Sci-Ed Update 298

Some vax issues, best way to frame test items, Vit K shot controversy, white matter, AI panic in education, long Covid and long cold, HDL not "good" for dementia,

Oct 27, 2023

*Peter Hotez speaks during a US congressional committee hearing in March 2020.Credit: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg/Getty*

For his work developing low-cost COVID-19 vaccines, Peter Hotez was nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. But for speaking out against anti-vaccine misinformation, he has become a prominent target of harassment, receiving death threats and having stalkers appear at his home on Father’s Day.
Nature spoke to the physician-scientist — who is dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and chair of Tropical Pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital — about his book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science. He also discusses why he finds the current crop of well-funded anti-science aggression concerning and how researchers and others must combat it.
You prefer to say ‘anti-science aggression’ rather than ‘misinformation’. Why?
Misinformation makes it sound like it’s random junk that appears out of nowhere on the Internet. It’s not: it’s an organized, well-financed, politically motivated campaign that’s meant to tear down the fabric of science. And we have to frame it in that way.

Sins Against Science – A Chat with Judi Nath

Author Judi Nath stops by for a chat about her new book Sins Against Science: How Misinformation Affects Our Lives and Laws. We discuss the origins of the book, its central message, and how we can use the book’s content to become better teachers of human anatomy & physiology.

To listen to this episode, click on the play button above ⏵ (if present) or this link→ theAPprofessor.org/podcast-episode-110.html

Vitamin K Injection for Babies Is Safe and Can Save Lives, Contrary to Post

The vitamin K injection administered to babies in their first six hours of life is extremely safe and crucial to prevent a life-threatening condition called vitamin K deficiency bleeding, or VKDB.
Vitamin K is essential to form blood clots and stop bleeding. People usually get vitamin K from food, such as green leafy vegetables, and some of it is produced by good bacteria in our intestines. But babies have low levels of vitamin K from birth up to six months of age. This is because very little of the vitamin passes through the placenta or is in breast milk, and newborns don’t yet have the gut bacteria to produce their own. The lack of vitamin K puts infants at risk of prolonged bleeding, which can range from minor to serious, and can result in brain damage or death.
Yet, a recent thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, falsely claims the shot is dangerous and unnecessary.

Investigating the Influence of Assessment Question Framing on Undergraduate Biology Student Preference and Affect

*FIGURE 2. Student preferences by section. Section 1 was given the authentic* framing in their assessments throughout the term; section 2 was given self-referential framing; and section 3 was given classmate-referential framing.

Nearly all undergraduate biology courses rely on quizzes and exams. Despite their prevalence, very little work has been done to explore how the framing of assessment questions may influence student performance and affect. Here, we conduct a quasi-random experimental study where students in different sections of the same course were given isomorphic questions that varied in their framing of experimental scenarios.
One section was provided a description using the self-referential term “you”, placing the student in the experiment; another section received the same scenario that used classmate names; while a third section's scenario integrated counterstereotypical scientist names.
Our results demonstrate that there was no difference in performance throughout the semester between the sections, nor were there differences in students’ self-reported stress and identity. However, students in all three sections indicated that they most preferred the self-referential framing, providing a variety of reasons that suggest that these variants may influence how well a student reads and processes the question. In addition, our results also indicate that the framing of these scenarios can also have a large impact on some students’ affect and attitude toward the question.
We conclude by discussing implications for the biology education research community and biology instructors.

Kevin Patton comment→ I’m going to keep this in mind when constructing my favorite kind of test/quiz/small-group problem…the “mini case study.”

White Matter Wonders: Re-imagining the Brain’s Silent Majority

Historically, scientific research has largely focused on the gray matter of the brain, leaving the equally important white matter understudied. However, a recent groundbreaking study has used fMRI to detect significant brain activity in white matter.
When subjects performed tasks, researchers observed increased BOLD signals throughout the white matter.
This discovery challenges conventional beliefs about the brain’s activity and emphasizes the potential importance of white matter in understanding various brain disorders.
Key Facts:
The Vanderbilt team, led by John Gore, Ph.D., utilized fMRI to identify BOLD signals, indicative of brain activity, in the white matter—previously a little-researched area.
When subjects performed tasks during the study, there was a noticeable increase in BOLD signals in the white matter across the entire brain.
Despite the current lack of full understanding about these white matter signals, they’re believed to hold valuable insights, especially since many brain disorders, including epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, disrupt the brain’s “connectivity.”

Let's use AI to rethink education, instead of panicking about cheating

If we build and use AI effectively, we can create an education system where students are assessed on the quality and depth of their knowledge, rather than the content of an exam, says Okezue Bell

It's not just long Covid: Symptoms can linger after other illnesses, leading to 'long colds'

The coronavirus isn’t the only pathogen that can cause symptoms that last months, or even years, after an initial infection is overcome, a new study published Friday in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine suggests.
In an analysis of data from 10,171 U.K. adults, the researchers found evidence of a “long cold” syndrome that can follow infection with a variety of common respiratory viruses, including common cold viruses and influenza.
While some of the symptoms of long Covid and long colds overlapped, the study noted that people with long Covid were more likely to continue to experience lightheadedness, dizziness and problems with taste and smell; lingering long cold symptoms were more likely to include coughing, stomach pain and diarrhea.
Experts said the new research could help shine a light on the types of long-lasting symptoms that come after recovery from an illness, including chronic fatigue syndrome.

Kevin Patton comment→ Yep. Been there; done that.

How levels of 'good' cholesterol may increase dementia risk

So-called “good” HDL cholesterol may not be as healthy as experts once thought, a new study suggests.

The new study, published Wednesday in Neurology, found that having either high or low levels of high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, cholesterol, may increase the risk of dementia in older adults. It’s more evidence showing that keeping HDL cholesterol within a certain range is important for cardiovascular and brain health.

“The relationship between HDL cholesterol and dementia is more complex than we previously thought," said the study’s lead author, Erin Ferguson, a doctoral student studying epidemiology at the University of California San Francisco. "While the magnitude of this relationship is relatively small, it’s important,”

The results show a correlation between HDL cholesterol and dementia, but do not prove that low or high levels of the lipid directly caused dementia.

Should you pick Novavax’s COVID-19 shot over mRNA options?

*A health care worker holds a vial of Novavax vaccine at a clinic in Italy. CECILIA FABIANO/LAPRESSE VIA ZUMA PRESS*

“It’s hard to know how it compares” to mRNA vaccines, Topol admits; there are no head-to-head studies to rely on. In clinical trials, Novavax appeared less likely than mRNA shots to cause side effects like headache and fatigue. But how does it stack up against mRNA vaccines when it comes to protection against SARS-CoV-2? The question has been vexingly difficult to answer.
Some hints are emerging, including the first large study of Novavax in the real world, published this week by a team in Italy. The results are far from definitive, but they suggest “there aren’t massive differences” between the vaccines, says Alberto Mateo Urdiales, an epidemiology and infectious disease researcher at the Italian National Institute of Health, who led the study.

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