Social media policies are no match for AI bots

Social media platforms aren’t doing enough to stop harmful AI bots, research finds.

While artificial intelligence (AI) bots can serve a legitimate purpose on social media—such as marketing or customer service—some are designed to manipulate public discussion, incite hate speech, spread misinformation, or enact fraud and scams.

To combat potentially harmful bot activity, some platforms have published policies on using bots and created technical mechanisms to enforce those policies.

But are those policies and mechanisms enough to keep social media users safe?

The new research analyzed the AI bot policies and mechanisms of eight social media platforms: LinkedIn, Mastodon, Reddit, TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter), and Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Then researchers attempted to launch bots to test bot policy enforcement processes.

The researchers successfully published a benign “test” post from a bot on every platform.

“As computer scientists, we know how these bots are created, how they get plugged in, and how malicious they can be, but we hoped the social media platforms would block or shut the bots down and it wouldn’t really be a problem,” says Paul Brenner, a faculty member and director in the Center for Research Computing at the University of Notre Dame and senior author of the study.

“So we took a look at what the platforms, often vaguely, state they do and then tested to see if they actually enforce their policies.”

The researchers found that the Meta platforms were the most difficult to launch bots on—it took multiple attempts to bypass their policy enforcement mechanisms. Although the researchers racked up three suspensions in the process, they were successful in launching a bot and posting a “test” post on their fourth attempt.

The only other platform that presented a modest challenge was TikTok, due to the platform’s frequent use of CAPTCHAs. But three platforms provided no challenge at all.

“Reddit, Mastodon, and X were trivial,” Brenner says. “Despite what their policy says or the technical bot mechanisms they have, it was very easy to get a bot up and working on X. They aren’t effectively enforcing their policies.”

As of the study’s publishing date, all test bot accounts and posts were still live. Brenner shared that interns, who had only a high school-level education and minimal training, were able to launch the test bots using technology that is readily available to the public, highlighting how easy it is to launch bots online.

Overall, the researchers concluded that none of the eight social media platforms tested are providing sufficient protection and monitoring to keep users safe from malicious bot activity. Brenner argued that laws, economic incentive structures, user education, and technological advances are needed to protect the public from malicious bots.

“There needs to be US legislation requiring platforms to identify human versus bot accounts because we know people can’t differentiate the two by themselves,” Brenner says.

“The economics right now are skewed against this as the number of accounts on each platform are a basis of marketing revenue. This needs to be in front of policymakers.”

To create their bots, researchers used Selenium, which is a suite of tools for automating web browsers, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o and DALL-E 3.

The research appears as a pre-print on ArXiv. This pre-print paper has not undergone peer review and its findings are preliminary.

Source: University of Notre Dame

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Students learn better writing by hand

We learn much better if we take notes the old-fashioned way, by hand, and now researchers know more about why this is.

“When we measure the brain activity of people who write by hand, we see that they form more connections in the brain than when they write using a computer,” says brain researcher Audrey van der Meer, a professor of neuropsychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Writing by hand seems to activate more brain cells, which improves our ability to learn subject matter.

“This year, 20 states in the United States reintroduced handwriting at school,” says van der Meer.

Previously, researchers have also looked at the differences in brain activity when subjects are writing by hand, on a keyboard, or when drawing. They have now delved deeper into which parts of the brain become activated, and how.

“When people write by hand, we see noticeably more nerve activity in the parts of the brain that deal with memory and interpretation of new information. This activity plays a key role in the learning process,” says van der Meer.

The researchers investigated students who wrote using a tablet, both with a digital pen and with a digital keyboard. They contend that the effect is the same as whether you use a regular pen or pencil. It is the formation of the letters that is important.

“When we write by hand, we use more of our senses than we do when we use a keyboard. On a keyboard, we repeat the same simple finger movements regardless of which character we want to type,” says van der Meer’s colleague, Professor Ruud van der Weel.

A 2020 study involving 19 countries showed that Norwegian children aged 9 to 16 spent the most time online of all, with a daily average of four hours. Norwegian 16-year-olds were online six hours a day.

The Norwegian Directorate of Health advises against any screen use for children under the age of 2. For children between the ages of 2 and 5, screen time should be limited to one hour per day. Much of our brain development takes place at a very early age, so parents need to be aware of the risks involved with too much screen time.

“Accurately controlled movements are among the brain’s most important tasks. We can accelerate Norwegian infants’ brain development by providing them with early sensory-motor stimulation through activities such as baby swimming, baby massage, or tummy time.

“Infants can certainly learn a lot from a screen, but they simply cannot afford to spend their valuable time sitting still in front of a screen, as they have so much to learn during the first two to three years of their lives. The youngest children, with their small bodies and plastic brains, need to experience the real world,” says van der Meer.

“Children who first learn to write using keyboards often have difficulty distinguishing between letters that are mirror images of each other, like ‘b’ and ‘d’. They haven’t physically experienced how it feels to form these letters,” says van der Weel.

The researchers have a very clear message.

“Preschoolers need to perform activities that require fine motor skills. These might include writing, drawing, coloring, beading, or doing puzzles. Many children barely know how to hold a pen or pencil,” says van der Weel.

“Children must first learn to write by hand, starting from Year 1 of school, so that they can form the neural networks that create the best possible foundation for learning,” says van der Meer.

This is important for handwriting, but also in relation to mastering new technologies later in life. Different tools are suitable for different situations.

“Research shows that pupils learn new information best when they take notes by hand, but it can also be more practical to write longer texts on a computer,” says van der Meer.

The researchers believe that we need to establish rules to ensure that children receive a minimum amount of handwriting practice.

The research appears in Frontiers in Psychology.

Source: Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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Games and puzzles can slow cognitive decline

A new study suggests that older people with mild cognitive impairment who engage in high levels of activities such as word games and hobbies have better memory, working memory, attention, and processing speed than those who do not.

The aging process can lead to diminished cognitive functioning for older adults. In addition, about 10% of people previously diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment develop Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia every year.

Although a few studies have found that activities such as putting together jigsaw puzzles can protect against cognitive aging, the benefits of these activities in preventing or postponing cognitive decline are still largely unknown.

“Today, nearly six million people in the United States have dementia, and this number is projected to grow to about 14 million by 2060—with minority populations affected the most,” says Junhyoung “Paul” Kim, an associate professor of health behavior at Texas A&M University. “We sought to help fill the gap in our understanding of cognitive decline.”

For the study in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, researchers analyzed data on 5,932 people who were at least 50 years old in 2012, had mild cognitive impairment and were part of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) from 2012 to 2020.

The HRS collects data through self-reported paper-and-pencil surveys and in-depth phone interviews. For this study, the researchers analyzed the answers to seven questions about how often participants engaged in cognitively stimulating activities such as reading, game playing, and hobbies.

Next, they divided the participation levels in the categories of low, mid, and high based on criteria used in previous studies and conducted repeated-measured multivariate analysis of covariance.

“In short, the high-level participation group consistently exhibited higher cognitive function levels during the study period and maintained a similar level of cognitive functions compared to the other groups,” Kim says.

Those in the high-level category had higher levels of memory, working memory, and attention and processing speed than those in the mid- and low-level groups. In addition, those in the mid-level category had higher levels of working memory and attention and processing speed than those in the low-level participation group.

“We also found significant differences in all three cognitive functions between years with a declining slope, but the differences between 2014 and the other years of the data set that were examined were not significant,” Kim says.

Kim and the others are hopeful that these findings will lead health care providers to recommend that older people with mild cognitive impairment play games, read, or engage in similarly stimulating activities at least three to four times a week.

“In addition, we hope that barriers to doing this, such as inadequate caregiver support and financial constraints, could be overcome through stronger public care services and community support networks,” Kim says.

Additional researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi and Indiana University contributed to the work.

Source: Texas A&M University

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Car collisions with wildlife spike during the full moon

New research found a 45.8% increase in vehicle collisions involving wildlife during a full moon.

Kentaro Iio, a former Texas A&M University student, and Dominique Lord, a professor in the civil and environmental engineering department, collected 10 years of collision data in Texas to compare full-moon nights with new-moon nights and their corresponding wildlife-vehicle collisions.

Non-wildlife collisions in the same time periods showed no significant differences.

The study highlights the importance of increased driver caution, especially on brighter nights. According to the researchers, it could also help inform transportation policy and infrastructure improvements where better safety measures are necessary.

“I compared really dark nights without moon illumination (new moon) to really dark nights with the full moon illumination,” Iio says.

“If you include other lunar phases in the analysis, they appear on the horizon at different times each day, making it more difficult for true apples-to-apples comparisons.”

Previous studies conducted worldwide, including regions in Spain, Canada, and Lithuania, have found similar increased collision trends during the full moon. Each used varying methods and proposed many possible reasons for the results. Iio and Lord believe a combination of factors could contribute to the increase. Factors like driver fatigue at night and increased wildlife activity could warrant further study by transportation and animal behavior experts.

“Although the illumination is better, it’s still nighttime,” Lord says. “When you drive at night, I’m not sure the illumination from the various perspectives is so much greater compared to daytime.”

This study also split the data into different regions of Texas to highlight rural and urban areas. The capital area of Texas was the only region with a lower relative risk of collisions during a full moon, but the difference was statistically insignificant. The capital area consists of 10 counties stretching from Llano to San Marcos and La Grange to Georgetown.

The regions were divided based on the Texas comptroller-defined economic regions. Wildlife-vehicle collision rates in the High Plains, South Texas, Central Texas, and Upper East regions saw high increases on full moon nights, ranging from 57.8% to 125%. The High Plains region primarily covers the Texas Panhandle.

“Rural areas tended to have higher collision ratios concerning the full moon than urban areas,” Iio says.

Lord further explains that lower urban wildlife density and urban light pollution could also contribute to lower results in those areas. The effect of lunar illumination can be diluted in brighter city areas.

Wildlife species identification was beyond the scope of this research. The study also did not account for variations in illumination intensity over the study period for the analyzed geographic areas. Future studies could account for these gaps when finer-resolution data is available for traffic volumes, illumination, and wildlife species identification by region.

Potential improvements such as increased lighting in rural areas, adding wildlife warning reflectors along rural highways, or increased emergency services on specific nights could also warrant further consideration and study by scientific, engineering, and economic experts.

The research appears in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment.

Source: Texas A&M University

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‘Forever chemicals’ may last more than 40 years in groundwater

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, known commonly as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” could take over 40 years to flush out of contaminated groundwater in North Carolina’s Cumberland and Bladen counties, according to a new study.

The study used a new combination of data on PFAS, groundwater age-dating tracers, and groundwater flux to forecast PFAS concentrations in groundwater discharging to tributaries of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.

The researchers sampled groundwater in two different watersheds adjacent to the Fayetteville Works fluorochemical plant in Bladen County.

“There’s a huge area of PFAS contaminated groundwater—including residential and agricultural land—which impacts the population in two ways,” says David Genereux, professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University and leader of the study.

“First, there are over 7,000 private wells whose users are directly affected by the contamination. Second, groundwater carrying PFAS discharges into tributaries of the Cape Fear River, which affects downstream users of river water in and near Wilmington.”

The researchers tested the samples they took to determine PFAS types and levels, then used groundwater age-dating tracers, coupled with atmospheric contamination data from the NC Department of Environmental Quality and the rate of groundwater flow, to create a model that estimated both past and future PFAS concentrations in the groundwater discharging to tributary streams.

They detected PFAS in groundwater up to 43 years old, and concentrations of the two most commonly found PFAS—hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid (HFPO−DA) and perfluoro-2-methoxypropanoic acid (PMPA)—averaged 229 and 498 nanograms per liter (ng/L), respectively.

For comparison, the maximum contaminant level (MCL) issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency for HFPO-DA in public drinking water is 10 ng/L. MCLs are enforceable drinking water standards.

“These results suggest it could take decades for natural groundwater flow to flush out groundwater PFAS still present from the ‘high emission years,’ roughly the period between 1980 and 2019,” Genereux says.

“And this could be an underestimate; the time scale could be longer if PFAS is diffusing into and out of low-permeability zones (clay layers and lenses) below the water table.”

The researchers point out that although air emissions of PFAS are substantially lower now than they were prior to 2019, they are not zero, so some atmospheric deposition of PFAS seems likely to continue to feed into the groundwater.

“Even a best-case scenario—without further atmospheric deposition—would mean that PFAS emitted in past decades will slowly flush from groundwater to surface water for about 40 more years,” Genereux says.

“We expect groundwater PFAS contamination to be a multi-decade problem, and our work puts some specific numbers behind that. We plan to build on this work by modeling future PFAS at individual drinking water wells and working with toxicologists to relate past PFAS levels at wells to observable health outcomes.”

The study appears in Environmental Science & Technology and was supported by the North Carolina Collaboratory.

Additional researchers from NC State, the University of Utah, and the University of Nebraska contributed to the work.

Source: North Carolina State University

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Gene may stop diabetic kidney disease progression

New research may help prevent or reduce the progression of diabetic kidney disease, the leading cause of chronic kidney disease worldwide.

The research centers on targeting key cellular signaling between two types of kidney cells, and inducing a certain gene within those processes.

According to the National Kidney Foundation, approximately one in seven adults in the United States has kidney disease, or more than 35 million people. As many as one-third of all Americans with diabetes has kidney disease.

Nephrology researchers have yet to create a therapeutic approach to reverse or prevent the progression of diabetic kidney disease (DKD).

Sandeep K. Mallipattu and lead author Nehaben A. Gujarati of the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension in the medicine department in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, are hoping that their murine model is a first step toward a new, more effective therapeutic strategy against DKD.

Their findings appear in Nature Communications.

They used a multi-omics (genome, proteome, etc.) approach, to demonstrate that inducing a human KLF6 transcription factor and targeting the cell signaling between podocyte and proximal tubule cells attenuates podocyte loss, proximal tubule dysfunction, and eventual interstitial fibrosis that occurs in later disease stages.

Podocytes play a pivotal role in regulating glomerular function, the filtering process that removes waste and excess water from the blood and forms urine. Proximal tubule cells, the predominant cell type of the kidney, perform many functions such as reabsorbing water, glucose, and certain proteins from the glomerular filtrate and also maintain electrolyte balance and fluid homeostasis. Both of these kidney cell types are critical to preventing the progression of DKD.

In summary, Mallipattu and Gujarati demonstrated in this DKD model that KLF6 triggers the secretion of Apolipoprotein J (ApoJ) from the podocytes, to prime the proximal tubule cells by activating calcium/calmodulin dependent protein kinase 1D (CaMK1D), thereby preventing mitochondrial injury and halting DKD processes.

“This cell to cell communication through this signaling mechanism in the kidney might serve as a protective mechanism in the early stages of DKD,” says senior author Mallipattu, a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension.

This study involved a combination of murine models, human cells, and tissue from human kidney biopsies from patients with DKD at various stages.

“In combination, findings from these studies highlight that targeting podocyte-proximal tubule signaling by enhancing Apolipoprotein J-CaMK1D could prove to be a therapeutic strategy in slowing down or perhaps event preventing DKD,” adds Mallipattu.

Gujarati and Mallipattu will continue to test this approach to treating DKD. Their next step in the research is to determine whether pharmacological approaches to activate this signaling pathway in the kidney could prevent individuals with diabetes from developing DKD.

The research was funded in part from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the Dialysis Clinic, Inc.

Source: Stony Brook University

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Diet and exercise reverse liver damage

New research suggests intensive lifestyle interventions are an effective way of treating and improving liver disease.

In the study of 24 patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a common liver disease caused by excessive fat buildup, one group followed a restricted diet and a high intensity interval training exercise program for 10 months. They dramatically improved their liver health over the control group of patients who received standard of care treatment.

Diet and exercise are the first lines of treatment for liver disease; however, this study is the first to examine the impact of diet and exercise on liver health and confirm the organ’s recovery through imaging and diagnostic biopsies. These techniques allow for measurements of liver inflammation, fat buildup, fibrosis development, and other indicators of liver health.

“Other studies investigated the impact of either diet or exercise on the liver, not both,” says study author Elizabeth Parks, professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

“In addition, similar studies were just observational, but[…] we have technology for metabolic imaging that can give in-depth data on liver disease.”

Nutritionists determined the best food intake for each participant and tracked their caloric and nutrient intake, and pathologists examined blood biochemistries with each blood sample taken.

The patients treated lost about 13-22 pounds and had increased muscle mass, while the control group lost 0-9 pounds. The peak oxygen uptake, considered an indicator of cardiovascular health and the ability to exercise, was much higher on average for the treatment group compared to the control. Insulin sensitivity, which measures how effectively cells convert glucose to energy, also increased for treated patients.

Obesity is one of the most prominent risk factors in developing MASH, and other conditions like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes can contribute. Lifestyle interventions can be used to treat these conditions and reverse liver damage. It may even protect against future development of MASH.

“Obesity and diabetes are going up in the country, and they are the two main risk factors for fatty liver disease,” Parks says.

“We know diet and exercise can alleviate these health conditions. Liver disease is increasing too fast. We were able to show in our research how diet and exercise should be the mainstay of treatment for the disease.”

Though more research is needed to validate and explore these findings, this breakthrough offers some hope.

“Our findings suggest liver disease doesn’t have to be a chronic, progressive condition,” Parks says.

The research appears in the Journal of Hepatology.

Source: University of Missouri

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