Indiana University Research and Science News

New research shows that pathogens that incubate at higher temperatures are more infectious. Yet the computer models that predict the spread of epidemics from climate change—such as crop blights or disease outbreaks—may not be taking into account this important factor when predicting their severity.

The study, published in Ecology, finds that pathogens that grow inside organisms at higher temperatures produce offspring that cause higher rates of infection compared to pathogens that grow inside organisms at lower temperatures. This suggests that climate can cause an “echo effect” in future pathogens, ultimately making them more infectious.

“It’s well known that environment can affect offspring across generations in plants and animals,” says senior author Spencer Hall, a professor in the biology department at Indiana University-Bloomington. “This study is one of the first to suggest that similar cross-generational effects occur in parasites and pathogens.”

“If past environmental conditions impact the frequency or severity of future infections, then current climate models are not taking an important factor into consideration when predicting threats from climate change,” says Marta Shocket, who led the work as a doctoral student and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. “This might include threats to animals, plants, and people.”

Water fleas and freshwater lakes

The researchers’ analysis draws in part upon research in water fleas at three freshwater lakes in southern Indiana.

Water fleas, also known as Daphnia, are small crustaceans that contribute to the health of lakes by feeding on algae. Without these organisms to control algae, a lake can quickly degrade into a turgid brew that resembles pea soup.

Water fleas are susceptible to infection from a fungal pathogen called Metschnikowia, which reproduces inside water fleas as needle-like spores that multiply until they kill them and burst out of their bodies to infect the next generation. A single autumn can produce six to 10 generations of the spores, with up to 60 percent of water fleas infected at the epidemic’s peak.

For the study, Shocket conducted lab experiments that found that the fungus caused more infections when higher temperatures were observed in the previous generations of water fleas. She then conducted research in the field to compare the lab results against fresh lake samples from late autumn.

The analysis found that an increase of merely 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit caused the fungal spores to become two to five times more likely to infect a new host.

Predicting disease outbreaks

Shocket says additional research is needed to explore these effects in other pathogen systems, especially since they could have an impact on agriculture. This is because the effect of climate across generations in parasites is more likely to have an impact on cold-blooded host organisms, such as crop plants or the insects that eat them.

Climate change is messing with how these fish breed

The study also features mathematical methods to predict the effect of temperature changes on spore infectiousness across generations. Hall says the principles behind these models could potentially enhance other simulations that draw upon many factors to predict disease outbreaks.

“The translation of observational data into computational models is important in the field of ecology since nature is so messy,” he adds. “The refinement of the algorithms to predict risks from climate is a crucial step in our ability to prepare for environmental change.”

Additional researchers contributed from the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois. The National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency supported this study.

Source: Indiana University

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A collagen formulation mixed with pancreatic cells is the first minimally invasive therapy to successfully reverse type 1 diabetes within 24 hours and maintain insulin independence for at least 90 days, a pre-clinical animal study shows.

The findings suggest that people and dogs with type 1 diabetes could eventually replace daily insulin injections or wearable pumps with a shot every few months.

For diabetic pets, the next step is a pilot clinical study in dogs with naturally occurring type 1 diabetes.

“We plan to account for differences from mouse to human by helping dogs first. This way, the dogs can inform us on how well the treatment might work in humans,” says Clarissa Hernandez Stephens, first author of the work and a graduate researcher in Purdue University’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. Findings appear in the American Journal of Physiology – Endocrinology and Metabolism.

‘No time off’ from diabetes

“With giving my dog shots twice a day, I have to constantly be thinking about where I am and when I need to be home. It greatly affects my work and my personal life,” says Jan Goetz, owner of a diabetic dog named Lexi. “Not having to give these shots would mean freedom.”

Type 1 diabetes affects about one in every 100 companion animals in the US, including dogs and cats, and approximately 1.25 million American children and adults.

David Taylor of Indiana has struggled with type 1 diabetes for almost 50 years.

“A type 1 diabetes diagnosis was my 18th birthday present, and since that first insulin injection, managing diabetes has been my ‘other’ full time job,” Taylor says. “Treatment methods have improved enormously over 50 years, but they still permit no time off for the patient. Receiving an injection every few months would restore the near-normal life to me that I haven’t had as an adult—and I could retire from that full-time diabetes management job.”

Because diabetes in dogs happens similarly in humans, treatment has so far been largely the same: Both need glucose monitoring throughout the day and insulin after meals.

This also means that dogs and humans could potentially benefit from the same cure: A new set of pancreatic cells to replace the clusters of cells, called islets, that aren’t releasing insulin to monitor blood glucose levels.

Still, 20 years of research and clinical trials hasn’t produced an effective islet transplantation therapy because it requires multiple donors; the current method of delivering islets through the portal vein of the liver is too invasive; and the human immune system tends to destroy a large percentage of transplanted islets.

New packaging for islets

The researchers simply changed the islets’ packaging—first, within a solution containing collagen, and second, as an injection through the skin instead of all the way at the liver, saving patients from a nasty procedure.

“Traditionally, we transplant islets in the liver of the animal and never do it under the skin, in large part because the skin doesn’t have the blood flow that the liver has for transporting insulin released by islets. And there are a lot of immune cells in the skin, so chances of rejection are high,” says Raghu Mirmira, professor of pediatrics and medicine and director of the Diabetes Research Center at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

The team removed the need for transplanting in the liver by thoroughly mixing mouse islets, which Mirmira’s lab provided, with the collagen solution. Upon injection just under the skin, the solution solidifies, the body recognizes the collagen, and supplies it with blood flow to exchange insulin and glucose.

“It’s minimally invasive; you don’t have to go to the operating room and have this infusion into the portal vein. It’s as easy as it comes, just like getting a shot,” says Sherry Voytik Harbin, professor of biomedical engineering and basic medical sciences at Purdue.

Dogs bust through boundaries to comfort their people

The researchers tested the effects of the solution between mouse twins and non-twins to check for discrepancies. Initial studies showed if the mouse donor were a twin to the recipient, the diabetic mouse could go at least 90 days without needing another shot. If not twins, the mouse would have normal blood sugar levels for at least 40 days. Nearly all transplanted islets survived either scenario, removing the need for multiple donors to compensate for those killed off by the immune system.

From mice to dogs

As they transition to testing the formulation in naturally diabetic dogs, the researchers will explore the feasibility of transplanting pig islets or stem cells programmed to produce insulin, in hopes that either method will further increase donor availability.

The islet transplantation therapy might also have implications for better treating severe pancreatitis.

Purdue and the Indiana University School of Medicine collaborated on this work through the National Institute of Health T32 Indiana Bioengineering Interdisciplinary Training for Diabetes Research Program.

The collagen formulation is a patented technology. Additional support for the work came from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research; the Indiana University School of Medicine Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases Pilot and Feasibility Program; and the McKinley Family Foundation. The study utilized core services provided by the NIH to the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Source: Purdue University

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The findings suggest that people and dogs with type 1 diabetes could eventually replace daily insulin injections or wearable pumps with a shot every few months.

For diabetic pets, the next step is a pilot clinical study in dogs with naturally occurring type 1 diabetes.

‘No time off’ from diabetes

Type 1 diabetes affects about one in every 100 companion animals in the US, including dogs and cats, and approximately 1.25 million American children and adults.

David Taylor of Indiana has struggled with type 1 diabetes for almost 50 years.

Because diabetes in dogs happens similarly in humans, treatment has so far been largely the same: Both need glucose monitoring throughout the day and insulin after meals.

New packaging for islets

From mice to dogs

The islet transplantation therapy might also have implications for better treating severe pancreatitis.

Source: Purdue University

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New research identifies cellular processes that appear to supercharge both growth and shrinkage of telomeres—the chemical “caps” on chromosomes associated with aging.

The work, which focused on two enzymes in yeast, could lead to new insights on stopping runaway cellular growth in cancer tumors and the treatment of premature aging disorders such as progeria (aka “Benjamin Button disease”).

“This work confirms that two specific enzymes—called helicases—are involved in telomere maintenance, and demonstrates they’re even stronger in combination,” says Matthew Bochman, an associate professor in the molecular and cellular biochemistry department at Indiana University Bloomington.

“This is significant since dysfunction in telomere maintenance has been found in 100 percent of cancers. Literally, 100 percent. So, it’s very likely they play a role in the disease,” Bochman says.

Aging teenagers

Helicases are enzymes that unwind double-stranded DNA into a single strand for the purposes of replication, recombination, and repair. In humans, the RecQ4 helicase functions similarly to the Hrq1 helicase in yeast. The Pif1 helicase is the same in both species.

In healthy people, telomeres shorten slowly over the lifespan as part of the natural aging process. In cancer cells, this process hits the brakes, so telomeres never grow shorter—resulting in uncontrolled cellular replication. In people with premature aging disorders, telomeres rapidly shrink, resulting in death from “old age” in the late teenage years.

Researchers have linked mutations of the Pif1 helicase to several types of cancer, including common forms such as breast, ovarian, and colon cancer. Research has also linked mutations in the RecQ4 helicase to three different diseases associated with predispositions for cancer.

Telomere growth

The study specifically found that Hrq1 and Pif1 are a “dynamic duo” that combine to create a “super inhibitor” or, under certain specific conditions, a “super stimulator” of telomere growth.

“Now, we can really start to pick apart more about how these enzymes work together or alone in cancer cells,” says Bochman, senior author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The work may help scientists better understand whether certain cancers involve errors in DNA recombination, DNA repair, or telomere maintenance—or some other mechanistic problem. This, in turn, could lead to new ways to disrupt or harness these processes with drugs or other therapies.

The American Cancer Society supported the work.

Source: Indiana University

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Researchers have reported the first measurements of the weak interaction between protons and neutrons inside an atom.

The detection of the elusive force verifies a prediction of the Standard Model, the most widely accepted model explaining the behavior of three of the four known fundamental forces in the universe.

“This observation determines the most important component of the weak interaction between the neutron and the proton—and also between the neutron and all other nuclei,” says lead author W. Michael Snow, a professor in the Indiana University-Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ physics department and the director of the university’s Center for Spacetime Symmetries. Snow is also a cospokesperson on the NDPGamma Experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where researchers conducted the experiments.

“You have to detect a lot of gammas to see this tiny effect.”

“The result deepens our understanding of one of the four fundamental forces of nature,” he adds.

These four forces are the strong force, electromagnetism, the weak force, and gravity. Protons and neutrons are made of smaller particles called quarks that the strong force binds together. The weak force exists in the distance inside and between protons and neutrons. The goal of the experiment was to isolate and measure one component of this weak interaction.

Inside the atom

To detect the weak interaction inside protons and neutrons, the experiment’s leaders used a device called NPDGamma at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that controls the spin direction of cold neutrons the laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source generates. After the angular momentum, or spin, of these neutrons lined up, the team smashed them into protons in a liquid hydrogen target to produce gamma rays.

“The goal of the experiment was to isolate and measure one component of this weak interaction, which manifested as gamma rays that could be counted and verified with high statistical accuracy,” says coauthor David Bowman, team leader for neutron physics at Oak Ridge. “You have to detect a lot of gammas to see this tiny effect.”

Any “lopsidedness” in the direction of the resulting rays can only come from the weak force between the protons and neutrons. By counting more gamma ray emissions opposite to the neutron spin than along the neutron spin, the researchers observed the influence of the weak interaction. The small size of this lopsidedness, about 30 parts per billion, is the smallest gamma asymmetry ever measured.

Researchers conducted the experiments to detect the weak force over nearly 20 years, with Snow playing a role in the work since the beginning.

“I’ve been involved in the experiment since the original proposal almost two decades ago,” says Snow, whose work on the project has spanned two major phases, including an initial phase that took place at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

What’s next?

Next, Snow is eager to delve deeper into new questions the recently reported study prompted, including exploring the connection between the weak force between the neutrons and protons and the strong force between the quarks inside them. As part of this effort, researchers plan to search for the effect of the weak interaction on slow neutron spin rotation in liquid helium.

“There is a theory for the weak force between the quarks inside the proton and neutron, but the way that the strong force between the quarks translates into the force between the proton and the neutron is not fully understood,” says Snow. “That’s still an unsolved problem.”

He compared the measurement of the weak force in relation with the strong force as a kind of tracer, similar to a tracer in biology that reveals a process of interest in a system without disturbing it.

“The weak interaction allows us to reveal some unique features of the dynamics of the quarks within the nucleus of an atom,” Snow adds.

The NPDGamma result also helps enable a new search for possible violations of time reversal symmetry. This experiment, called the Neutron OPtics Time Reversal EXperiment, NOPTREX, will address the mystery of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. Snow is the cospokesperson for NOPTREX.

The paper appears in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Additional lead coauthors came from Indiana University, Arizona State University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Virginia; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In total, 64 individuals from 28 institutions worldwide contributed to this research. The US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the IU Center for Spacetime Symmetries partially supported the work.

Source: Indiana University, Oak Ridge Laboratory

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A moderate level of piracy can have a positive impact on the bottom line for both the manufacturer and the retailer—and not at the expense of consumers.

Millions of fans continue to illegally download HBO’s popular television series Game of Thrones, for example, giving it the dubious distinction of being the most pirated program.

Many may wonder why the TV network hasn’t taken a more aggressive approach to combating illegal streaming services and downloaders. Perhaps, the new study suggests, it’s because the benefits to the company outweigh the consequences.

“When information goods are sold to consumers via a retailer, in certain situations, a moderate level of piracy seems to have a surprisingly positive impact on the profits of the manufacturer and the retailer while, at the same time, enhancing consumer welfare,” write Antino Kim, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and his coauthors.

“Such a win-win-win situation is not only good for the supply chain but is also beneficial for the overall economy.”

‘Shadow’ competition

While not condoning piracy, Kim and his colleagues were surprised to find that it can actually reduce, or completely eliminate at times, the adverse effect of double marginalization, an economic concept where both manufacturers and retailers in the same supply chain add to the price of a product, passing these markups along to consumers.

The professors found that, because piracy can affect the pricing power of both the manufacturer and the retailer, it injects “shadow” competition into an otherwise monopolistic market.

“From the manufacturer’s point of view, the retailer getting squeezed is a good thing,” Kim says. “It can’t mark up the product as before, and the issue of double marginalization diminishes. Vice versa, if the manufacturer gets squeezed, the retailer is better off.

“What we found is, by both of them being squeezed together—both at the upstream and the downstream levels—they are able to get closer to the optimal retail price that a single, vertically integrated entity would charge.”

In the example of Game of Thrones, HBO is the upstream “manufacturer” in the supply chain, and cable and satellite TV operators are the downstream “retailers.”

Rethinking the piracy problem

The research suggests that businesses, government, and consumers rethink the value of anti-piracy enforcement, which can be quite costly, and consider taking a moderate approach.

Australia, for instance, due to prohibitive costs, scrapped its three-strikes scheme to track down illegal downloaders and send them warning notices. Though the Australian Parliament passed a new anti-piracy law last year, its effectiveness remains unclear until after it is reviewed in two years.

As with other studies, Kim and his colleagues found that when enforcement is low and piracy is rampant, both manufacturers and retailers suffer. But they caution against becoming overzealous in prosecuting illegal downloaders or in lobbying for more enforcement.

“Our results do not imply that the legal channel should, all of a sudden, start actively encouraging piracy,” they say. “The implication is simply that, situated in a real-world context, our manufacturer and retailer should recognize that a certain level of piracy or its threat might actually be beneficial and should, therefore, exercise some moderation in their anti-piracy efforts.

“This could manifest itself in them tolerating piracy to a certain level, perhaps by turning a blind eye to it,” they add. “Such a strategy would indeed be consistent with how others have described HBO’s attitude toward piracy of its products.”

Source: Indiana University

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Researchers have created a prototype for a blood test that could measure pain.

They tracked hundreds of participants to identify biomarkers in the blood that can help objectively determine how severe a patient’s pain is. The blood test, the first of its kind, would allow physicians far more accuracy in treating pain—as well as a better long-term look at the patient’s medical future. It could also help stem the opioid crisis.

“Until now we have had to rely on patients self-reporting or the clinical impression the doctor has…”

“We have developed a prototype for a blood test that can objectively tell doctors if the patient is in pain, and how severe that pain is. It’s very important to have an objective measure of pain, as pain is a subjective sensation. Until now we have had to rely on patients self-reporting or the clinical impression the doctor has,” says Alexander Niculescu, a professor of psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

“When we started this work it was a farfetched idea. But the idea was to find a way to treat and prescribe things more appropriately to people who are in pain.”

During the study, which appears in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers looked at biomarkers in the blood—in this case molecules that reflect disease severity. Much like as glucose serves as a biomarker to diabetes, these biomarkers allow doctors to assess the severity of the pain the patient is experiencing, and provide treatment in an objective, quantifiable manner. With an opioid epidemic raging throughout the country, Niculescu says there has never been a more important time to administer drugs to patients responsibly.

“The opioid epidemic occurred because addictive medications were overprescribed due to the fact that there was no objective measure whether someone was in pain, or how severe their pain was,” Niculescu says.

“Before, doctors weren’t being taught good alternatives. The thought was that this person says they are in pain, let’s prescribe it. Now people are seeing that this created a huge problem. We need alternatives to opioids, and we need to treat people in a precise fashion. This test we’ve developed allows for that.”

In addition to providing an objective measure of pain, Niculescu’s blood test helps physicians match the biomarkers in the patient’s blood with potential treatment options. Like a scene out of CSI, researchers utilize a prescription database—similar to fingerprint databases employed by the FBI—to match the pain biomarkers with profiles of drugs and natural compounds cataloged in the database.

“Through precision medicine you’re giving the patient treatment that is tailored directly to them and their needs…”

“The biomarker is like a fingerprint, and we match it against this database and see which compound would normalize the signature,” says Niculescu, adding that often the best treatment identified is a non-opioid drug or compound.

“We found some compounds that have been used for decades to treat other things pair the best with the biomarkers. We have been able to match biomarkers with existing medications, or natural compounds, which would reduce or eliminate the need to use the opioids.”

By treating and prescribing medicine more appropriately to the individual person, this prototype may help alleviate the dilemmas that have contributed to the current opioid epidemic.

“In any field, the goal is to match the patient to the right drug, which hopefully does a lot of good and very little harm,” Niculescu says. “But through precision health, by having lots of options geared toward the needs of specific patients, you prevent larger problems, like the opioid epidemic, from occurring.”

Additionally, study experts discovered biomarkers that not only match with non-addictive drugs that can treat pain, but can also help predict when someone might experience pain in the future—helping to determine if a patient is exhibiting chronic, long-term pain which might result in future emergency room visits.

“Through precision medicine you’re giving the patient treatment that is tailored directly to them and their needs,” Niculescu says.

“We wanted first to find some markers for pain that are universal, and we were able to. We know, however, based on our data that there are some markers that work better for men, some that work better for women. It could be that there are some markers that work better for headaches, some markers that work better for fibromyalgia and so on. That is where we hope to go with future larger studies.”

Moving forward, Niculescu’s group hopes to continue and accelerate these studies—with the hopes of personalizing the approach even more and moving toward a clinical application. A self-described longshot at the start, Niculescu says that the work his group has done could have a major impact on how doctors around the world treat pain in the future.

“It’s been a goal of many researchers and a dream to find biomarkers for pain,” Niculescu says. “We have come out of left field with an approach that had worked well in psychiatry for suicide and depression in previous studies. We applied it to pain, and we were successful.”

The National Institutes of Health and VA Merit Award funded the study. The content is solely the responsibility of Indiana University School of Medicine and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the VA.

Source: Indiana University

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People watching “social shows” like Dancing with the Stars or The Bachelor on television and simultaneously sharing their views on Twitter are more likely to shop online, according to new research

Marketers have feared that social media distracts viewers from commercials and minimizes their impact. But this research found the opposite. “Social shows” are more beneficial to advertisers because commercials that air in those programs generate more online shopping on the advertisers’ websites.

The international marketing research firm Nielsen estimated in 2014 that 80 percent of US television viewers simultaneously used another device while watching television, often live tweeting to share their views, for example. The trend has led scholars to coin the term “social TV.”

“…media multitasking may decrease the ability for the viewer to counterargue or resist persuasion attempts, increasing ad effectiveness.”

“Participation in online chatter about a program may indicate that viewers are more engaged with the program,” says Beth L. Fossen, assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “Online program engagement may encourage a loyal, committed viewing audience. And media multitasking may decrease the ability for the viewer to counterargue or resist persuasion attempts, increasing ad effectiveness.

“We find that advertisements that air in programs with more social activity see increased ad responsiveness in terms of subsequent online shopping behavior. This result varies with the mood of the ad, with more affective ads—in particular, funny and emotional ads—seeing the largest increases in online shopping activity.

“Our results shed light on how advertisers can encourage online shopping activity on their websites in the age of multiscreen consumers,” Fossen says.

In the study, Fossen and her coauthor, David Schweidel of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, sought to determine how the volume of program-related online chatter is related to online shopping behavior at the retailers that advertised during the programs.

In addition to their findings that social shows benefit advertisers by encouraging online shopping activity, Fossen and Schweidel also found that increases in online chatter about a retailer lead to increased traffic to the company’s website in the first five minutes after the advertisement appears.

They also found that ad timing affected online shopping. Ads airing near a half-hour interval—such as 8:28 or 9:02 PM—spurred more online purchases than ads aired at other times. Commercials airing earlier in the evening generated more web traffic than those airing before the late-night news.

Fossen and Schweidel studied the online shopping activity of 100,000 active internet users, which they paired with data on commercials for five retailers and nearly 1,700 instances of advertising on 83 prime-time programs during the fall 2013 television season. They considered online traffic and sales on the retailers’ websites, prime-time advertising, social media comments mentioning the TV program or the advertiser, and characteristics of both the program and the advertising.

The research appears in the journal Marketing Science.

Source: Indiana University

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A powerful new molecule that extracts salt from liquid has the potential to help increase the amount of drinkable water on Earth, report researchers.

As reported in Science, researchers designed the molecule to capture chloride, which forms when the element chlorine pairs with another element to gain an electron. The most familiar chloride salt is sodium chloride, or common table salt. Other chloride salts are potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and ammonium chloride.

The seepage of salt into freshwater systems reduces access to drinkable water across the globe. In the US alone, about 272 metric tons of dissolved solids, including salts, enter freshwater streams per year, according to US Geological Survey estimates.

Contributing factors include the chemical processes involved in oil extraction, the use of road salts and water softeners, and the natural weathering of rock. It only takes one teaspoon of salt to permanently pollute five gallons of water.

The new salt-extraction molecule is made up of six triazole “motifs”—five-membered rings composed of nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen—which together form a three-dimensional “cage” perfectly shaped to trap chloride.

In 2008, Flood’s lab created a two-dimensional molecule, shaped like a flat doughnut, that used four triazoles. The two extra triazoles give the new molecule its three-dimensional shape and a 10 billion-fold boost in efficacy.

The new molecule is also unique because it binds chloride using carbon-hydrogen bonds, previously regarded as too weak to create stable interactions with chloride compared to the traditional use of nitrogen-hydrogen bonds. Despite expectations, the researchers found that the use of triazoles created a cage so rigid as to form a vacuum in the center, which draws in chloride ions.

By contrast, cages with nitrogen-hydrogen bonds are often more flexible, and their vacuum-like center needed for chloride capture requires energy input, lowering their efficiency compared to a triazole-based cage.

“If you were to take our molecule and stack it up against other cages that use stronger bonds, we’re talking many orders of magnitude of performance increase,” says Amar Flood, professor of chemistry at Indiana University . “This study really shows that rigidity is underappreciated in the design of molecular cages.”

The rigidity also allows the molecule to retain its shape after the central chloride is lost, compared to other designs that collapse under the same circumstances due to their flexibility. This gives the molecule greater efficacy and versatility.

Lastly, the work is reproducible. The first molecule took nearly a year to synthesize, says Yun Liu, who led the study as a PhD student in Flood’s lab and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The crystals they needed to confirm the molecule’s unique structure formed after they left the experiment alone in the lab for several months—a surprising occurrence since that process typically requires careful monitoring.

Later, Wei Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Flood’s lab, was able to recreate the molecule in a span of several months. The formation of the crystal represented a “eureka” moment, proving that the molecule’s unique design was actually viable, Liu says.

Coauthor Chun-Hsing “Josh” Chen, an associate scientist at the Molecular Structure Center at the time of the study, confirmed the molecule’s structure using X-ray crystallography.

The US Department of Energy funded the work. Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office has filed a patent application on the work.

Source: Indiana University

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The discovery of a 100-million-year-old ammonite—a distant relative of modern squid and octopuses—in amber is significant and surprising, researchers say.

Scientists say the lump of fossilized tree resin, from the mines of northern Myanmar, sheds light on ancient sea life.

The fossil is surprising, researchers say, because amber forms on land from resin-producing plants, so it is rare to find marine life entombed in the substance.

“The excitement of the discovery is its potential to open the window on past life,” says David Dilcher, professor emeritus of biology at Indiana University. “The preservation of amber from an age as old as this, it helps increase our understanding of ancient life and the world in which ancient life lived.”

Ammonites were shelled mollusks that lived on Earth during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods—the same time as some dinosaurs. Typically fossilized as impressions in shale, ammonites’ preservation in amber provides a unique 3D look at the ancient sea creatures, Dilcher says.

In addition to trapping the shell of an ammonite, the amber also contains the fossils of at least 40 other organisms from both land and sea habitats, such as spiders, snails, and wasps. This diversity of organisms preserved in one place may one day have the most potential for future research, Dilcher says.

Possible theories for how land and sea organisms ended up trapped together include a coastal forest with resin-producing trees growing close to marine debris on the edge of a beach, a tsunami that flooded an amber-producing forest with marine debris, or tropical storms that blew marine debris inland, Dilcher says.

However, the first theory seems most likely, the scientists posit. The lack of soft tissue from the ammonite and other marine organisms preserved in the amber suggests they were dead long before their shells encountered the ancient tree resin.

This makes the tsunami theory less likely, and the rarity of the presence of marine organisms in other amber specimens found to date suggests the tropical storms wouldn’t have been frequent occurrences.

The study appears in PNAS.

Source: Indiana University

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Researcher Sam Cohen with a dog at a shelter

Psychologists who study how people pick their spouses have turned their attention to another important relationship: choosing a canine companion.

They recently found that, when it comes to puppy love, the heart doesn’t always know what it wants.

The researchers based their results, which could help improve the pet adoption process, on data from a working animal shelter.

Picking a pet from dog shelters

“What we show in this study is that what people say they want in a dog isn’t always in line with what they choose,” says Samantha Cohen, who led the study as a PhD student in the psychological and brain sciences department at Indiana University-Bloomington. “By focusing on a subset of desired traits, rather than everything a visitor says, I believe we can make animal adoption more efficient and successful.”

As a member of the lab of study coauthor Peter Todd, Cohen conducted the study while also volunteering as an adoption counselor at an animal shelter.

“It was my responsibility to match dogs to people based on their preferences, but I often noticed that visitors would ultimately adopt some other dog than my original suggestion,” Cohen says. “This study provides a reason: Only some desired traits tend to be fulfilled above chance, which means they may have a larger impact on dog selection.”

Dog shelter dog — (Credit: Cadence L. Baugh Chang/Indiana U.)

The researchers categorized dogs based upon 13 traits: age, sex, color, size, purebred status, previous training, nervousness, protectiveness, intelligence, excitability, energy level, playfulness, and friendliness. They surveyed the preferences of 1,229 people who visited dogs at an animal shelter, including 145 who decided to make an adoption.

A similar disconnect has been found in research on speed dating Todd led, which has shown that people’s stated romantic preferences tend not to match the partners they choose.

Although most participants in the dog adoption study listed many traits they preferred—with “friendliness” as the most popular—they ultimately selected dogs most consistent with just a few preferences, like age and playfulness, suggesting that others, like color or purebred status, exerted less influence on decision-making.

There was also another parallel to the world of dating. In short: Looks matter.

“As multiple psychologists have shown in speed-dating experiments, physical attractiveness is very important,” Cohen says. “Most people think they’ve got a handsome or good-looking dog.”

Issues potential pet-owners face

In the article, Cohen outlines some challenges facing aspiring dog-owners:

Focusing on “the one”: Although adopters often came to the shelter with a vision of the perfect pet, Cohen says many risked missing a good match due to overemphasis on specific physical and personality traits. For example, an adopter who wants an Irish wolfhound because they’re large, loyal, and light shedders might fail to consider a non-purebred with the same qualities.
Mismatched perceptions: Surprisingly, adopters and shelters often used different traits to describe the same dog. These included subjective traits, such as obedience and playfulness, as well as seemingly objective traits, such as color.
Missed signals: People who have never had a dog may not grasp the implications of certain behaviors. A dog seen as “playful” at the shelter may come across as “destructive” in a small home, for example.
Performance anxiety: Shelters are high-stress environments for dogs, whose personalities may shift when they’re more relaxed at home. Picking a dog based upon personality at the shelter is akin to choosing a date based on how well they perform while public speaking, Cohen says.

To improve pet adoptions, Cohen says animal shelters need to know that people tend to rely on certain traits more strongly when choosing a dog, which might make it easier to match adopters to dogs.

She also suggests shelters consider interventions, such as temporary placement in a calmer environment, to help stressed or under-socialized dogs put their best paw forward, showing their typical level of desirable traits, such as friendliness.

Finally, Cohen advises caution about online adoption, since adopters are dependent upon someone else’s description of the dogs. She suggests users limit their search criteria to their most desired traits to avoid filtering out a good match based upon less important preferences.

The journal appears in Behavior Research Methods. Support for the study came, in part, from an Indiana University Graduate and Professional Student Government Research Award.

Source: Indiana University

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row of colorful pills on white paper - adverse drug reactions

A review of the Brazilian health system finds that women have a 90% increased risk for prescription combinations known to produce dangerous reactions.

The analysis, which appears in the journal npj Digital Medicine, reveals a 60% increased risk for adverse drug reactions in women compared to men—and a 90% increased risk in cases of medicines whose interaction is known to produce dangerous reactions. In older people, one in every four people prescribed multiple medicines over age 55 received drugs with an interaction—reaching one in every three for ages 70 to 79.

A total of 181 drug combinations prescribed against recommendations were uncovered. These medications, widely known to interact dangerously, were dispensed to 15,527 people among the study’s population, including 5,000 who got drug combinations known to cause major complications likely requiring medical attention.

“These results are surprising—shocking even—since it’s no secret these drugs aren’t supposed to be prescribed in combination,” says senior author of the study Luis Rocha, a professor in the Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. “We expected some elevated risk in the elderly since they use more medications, but not this high. The gender bias was completely unexpected.”

color-coded dots (according to drug type) are linked with lines to indicate adverse reactions when drugs are taken in combination — A web of drug interactions among people prescribed multiple medications. The red lines connect higher-risk drug combinations among women. The blue lines connect higher-risk drug combinations among men. (Credit: Indiana U.)

Drugs like ibuprofen and Prozac

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, about one out of every three hospital visits annually are related to adverse drug effects, which include adverse drug reactions. Another analysis of adverse drug reaction in Ontario, Canada placed the cost of these incidents at nearly $12 million per year—or $1 per capita—for that province alone. In other countries, such as the US, the study’s authors estimate costs could run as much as seven times higher per capita.

The new analysis uses health records from Blumenau, a city in Brazil with a population of about 334,000. The researchers stumbled across gender- and age-based disparities in care during a general analysis of drug interactions among the city’s population in collaboration with researchers at the Regional University of Blumenau, which developed the city’s health record system. A PhD student in Rocha’s lab at the time of the study, Rion Brattig Correia, previously managed the lab that created the system.

The drugs identified as most commonly prescribed in dangerous combinations were standard medications—such as omeprazole, a common heartburn medication whose brand names include Prilosec; fluoxetine, a common antidepressant whose brand names include Prozac; and ibuprofen, a common analgesic—as well as some less common drugs, such as erythromycin, an anti-infectant.

The researchers were careful to control for other factors that might result in higher risk for dangerous drug combinations, such as older adults taking more prescription drugs, Rocha says. The study compares drugs actually prescribed to older patients against a random selection of drugs common among older adults, for example, to show that dangerous drug combinations actually occurred at a higher rate in real life compared to the random model.

Lack of options

Although the research did not explore the cause of these higher drug interaction risks, the lack of options for certain medications under Brazil’s public health system could play a role, Rocha adds. Women tend to be prescribed more antidepressants, for example, and more expensive options with fewer interactions are not available in the public health system. Similarly, older adults tend to use more medications to control cholesterol, another drug type with few public options found to occur often in dangerous combination.

“It might simply be that no other choice exists, so doctors feel that the treatment is worth the risks,” Rocha says. “Or some physicians may simply be unaware of the dangers.”

The researchers are hopeful the work might influence health policy in Brazil, Correia adds, including increasing publicly available drug choices for seniors and women. He plans to delve further into the results to learn the deeper causes of these biases against women and older adults.

“Physicians and other health care professions everywhere need to understand the role of gender and age toward the risk of dangerous drug interactions for their patients,” he says. “We expect these results will increase this awareness.”

Source: Indiana University

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paper collage of red-lipsticked mouth and triangles emerging as if sound

College students who participate in fun, peer-directed activities that openly and honestly address mental illness are significantly less likely to stigmatize people with these conditions, according to a new study.

The study is the first to systematically survey a single graduating class over the course of their college careers on attitudes toward people with mental illness in conjunction with a sustained campaign on the topic. The study was led by Bernice Pescosolido, professor of sociology at Indiana University and director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research.

Specifically, the study examined the effectiveness of U Bring Change to Mind, a part of Bring Change to Mind, a national nonprofit focused on reducing the stigma associated with mental illness led by actress Glenn Close, whose sister and nephew live with mental illness. The researchers measured shifts in student attitudes over time though surveys in their freshman and junior years.

“This is really the first program to target stigma that’s been scientifically vetted from its inception,” says Pescosolido, whose team worked closely in collaboration with university leaders to implement a four-year anti-stigma campaign. “This pre- and post-analysis is very unique. Moreover, the results show these efforts really did change campus climate… not only regarding attitudes but also behaviors.”

The image shows a U Bring Change to Mind information and recruitment table at IU's Involvement Fair in September 201 — A U Bring Change to Mind information and recruitment table at Indiana University’s Involvement Fair in September 2014. (Credit: Alex Capshew/Indiana University)

Reducing mental health stigma on campus

The need to address mental illness on college campuses is great and continues to grow, Pescosolido says. According to a 2018 report based on data from nearly 200 college campuses, the percentage of students seeking mental health treatment between 2007 and 2017 rose from 19 to 34%, and the percentage of those with mental illness diagnoses rose from 22 to 36%. Because counseling services must concentrate on the most serious cases due to limited resources, Pescosolido says the need remains for other efforts that focus on improving the general campus climate around mental health.

Overall, the study found significant reductions in stigma in 11 to 14% of students, with those who participated in four or more activities sponsored by U Bring Change to Mind reporting the most change. This included serious events, such as a suicide awareness walk, and lighter activities, such as a scavenger hunt and escape room. These changes included reductions in prejudice toward people with mental illness—both in college and in general—as well as reduced likelihood of distancing themselves socially from people with mental illnesses.

To put these numbers in context, the study’s authors say this rate of change is nearly five times greater than a national-level campaign to reduce stigma in the UK over the course of 10 years produced.

“When you look at most interventions, the numbers are very small,” Pescosolido says. “This study suggests that students really are at the right moment in their lives for this sort of intervention to make a difference.”

The study also suggests that a “tipping point” is necessary to drive change since shifts in attitude were strongest in students who attended four or more events. Students who attended one to three events showed relatively small changes in stigmatization toward mental illness.

What’s working?

The study also outlines how the U Bring Change to Mind model differs from other campaigns through a focus on open activities with honest discussion of mental illness. The concept draws upon Pescosolido and colleagues’ previous work on reducing mental illness stigma, which found that efforts focusing on the scientific understanding of mental illness as “a disease like any other” did not lower stigma.

“Those messages didn’t seem to affect whether or not people actually reject or include people with mental illness,” Pescosolido says. “We wanted to create a program based on research that started from a new place—one that draws from Bring Change to Mind’s idea of ending stigma through starting a conversation.”

The five key principles of this approach are:

targeting a receptive population, such as college students, at a critical time of change;
providing group leaders with needed resources to design relevant messages and organize activities “by students, for students”;
avoiding past, ineffective approaches;
leveraging existing resources;
and “building in change” to evolve the program over time.

Based on the results, Pescosolido and her team are designing a national and international rollout of the program. Toward this goal, they are seeking partners to assist with logistics so other universities can launch similar efforts or inform existing programs.

“We believe this is the right time for these efforts both because this generation is much more open than past generations—including their thinking about mental health—and because college is when people are really forming critical attitudes that will follow them the rest of their lives,” Pescosolido says. “This is the moment when we can really make a difference.”

The research appears in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Source: Indiana University

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Providing adolescents who want birth control the ability to get a long-acting reversible contraceptive on the same day as their clinic visit could lead to significant cost savings for insurance providers, say researchers.

For the study in JAMA Network Open, the team worked to determine what the cost savings would be by providing same-day access to long-acting reversible contraception, from the perspective of insurance companies, in particular, Medicaid, to adolescents. Considered the most effective contraception for adolescents, long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC, includes intrauterine contraceptives (IUCs) and implants.

“Access matters, and any barrier to access means that fewer people will actually get to that finish line.”

According to Tracey A. Wilkinson, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, the lack of clinics in Indiana offering same-day access to these contraceptives came as a surprise when she began her work in the state as a health services researcher.

“When I landed in Indiana, I quickly realized there were very few clinical sites providing same-day LARC. They are more expensive, but they are very effective, because they don’t require any user dependence in order to work,” Wilkinson says. “As I started to piece together what the barriers were, one of the biggest seemed to be cost.”

About $2,000 in savings per patient

Wilkinson says the research team set out to create a cost minimization model to determine the cost to an insurance company when a patient must return to the clinic for subsequent visits to receive their desired contraceptive.

Using data from previous studies, the group worked through all of the scenarios that could result from an adolescent seeking same-day LARC. With each step, the group calculated what the cost would be to the payer—looking into the cost of the device, the cost of delivering a baby, the cost of an annual visit, and so on.

“We thought about the typical young woman seeking contraception and drew a branching tree representing all of the things that might happen if she could or could not get it that day,” says coauthor and pediatrics professor Stephen M. Downs. “The research literature tells us how likely all of those things are, and we know from medical claims how much they cost. With the resulting tree, we can compare the average cost we’d expect if contraception is immediately available or not.”

Through their work, the group found that same-day LARC placement led to overall lower costs to the payer—$2,016 on average—compared with placement at a later visit—$4,133 on average. Additionally, they found that the numbers of unintended pregnancies and abortions decreased in association with providing same-day placement.

Health benefits of same-day LARC

Coauthor Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, assistant dean for diversity affairs and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, asserts that the practice of providing patients access to same-day LARC could improve health: “We know that LARC is highly effective at preventing unintended pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy is associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, such as premature birth, which is a leading cause of infant mortality.

“Seeing as unintended pregnancy, premature birth, and infant mortality disproportionately impact women and infants of color and low income populations, it stands to reason that by improving access to same-day LARC, Medicaid could not only cut costs, but could potentially also improve health disparities related to prematurity and infant mortality.”

In the paper, the researchers came up with four recommendations for state Medicaid officials from the data compiled through their study:

Provide bonus payments for clinicians to incentivize same-day contraceptive access. Doing so would overcome the reimbursement-to-cost differential that leads to the two-visit strategy and mitigate carrying-cost concerns.
Create a single, uniform reimbursement structure, preferably as a medical benefit, to mitigate some of the procedural delays that occur when a device has to be ordered for an individual patient as opposed to being used for any presenting patient.
Pursue a strategy to purchase LARC devices in bulk and distribute devices up front to clinics desiring to provide same-day LARC access.
Develop a policy whereby LARC devices that were ordered for a specific patient but ultimately unused after a certain time could be used for another patient.

Moving forward from the study, Wilkinson says she hopes the findings will help push the needle forward in helping provide access to same-day contraceptives of all kinds to patients when and if they need it.

“Access matters, and any barrier to access means that fewer people will actually get to that finish line,” Wilkinson says. “When you have people who desire contraception not being able to access it, the outcomes of all our communities are less than ideal. Planned pregnancies are healthier pregnancies, so having same-day access to all forms of contraception is vital.”

For the work, the researchers drew on their work as members of the School of Medicine’s Medicaid Medical Advisory Cabinet, a group of physicians who provide research-based policy advice to Indiana’s Office of Medicaid Policy and Planning.

Source: Indiana University

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A person with hand tattoos uses a laptop that's sitting on a marble table with a phone nearby

There’s a new tool in the fight against online disinformation called BotSlayer.

The software, which is free and open to the public, scans social media in real time to detect evidence of automated Twitter accounts—or “bots”—pushing messages in a coordinated manner. The use of bots is an increasingly common practice to manipulate public opinion by creating the false impression that many people are talking about a particular subject. The method is also known as “astroturfing” because it mimics the appearance of legitimate grassroots political activity.

By leveraging the observatory’s expertise and technological infrastructure, BotSlayer gives groups and individuals of any political affiliation the power to detect coordinated disinformation campaigns in real time—without any prior knowledge of these campaigns.

“We developed BotSlayer to make it easier for journalists and political campaigns to monitor potential new disinformation campaigns that attempt to manipulate public opinion using bots,” says Filippo Menczer, a professor in the School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University and director of the Observatory on Social Media.

“If there is a suspicious spike in traffic around some specific topic, BotSlayer allows you to spot it very quickly so you can investigate the content and its promoters and, if there appears to be abuse of the platform, report it or communicate to your followers about it,” Menczer says.

Hunting for disinformation

The use of deceptive bots to sway public opinion is a growing issue in politics in the US and internationally, adds Menczer, who is also a part of a group of researchers who found prevalent use of bots in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election. Other bot campaigns have sought to influence votes related to the UK Brexit movement and elections in France, Germany, and Italy.

During the run-up to the midterm elections in 2018, for example, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used publicly available tools created by the observatory to report over 10,000 bots spreading voter suppression messages to Twitter, which shut down the accounts. The tools used to inform the report were Botometer, which uses an algorithm to assign a score to Twitter accounts based upon the likelihood they’re automated, and Hoaxy, which lets individuals search and visualize the spread of specific topics on Twitter in real time. Botometer is one of the observatory’s most popular tools, currently receiving over 100,000 queries per day.

Researchers created BotSlayer, which combines technology from Hoaxy and Botometer, in part based on feedback from political and news organizations asking to make faster, more powerful, and more user-friendly tools. These organizations include The Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN.

The system uses an “anomaly detection algorithm” to quickly report trending activity whose sudden surge is likely driven by bots, Menczer says.

For example, BotSlayer could be useful during a presidential debate to not only instantly detect when a candidate’s username or related hashtags are trending, but also automatically assign a “bot score” to indicate whether the surge appears related to bot activity. In business, BotSlayer could help organizations protect against reputational threats that rely on automated accounts to amplify messages. In journalism, the tool could help monitor against manipulation of reporting on trending topics, or warn the public against disinformation attacks.

Real or fake? BotSlayer can tell

In addition to detecting trends, BotSlayer can instantly generate a “network map” that illustrates how a particular topic is spreading over time. A bot score is also assigned to each user in the network, providing an easy way to see the most influential accounts—real or fake—in the conversation. Each trending “entity”—a hashtag; a user handle; an image, video, gif, or meme; or a keyword or phrase—is also assigned a percentage to indicate how quickly it’s surging. A percentage of 5,000 indicates a 50-fold increase in mentions in the past four hours, for example.

To use BotSlayer, users can download the software through an online form and follow simple instructions to install it in the cloud or on their own server. This process can be performed in a few clicks, and at no cost. It lets users personalize their use of the tool and protects privacy. The system is accessed through a web dashboard integrated with the observatory’s other tools.

“BotSlayer has the potential to be a very powerful new tool in our global battle against misinformation and disinformation. During the 2018 elections, we used an earlier version of BotSlayer to identify and ultimately take down malicious accounts throughout the general election. It was very effective and easy to use,” says Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and senior advisor to the DCCC during the 2017-18 election cycle.

“My hope is that actors in democracies throughout the world take advantage of it as we did for the last election here in the US,” Rosenberg says.

Craig Newmark Philanthropies supported the software’s development. You can download BotSlayer here.

Source: Indiana University

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A tumbling flower beetle with pollen on its legs, trapped in amber, pushes the first known physical evidence of insect flower pollination to 99 million years ago.

The fossil comes from deep inside a mine in northern Myanmar and from the same amber deposit as the first ammonite discovered in amber, which the same research group reported earlier this year.

The newly reported fossil appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The fossil, which contains both the beetle and pollen grains, pushes back the earliest documented instance of insect pollination to the mid-Cretaceous. That’s when pterodactyls still roamed the skies—or about 50 million years earlier than previously thought.

beetle in amber with hairy leg visible — A close-up of *A. burmitina* in amber. (Credit: Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology)

Study coauthor David Dilcher, emeritus professor at Indiana University Bloomington, provided a morphological review of the 62 grains of pollen in the amber. He says that the shape and structure of the pollen shows it evolved to spread through contact with insects. These features include the pollen’s size, “ornamentation,” and clumping ability.

The grains also likely originated from a flower species in the group eudicots, one of the most common types of flowering plant species, says Dilcher, a paleobotanist in the department of earth and atmospheric science.

The pollen was not easy to find. The powdery substance was revealed hidden in the insect’s body hairs under a confocal laser microscopy. The analysis took advantage of the fact that pollen grains glow under fluorescent light, contrasting strongly with the darkness of the insect’s shell.

The insect in the amber is a newly discovered species of beetle, which the study’s authors named Angimordella burmitina. They determined its role as a pollinator based upon several specialized physical structures, including body shape and pollen-feeding mouthparts. An imaging method called X-ray microcomputed tomography, or micro-CT, made those structures clear.

“It’s exceedingly rare to find a specimen where both the insect and the pollen are preserved in a single fossil,” Dilcher says. “Aside from the significance as earliest known direct evidence of insect pollination of flowering plants, this specimen perfectly illustrates the cooperative evolution of plants and animals during this time period, during which a true exposition of flowering plants occurred.”

two beetles on flowers — Artist’s rendering of *A. burmitina* feeding on eudicot flowers. (Credit: Ding-hau Yang)

Prior to this study, the earliest physical evidence of insect pollination of flowering plants came from Middle Eocene. Researchers determined the age of the new fossil based upon the age of other known fossils in the same location as the fossilized beetle’s discovery.

The co-lead author of the study is Bo Wang, an amber fossil expert at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, where researchers procured and analyzed the specimen. Additional coauthors of the study are from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and the Institute of Geosciences and Meteorology at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Support for the work came from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Source: Indiana University

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A man holds several hundred dollar bills in front of his face while wearing a black shirt against a white background

New research digs into when hiding purchases, debt, and savings constitute “financial infidelity,” and provides a means for predicting its occurrence within relationships.

The study is the first systematic investigation of financial infidelity in committed romantic relationships.

Researchers define financial infidelity as “engaging in any financial behavior that is expected to be disapproved of by one’s romantic partner and intentionally failing to disclose this behavior to them.” It involves both the financial “act” and the subsequent concealment.

It differs from secret consumption and merely hiding spending because it involves a broader set of financial behaviors, including seemingly “positive” actions such as saving extra income in a personal bank account.

“Financial infidelity has the potential to be as harmful for relationship health and longevity as sexual infidelity, as conflicts over money are also a primary reason for divorce,” says coauthor Jenny Olson, assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “Given the role that finances play in the health of relationships, consumers benefit from being aware of financial infidelity and its consequences.”

Growing in popularity is financial therapy, which combines finance with emotional support to help individuals and couples think, feel, and behave with money to improve their overall well-being, make logical spending decisions, and face financial challenges.

“An understanding of financial infidelity can benefit financial services companies and advisors, clinical therapists, and relationship counselors, all of whom play a role in promoting consumer well-being,” Olson says. “If couples seek professional financial advice, they must be willing to openly discuss their spending and savings habits, debts, and financial goals. It is clear that financial infidelity is a barrier to effective planning, as well as to a healthy relationship.”

The researchers developed a “financial infidelity scale (FI-Scale)” using a dozen lab and field tests. Key elements include:

Whether the financial act is expected to elicit any level of disapproval was more important than the degree of disapproval.
Consumers more prone to financial infidelity exhibited a stronger preference for secretive purchase options, such as using a personal credit card versus a jointly held card, and cash over credit.
A preference for ambiguous packaging and shopping at inconspicuous stores.
A greater likelihood of concealing financial information from their partner in a mobile banking app.

Each choice is relevant to marketers. The prevalence of financial infidelity among consumers and variations along the FI-Scale affect purchasing decisions. It is important that companies be aware of certain consumer segments that may be prone to financial infidelity and thus affect their bottom lines.

For example, the trend of businesses going “cash-free” may affect retailers such as beauty salons and gift shops because of the use of cash to disguise purchases. Consumers strategically using cash may be less willing to make purchases only for their pleasure or personal wants.

The research appears in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Additional coauthors are from the University of Notre Dame, University College London, and Boston College.

Source: Indiana University

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Deep purple lavender flowers hangs down over a white background

A chemical compound found in essential oils improves the healing process in mice when topically applied to a skin wound, a new study shows.

The finding could lead to improved treatments for skin injuries in humans.

Further, skin tissue treated with the chemical compound, beta-carophyllene—found in lavender, rosemary, and ylang ylang, as well as various herbs and spices such as black pepper—showed increased cell growth and cell migration critical to wound healing. Researchers also saw increased gene expression of hair follicle stem cells in the treated tissue. They found no involvement of the olfactory system in wound healing.

“This is the first finding at the chemical-compound level showing improved wound healing in addition to changes in gene expression in the skin,” says corresponding author Sachiko Koyama, who, at the time of the research, was an associate scientist at the Indiana University School of Medicine and is currently a visiting scientist in the biology department.

“The way gene expression changed also suggests not only improved wound healing but also the possibility of less scar formation and a more full recovery. It’s an example that essential oils work; however, it’s not through our sense of smell.”

Stages of wound healing

Essential oils are natural, concentrated oils extracted from plants. Humans have used them since the times of ancient Egypt, but the scented oils have experienced a resurgence in popularity in the US over the past few years, with many people using them for aromatherapy.

Koyama, who originally studied pheromones, says she had no interest in essential oils at first. The project started when she saw several students studying the wound healing process in mice in the Medical Sciences Program. Having previously worked in the psychological and brain sciences department, where scientists work with cannabinoid receptors, Koyama knew that beta-caryophyllene activates not only olfactory receptors but also cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2), which has an anti-inflammatory effect when it is activated.

“In the wound healing process, there are several stages, starting from the inflammatory phase, followed by the cell proliferation stage, and the remodeling stage,” she says. “I thought maybe wound healing would be accelerated if inflammation was suppressed, stimulating an earlier switch from the inflammatory stage to the next stage.”

This accelerated the wound healing process, she says, but the resulting change in gene expression indicates there is more to the improved healing than just activating of the CB2 receptor.

“It’s possibly more complicated,” Koyama says. “Our findings suggest the involvements of some other routes in addition to CB2. I hope to clarify the mechanisms of action in the near future.”

Essential oils for drug delivery, too?

Although the study’s results are promising, Koyama says she wouldn’t recommend that people start treating their injuries with just any essential oils, as her research applies to a very specific chemical compound with known purity, diluted in a specific concentration.

“It’s not very precise to use the essential oils themselves because there are differences,” she says. “Even if you say you used lavender, when the lavender was harvested, where it was harvested, how it was stored—all of this makes a difference in the chemical composition.”

Koyama says further research is necessary to figure out how beta-carophyllene might be used to develop new treatments for skin wounds in humans.

She says she hopes to better understand the mechanisms that accelerate the healing process and to find a combination of chemical compounds that could combine to accelerate drug delivery and chemical stability, which is important for avoiding or suppressing allergic responses that oxidation of the chemical compounds may cause.

“We still need thorough scientific studies at the chemical-compound level and also to test the combinations of these chemical compounds,” she says.

“For example, there are studies showing that linalool—another compound found in lavender—can suppress anxiety through the olfactory system. There could be the best combinations of chemical compounds at specific ratios, and we might be able to do prescriptions of aroma chemical compounds, depending on the specific treatment goals.

“There are many things to test before we can start using it clinically, but our results are very promising and exciting; someday in the near future, we may be able to develop a drug and drug delivery methods using the chemical compounds found in essential oils.”

The study appears in PLOS ONE.

Additional coauthors are from Duke University and Indiana University.

Source: Indiana University

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Medical product companies, such as those that make pharmaceuticals and medical devices, make recall decisions quite differently when women join their board of directors, a new study finds.

In life-threatening situations when defective medical products may kill a user, companies with female directors issue recalls much more quickly. For less severe instances in which there is greater discretion in the recall decision, recalls occur more frequently for companies that have women on their boards.

Both of these findings point to a more socially conscious and responsive decision-making culture regarding product quality when women are on a company’s board of directors.

The study appears in the journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

“Our study shows that there is a difference in real and important safety outcomes for consumers, between firms that have women on their boards and those who do not,” says George Ball, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

Firms with female directors announced recalls of products with the most serious, life-threatening defects 28 days earlier than at firms where the board was all-male. This equates to a 35% reduction in time between when such firms were first made aware of a defect and when the decision was made to recall the product.

The researchers also found that companies with female directors initiated recalls of product defects that are less severe and easier to hide from regulators 120% more often. These situations often involved packaging and labeling issues. This is equal to 12 more of these type of recalls per firm.

A year ago, California became the first state to require that all public companies headquartered in the state have at least one female director. The European Commission mandates that all companies based in Europe have at least 40% female representation on their boards.

Previous research has suggested that women, compared to men, are more risk-averse, follow rules more closely, and consider how their decisions influence a wider array of stakeholders.

While the addition of just one female director changed how recall decisions were made compared to firms with an all-male board, recall decisions continue to change as each additional woman is added to the board. Severe recalls are recalled more quickly, and discretionary low-severity recalls occur more often, as each additional female director joined.

The study relied on recall data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and recall timing data from the Food and Drug Administration. Researchers analyzed 4,271 medical product recalls from 2002 to 2013 across 92 publicly traded medical product firms regulated by the FDA.

Coauthors of the study are from the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, Lehigh University, and Auburn University.

Source: Indiana University

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Pairing headlines with credibility alerts from fact-checkers, the public, news media, and even artificial intelligence, can reduce peoples’ intention to share misinformation on social media, researchers report.

The dissemination of fake news on social media is a pernicious trend with dire implications for the 2020 presidential election.

Credibility indicators are less likely to influence men, who are more inclined to share fake news on social media.

Indeed, research shows that public engagement with spurious news is greater than with legitimate news from mainstream sources, making social media a powerful channel for propaganda.

The new study also shows the effectiveness of alerts about misinformation varies with political orientation and gender.

The good news for truth seekers? People overwhelmingly trust official fact-checking sources.

The study, led by Nasir Memon, professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, and Sameer Patil, visiting research professor at NYU Tandon and assistant professor in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington, goes further, examining the effectiveness of a specific set of inaccuracy notifications designed to alert readers to news headlines that are inaccurate or untrue.

Warnings about misinformation on social media

The work involved an online study of around 1,500 individuals to measure the effectiveness among different groups of four so-called “credibility indicators” displayed beneath headlines:

Fact Checkers: “Multiple fact-checking journalists dispute the credibility of this news”
News Media: “Major news outlets dispute the credibility of this news”
Public: “A majority of Americans disputes the credibility of this news”
AI: “Computer algorithms using AI dispute the credibility of this news”

“We wanted to discover whether social media users were less apt to share fake news when it was accompanied by one of these indicators and whether different types of credibility indicators exhibit different levels of influence on people’s sharing intent,” says Memon. “But we also wanted to measure the extent to which demographic and contextual factors like age, gender, and political affiliation impact the effectiveness of these indicators.”

Participants—over 1,500 US residents—saw a sequence of 12 true, false, or satirical news headlines. Only the false or satirical headlines included a credibility indicator below the headline in red font. For all of the headlines, researchers asked respondents if they would share the corresponding article with friends on social media, and why.

The chart shows less change in republicans sharing of fake news even with the credibility indicators — Republicans are less likely to be influenced by credibility indicators, more inclined to share fake news on social media. (Credit: NYU)

“Upon initial inspection, we found that political ideology and affiliation were highly correlated to responses and that the strength of individuals’ political alignments made no difference, whether Republican or Democrat,” says Memon. “The indicators impacted everyone regardless of political orientation, but the impact on Democrats was much larger compared to the other two groups.”

The most effective of the credibility indicators, by far, was Fact Checkers: Study respondents intended to share 43% fewer non-true headlines with this indicator versus 25%, 22%, and 22% for the “News Media,” “Public,” and “AI” indicators, respectively.

How politics affects things

The team found a strong correlation between political affiliation and the propensity of each of the credibility indicators to influence intention to share.

In fact, the AI credibility indicator actually induced Republicans to increase their intention to share non-true news:

Democrats intended to share 61% fewer non-true headlines with the Fact Checkers indicator (versus 40% for Independents and 19% for Republicans).
Democrats intended to share 36% fewer non-true headlines with the News Media indicator (versus 29% for Independents and 4.5% for Republicans).
Democrats intended to share 37% fewer non-true headlines with the Public indicator, (versus 17% for Independents and 6.7% for Republicans).
Democrats intended to share 40% fewer non-true headlines with the AI indicator (versus 16% for Independents).
Republicans intended to share 8.1% more non-true news with the AI indicator.

The chart shows women are more responsive to credibility indicators than men — Credibility indicators are less likely to influence men, who are more inclined to share fake news on social media. But indicators, especially those from fact-checkers, reduce intention to share fake news across the board. (Credit: NYU)

Patil says that, while fact-checkers are the most effective kind of indicator, regardless of political affiliation and gender, fact-checking is a very labor-intensive. He says the team was surprised by the fact that Republicans were more inclined to share news that was flagged as not credible using the AI indicator.

“We were not expecting that, although conservatives may tend to trust more traditional means of flagging the veracity of news,” he says, adding that the team will next examine how to make the most effective credibility indicator—fact-checkers—efficient enough to handle the scale inherent in today’s news climate.

“This could include applying fact checks to only the most-needed content, which might involve applying natural language algorithms. So, it is a question, broadly speaking, of how humans and AI could co-exist,” he explains.

The team also found that males intended to share non-true headlines one and half times more than females, with the differences largest for the public and news media indicators.

Credibility indicators are less likely to influence men, who are more inclined to share fake news on social media. But indicators, especially those from fact-checkers, reduce intention to share fake news across the board.

Socializing was the dominant reason respondents gave for intending to share a headline, with the top-reported reason for intending to share fake stories being that they were considered funny.

The research appears in ACM Digital Library.

Source: NYU

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