(Press-News.org) EAST LANSING, Mich. — Grasping the concept of climate change and its impact on the environment can be difficult. Establishing common ground and using models, however, can break down barriers and present the concept in an easily understood manner.
In a presentation at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Michigan State University systems ecologist and modeler Laura Schmitt-Olabisi shows how system dynamics models effectively communicate the challenges and implications of climate change.
"In order to face the ongoing challenges posed by climate adaptation, there is a need for tools that can foster dialogue across traditional boundaries, such as those between scientists, the general public and decision makers," Schmitt-Olabisi said. "Using boundary objects, such as maps, diagrams and models, all groups involved can use these objects to have a discussion to create possible solutions."
Schmitt-Olabisi has vast experience working directly with stakeholders using participatory model-building techniques. She uses a model of a hypothetical heat wave in Detroit to illustrate the implications of climate change.
Climate change is anticipated to increase the frequency and intensity of heat waves in the Midwest, which could potentially claim hundreds or thousands of lives. Hot weather kills more people in the United States annually than any other type of natural disaster, and the impacts of heat on human health will be a major climate change adaptation challenge.
To better understand urban health systems and how they respond to heat waves, Schmitt-Olabisi's team interviewed urban planners, health officials and emergency managers. They translated those interviews into a computer model along with data from earlier Midwestern heat waves.
Participants are able to manipulate the model and watch how their changes affect the outcome of an emergency. The exercise revealed some important limitations of previous approaches to reducing deaths and hospitalizations caused by extreme heat.
"The model challenges some widely held assumptions, such as the belief that opening more cooling centers is the best solution," Schmitt-Olabisi said. "As it turns out, these centers are useless if people don't know they should go to them."
More importantly, the model provides a tool, a language that everyone can understand. It is a positive example of how system dynamics models may be used as boundary objects to adapt to climate change, she added.
Overall, Schmitt-Olabisi finds that this approach is a powerful tool for illuminating problem areas and for identifying the best ways to help vulnerable populations. Future research will focus on improving the models' accuracy as well as expanding it beyond the Midwest.
"In order for the models to be deployed to improve decision-making, more work will need be done to ensure the model results are realistic," Schmitt-Olabisi said.
INFORMATION: END
Finding common ground fosters understanding of climate change
2014-02-17
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Small non-coding RNAs could be warning signs of cancer
2014-02-17
Small non-coding RNAs can be used to predict if individuals have breast cancer conclude researchers who contribute to The Cancer Genome Atlas project. The results, which are published in EMBO reports, indicate that differences in the levels of specific types of non-coding RNAs can be used to distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. These RNAs can also be used to classify cancer patients into subgroups of individuals that have different survival outcomes.
Small non-coding RNAs are RNA molecules that do not give rise to proteins but which may have other ...
New finding points to potential options for attacking stem cells in triple-negative breast cancer
2014-02-17
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — New research from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and Georgia Regents University finds that a protein that fuels an inflammatory pathway does not turn off in breast cancer, resulting in an increase in cancer stem cells. This provides a potential target for treating triple negative breast cancer, the most aggressive form of the disease.
The researchers identified a protein, SOCS3, that is highly expressed in normal cells but undetectable in triple-negative breast cancer. They showed that this protein is degraded in cancers, blocking ...
Religious and scientific communities may be less combative than commonly portrayed
2014-02-17
One of the largest surveys of American views on religion and science suggests that the religious and scientific communities may be less combative than is commonly portrayed in the media and in politics.
Only 27 percent of those surveyed said that they viewed science and religion as being in conflict with each other, with about equal percentages of those people "siding with either religion or science," said Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund at the AAAS Annual Meeting. The survey was commissioned by the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion (DoSER) ...
Uncovering the secrets of tularemia, the 'rabbit fever'
2014-02-17
WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 16, 2014 -- Tularemia, aka "rabbit fever," is endemic in the northeastern United States, and is considered to be a significant risk to biosecurity -- much like anthrax or smallpox -- because it has already been weaponized in various regions of the world.
At the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, which takes place Feb. 15-19, 2014, in San Francisco, Calif., Geoffrey K. Feld, a Postdoctoral researcher in the Physical & Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), will describe his work to uncover the secrets of the ...
Bacterial superbug protein structure solved
2014-02-17
WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 16, 2014 -- A research team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., is the first to decipher the 3-D structure of a protein that confers antibiotic resistance from one of the most worrisome disease agents: a strain of bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can cause skin and other infections. The Vanderbilt team's findings may be an important step in combatting the MRSA public health threat over the next 5 to 10 years.
By deciphering the shape of a key S. aureus protein -- an enzyme called ...
Harvesting light, the single-molecule way
2014-02-17
WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 16, 2014 -- New insights into one of the molecular mechanisms behind light harvesting, the process that enables photosynthetic organisms to thrive, even as weather conditions change from full sunlight to deep cloud cover, will be presented at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, taking place in San Francisco from Feb. 15-19.
At the meeting, Hsiang-Yu Yang, a graduate student, and Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, a postdoc in W.E. Moerner's research group at Stanford University, will describe how probing these natural systems at the single molecule level ...
Deep ocean needs policy, stewardship where it never existed
2014-02-17
BEAUFORT, N.C. -- Technological advances have made the extraction of deep sea mineral and precious metal deposits feasible, and the dwindling supply of land-based materials creates compelling economic incentives for deep sea industrialization. But at what cost?
“We’re really in the dark when it comes to the ecology of the deep sea," said Linwood Pendleton, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. "We know a lot about a few places, but nobody is dealing with the deep sea as a whole, ...
Obesity in Samoa: A global harbinger?
2014-02-17
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The South Pacific archipelago of Samoa and American Samoa harbors a global health mystery that may seem both remote and extreme but could foretell trends in obesity and related conditions across much of the developing world.
About three-quarters of the U.S. territory's adult population is obese, the highest rate in the world with independent Samoa quickly catching up. Rates of type 2 diabetes top one in five and a recent study found that the elevated obesity rates are present even in newborns.
This pandemic began only a few decades ...
Global perspectives on human biology and health
2014-02-17
CHICAGO --- Three anthropology professors from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University will highlight recent research in biological anthropology Sunday, Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.
The presentations, part of the symposium "Comparative Advantage: Global Perspectives on Human Biology and Health" will be held from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Crystal Ballroom A at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
Christopher Kuzawa, professor of anthropology and faculty fellow at the Institute ...
Nanoelectronics key to advances in renewable energy
2014-02-17
TEMPE, Ariz. – Nanoscale technology looks promising as a major contributor to advancements needed to fulfill the potential of emerging sources of clean, renewable energy.
Progress in the comparatively new area of nanoelectronics in particular could be the basis for new manufacturing processes and devices to make renewable energy systems and technologies more efficient and cost-effective.
Stephen Goodnick will focus on what nanoelectronics advances could do to help push the performance of solar energy systems to the next level in his talk at the 2014 annual meeting of ...