A new study used eye-tracking technology to show that kids’ attention wandered all over a computer screen while they were trying to complete a task — even when adults quickly figured out they could do the task more efficiently by focusing on particular objects.

But that tendency to have a wandering eye helped 4- and 5-year-olds when the task unexpectedly changed — and they noticed important things on the screen that adults were not paying attention to.

“The ability of adults to focus their attention is usually very helpful in everyday life,” said Vladimir Sloutsky, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

“But sometimes it helps to see the world more as a kid and to notice things that may not seem that important or relevant at the time.”

Sloutsky conducted the research with Nathaniel Blanco, a postdoctoral researcher, and Brandon Turner, professor, both in psychology at Ohio State. The study was published online recently in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

The study involved 30 4- and 5-year-old children and 38 adults who participated in a lab, where they were fitted with eye trackers that could tell where they looked on a computer screen.

They were then shown colorful images of creatures that had seven identifiable features, including a head, tail and antennae.

Participants were told there were two types of creatures, called Flurps and Jalets, and that they had to figure out which ones were which.

One feature was always different on the two types of creatures — for example, the Jalets may have a blue tail and the Flurps an orange tail. In addition, the children and adults were told that most (but not all) of the Flurps had a certain type of feature, such as pink antennae.

One of the features was never mentioned in the instructions and it did not differ between the types of creatures. This was what the researchers called the “irrelevant feature.”

After training, participants were shown a series of images of the creatures on the computer screen and were told to indicate which type of creature each one was.

During the first part of the experiment, adults quickly learned which feature always determined whether the creature was a Flurp or Jalet, and the eye-tracker showed that they then concentrated nearly all of their attention on that feature.

Children were slower to learn which feature was most important in determining which creature was which — and the eye-tracker showed they continued to look at all the features of the two creatures, even the ones that were not relevant.

“The kids were not as efficient as adults at learning quickly,” Sloutsky said. “They kept looking around even when they didn’t need to.”

But halfway through the experiment, the researchers made an unannounced switch: The irrelevant feature — the body part that previously had no bearing on what type of creature it was — became the feature that would determine whether it was a Flurp or a Jalet. This feature, which had been the same for both creatures before the switch, was now different for each.

After the switch, the adults were more oblivious to the importance of the new feature than the children were. Instead, they were relying on the previously learned less-important features.

Children, on the other hand, had been paying attention to everything, so they noticed more swiftly that the rules had changed.

“The adults were suffering from learned inattention,” Sloutsky said. “They weren’t paying attention to features that weren’t important during the first part of the experiment, so they missed when those features did become important.”

Sloutsky said the brains of 4- and 5-year-olds aren’t mature enough to focus attention in the way adults do. That fact may help them learn more as they explore the world.

And adults certainly have the ability to distribute their attention broadly like the children did in this study — but they often choose selective attention because it is helpful in achieving efficiency, he said.

The lesson for adults, though, is to realize that selective attention, while increasing the efficiency of learning and performance, can also lead to a learning trap in some situations, Sloutsky said.

“When you know something really well or a solution to a problem seems obvious, it may help to broaden your attention, to look for clues that may not seem relevant at first — to think like a kid again.”

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a research vessel or sending a ship to recharge its batteries, is a steep challenge preventing widespread undersea exploration.

MIT researchers have taken a major step to overcome this problem by developing a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras. The device takes color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and transmits image data wirelessly through the water.

The autonomous camera is powered by sound. It converts mechanical energy from sound waves traveling through water into electrical energy that powers its imaging and communications equipment. After capturing and encoding image data, the camera also uses sound waves to transmit data to a receiver that reconstructs the image.

Because it doesn’t need a power source, the camera could run for weeks on end before retrieval, enabling scientists to search remote parts of the ocean for new species. It could also be used to capture images of ocean pollution or monitor the health and growth of fish raised in aquaculture farms.

“One of the most exciting applications of this camera for me personally is in the context of climate monitoring. We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world,” says Fadel Adib, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab, and senior author of the paper.

Joining Adib on the paper are co-lead authors and Signal Kinetics group research assistants Sayed Saad Afzal, Waleed Akbar, and Osvy Rodriguez, as well as research scientist Unsoo Ha, and former group researchers Mario Doumet and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh. The paper is published in Nature Communications.

Going battery-free

To build a camera that could operate autonomously for long periods, the researchers needed a device that could harvest energy underwater on its own while consuming very little power.

The camera acquires energy using transducers made from piezoelectric materials that are placed around its exterior. Piezoelectric materials produce an electric signal when a mechanical force is applied to them. When a sound wave traveling through the water hits the transducers, they vibrate and convert that mechanical energy into electrical energy.

Those sound waves could come from any source, like a passing ship or marine life. The camera stores harvested energy until it has built up enough to power the electronics that take photos and communicate data.

To keep power consumption as a low as possible, the researchers used off-the-shelf, ultra-low-power imaging sensors. But these sensors only capture grayscale images. And since most underwater environments lack a light source, they needed to develop a low-power flash, too.

“We were trying to minimize the hardware as much as possible, and that creates new constraints on how to build the system, send information, and perform image reconstruction. It took a fair amount of creativity to figure out how to do this,” Adib says.

They solved both problems simultaneously using red, green, and blue LEDs. When the camera captures an image, it shines a red LED and then uses image sensors to take the photo. It repeats the same process with green and blue LEDs.

Even though the image looks black and white, the red, green, and blue colored light is reflected in the white part of each photo, Akbar explains. When the image data are combined in post-processing, the color image can be reconstructed.

“When we were kids in art class, we were taught that we could make all colors using three basic colors. The same rules follow for color images we see on our computers. We just need red, green, and blue — these three channels — to construct color images,” he says.

Sending data with sound

Once image data are captured, they are encoded as bits (1s and 0s) and sent to a receiver one bit at a time using a process called underwater backscatter. The receiver transmits sound waves through the water to the camera, which acts as a mirror to reflect those waves. The camera either reflects a wave back to the receiver or changes its mirror to an absorber so that it does not reflect back.

A hydrophone next to the transmitter senses if a signal is reflected back from the camera. If it receives a signal, that is a bit-1, and if there is no signal, that is a bit-0. The system uses this binary information to reconstruct and post-process the image.

“This whole process, since it just requires a single switch to convert the device from a nonreflective state to a reflective state, consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems,” Afzal says.

The researchers tested the camera in several underwater environments. In one, they captured color images of plastic bottles floating in a New Hampshire pond. They were also able to take such high-quality photos of an African starfish that tiny tubercles along its arms were clearly visible. The device was also effective at repeatedly imaging the underwater plant Aponogeton ulvaceus in a dark environment over the course of a week to monitor its growth.

Now that they have demonstrated a working prototype, the researchers plan to enhance the device so it is practical for deployment in real-world settings. They want to increase the camera’s memory so it could capture photos in real-time, stream images, or even shoot underwater video.

They also want to extend the camera’s range. They successfully transmitted data 40 meters from the receiver, but pushing that range wider would enable the camera to be used in more underwater settings.

This research is supported, in part, by the Office of Naval Research, the Sloan Research Fellowship, the National Science Foundation, the MIT Media Lab, and the Doherty Chair in Ocean Utilization.

“Although asexuals don’t have the desire for sexual relationships, they nevertheless form romantic relationships and those connections look at least somewhat similar to non-asexuals’ romantic relationships,” said William Chopik, associate professor in MSU’s psychology department and coauthor of the study.

The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, is among the largest studies of asexual individuals’ relationships ever conducted and the only one to examine what predicts commitment and longevity in their relationships. The study looked at a sample of 485 people who self-identified as on the asexual spectrum and are currently in a romantic relationship. This is one of the only published studies that allowed people to self-identify with any asexual spectrum label, in addition to allowing them to use any other sexual or romantic labels that fit.

“I sincerely hope that this study will more widely show the diversity of the asexual community, shed light on their experiences and show that being on the asexual spectrum does not preclude one from successful romantic relationships or love,” said coauthor and research associate Alexandra Brozowski.

The long-standing theory about what predicts who breaks up and who stays in relationships, called the Investment Model, says that people stay in relationships if they are happy and satisfied, if they have invested time and energy into the relationship and if they don’t have any other options. Many theories say that sex is a central part of romantic relationships, which doesn’t leave room for asexual relationships.

“We found that the same ingredients predict success in these relationships, so they’re not weird, bizarre, worse than or much different at all from non-asexual people’s relationships.” Chopik said. “The hope is that this destigmatizes asexual people’s relationships as just as satisfied and common as non-asexual people’s relationships.”

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The paper describes current preclinical successes and clinical genome editing approaches for treating inherited retinal degenerative disease and stresses there is hope that in vivo gene editing will be the future treatment paradigm for IRDs. Currently, there are no effective treatments for these devastating diseases, which commonly result in blindness.

“Genome editing technologies are an excellent approach for targeting the root causes of genetic disorders,” explained Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD, Donald Bren Professor of Ophthalmology at the UCI School of Medicine and corresponding author. “Technologies in genome editing have continuously evolved to enable precise genome editing with fewer side effects and risks, making precision genome editing possible.”

The paper describes progress toward using genome editing for treating IRDs and important considerations for robust clinical translation.

“More and more CRISPR-based treatment approaches are being tested in clinical trials,” said Palczewski. “We believe that there will be an increasing number of clinical trials for targeting IRDs and that any mutation that causes them will be amenable to treatment with this approach.”

Programmable CRISPR-Cas nucleases are effective tools for gene disruption, but they are poorly suited for precisely correcting pathogenic mutations in most therapeutic settings. Improvements are needed for clinical translation.

Inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) are a genetically heterogeneous group of blinding disorders characterized by a progressive degeneration of the photoreceptors as well as the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). These disorders affect ?1 in 3,000 individuals worldwide and profoundly impact patients’ quality of life. IRDs are caused by mutations in genes that are critical for development and/or function of the retina or RPE, and more than 270 causative genes have been identified.

Over the past two decades, major advances in gene therapy have engendered new hopes for successful treatment of these IRDs. Most recently, precision genome editing agents, including base editors (BEs) and prime editors (PEs), developed by The Liu Lab, have enabled efficient and precise target gene correction, rather than gene disruption, in various therapeutic settings, including mouse models of IRDs. Precise target gene correction greatly expands the potential therapeutic applications of genome editing technologies, since most genetic disorders cannot be treated by gene disruption.

“Precision medicine for IRDs has a promising outlook, as basic science has consistently led to the development of therapeutic tools to target patient-specific genetic mutations,” said Palczewski. “The results of initial clinical trials, that use in vivo gene editing to treat IRDs, will be essential for informing the design and translation of future precision genome editing therapies.”

This work was done in collaboration with David R. Liu, and supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Research to Prevent Blindness.

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Led by The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California San Diego, the study, which was published Sept. 23 in Science Advances, is the first to simulate how aerosol pollution affects both climate and air quality for locations around the globe.

Aerosols are tiny solid particles and liquid droplets that contribute to smog and are emitted from industrial factories, power plants and vehicle tailpipes. They impact human health, agricultural and economic productivity in unique global patterns when compared with carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, which are the focus of efforts to mitigate climate change.

Although CO₂ and aerosols are often emitted at the same time during the combustion of fuel, the two substances behave differently in Earth’s atmosphere, said co-lead author Geeta Persad, an assistant professor at the UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences.

“Carbon dioxide has the same impact on climate no matter who emits it,” said Persad. “But for these aerosol pollutants, they tend to stay concentrated near where they’re emitted, so the effect that they have on the climate system is very patchy and very dependent on where they’re coming from.”

The researchers found that, depending on where they are emitted, aerosols can worsen the social costs of carbon — an estimate of the economic costs greenhouse gasses have on society — by as much as 66%. The scientists looked at eight key regions: Brazil, China, East Africa, Western Europe, India, Indonesia, United States and South Africa.

“This research highlights how the harmful effects of our emissions are generally underestimated,” said Jennifer Burney, co-lead author and the Marshall Saunders Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Global Climate Policy and Research at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. “CO₂ is making the planet warmer, but it also gets emitted with a bunch of other compounds that impact people and plants directly and cause climate changes in their own right.”

The work, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, represents a collaboration between Persad and Burney, who are physical scientists, and a group of economists and public health experts. Co-authors include Marshall Burke, Eran Bendavid, and Sam Heft-Neal at Stanford University and Jonathan Proctor at Harvard University.

Aerosols can directly affect human health and the climate independently of CO₂. They are associated with negative health impacts when inhaled, and can affect the climate by influencing temperature, precipitation patterns and how much sunlight reaches the Earth’s surface.

To study aerosols’ influence in comparison to CO₂, the team created a set of climate simulations using the Community Earth System Model version 1 developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They ran simulations in which each of the eight regions produced identical aerosol emissions and mapped how temperature, precipitation, and surface air quality were affected across the globe. Then they connected this data with known relationships between climate and air quality and infant mortality, crop productivity, and gross domestic product across the eight regions. In a final step, they compared the total societal costs of these aerosol-driven impacts against the societal costs of co-emitted CO₂ in each of the eight regions, and produced global maps of the combined effects of aerosols and CO₂. The researchers said the study is a big step forward from previous work, which either only estimated the air quality impacts of aerosols or didn’t consider their diverse global climate effects.

The outcome paints a varied and complicated picture. Emissions from some regions produce climate and air quality effects that range from two to more than 10 times as strong as others and social costs that sometimes affect neighboring regions more than the region that produced the aerosol emissions. For example, in Europe local emissions result in four times as many infant deaths outside Europe as within.

But the researchers note that aerosol emissions are always bad for both the emitter and the planet overall.

“While we might think about aerosols, which cool the climate, as having the silver lining of counteracting CO₂-driven warming, when we look at all these effects in combination, we find that no region experiences overall local benefits or generates overall global benefits by emitting aerosols,” said Persad.

Researchers also said the findings create potentially new motivations for countries to cut emissions — and to care about other countries cutting emissions. For example, the study found that adding aerosol costs to CO₂ costs could double China’s incentive to mitigate emissions. And it switches the impact of local emissions in Europe from a net local benefit to a net cost. The study also shows that some emerging economies, like East African nations and India, might be motivated to collaborate on emission cuts since they are strongly impacted by each other’s emissions.

The framework developed in this study can also be applied to maximize societal benefits from current mitigation strategies being considered by policy makers. For example, the researchers applied it to the “fair-share” approach laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement in which all countries target the same per-capita CO₂ emissions. They found the approach, while beneficial for climate stability, does not improve the mortality and crop impacts from combined aerosol and CO₂ emissions because it focuses mitigation in regions that already have fairly low aerosol impacts, like the U.S. and Europe.

“By expanding societal cost calculations to include the geographically-resolved societal impacts of co-emitted aerosols, we’re showing that the incentive for individual countries to mitigate and collaborate on mitigation is much higher than if we only think about greenhouse gases,” Burney said.