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Physicists take a major step toward making a nuclear clock

By tweaking the energy of a thorium nucleus with a laser, scientists demonstrated a key step to building clocks based on the physics of atomic nuclei.

How a 19th century astronomer can help you watch the total solar eclipse

‘On the Move’ examines how climate change will alter where people live

Bird flu has infected a person after spreading to cows. Here’s what to know

Eavesdropping on fish could help us keep better tabs on underwater worlds

A new study has linked microplastics to heart attacks and strokes. Here’s what we know 

During a total solar eclipse, some colors really pop. Here’s why

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Why the 2024 total solar eclipse will be such a big deal

Here’s why some pigeons do backflips

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. What now?

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Here’s what distorted faces can look like to people with prosopometamorphopsia

A patient with an unusual variation of the condition helped researchers visualize the demonic distortions he sees when looking at human faces.

Don’t use unsterilized tap water to rinse your sinuses. It may carry brain-eating amoebas

Long covid brain fog may be due to damaged blood vessels in the brain, from the archives.

How to Stop a Biological Clock

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This is the first egg-laying amphibian found to feed its babies ‘milk’

Insects flocking to artificial lights may not know which way is up, some honeybees in italy regularly steal pollen off the backs of bumblebees.

Here’s why COVID-19 isn’t seasonal so far

Human embryo replicas have gotten more complex. here’s what you need to know, lauren schroeder looks beyond natural selection to rethink human evolution.

Waterlogged soils can give hurricanes new life after they arrive on land

Cold, dry snaps accompanied three plagues that struck the roman empire, numbats are built to hold heat, making climate change extra risky for the marsupials.

JWST spies hints of a neutron star left behind by supernova 1987A

Astronomers are puzzled over an enigmatic companion to a pulsar, a bar of stars at the center of the milky way looks surprisingly young.

A teeny device can measure subtle shifts in Earth’s gravitational field

50 years ago, superconductors were warming up, ‘countdown’ takes stock of the u.s. nuclear weapons stockpile, health & medicine.

How patient-led research could speed up medical innovation

The u.s. now has a drug for severe frostbite. how does it work, four years on, the covid-19 pandemic has a long tail of grief.

Earth’s oldest known earthquake was probably triggered by plate tectonics

Climate change is changing how we keep time, where are u.s. earthquakes most likely a new map shows the hazard risks, science & society.

Not all cultures value happiness over other aspects of well-being

Geneticist krystal tsosie advocates for indigenous data sovereignty.

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"One second doesn't sound like much, but in today's interconnected world, getting the time wrong could lead to huge problems," geophysicist Duncan Agnew says. Here, an official clock is seen at a golf tournament in Cape Town, South Africa. Johan Rynners/Getty Images hide caption

Negative leap second: Climate change delays unusual step for time standard

March 30, 2024 • We're nearing a year when a negative leap second could be needed to shave time — an unprecedented step that would have unpredictable effects, a new study says.

A researcher holds up a sandy De Winton's golden mole. Nicky Souness/Endangered Wildlife Trust hide caption

Once lost to science, these "uncharismatic" animals are having their moment

March 29, 2024 • Historic numbers of animals across the globe have become endangered or pushed to extinction. But some of these species sit in limbo — not definitively extinct yet missing from the scientific record. Rediscovering a "lost" species is not easy. It can require trips to remote areas and canvassing a large area in search of only a handful of animals. But new technology and stronger partnerships with local communities have helped these hidden, "uncharismatic" creatures come to light.

Once lost to science, these "uncharismatic" animals are having their moment

The country's two biggest reservoirs are on the Colorado River. Water levels at Lake Powell have dropped steeply during the two-decade megadrought. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

The Colorado River rarely reaches the sea. Here's why

March 28, 2024 • More than half of the Colorado River's water is used to grow crops, primarily livestock feed, a new study finds. The river and its users are facing tough decisions as the climate warms.

A post-reproductive toothed whale mother and her son. David Ellifrit/Center for Whale Research hide caption

Most animals don't go through menopause. So why do these whales?

March 22, 2024 • Across the animal kingdom, menopause is something of an evolutionary blip. We humans are one of the few animals to experience it. But Sam Ellis , a researcher in animal behavior, argues that this isn't so surprising. "The best way to propagate your genes is to get as many offspring as possible into the next generation," says Ellis. "The best way to do that is almost always to reproduce your whole life."

A cicada perches on a picnic table in front of Nolde Mansion in Cumru Township, PA in May 2021. New research shows that these insects urinate in a surprising way. Ben Hasty / MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images hide caption

Scientists studied how cicadas pee. Their insights could shed light on fluid dynamics

March 20, 2024 • Cicadas, and the way they urinate, offer a 'perfect' lab for understanding fluid dynamics at very small scales, researchers say

Workers at the U.S. Embassy in Havana leave the building in September 2017. New research out of the National Institutes of Health finds no unusual pattern of damage in the brains of Havana syndrome patients. Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images hide caption

Shots - Health News

In havana syndrome patients, nih scientists find no physical trace of harm.

March 18, 2024 • The mysterious ailments that became known as Havana syndrome left no physical evidence of injury or disease, according to two government studies.

This close-up of the Verona astrolabe shows Arabic and Hebrew markings. Federica Gigante hide caption

This medieval astrolabe has both Arabic and Hebrew markings. Here's what it means

March 16, 2024 • This discovery sheds new light on the rich history of scholarship and intellectual exchange between Muslims, Jews and Christians during a time of Muslim rule in medieval Spain.

Flares burn off methane and other hydrocarbons at an oil and gas facility in Lenorah, Texas in 2021. New research shows drillers emit about three times as much climate-warming methane as official estimates. David Goldman/AP hide caption

Oil and gas companies emit more climate-warming methane than EPA reports

March 13, 2024 • Oil and gas drillers are releasing more climate-warming methane than the government estimates, a new study shows.

This type of staghorn coral ( Acropora pulchra ) appeared to benefit from the presence of sea cucumbers ( Holothuria atra ), a new study finds. Terry Moore/Stocktrek Images / Science Source hide caption

This often-overlooked sea creature may be quietly protecting the planet's coral reefs

March 13, 2024 • The pickle-shaped bottom feeders may reduce the amount of microbes on the seafloor that could potentially sicken coral, scientists suggest

Millions of people are affected by long COVID, a disease that encompasses a range of symptoms — everything from brain fog to chronic fatigue — and that manifests differently across patients. The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption

What we know about long COVID — from brain fog to physical fatigue

March 13, 2024 • "Long COVID has affected every part of my life," said Virginia resident Rachel Beale said at a recent Senate hearing. "I wake up every day feeling tired, nauseous and dizzy. I immediately start planning when I can lay down again." Beale is far from alone. Many of her experiences have been echoed by others dealing with long COVID. It's a constellation of debilitating symptoms that range from brain fog and intense physical fatigue to depression and anxiety. But there's new, promising research that sheds light onto some symptoms. NPR health correspondent Will Stone talks with Short Wave host Regina G. Barber about the state of long COVID research — what we know, what we don't and when we can expect treatments or even cures for it. Have more COVID questions you want us to cover? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you.

Maria E. Garay-Serratos holds a framed photograph of her mother, who died after suffering decades of domestic violence. Scientists are trying to understand how domestic violence damages the brain. Julio Serratos/Maria E. Garay-Serratos hide caption

Domestic violence may leave telltale damage in the brain. Scientists want to find it

March 8, 2024 • Traumatic brain injuries from intimate partner violence are common, and potentially more severe than those seen in sports.

Elephantnose Fish, Gnathonemus petersii, Congo ullstein bild hide caption

The "shocking" tactic electric fish use to collectively sense the world

March 8, 2024 • Neuroscientist Nathan Sawtell has spent a lot of time studying the electric elephantnose fish. These fish send and decipher weak electric signals, which Sawtell hopes will eventually help neuroscientists better understand how the brain filters sensory information about the outside world. As Sawtell has studied these electric critters, he's had a lingering question: why do they always seem to organize themselves in a particular orientation. At first, he couldn't figure out why, but a new study released this week in Nature may have an answer: the fish are creating an electrical network larger than any field a single fish can muster alone, and providing collective knowledge about potential dangers in the surrounding water.

The "shocking" tactic electric fish use to collectively sense the world

A digital illustration of a circle of hands extending from the edge of the image, each holding a sheet of paper. The papers overlap in the center and, like a puzzle, come together to reveal a drawing of a handgun. Oona Tempest/KFF Health News hide caption

Meet the public health researchers trying to rein in America's gun violence crisis

Kff health news.

March 6, 2024 • After the 1996 Dickey Amendment halted federal spending on gun violence research, a small group of academics pressed on, with little money or support. Now a new generation is taking up the charge.

This artist's concept shows the Voyager 1 spacecraft entering the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by plasma, ionized gas (illustrated here as brownish haze). NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

The Voyager 1 spacecraft has a big glitch. Now, NASA must figure out how to fix it

March 6, 2024 • The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest human-made object in space. It launched in 1977 with a golden record on board that carried assorted sounds of our home planet: greetings in many different languages, dogs barking, and the sound of two people kissing, to name but a few examples. The idea with this record was that someday, Voyager 1 might be our emissary to alien life – an audible time capsule of Earth's beings. Since its launch, it also managed to complete missions to Jupiter and Saturn. In 2012, it crossed into interstellar space.

A case of bronchitis in 2014 left Sanna Stella, a therapist who lives in the Chicago area, with debilitating fatigue. Stacey Wescott/Tribune News Service via Getty Images hide caption

Clues to a better understanding of chronic fatigue syndrome emerge from a major study

February 23, 2024 • After seven years of research, the findings shed light on the long-neglected illness. Scientists say the results could lead to future trials for potential treatments.

A 3D model of a short section of the stone wall. The scale at the bottom of the image measures 50 cm. Photos by Philipp Hoy, University of Rostock; model created using Agisoft Metashape by J. Auer, LAKD M-V hide caption

Scientists scanning the seafloor discover a long-lost Stone Age 'megastructure'

February 22, 2024 • The more than half mile long wall, called the Blinkerwall, was likely used by Stone Age hunter-gatherers to herd reindeer toward a shooting blind.

The sun emits a mid-level solar flare releasing a burst of solar material. NASA hide caption

In light of the solar maximum, a look at the biggest solar storm in recorded history

February 21, 2024 • We are at the height of the Sun's activity in its eleven year cycle, known to astronomers as the solar maximum. This means that over the next several months there's going to be a lot of solar activity. It's got us thinking back to 1859. That's when astronomer Richard Carrington was studying the Sun when he witnessed the most intense geomagnetic storm recorded in history. The storm, triggered by a giant solar flare, sent brilliant auroral displays across the globe causing electrical sparking and fires in telegraph stations. This encore episode, Regina talks to solar physicist Dr. Samaiyah Farid about what's now known as the Carrington event and about what may happen the next time a massive solar storm hits Earth.

One woolly mammoth's journey at the end of the Ice Age

February 19, 2024 • Lately, paleoecologist Audrey Rowe has been a bit preoccupied with a girl named Elma. That's because Elma is ... a woolly mammoth. And 14,000 years ago, when Elma was alive, her habitat in interior Alaska was rapidly changing. The Ice Age was coming to a close and human hunters were starting early settlements. Which leads to an intriguing question: Who, or what , killed her? In the search for answers, Audrey traces Elma's life and journey through — get this — a single tusk. Today, she shares her insights on what the mammoth extinction from thousands of years ago can teach us about megafauna extinctions today with guest host Nate Rott .

Tai chi has many health benefits. It improves flexibility, reduces stress and can help lower blood pressure. Ruth Jenkinson/Getty Images/Science Photo Library hide caption

Tai chi reduces blood pressure better than aerobic exercise, study finds

February 14, 2024 • The slow-moving Chinese martial art tai chi is known to increase flexibility and balance. Now, research suggests it's more effective at reducing blood pressure than more vigorous forms of exercise.

Manny and Cayenne wrestle and kiss. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

Manny loves Cayenne. Plus, 5 facts about queer animals for Valentine's Day

February 14, 2024 • In a Valentine's Day exclusive report, NPR has learned there is currently a gay anteater couple at Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington D.C.But this couple is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to queerness in the animal world – it's been documented in hundreds of species. We spoke with wildlife ecologist Christine Wilkinson of the "Queer is Natural" TikTok series to uncover the wildest, queerest animals of the bunch.

Ninety-seven percent of migratory fish species are facing extinction. Whale sharks, the world's largest living fish, are among the endangered. Ullstein Bild/Ullstein Bild hide caption

Across the world, migrating animal populations are dwindling. Here's why

February 12, 2024 • In a landmark U.N. study, researchers found nearly half of the world's threatened migratory species have declining populations. More than a fifth of the assessed animals face extinction.

Clownfish might be counting their potential enemies' stripes

February 9, 2024 • At least, that's what a group of researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University thinks. The team recently published a study in the journal Experimental Biology suggesting that Amphiphrion ocellaris , or clown anemonefish, may be counting. Specifically, the authors think the fish may be looking at the number of vertical white stripes on each other as well as other anemonefish as a way to identify their own species. Not only that — the researchers think that the fish are noticing the minutiae of other anemonefish's looks because of some fishy marine geopolitics.

Anxiety, Bedtime and Mating: How Animals May React to the Eclipse

When the total solar eclipse happens on Monday, animals at homes, farms and zoos may act strangely. Researchers can’t wait to see what happens when day quickly turns to night.

By Juliet Macur and Emily Anthes

An Ozempic Relative Slowed Parkinson’s Disease in a Small Study

The trial lasted only one year but offered embers of hope to some experts.

By Gina Kolata

How a Snake Uses Its Sense of Smell

These reptiles and their social networks are understudied, according to researchers applying scents to different snakes to assess their behavior.

By Asher Elbein

Warming Is Getting Worse. So They Just Tested a Way to Deflect the Sun.

A trial in California is testing a machine designed to reflect sunlight back into space. “All my colleagues hope that we never use these things,” one researcher said.

By Christopher Flavelle and Ian C. Bates

¿Existe un orden correcto para comer los alimentos?

Uno de los recientes consejos de salud muy popular en internet es la “secuenciación de nutrientes”. Preguntamos a los expertos si tienen algún beneficio.

By Nikki Campo

Is It Healthier to Eat Your Vegetables Before Your Carbs?

“Nutrient sequencing” is said to regulate blood sugar. We asked experts if the science holds up.

¿Por qué las mujeres padecen más enfermedades autoinmunes? Un estudio apunta al cromosoma X

Las moléculas que se adhieren al segundo cromosoma X de las mujeres lo silencian y pueden confundir al sistema inmunitario, según un nuevo estudio.

By Carl Zimmer

A Lifetime Under the Moon’s Shadow

The late Jay Pasachoff inspired generations of students to become astronomers by dragging them to the ends of the Earth for a few precarious moments of ecstasy.

By Dennis Overbye

A Solar Eclipse Means Big Science

To study an eclipse you need cameras, rockets, giant balloons and beehives.

By Katrina Miller

Heat Waves Are Moving Slower and Staying Longer, Study Finds

Climate change is making heat waves linger for longer stretches of time, exacerbating the effects of extreme temperatures.

By Delger Erdenesanaa

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Top 15 Research News Sites

From thoughtful editorials and long-form pieces, to ‘churnalism’ sites that aggregate press releases from major universities and institutes, here’s our pick of the top 15 research news websites that deliver the goods.

1. futurity.

Futurity publishes news on the latest discoveries by scientists at top research universities in the US, UK, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The non-profit site is supported solely by its university partners, who use it as a channel to share their research news directly with the public.

Unlike wire services that simply distribute press releases about research (which we’ll cover below), Futurity is aimed at a general audience. Which means the website’s scientific stories (which range from topics like a sinking Californian island, to a malaria drug that can also combat Ebola) are lightly edited for ease of reading.

2. The Conversation

The Conversation was conceived as a sort of ‘giant newsroom’ for academics and researchers, to collectively publish stories that engage with the news cycle and major current affairs. The website contains a wealth of authoritative and informed news and opinion pieces about research discoveries, directly from the research community.

Like Futurity, it’s a not-for-profit and is largely funded by the university and research sectors, but The Conversation isn’t limited to science. Articles on everything from the big data of best-seller lists to Ethiopian food security are penned by academics, and edited by professional journalists. Authors and editors work together to ensure every piece of writing is a tribute to the plain English movement (they aim for the reading ability of an educated 16 year old).

3. Space.com

As noted space enthusiasts , we love Space.com ’s chronicles of the ongoing expansion of our final frontier. The news site was launched on the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And Sally Ride – the first American woman in space – was its first President, while Apollo 11 commander, Neil Armstrong, was on the board of directors. Not too shabby.

Space.com publishes the latest news and discoveries in space exploration and astronomy, and reports on everything from the Madagascar meteorite, to a calculation that adds up all the starlight in the universe.

4. Science X

Science X is a science, research, and technology news site covering a broad range of sci-tech developments and discoveries around the globe. Targeted at scientists, researchers, and engineers, the publishing hub offers three sister sites: Phys.org , Tech Xplore , and Medical Xpress , that are packed with research news. Science X allows you to create a free account to comment and rank or bookmark articles, and customise a daily newsletter with content from all three sites.

5. Live Science

Live Science covers scientific breakthroughs, research ventures, and odd facts from around the research world that hit on a broad range of scientific fields – from dinosaurs and archaeology, to health and human behaviour. Staff writers source stories from science journals and research institutions, while deconstructing the science behind the news, from hyped-up health claims and giant Australian cows, to the scientific stories trending on social media.

6. ScienceDaily

ScienceDaily aggregates press releases about science. You won’t find stories that scratch much beyond the surface on this site, but it’s a good destination for press releases from universities and research institutes around the world. And you can subscribe for daily or weekly newsletters, or view an hourly updated RSS newsfeed to get the latest on Greenland’s ice sheet melt, or how microbes survive extreme environments.

7. NPR Research News

NPR Research News , from US public radio station NPR, is also a pretty decent source for news from the research world. It aggregates audio stories from NPR programmes like The Salt and Hidden Brain, to present you with a treasure trove of research findings for your listening pleasure.

This site covers audio reports on new advances in science, medicine, health, and technology, on topics from whether childhood infections increase our risk of developing certain mental illnesses, to the mystery of the disappearing foxes of the Channel Islands.

8. National Geographic

National Geographic supports groundbreaking scientific fieldwork and expeditions, and research and conservation projects, through its generous grant programmes and public projects. Their science and space site covers topics on archaeology, technology, space, the prehistoric world, Earth, health, and the human body. With – as you’d expect from National Geographic – gorgeous visuals, videos, and in-depth reporting.

9. Futurism

Futurism brings news on the research breakthroughs that are catapulting us into tomorrow’s world. The website covers a broad array of topics and formats. The official launch of the first self-driving taxi service, and a beatboxing AI (it’s the stuff of nightmares) rub shoulders with engaging explainer videos charting the narratives of tomorrow. Whether you want the latest on MDMA clinical trials, or plans for underwater bullet trains, Futurism has you covered.

If you’re a fan of  academic podcasts , head on over to the  Nature website. Nature is the online publishing hub of Springer Nature’s family of journals, and includes a vast array of blog posts and research breakthroughs. And though you need a paid subscription to access Nature’s full journal articles, content like the website’s research news and comment section, and its richly detailed podcasts, are available for free. Dive in.

11. NSF Science 360

Don’t overlook the websites of the respected associations in your field, as they’re often a great source of research developments. For example, the editors of Science 360 , published by  the National Science Foundation , gather breaking STEM news from wherever science is happening, including: colleges and universities, dozens of science and engineering centres, and peer-reviewed journals.

12. Chemistry World 

Chemistry World (from the Royal Society of Chemistry)  publishes articles, podcasts, and videos on matter, energy, Earth, and life. You can browse the site as a visitor, or register for free to get more access to the goods, like a fascinating long-reads section, and a deep dive into culture within the world of chemistry. The webinar section dispenses advice on everything from making your analytical methods fit-for-purpose, to capturing value from your data to accelerate innovation.

13. PNASNews 

PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) p ublishes research reports, commentaries, reviews, and colloquium papers of the Academy that cover the biological, physical, and social sciences. Though much of the site sits behind a paywall, there’s still lots you can access for free, including research news, recently published papers selected by Academy members, and the PNAS Science Sessions podcast on topics like biodiversity loss in Haiti, and the ancient Mayan salt industry.

14. Universities

Though some universities and institutes struggle to get their latest findings published in mainstream media, their websites are often a fantastic resource on research breakthroughs. Visit your own uni’s website and subscribe for updates, and do the same for the top research universities or technical colleges in your field . 

15. Research Information

And, finally, for news on the world of research publishing itself, there’s Research Information . This news site focuses on the ever-shifting sands of scholarly publishing, and is mostly aimed at publishers, librarians, and information professionals, though academic authors and researchers can use it to stay informed of the latest trends, in topics like open access and user experience.

Plenty of reading material to keep you busy till this time next year. And when you’re done with news sites, there are loads of research blogs to get stuck into, too…

Gemma Elliott

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Citation: Heston TF. Critical Gaps in Medical Research Reporting by Online News Media. Cureus. 2024 Apr 2;16(4):e57457. doi: 10.7759/cureus.57457 .

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

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Large language models use a surprisingly simple mechanism to retrieve some stored knowledge

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Large language models, such as those that power popular artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT, are incredibly complex. Even though these models are being used as tools in many areas, such as customer support, code generation, and language translation, scientists still don’t fully grasp how they work.

In an effort to better understand what is going on under the hood, researchers at MIT and elsewhere studied the mechanisms at work when these enormous machine-learning models retrieve stored knowledge.

They found a surprising result: Large language models (LLMs) often use a very simple linear function to recover and decode stored facts. Moreover, the model uses the same decoding function for similar types of facts. Linear functions, equations with only two variables and no exponents, capture the straightforward, straight-line relationship between two variables.

The researchers showed that, by identifying linear functions for different facts, they can probe the model to see what it knows about new subjects, and where within the model that knowledge is stored.

Using a technique they developed to estimate these simple functions, the researchers found that even when a model answers a prompt incorrectly, it has often stored the correct information. In the future, scientists could use such an approach to find and correct falsehoods inside the model, which could reduce a model’s tendency to sometimes give incorrect or nonsensical answers.

“Even though these models are really complicated, nonlinear functions that are trained on lots of data and are very hard to understand, there are sometimes really simple mechanisms working inside them. This is one instance of that,” says Evan Hernandez, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and co-lead author of a paper detailing these findings .

Hernandez wrote the paper with co-lead author Arnab Sharma, a computer science graduate student at Northeastern University; his advisor, Jacob Andreas, an associate professor in EECS and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); senior author David Bau, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern; and others at MIT, Harvard University, and the Israeli Institute of Technology. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.

Finding facts

Most large language models, also called transformer models, are neural networks . Loosely based on the human brain, neural networks contain billions of interconnected nodes, or neurons, that are grouped into many layers, and which encode and process data.

Much of the knowledge stored in a transformer can be represented as relations that connect subjects and objects. For instance, “Miles Davis plays the trumpet” is a relation that connects the subject, Miles Davis, to the object, trumpet.

As a transformer gains more knowledge, it stores additional facts about a certain subject across multiple layers. If a user asks about that subject, the model must decode the most relevant fact to respond to the query.

If someone prompts a transformer by saying “Miles Davis plays the. . .” the model should respond with “trumpet” and not “Illinois” (the state where Miles Davis was born).

“Somewhere in the network’s computation, there has to be a mechanism that goes and looks for the fact that Miles Davis plays the trumpet, and then pulls that information out and helps generate the next word. We wanted to understand what that mechanism was,” Hernandez says.

The researchers set up a series of experiments to probe LLMs, and found that, even though they are extremely complex, the models decode relational information using a simple linear function. Each function is specific to the type of fact being retrieved.

For example, the transformer would use one decoding function any time it wants to output the instrument a person plays and a different function each time it wants to output the state where a person was born.

The researchers developed a method to estimate these simple functions, and then computed functions for 47 different relations, such as “capital city of a country” and “lead singer of a band.”

While there could be an infinite number of possible relations, the researchers chose to study this specific subset because they are representative of the kinds of facts that can be written in this way.

They tested each function by changing the subject to see if it could recover the correct object information. For instance, the function for “capital city of a country” should retrieve Oslo if the subject is Norway and London if the subject is England.

Functions retrieved the correct information more than 60 percent of the time, showing that some information in a transformer is encoded and retrieved in this way.

“But not everything is linearly encoded. For some facts, even though the model knows them and will predict text that is consistent with these facts, we can’t find linear functions for them. This suggests that the model is doing something more intricate to store that information,” he says.

Visualizing a model’s knowledge

They also used the functions to determine what a model believes is true about different subjects.

In one experiment, they started with the prompt “Bill Bradley was a” and used the decoding functions for “plays sports” and “attended university” to see if the model knows that Sen. Bradley was a basketball player who attended Princeton.

“We can show that, even though the model may choose to focus on different information when it produces text, it does encode all that information,” Hernandez says.

They used this probing technique to produce what they call an “attribute lens,” a grid that visualizes where specific information about a particular relation is stored within the transformer’s many layers.

Attribute lenses can be generated automatically, providing a streamlined method to help researchers understand more about a model. This visualization tool could enable scientists and engineers to correct stored knowledge and help prevent an AI chatbot from giving false information.

In the future, Hernandez and his collaborators want to better understand what happens in cases where facts are not stored linearly. They would also like to run experiments with larger models, as well as study the precision of linear decoding functions.

“This is an exciting work that reveals a missing piece in our understanding of how large language models recall factual knowledge during inference. Previous work showed that LLMs build information-rich representations of given subjects, from which specific attributes are being extracted during inference. This work shows that the complex nonlinear computation of LLMs for attribute extraction can be well-approximated with a simple linear function,” says Mor Geva Pipek, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University, who was not involved with this work.

This research was supported, in part, by Open Philanthropy, the Israeli Science Foundation, and an Azrieli Foundation Early Career Faculty Fellowship.

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Researchers at MIT have found that large language models mimic intelligence using linear functions, reports Kyle Wiggers for  TechCrunch . “Even though these models are really complicated, nonlinear functions that are trained on lots of data and are very hard to understand, there are sometimes really simple mechanisms working inside them,” writes Wiggers. 

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• 27 March 2024

Tweeting your research paper boosts engagement but not citations

• Bianca Nogrady

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Even before complaints about X’s declining quality, posting a paper on the social-media platform did not lead to a boost in citations. Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty

Posting about a research paper on social-media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) doesn’t translate into a bump in citations, according to a study that looked at 550 papers.

The finding comes as scientists are moving away from the platform in the wake of changes after its 2022 purchase by entrepreneur Elon Musk.

An international group of 11 researchers, who by the end of the experiment had between them nearly 230,000 followers on X, examined whether there was evidence that posting about a paper would increase its citation rate.

“There certainly is a correlation, and that’s been found in a lot of papers. But very few people have ever looked to see whether there’s any experimental causation,” says Trevor Branch, a marine ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and lead author on the paper, published in PLoS ONE last week 1 .

Every month for ten months, each researcher was allocated a randomly selected primary research article or review from a journal of their choice to post about on their personal account. Four randomly chosen articles from the same edition of the journal served as controls, which the researchers did not post about. They conducted the experiment in the period before Elon Musk took ownership of what was then known as Twitter and complaints of its declining quality increased.

‘Nail in the coffin’

Three years after the initial posts, the team compared the citation rates for the 110 posted articles with those of the 440 control articles, and found no significant difference. The researchers did acknowledge that their followers might not have been numerous enough to detect a statistically significant effect on citations.

The rate of daily downloads for the posted papers was nearly fourfold higher on the day that they were shared, compared with controls. Shared papers also had significantly higher accumulated Altmetric scores both 30 days and three years after the initial post. Calculated by London-based technology company Digital Science, an Altmetric score, says Branch, is a measure of how many people have looked at a paper and are talking about it, but it’s not a reliable indicator of a paper’s scientific worth. “It’s thoroughly biased by how many people with large followings tweet about it,” he says.

The findings echo those of information scientist Stefanie Haustein at the University of Ottawa, whose 2013 study 2 found a low correlation between posts and citations.

Haustein says the problem with using posts as a metric is that, even a decade ago, there was a lot of noise in the signal.

“We actually showed that a lot of the counts on Twitter you would get were bots, it wasn’t even humans,” says Haustein, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

She says the more recent departure of scientists from the platform has been the final nail in the coffin of the idea that posting could increase citations.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00922-y

Branch, T. A. et al. PLoS ONE 19 , e0292201 (2024).

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Haustein, S., Peters, I., Sugimoto, C. R., Thelwall, M. & Larivière, V. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 65, 656–669 (2014).

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Readers and Online News Websites Research Paper

This paper will be a case study of News.com.au. The objective will be to use this site to explore some of the factors mentioned above. It will show that the success of online broadcasts relies on more than just the readers. The paper will also take into account the thoughts of the readers on their role in that success, and members of the site’s staff on the news and the new developments they wish to adopt.

This will be done through a questionnaire. The paper will also explore the organization and structure of News.com.au website, and how this helps it sell itself to the readers.

Introduction

With the prevalence of online media today, more and more media houses are going online. Not only are new media houses adopting online broadcasting, but the ones that are already online are increasing their online portals. These media houses hope to retain their customers.

Their adoption of online media is an attempt to chase after their customers who are already on line, as well as winning new online users. The participation of readers is pivotal for the success of the sites (Cushion 2001; Cameron 2000).

Based on their perceptions on the sites, the readers could inform other people; their friends, families, workmates, et cetera. Although getting more people coming in is a good thing, the real question is not whether a person logs in, but whether he/she keeps returning to the portal. Retaining old customers makes it possible to identify the new readers, and to evaluate whether the portal is popular amongst readers (Emmerichs et al 2004).

News.com is an organization of editors based in Sydney. It has a large number of online editors who manage its work in many cities and mast-head sections all over the world (Burden 2008; Chappel 2000, p. 12). It has reporters and newspapers that contribute greatly in many states including territories all over Australia and goes further to include correspondents from different parts of the world (Chaston 1999, p. 34).

In Asia, it has correspondents from various cities that include Beijing in China, Bangkok in Thailand, Tokyo in Japan and Jakarta in Indonesia. In Europe, London takes the lion share and takes the representation of United Kingdom and the larger European continent. In the United States, the cities of Washington, Wellington, New York and Los Angeles have been inhabited by the correspondents of this organization (Chaston 1999, p. 30).

It has in the last decade drawn its global power of incorporating news and the act of gathering parallel news from News Limited. This is the largest new gathering network in Australia (De Botton 2002; Denu 2011).

Within its rank, is an out-and-about team of online reporters who work hard to contribute their daily reports to the millions of the Australian population (Little 2007, p. 41; Alysen 2002, p. 35).It presents the content it gathers from the vast network of the News Limited network which has in its ranks news on a range issues such as business, weather, entertainment, and sports.

The portal makes almost minute to minute update of its news. For example, it can be noticed that the Breaking News column in the News.com.au bears headlines only minutes apart (Young 2007).

It has a wide range of contributing factors in its daily to daily news that range from newspapers which include the daily telegraph, the advertiser, the Australian, the herald sun, the Sunday times, the courier mail and the mercury. The posting of the newspapers is done every night at around 2am.

The reporting teams give an update on the events that happen each and every-day, and get its daily update from its efficiently developed network of printing activities and the other resources of the associated press of Australia and other press resources like the Agence France-Presse and the associated press (Erdelez 1995).

Literature review

Print media thrive on readership. As has been briefly mentioned above, media houses count on readers to keep their sites running. Variety and the consequent competitiveness helped by the internet makes it necessary for these media houses to adopt suitable ways to attract and retain more readers.

For this reason, various media houses have adopted a number of audience-based tactics. Since the primary objective is to win and retain these customers, the news content, which is the primary product that these media houses are selling, becomes only a small part of the overall methods used to win readers (Valentine 2011, p. 65).

For instance, Bowman and Willis (2003, p. 7) pointed out how MSNBC.com, CNN, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal offered their readers certain degrees of personalization on their sites’ front pages. Personalization means that readers can customize the portals to satisfy some of their tastes.

Also another phenomenon of online activity is what Erdelez (1995, p. 20) referred to as information encountering. This is the ability of the internet to get readers to news without them really intending to. This thrives upon the opportunistic reading habits and emotional response of the readers.

Tewksbury et al. (2001, p. 34) argued that due to the prevalence of news online, many people come by news items without necessarily setting out to find the news. In the same line, Nguyen (2008) agrees that the structure of online media has facilitated unintended encounter of news and its reading.

What these examples reveal is that it is not only the place of readers to keep the get to the site. While the end target is humans, there are other elements of the internet that helps keep the sites running. The irony here is that people may not really go to the site for the purpose of reading the news, but maybe to reach a gateway to other portals.

But the fact still remains that they have gotten the readers to their site. Another Irony is that the very nature of internet structure that leads readers to these sites may be the same thing that directs them away. Nonetheless, the case of New.com.au shows clearly just how important readers are to keeping news website running.

News.com.au has also adopted a readers-centered tactic of retaining its readers. This has involved different forms of reader-participation. For instance, readers participate in the site by posting their comments on various issues on the company site.

These posts include the reader’s reaction(s) to various issues, including the news or certain new adoptions in the site-structure and organization, amongst others. This paper will show that this reader-centered tactic is having a positive effect on winning readers to their online portal.

As it were, this tactic has been a direct way to hear what the readers want from their own lips. The company has an online portal dedicated to collecting the readers’ views fro critical assessment and evaluation. It has constantly used the information from the readers to know what they perceive as negative and make necessary adjustments.

In other words, the company realizes and acknowledges the role of the readers in keeping their site running. Their primary goal then becomes satisfying the readers (Goggin 2001, p. 44).

It is as if the company has explicitly set out to answer a question it has set itself: How do we expect to have the most captivating news when the readers do not have the right platforms to express themselves and air their satisfactions or dissatisfactions?

A good media house cannot emerge without the resurgent action of its readers, so the readers ought to be given the chance to help the media houses online make the right decisions and changes (Heracleous, Wirtz & Pangarkar 2006; Berridge 2007).

Research Questions

The research seeks to answer the question like; how has the general setting of the online portal of the News.com.au helped it win and keep readers? And what other new tactics should the company adopt to ensure that it retains a close relation with its readers?

Methodology

The research made use of multiple methods of data collection, including where experimentation, surveys, questionnaires and observation of the site to enhance the accuracy and reproducibility of the results, and to increase the likeliness of getting more results from other sources relating to online media organization, especially News.com.au (Karol & Nelson 2007).

Experimentation: the research emphasized on studying the trend of relations between the readers and the organization.

For instance, the number of readers who have visited their websites of the organization, what kinds of comments the readers have made: positive or negative, and how these comments have influenced certain changes in the site, and the company’s general operations. The decisions of the managers and the readers’ involvement in online media were used for the experimentation (Gillespie, Jeannette & Hennessey 2010).

Some of the data was obtained from the company’s history from the company website sites. Other data that was gotten from the company website including the recent activities of the company and what the managers have done to deal with the pressure of the increasing online readership and how they have reacted to the different comments.

The correspondence between the company and the readers on the company website was equally witnessed. Moreover, more data was gotten from the company’s history, its position on online reading and the effects it has had on the general online media broadcasts from other secondary results like journals and magazines (Atwood 2007; Cohen 2011).

Questionnaires were used to interview specific groups of people over the internet. The different questions that were required for the research were composed and sent to the News Limited office in Australia via email. In this case, the researcher identified the target group from the players within this organization.

Since these persons were located in various places around Australia, the internet was the only effective means of communicating with them. Questionnaires were developed on word format and sent to the identified study group, which included the managers and the executive chairman of the organization who had been consulted before the study. As already stated, the questionnaires were sent over through email.

The results were received back from these persons by the same means. This study identified 40 potential interviewees who signed consent forms, received the questionnaire over the net, but only 35 of them returned the questionnaires. Out of the 35 returned questionnaires, 2 were found ineligible for the study. In the end, only 33 of the of the study sample were eligible for the study (MacGinley 2004; Erdley & Kesterson 2002).

The annual reports released by News.com Australian media for the last five years shows their performances regarding the number of online readers who visited its online portal. I obtained permission to study the data from the organization which had been identified as the study center and place.

The researcher sought for permission from the managers and the various stakeholders of the organization. The executive chairman was the main person contacted with a request to allow an explicit study on his organization on their activities and everything revolving around their reader-data collection methods. The permission was granted.

These study populations formed the first study section, where the causes of the divergent opinions and comments in the online Medias were determined. These study populations were considered for the qualitative research, given that the study was both quantitative and qualitative. For the quantitative research, the researcher sent questionnaires to the main organization offices in Australia.

Because all the study populations identified in this research understood and used English, the questionnaires were in English language. The researcher obtained important financial aid from the professionals working at the News.com.au branch in the region.

The study targeted the organization, which, it felt, was the best in Australia- being the major media house in Australia (Kenyon 2008; Austin 2010). The data was not tampered with in for one month that data collection was carried out.

The qualitative data was cumulated in individual’s interviews and then documented. For the Quantitative data, the questionnaires were gathered by the researcher and distributed through email to the staff of News.com.au. Responses were collected via the email (Bunzel 2000; Karol & Nelson 2007).

Data analysis

Statistical data analysis tools and procedures were used to derive information from the data obtained in the questionnaires. Specifically, the Statistical Packages software as well as the Microsoft access and database tools was used for the study. The data analysis procedure was done within a period of one week which was well within the stipulated time (Donald & Keane 2002; Bowman & Willis 2003).

The questionnaires were responded to according to the instructions given. On analyzing the questionnaires, it was revealed that there were several positive questions for the researched organization. The organization conveyed that there was an average of more than 5% difference between the comments and the opinions which the online readers gave out in 2009.

The difference rose by 6 percent in 2010.

The organization further reported that they had a negative difference when handling readers from other countries who had read and sampled its news portal, mainly because it was not so enriched in terms of experience compared to other well established media sites in Australia like the News Limited which has acted as an all-time leading online portal in the past decade (Newton & Morrison 2007, p. 45).

Most readers preferred other up to date and the emerging news precisely the political news.

Study results

The research found out that the organization had taken into key consideration the increased feedbacks and the opinions that it received from its daily readers through their portal. As the managers explained in their questionnaires, this had impacted greatly on the company positively since they were able to receive prompt feedbacks when an error occurred in their site.

For instance, whenever their broadcast is not streaming properly, they have learnt it from the readers and used the information to avert and counter the problem promptly. And by observing the website and witnessing the correspondence between the readers and the site staff, it was noticed that the handlers of the portal responded promptly to the readers’ questions and comments (Berridge 2007; Bretford 2010).

After the end of research on the organization and the readers’ participation on online media, it can be concluded that each and every media that feeds news to the people through an online platform should instill efficient platforms where readers’ can air and interact directly with the organization, for example, the help-platform in the organization’s website.

The use of online feeds will give the readers a one-on-one platform to air their opinions: satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and their views on various pieces of information.

For an efficient growth of the online Media, the readers should be allowed to be involved in the day to day running of the organization. The research also found out that news.com had involved their online readers a lot and this had been a major help to their immense growth in the past decade (Young 2007).

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Bowman, S & Willis, C 2003, We Media, The Media Centre at The American Press Institute, Virginia.

Bretford, A 2010, A methodology approach to journalism , Gower Publishing, Ltd, Hampshire.

Bunzel, D 2000, Australian media organizations, University of Western Sydney, Sydney.

Burden, D, Joyce, P and Mustard, J 2008, Adoption of the World Wide Web by Traditional Australian Media Organizations. Web.

Cameron, D 2000, Media and the web , Sage Publications Ltd, London.

Chappel, S 2000, News limited in perspective , University of South Australia, Melbourne.

Chaston, I 1999, New-Media Strategies: Evolving Flexible Processes to Fit Information Seeking , Syracuse University, Syracuse.

Cohen, R 2011, An analysis on Australian online Media? Springer, New York.

Cushion, S 2001, The rise of 24-hour news television: Global perspectives , UMI Research Press, New York.

De Botton, A 2002, The art of media , Hamish Hamilton, New Delhi.

Denu, B 2011, Institutions and media houses: Europe and Australia , LIT, Munich.

Donald, S H & Keane, M 2002, “Responses to crisis: convergence, content industries, and media governance”, Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis , pp. 200-211.

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Gillespie, K, Jeannet, J P & Hennessey, H D 2010, Global Marketing , Cengage Learning, Masson.

Goggin, G 2001, Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia , McGraw-Hill Professional, New York.

Heracleous, L T, Wirtz, J & Pangarkar, N 2006, Information technology and innovation in language education , McGraw Hill, New York.

Karol, R & Nelson, B 2007, National library for Australian news , For Dummies, New Jersey.

Kenyon, A 2008, TV futures: digital television policy in Australia , OECD publishing, Paris.

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Paper: policy reforms urgently needed to mitigate racial disparities in perinatal mental health conditions.

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Significant reforms in U.S. health care and economic policies are needed to mitigate the stark disparities in perinatal mental health diagnoses and treatment that place women of color at greater risk of mortality and morbidity, according to social work professor Karen M. Tabb, the senior author of a paper published in Health Affairs.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A team of researchers is calling for comprehensive changes to U.S. health care and social policies to improve diagnosis and treatment of perinatal mental health conditions and mitigate the dramatic disparities that put women of color at significantly greater risks of morbidity and mortality compared with white women.

In a commentary published in the journal Health Affairs, the researchers proposed seven comprehensive changes to health care and economic policies to mitigate the burden of undiagnosed and untreated perinatal mental health challenges that are greatest among racial minority populations.

Dr. Emily C. Dossett, a professor of psychiatry and of obstetrics in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, was the first author of the group’s paper, and she was among the scholars who discussed their findings during Health Affairs’ virtual briefing on perinatal health.

Photo courtesy Keck Medicine of USC

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The researchers’ recommendations include a national training and certification program for health care providers; payment models that enable women to obtain services through community-based providers; paid family leave; expanded funding for perinatal psychiatry access programs; and access to safe, legal abortions and contraception. They also proposed poverty-mitigation strategies such as reinstating the federal child tax credit and implementing a universal basic income program.

The team said their recommendations are a call for reproductive justice – which includes rights to bodily autonomy, decisions to have or not have children and to live in safe, healthy environments.

During Health Affairs’ virtual briefing on April 3, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign social work professor Karen M. Tabb Dina , the senior and corresponding author of the commentary, spoke about the urgent need for a comprehensive strategy to improve maternal health outcomes and promote equity.

“Perinatal mental health challenges are a microcosm for the U.S. health care system, bringing into focus gaps in equity, access, research data and social determinants of health,” said Tabb Dina, who is co-principal investigator on a grant-funded project that is examining the impact of racial bias and discrimination on women’s health care interactions during the perinatal period, defined as the time before and after giving birth.

While the team acknowledged that the reforms proposed are significant, they said that none of these are unattainable – “the challenges lie in who we value and how we choose to demonstrate that.”

“Broadening our understanding of what constitutes perinatal mental illness and wellness, and grounding our understanding in reproductive justice would lead to policies that close some of these gaps,” said first author Dr. Emily C. Dossett , a professor of psychiatry and the behavioral sciences and of obstetrics in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Dossett is also the medical director of CHAMP for Moms – Child Access to Mental Health and Psychiatry, a consultation and educational service for pediatric primary care providers based at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Their co-authors were Dr. Alison M. Stuebe , a professor of maternal and child health, and of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine; and Twylla Dillion , the executive director of HealthConnect One, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on training community birth workers and research.

A 2022 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that mental health conditions – including suicide and overdoses associated with substance use – are the leading cause of pregnancy-related death. However, more than 80% of these deaths are preventable, the report said.

Current policy and research, which focus primarily on postpartum depression, should be expanded to include other mental health conditions that can predate conception and continue after labor and delivery or miscarriage, the team suggested. Likewise, research samples must include greater diversity in race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, and non-English speaking individuals.

Women’s health care needs are often not prioritized as high as those of their infants and children by many well-funded maternal health programs such as home visits and family case managers, which tend to view the “baby as the candy and the mother as the wrapper,” Stuebe has said.

However, community- and patient-centered care, such as doulas and birth centers, has shown promise at improving maternal health outcomes. To begin scaling up these services, HealthConnect One and several other doula programs have partnered on the Doula Data + Compensation Consortium, a crowdsourced organization specifically designed to gather research data on the health outcomes associated with these services.

Community-based care may be more cost-effective, and alternative payment models such as bundled payments and capitation that prioritize value-based care over fee-for-service care would make services more accessible to women in need, the researchers proposed. Moreover, research has shown that community birth centers protect women of color against the discriminatory treatment and trauma they frequently experience in traditional clinical settings, the team said.

Additionally, they called for broader funding for perinatal psychiatry access programs that would enable nonspecialty providers to consult by phone with behavioral health clinicians for help diagnosing, treating and managing pregnant and postpartum women’s mental health care. The Health Resources and Services Administration is currently funding these programs in more than 20 states, and they have consistently demonstrated more equitable access to care and cost savings, the team wrote.

Accordingly, the team called for reinstatement of the 2021 federal child tax credit, which had striking effects on recipients’ mental health, particularly Black and Hispanic families. Almost 50% of the reduction in depressive symptoms and about 70% of the decrease in anxiety symptoms were associated with recipients’ improved capacity to afford food and housing.

Likewise, the team proposed implementing and evaluating a universal basic income program for perinatal families as research has found that these programs significantly improve recipients’ mental health. Cash-based, unconditional universal basic income programs that uncouple childbearing from the receipt of benefits also support recipients’ reproductive rights to decide to have or not have children, as well as parents’ rights to raise their families in safe, healthy environments, the researchers said.

Finally, the team advocated workplace policies that support families – specifically, paid parental leave and high-quality child care. Currently, four states offer paid family leave policies that allow parents up to 12 weeks off during the first year after birth or adoption. Preliminary data suggest these policies are associated with improvements in maternal mental health, while struggles with access to affordable child care negatively impact parents’ mental and physical well-being, the team said.

Editor’s note :    

To reach Karen Tabb Dina, email [email protected]

To reach Dr. Emily Dossett, [email protected]

The paper “Perinatal mental health: The need for broader understanding and policies that meet the challenges” is available online or from the News Bureau

DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff/2023.01455     

Karen Tabb Dina Youtube video

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