About 6% of pregnant women say they use marijuana

A new study found that about 6% of pregnant women reported using marijuana during the last month, and many did not associate it with health risks.

The study highlights the importance of education surrounding marijuana use during pregnancy, says lead researcher Mohammad Rifat Haider.

Published in The American Journal on Addictions, the study utilized responses from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Among 4,338 pregnant mothers, 5.7% reported using marijuana during the last month.

Within that group, 70.9% perceived little to no risk associated with marijuana use during pregnancy, even though it has been associated with low birth weight, premature birth, and neurodevelopmental effects.

While other substances, like alcohol or illegal drugs, have clearly identified adverse effects, marijuana has some conflicting perceptions, says Haider, an assistant professor in health policy and management at the University of Georgia. It can be seen as helpful in reference to cancer patients seeking to minimize nausea, but studies have also shown harmful side effects of continued use.

During pregnancy, however, the evidence clearly points to negative effects, Haider says.

Marijuana use is legal for recreational use in 25 states and or medical purposes in 14 more. Two-thirds of the pregnant women who reported using marijuana lived in a state where medical marijuana was legal at the time of the survey.

Most of the pregnant women who used marijuana were also in their first trimester, and use decreased as the pregnancy progressed. Women in their first trimester may have seen medical marijuana as a way to combat morning sickness, Haider says.

“Marijuana is seen as a cure for nausea, but that’s not the way it should be dealt with in pregnancy because it is harmful for the mother and the fetus,” Haider says.

Women should consult physician to combat nausea, not turn to marijuana
Rather than turn to medical marijuana, women should talk to their OBGYN about prescription drugs that can limit nausea and vomiting, Haider says.

And doctors should be prepared to address misconceptions about how marijuana can affect these symptoms during pregnancy.

“When medical marijuana is available, when it is legal, it is available in the pharmacy. It is widely available,” he says. “So we need to be extra cautious in those states and make solid policy that helps make pregnant women aware of the detrimental effects or marijuana use.”

Another factor associated with marijuana use was mental health disorders or major depressive episodes. This is seen with many other substances, Haider says, where if there are unmet health needs, individuals are more likely to experience a substance use disorder.

All of these numbers highlight a need for improved education efforts around marijuana use in pregnancy. Doctors should be prepared to screen individuals for past substance use including regular marijuana use, and they should provide information on potential adverse effects of marijuana, especially in states where medical marijuana is legal.

“Long story short, this is a very vulnerable population, and evidence shows that during pregnancy, marijuana use is detrimental for both mother and child,” Haider says. “There needs to be policy direction from the state to have these discussions.”

Additional coauthors on the study are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Kentucky, the University of Georgia, and Ohio University.

Source: University of Georgia

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Experts aren’t great at figuring out which political messages work

Political campaigns spend big bucks hiring consultants to craft persuasive messaging, but a new study demonstrates that political professionals perform no better than regular folks in predicting which messages will sway voters.

In the study, Kalla and his coauthors evaluated how well sample groups of political practitioners—professionals who work for political campaigns, polling firms, and advocacy organizations—and members of the public could predict the effectiveness of 172 campaign messages concerning 21 political issues, including legalizing marijuana, cancelling student debt, and increasing border security.

They found that both groups performed barely better than chance and that the practitioners were no more perceptive than laypeople in identifying messaging that resonates with people.

“We found that neither political practitioners nor the mass public are particularly accurate in predicting which persuasive messages are more effective than others,” says coauthor Joshua L. Kalla, associate professor of political science at Yale.

“This suggests that political practitioners who craft language intended to persuade have fairly poor intuitions about which messages people will find persuasive.”

For the study, the researchers gathered 172 text-based political messages that political practitioners have used to support or oppose 21 distinct issues. They pulled the messages from sources such as voter guides published by various advocacy organizations and the social media accounts of prominent politicians.

An example is a message used by the Marijuana Policy Project to support the legalization of cannabis: “Polls show that a strong and growing majority of Americans agree it is time to end cannabis prohibition. Nationwide, a recent Gallup poll found that 66% support making marijuana use legal for adults.”

To measure the effectiveness of these messages, the researchers conducted a large-scale survey experiment, in which they randomly assigned 23,167 participants into either a treatment group or a control group. The treatment groups were presented with messages for three specific issues; the control group saw no messages. Then researchers questioned participants in both the treatment and control groups on their opinions of the issues, for a total of 67,215 observations from the participants. The researchers used this data to estimate the efficacy of each message.

Next, they asked 1,524 political practitioners with varied experience and expertise and 21,247 laypeople to predict the messages’ effectiveness. (Ninety-one percent of the practitioners reported being directly involved with developing messaging.) Both groups did little better predicting the messages’ persuasiveness than if they had guessed randomly.

The study showed that the members of the public believed that other people are more persuadable than the initial survey showed or the practitioners expected. But after accounting for those inflated expectations, practitioners did not predict meaningfully better than laypeople.

Among the political practitioners, the study found that experience or issue expertise did not translate into a greater ability to identify effective messages.

The findings suggest that, rather than relying on their intuition, political practitioners should consider incorporating data-science techniques into their evaluations of potential messages, says Kalla, a faculty fellow at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

“The main takeaway here is that political practitioners have tools available to help them identify effective messages without having to rely on their gut feeling,” he says.

“They could use survey experiments similar to what we did in this study. We see political campaigns already doing that, and I suspect more will adopt such techniques moving forward.”

The study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Additional coauthors are from the University of California, Berkeley.

Source: Yale

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Everything you should know about voter turnout

Political scientists have answers for you about why people do and don’t exercise their right to vote—and the implications of that choice for democracy.

It’s election season, when candidate lawn signs sprout in yards and political messaging seeps into news feeds. Many Americans are preparing to visit their polling place to cast their ballot (and score their “I Voted” sticker).

Yet for other voters, Election Day is just another Tuesday.

What does voter turnout mean?

Technically, “voter turnout is the number of people who cast ballots in any given election,” says Mayya Komisarchik, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester.

In the United States, the voting-eligible population comprises citizens of the right age, who are not convicted of a felony—though this depends on state law—and not mentally incapacitated.

“But it’s hard to get that granular with numbers, so the voter turnout rate is typically calculated as the number of ballots cast divided by the voting-age population,” she says. “If high turnout is the harbinger of a healthy democracy, we want a high percentage of voter turnout.”

Since 1980, voter turnout for US presidential elections has fluctuated between 50 to 65% of eligible voters—with the exception of 2020, when it reached a record high of 67%. (Midterm elections draw significantly fewer voters.)

“Turnout in the US is not super-high relative to other democracies, like in Australia, where voting is compulsory with a fine for not participating,” says Komisarchik.

Even without a slap on the wrist, why aren’t more US citizens voting?

“Given that we’re talking about 51 different electoral systems (each state plus Washington DC) with multi-pronged processes, various restrictions, and lots of contestation, the voter turnout rate doesn’t surprise me,” says James Druckman, a professor of political science at the University of Rochester. “States vary dramatically in terms of their registration laws, early voting policies, access to polls, even when absentee ballots are counted.”

Scheduling is also a factor: In some places, local elections are timed to coincide with midterm or presidential ones, while in other places they are staggered in different years.

Add to this tangle the country’s history of constricted ballot access and voter suppression, through legal means and otherwise: literacy tests with subjective scoring, character witnesses (also subjective), and recent challenges to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. The finer points of “electioneering” can even penalize distributing water at a polling line.

In the lead-up to Election Day, here are several key points about voter turnout and why it’s important.

Voter “decline” is often really voter disenfranchisement.

Extending the franchise—or giving more people the right to vote—is one way to influence voter turnout.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution acknowledged the right of formerly enslaved African American men to vote. Fifty years later, in 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, legally guaranteeing American women the right to vote, a longstanding goal of the women’s suffrage movement. (Susan B. Anthony was a key player in the movement. On November 5, 1872—well before the 19th Amendment’s ratification—Anthony marched to the polls near her home in Rochester, New York, demanding to vote in the presidential election. She cast her vote, but was subsequently arrested, charged, and indicted.)

Conversely, disenfranchising people can also affect voter turnout.

“Because we often divide voters by the entire voting-age population, voter turnout appeared to decline through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s,” says Druckman. “In reality, this is explained by the growing disenfranchisement rate of felons.”

Only in Maine, Vermont, and Washington, DC, do people convicted of a felony never lose their right to vote. In other states, convicted felons are ineligible to vote either while incarcerated, for a period of time after release, or indefinitely.

When it comes to the calculus of voting, participation trumps “pivotality.”

In US elections, some states are reliably “blue” or “red”—that is, the results of the state elections tend to be more Democratic or Republican, respectively. By contrast, “purple” or “swing” states are those where either the Democratic or Republican candidates could win a statewide election. In these so-called battleground states, the difference between winning and losing can come down to a few thousand—or even hundred—votes.

Why, then, would anyone in a blue or red state bother to cast a ballot, knowing their vote isn’t pivotal to the election results? Is the act of voting an irrational one if you know your vote isn’t pivotal?

Enter the rational choice theory, a scientific model of political behavior that assumes people make decisions based on their calculations of costs and benefits. William Riker, an American political scientist at the University of Rochester from 1962 to 1993, is considered the founder of rational choice theory. He used economic and game-theoretic approaches to develop mathematical models of politics, including the Riker-Ordeshook theory of the calculus of voting. In doing so, he founded an entirely new subfield of political science in the 1960s—one that continues to influence the discipline today.

“Rational choice theory is an umbrella term for considering instrumental motivations that voters might have. In other words, what compels a person to vote?” explains Scott Tyson, an associate professor of political science.

Those motivations could vary anywhere from getting personal satisfaction from participating in the democratic process to thinking your vote will make the difference in a particular election. The latter “is a narrower definition of instrumentality,” says Tyson.

“What is the likelihood that I am pivotal in this election? If my vote is pivotal for Candidate A, that means half of all voters will vote for Candidate B. And that means that public opinion is more divided than I thought. So, when my vote ‘matters’ the most, my knowledge that it’s ‘right’ may be the least secure.”

Voting behavior has evolved from private decision to team sport.

“More recently, voting has taken on an event-based, participatory aspect,” says Tyson. There’s a difference between attending a concert or game in person versus streaming it on YouTube. “It’s just not the same,” he says. Likewise with voting today.

The aforementioned Riker-Ordeshook model of political science—also called the paradox of voting—ascribes most of the benefit of voting to the act itself, rather than to the outcome of the election. Even when a voter knows they won’t change the outcome, they still get some value from the act—whether that’s securing the coveted “I Voted” sticker or posting a selfie on social media (after clearing the electioneering zone, of course).

According to Tyson, today’s political advertisements reinforce the notion of voting behavior as a team sport or stadium concert, rather than reflective decision-making.

“Very few ads seem designed to persuade independent voters to cast their vote one way or another,” he says. “Instead, they seem to ask: ‘Are you going to turn out for your candidate on Election Day? Will we see you in the arena?'”

From drizzle to deluge, the weather forecast matters for voter turnout.

“On a rainy and cold day, people are less likely to stand outside the polling place in long lines,” says Komisarchik. And when handing out water and snacks is perceived as risky, people may not wait outside on sweltering Tuesdays, either.

Extreme weather events can affect voting behavior even more profoundly.

“Sometimes there are natural disasters right around Election Day, like tornadoes, where officials need to consolidate voting places as shelters,” says Komisarchik.

For example, during the Super Tuesday Democratic Party presidential primaries in 2020, severe tornadoes in Nashville, Tennessee, forced the closing and consolidating of polling stations, leaving voters and election officials scrambling to navigate both dangerous conditions and thorny logistics.

Younger people tend to vote less.

“Voting habituates,” says Druckman. “The key determinant of voting in any given election is whether you have voted before.”

So, which voters reliably show up to exercise their civic duty?

“In general, the people who are most likely to turn out—and turn out in most elections, from presidential to midterms to primaries to local races—are college-educated suburban homeowners,” says Komisarchik. “They are stakeholders, who have lived somewhere for a long time and put down roots.”

Turnout rates also increase along with voters’ level of education.

Younger voters between ages 18 and 29, conversely, tend to vote less. “This is the bane of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. If your life is in flux without a fixed address, you’re less likely to vote.”

People over the age of 45 are the highest-propensity voter, Komisarchik says. And despite efforts to enforce (and protect) the Voting Rights Act, “racial gaps do persist. By and large, it’s still the case that white voters are most likely to turn out.” Data shows that the most significant drop-off is for Hispanic voters, specifically for midterm elections.

Low voter turnout used to benefit Republicans. Now it favors Democrats.

“Political scientists used to think that low-turnout elections were marginally better for the Republican party,” says Komisarchik. “Historically, it was the case that all college-educated homeowner suburban votes were Republican. But in the Trump years, there has been a realignment and those places now tend to go Democrat.”

One of the largest advertising investments late in Trump’s campaign, she notes, has been anti-transgender attack ads. Komisarchik says, “That does not look like an effort to win back suburban voters who value affordable childcare or accessible health care.”

This realignment will likely persist for a while, she says, with political, societal, and historical implications still playing out in real-time.

Same-day registration boosts voter turnout.

Same-day registration allows voters to register and vote at the same time, usually on Election Day itself. This voting option, currently available in 23 states and Washington, DC, is the strategy that “consistently has the most positive impact, from what I’ve seen,” says Komisarchik.

For states without this option, campaigns should try the opposite tactic. According to Komisarchik, research on voter turnout suggests that one way to reduce the “mental load” for voters is to encourage them to make a written plan in advance.

“This includes when they will vote, the confirmed location of their polling place, and how they will get to the polls. Providing them with rides, registration information, and other means to reduce their ‘mental load’ will also help,” she says.

Without a paper trail, trust in elections and democracy suffers.

If voting migrated online for convenience, would turnout improve? Maybe—but don’t count on seeing a ballot box icon next to the Amazon button on your home screen.

“The tricky thing about voting is that if we removed all logistics and other ‘costs,’ it would be easier,” Komisarchik allows. “People could vote from the convenience of their homes. However, we also need elections to be secure, auditable, and verifiable—with a ‘paper trail.’ Cybersecurity experts tell us that the most secure way to vote is on paper.”

The tangible evidence of a paper trail makes it more difficult for a foreign power or bad actors to interfere, she explains, while simplifying post-election audits.

“They would have to break into polling stations and steal the physical ballots, as opposed to remotely hacking a server. In a world of eroding trust and mounting disinformation, paper ballots actually give us security.”

Source: Melissa Pheterson for University of Rochester

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Loss of smell tied to 100+ diseases

New research reveals a powerful link between olfactory loss and inflammation in a staggering 139 medical conditions.

This research emphasizes a little-known but potentially life-altering connection: the role our sense of smell plays in maintaining our physical and mental health.

The study appears in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience.

Olfactory dysfunction, often dismissed as a minor inconvenience, may actually be an early sign of various neurological and bodily diseases, as indicated by this research.

“The data are particularly interesting because we had previously found that olfactory enrichment can improve the memory of older adults by 226%,” says professor emeritus Michael Leon of the University of California, Irvine.

“We now know that pleasant scents can decrease inflammation, potentially pointing to the mechanism by which such scents can improve brain health.”

This finding, he adds, could hold key implications for mitigating symptoms and possibly even reducing the onset of certain diseases through therapeutic olfactory stimulation.

The study delves into the methodical tracking of 139 medical conditions associated with both olfactory loss and heightened inflammation, uncovering insights into a shared pathway linking these factors. Olfactory loss, which often precedes conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, may serve as an early indicator of disease onset, allowing for more proactive therapeutic approaches.

“It was difficult to track down the studies for so many medical conditions,” says Leon, reflecting on the complexity of linking olfactory loss to such a wide array of disorders.

The challenge, he adds, underscores the importance of these findings in framing olfactory health as integral to overall well-being.

By showing how olfactory enrichment can mitigate inflammation, this research has laid a foundation for future studies aiming to explore the therapeutic use of scent to address a broader range of medical conditions.

“It will be interesting to see if we can ameliorate the symptoms of other medical conditions with olfactory enrichment,” says Leon.

Leon is now working on a device to deliver olfactory therapy, which could hold promise as a novel, non-invasive way to improve health outcomes.

As science continues to uncover the profound impacts of our senses on health, this research underscores a critical need for further study into olfactory therapies.

Source: UC Irvine

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Was a fungus to blame for the Salem witch trials?

Could a fungus have been behind the Salem witch trials?

Mass hallucinations and paranoia. Seizures and bodily convulsions. From 1692 to 1693, the town of Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony tried approximately 200 people for their crimes of witchcraft.

Within that year, 14 women, six men and two dogs were killed on suspicion of working for the devil. Politics, fear, religious superstition, and social ostracization have all been credited as kindling for the witch trials.

Could fungi also have been to blame?

Under the guise of amber waving grains, the fungal pathogen Claviceps purpurea, or ergot, explodes from its capsule set in the rye seed head and releases spores across the rest of the unsuspecting cereal-grain fields. This fungus has infected crops, and in turn, food supplies for more than a millennia.

Even for Rabern Simmons, the Purdue University Herbaria’s curator of fungi, mushrooms’ troubled reputation is difficult to ignore.

“I think there’s always been a negative connotation of mushrooms and fungi,” he says. “These organisms just erupt out of the soil in a rather crude shape. Think of the words we use to describe them: rot and decay, mold and blight. Historically, they’re seen as dangerous and associated with witchcraft and curses.”

That association is particularly strong with ergot. Approximately 130 epidemics in Europe from 591 to 1789 A.D. are thought to have been caused by ergot poisoning.

Some alkaloids, a chemical class of nitrogenous and organic compounds derived from plants and fungi—including the alkaloid used to create LSD—are active in the ergot fungus and have major physiological effects on humans. Convulsive ergot poisoning can cause hallucinations, body spasms, nausea, seizures, and vomiting. Gangrene ergotism restricts the blood vessels in extremities, making fingers and toes blacken, die, and fall off.

“What was most upsetting is that there was such a loss of sensation that your finger could fall off and you didn’t feel it fall. Europeans considered that lack of feeling as proof an evil spirit was causing it,” Simmons explained.

“Also, one of the early symptoms of ergotism is something colloquially known as ‘holy fire’ or ‘Saint Anthony’s fire,’ a general burning sensation that most affected young people, like the accusers. People said that this was your body preemptively burning in hell.”

Rye being the pathogen’s favorite host was also considered an act of God. Rye was a cheaper crop than white wheat and other grains less susceptible to ergot. So, communities that could afford only rye were more likely to end up with ergotism, a trend that people historically claimed meant that God was punishing the lower class.

Psychologist Linnda R. Caporael, credited as the first to theorize that ergotism might’ve played a role in the Salem witch trials, published a hypothesis in Science in 1976 that the cold winter and wet spring of 1691 would’ve been ripe conditions for ergot to flourish in the town’s rye crop. Simmons says towns like Salem also typically stored their grain in damp conditions, which could have led to further contamination.

Nine-year-old Betty Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams were the first accusers of witchcraft, blaming two socially ostracized neighbors and a servant for their violent fits, strange visions, and burning sensations. While these symptoms could be explained today by ergotism, Salem’s doctor could only describe the illness as something supernatural.

Simmons says it was not just the accusers infected by ergot “but also the accused and the rest of the town were likely suffering from ergotism. Everyone was terrified of what was going on around them, whether it be convulsions, necrosis, or hallucinations. It wasn’t until the next year, after a hot and dry summer, that the ‘witchcraft’ disappeared—likely because there was no ergot the following season.”

Simmons is looking to change the negative worldview mushrooms have acquired. Among this group of decomposers, there’s the bad and the dangerous, but also the medicinal, the delicious, and the recyclers. Beyond the hallucinogenic properties of the fungus and LSD, people have used ergot for centuries to stop bleeding in mothers after giving birth. It could also potentially be used for treating migraines and Alzheimer’s disease.

As it turns out, ergot even benefits rye. “Ergot gains its nourishment from the plant, but it’s believed that it protects the cereal from insect damage because the insects don’t want to eat it either,” Simmons says.

“Historically, some people saw this as a plant disease, but others thought if you had a lot of black spots of ergot in the fields, yields were going to be abundant.”

In his own research, Simmons has seen similar stories between fungi, their environment and people. He specializes in the chytrid group of microscopic fungi; one species was discovered to infect frogs in 1999. Only in 2022 was that fungal pathogen then linked to an increase of malaria cases because there were fewer amphibians around to control the mosquito population. All members of an ecosystem are connected, ties that Simmons says will only become clearer in climate change.

Although there is no way to fully know if ergot was present and responsible for Salem’s witch trials, the possibility serves as a warning to better understand the fungal kingdom’s significance in the natural world.

Source: Purdue University

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People don’t like stories they think AI wrote

Stories written by the latest version of ChatGPT were nearly as good as those written by human authors, according to new research on the narrative skills of artificial intelligence.

But when people were told a story was written by AI—whether the true author was an algorithm or a person—they rated the story poorly, a sign that people distrust and dislike AI-generated art.

“People don’t like when they think a story is written by AI, whether it was or not,” says Haoran “Chris” Chu, a professor of public relations at the University of Florida and coauthor of the new study.

“AI is good at writing something that is consistent, logical, and coherent. But it is still weaker at writing engaging stories than people are.”

The quality of AI stories could help people like public health workers create compelling narratives to reach people and encourage healthy behaviors, such as vaccination, says Chu, an expert in public health and science communication. Chu and his coauthor, Sixiao Liu of the University of Central Florida, published their findings in the Journal of Communication.

The researchers exposed people to two different versions of the same stories. One was written by a person and the other by ChatGPT. Survey participants then rated how engaged they were with the stories.

To test how people’s beliefs about AI influenced their ratings, Chu and Liu changed how the stories were labeled. Sometimes the AI story was correctly labeled as written by a computer. Other times people were told it was written by a human. The human-authored stories also had their labels swapped.

The surveys focused on two key elements of narratives: counterarguing—the experience of picking a story apart—and transportation. These two story components work at odds with one another.

“Transportation is a very familiar experience,” Chu says. “It’s the feeling of being so engrossed in the narrative you don’t feel the sticky seats in the movie theater anymore. Because people are so engaged, they often lower their defenses to the persuasive content in the narrative and reduce their counterarguing.”

While people generally rated AI stories as just as persuasive as their human-authored counterparts, the computer-written stories were not as good as transporting people into the world of the narrative.

“AI does not write like a master writer. That’s probably good news for people like Hollywood screenwriters—for now,” Chu says.

Source: University of Florida

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When are heat waves climate change’s fault?

When extreme weather events occur, can we tell if they’re directly attributable to climate change?

A new study used the 2023 heat wave in Texas and Louisiana as a test case for establishing processes that tease out whether particular weather events are climate related.

“Our main goal with this project is to be able to tell communities that are affected by extreme weather events whether they will continue to see more events like this in the future,” says Carl Schreck, senior research scientist with North Carolina State University’s North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies (NCICS).

“Getting this information to them in a timely manner will help them make informed decisions about hardening infrastructure or rebuilding after a weather event.”

The researchers set out to establish a routine process for evaluating extreme weather events.

The test case for the study was an extreme heat wave that occurred in Texas and Louisiana in 2023. The event was notable for its duration—it lasted almost the entire summer. Most heat wave measurement metrics are designed for events that last three to seven days.

“The other interesting piece of this event is that it occurred within the daytime warming hole,” Schreck says. “The warming hole refers to an area in the central US where temperatures have not warmed at the same rate that we see over most other places. This is because increased precipitation there has kept afternoon temperatures from warming.”

The scientists used a two-step process to determine whether the heat wave was an anomaly or part of a new pattern. First, they took historical data from heat monitoring stations across the US from the past 100 years to see how unusual 2023 was. Then they compared that data with the frequency of heat waves in both past and present predictive computer models.

Comparing those predictive models can indicate whether climate change is playing a role in the event.

“A similar drought wouldn’t have been as hot 50 years ago,” Schreck says. “That tells us the heat wave is directly related to climate change and that we will see even hotter heat waves in the future.”

Now that these methods have been established, the researchers plan to use them to determine the role of climate change in future heat waves.

The work appears in Environmental Research: Climate. Additional coauthors are from NC State; NOAA/National Centers for Environmental Information; University of Colorado, Boulder; NOAA/Physical Science Laboratory; NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; and Princeton University.

Support for the research came from NOAA’s Climate Program Office and the US Department of Commerce.

Source: North Carolina State University

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