Aurelia Butler

Solid electrolytes with high lithium-ion conductivity can be designed for millimeter-thick battery electrodes by increasing the complexity of their composite superionic crystals, report researchers from Tokyo Tech. This new design rule enables the synthesis of high-entropy active materials while preserving their superionic conduction.
As the world transitions towards a greener and more sustainable energy economy, reliance on lithium (Li)-ion batteries is expected to rise. Scientists from across the globe are working towards designing smaller yet efficient batteries that can keep up with the ever-increasing demand for energy storage. In recent years, all-solid-state lithium batteries (ASSLBs) have captured research interest due to their unique use of solid electrolytes instead of conventional liquid ones. Solid electrolytes not only make the battery safer from leakage and fire-related hazards, but also provide superior energy and power characteristics. However, their stiffness results in poor wetting of the cathode surface and a lack of homogenous supply of Li ions to the cathode. This, in turn, leads to a loss of capacity in the solid-state battery. The issue becomes more pronounced in thick battery cathode electrode such as millimeter-thick one, which is a more advantageous electrode configuration for realizing inexpensive and high-energy-density battery package, compared to conventional electrode with typical thickness of < 0.1 mm. Fortunately, a recent study published in Science found a way to overcome this problem. The paper -- authored by a team of researchers led by Prof. Ryoji Kanno from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) -- describes a new strategy to produce solid electrolytes with enhanced Li-ion conductivity. Their work establishes a design rule for synthesizing high-entropy crystals of lithium superionic conductors via the multi-substitution approach. "Many studies have shown that inorganic ionic conductors tend to show better ion conductivity after multi-element substitution probably because of the flattened potential barrier of Li-ion migration, which is essential for better ion conductivity," points out Prof. Kanno. This was where they started their research. For the design of their new material, the team took inspiration from the chemical compositions of two well-known Li-based solid electrolytes: argyrodite-type (Li6PS5Cl) and LGPS-type (Li10GeP2S12) superionic crystals. They modified the LGPS-type Li9.54Si1.74P1.44S11.7Cl0.3 via multi-substitution and synthesized a series of crystals with composition Li9.54[Si1−δMδ]1.74P1.44S11.1Br0.3O0.6 (M = Ge, Sn; 0 ≤ δ ≤ 1). The researchers used a crystal with Ge = M and δ = 0.4 as a catholyte in an ASSLB with an 1- or 0.8- millimeter-thick cathode. The former and latter ASSLB exhibited discharge capacities of 26.4 mAh cm−2 at 25 °C (1 mm) and 17.3 mAh cm−2 at −10 °C (0.8 mm), respectively, with the area-specific capacity 1.8 and 5.3 times larger than those reported for previous state-of the-art ASSLBs, respectively. Theoretical calculations suggested that the enhanced conductivity of the solid electrolyte could be a result of the flattening of the energy barrier for ion migration, caused by a small degree of chemical substitution in the above-mentioned crystal. This study provides a new way for preparing high-entropy solid electrolytes for millimeter-thick electrodes while preserving their superionic conduction pathways. "In effect, the proposed design rule lays a solid groundwork for exploring new superionic conductors with superior charge-discharge performance, even at room temperature," concludes Prof. Kanno. More

We humans can be a scary acquaintance for whales in the wild. This includes marine biologists tagging them with measuring devices to understand them better. These experiences can make whales behave erratically for a while. Such behaviour can affect research quality and highlights an animal ethics dilemma. Now, University of Copenhagen researchers have figured out how to solve the problems with math.
Maybe you have tried taking a howling pooch or cranky cat to the vet. Regardless of your noblest intentions, your pet’s experience may have been equally unpleasant. Animals react to the unknown in their own way. The case is no different for cetaceans like narwhal and bowhead whales when they encounter human generated noises such as ship noise or mining blasts in the North Atlantic — or when they are caught by well-meaning marine biologists who just want to get to know them better.
When biologists ‘tag’ whales with measuring devices, the animals react by behaving unusually — abnormally. For example, for a while after being tagged, they may perform many atypical shallow dives and quick jerks. Such behaviour is misleading when the goal is to study the animal’s normal and natural behaviour.
The problem is getting help from an unusual corner.
“Biologists seek to understand animals as natural beings, but their reactions turn into unnatural behaviour that creates noise in the dataset. Because of this, a lot of data from just after whales are tagged ends up getting discarded. In this study, we have proposed a mathematical approach using statistical methods that can determine exactly how much data to keep,” says PhD student Lars Reiter from the Department of Mathematics.
Valuable for humans and animals alike
With two statistical calculations, the researcher has found a way to estimate when whales like narwhals and bowhead whales will return to their natural behaviour after being tagged. It is a method that can also be used to study how animals respond to other types of disturbances.

“This research is extremely valuable to us as marine biologists who are interested in the behaviour and well-being of whales. It provides us with a standardised approach by which to distinguish between natural behaviour and affected behaviour in whales. Thus far, we’ve made individual estimates that are more or less spot on,” says marine biologist Outi Tervo from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, who collaborated with the mathematicians on the study.
The statistical method allows researchers to avoid discarding too much or too little data. If too much data is kept, it can interfere with the research results, and if too much is lost, it comes at cost to both the animals and humans.
“It really matters in terms of research, but also financially. And not least, it means something for animal welfare. If we throw away data unnecessarily, more whales will eventually have to go through the experience for us to conduct this research, which is ultimately meant to benefit the animals,” says Outi Tervo.
Idea came from a parliamentary election
Whale behaviour does not go from abnormal to normal with a flick of its tail. Their behaviour normalizes gradually, typically over a day — and in a few cases over a longer period of time. During this transition, a whale’s behaviour manifests itself on both sides of an area designated as normal whale behaviour. So how do scientists figure out where to make the cut?

“The idea came to me while I was standing in the voting booth during parliamentary elections. Borrowing from the logic of the electoral system, you can consider it as if the whales — or these data points which show the whale’s behaviour — vote on whether they are in or out of their normal range,” explains Lars Reiter.
By recording 1 positive “vote” when the behaviour is within the normal range, and 1 negative “vote” when outside, the scientists can add up all the votes and find the moment at which the number of votes goes from predominantly negative to positive.
The researchers use two approaches to determine normal whale behaviour. In part, they look at the whale’s diving pattern, as well as its acceleration and fine motor skills.
How to calculate the behaviour of animals statistically
Sometimes it hunts in the deep, while at others times, it cruises quietly at the surface. The activity that a whale is engaged in is crucial for understanding its normal energy level. Lars Reiter’s method takes this into account as something new:
“Where previous research focused on the mean behavior, we instead situate a whale in an activity based on its movements — where it is assessed based on a normal value for acceleration that matches the speci?c activity being engaged in. We do this by using what are known as quantiles, instead of averages, because they allow us to focus on behavioural extremes. For example, hunting and resting are opposing extremes in terms of energy levels,” explains Lars Reiter.
When the focus is on the whale’s diving profile, on the other hand, you look at the pattern formed by the whale’s overall activities. By combining depth and time, one can assess whether the distribution of different dive types is natural.
Wiser about the animals’ hardships and better at avoiding them
According to the marine biologist, the data-based approach represented by the statistical method also means that researchers can now develop better, more gentle ways of tagging.
“Based on this study, we already know that the amount of time we spend putting the equipment on is an important factor for how much the animals are affected afterwards. Therefore, we can set up some time limits — where we stop and set the whale free if it takes more than X number of minutes allowed,” says Outi Tervo.
A shift away from individual estimates to a mathematical standard could also mean better assessments from the veterinary oversight that tag-using research projects are required to go through.
“The method will make it so that ethical approval from a veterinary inspection is more data-based and precise. So, there is no doubt that this research is a step forward for animal welfare,” says the marine biologist.
* Extra info: An important instrument for a future with less ice and more people
The natural Arctic habitat of narwhals and bowhead whales is changing due to climate change. Annual ice shrinkage and increasing human activity is taking place in areas that whales once had all to themselves. The researchers’ method can become an important instrument and contribute to a greater understanding of the consequences.
“It allows us to study how whales are impacted by various human activities. They can be external sources of noise that we can situate in time and location, such as a blast or a ship passing by. Or sounds and activities that we emit ourselves. Lars’ algorithm lets us get a clear picture of how it all affects the animals,” says Outi Tervo.
Increased activity will lead to more ocean noise, which is of concern to marine biologists with regards to how it will affect large marine animals like narwhal, which are incredibly sensitive to sound. Co-author and supervisor Professor Susanne Ditlevsen believes that the studies and new method will become more important in the years ahead.
“Climate change is leading to increased anthropogenic activity in Arctic whale habitats. Melting ice means that areas which were once impassable can now be reached by humans. We would like to assess whether it scares and disturbs the animals, but it is not clear how. The new methods can be used to assess at what distance from the animal habitat should various activities take place,” says Susanne Ditlevsen.
Facts: Statistical method with two mathematical calculations and one intersection.
The statistical method can generally be understood as calculations with two types of tagging data — acceleration and depth, and a way of adding it up that finds the optimal intersection.
1. Acceleration tells about the energy level and whale movements (“jerks”). The indicators for natural behaviour are divided according to whale activity, so that, for example, a high energy level is recorded as natural in connection with hunting, but not in connection with rest.
2. The whale’s diving profile is measured in depth and time spent on a dive. Temporal impacts over a 40-hour period show a pattern of different types of dives — e.g., U-dives, where the whale stay at depth for some time, or V-dives, where the whale resurfaces quickly. The pattern is compared with normal values measured after the 40 hours.
3. The cut-off point for when the whale is back in normal behaviour is found by counting the individual measurements as “voting for or against” normal behaviour. As such, the researchers find the optimal place to divide the research data into natural and influenced behaviour.
About the study
The study is part of a larger research collaboration between the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Mathematics, that focuses on the Arctic’s large marine mammals.
The researchers include Lars Reiter Nielsen and Susanne Ditlevsen from the University of Copenhagen, Outi M. Tervo and Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and Susanna B. Blackwell from Greeneridge Sciences, Inc., Santa Barbara, USA More

A new study identifies how to calculate the economic value of temporarily reducing carbon emissions through carbon offsetting.
The Social Value of Offsets (SVO) is an economic framework that will help policymakers calculate how much carbon should be stored in temporary offsets to make it equivalent to a permanent CO2 emission.
Using the SVO metric the researchers estimate that an offset sequestering one ton of carbon for 50 years is equivalent to between 0.3 to 0.5 tons permanently locked away, taking into account a range of factors for different risks, permanence and climate scenarios.
Offsets are a key part of Paris-compliant net zero strategies, but many offsetting projects fail and there is never a guarantee on how long an offset will sequester carbon for — making it difficult to measure the economic damage avoided.
The study, published in Nature, sets out the risks and uncertainties of offsetting, which occur due to the unregulated nature of the global offsets market.
Risk factors to projects in tropical forests, for example, can include the lack of strong institutions on the ground to monitor, enforce and account for emissions sequestered, as well as the possibility of fires and disease.

There are also risks in how emissions reductions are reported as well that of ‘non-additionality’ — when emissions reductions would have happened irrespective of the offsetting.
Other frameworks count the physical units of carbon but SVO is unique in that it is an economic framework where the value of temporary emissions reductions is measured as the value of the damages avoided to the economy during the length of the offsetting project.
The researchers say this will potentially make it easier to compare offsetting schemes, allowing anyone offsetting their carbon emissions to be able to weigh up the risks involved and decide how much carbon they would need to offset in temporary schemes to make up for a permanent carbon emission.
Professor Ben Groom, Dragon Capital Chair in Environmental Economics at the University of Exeter Business School, said: “Our analysis shows that a carbon emission today which is offset by a temporary project can be thought of as a postponed emission with the same warming effect when the project ends, but with less warming during the project.
“The Social Value of Offsets (SVO) stems from the value of delaying emissions and damages, and this depends on how impermanent, risky or additional they are. Valuing offsets using the SVO then provides a means of comparing offsets with different qualities in terms of the economic damages avoided.”
Professor Groom explains why delaying emissions is important, both in an economic and physical sense. “With a project that stores carbon and releases it 50 years later, the net carbon reduction is always going to be zero, so some may say it’s as if it never happened.”

“But what that ignores is the flow of damages that you’ve avoided in the meantime, which could be important, because certain responses to climate change, like the melting of the ice caps, are responsive, depending on how long temperatures have been at a particular level.
“Delaying emissions is also important because economic processes could be happening in the background that make carbon removal cheaper in the future so offsetting could act as a temporary solution allowing the action point to be delayed until a time when it is cheaper to act.
“The question we’re answering with SVO is how valuable this temporary period in which you avoid damages is.”
The IPCC has previously noted that meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement will require some offsetting, though some organisations suggest that offsetting should be largely avoided due to the unregulated, impermanent and risky nature of the offset market.
However, this study illustrates that in principle delaying emissions, even when offsetting projects are temporary and risky, is valuable in economic terms.
The economists believe the SVO metric can play an important role in appraising net-zero climate policy and harmonising the offset market, and has policy applications beyond the valuation of offsets.
These include calculating the benefits-to-cost ratio of an offset or any temporary carbon storage solution allowing for comparison to alternative technologies for mitigating climate change.
The SVO formula can also be applied to Life-Cycle Analysis of biofuels as well as used to calculate the price of carbon debt, using the rule of thumb that a company that emits a ton of carbon today and commits to a permanent removal in 50 years’ time will pay 33% of the carbon price today to cover the damages of temporary atmospheric storage.
The Social Value of Offsets, by Professor Ben Groom, Dragon Capital Chair in Environmental Economics at the University of Exeter Business School and Professor Frank Venmans from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE, is published in Nature. More

Researchers at The Ohio State University have developed new software to aid in the development, evaluation and demonstration of safer autonomous, or driverless, vehicles.
Called the Vehicle-in-Virtual-Environment (VVE) method, it allows the testing of driverless cars in a perfectly safe environment, said Bilin Aksun-Guvenc, co-author of the study and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State.
Imagine a driverless car is placed in the middle of an empty parking lot. Although it is driving, it isn’t reacting to the real world, but to input from the software, which tells the car what the road looks like, and what cars, pedestrians and hazards it is meeting along the way.
“With our software, we’re able to make the vehicle think that it’s driving on actual roads while actually operating on a large open, safe test area,” said Aksun-Guvenc. “This ability saves time, money, and there is no risk of fatal traffic accidents.”
The study, published recently in the journal Sensors, found that by immersing self-driving machines in a virtual environment, the technique can help the car learn to avoid possible car collisions, increase pedestrian safety, and react to rare or extreme traffic events.
Although autonomous driving technologies have become a much more common sight on the road in the last few years, due to the sheer number of accidents these systems have caused, the way these technologies are tested deserves closer scrutiny, Aksun-Guvenc said.

“Our future depends on being able to trust any and all road vehicles with our safety, so all of our research concepts pertain to working towards that goal,” said Aksun-Guvenc, who is also co-director of Ohio State’s Automated Driving Lab, a research group originally formed in 2014 to advance autonomous vehicle technologies.
Current approaches for demonstrating autonomous vehicle functions involve testing software and technology first in simulations and then on public roads. Yet this method essentially turns other road users into involuntary participants in these driving experiments, said Aksun-Guvenc, and such risks can make the entire development process costly, inefficient, and potentially unsafe for both drivers and pedestrians alike.
To overcome the limitations of these faulty assessments, researchers in this study replaced the output of high-resolution sensors in a real vehicle with simulated data to connect its controls to a highly realistic 3D environment, much like giving the machine a VR headset or virtual reality glasses. After feeding the data to the autonomous driving system’s computers and syncing the car’s real motions with the simulations’, researchers were able to show that it behaves as if the virtual environment were its true surroundings in real time.
But what makes their software especially powerful, said Levent Guvenc, co-author of the study and also co-director of the Automated Driving Lab, is the strength of how flexible their virtual environment can be. “When actual senses are replaced by virtual senses, the model can be easily changed to fit any kind of scenario,” said Guvenc.
Because the VVE method can be calibrated to maintain the properties of the real world while modeling rare events in the virtual environment, it could easily simulate extreme traffic scenarios, like someone jumping in front of a vehicle, to mundane ones like pedestrians waiting at a crosswalk, he said.

Additionally, with the help of a communication app for vehicle-to-pedestrian connectivity, the software can use Bluetooth to communicate between a pedestrian with a mobile phone and a phone in the test vehicle. The researchers had a pedestrian actually dart quickly across a simulated road a safe distance from the test vehicle. But the Bluetooth signal told the car that the person was darting right in front of it.
“The beauty of the method is that road users can share the same environment at the same time without being in the same location at all,” said Guvenc. And although generating these super-realistic environments can take time, he said the technological challenge of syncing different environments to use in real-time simulations is one challenge their team has solved.
The team has also filed a patent for the technology. In the future, Guvenc said he’d also like to see it be integrated into traffic guidelines made by groups such as The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“We could see this technology becoming a staple in the industry in the next five or 10 years,” said Guvenc. “That’s why we’re focusing on building more applications for it.”
Other Ohio State co-authors were Xincheng Cao, Haochong Chen and Sukru Yaren Gelbal. More

A new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge reveals a surprising discovery that could transform the future of electrochemical devices. The findings offer new opportunities for the development of advanced materials and improved performance in fields such as energy storage, brain-like computing, and bioelectronics.
Electrochemical devices rely on the movement of charged particles, both ions and electrons, to function properly. However, understanding how these charged particles move together has presented a significant challenge, hindering progress in creating new materials for these devices.
In the rapidly evolving field of bioelectronics, soft conductive materials known as conjugated polymers are used for developing medical devices that can be used outside of traditional clinical settings. For example, this type of materials can be used to make wearable sensors that monitor patients’ health remotely or implantable devices that actively treat disease.
The greatest benefit of using conjugated polymer electrodes for this kind of devices is their ability to seamlessly couple ions, responsible for electrical signals in the brain and body, with electrons, the carriers of electrical signals in electronic devices. This synergy improves the connection between the brain and medical devices, effectively translating between these two types of signals.
In this latest study on conjugated polymer electrodes, published in Nature Materials, researchers report on an unexpected discovery. It is conventionally believed that the movement of ions is the slowest part of the charging process because they are heavier than electrons. However, the study revealed that in conjugated polymer electrodes, the movement of “holes” — empty spaces for electrons to move into — can be the limiting factor in how quickly the material charges up.
Using a specialised microscope, researchers closely observed the charging process in real-time, and found that when the level of charging is low, the movement of holes is inefficient, causing the charging process to slow down a lot more than anticipated. In other words, and contrary to standard knowledge, ions conduct faster than electrons in this particular material.
This unexpected finding provides a valuable insight into the factors influencing charging speed. Excitingly, the research team also determined that by manipulating the microscopic structure of the material, it is possible to regulate how quickly the holes move during charging. This newfound control and ability to fine tune the material’s structure could allow scientists to engineer conjugated polymers with improved performance, enabling faster and more efficient charging processes.
“Our findings challenge the conventional understanding of the charging process in electrochemical devices,” said first author Scott Keene, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and the Electrical Engineering Division. “The movement of holes, which act as empty spaces for electrons to move into, can be surprisingly inefficient during low levels of charging, causing unexpected slowdowns.”
The implications of these findings are far-reaching, offering a promising avenue for future research and development in the field of electrochemical devices for applications such as bioelectronics, energy storage, and brain-like computing.
“This work addresses a long-standing problem in organic electronics by illuminating the elementary steps that take place during electrochemical doping of conjugated polymers and highlighting the role of the band structure of the polymer,” said George Malliaras, senior author of the study and Prince Philip Professor of Technology in the Department of Engineering’s Electrical Engineering Division.
“With a deeper understanding of the charging process, we can now explore new possibilities in the creation of cutting-edge medical devices that can seamlessly integrate with the human body, wearable technologies that provide real-time health monitoring, and new energy storage solutions with enhanced efficiency,” concluded Prof. Akshay Rao, co-senior author, also from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. More

A team led by Nagoya University researchers in Japan has successfully predicted crystal orientation by teaching an artificial intelligence (AI) using optical photographs of polycrystalline materials. The results were published in APL Machine Learning.
Crystals are a vital component of many machines. Familiar materials used in industry contain polycrystalline components, including metal alloys, ceramics, and semiconductors. As polycrystals are made up of many crystals, they have a complex microstructure, and their properties vary greatly depending on how the crystal grains are orientated. This is especially important for the silicon crystals used in solar cells, smartphones, and computers.
“To obtain a polycrystalline material that can be used effectively in industry, control and measurement of grain orientation distribution is required,” Professor Noritaka Usami said. “However, this is hindered by the expensive equipment and time current techniques needed to measure large-area samples.”
A Nagoya University team consisting of Professor Usami (he, him) from the Graduate School of Engineering and Professor Hiroaki Kudo (he, him) from the Graduate School of Informatics, in collaboration with RIKEN, have applied a machine learning model that assesses photographs taken by illuminating the surface of a polycrystalline silicon material from various directions. They found that the AI successfully predicted the grain orientation distribution.
“The time required for this measurement was about 1.5 hours for taking optical photographs, training the machine learning model, and predicting the orientation, which is much faster than conventional techniques, which take about 14 hours,” Usami said. “It also enables measurement of large-area materials that were impossible with conventional methods.”
Usami has high hopes for the use of the team’s technique in industry. “This is a technology that will revolutionize materials development,” Usami said. “This research is intended for all researchers and engineers who develop polycrystalline materials. It would be possible to manufacture an orientation analysis system of polycrystalline materials that packages an image data collection and a crystal orientation prediction model based on machine learning. We expect that many companies dealing with polycrystalline materials would install such equipment.” More

Encouraging adolescents to feel capable and purposeful — rather than just happy — could improve their academic results as well as their mental health, according to new research which recommends changing how wellbeing is supported in schools.
The University of Cambridge study, involving over 600 teenagers from seven English schools, examined two separate aspects of their wellbeing: life satisfaction and ‘eudaimonia’. While life satisfaction roughly equates to how happy a person is, eudaimonia refers to how well that person feels they are functioning. It incorporates feelings of competence, motivation and self-esteem.
Researchers found that students with high levels of eudaimonia consistently outperformed their peers in GCSE-level assessments, especially Maths. On average, those achieving top Maths grades had eudaimonic wellbeing levels 1.5 times higher than those with the lowest grades.
No such link was found between academic performance and life satisfaction. Despite this, child wellbeing policy in England tends to focus on life satisfaction. The Government has, for example, recently added ‘happiness’ to national curricula as part of its Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) guidance, emphasising teaching adolescents how to feel happy and resilient while managing negative emotions.
Previous research has pointed to the importance of fostering adolescents’ eudaimonic wellbeing by nurturing their personal values, goals and sense of self-worth. The new study appears to strengthen that case by demonstrating a positive link between eudaimonia and academic performance.
Its lead author, Dr Tania Clarke, is a psychologist of education who now works for the Youth Endowment Fund, but undertook the study for her doctoral research at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. The findings are published in School Psychology Review.

“Wellbeing education often focuses on teaching students about being happy and not being sad.” Clarke said. “That is over-simplistic and overlooks other vital qualities of wellbeing that are particularly salient during the formative period of adolescence.”
“Adolescents also need to develop self-awareness, confidence, and ideally a sense of meaning and purpose. Judging by our findings, an adolescent who is currently getting a 3 or 4 on their Maths GCSE could be helped to rise a couple of grades if schools emphasised these qualities for all students, rather than just promoting positivity and minimising negative emotions.”
The study involved 607 adolescents, aged 14-15. Participants completed an established psychological assessment called ‘How I feel about myself and school’, which measures both life satisfaction and eudaimonia, as well as feelings of interpersonal relatedness and negativity.
These measures were compared with their scores in mock English and Maths GCSEs. The research also assessed whether the students exhibited a ‘growth mindset’: a belief in their personal capacity for improvement. Many educators consider this essential for enhancing academic performance.
The students’ overall wellbeing — their eudaimonia and life satisfaction combined — clearly correlated positively with their exam results. Those attaining top Maths grades (Grades 8 or 9) had, on average, a wellbeing score of 32 out of a possible 50. This was nine points higher than those with a Grade 1, and three to four points higher than the average for all 607 students.

When they analysed the separate dimensions of wellbeing, however, the researchers found a positive relationship between eudaimonia and higher attainment, but no correlation with life satisfaction. In Maths, the average eudaimonic wellbeing score of Grade 9 students was 17.3 from a possible 25, while that of Grade 1 students was just 10.9. These results held true even when accounting for potentially confounding factors, such as school attended, gender, socio-economic status, or special educational needs.
The study also found that a growth mindset did not predict good academic results, although students with high eudaimonic wellbeing did tend to exhibit such a mindset. Other research has similarly struggled to draw a clear link between growth mindset and academic progress, but does link it more generally to positive mental health. This implies that eudaimonia, as well as supporting better attainment, may also underpin important aspects of self-belief, leading to broader mental health benefits.
Clarke’s wider research suggests that various constraints currently limit schools’ capacity to promote eudaimonic wellbeing. In an earlier Review of Education article she published the results of in-depth interviews with some of the same students, which highlighted concerns about a ‘performativity culture’ stemming from a heavy emphasis on high-stakes testing. These interviews indicated that many students associate ‘doing well’ with getting good grades, rather than with their own strengths, values and goals.
Students said they often felt worthless, inadequate or “dumb” if they failed to get high marks in tests. “You let your scores define you,” one student told Clarke. “Then you feel really low about… your worth and everything. You think it’s literally the end of the world.” Ironically, the new findings suggest that by limiting teachers’ capacity to support students’ personal growth, the heavy emphasis on exam results and testing may be undermining academic progress, at least in some cases.
Clarke suggested that eudaimonic therapy, which increasingly features in professional mental health psychology for adolescents, could be incorporated more into wellbeing education. In particular, her study underscores the need to help students understand their academic work and progress in the context of their personal motivations and goals.
“There is a link between better wellbeing and a more nuanced understanding of academic success,” Clarke said. “Because schools are under heavy pressure to deliver academic results, at the moment students seem to be measuring themselves against the exam system, rather than in terms of who they want to be or what they want to achieve.”
Dr Ros McLellan, from the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, who co-authored the study, said: “Wellbeing education needs to move beyond notions of ‘boosting’ happiness towards deeper engagement, helping adolescents to realise their unique talents and aspirations, and a sense of what happiness means for them, personally. This would not just improve wellbeing: it is also likely to mean better exam results, and perhaps fewer issues for students later on.” More

New research from the University of Montana and its partners suggests artificial intelligence can match the top 1% of human thinkers on a standard test for creativity.
The study was directed by Dr. Erik Guzik, an assistant clinical professor in UM’s College of Business. He and his partners used the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, a well-known tool used for decades to assess human creativity.
The researchers submitted eight responses generated by ChatGPT, the application powered by the GPT-4 artificial intelligence engine. They also submitted answers from a control group of 24 UM students taking Guzik’s entrepreneurship and personal finance classes. These scores were compared with 2,700 college students nationally who took the TTCT in 2016. All submissions were scored by Scholastic Testing Service, which didn’t know AI was involved.
The results placed ChatGPT in elite company for creativity. The AI application was in the top percentile for fluency — the ability to generate a large volume of ideas — and for originality — the ability to come up with new ideas. The AI slipped a bit — to the 97th percentile — for flexibility, the ability to generate different types and categories of ideas.
“For ChatGPT and GPT-4, we showed for the first time that it performs in the top 1% for originality,” Guzik said. “That was new.”
He was gratified to note that some of his UM students also performed in the top 1%. However, ChatGTP outperformed the vast majority of college students nationally.

Guzik tested the AI and his students during spring semester. He was assisted in the work by Christian Gilde of UM Western and Christian Byrge of Vilnius University. The researchers presented their work in May at the Southern Oregon University Creativity Conference.
“We were very careful at the conference to not interpret the data very much,” Guzik said. “We just presented the results. But we shared strong evidence that AI seems to be developing creative ability on par with or even exceeding human ability.”
Guzik said he asked ChatGPT what it would indicate if it performed well on the TTCT. The AI gave a strong answer, which they shared at the conference:
“ChatGPT told us we may not fully understand human creativity, which I believe is correct,” he said. “It also suggested we may need more sophisticated assessment tools that can differentiate between human and AI-generated ideas.”
He said the TTCT is protected proprietary material, so ChatGPT couldn’t “cheat” by accessing information about the test on the internet or in a public database.

Guzik has long been interested in creativity. As a seventh grader growing up in the small town of Palmer, Massachusetts, he was in a program for talented-and-gifted students. That experience introduced him to the Future Problem Solving process developed by Ellis Paul Torrance, the pioneering psychologist who also created the TTCT. Guzik said he fell in love with brainstorming at that time and how it taps into human imagination, and he remains active with the Future Problem Solving organization — even meeting his wife at one of its conferences.
Guzik and his team decided to test the creativity of ChatGPT after playing around with it during the past year.
“We had all been exploring with ChatGPT, and we noticed it had been doing some interesting things that we didn’t expect,” he said. “Some of the responses were novel and surprising. That’s when we decided to put it to the test to see how creative it really is.”
Guzik said the TTCT test uses prompts that mimic real-life creative tasks. For instance, can you think of new uses for a product or improve this product?
“Let’s say it’s a basketball,” he said. “Think of as many uses of a basketball as you can. You can shoot it in a hoop and use it in a display. If you force yourself to think of new uses, maybe you cut it up and use it as a planter. Or with a brick you can build things, or it can be used as a paperweight. But maybe you grind it up and reform it into something completely new.”
Guzik had some expectation that ChatGPT would be good at creating a lot of ideas (fluency), because that’s what generative AI does. And it excelled at responding to the prompt with many ideas that were relevant, useful and valuable in the eyes of the evaluators.
He was more surprised at how well it did generating original ideas, which is a hallmark of human imagination. The test evaluators are given lists of common responses for a prompt — ones that are almost expected to be submitted. However, the AI landed in the top percentile for coming up with fresh responses.
“At the conference, we learned of previous research on GPT-3 that was done a year ago,” Guzik said. “At that time, ChatGPT did not score as well as humans on tasks that involved original thinking. Now with the more advanced GPT-4, it’s in the top 1% of all human responses.”
With AI advances speeding up, he expects it to become a key tool for the world of business going forward and a significant new driver of regional and national innovation.
“For me, creativity is about doing things differently,” Guzik said. “One of the definitions of entrepreneurship I love is that to be an entrepreneur is to think differently. So AI may help us apply the world of creative thinking to business and the process of innovation, and that’s just fascinating to me.”
He said the UM College of Business is open to teaching about AI and incorporating it into coursework.
“I think we know the future is going to include AI in some fashion,” Guzik said. “We have to be careful about how it’s used and consider needed rules and regulations. But businesses already are using it for many creative tasks. In terms of entrepreneurship and regional innovation, this is a game changer.” More