Oh Dam Look, That Beaver Just Put Out A Forest Fire! With Emily Fairfax

Today we talk with Emily Fairfax about beavers. They were almost wiped out through over trapping, but now they’re making a comeback and stopping forest fires in the process… Listen to learn about these amazing animals.

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Emily’s website: https://emilyfairfaxscience.com/

Emily’s twitter: https://twitter.com/EmilyFairfax

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Professor Lobelia Samavati | Paving the Way for Antibody-based Diagnostics for Tuberculosis and Sarcoidosis

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SciPod · Paving the Way for Antibody-based Diagnostics for Tuberculosis and Sarcoidosis

About this episode

Tuberculosis – or TB – is a global health threat, with 10 million new cases annually. Diagnosing TB can be a challenge, as there is a lack of rapid, point-of-care diagnostic tests. It can also be difficult to distinguish between TB and other inflammatory diseases, such as Sarcoidosis. One option may be to identify antibodies in patient samples that can reveal the presence of TB. However, current antibody tests for TB lack accuracy. Professor Lobelia Samavati and colleagues at the Wanye State University School of Medicine in Michigan are tackling this challenge to cast light on the immune signature of these diseases. Their aim is to develop new diagnostic techniques for TB and Sarcoidosis. More

TB is major global health scourge, leading to 1.7 million deaths annually. It has been estimated that up to one-third of the world’s population may be infected with TB. In most cases, these infections are latent and symptomless, but they can become active in approximately 10% of cases. Active TB is contagious and can be lethal, particularly if left untreated, and typically involves chronic cough, blood-containing mucus, fever and weight loss.

Diagnosing TB is notoriously challenging. Distinguishing between latent and active disease can be tricky, as well as distinguishing between TB and other inflammatory diseases, such as Sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis typically involves the formation of lumps of white blood cells called granulomas. When sarcoidosis presents in the lungs, it can create similar symptoms to TB, such as coughing and weight loss.

While Sarcoidosis and TB can present very similarly, their causes and required treatments differ significantly. Therefore, developing new diagnostic tools that can rapidly and accurately distinguish between active TB, latent TB and Sarcoidosis would be very valuable in enabling clinicians to prescribe the most appropriate course of treatment as soon as possible.

Both Sarcoidosis and TB involve significant inflammation, and there is evidence for the role of the immune system in both diseases. Moreover, identifying proteins that are characteristically present in each disease state could be useful in diagnosing them. One way to do this is to identify antibodies in patient blood samples that will bind to these proteins.

Antibodies are typically Y-shaped protein structures that are created and released into the blood by cells of the immune system. They can bind to other proteins, such as those present on bacterial pathogens, with a high degree of specificity. Therefore, they can be very useful tools for researchers measuring specific proteins in the body or for doctors who wish to identify a protein that is associated with a specific disease. Despite the promise of antibody-based diagnostic assays, those created for TB diagnosis have lacked accuracy.

Professor Lobelia Samavati and her colleagues at the Wanye State University School of Medicine in Michigan are working to change this. Their work in this area began to emerge in 2015, when they published a paper in the journal EBioMedicine. In this paper, they describe a technique to identify the relationships between proteins and antibodies in Sarcoidosis that could pave the way for antibody-based diagnostic tools.

This involved isolating DNA from white blood cells and airway cells obtained from Sarcoidosis patients. The researchers then inserted this isolated DNA into a phage display. Phages are tiny viruses that infect bacteria, but they will dutifully display the proteins encoded by the inserted DNA on their surfaces – creating a so-called ‘peptide array’.

Next, Professor Samavati and her team exposed the peptide array to serum samples from Sarcoidosis patients and healthy controls. Human serum contains huge numbers of antibodies, and some of these bound strongly to specific peptides on the array.

By analyzing the binding pattern, the researchers identified a set of antibody-bound peptides that were hallmarks of Sarcoidosis. This allowed them to discriminate between the serum of healthy controls and that of Sarcoidosis patients. Interestingly, when the researchers exposed the array to serum from TB patients, it also revealed characteristic binding that allowed them to discriminate between serum samples from TB, Sarcoidosis and healthy controls.

In a follow-on study in the journal Microbiology Spectrum published in 2023, Professor Samavati’s team performed a similar task. This time, however, they focused on one of the most promising diagnostic targets discovered during their previous study. This is the protein Transketolase, which is essential for the growth of the bacteria that cause TB.

The researchers created peptides that represented slightly different parts of the Transketolase protein, and then incorporated them into a rapid assay that may be suited for diagnostic purposes, known as an ELISA.

Using their new assay, the team tested serum samples from patients with TB, latent TB, Sarcoidosis and from healthy controls. They found that the approach could sensitively and specifically discriminate between TB, latent TB, Sarcoidosis and healthy samples. Interestingly, the technology may also be amenable to incorporation into a lateral flow test, such as the ubiquitous COVID-19 tests or common pregnancy tests, which could make it well suited for point-of-care use. Other applications may include using the Transketolase peptides as components in a TB vaccine.

Professor Samavati hopes that her team’s findings will pave the way for easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic tests that can be deployed by community healthcare workers or in local clinics in the fight against TB and Sarcoidosis. Administering the correct treatment as soon as possible is crucial in achieving optimal treatment outcomes. Such diagnostic breakthroughs may help to make this possible in the case of TB and Sarcoidosis.

Original Article Reference

This Audio is a summary of the papers ‘Development of a T7 Phage Display Library to Detect Sarcoidosis and Tuberculosis by a Panel of Novel Antigens’, in EBioMedicine, doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.03.007; and ‘Discovery of Novel Transketolase Epitopes and the Development of IgG-Based Tuberculosis Serodiagnostics’, in Microbiology Spectrum, doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.03377-22

Contact

For further information, you can connect with Professor Lobelia Samavati at ay6003@wayne.edu

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Professor Xiaobei Li | How HR Management Can Help Businesses Weather a Changing World

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SciPod · How HR Management Can Help Businesses Weather a Changing World

About this episode

Businesses today exist in a changing world, which brings both opportunities for growth and increasingly complex challenges. To survive and thrive, organisations need a robust understanding of HR management. In their research, Professor Xiaobei Li and her colleagues at various universities, including University of New South Wales, Arizona State University and Peking University, recently explored how organisations can motivate their staff to ensure high-quality performance. More

Professor Li’s team has conducted three research projects on different aspects of HR management. They look at encouraging innovative behaviour in the workforce, the role of HR practices in different local contexts, and the practice of paradoxical leader behaviour.

In one research project, Professor Li and her colleagues focus on the role of innovation, and explore an interesting question: “Are performance-based rewards sufficient to encourage innovation?”. In the current global market, companies need to be adaptable and versatile in order to thrive. “Employee innovative behaviours” are increasingly recognised as a major contributor to organisational innovation. This refers to activities undertaken by employees to generate, develop and implement new ideas. Businesses increasingly aim to encourage their employees to work in this way.

Research on how HR management can foster innovative behaviour is still in its early stages. Professor Li’s work is an important and timely contribution to this.

She draws on situational strength theory, which suggests that the extent to which your personality traits drive your behaviour depends on the situation you are in. She references research arguing that strong organisational structures that provide support and clarity can liberate their employees from unhelpful distractions and enhance creativity.

Using these ideas, she investigates the relationships between financial and non-financial performance-based rewards, employee perceptions of HR strength, and the uncertainty avoidance of the country within which an organisation operates.

HR strength refers to the level of clarity and consistency in terms of what employees are expected to deliver and why. Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which a society, organisation, or group relies on social norms, rules, and procedures to alleviate the unpredictability of future events.

In her study, she used responses from 1589 employees and 186 managers in 29 organisations across 10 countries. The study adopted a multilevel design, which aimed for both breadth and depth, drawing on data at individual, organisation, and country levels. The organisations represented in the sample are from different industries and vary in size, and the perceptions of both employees and managers are included.

Dr Li’s research found that performance-based rewards alone were not significantly associated with innovative behaviours. However, they were much stronger where there was high HR strength and low uncertainty avoidance. Put simply, performance rewards were more effective at encouraging innovation when HR processes were clear and supportive, and when the host society of the organisation was more accepting of ambiguity, uncertainty and change. This emphasises the important role of HR practices and employees’ understanding of them.

In a second research project, Professor Li and her colleagues conducted two studies to investigate an intriguing question: “Will companies’ investment in employees enhance performance?” They explored the impact of the skills, knowledge and experience of the workforce in a region, and examined how this affects the relationship between a company’s HR practices and how well the company does in China.

In recent years, there has been much emphasis on researching the fit between HR practices and their operating contexts. This has become increasingly vital given that globalisation has facilitated the rapid spread of strategic HR management from west to east. However, our knowledge about the effectiveness of HR practices in different socioeconomic and cultural environments remains limited.

In one study, Professor Li and her colleagues looked at data from 9,125 companies across 30 provinces. In another, they looked at 203 companies across seven provinces.

They found that when the quality of the employees in a region was low, the way a company managed its employees had a bigger impact on the company’s performance. They also found that when a company focused on being innovative, the effect was even stronger. Once again, this highlights the importance of HR practices and their increasing relevance in a landscape that rewards innovation.

In the third research project, Professor Li and her colleagues theorized the role of leadership.

As organisational environments become increasingly complex and dynamic, leaders face contradictory demands. They are required to combine self-centredness with a focus on their employees and colleagues. They must develop a closeness with their colleagues while maintaining a professional distance, treat junior members of staff equally while allowing individualisation, enforce work requirements while allowing workplace flexibility, and maintain control whilst encouraging autonomy. Professor Li and her colleagues call this “paradoxical leader behaviour”.

Existing research on organisational paradoxes has promoted different approaches for understanding and managing them. For example, one researcher suggests that the role of a leader is to support opposing forces and harness the tension that this creates.

Professor Li and her colleagues note that research on organisational paradoxes largely comes from a Western perspective. However, they also acknowledge the basic alignment between these ideas and Eastern perspectives rooted in the yin-yang philosophy. The yin-yang philosophy views the world as a holistic, dynamic environment in which two opposing yet interdependent forces shape all phenomena. This theoretical base could help to broaden our understanding of paradoxes beyond the Western perspectives generally seen in research.

Professor Li and her colleagues used a field sample of 76 supervisors and 516 subordinates from 6 firms. They examined the conditions that exist before and after leaders display paradoxical behaviour and assess how successful this mode of leadership is.

Their findings showed that leaders who think holistically and can understand complexities tend to exhibit this paradoxical leader behaviour. The leaders who embrace this were found to be more effective in complex environments, leading to better performance among their team members. This challenges traditional leadership approaches and emphasises the importance of cognitive flexibility. It also shows that holistic thinking is important for all managers, regardless of cultural differences.

We live in a complex, constantly changing world. For businesses to survive and thrive in this environment, they need to understand how to get the best out of their workforce. Studies like those conducted by Professor Li and her colleagues explore different techniques that can encourage high-quality performance and emphasise the vital importance of HR management.

Original Article Reference

This Audio is a summary of the papers: ‘Performance-based rewards and innovative behaviours’ in Human Resource Management; ‘Human Resource Practices and Firm Performance in China: The Moderating Roles of Regional Human Capital Quality and Firm Innovation Strategy’ in Management and Organization Review; and ‘Paradoxical Leader Behaviours in People Management: Antecedents and Consequences’ in Academy of Management Journal.

Contact

For further information, you can connect with Professor Xiaobei Li at xiaobeili99@163.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Professor Uma Lele | Exploring How India Can Ensure Sustainable Growth and Resilience with Broad Participation into the Future

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SciPod · How India Can Ensure Sustainable Growth & Resilience with Broad Participation into the Future

About this episode

India has seen impressive economic and institutional growth in recent years, but the country isn’t yet meeting its full potential. In a world that is increasingly volatile and uncertain, how can India overcome its challenges and ensure resilience into the future? In her recent work, Professor Uma Lele explores various ways that India can achieve this. More

India has been rapidly developing, and some aspects of its economy are flourishing. Its overall economic performance has climbed at a greater rate than other Asian countries, barring China and South Korea.

The country has seen significant poverty reduction, the closure of the gender gap in access to financial services, and the implementation of substantial institutional and physical infrastructure. For example, universal ID cards and public works programmes have been introduced, the population is seeing increased access to sanitation and power, and an active democracy has been established.

In terms of health and medicine, the country has an impressive, low-cost pharmaceutical industry. There is a high vaccination rate amongst children, which has greatly reduced child mortality. An increasing number of births are attended by medical professionals, meaning that the maternal death rate has also dropped by 59%. Even during COVID, the health system performed well, despite some richer countries faring poorly, such as the USA. Supply chain disruptions were overcome and at least 67% of people are fully vaccinated against the virus.

However, despite these impressive statistics, India is facing a number of challenges. While poverty and hunger has reduced, other East and Southeast Asian countries have achieved bigger reductions.

Some of India’s neighbours, such as Bangladesh, have seen more rapid growth in employment, and are more integrated in global trade. India’s growth and quality of employment is declining, and its deficit and short-term borrowing is increasing. The country also has lower rates of agricultural research, slower growth of female employment, and poorer savings and investment strategies than other Asian countries.

Declines in child mortality and child poverty have slowed. Consumption of cheap junk food, incidence of obesity, and incidence of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, are on the rise. During COVID, malnutrition amongst children was worsened by the closure of school feeding programs. The country continues to face the threat of new COVID strains, climate change and vulnerability to inflation, especially on food.

India is also lagging behind other Asian countries in terms of demographic transition, which describes the progression from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates.

Going into the future, how can India face many environmental threats, and realize the potential to reverse trends? Climate change has caused more frequent droughts and floods, lower agricultural yields, unsustainable groundwater exploitation, soil degradation and biodiversity loss. The cumulative effect of these stressors is considerable.

So, what will it take for India to achieve robust, broad-based, sustainable growth?

Professor Uma Lele says that, to meet these challenges, India needs to introduce the right mix of policies and increase the capacity of its grassroot institutions to promote grassroot development. It also needs to foster technological innovation such as genetic technologies, digitalisation, the Internet of Things, and AI, to produce more from less.

India’s trade export policies need to be less restrictive and unpredictable, fostering growth. Tariff rates were reduced in 1991, and need to change again to increase regional integration commensurate with its neighbouring countries in East and South-East Asia.

Reforms can improve market efficiency, lower transaction costs and food losses, and lower restrictions on sale, stocking, movement and exports. Investment in building efficient and sustainable supply chains should also be increased.

Professor Lele highlights the significant potential of a diversified Indian agriculture. Diversified agriculture can promote balanced diets, which are currently beyond the reach of many low- and middle-income citizens. This calls for the production of crops beyond rice and wheat, with investment in other nutritional sources.

Professor Lele also suggests that investment in state agricultural universities and research is important. New technologies and practices need to be developed and adopted to meet future demands. Next, she identifies a number of specific interventions that could bolster the agricultural sector.

India has the world’s largest bovine stock, which offers huge potential for productivity, growth and sustainability. However, these cattle are distributed across 80 million small-scale dairy farms, so efficiencies are often low. Furthermore, the milk yields of the most common breeds of Indian cows are relatively low, due to the overall low genetic merit of the national herd.

One method to tackle this is a Ration Balancing Program – a systematic method of formulating animal diets to ensure that they meet nutritional requirements in the most cost-effective manner. These types of interventions can increase productivity from 5 to 15 percent, while reducing emissions by the same amount. To support this, it would be useful to encourage small-scale dairy producers to reinforce organisations into dairy cooperative societies, which would encourage more widespread upgrading of the overall genetic merit of the national dairy herd and the use of Ration Balancing Programs.

There are further initiatives that could encourage sustainable developments in agriculture. One example is investing in precision irrigation technologies. Satellite crop monitoring systems can assess soil moisture, expected rainfall and overall crop conditions, to identify the exact quantity of irrigation required. This provides crops with the best possible conditions and also saves water. Technologies like this can help us to manage natural resources for a more efficient, sustainable, and climate-resilient food system.

Finally, Professor Lele highlights women’s role in agriculture. India’s structural transformation from agriculture to more productive sectors has been slower than in some neighbouring countries. Also, India has experienced lower levels of female labour force participation. However, recent evidence suggests that female labour force participation has been increasing. This is a result of both changes in social norms and greater job opportunities.

The Millenium Development Goals include separate targets for both gender equality and food security. However, these can go hand-in-hand and be mutually reinforcing. Promoting gender equality empowers women in agriculture, which can contribute significantly to the fight against hunger and extreme poverty. Agricultural policies need to focus on training women so that land farmed by women achieves the yields of that farmed by men. By achieving this, the number of undernourished people in the world could be reduced by up to 17%.

The world is experiencing a series of unique shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian War and skyrocketing inflation. The consequences have been far-reaching and countries around the world have seen budget deficits, exchange rate depreciation, and the lowering of projected GDP growth rates.

It is more important than ever that India focuses on reaching its potential and building the resilience required for the future. The adoption of innovative policies and technologies in agriculture and trade are a huge part of this and can pave the way for sustainable growth and a thriving population.

Contact

For further information, you can connect with Professor Uma Lele at umalele1@gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Professor Ann Nevile | What Evidence Do Policymakers Need to Make Robust Decisions?

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SciPod · What Evidence Do Policymakers Need to Make Robust Decisions?

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Policy decisions are influenced by many factors, from the ideology of the policymaker and their advisors to political expediency. Most would also agree that key political decisions should be evidence-based. However, this is easier said than done. Understanding what evidence policymakers need, and how they should evaluate this, is key for more robust decision-making. More

Politicians often make policy decisions based on many factors that are not evidence-based, such as ideology and political expediency. There is also often pressure to reach political decisions very quickly.

It is common for experts that advise policymakers to disagree, due to their own values, ideologies, institutional roles, or support for demographic groups. This can lead them to place different weights on certain costs and benefits and come to different conclusions. It is also difficult to understand the merits and drawbacks of different forms of evidence. Further, it can be even more challenging to apply academic, theoretical arguments to real-world cases.

In her recent work, Professor Ann Nevile at the Australian National University asks: What is the nature of the evidence needed by policymakers? And how should they go about evaluating it, especially given the differing conclusions drawn by various experts?

Disagreement amongst experts is key to this discussion. When this happens, it usually leads to delays in decision-making and politicians retreating to less radical alternatives in order to reduce risk.

For example, the decision to float the Australian dollar was delayed by opposition from the Head of Treasury. Although the Treasurer, the Prime Minister, the Reserve Bank and other relevant departments all believed the exchange rate should be deregulated, the Head of the Treasury believed that the costs of deregulation outweighed the benefits. The Treasurer knew that the potential consequences were unpredictable, and didn’t want to make such a historic decision without the Treasury on board. Officials shared a common goal, but disagreed on the methods of achieving this.

In 1983, a capital inflow crisis in Australia urgently raised the question of deregulating foreign exchange markets. As part of discussions around this decision, Prime Minister Bob Hawke asked the Reserve Bank Governor about removing all exchange controls, not just those necessary to float the dollar. As a result, Australia went further than most other countries at the time and removed almost all foreign exchange controls.

This example illustrates the effects of disagreement amongst technical experts, and the importance of personal attributes of key decision makers – an unpredictable factor that is often overlooked.

So, what can policy advisors do to ensure the information they are providing to politicians is useful?

Professor Nevile argues that it is vital to draw on a range of policy instruments when advising government. Policy instruments are simply tools that governments use to achieve specific objectives, such as laws, regulations, economic incentives, campaigns and investments. She argues that it is key to connect theory to the real world. Combining factual information with a number of theoretical perspectives gives policymakers the breadth of information they need to make an informed decision.

Professor Nevile looks at this in more detail in relation to a specific type of policy advice: the evaluation of government programs.

A fantastic way of identifying the best policy interventions is to deploy small-scale pilot programs, which can then be evaluated to identify specific factors that underpin success or failure. However, for this to work, the evaluation methodology needs to be robust.

Traditionally, policy evaluations have sought to emulate the natural sciences by isolating causal factors through experimental research methods. In instances where a group undergoing a policy intervention and an approximate control group can be found, randomised control trials can provide an answer to the question of whether a particular program has achieved its stated, formal objectives.

However, in the Australian context and around the world, the possibilities for this are rare. The fact that policies may have multiple, even conflicting, objectives as a result of political compromise needs to be recognised.

The traditional view of evaluation also assumes a linear relationship between policy and implementation. From this perspective, policy is static and objectives will be achieved as long as certain conditions are present. However, in reality, this is not the case. Bureaucracies often have limited control over practices ‘on the ground’.

Finally, traditional methods of evaluation do not take into account the importance of policy framing. Policy framing refers to the way in which policy problems are defined. For example, unemployment might be identified as an issue to be addressed through policy. However, framing determines whether unemployment is perceived and tackled as a problem of a workforce skills deficit or a lack of aggregate demand in the economy. These two different framings of unemployment would lead to very different policy interventions.

It is therefore vital that policymakers reject standardised approaches to evaluation that ignore the nuances of competing political interests, complex implementation, and the relationships between formal and informal policy objectives.

Professor Nevile advocates for a pluralist approach to evaluation.

For pluralist evaluators, there is no single, universal logic of evaluation that can be applied to all projects or programs. Rather, they believe that combining the strengths of the standard experimental method with the strengths of other methods allows for a more comprehensive assessment.

A pluralist evaluation utilises a range of research methods and types of data. Using both qualitative and quantitative data alongside theoretical perspectives, a complex but realistic picture of policy success can be obtained. This method can explain failure more accurately, because it examines process as well as outcomes. It can also identify the unanticipated consequences of policies and facilitate the implementation of research results.

While technical experts often disagree over the interpretation of various forms of evidence, governments are attracted to the idea of evidence-based policy because of the additional authority this provides. For this to be successful, policy advisors need to understand the best ways to communicate evidence.

For Professor Nevile, the combination of technical statistical techniques and qualitative descriptions of processes provides a rich, balanced and accurate assessment of policy interventions.

Original Article Reference

This Audio is a summary of the paper ‘Evidence-based policy: What sort of evidence do governments need?’ in The Economic and Labour Relations Review, doi.org/10.1177/1035304613482822