Why so many jobs are boring

A recent study found large gaps between people’s career interests and US job demands.

These gaps indicate that the interest demands of the US labor market differ drastically from the supply of interested people, revealing how many people have unfulfilled interests at work.

The study, published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, is the first to look at labor gaps using career interests instead of skills or knowledge.

The study used a national dataset comprising 1.21 million US residents alongside national employment data from the US Department of Labor.

“We know that interest fit predicts higher job performance and satisfaction, so these results show that many people are not able to optimize their productivity and well-being at work,” says Kevin Hoff, lead author of the study and assistant professor in Michigan State University’s psychology department.

The study found that “artistic” was the most popular interest among people, but it is also the least demanded among jobs with only 2% of jobs involving artistic interests.

By contrast, the least popular interest among people was “conventional or otherwise described as systematic and detail-oriented work,” but this interest is highly demanded among jobs.

Interest gaps were also larger at lower education levels. This suggests that higher education can provide more opportunities to achieve interest fit at work.

“Interests drive knowledge and skill development, which support the success of the labor force,” adds Hoff.

“People need to be given more information about labor demands during career assessments so they can explore careers that not only provide a good fit, but also have available jobs.”

To test the robustness of their results against future projections, the study compared job demands in 2014 and 2019 to projections for 2029 and found consistent interest gaps in each of these years. As artificial intelligence continues to affect jobs, the researchers expect to see adjustments happening in the labor market. However, due to the large size of the interest gaps, many jobs will likely remain boring for at least the near future.

Source: Michigan State University

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Early education benefits kids, but for how long?

A new study reveals varied results on the impact of publicly funded US preschool programs on student performance beyond early childhood.

“It’s settled that early childhood education is an essential component of any nation’s public policy; children are learning well before kindergarten, and parents are working,” says Jade Jenkins, associate professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, and coauthor of the study published in Science.

“What is less settled, however, is how much we should expect preschool to be shaping achievement and well-being later in life.”

The researchers examined evaluations of the Head Start program and public prekindergarten initiatives in Boston and Tennessee, discovering that while children saw academic benefits immediately after preschool, the long-term effects varied.

The findings highlight that not all early education programs guarantee favorable results, the authors say, stressing the need for more research on effective preschool interventions.

Two key studies in the 1960s and 1970s, the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian projects, respectively, have shaped common beliefs about early childhood education, and sparked significant interest in funding.

They showed that early education led to better scholastic outcomes, income levels, employment rates, and health, while reducing criminal behavior. However, these studies focused on projects more than five decades old, and current preschool initiatives should undergo modern assessments, the researchers note.

“The proven long-term success of early programs like Perry Preschool showed what’s possible with very intensive preschool programs. But policymakers need to know if lessons from Perry hold for today’s programs. Recent research shows that the answer appears to be ‘yes’ in some, but not all, cases,” says Greg Duncan, professor in the School of Education.

Given these mixed findings, he and his fellow authors recommend follow-up evaluations of existing random-assignment and lottery studies to learn whether early education programs correlate to successful outcomes in adulthood.

“The good news for society is that we have invested dramatically more over the past 50 years in programs designed to help young children and families,” says Drew Bailey, professor in the School of Education. “But with such improvements come practical challenges of balancing necessary redundancies in the system with unique opportunities for early education programs to support children’s development.”

The team proposes further research to uncover the essential components of preschool success, with a focus on identifying cognitive and socioemotional skills that yield enduring benefits. The scholars maintain that future efforts should include K-12 test scores and behavior records as well as surveys of teachers and students to shed light on classroom experiences and child development.

They also encourage policymakers and researchers to prioritize rigorous evidence around early childhood education programs in hopes of propelling their evolution and implementation.

Additional coauthors are from the UC Irvine School of Education, Columbia University, the University of Delaware, and the University of Virginia.

Source: UC Irvine

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When new moms use cannabis, THC shows up in breast milk

When breastfeeding mothers used cannabis, its psychoactive component THC showed up in the milk they produced.

Further, unlike alcohol, when researchers detected THC in milk there was no consistent time when its concentration peaked and started to decline.

Importantly, the researchers discovered that the amount of THC they detected in milk was low—they estimated that infants received an average of 0.07 mg of THC per day. For comparison, a common low-dose edible contains 2 mg of THC. The research team stresses that it is unknown whether this amount has any impact on the infant.

“Breastfeeding parents need to be aware that if they use cannabis, their infants are likely consuming cannabinoids via the milk they produce, and we do not know whether this has any effect on the developing infant,” says Courtney Meehan, a biological anthropologist at Washington State University who led the project and is corresponding author of the study in the journal Breastfeeding Medicine.

Since other research has shown that cannabis is one of the most widely used drugs during breastfeeding, the researchers aimed to uncover how long cannabinoids, like THC, persisted in breastmilk.

For this study, the researchers analyzed milk donated by 20 breastfeeding mothers who used cannabis. The participants, who all had infants younger than six months, provided detailed reports on their cannabis use. They collected milk after abstaining from using cannabis for at least 12 hours and then at regular intervals after use. All of this was done in their own homes, at a time of their choosing, and with cannabis they purchased themselves.

The researchers then analyzed the milk for cannabinoids. They found that the milk produced by these women always had detectable amounts of THC, even when the mothers had abstained for 12 hours.

“Human milk has compounds called lipids, and cannabinoids are lipophilic, meaning they dissolve in those lipids. This may mean that cannabinoids like THC tend to accumulate in milk—and potentially in infants who drink it,” says Meehan.

The research also reveals that people had different peak THC concentrations in their milk. For participants who used cannabis only one time during the study, cannabinoids peaked approximately 30 minutes to 2.5 hours after use and then started to decline. For participants who used multiple times during the study, the majority showed a continual increase in concentrations across the day.

“There was such a range. If you’re trying to avoid breastfeeding when the concentration of THC peaks, you’re not going to know when THC is at its peak in the milk,” says lead author Elizabeth Holdsworth, who worked on this study while a WSU postdoctoral researcher and is now on the faculty of Ohio State University.

A related qualitative study by the research team revealed that many breastfeeding moms are using cannabis for therapeutic purposes—to manage anxiety, other mental health issues, or chronic pain. The mothers often chose cannabis over using other medications because they felt it was safer.

“Our results suggest that mothers who use cannabis are being thoughtful in their decisions,” says coauthor Shelley McGuire, a professor at the University of Idaho who studies maternal-infant nutrition. “These women were mindful about their choices. This is far from a random lifestyle choice.”

While in most cases, the women were using cannabis as alternative treatment for a variety of conditions, McGuire points out that there is no evidence yet whether it is safer or more harmful.

In fact, scientists know almost nothing about how many commonly used drugs may affect breastfeeding babies, partly because women, especially those who are breastfeeding, have historically been left out of clinical trials on medicines.

“This is an area that needs substantial, rigorous research for moms to know what’s best,” McGuire says.

Some research has been done regarding alcohol with guidelines for new mothers to wait at least two hours after consuming alcohol before breastfeeding. Nothing similar has been developed for cannabis, which has been growing in popularity.

The researchers are currently working to address some of that knowledge gap with further research on cannabis use in breastfeeding moms, holistic composition of the milk they produce, and its effects on infant development.

This study received support from state of Washington Initiative Measures 171 and 502 as well as the WSU Health Equity Research Center.

Source: Washington State

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New tech could lead to smaller, stronger wireless devices

A new class of synthetic materials could lead to the next revolution of  wireless technologies, enabling devices to be smaller, require less signal strength, and use less power.

The key to these advances lies in what experts call phononics, which is similar to photonics. Both take advantage of similar physical laws and offer new ways to advance technology.

While photonics takes advantage of photons—or light—phononics does the same with phonons, which are the physical particles that transmit mechanical vibrations through a material, akin to sound, but at frequencies much too high to hear.

In their paper in Nature Materials, researchers report clearing a major milestone toward real-world applications based on phononics.

By combining highly specialized semiconductor materials and piezoelectric materials not typically used together, the researchers were able to generate giant nonlinear interactions between phonons. Together with previous innovations demonstrating amplifiers for phonons using the same materials, this opens up the possibility of making wireless devices such as smartphones or other data transmitters smaller, more efficient, and more powerful.

“Most people would probably be surprised to hear that there are something like 30 filters inside their cell phone whose sole job it is to transform radio waves into sound waves and back,” says senior author Matt Eichenfield, who holds a joint appointment at the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Part of what are known as front-end processors, these piezoelectric filters, made on special microchips, are necessary to convert sound and electronic waves multiple times each time a smartphone receives or sends data, he says.

Because these can’t be made out of the same materials, such as silicon, as the other critically important chips in the front-end processor, the physical size of your device is much bigger than it needs to be, and along the way, there are losses from going back and forth between radio waves and sound waves that add up and degrade the performance, Eichenfield says.

“Normally, phonons behave in a completely linear fashion, meaning they don’t interact with each other,” he says. “It’s a bit like shining one laser pointer beam through another; they just go through each other.”

Nonlinear phononics refers to what happens in special materials when the phonons can and do interact with each other, Eichenfield says. In the paper, the researchers demonstrated what he calls “giant phononic nonlinearities.” The synthetic materials produced by the research team caused the phonons to interact with each other much more strongly than in any conventional material.

“In the laser pointer analogy, this would be like changing the frequency of the photons in the first laser pointer when you turn on the second,” he says. “As a result, you’d see the beam from the first one changing color.”

With the new phononics materials, the researchers demonstrated that one beam of phonons can, in fact, change the frequency of another beam. What’s more, they showed that phonons can be manipulated in ways that could only be realized with transistor-based electronics—until now.

The group has been working toward the goal of making all of the components needed for radio frequency signal processors using acoustic wave technologies instead of transistor-based electronics on a single chip, in a way that’s compatible with standard microprocessor manufacturing, and the latest publication proves that it can be done.

Previously, the researchers succeeded in making acoustic components including amplifiers, switches, and others. With the acoustic mixers described in the latest publication, they have added the last piece of the puzzle.

“Now, you can point to every component in a diagram of a radiofrequency front-end processor and say, ‘Yeah, I can make all of these on one chip with acoustic waves,'” Eichenfield says. “We’re ready to move on to making the whole shebang in the acoustic domain.”

Having all the components needed to make a radio frequency front end on a single chip could shrink devices such as cell phones and other wireless communication gadgets by as much as a factor of a 100, according to Eichenfield.

The team accomplished its proof of principle by combining highly specialized materials into microelectronics-sized devices through which they sent acoustic waves. Specifically, they took a silicon wafer with a thin layer of lithium niobite—a synthetic material used extensively in piezoelectronic devices and cell phones—and added an ultra-thin layer (fewer than 100 atoms thick) of a semiconductor containing indium gallium arsenide.

“When we combined these materials in just the right way, we were able to experimentally access a new regime of phononic nonlinearity,” says lead author Lisa Hackett, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories. “This means we have a path forward to inventing high-performance tech for sending and receiving radio waves that’s smaller than has ever been possible.”

In this setup, acoustic waves moving through the system behave in nonlinear ways when they travel through the materials. This effect can be used to change frequencies and encode information.

A staple of photonics, nonlinear effects have long been used to make things like invisible laser light into visible laser pointers, but taking advantage of nonlinear effects in phononics has been hindered by limitations in technology and materials. For example, while lithium niobate is one of the most nonlinear phononic materials known, its usefulness for technical applications is hindered by the fact that those nonlinearities are very weak when used on its own.

By adding the indium-gallium arsenide semiconductor, Eichenfield’s group created an environment in which the acoustic waves traveling through the material influence the distribution of electrical charges in the indium gallium arsenide semiconductor film, causing the acoustic waves to mix in specific ways that can be controlled, opening up the system to various applications.

“The effective nonlinearity you can generate with these materials is hundreds or even thousands of times larger than was possible before, which is crazy,” Eichenfield says. “If you could do the same for nonlinear optics, you would revolutionize the field.”

With physical size being one of the fundamental limitations of current, state-of-the-art radiofrequency processing hardware, the new technology could open the door to electronic devices that are even more capable than their current counterparts, according to the authors.

Communication devices that take virtually no space, have better signal coverage, and longer battery life, are on the horizon.

Source: University of Arizona

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Did a weak magnetic field lead to life on Earth?

Evidence suggests a weak magnetic field millions of years ago may have fueled the proliferation of life on Earth.

The Ediacaran Period, spanning from about 635 to 541 million years ago, was a pivotal time in Earth’s history. It marked a transformative era during which complex, multicellular organisms emerged, setting the stage for the explosion of life.

But how did this surge of life unfold and what factors on Earth may have contributed to it?

Researchers have uncovered compelling evidence that Earth’s magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period diversified and thrived. Their study raises the question of whether these fluctuations in Earth’s ancient magnetic field led to shifts in oxygen levels that may have been crucial to the proliferation of life forms millions of years ago.

The study appears in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

According to John Tarduno, professor in the earth and environmental sciences department at the University of Rochester, one of the most remarkable life forms during the Ediacaran Period was the Ediacaran fauna. They were notable for their resemblance to early animals—some even reached more than a meter (three feet) in size and were mobile, indicating they probably needed more oxygen compared to earlier life forms.

“Previous ideas for the appearance of the spectacular Ediacaran fauna have included genetic or ecologic driving factors, but the close timing with the ultra-low geomagnetic field motivated us to revisit environmental issues, and, in particular, atmospheric and ocean oxygenation,” Tarduno says.

Magnetic mysteries

About 1,800 miles below us, liquid iron churns in Earth’s outer core, creating the planet’s protective magnetic field. Though invisible, the magnetic field is essential for life on Earth because it shields the planet from solar wind—streams of radiation from the sun. But Earth’s magnetic field wasn’t always as strong as it is today.

Researchers have proposed that an unusually low magnetic field might have contributed to the rise of animal life. However, it has been challenging to examine the link because of limited data about the strength of the magnetic field during this time.

Tarduno and his team used innovative strategies and techniques to examine the strength of the magnetic field by studying magnetism locked in ancient feldspar and pyroxene crystals from the rock anorthosite. The crystals contain magnetic particles that preserve magnetization from the time the minerals were formed. By dating the rocks, researchers can construct a timeline of the development of Earth’s magnetic field.

Leveraging cutting-edge tools, including a CO2 laser and the lab’s superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer, the team analyzed with precision the crystals and the magnetism locked within.

Earth’s core and evolution

Their data indicates that Earth’s magnetic field at times during the Ediacaran Period was the weakest field known to date—up to 30 times weaker than the magnetic field today—and that the ultra-low field strength lasted for at least 26 million years.

A weak magnetic field makes it easier for charged particles from the sun to strip away lightweight atoms such as hydrogen from the atmosphere, causing them to escape into space. If hydrogen loss is significant, more oxygen may remain in the atmosphere instead of reacting with hydrogen to form water vapor. These reactions can lead to a buildup of oxygen over time.

The new research suggests that during the Ediacaran Period, the ultraweak magnetic field caused a loss of hydrogen over at least tens of millions of years. This loss may have led to increased oxygenation of the atmosphere and surface ocean, enabling more advanced life forms to emerge.

Tarduno and his research team previously discovered that the geomagnetic field recovered in strength during the subsequent Cambrian Period, when most animal groups begin to appear in the fossil record, and the protective magnetic field was reestablished, allowing life to thrive.

“If the extraordinarily weak field had remained after the Ediacaran, Earth might look very different from the water-rich planet it is today: water loss might have gradually dried Earth,” says Tarduno.

The work suggests that understanding planetary interiors is crucial in contemplating the potential of life beyond Earth.

“It’s fascinating to think that processes in Earth’s core could be linked ultimately to evolution,” Tarduno says. “As we think about the possibility of life elsewhere, we also need to consider how the interiors of planets form and develop.”

The National Science Foundation supported the work.

Source: University of Rochester

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Heat stress has damaging impact on older adults’ vital organs

Researchers have found evidence of the molecular causes of the damaging impact heat stress has on vital organs, including the gut, liver, and brain in older adults.

The findings point to the potential of developing precise prognostic and therapeutic interventions.

These organs have a complex and multidirectional communication system that touches everything from our gastrointestinal tract to the nervous system. Whether it is our brain affecting hunger or the liver influencing mental health, understanding the gut-liver-brain communication or “axis” is crucial to protecting human health.

The study, using mouse models, is one of the first to fill the knowledge gap on the effects of heat stress on a molecular level of this crucial biological conversation.

“Inflammation in the brain and spine contributes to cognitive decline, compromises the ability to form new neurons, and exacerbates age-related diseases,” says Saurabh Chatterjee, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Irvine program in public health and corresponding author of the study in the journal Scientific Reports.

“By investigating the effects of heat stress on the gut-liver-brain crosstalk, we can better protect our increasingly vulnerable aging population.”

Using RNA analysis and bioinformatics to analyze elderly, heat-stressed mice, Chatterjee and his team found evidence of heat stress-affected genes in the brain and liver. A significant increase in the production of ORM2, a liver-produced protein, was observed in the heat-stressed mice.

The control group of unstressed mice did not show a change, providing proof of organ dysfunction in the heat-stressed mice.

The researchers believe that increased secretion of ORM2 is a coping mechanism that may be due to gut inflammation and imbalance. In addition, ORM2 may impact the brain through a leaky blood-brain barrier, emphasizing intricate multi-organ crosstalk.

Additionally, the study shows the potential to use ORM2 for targeted biomarker interventions to prevent liver disease in heat exposure. This observation advances molecular insights into the pathophysiology of adverse heat events and will serve as a foundation for future research.

“Our findings have the potential to be used for the development of prognostic and therapeutic markers for precise interventions,” says Chatterjee.

“In a dynamically changing global landscape, the imminent threat of climate change is evident in rising temperatures, raising concerns about intermittent heat waves. Our heating planet is undoubtedly leading to acute and chronic heat stress that harms the health of our aging population.”

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a Veterans Affairs Merit award supported the work.

Source: UC Irvine

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Feeling misinformed leads some people to actively avoid news

As people have more difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction in the United States, they are more likely to feel news fatigue and avoid news altogether, according to a new study.

More than an unintentional avoidance because of lack of media exposure, the researchers say people actively avoid news.

The researchers also find that people who identify as strong Democrats begin relying more on nonpartisan news media when feeling misinformed, while people who identify as strong Republicans report using less news media overall, including less conservative news media.

The study appears in Journalism Studies.

“The more confusing or difficult to navigate that you find the news environment, the more you actively avoid news—but it’s not just news,” says lead author Ariel Hasell, assistant professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan and faculty affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research.

“News avoidance also includes people avoiding discussing politics with others as well. So it’s not just not consuming news, you’re stepping out of the conversation completely.”

Hasell and Audrey Halversen, a doctoral student in communication and media, drew data from three waves of a national online survey of adults in the United States. The first two waves were collected leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and the final wave was collected shortly after. Nearly 1,200 adults completed the surveys, and the sample closely resembled the US adult population.

The researchers asked the respondents to rate their feelings of being misinformed online, their active news avoidance, their news fatigue, and their online news media use. They also asked the respondents detailed questions about what kinds of news and news websites they read, and found that news avoidance and fatigue increased leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

Additionally, the researchers showed that being white, conservative, and using more conservative media were all significantly associated with feeling more misinformed online, while political interest, political knowledge, and nonpartisan news use were significantly associated with feeling less misinformed online.

“For a lot of people, public discussion about misinformation, the crowdedness of digital media environments and social media, and the amount of information that comes out from so many different sources, drives them away from news,” Hasell says. “There’s this paradox that the more information that is available, the more people just opt out because it becomes too hard for them to make sense of it.”

Hasell says she thinks the United States’ low trust environment is contributing to the effect.

“That is, when we don’t trust institutions, we don’t have those mental shortcuts to determine whether nonpartisan news outlets are sharing information viewers can trust,” she says.

“Ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we had a higher trust environment. Even among Democrats, the trust in mainstream news is declining. If you looked at another Western democracy that had more institutional trust in the news media, I’m not sure you would get this same effect.”

Source: University of Michigan

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