cells without permanently affecting the processes controlled by auxin.

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found that an outdoor science program was linked to higher average science grades and an increase in a measure of science knowledge for a group of fifth grade girls in North Carolina.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Science Education, indicates outdoor education could be a promising tool to help close gender gaps in science.

"The outdoors is a space where teachers can find tangible ways to make science come alive," said the study's lead author Kathryn Stevenson, assistant professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at NC State. "The natural environment is also a place that everybody has in common. In a way, it's also a great context for employing reform-based teaching practices like hands-on, inquiry-based learning or group work. These practices can be good for all students, but they may be particularly good for reaching students who aren't as well-served in classroom settings."

The researchers studied the impact of an outdoor science education program called Muddy Sneakers on fifth graders' science grades and knowledge of, and attitudes about, science. Fifth graders from western North Carolina attended between six and 10 days of Muddy Sneakers during the 2016-2017 school year. They had science lessons in nearby natural areas, including state parks and school grounds. Outdoor lessons followed the standard course of study for science through hands-on activities, hikes, science journaling, nature exploration and reflections.

Researchers compared the performance of 237 students who learned about science in the classroom to 403 students who participated in the outdoor program. They compared students' grades - which were provided by their teachers - and also used surveys to evaluate students' knowledge about how science works and their feelings about science.

When researchers evaluated students' science grades by gender, they saw that girls who participated in the outdoor science program maintained their science grades on average, while girls' average grades in the traditional science classes dropped. They also saw that participation in the outdoor program helped girls learn more about how science works on average, but traditional classrooms did not.

Boys in the outdoor and traditional class settings had fairly stable science grades on average and saw similar gains in knowledge of how science works.

The researchers reported their findings for girls was consistent with research that shows that girls start to disengage with science around age 10. The outdoor program could be providing a learning context that is different than those that enforce traditional gendered narratives about science and science learning, they argued.

"Outdoor education seems to be one of those contexts that helps everyone learn, but it may be really, really helpful for some students in particular," Stevenson said.

When they evaluated ratings of self-efficacy, which is students' confidence in their own science ability and interest in the field, they found boys' and girls' ratings actually declined on average.

The researchers argued that the measure of science efficacy may be missing an important component that could be more important for encouraging long-term interest in science: an attitude of persistence despite failure. It could be that the results captured that the students were less likely to see science ability as an innate talent rather than the product of hard work.

They also say the outdoor program could have been a new challenge for students. That might explain why students were less confident in their science ability after the program, but still showed gains in science grades and knowing how science works.

"A good combination for students to sustain success is - you need them to learn, but you need them to feel comfortable with not knowing it all," Stevenson said. "While self-efficacy dropped, achievement was stable."

Tracking carbon dioxide levels indoors is an inexpensive and powerful way to monitor the risk of people getting COVID-19, according to new research from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the University of Colorado Boulder. In any given indoor environment, when excess CO2 levels double, the risk of transmission also roughly doubles, two scientists reported this week in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

The chemists relied on a simple fact already put to use by other researchers more than a decade ago: Infectious people exhale airborne viruses at the same time as they exhale carbon dioxide. That means CO2 can serve as a "proxy" for the number of viruses in the air.

"You're never safe indoors sharing air with others, but you can reduce the risk," said Jose-Luis Jimenez, co-author of the new assessment, a CIRES Fellow and professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"And CO2 monitoring is really the only low-cost and practical option we have for monitoring," said Zhe Peng, a CIRES and chemistry researcher, and lead author of the new paper. "There is nothing else."

For many months, researchers around the world have been searching for a way to continually monitor COVID-19 infection risk indoors, whether in churches or bars, buses or hospitals. Some are developing instruments that can detect viruses in the air continually, to warn of a spike or to indicate relative safety. Others tested existing laboratory-grade equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Jimenez and colleagues turned to commercially available carbon dioxide monitors, which can cost just a few hundred dollars. First, they confirmed in the laboratory that the detectors were accurate. Then, they created a mathematical "box model" of how an infected person exhales viruses and CO2, how others in the room inhaled and exhaled, and how the viruses and gas accumulate in the air of a room or are removed by ventilation. The model takes into consideration infection numbers in the local community, but it does not detail air flow through rooms--that kind of modeling requires expensive, custom analysis for each room.

It's important to understand that there is no single CO2 level at which a person can assume a shared indoor space is "safe," Peng emphasized. That's partly because activity matters: Are people in the room singing and talking loudly or exercising, or are they sitting quietly and reading or resting? A CO2 level of 1,000 ppm, which is well above outside levels of about 400 ppm, could be relatively safe in a quiet library with masks but not in an active gym without masks.

But in each indoor space, the model can illuminate "relative" risk: If CO2 levels in a gym drop from 2,800 to 1,000 ppm (~2,400 above background levels to 600), the risk of COVID-19 transmission drops, too, to one-quarter of the original risk. In the library, if an influx of people makes CO2 jump from 800 to 1,600 (400 to 1,200 above background), COVID transmission risk triples.

In the new paper, Peng and Jimenez also shared a set of mathematical formulae and tools that experts in building systems and public health can use to pin down actual, not just relative, risk. But the most important conclusion is that to minimize risk, keep the CO2 levels in all the spaces where we share air as low as practically possible.

"Wherever you are sharing air, the lower the CO2, the lower risk of infection," Jimenez said.

HOUSTON -- (April 7, 2021) -- Rice University computer scientists have demonstrated artificial intelligence (AI) software that runs on commodity processors and trains deep neural networks 15 times faster than platforms based on graphics processors.

"The cost of training is the actual bottleneck in AI," said Anshumali Shrivastava, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice's Brown School of Engineering. "Companies are spending millions of dollars a week just to train and fine-tune their AI workloads."

Shrivastava and collaborators from Rice and Intel will present research that addresses that bottleneck April 8 at the machine learning systems conference MLSys.

Deep neural networks (DNN) are a powerful form of artificial intelligence that can outperform humans at some tasks. DNN training is typically a series of matrix multiplication operations, an ideal workload for graphics processing units (GPUs), which cost about three times more than general purpose central processing units (CPUs).

"The whole industry is fixated on one kind of improvement -- faster matrix multiplications," Shrivastava said. "Everyone is looking at specialized hardware and architectures to push matrix multiplication. People are now even talking about having specialized hardware-software stacks for specific kinds of deep learning. Instead of taking an expensive algorithm and throwing the whole world of system optimization at it, I'm saying, 'Let's revisit the algorithm.'"

Shrivastava's lab did that in 2019, recasting DNN training as a search problem that could be solved with hash tables. Their "sub-linear deep learning engine" (SLIDE) is specifically designed to run on commodity CPUs, and Shrivastava and collaborators from Intel showed it could outperform GPU-based training when they unveiled it at MLSys 2020.

The study they'll present this week at MLSys 2021 explored whether SLIDE's performance could be improved with vectorization and memory optimization accelerators in modern CPUs.

"Hash table-based acceleration already outperforms GPU, but CPUs are also evolving," said study co-author Shabnam Daghaghi, a Rice graduate student. "We leveraged those innovations to take SLIDE even further, showing that if you aren't fixated on matrix multiplications, you can leverage the power in modern CPUs and train AI models four to 15 times faster than the best specialized hardware alternative."

Study co-author Nicholas Meisburger, a Rice undergraduate, said "CPUs are still the most prevalent hardware in computing. The benefits of making them more appealing for AI workloads cannot be understated."

ZANZIBAR CITY (April 7, 2021) - A new study revealed that a drastic reduction of deaths of one of Africa's rarest primates, the Zanzibar red colobus (Piliocolobus kirkii), followed the installation of four speedbumps along a stretch of road where the species frequently crossed.

Zanzibar red colobus are found only in the Zanzibar archipelago and classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Reliant on Unguja Island's forests for their survival, around half of the species population is found in Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park.

In the study, published in Oryx - The International Journal of Conservation, primatologists from Bangor University, in collaboration with national park managers from Zanzibar and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), assessed mortality from vehicle collisions - a growing threat faced by primates living in increasingly fragmented habitats crisscrossed by roads.

They found that historic data from the road traversing the national park showed that one colobus was killed on average every 2-3 weeks by traffic. After speedbumps were installed, this was reduced to one every six weeks.

While great progress, this mortality rate is still a significant threat to the species - especially given that natural predation tends to target weaker individuals, yet roadkill is indiscriminate, killing reproductively active adults as well as the very young and old.

Bangor primatologist and Director of the Zanzibar Red Colobus Project, Dr. Alexander Georgiev, and senior author of this study, said: "Cars are not selective in the animals they kill. This means that while natural predators may target the very young and old more often, cars are equally likely to kill reproductively active young adults, who would contribute the most to population growth. And this may be a problem."

Harry Olgun, now a PhD student at the University's School of Natural Sciences, led this study as part of his Masters research on the road ecology of the Zanzibar red colobus. Olgun said: "After the road at Jozani was surfaced but before the speedbumps were installed, a colobus was reported to have been killed every two to three weeks, resulting in perhaps about 12-17 percent annual mortality, according to one estimate. The recent data show that speedbumps have made a huge difference for the safety of the colobus. Adding more speedbumps would help reduce the risk further."

Dr. Tim Davenport, Director of Species Conservation & Science in Africa at WCS, who led the first countrywide census of the Zanzibar red colobus a few years ago and is a coauthor of the study, said: "As tourism grows in Zanzibar and habitat continues to shrink, using science to quantify and solve conservation problems has never been so important. Understanding the impact of vehicles on wildlife within a park, and implementing practical solutions is exactly what we as conservationists should be doing."

In a study of 558 college students, those who reported more symptoms associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also reported higher levels of stress. Students reporting higher levels of ADHD symptoms also reported lower levels of resilience, according to the study published in the
Journal of College Counseling.

Each of the 4 protective factors of resilience--social skills, social support, goal efficacy (the perception of one's own ability to reach a goal), and planning and prioritizing behaviors--influenced the relationship between ADHD symptoms and perceived stress.

"The results offer hope to students, because each of the resilience factors can be strengthened at any point in life either on one's own or with the help of a counselor," said senior author Shelia M. Kennison, PhD, Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University.

New research published in the British Educational Research Journal suggests a very strong association between socio-economic background and educational attainment throughout children's schooling in 4 low- and middle-income countries.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from individuals in Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam, and India from age 5 to age 22 years to explore the relationship between early schooling opportunities and progression to higher education. Investigators found that students who had high initial learning achievements in primary school, but who were from poor backgrounds, typically fell back in secondary school, or high school.

The results imply that lower socio-economic status continues to be a barrier to educational attainment throughout children's schooling in some countries.

"Our findings, based on the Young Lives study, suggest that even when comparing children with similar levels of prior attainment at ages 8, 12, and 15 years, differences in higher education participation by socio-economic background still remain," said lead author Sonia Ilie, MPhil, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, in the U.K. "This suggests enduring barriers for education progression for the poorest and a need for better evidence about what supports equitable progression."

Foodborne disease outbreaks linked to the consumption of fresh produce have caused farmers to re-evaluate their practices. A recent analysis of a 27-year experiment comparing organic and conventional soil management indicates that animal-based composts do not promote pathogen survival and may even promote bacterial communities that suppress pathogens.

The study, which is published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology, comes following other research documenting a higher prevalence of foodborne pathogens in fields fertilized with raw animal manure compared with conventional fertilizers.

"Our findings suggest that abandoning animal-based composts should be reconsidered, both because of the known benefits of composts for soil health and because it may be possible to apply amendments so that food-safety risks are mitigated rather than exacerbated," said lead author Naresh Devarajan, PhD, of the University of California, Davis.

Studies on electrochemical CO2 conversion systems which can be used to obtain useful chemicals through conventional petrochemical processes while eliminating CO2, without polluting the environment, are essential for creating a carbon-neutral society. While significant progress has been made through a number of relevant studies, thus far, they have only been laboratory-scale in size. In fact, there are still many roadblocks to industrial application, such as the scaling up and development of suitable catalysts and electrodes.

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), announced that a research team of Clean Energy Research Center, led by Dr. Hyung-Suk Oh, Dr. Yoon-Jung Hwang, and Dr. Woong-Hui Lee, has developed a sea urchin-shaped nano copper catalyst for a high-efficiency electrochemical CO2 conversion system that yields ethylene and ethanol, as well as a related system for mass production of the catalyst.

The urchin-shaped catalyst developed by the research team at KIST is capable of producing large quantities of ethylene, a petroleum-based substance used to manufacture various everyday products, including plastics, synthetic rubber, and construction materials. The catalyst features an array of irregularly-shaped needles and is similar in appearance to a sea urchin. This unique design enables increased catalytic activity by way of the sharp needle tips. Use of this catalyst conferred higher selective ethylene production at a lower voltage than conventional copper catalysts, improving the yield of ethylene by over 50%. Moreover, the establishment of a mass production system through the stacking of multiple layers of CO2 conversion cells confirms the potential for commercialization of the catalyst.

The research team performed various real-time (in-situ/operando) analyses to observe the chemical properties of the catalyst during reactions. Their results confirmed that carbon dioxide conversion efficiency increased as a result of the higher copper hydroxide and copper oxide content due to the alkaline substances which had been added to the team's catalyst. Based on their findings, it was identified that increasing the proportion of copper hydroxide and copper oxide during reactions is key to increasing the efficiency of ethylene production, which presented direction for designing the catalyst in future studies.

Dr. Hyung-Suk Oh of KIST stated that "this study has enabled us to significantly enhance the performance and scale of electrochemical CO2 conversion systems through the development of a sea urchin-shaped nano copper catalyst with added alkaline substances for large surface area conversion applications, which also presented direction for future research and development." He also mentioned that "the findings of this study are expected to make a substantial contribution to the commercialization of an electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion system."

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2021 -- With research increasingly showing the COVID-19 virus is transmissible via smaller droplets suspended in air, there is a growing concern current public health guidelines of mask wearing and social distancing are insufficient in combating its spread in indoor environments, like prisons, hospitals, and meatpacking plants, where people tend to be in close quarters.

Most research has focused on coughing and sneezing. But studies on how simply breathing might contribute to airborne spread of the virus are rare.

In AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar show social distancing is equally important as mask wearing when people indoors are just breathing or participating in normal conversation, even when there is no risk of coughing or sneezing. They also found mask leakage in the same scenario presents a notable challenge in preventing the virus's spread.

"Our findings show the need for good ventilation systems that take into account the 5 to 10% of aerosolized particle leakage that occurs in each breathing cycle as a way to reduce droplet concentration in enclosed spaces," author Venugopal Arumuru said. "There also is a need for mask design innovation to reduce side and bottom droplet leakage while providing adequate face comfort."

In an experimental setup, a mechanical breathing simulator was connected to a mannequin standing at 5 feet 8 inches tall to simulate regular breath and slightly longer breath typical of healthy adults standing still or involved in moderate activity, like walking, talking, or participating in assembly work. The researchers evaluated the efficacy of various mask types, mask-shield combinations, and only face shield use.

A fog generator was filled with a mixture of water and glycerin to emulate the consistency of saliva droplets in the diameter range of 1-10 micrometers to reflect airborne transmissibility. Droplet exposure was illuminated and captured by video camera.

The researchers found that with no face covering, droplets from breathing can travel up to 4 feet in five seconds. A commercial five-layered mask was found to provide the best protection, with full front-of-face protection and minimal leakage below the chin. A commercial N-95 mask impedes droplet leakage in front, but leakage in gaps between the mask and nose was significant.

Leakage from the front of the surgical mask was evident, although adding a face shield increased droplet restriction.

"However, the noticeable droplets settling below the shield is concerning, and pairing surgical masks with shields is not adequate in hospitals and other places where strict social distancing guidelines are difficult to follow," Arumuru said.