The cicadas that synchronize their emergence with others have a better chance of survival. Scientists believe that the simultaneous emergence of insects is an evolutionary strategy. Predators like birds and raccoons can only consume a limited amount, so the more cicadas emerge together, the higher their chances of survival, reproduction, and passing on their genes. “They have a strategy of safety in numbers,” explains Chris Simon, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut.
On the other hand, rare cicadas that emerge out of sync are often referred to as “strays.” These stragglers are usually preyed upon and struggle to survive. “Natural selection favored those that waited, because those that couldn’t wait were eaten,” Simon said.
This summer, two cicada broods are expected to emerge simultaneously, leading to a particularly large population of periodic cicadas. The last time such an event occurred was in 1803. The organization behind the Cicada Safari app, which aims to track cicada sightings and help scientists study these insects, has already recorded over 1,000 sightings in Georgia and hundreds more in North Carolina and Alabama.
Periodic cicadas are categorized into two groups based on their emergence period: those that appear every 13 years and those that appear every 17 years. While temperature seems to trigger their emergence, the exact mechanism behind how they synchronize their emergence remains somewhat mysterious. Scientists have observed changes in cicadas’ emergence patterns, speculating that rising temperatures due to climate change may be impacting their internal clocks.
Entomologist Gene Kritsky notes that global warming is causing cicadas to emerge earlier in the year due to higher average temperatures. This shift in emergence time has been observed to be approximately 10 days to two weeks earlier than in 1940. Researchers like John Cooley predict that cicadas’ distribution will shift northward as the climate warms and their preferred plant species move north.
There has been an increase in reports of stragglers, intriguing researchers in the field. Simon and her colleagues believe that climate change may be influencing the emergence of cicadas earlier than usual, leading to the formation of new populations among stragglers. This adaptation is seen as a response to a warming climate and extended growing seasons.
Simon proposes a theory that rising temperatures may prolong the development of cicadas underground, resulting in the emergence of more stragglers sooner than expected. Eventually, the population as a whole may adapt and change its timing. She predicts that the 17-year cicada broods may transition to a 13-year cycle and possibly even emerge every nine years.
If proven correct, this theory would be another example of how climate change is disrupting natural rhythms in the environment. Periodic cicadas, harmless to humans, range across the eastern United States to the Midwest and emerge in special events rather than yearly like annual cicadas.
While scientists continue to study how cicadas coordinate their mass emergence, they have yet to discover a precise explanation for their successful synchronization. A recent study suggests that underground communication could be a potential factor worth investigating further. “No one has ever studied this,” Simon said.
I I don’t usually believe in life hacks. I’d like to imagine that with one simple adjustment my life would reappear like a cracked tennis court, but as time and experience have shown, positive change usually happens slowly and gradually.
But there is one hack that I truly believe in. It’s fast, free, and will instantly change your life for the better. Just mute the annoying people on social media.
The process varies by platform. Typically, you would go to the offending poster’s profile page or one of her posts and tap “Mute,” “Snooze,” or “Unfollow.” But that’s it. Thanks to this digital dust, social media is cleaner, or at least less dirty than it used to be. They’ll disappear from your timeline, and so will the various little annoyances they caused. Also, unlike unfollowing or blocking someone, the muted party won’t know they’ve been silenced, so there’s no risk of awkwardness or drama. .
Several people are muted. Some of them are people you don’t want to unfollow. I unfollowed some people, but I muted them because others might repost and pollute my pure timeline. One is a semi-celebrity who was rude to me about work many years ago. Another person was rude to my friend. There are also ex-lovers and people who are always humble and boastful and make you want to bang your head against something hard.
These people brought out the worst in me. When I saw their posts, I felt angry, mean, and small. I wondered how much it would cost to buy billboards along major highways with bullet points detailing just how bad it really is.
Luckily, I rarely think about these people anymore because I’ve muted them on all platforms. I usually forget these people exist unless someone brings it up in conversation. They were weeded from the lush garden of my brain.
Bailey Parnell, founder and president of the Center for Digital Wellbeing, said, “Muting accounts that repeatedly make you uncomfortable is setting up digital boundaries to create a healthier digital environment.” I am. This allows you to avoid offensive content without disconnecting. It’s a solution, she says, to the complicated situation where a relationship with someone is important to you despite their annoying online presence.
“This allows you to maintain your social and professional networks while also maintaining your mental health,” she says.
This may seem like obvious advice. Still, it can be difficult to follow. The frustration you feel when you see someone’s bad posts can be accompanied by a sense of satisfaction. It’s like, “Look!” It’s annoying!
“There can be a dopamine rush at the end of a big emotion,” says Monica Amorosi, a certified trauma therapist in New York City. We may begin to crave the adrenaline spike that comes with content that makes us feel shocked, angry, or disgusted.
“If we lead a mundane life, lack stimulation, are bored or overwhelmed, consuming this substance can be a form of entertainment or distraction,” says Amoros. says Mr.
Amorosi emphasizes the importance of not creating a “space of ignorance” in your feed by avoiding different perspectives on current events and alarming news. But this does not mean that social media should only be used to access upsetting information. Our feed can be used for “healthy, positive education, connecting with like-minded people, understanding the nuances and diversity of the world, fact-checking information, and learning new hobbies and ideas,” she says. say.
So muting is probably most effectively applied against people who annoy you in a bland, everyday way, such as an arrogant colleague. Not seeing humble braggarts pretending to be ashamed of their professional successes does not limit my worldview. Instead, I get back the 5-10 minutes I might have wasted taking screenshots of posts and complaining to friends about them.
Frankly, I haven’t done anything with the time I’ve gained by not badmouthing the people I’ve muted. But how nice that at least he has days when he’s comfortable for even five minutes.
So feel free to mute yourself and often. And what if you disagree with me? Please mute. You never know!
Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, still wields influence over the cryptocurrency almost 14 years after vanishing.
This week, a protocol crafted by Nakamoto (an individual or group that went silent in December 2010) will trigger the “Bitcoin halving,” which has historically been tied to price increases. The upcoming halving is set to occur this Saturday.
Here’s a breakdown of what the Bitcoin halving entails and its potential ramifications.
What is Bitcoin halving?
It revolves around how Bitcoins are recorded and generated. Cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on a public ledger called the blockchain. These transactions are grouped into blocks by “miners,” solved, and linked. Miners use specialized hardware to solve cryptographic puzzles and, crucially, receive rewards in newly minted Bitcoins.
Nakamoto’s goal was to cap the total number of Bitcoins at 21 million, so the protocol adjusts to limit the influx of new coins into the market. This is accomplished by halving miners’ rewards every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years.
The imminent halving is slated to take place early Saturday in the US and UK, reducing the reward for adding a new block to the blockchain from 6.25 Bitcoins to 3.125 Bitcoins. Bitcoin, currently with over 19 million coins in circulation, will continue halving until an estimated 21 million by 2140.
What impact will it have on the price of Bitcoin?
A halving leads to a decrease in the supply of new Bitcoin, potentially raising its price. It’s an economic principle that a decrease in supply with stable demand should drive up the price of an asset.
Data from 10x Research shows that the average prices following the past three halvings (2020, 2016, 2012) increased by 16% in the subsequent 60 days. The 2016 halving initially saw a 6% dip but then rebounded strongly in 2017.
Experts suggest that halvings usually lead to rising prices due to reduced supply, with a peak typically occurring around 500 days post-halving. However, markets have already factored in the halving, and significant price hikes aren’t expected immediately after.
Are there any negative effects?
Bitcoin mining companies, which bear energy and equipment costs to validate transactions, may face financial strain as rewards shrink.
Andrew O’Neill, managing director of digital assets research at S&P Global, notes that halving the block rewards can impact miners’ profitability significantly, leading to potential closures of unprofitable businesses.
For Bitcoin mining to be economically sustainable, broader adoption across the global economy is required to boost miners’ earnings from transaction fees. However, concerns are rising about the environmental unsustainability of energy-intensive Bitcoin mining.
Critics fear that amateur investors may be drawn into price spikes and hype surrounding the halving, adding another layer of negative impact.
We are witnessing the emergence of AI, a development that was unexpected by many. Let’s explore this further.
If you’ve interacted with an AI assistant extensively, you may have noticed a distinct quality in their responses. Unless deliberate efforts are made to deviate from the default settings, the text generated by AI can seem oddly produced, even if technically correct in terms of grammar and meaning.
Certain patterns are evident. Chatbots exhibit an exaggerated use of language models influenced by reinforcement learning with human feedback. The result? A willingness to please and a generally optimistic demeanor, desirable traits for an assistant role (or any role).
There are also areas where the AI hesitates to venture. Initiating a scenario like a romantic encounter between Mickey Mouse and Barack Obama can trigger various safety mechanisms, revealing the AI’s reluctance to engage in certain topics.
Other subtle indicators include a tendency to present both sides of an argument, an aversion to brief responses, and impeccable spelling and grammar, akin to “writing by a robot.”
Additionally, specific terms like “Learn more” recurrently used by ChatGPT raise flags on AI involvement, pointing towards the increasing integration of AI models in various fields for enhancing written content.
Dr. Jeremy Nguyen’s exploration suggests ChatGPT’s influence on certain PubMed articles. Photo: Jeremy Nguyen/X
A different dataset reveals that words like “Explore,” “Tapestry,” “Will,” and “Exploit” are more frequent in ChatGPT’s output compared to general internet usage.
Understanding the inner workings, GPT-4 serves as a vast language model processing extensive data to predict the next word in a sentence, a task requiring substantial data sets and sophisticated processing.
Transitioning this into a chatbot involves reinforcement learning with human feedback, engaging human testers to provide feedback for refining the AI’s responses, a resource-intensive process demonstrating the growing reliance on AI in content creation.
While AI advances in various sectors, the physical manifestation of AI technology is slowly emerging, as evidenced by Limitless’s innovative pendant for intelligent conversation tracking.
Looking ahead, AI hardware like Rabbit’s R1 proposes novel solutions for enhancing daily tasks through AI agents, emphasizing the evolving integration of AI in our lives.
As AI hardware gains traction, the future holds a vast landscape of possibilities, with ongoing advancements shaping the interconnected realms of AI technology and human interaction.
Please try to imagine. I remember being on the bus or walking in the park and having an important task slip out of my mind. Maybe you were planning to send an email, catch up on a meeting, or have lunch with a friend. Without missing a beat, just say out loud what you forgot, and a small device strapped to your chest or placed on the bridge of your nose will send you a message, summarize a meeting, or remind a friend to go to lunch. Send invitations. No need to poke at your smartphone screen and the job is done.
This is the kind of utopian convenience that a growing wave of technology companies are trying to achieve through artificial intelligence. Generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT exploded in popularity last year as search engines like Google, messaging apps like Slack, and social media services like Snapchat raced to integrate the technology into their systems.
AI add-ons have become commonplace across apps and software, but as the first AI-powered consumer devices launch and compete for space with smartphones, the same generation technology is poised to enter the hardware realm.
One of the first people out of the gate was eye pin California startup Humane. It’s a wearable device that’s only slightly larger than a can of Vaseline and attaches to your shirt via a magnet. You can send texts, make calls, take photos, and play music. However, there is no app support and no screen. Instead, it uses a laser to project a simple interface onto your outstretched palm. The built-in AI chatbot can be instructed through voice commands to search the web or answer queries in much the same way you’d expect from ChatGPT.
“I plan to train Ai Pin to be my personal assistant to facilitate my writing and creative work,” said the Virginia-based company, which pre-ordered the device ahead of its initial U.S. launch in April, says Tiffany Jana, a consultant with Since she travels a lot, she thinks it would be nice to have a photographer and translator to accompany her. “I don’t have all the assistants and large teams that supported me in the past. I’ve always been a tech guy and enjoy ChatGPT.”
Meanwhile, Facebook’s parent company Meta has already Smart glasses equipped with AI Partnering with Ray-Ban and Chinese companies TCL and Oppo Companies followed suit with their own AI glasses. All of these have pretty much the same functionality as Ai Pin and are sold in a way that connects to an AI chatbot that responds to voice commands.
It’s a way to curb smartphone overuse by providing the same essential functionality without addictive apps.
If all of this sounds a lot like what your smartphone’s voice assistant or your living room’s Alexa already does, that’s because that’s essentially what it does. “Using AI in new devices is still the norm today,” says David Lindlbauer, an assistant professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. “Everyone uses Google Suggestions, Apple Siri to navigate their phones, or smart suggestions in apps on their phones.” The difference, he says, is that these new and upcoming devices will, which aims to embed AI capabilities in a “less obtrusive and more ubiquitous way.”
Its design intent is most evident in future products pendant From US startup Rewind and software developer Tab AI Avi Shiffman. These small devices hang around your neck and passively record everything you hear and say during the day, then transcribe the most important parts so you can read them back at your convenience later. Designed to summarize. These are essentially productivity tools that bundle the kinds of generative AI capabilities found elsewhere into standalone devices.
But why would you want a device that does more than what your smartphone already has? Partly to free yourself from the less-than-welcome elements. Humane is pitching Ai Pin as a way to curb smartphone overuse by offering the same important functionality without the addictive apps that make you scroll compulsively. “An alcoholic is not dependent on the bottle, but on the contents,” says Christian Montag, chair of molecular psychology at the University of Ulm in Germany, by analogy. He says social media platforms in particular are often interested in intentionally extending screen time in order to show more ads or collect personal data. say. Experiments show that when you use your smartphone in grayscale mode, Reduce user retentionremoving the screen completely can have even more severe effects.
While this may seem counterintuitive to the tech industry’s ever-increasing appetite for new features and gadgets, it’s probably not as alien as it first seems. “Many people wear headphones all day long,” says Lindlbauer. “Therefore, it is entirely possible to move away from the temptation of scrolling through doom and move towards technology that allows us to access the digital world constantly, but unobtrusively.”
However, discussions about their broader applications are beginning to take place. For some, the future of this technology lies not in how it can be integrated into existing platforms, but in whether it can fundamentally change the way platforms are accessed. “There will be no need to use different apps for different tasks,” former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates said in an article. Blog post outlining his vision. “Simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do.” Then, leave it to your device to figure out what apps, platforms, and information it needs to complete the task you set.
This is an idea that will be put into preliminary practice in the next stage. R1. Developed by Rabbit, a Californian AI startup, the R1 is a handheld device that looks a bit like a portable gaming console and operates like a powerful voice assistant. However, it is designed to interact directly with an app on your phone on your behalf, rather than simply connecting to an AI chatbot that generates passive responses to your commands (like other wearable gadgets). Masu. The idea is that R1 acts as an all-in-one interface for your device, a kind of central app that can control everything else.
“We’re not building products for new use cases. We’re developing better, more intuitive ways to address existing use cases.” said Jesse Lyu, Chief Executive Officer of Rabbit. He describes the R1 as a “digital companion” that doesn’t replace your smartphone, but makes it easier to use.
The value of that approach will become clear when R1 launches later this year. However, similar experimental devices are expected to follow. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, is reportedly already in talks with former Apple chief designer Jony Ive to explore hardware ideas. And a group of startups and Silicon Valley powerhouses are now racing to develop the chips and processors these new devices will need to power their AI models.
Whatever form these AI devices end up taking, they will be hard to compete with the globally connected, highly capable, and intuitively controlled glass rectangles that are in most of our pockets. You’re going to have to work. However, as ubiquitous as smartphones seem, they too have an expiration date. “Smartphones have only been with us for about 15 years,” says Lindlbauer. “I don’t want to believe that smartphones are the pinnacle of technology or that we’ll ever use them the way we do now. [another] 15 years.”
Police officer in Rome, Italy gestures to tourists
Jochen Tack/imageBROKER/Alamy
Research shows that different nationalities seem to use hand gestures differently, supporting the idea that Italians in particular “talk with their hands.”
Maria Graziano and her colleagues Marianne Gullberg from Lund University in Sweden asked 12 people from Sweden and 12 from Italy to describe clips from children’s TV shows, such as Pingu, and examine their gestures.
“Italians gesture more,” Graziano said on a video call, using gestures to emphasize herself, which she attributed to her upbringing in Naples, Italy. In this study, Italians made an average of 22 gestures per 100 words, compared to 11 for Swedes.
But what’s more interesting, says Graziano, is the difference in the functionality of the gestures. Swedes primarily used “representational gestures” to describe events and actions in stories, while Italians also made more “practical gestures” that commented on the story or introduced new information, such as hand movements indicating new characters.
This suggests that the two cultures think differently about how stories are produced, Graziano says. Gestures can reflect what a culture values about the content and purpose of a story.
Barbara Tversky, a researcher at Stanford University in California, mentioned that the exact reason for these results is unclear, but the findings suggest that “cultural practices of understanding and explaining short episodes are driving this behavior.” Tversky suggests further research involving larger populations with a more diverse mix of nationalities.
Graziano is currently researching the gestures used in different types of discourse and the different relationships between speakers to further understand how different cultures use gestures to communicate and tell stories.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in humans, accounting for almost 13% of deaths worldwide. Global Health Observatory by the World Health Organization. Biological males (or those assigned male at birth) account for 56% of cancer-related deaths, while biological females (or those assigned female at birth) account for only 44%.
The researchers showed that these differences between biological sexes are not limited to mortality rates, but are also evident in cancer development, progression, and treatment. For example, in the United States, women have a higher risk of developing breast and thyroid cancers, while men are more likely to develop prostate, colon, and stomach cancers.
Doctors also found that women tend to have colorectal cancer more often on the right side of the body, while men tend to have colorectal cancer more often on the left side of the body. Doctors want to know how biological sex affects different aspects of cancer so they can develop treatments tailored to a patient’s gender.
A team of scientists from Adityunchanagiri Pharmaceutical University in Karnataka state, India recently reviewed research on the role of biological sex in cancer. They explained that because every cell in the human body is controlled by DNA, gender can influence cancer growth at the genetic, molecular, and hormonal levels. Every patient’s biological sex changes the types of hormones and enzymes they produce, as well as the way their bodies respond to and metabolize carcinogens.
Researchers have previously found that men and women have different immune responses to cancer and chemotherapy. Women tend to have stronger immune systems that respond more strongly to cancer than men. The researchers suggested that this discrepancy may explain why fewer women die from cancer.
They also looked at data from doctors treating cancer patients and showed that similar treatments for male and female patients with the same cancer diagnosis resulted in different levels of side effects. For example, female cancer patients experience higher levels of drug-induced toxicity, infection, nausea, and vomiting during treatment than male cancer patients. They found that some anti-cancer treatments can even cause women to develop diabetes.
The researchers concluded that cancer behaves differently in male and female patients. However, despite differences in immune responses and side effects, physicians are still unable to customize immunotherapy treatments for different patients based on their biological sex. They suggested that the typical “one size fits all” approach to cancer treatment could be better tailored to specific cancer patients.
They recommended that drug companies test how new drugs affect male and female cancer patients during clinical trials before the drugs are approved. They suggested that drug companies could use this data to better estimate how much medication male and female patients should take, or for how long. They proposed that treatments tailored to each patient’s biological sex could help doctors treat patients in a more efficient manner with minimal side effects.
On organic farms, conventional farming practices appear to inadvertently cause more pesticides to be used in surrounding fields
Daniel Balderas/Shutterstock
Organic farmers dedicate their working lives to producing food with minimal use of pesticides, but by curbing the use of chemicals on their land, they can unknowingly damage their neighbor’s fence. may be causing a sharp increase in pesticide use.
Ashley Larsen and colleagues from the University of California, Santa Barbara, evaluated land use and pesticide data across 14,000 fields in Kern County, California. It is one of the largest agricultural counties in the state, producing agricultural products such as almonds, grapes, carrots, and pistachios.
The researchers found that when organic farmland is surrounded by conventional agriculture, neighboring farmers appear to increase their use of pesticides, which is associated with a 10 percent increase in organic farmland. Total pesticide use in conventional fields increases by 0.3%. Most of that is due to increased use of pesticides, the researchers found.
This is because more insects, pests or not, are present on organic land and tend to ‘bleed-off’ onto adjacent conventional farmland, leading these farmers to increase their use of pesticides. It is considered. “Pests come and sow the seeds for new outbreaks. [farmers] We will increase the use of pesticides,” Larsen told reporters at a press conference. This effect appears to be strongest when the adjacent field is within 2.5 kilometers of the organic “focal field”.
Conversely, the researchers found that the presence of organic fields was associated with reduced pesticide use in adjacent organic fields, with a 10 percent increase in the area of surrounding organic fields reducing total pesticide use on organic fields by 3%. He pointed out that it is associated with a decrease in the percentage of organic focal field. This may be because larger areas of organic farmland allow for larger and more stable communities of beneficial insects.
Organic agriculture only covers about 2 percent of the world’s land, but in Kern County, about 5.5 percent of the farmed area is organic.
If organic farming occupies a high proportion of agricultural land, perhaps Researchers say that regardless of where organic fields are located, net pesticide use is reduced by more than 20 percent.
However, when relatively small areas of organic cropland are evenly distributed across the landscape, such as in Kern County, net pesticide use may actually be higher than if no organic cropland were present.
“Our simulations suggest that low levels of organic agriculture in the landscape may actually increase net pesticide use,” Larsen said.
However, she said this impact can be completely mitigated by clustering organic farmland to minimize potential pest spillover. “Basically, at the policy level, how do we encourage the spatial clustering of new organic fields to take advantage of the pest control benefits of organic and limit the potential costs of organic to conventional growers?” It might be worth considering.
This could include paying subsidies to farmers to convert more land to organic farming in certain areas, or even creating buffer zones between organic and non-organic land. be.
robert finger Switzerland’s ETH Zurich said the study results demonstrate the need for policymakers to consider land use policy at a “landscape scale” to maximize the environmental benefits of organic farming. “Fundamentally, it’s not enough to think about a single field or a single farm,” he says.
Because of global warming, you are already paying more and more for groceries. And rising temperatures will cause food prices to rise significantly over the next decade.
By 2035, rising temperatures alone are expected to increase global food prices by 0.9 to 3.2 percent each year, according to a study conducted in collaboration with the European Central Bank. This would increase the overall inflation rate by 0.3 to 1.2 percentage points.
“We are often shocked and surprised by the magnitude of these effects,” he says. Maximilian Kotz He mentioned discussions he had with economists during his research at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
To find out how this is affecting food prices, Kotz and his colleagues looked at monthly price data for a variety of goods and services for 121 countries from 1996 to 2021 and the exposure to which those countries were exposed. The weather conditions were compared.
Researchers looked at the correlation between food prices and factors such as average monthly temperatures, temperature fluctuations, droughts and extreme rainfall. They found a strong association between average temperature and food prices a month or so later.
Areas north of 40 degrees latitude, such as New York City, Madrid, and Beijing, experienced warmer-than-average winter temperatures, leading to lower food prices. But not just in the summer, temperatures in other parts of the world have always been above average, causing food prices to rise.
Moreover, the impact on prices is long-lasting. “If prices go up based on one of these shocks, they stay high for at least the rest of the period,” Kotz says.
The study didn't look at why prices have increased, but one possible explanation is that extreme heat is reducing yields, he said. “The vines may be dry when the crop should be harvested.”
Kotz said factors such as extreme rainfall had a smaller impact on food prices than average temperatures. This may be because flooding tends to be localized, whereas above-average temperatures can be very widespread.
Other studies have reached similar conclusions, Kotz said. But his team went a step further and investigated how food prices would change based on increases in average temperatures in climate model projections. Under the team's worst-case emissions scenario, global food inflation due to climate change will exceed 4% per year by 2060. However, the team believes the 2035 prediction is more reliable, as many other factors could have changed by then.
“There are a lot of things that could happen that will change the way the economy responds to climate change,” Kotz said. For example, inflationary pressures would be reduced if farmers adapted their practices to better cope with rising temperatures. But so far, he says, there is no sign that farmers are adapting.
“I think these are realistic predictions. They are based on solid empirical evidence.” Matin Kaim At the University of Bonn, Germany. “We need to recognize the fact that climate change poses new and major challenges to food and nutrition security.”
Like the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, the European Central Bank aims to: keep inflation around 2%. Rising food inflation will make achieving this goal even more difficult, Kotz said.
The European Parliament has approved the EU’s proposed AI law, marking a significant step in regulating the technology. The next step is formal approval by EU member states’ ministers.
The law will be in effect for three years, addressing consumer concerns about AI technology.
Guillaume Cournesson, a partner at law firm Linklaters, emphasized the importance of users being able to trust vetted and safe AI tools they have access to, similar to trust in secure banking apps.
The bill’s impact extends beyond the EU as it sets a standard for global AI regulation, similar to the GDPR’s influence on data management.
The bill’s definition of AI includes machine-based systems with varying autonomy levels, such as ChatGPT tools, and emphasizes post-deployment adaptability.
Certain risky AI systems are prohibited, including those manipulating individuals or using biometric data for discriminatory purposes. Law enforcement exceptions allow for facial recognition use in certain situations.
High-risk AI systems in critical sectors will be closely monitored, ensuring accuracy, human oversight, and explanation for decisions affecting EU citizens.
Generative AI systems are subject to copyright laws and must comply with reporting requirements for incidents and adversarial testing.
Deepfakes must be disclosed as human-generated or manipulated, with appropriate labeling for public understanding.
AI and tech companies have varied reactions to the bill, with concerns about limits on computing power and potential impacts on innovation and competition.
Penalties under the law range from fines for false information provision to hefty fines for breaching transparency obligations or developing prohibited AI tools.
The law’s enforcement timeline and establishment of a European AI Office will ensure compliance and regulation of AI technologies.
A groundbreaking study by the Institute for Work think tank has revealed that exposure to new technologies like trackers, robots, and AI-based software in the workplace has a negative impact on people’s quality of life.
Conducted through a survey of over 6,000 individuals, the study focused on the health impacts of four categories of technologies that are increasingly prevalent in various industries.
The research found that increased exposure to technology in areas such as AI, machine learning-based software, surveillance devices like wearable trackers, and robotics had a detrimental effect on the health and well-being of workers.
On the other hand, the use of established information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as laptops, tablets, and instant messaging at work had a more positive impact on well-being.
The report highlighted that frequent interactions with ICT improved quality of life, while interactions with new technologies in the workplace had the opposite effect.
Economists at Goldman Sachs estimated that by 2030, 300 million jobs worldwide could be automated, with many roles being fundamentally transformed due to developments in generative AI.
Lead author Dr. Magdalena Sofia emphasized that the issue lies not in the technology itself, but in how it is implemented and utilized.
The report also raised concerns about the negative impact of tracking devices and surveillance technology on worker performance, echoing warnings from unions and activists.
Mary Towers, head of AI at TUC, cautioned that without proper regulation, AI could create an oppressive work environment for many individuals.
On the other hand, the Pissarides review on the future of work and happiness, in collaboration with Warwick Business School and Imperial College London, aims to shed light on the impact of new technologies on quality of life in the workplace.
Professor Christopher Pissarides emphasized the importance of understanding how interactions with new technologies influence the overall well-being of individuals in their working lives.
A new technique that dyes denim using chemicals that turn blue in sunlight could reduce the environmental impact of jeans production.
Blue denim is dyed with indigo. Indigo is a compound that was once extracted from plants, but is now usually synthesized. Harmful chemicals such as sodium dithionite are required to dissolve indigo in water so that it can be used for dyeing. These chemicals produce toxic fumes that can harm the health of textile workers and can also cause toxic pollution of wastewater.
now, Ditte Hededam Werner Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have instead developed a new process that uses a natural precursor of indigo called indican.
“Indican is also a natural product, so it's not artificial or weird,” says Hededam-Werner. “But the good thing about this is that it's soluble, so you can basically just soak the fabric, which you can't do with indigo. So many harsh chemicals simply This made it a very attractive solution to this problem because it could be omitted.”
However, there is one important drawback. Indican is colorless, so the compound must be converted to indigo after being applied to the material. One way to do this is to leave it in the sun for a few hours.
“I don't know if consumers like it or not, but if you wear Indian-soaked jeans in the sun, they turn blue over time,” says Hededam-Werner. “You think it's a gimmick, don't you? You can do it.”
The research team has discovered two methods that can provide the faster, more reproducible results required by modern manufacturing. One method uses plant enzymes and the other uses electric light.
Using light is a simpler process that reduces the environmental impact of dyeing by 73% compared to using indigo. European Commission indicators It takes into account carbon emissions, land use, water consumption, and ozone layer depletion. Using enzymes led to even greater reductions of 92%.
Hededam-Werner said that with further research, the process could become cheaper and more efficient, but major obstacles still stand in the way, not least of which is the production of the 4 billion pairs needed. The aim is to establish a supply chain for 80,000 tons of Indican. Number of jeans manufactured each year.
Elton John to perform at Glastonbury Festival in June 2023
Matt Crossic/Alamy
Hearing live music can be more moving than listening to a recording of the same song. This is because the parts of the brain associated with emotional processing become more active.
Sasha Frewholz from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, composed 12 pieces of music, each 30 seconds long. Half were written with the purpose of conveying negative emotions such as sadness or anger. These are slower than the rest of the songs, are less harmonious, contain more minor chords, and were written to evoke positive emotions.
They then recruited 27 people with no musical training and asked them to listen to these 12 songs twice. The first performance was performed by a live pianist, and the second performance was played to the participants as a recording.
The order of hearing was randomly assigned, with 30 seconds of silence in between. Participants did not know when they were listening to a recording or a live performance.
While listening to music, they lay in an MRI scanner so the team could monitor their brain activity. The pianist was told to adjust the volume and speed of the piece according to this activity. For example, if participants showed little activity in response to positive music, they may have played louder.
“Recorded music does not adapt to the listener's response, but live pianists often adapt their music to the audience to get the best response from the audience,” says Frewholz.
The researchers found that live performances of both negative and positive pieces consistently caused brain activation in the left amygdala, an area of the brain strongly associated with assigning sensory stimuli such as sounds to specific emotions. was found to lead to an increase in
The recorded songs, on the other hand, activated activity in the left amygdala much less and more inconsistently. This matched how emotionally participants rated each piece of music after the experiment.
The findings show that live music enhances our emotional responses, perhaps because of its free-flowing, dynamic nature, Fruhholz says.
The researchers hope to repeat the experiment with a larger audience in a concert setting. “When you go to a live concert, you're not alone,” Fruhholz says. “This intense emotional experience is also a social experience.”
Mary Buckingham shares, “There’s a long-standing pioneer tradition, tracing back to the early days of settling the American West, where people freely shared bread starter with those who asked.”
Things were going smoothly until the arrival of TikTok.
Mr. Buckingham, a retired meteorologist from Greeley, Colorado, along with a small group of bread enthusiasts, have been sending out sourdough starter samples to individuals who send stamped envelopes for baking their own bread. As a demonstration of that generous tradition, we are offering you free shipping.
But this isn’t just any ordinary starter. The natural yeast and bacteria cultures in this mixture have been carefully nurtured and kept alive since 1847 when a pioneer family travelled from Missouri to Oregon in a covered wagon and settled there. The tradition has been handed down through generations.
For years, the 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter was known only to a select few.until Viral TikTok videos changed everything after an article posted last month.
Mary Buckingham currently records one of the many letters she receives at her Greeley, Colorado home. Photo: Andy Cross/Media News Group/Denver Post/Getty Images/DP
“It’s absolutely crazy,” Buckingham remarked. While they used to receive 30 to 60 requests per week for samples, this year they have already received 7,000. They are struggling to keep up. I enlisted my sister’s help for this task, but it’s just the two of us handling it.
She used to dedicate two to three hours a week to respond to requests, but no more. “I’m now spending all day, every day, every weekend, eight to 10 hours a day,” she said. “It’s really overwhelming. I haven’t taken a day off since this began.”
Sourdough, a naturally fermented mix of flour and water, has been used for centuries to make leavened bread before commercial yeast was introduced. While highly valued by many bread makers, careful upkeep is required to sustain the culture, which can potentially live indefinitely.
The origin of the 1847 starter can be traced back to Carl Griffith. Born in 1919, an Oregon attorney and U.S. Air Force veteran from World War II, he had been baking bread from the same sourdough batch since he was 10 years old. He later documentedthat his family inherited it from his great-grandfather’s family, Dr. John Savage, who settled in the western part of the state in 1847.
“We’re unsure where or when it originally originated from in the wild, as commercial bread starters weren’t available back then, but we’ve encountered many wild yeasts since then. Personally, I love it,” he noted.
Griffith gladly shared dried samples of his dough with anyone who asked, connecting with an online community of sourdough enthusiasts in the early days of the internet. When he passed away in 2000, his widow and the others decided to continue the tradition.
Mary Buckingham collects the most recent batch of letters at the Greeley post office. Photo: Andy Cross/Media News Group/Denver Post/Getty Images/DP
Although most members never met Griffith, they referred to themselves as “Carl’s Friends.”
“It was a good start, and the founders thought, ‘It’d be a shame to let this disappear.’ So, we established a small society,” Buckingham explained.
While she typically handles request sorting, another member in WA nurtures and dries the starter. Given the number of people who forget to include stamps, it’s more work than expected. With the surge in demand, “It has to diminish quickly,” meaning she’ll also jump in.
After expanding enough to cover eight Swiss rolls cans thinly, “the dough is tacky and stretchy, making it hard to fit into the cans,” then left in a warm and dry area. After two to four days, the mix is blended, tested, portioned into small bags, and packed into the incoming envelopes by the thousands.
“A robust, enduring, palatable, consistent starter is highly prized and always has been,” shared Mr. Buckingham, a bread baker since the 1960s when his mother showed him at age 11. Carl’s starter is “a solid, robust starter” that ferments beautifully without yeast.
Has it genuinely lived for 177 years? While it’s impossible to confirm, Buckingham remarks, “That’s how bread was made in the old days.”
Why does she continue despite the time commitment? “I think it’s a kind of passion. It’s heartening to see so many young people taking an interest in it. I hope they carry it forward.”
Sourdough is “like a little pet that you have to feed and keep alive. And if you don’t, it will perish. After a while, you might feel, ‘Oh, that’s too much work. It’s easier to buy bread locally.'”
Tyler Perry has put an $800m (£630m) expansion of his Atlanta studio complex on hold after the release of OpenAI’s video generator Sora, citing concerns that “many jobs” in the film industry could be replaced by artificial intelligence.
The American film and television mogul had planned to add 12 soundstages to his studio, but he indefinitely paused those plans after witnessing a demonstration of Sora and its “shocking” capabilities. He stated that the expansion had been canceled.
“Due to what Sora and I are seeing, all of that is currently and indefinitely on hold,” Perry said in a statement in an interview with Hollywood Reporter. “I’ve been hearing about this for about a year now, but I didn’t know until I saw a demonstration of how it would work recently. It’s mind-blowing to me.”
The AI tool, Sora, was launched on February 15 and caused widespread concern with its ability to create one minute of realistic footage from a simple text prompt.
Perry, known for films such as the Madea series, mentioned that Sora’s capabilities eliminate the need for real-world locations or physical sets. He described it as a shocking development.
A demo published by OpenAI showcases Sora’s ability to generate photorealistic scenes in response to text prompts, including a “beautiful snowy Tokyo city, with gorgeous cherry blossom petals flying in the wind along with snowflakes.”
Tweet content with link to video demonstration.
Perry expressed concerns about the potential job impact across the film industry, including actors, editors, sound specialists, and transport crews.
He stated, “I’m very concerned that there will be a lot of job losses in the near future. I really, really feel that.”
Perry mentioned a direct example of construction crews and contractors refusing to work on a planned studio expansion due to the belief that it was unnecessary. He also noted that he had used AI in two recent films to age his face and avoid lengthy makeup sessions.
Concerns about the impact of AI on jobs have been a focal point of recent Hollywood strikes, and peace agreements that ended these conflicts include provisions against the use of the technology.
However, Perry emphasized the need for a “whole-of-industry” approach to protect jobs, stating, “I think everyone needs to be involved.”
a
The following week, there was another clash between Apple and European regulators. According to the Financial Times, the company could face a huge fine for alleged anti-competitive conduct in its music streaming business. from that story:
The fine, estimated at around 500 million euros, is expected to be announced early next month and will be exclusive to the European Commission, which is investigating whether Apple used its own platform to favor its own services over those of competitors. This will be the culmination of research into prohibition laws.
The investigation is looking into whether Apple blocked apps from informing iPhone users of cheaper alternatives to access music subscriptions outside the App Store.
The process dates back to a complaint filed by Spotify in 2019. From what we said at the time:
Apple’s app the Store is a key distribution platform for Spotify. However, Apple receives a 30% commission on all sales made through this site. Spotify and many other third-party app developers have long complained that the store (which includes music streaming subscriptions) is an unfair “tax.”
“Apple requires Spotify and other digital services to pay a 30% tax on purchases made through Apple’s payment system, including upgrades from free to premium services.” Said Daniel Ekco-founder of Spotify, chief executive officer in a blog post.
“If we pay this tax, we will be forced to artificially inflate the price of premium membership far above the regular price.” Apple Music. And keeping prices competitive for our customers is beyond our control. ”
For more information on the fine itself, Dan Milmo explains.
In the years since then, complaints have diminished somewhat. Apple declined to respond directly to the FT’s report, saying it does not comment on speculation, but pointed to the European Commission’s decision last year to exclude the “tax” aspect from an investigation launched by Spotify. ‘s complaint. The revised counter statement states that the main harm is no longer the 30% fee levied by apps that use in-app purchases or the requirement to offer them in the first place, but simply the fact that other payment options exist for users. It was forbidden to communicate.
“We are pleased that the European Commission has narrowed the issue and no longer challenges Apple’s right to collect fees on digital goods and require the use of in-app payment systems that users trust,” Apple said in a statement. Ta. time.
These so-called “anti-steering” rules have been tested by regulators around the world, and various jurisdictions have placed formal limits on Apple’s ability to impose them. But these restrictions rarely go as far as competitors like Spotify would like. Because Apple is letting out a sharp gasp. If forced to do so, companies could direct users to alternative payment methods and still charge fees. In some cases, that new fee accounted for 27% of costs, and his 3% reduction in in-app purchase fees was justified on the basis that it reflected the fact that Apple was not paying directly for credit card processing. I am.
“We are currently negotiating the price.”
Spotify on Apple Watch. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Assuming the fine is imposed as expected, Apple is unlikely to be too disappointed. The Digital Markets Act, which Apple and other “tech gatekeepers” must comply with by March 6, has already forced changes to the App Store that will put Apple Music in unfair competition with Spotify. The Competition Commission’s concerns will almost certainly be corrected. As for the cash itself, “500 million isn’t a laughable amount, even for a company as big as Apple, but it’s a fraction of the maximum potential, and it’s a fraction of the company’s total.” An even smaller amount’ of annual profit.
In fact, it’s possible that Apple will avoid fines with dignity. The company hammers home one of its core points every time it is hit by regulatory action that leaves room for compromises, such as imposing a 27% fee on outside purchases. That is, the real criticism is not about the lofty points. Basically, it’s a simple haggling over fees. If complaints about Apple’s control of the App Store boil down to “I want to pay less,” that would be an easier fight than one that would force Apple to actually relinquish control of the platform.
Some critics make deeper claims. Spotify, for example, has long complained about more detailed aspects of Apple’s platform, from the fact that Apple Music is installed by default on its devices to the way platform owners break their own rules about free. I’ve been holding you. Trials (Apple can independently offer trials that end the moment they are canceled; all third parties must provide access until just before the first billing deadline).
For others, the gist of the principle is poor in reality. Epic Games famously introduced a unique payment process for Fortnite, which resulted in Apple pulling the game from the App Store. The company already pays hefty cuts to operate its gaming consoles and operates its own app store for PCs. Issues with Apple have always been viewed through the lens of how much Apple pays.
Perhaps this is why Epic is also the longtime Apple critic most eager to enter the world of an EU-mandated alternative App Store. You may remember the debate over whether the company’s proposals amounted to “garbage” or meaningful concessions. Well, three weeks have passed, Epic Games announces the launch of Epic Games Store for iOS.
This is a bold move. The company will immediately pay him 0.50 euros for every download on the store, and an additional 0.50 euros for every download of Fortnite via the store after his first 1 million. But compared to keeping it on the App Store, per user he should be able to get that amount back in one “Battle Pass” purchase. And to the company’s credit, it clearly believes the principles exist. At risk.
Cash is also constantly flushed in case it takes longer to break even. The company, which is run by founder and CEO Tim Sweeney and has a 40% minority stake held by China’s Tencent, announced earlier this month that it will become the world’s leading company in the world of gaming and entertainment. The collaboration required a $1.5 billion investment from Disney. Disney is a long-time ally of Apple, and its CEO was on Apple’s board of directors until 2019, but competition between Apple TV+ and Disney+ made that unsustainable. . We haven’t seen the beginnings of a messy breakup yet, but perhaps even the House of Mouse will want to pay a smaller share of the world’s most valuable company.
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FOr James, it started with muscles. He was about 16 years old, he was confident in his body shape and worried that he wasn't strong enough to attract girls. He went to bodybuilding forums and started doing his workouts. I don't remember when it happened, but at some point trolls started invading the forums. They were visitors from different online communities with different focuses.
“Their whole vibe was pretty mean,” says James, who did not want to give his real name. “They would take pictures of their great physiques that people posted and say, 'You guys forgot to work out your face!'”
Despite the meanness, James was flooded with curiosity on forums primarily focused on facial aesthetics. He discovers a new world, primarily a young man and his teenage boys, scouring each other's photos for possible flaws and fixes.
The forum was filled with brutal judgments, providing James with a compelling new outlet for his anxiety. “I was learning about issues I wasn't even aware of,” he says. “I had a short face, a short chin, a nose that was too wide, eyes that were too far apart, and a hairline that was too high. A lot of these things you don't notice until someone points them out to you.” I can't stop seeing you. ”
James was hooked on LooksMaxThing, an online community for people who want to beautify their faces. He began learning strange codes that members use to compare their features. Eye angle (eye angle). Meow meow (a tongue movement that is said to improve the shape of the jaw). “The ultimate goal is to improve SMV,” he says. In other words, sexual market value.
Kareem Shami promotes non-surgical soft maxing (2020) (left) And in 2023.
Looksmaxxing has been around for at least a decade, but in recent months it has exploded from obscure forums and Reddit pages to mainstream social media, especially TikTok. An incredibly chiseled chin, pouty lips, and cheekbones as high as the Egyptian pyramids are complemented by “hunter” eyes (slanted slightly downward toward the nose, meaning the corners of the eyes are positively slanted). It is highly prized along with other people.
I felt like an outcast and it triggered something in me.
“The majority of the groups we work with are now LookMax conscious,” says Mike Nicholson, a former teacher who runs a workshop program in schools called Progressive Masculinity. says. The day after a report by researchers from University College London and the University of Kent found that TikTok's algorithm amplified misogynistic content and helped normalize it on playgrounds, he talking to. (In response, TikTok said it removed the misogynistic content it had banned and questioned the report's methodology.)
“We approach this issue from a very sympathetic perspective,” Nicholson added. “But the world that these young people and boys live in is a world that is increasing their insecurities and leading them down this path that can lead to 'incel' ideology if they are not careful. –
James, who is in his 20s and works in finance in the UK, started participating in forums around 2015, when they were still niche. He started “Soft Max Thing,” which is tweaking hair styling, skin care regimens, diet, exercise regimens, and more. But as the site held up an increasingly harsh mirror, he began exploring a more extreme fix known as “hardmaxing.”
To find out more, they asked 253 Chinese and 270 British people (about an equal number of men and women) aged 18 to 84 to take part in an online survey.
Researchers selected 24 emojis to represent one of six emotions: happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, and anger based on the suggestions that appeared when you typed the word. There are four emojis for each emotion, representing different designs used by Apple, Windows, Android, and WeChat.
Each participant then assigned an emoji to the emotion they thought best matched.
Women were more likely than men to match emojis to the same emotions selected by researchers. The researchers say women may be better at recognizing facial expressions, perhaps because they make more eye contact.
Younger participants also matched emojis better than older participants, probably because they used them more frequently.
On the other hand, British participants agreed better with emojis than Chinese participants, although this may be because the latter group uses emojis differently. “For example, it has been suggested that: [people in China] According to the researchers, people rarely use the happy emoji to express happiness, but instead use it in negative connotations, such as sarcasm.
“When you send someone a message that includes emojis, you can't just assume that they see the emojis the same way you see them,” says Fillick.
Isabel Butet Researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada say matching 24 emojis to six emotions is extremely restrictive. Nevertheless, “assigning emojis specific emotional labels is problematic when you don't know how they will be interpreted in various online communities,” she says. “For example, it would never have been considered to use eggplant as an allusion if that meaning had not developed in a particular community.”
T
The impact of artificial intelligence on creative industries is a topic that has sparked widespread fears of job losses and the death of imagination, and the world of fashion is no exception.
But this month’s London Fashion Week, which marks the event’s 40th anniversary, will feature a slew of AI-generated costumes, with industry insiders saying the technology is helping to make the journey from improving diversity to shortening the path to the design desk. He is expressing increasing optimism about what the field can do. Go to the sales floor.
President of London College of Fashion innovation agency
Matthew Drinkwater believes AI will prove to be an “incredibly useful tool” for the creative process and the industry as a whole.
“It’s opened the door to a non-traditional path into the fashion industry for people who wouldn’t have been able to get into it before, because let’s be honest, this industry is pretty elitist and very This is because there may be a perception that the industry is exclusive and expensive.
“But thanks to these tools, people from completely different backgrounds are starting to gain a foothold in the industry. And to me, that feels really fresh and exciting,” he said.
Brands such as Heriot Emil, Zara and H&M are already using AI to manage their supply chains, promoting sustainability by reducing overstock and waste. Many brands are also leveraging AI to aid the design process, visualizing different materials and patterns using garment images generated from input prompts. This allows designers to make informed decisions before the garment is physically produced.
consulting company McKinsey predicted
Last year, generative AI (a term used to describe technology that can generate compelling images, text, and audio from simple human prompts) drove the domestic fashion and luxury sector’s operating profits from $150 billion to $275 billion ($120 billion). It has been announced that this could increase from £220 billion to £220 billion. Next 3-5 years. It is predicted that the use of AI to predict future fashion trends and the realization of virtual try-on will be just around the corner.
Drinkwater has been working with his team to consider how AI can change the industry, and has been testing generative AI’s ability to create clothing for years. “We were trying to scrape websites and get a lot of data so we could create a dress from over 40,000 images. It was actually quite a task to do this four years ago. But now they open up their laptops, or even their smartphones, and start generating images very quickly,” Drinkwater said.
A collaboration between VFX and AI artist Atara and London College of Fashion’s Fashion Innovation Agency will take place in March 2023.
“So typically we take things that are probably three to five years away from commercialization and start showing research projects about where the future of the industry could move,” he added.
Last April, Cyrille Foiret’s generative AI studio, Maison Meta, hosted the first AI Fashion Week in New York. This included a competition for aspiring designers to create a fashion line using AI. Winners were able to physically manufacture their collections for sale online at retailer Revolve. As in other industries, AI has become associated with layoffs, with critics arguing that creative artistry could be lost. But Foiret insists there is little need to fear.
“AI is a very powerful tool to amplify creativity. People who think it will reduce their jobs should not think that way. We just need to get used to the tool, but it is just a tool.” , and it’s useless if there’s no one behind it,” he said.
Arti Zeighami, former chief data and analytics officer at H&M and now senior AI advisor at consulting firm BCG, agrees that AI can be used as a force for good in the fashion world. “Being transparent about AI can help people feel less fearful and more secure and in control. What’s important is a change in human thinking,” he said.
“AI will evolve as a technology, and we need to evolve with it, but we’re not at the Terminator stage, at least not yet.”
Mary Towers, head of AI at the TUC, said AI could be a useful support for creative sector workers, but it should not be taken over to replace human creativity. .
“We need new legislation to ensure that all workers in the arts, including fashion, are consulted and properly compensated when their work or intellectual property is used by AI.” she stated.
“In the UK, we have already seen performers having their images, voices or likenesses replicated by AI technology without their consent. We cannot afford for this to become the norm in other industries. , new regulations are urgently needed to protect worker creativity and copyright.”
Studies have shown that although climate change is not expected to increase the number of hurricanes, rising ocean temperatures will make hurricanes more intense. Warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to heavier rainfall and flooding from these storms.
Therefore, as long as global warming continues, we can expect more intense storms on Earth.
Researchers found that from 1980 to 2021, five storms in the past nine years had maximum wind speeds exceeding 192 miles per hour, which could have been classified as Category 6 storms. Their study also used models to explore how different climate scenarios could affect hurricanes and other large storms around the world. They found that if the Earth warmed by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the risk of Category 6 storms could double in the Gulf of Mexico and in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
The researchers also highlighted that even the relatively low global warming target of the Paris Agreement, aiming to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, could significantly increase the likelihood of Category 6 storms.
These findings will continue the debate about how to better communicate the threat of extreme weather events and how climate change increases that threat. For example, scientists pointed out that the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale cannot convey some of the most destructive aspects of hurricanes, such as storm surge, rainfall, and flooding. Adding a sixth category to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale may raise awareness of the increased risk of major hurricanes due to global warming. The National Hurricane Center has also announced new experimental forecasts to better communicate the risk of inland winds during extreme weather events.
“circleWhat would happen to your hat if I told you that one of the most powerful choices you can make is to ask for help? '' a young woman in her 20s wearing a red sweater says before encouraging viewers to seek counseling. The ad, promoted on Instagram and other social media platforms, is just one of many campaigns created by BetterHelp, a California-based company that connects users with their therapists online.
In recent years, the need for sophisticated digital therapies to replace traditional face-to-face therapies has been well established.when I go to the street Latest data The NHS Talking Therapy Service saw 1.76 million people referred for treatment in 2022-23, with 1.22 million people actually starting to engage directly with a therapist.
Companies like BetterHelp hope to address some of the barriers that prevent people from receiving therapy, such as a lack of locally trained practitioners and a lack of empathetic therapists. Many of these platforms also have worrying aspects. That is, what happens to the large amounts of highly sensitive data collected in the process? The UK is currently considering regulating these apps, and there is growing awareness of their potential harm.
Last year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission told BetterHelp $7.8m (£6.1m) fine After a government agency was found to have misled consumers and shared sensitive data with third parties for advertising purposes despite promising to keep it private. A BetterHelp representative did not respond to BetterHelp's request for comment. observer.
The number of people seeking mental health help online has increased rapidly during the pandemic. Photo: Alberto Case/Getty Images
Research shows that such privacy violations are not isolated exceptions within the vast industry of mental health apps, which include virtual therapy services, mood trackers, mental fitness coaches, digitized cognitive behavioral therapy, chatbots, and more. , has been suggested to be too common.
independent watchdogs such as Mozilla Foundation, a global nonprofit organization working to police the Internet from bad actors, has identified platforms that exploit opaque regulatory gray areas to share or sell sensitive personal information. did. When the foundation looked at 32 leading mental health apps; Last year's reportWe found that 19 of them did not protect user privacy and security. “We found that too often your personal and private mental health issues were being monetized.” Jen CultriderHe leads Mozilla's consumer privacy advocacy efforts.
Mr. Cult Rider, in the United States, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects communications between doctors and patients. However, she says many users are unaware that there are loopholes that digital platforms can exploit to circumvent HIPAA. “You may not be talking to a licensed psychologist, you may be just talking to a trained coach, and none of those conversations are protected under medical privacy laws,” she says. “But metadata about that conversation, the fact that you're using the app for OCD or an eating disorder, could also be used and shared for advertising and marketing purposes. They don't necessarily want to be collected and used to target products to them.”
Like many others studying this rapidly growing industry, the digital mental health apps market is predicted to be valuable. $17.5bn (£13.8bn) by 2030 – Caltrider feels that increased regulation and oversight of many of these platforms, which target particularly vulnerable segments of the population, is long overdue.
“The number of these apps has exploded during the pandemic. When we started our research, we realized how many companies are capitalizing on the gold rush of mental health issues rather than helping people. “It was really disappointing because it seemed like there was a lot of emphasis on that,” she says. “Like many things in the tech industry, the tech industry has grown rapidly and for some, privacy has taken a backseat. We felt that maybe things weren't going to work out, but we What they found was much worse than expected.”
Promotion of regulations
Last year, UK regulators Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence (Nice) will explore the best way to regulate digital mental health tools in the UK and collaborate with international partners on a three-year project funded by the charity Wellcome. project has started. Help foster consensus on digital mental health regulation around the world.
Holly Cool, MHRA's senior manager for digital mental health, explains that while data privacy is important, the main focus of the project is to reach agreement on minimum standards of safety for these tools. . “We are more focused on the efficacy and safety of these products. It is our duty as regulators to ensure that patient safety is paramount in devices that are classified as medical devices. ,” she says.
At the same time, leaders in the mental health field are beginning to call for strict international guidelines to assess whether tools truly have a therapeutic effect. “Actually, I'm very excited and hopeful about this field, but we need to understand what good looks like for digital therapeutics.” Neuroscientist and former U.S. director says Dr. Thomas Insel. National Institute of Mental Health.
Psychiatric experts acknowledge that while new mood-boosting tools, trackers and self-help apps have become wildly popular over the past decade, there has been little hard evidence that they actually help.
“I think the biggest risk is that many apps waste people's time and may delay getting effective treatment,” said Harvard Medical School Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. says Dr. John Taurus, director of digital psychiatry at .
Currently, companies with enough marketing capital can easily bring their apps to market without having to demonstrate that their apps will maintain user interest or add any value, he said. It is possible to participate. In particular, Taurus criticizes the poor quality of many purported pilot studies, with very low standards for app efficacy and results that are virtually meaningless.He gives the following example 1 trial in 2022This paper compared a stopwatch (a “fake” app with a digital clock) to an app that provides cognitive behavioral therapy to schizophrenic patients experiencing an acute psychotic episode. “When we look at research, we often liken our apps to looking at a wall or a waiting list,” he says. “But anything is better than nothing.”
Vulnerable user operations
But the most concerning question is whether some apps may actually perpetuate harm and worsen the symptoms of the patients they are meant to help.
Two years ago, U.S. healthcare giants Kaiser Permanente and Health Partners I decided to find out Effectiveness of new digital mental health tools. It was based on a psychological approach known as dialectical behavior therapy, which includes practices such as emotional mindfulness and steady breathing, and was expected to help prevent suicidal behavior in at-risk patients.
Over a 12-month period, 19,000 patients who reported frequent suicidal thoughts were randomly divided into three groups. A control group received standard care, a second group received usual care plus regular outreach to assess suicide risk, and a third group received digital tools in addition to care. It was done. However, when he evaluated the results, he found that he actually performed worse in the third group. Using this tool appears to significantly increase the risk of self-harm compared to just receiving usual care.
“They thought they were doing a good thing, but it made people even worse, so that was very alarming,” Taurus says.
Some of the biggest concerns relate to AI chatbots, many of which are touted as safe spaces for people to discuss mental health and emotional struggles. But Kaltrider worries that without better monitoring of the responses and advice provided by these bots, these algorithms could be manipulating vulnerable people. “With these chatbots, you can create something that lonely people can potentially relate to, so the possibilities for manipulation are endless,” she says. “This algorithm could be used to force that person to buy expensive things or force them to commit violence.”
These concerns are not unfounded. A user of the popular chatbot Replika shared this on Reddit. screenshot The content of the conversation appears to be such that the bot is actively encouraging his suicide attempt.
Telephone therapy: But how secure is your sensitive personal data? Photo: Getty Images
In response, a Replika spokesperson said: observer: “Replika continuously monitors the media and social media and spends a lot of time talking directly with users to find ways to address concerns and fix issues within the product. Provided. The interface in the screenshot above is at least 8 months old and may date back to 2021. There have been over 100 updates since 2021, and 23 in the last year alone.”
Because of these safety concerns, the MHRA believes that so-called post-market surveillance will be important for mental health apps, just as it is for medicines and vaccines. Kuhl points out that Yellow card reporting site, is used in the UK to report side effects and defects in medical products, and could in the future allow users to report adverse experiences with certain apps. “The public and health professionals can be very helpful in providing vital information to the MHRA about adverse events using yellow cards,” she says.
But at the same time, experts say that if properly regulated, mental health apps could improve access to care, collect useful data to help make accurate diagnoses, and fill gaps left by over-medicalization. I still strongly believe that I can play a big role in the future. system.
“What we have today is not great,” Insel says. “Mental health care, as we have known it for the past 20 to 30 years, is clearly an area ripe for change and in need of some transformation. Perhaps regulation will come in the second or third act, and we need it, but there are many other things, from better evidence to interventions for people with more severe mental illnesses. That is necessary.”
Torous believes the first step is to be more transparent about how an app's business model works and the underlying technology. “Otherwise, the only way a company can differentiate is through marketing claims,” he says. “If you can't prove that you're better or safer, all you can do is market it because there's no real way to verify or trust that claim.” The thing is, huge amounts of money are being spent on marketing, which is starting to erode clinician and patient trust. You can only make so many promises before people become skeptical. you can't.”
I
Researching the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work, Hilke Shellman
She thought it would be a good idea to try some tools. Among them was a system called a one-way video interview system aimed at supporting recruitment. my interview.
She got a login from her company and started her experiment. She first chooses the questions she asks as a hiring manager, then video records her answers as a candidate, and then her proprietary software records the words she used and the intonation of her voice. was analyzed. She scores how suitable she is for the job.
She was delighted to have an 83% match rate for the role. But when she redid her interview in German, which is her native language, instead of English, she received an error message and instead she received the appropriate score (73%). I was surprised that it did. And she wasn’t even trying to answer the question this time. But read the Wikipedia entry. The record the tool made up of her German was gibberish.When her company showed her their tools Already knew
Since she didn’t speak English, she was graded mainly on intonation, but we used a robot voice generator to read her English answers. Here again she recorded her high score (79%) and Shellman gave her a headache.
“If simple tests show that these tools may not work, then we need to seriously consider whether we should be using them in recruiting,” said Shellman, an assistant professor of journalism at New York University and an investigative reporter. “There is,” he says.
The experiment, which was conducted in 2021, is described in Schellman’s new book, algorithm.
Explore how AI and complex algorithms are increasingly being used to help hire and then monitor and evaluate employees, including firing and promoting them. Mr. Shellman previously guardian
In addition to experimenting with the tools, we also talk about this topic with experts who have researched the tools and experts who are on the receiving end of the tools.
This tool is attractive to employers because it aims to reduce the time and cost of filtering through large numbers of job applications and increase workplace efficiency. But Shellman concludes that they do more harm than good. Many hiring tools are not only based on troubling pseudoscience (for example, the idea that your voice intonation can predict your success on the job doesn’t hold true, Shellman says), but they also have the potential to discriminate. There is also.
Mapping how interactions between different organs change during pregnancy could help us better understand conditions such as pre-eclampsia.
Tetra Images, LLC / Alamy
Scientists have mapped for the first time the metabolic changes that different parts of a primate's body undergo during pregnancy. The results suggest that pregnancy-related conditions such as preeclampsia and gestational diabetes may be due to “rewiring” errors when these changes occur.
Outside of pregnancy, different body systems normally “supply” each other with molecular nutrients, known as metabolites, in relatively equal exchange.
However, during pregnancy, major changes occur in tissues throughout the body. for example, Heart pumps up to 40% more. However, the thymus gland, which is involved in the immune system, “shrinks very quickly” to prevent rejection of the fetus. See Chan Ng at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
After studying Effects of metabolites on stem cells, Ng was curious about the role they play during pregnancy. During this period, “a lot of things are growing and regenerating…It's something you only see in comic books and superhero movies where people transform,” he says.
To learn more, Ng et al. collected 273 tissue samples from 12 cynomolgus monkeys (cynomolgus monkey), including when the monkey was in each trimester of pregnancy and when it was not pregnant. Samples were taken from 23 body parts, including five areas of her body: uterus, liver, spinal cord, skin, blood and heart.
The researchers analyzed the samples for metabolites and compared each site during non-pregnancy to the equivalent site during the third trimester.
As expected, when the macaques were not pregnant, Ng said, the metabolites were distributed fairly evenly across the body. But to her surprise, pregnancy caused her interactions to be “dramatically reprogrammed.”
For example, during the first trimester, the uterus reduced communication with the heart and skeletal muscles and instead “coupled” with the developing placenta. During the second trimester of pregnancy, the fully formed placenta began pumping “large amounts of metabolites” to the heart, ovaries, and liver. On the other hand, the uterus gradually migrated towards union with the scalp by the third trimester of pregnancy.
Also, during the third trimester, important exchanges between skeletal muscles and the spinal cord took place. Researchers have not investigated why these coupling changes occur.
When the flow of “reprogrammed” metabolites deviates from what is considered normal during pregnancy, certain conditions can occur, Ng says.
In a separate experiment, researchers took serum samples from 32 pregnant women and found that levels of the metabolite corticosterone were “significantly reduced” in patients with preeclampsia, Ng said. He states: Then, when they removed corticosterone from human placental cells in the lab, they caused pre-eclampsia-like inflammation. “Corticosterone is an important steroid in human pregnancy,” says Ng. “It’s been undervalued.”
The second important metabolite is thought to be palmitoylcarnitine, which helps process fatty acids and regulate immunity. Ongoing human stem cell research led by Ng suggests that human stem cells may be involved in gestational diabetes, he says.
Based on their findings, the researchers developed an “atlas” of 91 metabolites that consistently change in the tissues of pregnant cynomolgus monkeys. This provides a framework for the involvement of metabolites in regulating health during human pregnancy, Ng said. “There is a treasure trove of small molecules and metabolites that we have discovered. [which] I hope this will further encourage research into new treatments,” he says.
Previous studies have investigated metabolic changes such as: While pregnant rats and mice do, cynomolgus monkeys have reproductive systems much more similar to humans, Ng said. Even though macaques have a shorter gestation period than humans (about 26 weeks compared to the average 40 weeks), they still serve as a reliable model for human reproduction, especially pregnancy-related conditions, he said.
WWhen the weather is nice, Buxton Boarding School moves lunch outside. Students, faculty, staff, and guests grab food from the kitchen and eat together under a white tent overlooking the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.
As the end of the school year approached last June, conversation turned to final assignments (English class was finishing Moby Dick) and year-end fun (a trip to the local lake was planned). Ta. It was, in most ways, a typical teenage afternoon. However, no one was using a cell phone.
Buxton was completing the first year of a simple but novel experiment: banning cell phone use on campus. Or rather, a smartphone.
Instead, the school will require everyone on campus, including staff, to light phone, that is, a “dumb” phone with limited functionality. The device can make calls and send texts (slowly), but it cannot load modern applications. Instead, it comes with intentionally cumbersome versions of the Music and Maps apps. They are about the size of a deck of playing cards and have black and white screens.
One student said: “It's like the devil's baby of the iPad and Kindle.”
But most people agree that schools are better off with these infernal devices. (Yes, that includes students.) There are fewer interruptions during classes, more meaningful interactions on campus, and less time spent on screens.
“We've found a pretty good way to deal with this problem,” said Scott Hunter, who teaches English and music, about smartphones. Buxton senior Bea Sass added: “I think people are a lot more social.”
FFor many teachers, students' cell phone use is frustrating. “That's every class, every time period,” said Mark McLaughlin, a math teacher at Near Car Knee High School in Oregon. “The worst part of my job is being the cellphone police.”
Educators across the country report fighting a near-constant battle with their phones.school districts in virginia The survey found that about a third of teachers asked students to put away their phones five to 10 times during class, and 14.7% did so more than 20 times during class. .
When I was in junior high school in Canada investigated According to staff, 75% of respondents believe that mobile phones have a negative impact on students' physical and mental health. Nearly two-thirds believed the device was also having a negative impact on their academic performance.
“This is a big problem,” said Arnold Glass, a psychology professor at Rutgers University. Researched the impact of mobile phones on student grades. “If they are allowed to look at their cell phones during class, they will drop half to the entire grade.”
Ian Tomonblak, a career guidance counselor at Lamoille Union High School in northern Vermont, is also faced with the proliferation of cell phones at his school. “There are kids who get Snapchats or text messages during the day and it just ruins their whole day,” he says. Another problem he sees is students using their cell phones to coordinate trips to collective restrooms in order to hang out during class. “I feel like it distracts me from learning on an academic level.”
Lunch time at Buxton School.
When I told Tromblak about Buxton's experiment, he was intrigued. He noted that one of the things this would address is the argument from students that they need a phone to contact their parents. And teenagers often adapt to new parameters relatively quickly, he said. He remembers learning at the last minute on a field trip with his students that not everyone was allowed to use cell phones. At first, the news was apocalyptic.
“They were very upset. They didn't know how to handle themselves. It was really tense,” Tromblak said, recalling the drama. However, during the trip, the kids almost forgot about their cell phones, and at one point they took it upon themselves to police a girl who secretly tried to call the source of the rope.
“At the end of the first day, we were sitting around the campfire and they were saying, 'I haven't thought about my phone all day,'” Tomblak said. “It was really cool.”
TTo some extent, Buxton experienced a similar progression through stages of panic, grief, and ultimately some acceptance. “When it was announced, I was almost sick,” then-senior Max Weeks said. And while he's still not happy about the switch to Litephone, saying it was a “unilateral” decision, he said overall it was “not as bad as I expected.”
It's an open secret that students still sneak cell phones into their rooms on campus, and some are testing the limits more than others. “People get pretty temperamental and get caught,” said Yamaira Marks, also a senior at Buxton. But smartphones are generally difficult to find on campus.
That includes staff. The school's principal, Peter Beck, said he ditched his iPhone for a Litephone and installed his old GPS system in his car for when he needed to go out into the world. He is thrilled with how his first year went.
Because Buxton uses a narrative evaluation system, it is difficult to determine how the new phone policy is impacting academic performance. But culturally, Beck says, the movement has often led to changes in small but cumulatively meaningful ways.
“People are crazy about the lounge. They stay after class and chat,” says Beck, who estimates they are now having more conversations than ever before at school. “The frequency of all these face-to-face interactions is orders of magnitude higher.”
Employer-provided benefits initiatives generally do not improve workers’ mental health, but volunteering may be an exception
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A study of more than 46,000 workers found that the benefits initiatives offered by many companies do little to improve the mental health of their employees.
In England, More than half of employers have a formal employee benefits strategy. These include employee assistance programs that provide support for work or personal issues, as well as counseling, online life coaching, mindfulness workshops, stress management training, and more.
“Employers are increasingly offering a variety of strategies, practices and programs to improve wellbeing and mental health,” he says. William Fleming at Oxford University. “Their fundamental purpose is to change people's psychological capacities and coping mechanisms,” he says.
To investigate whether these interventions are useful, Fleming and other researchers conducted the UK’s healthiest workplace survey in 2017 and 2018. He examined responses from more than 46,000 individuals in 233 organizations, the majority of whom were office and service industry employees. Approximately 5,000 people have participated in at least one welfare initiative in the past year. The researchers found that there was no difference in the self-reported mental health of those who participated in these programs compared to those who did not participate. The result was consistent regardless of different types of workers and sectors.
“The program doesn’t seem to be providing any benefits,” Fleming said.
However, volunteer work may be an exception. Employees who participated in company-sponsored volunteer programs reported better mental health on average than those who did not participate. Fleming notes that it’s important to consider that people who are willing to volunteer for a cause may have relatively good mental health to begin with.
Instead of proposing these initiatives, Fleming suggests that employers focus on improving working conditions. For example, they can assess whether someone’s workload is too demanding, whether they’re working too many hours, and whether management strategies can be improved, he said.
In the relatively short period of space exploration history, the moon has experienced significant changes as a result of human activity. From the historical significance of our first footprints to the damage caused by spacecraft crashes, our impact on the moon is evident and nearly preserved within the moon’s regolith.
For the past 1.1 billion years, the Moon has been in the Copernican Era, the current epoch. Now, there are calls for a new lunar era to be formally defined: the lunar Anthropocene. This proposed era started in 1959 with Russia’s first-ever landing of the Luna 2 spacecraft on the moon. With upcoming missions like NASA’s Artemis and Lunar Gateway, further changes are expected.
Dr. Justin Holcomb, a space archaeologist, and researcher at the University of Kansas, USA, was interviewed.
What markers suggest that a new era has begun on the Moon?
Unlike the Earth’s Anthropocene, the moon provides a unique setting for human activity to be recorded due to its limited systems and ability to preserve the entirety of human history. The relatively slow impact of meteorite collisions has historically been the primary cause of change on the Moon, contrasting with the addition of the human variable now present on the lunar surface.
What’s the biggest impact we’ve had there?
When humans land on the Moon, they significantly impact the surface. However, accidental impacts, such as spacecraft crashes, pose a significant risk and have occurred multiple times since 2019. These accidents jeopardize planned areas of operation and can potentially erase important historical sites on the Moon.
What else do we have left there?
Various artifacts and items have been left on the Moon, including personal items, scientific equipment, and the national emblem on India’s rover. It’s argued that the space debris on the Moon should be considered as space heritage rather than just waste, and thus, it needs to be protected as such.
How are human activities changing the Moon’s geological processes, and to what extent can humans disrupt the balance of the Moon’s system?
The impact of human activities on the Moon’s geological processes, such as the movement of lunar regolith and potential contamination of ice due to rocket fuel, presents concerns for the future. These impacts could have far-reaching consequences and affect the balance of the Moon’s system.
How will the Moon change further for future space missions after 2024?
With a focus on mining and the potential for private companies to be involved in future space missions, the Moon is expected to experience significant changes in the coming years. The increase in planned lunar missions indicates a new phase in the relationship between humans and the moon. With the rise of private space companies, the landscape of space exploration has shifted.
About our experts
Dr. Justin Holcomb, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas, has conducted research in various scholarly publications.
How will our species evolve in space? If humans were suddenly forced to board a fleet of space arks and abandon Earth, evolution by natural selection would force our bodies to adapt to the new environment. Humans will probably become extinct before we change anything.
Even assuming that air, food, and water are all synthesized and infinitely recyclable, the microgravity environment currently makes it difficult for astronauts on the International Space Station to undergo daily strenuous exercise. Bone density decreases by about 1 percent every month.
If this situation continues for several years, everyone will suffer from serious illness. Osteoporosis. If our voyage were to go into deep space, we would also have to worry about radiation. Galactic cosmic rays We will be exposed to approximately 250 times the normal background radiation we receive on Earth, and a single solar flare can be strong enough to cause radiation sickness.
Surviving this situation for decades at a time would require a spacecraft with an environment more similar to Earth than our current spacecraft. A large-diameter rotating habitat to simulate gravity and thick shielding to block radiation would be the minimum requirements. But if the conditions inside the spacecraft were exactly the same as on Earth, there would be no evolutionary pressure for our bodies to adapt.
Society will definitely evolve. Surrounded by danger and heavily dependent on technology, we are becoming more authoritative, with each person fulfilling their assigned role without question, ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of the species. It is possible to develop a principled society. This is too important to be left to the unpredictability of democratic, free-market capitalism, so a rigid hierarchy akin to the sailing ship regime of the 19th century will likely emerge.
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Chip-scale ultrafast mode-locked laser based on nanophotonic lithium niobate.Credit: Alireza Marandi
Researchers have developed a compact mode-locked laser integrated into a nanophotonic platform that can generate ultrafast light pulses at high power. This breakthrough in the miniaturization of MLL technology has the potential to significantly expand photonics applications.
Innovation in mode-locked laser technology
Setting out to improve a technology that typically requires bulky benchtop equipment, Quishi Guo and colleagues have miniaturized a mode-locked laser (MLL) with an integrated nanophotonics platform to the size of an optical chip. This result shows promise for the development of ultrafast nanophotonics systems for a wide range of applications.
Possibility of small MLL
Model-locked lasers (MLLs) can generate coherent ultrashort pulses of light at very fast speeds on the order of picoseconds to femtoseconds. These devices have enabled numerous techniques in the field of photonics, including extreme nonlinear optics.photon Microscopy and optical computing.
However, most MLLs are expensive, power-hungry, and require bulky, separate optical components and equipment. As a result, the use of ultrafast photonic systems has generally been limited to benchtop laboratory experiments. Furthermore, so-called “integrated” MLLs aimed at driving nanophotonics platforms have significant limitations, such as low peak power and lack of controllability.
Breakthrough advances in nanophotonics MLL integration
Through hybrid integration of semiconductor optical amplification chips and novel thin-film lithium niobate nanophotonic circuits, Guo other. We created an optical chip-sized integrated MLL.
According to the authors, this MLL generates ultrashort light pulses of about 4.8 picoseconds at about 1065 nanometers with a maximum output of about 0.5 watts. This is the highest output pulse energy and peak power of any MLL integrated into a nanophotonics platform.
Furthermore, the researchers show that the repetition rate of the integrated MLL can be tuned over a range of about 200 MHz and that the coherence properties of the laser can be precisely controlled, creating a fully stable on-chip nanophotonic frequency comb source. provided a path to.
Learn more about this breakthrough advancement below.
Reference: “Ultrafast mode-locked lasers in nanophotonic lithium niobate” Qiushi Guo, Benjamin K. Gutierrez, Ryotosekine, Robert M. Gray, James A. Williams, Luis Ledezma, Luis Costa, Arkadev Roy, Selina Zhou, Mingchen Liu, and Alireza Marandi, November 9, 2023; science. DOI: 10.1126/science.adj5438
NIST researchers studied VOC emissions from living Christmas trees and their interaction with ozone. They found that monoterpenes were the main VOCs emitted, decreasing over time and reacting with ozone to produce low levels of formaldehyde. The study concludes that Christmas trees have minimal impact on indoor air quality for most people. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Living Christmas trees emit chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Some of these VOCs can react with ozone, a reactive gas, to create chemical irritants in your home.
Levels of chemical irritants are low, but may be a potential concern for people who are sensitive to chemical irritants.
Every year during the holiday season, Americans purchase approximately 30 million live Christmas trees. Many families enjoy not only having a live tree in their home, but also smelling the fresh scent it produces. That odor comes from chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). However, little is known about how much is excreted and whether it affects health.
“Our noses are excellent chemical sensors,” says Dustin Poppendieck, an environmental engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “We know these trees are emitting something, but the question is how big is the source? We are investigating which chemicals and how much they are emitting. “We wanted to compare that to other chemical sources in the home,” he said.
To answer these questions, Poppendieck and his colleagues at NIST took a common type of Christmas tree (Dog pine) and sealed it inside a room. They then measured the amount and type of VOCs emitted over a 17-day period. They also investigated whether VOCs react with other components of indoor air to form new compounds.
The team’s findings were published in the journal indoor environment.
NIST researchers placed a common type of Christmas tree in a sealed room for 17 days and monitored and measured the chemicals released from it. These chemicals are called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which give the smell of pine and can react with ozone to produce byproducts. Researchers found low amounts of these chemicals, which could be a potential concern for people who are sensitive to chemicals. Credit: M. King/NIST
The refreshing scent commonly associated with Christmas trees comes from a group of VOCs called . monoterpenesIt is also found in air fresheners, candles, and some personal care products. In the outdoors, conifer, a group of plants, including most Christmas trees, emit monoterpenes and can affect outdoor air quality. However, little is known about how much monoterpene is released when trees are cut down and placed indoors.
Research also shows that monoterpenes can react with ozone. Ozone in the upper atmosphere acts as a protective barrier against the sun. On the ground, chemical reactions with light produce ozone, which can cause symptoms such as coughs and throat irritation. Ozone also easily reacts with other chemicals in the air to form new compounds. Researchers were therefore interested in observing the effects of ozone in the presence of indoor trees.
They placed it inside an environmentally controlled room so they could measure the chemicals released by the tree in real time. Using a technique that can detect airborne organic compounds, known as proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS), they measured the VOCs emitted over a 17-day period.
In the experiment, the researchers simulated a home environment. They decorated the tree with a typical holiday lighting setup and illuminated it with bright lights to mimic the day/night cycle. They turned off the lights every 12 hours and watered the tree daily. They brought in outside air at rates typical of a typical home and constantly measured chemicals in the indoor air.
Monoterpenes were the most abundant VOCs emitted by trees. They peaked on the first day and then decreased significantly by the third day. Poppendieck said the concentrations were initially similar to those found in plug-in air fresheners and new homes, but quickly dropped to nearly 10 times the original concentration. Researchers detected 52 different monoterpenes.
The researchers then injected ozone into the chamber to see how it affected indoor air chemistry. They found that ozone reacts with monoterpenes, producing byproducts such as formaldehyde, another type of VOC, and other reactive chemicals. It was found that the introduction of ozone further reduced monoterpene concentrations and increased formaldehyde levels, affecting indoor air chemistry. However, the amount of formaldehyde produced was relatively small at approximately 1 ppb. Formaldehyde concentrations in typical homes in the United States range from 20 to 30 ppb.
For people who are sensitive to VOCs, Christmas trees can be another source of watery eyes and noses, especially if you first bring them indoors. In that case, Poppendieck suggests opening a window near the tree to reduce exposure. In addition, the emission intensity naturally decays over time, so a newly cut tree can be left outdoors or in the garage for three days before bringing it into the house.
“But for most people, this shouldn’t be a big concern,” Poppendieck says. I will continue to decorate the Christmas tree at home. ”
Reference: “Jingle Bells, what do they smell like?” Indoor VOC Emissions from Living Christmas Trees,” by Dustin Poppendieck, Riley Robertson, and Michael F. Link, December 22, 2023. indoor environment. DOI: 10.1016/j.indenv.2023.100002
New research has found that formaldehyde poses serious risks to epigenetics, interfering with gene activity and potentially causing cancer and other diseases. The study emphasizes the need for stricter policies to limit exposure to formaldehyde, given its prevalence in various household products, cosmetics, polluted air, architecture, and other industries.
The research, conducted by Dr. Manel Esteller and Dr. Lucas Pontel from the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute and Dr. Christopher J. Chan from the University of California, Berkeley, focused on the effects of high formaldehyde concentrations in the body. The study revealed formaldehyde’s harmful impact on normal epigenetic patterns and its association with cancer, liver degeneration, and increased asthma risk.
Formaldehyde is commonly found in products used in architecture, furniture manufacturing, textiles, and hair products, as well as in polluted gases and the metabolism of certain food substances. It can also be produced in the body and has the potential to alter the epigenetic landscape of cells.
The study concluded that formaldehyde inhibits the production of S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM), a universal donor of the methyl chemical group that regulates genetic activity. This decrease in SAM content leads to a loss of methylation of histones, proteins that package DNA and control gene function, contributing to formaldehyde’s carcinogenic properties.
As such, the researchers stressed the need for environmental and health policies aimed at reducing exposure to formaldehyde in various industries and environmental sources. Despite restrictions by international health authorities, there are still areas of work where formaldehyde is used at high levels, necessitating further regulations to minimize exposure to this hazardous substance.
Reference: Vanha N. Pham, Kevin J. Bruemmer, Joel DW Toh, Eva J. Ge, Logan Tenney, Carl C. Ward, Felix A Dingler, Christopher L. Millington, Carlos A. Garcia Prieto, Mia C. Pross Holmes, Nicholas T. Ingoglia, Lucas B. Pontel, Manel Esther, Keetan J. Patel, and Daniel K.・Nomura, Christopher J. Chan, November 3, 2023, science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abp9201
Satellite image of parts of Akaland taken on May 14, 2023 by Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager.
Ejecta from Missoula Glacier Lake has carved out channeled skeletal lands in Washington state.
Southeastern Washington is home to miles of rolling hills and a neat grid of farmland. Dozens of crops It is grown on precious farmland on the Columbia Plateau. But in some places, undulating streaks of scoured soil interrupt a series of angular plots or center-pivot irrigated fields.
These rocky scars channeled scrubland, and they were formed in a series of dramatic floods 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Landsat 8’s OLI (Operational Land Imager) captured the image of part of Acarland, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Spokane, on May 14, 2023.
The sources of water that carved these unusual landforms remained a mystery to geologists for decades. Then they came to understand that as the Cordilleran Ice Sheet moved south during the last ice age, it formed dams along the Clark Fork River. Glacial Lake Missoula grew behind this ice dam in what is now western Montana and eventually held as much water as Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined. Geologists estimate that: a dam was formed and broke dozens of times Over thousands of years, each breach releases up to 600 cubic miles of water across the region.
Detailed view of the image above.
Floodwaters flowed south and southwest, eventually emptying into the Columbia River. In the process, they carved grooves, potholes, and long channels known as “coulees” into the volcanic basalt bedrock. The detailed map (above) shows one of these channels and reveals the striking contrast between flood scoured areas and arable land.
The canyon shown here is small compared to the others. Grand Coulee, the largest of the Channeled Scrublands north of this scene. Completed in 1942, Grand Coulee Dam was the largest concrete structure in the world until it was surpassed by dams in South America. Itaipu Dam 1984 and China three gorges dam Established in 2006.Currently America’s largest hydroelectric facility Provides irrigation water to the Columbia Plateau.
NASA Earth Observatory imagery by Lauren Dauphin using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
GPS satellites play a crucial role in Earth measurements by relaying information to other satellites. Laser retroreflector arrays (LRA) have emerged as a technological advancement that enhances the precision of geodesy, the study of the Earth’s shape and changes. LRAs enable the collection of precise distance measurements necessary for monitoring global phenomena like sea level rise and tectonic movements. They work by reflecting laser light back to its original source, allowing scientists to accurately measure changes in the Earth’s surface.
Numerous federal agencies, including NASA, the U.S. Space Command, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, have been involved in improving the accuracy of Earth measurements. The use of LRAs has allowed geolocation of all Earth observations to improve, enabling scientists to strategize and anticipate changes in the Earth’s angular momentum, changes in the Earth’s figure, and significant geodetic factors.
Laser retroreflector arrays function by reflecting light directly back towards its original source, as they consist of mirrors placed at right angles. They are instrumental in providing precise location information to ground stations on Earth, aiding in pinpointing the Earth’s center of mass and aiding in geodetic measurements. The ability to measure minute changes in the Earth’s center of gravity is of utmost importance as it aids in quantifying and understanding larger shifts resulting from events like tsunamis or earthquakes.
Overall, the implementation of laser retroreflector arrays is essential in studying Earth’s shape, gravity, and rotation, as well as determining changes over time. It is a fundamental component of daily life that aids in understanding how the world is changing.
A West Yorkshire NHS Trust is utilizing advancements in technology, such as artificial intelligence and surgical robots, to achieve crucial cancer targets and alleviate widespread pressure on hospitals.
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS The Foundation Trust is meeting three important cancer targets established by the government.
These targets include a waiting time of 28 days for patients who receive an emergency referral and are diagnosed with an infection or cancer, a 31-day wait from the patient’s treatment decision to the first treatment, and a 62-day wait from the emergency GP referral to the first treatment.
Sky News was given a tour of the innovations behind the hospital’s results, starting with a diagnostic test called Cytosponge. The Cytosponge is a small capsule with a string attached that is swallowed by the patient. When dissolved in the stomach, a brush collects cells from the esophageal lining, which are then analyzed for abnormalities.
image: New diagnostic test site sponge could help doctors find cases of esophageal cancer faster
Cytosponges are used as an alternative to longer and more invasive endoscopies. Patients find the cytosponge less invasive and report a quicker procedure time.
A recent study reveals that ingesting chitin, found in insect exoskeletons, activates the immune system in mice and reduces weight gain, potentially as an addition to the diet to fight obesity.
Research conducted in mice suggests that engaging certain types of fiber with the immune system may help prevent obesity.
Who can forget the stomach-churning moment when contestants on “Survivor” ate crunchy insects and other unpalatable foods for a chance to win $1 million? The TV show featured contestants demonstrating their gastronomic courage by trying their hand at cooking, leaving viewers feeling uncomfortable.
Digestion in a crunchy creature begins with the sound of its hard protective covering, the exoskeleton. It may be unpalatable, but hardcovers may be good for your metabolism, according to a new study in mice from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Immune system activation and dietary fiber
Researchers led by Dr. Stephen Van Dyken, assistant professor of pathology and immunology, have discovered that the immune system is involved in digesting chitin, a dietary fiber found abundantly in insect exoskeletons, mushrooms, and crustacean shells. A vigorous immune response was associated with less weight gain, less body fat, and resistance to obesity.
“Obesity is an epidemic,” Van Dyken said. “What we put into our bodies has a huge impact on our physiology and how we metabolize food. Based on this, we are researching ways to combat obesity.”
This study was recently published in the journal science.
The immune system is well known for protecting the body from a variety of threats such as bacteria, viruses, allergens, and even cancer. Researchers have discovered that specific departments of the immune system are also involved in chitin digestion. Stomach distension after chitin ingestion activates the immune response, causing gastric cells to increase production of enzymes known as chitinases, which break down chitin. Notably, chitin is insoluble and cannot be dissolved in liquids, so enzymes and harsh acidic conditions are required for digestion.
Research methods and findings
Dr. Do-hyun Kim, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the study, conducted experiments on germ-free mice lacking gut bacteria. His results show that chitin activates the immune response in the absence of bacteria.
“We believe that chitin digestion relies primarily on the host’s own chitinases,” van Dijken said. “The cells of the stomach change their enzyme output through a process called adaptation. However, bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract are also a source of chitinase, which breaks down chitin, so it is unlikely that this process is occurring without microbial input. Dr. van Dijken noted that in mice with gut bacteria, dietary chitin altered the bacterial composition of the lower gastrointestinal tract, suggesting that after the gut bacteria left the stomach, This also suggests that they can also adapt to chitin-containing foods.
The researchers found that chitin, which activates the immune system but is not digested, had the greatest effect on obesity in mice. Mice fed a high-fat diet were also given chitin. Some mice lacked the ability to produce chitinase, which breaks down chitin. Mice that ate but were unable to break down chitin gained the least weight, had the lowest body fat measurements, and were resistant to obesity compared to mice that did not eat chitin or mice that ate chitin but were able to break it down. did.
Although mice could still break down chitin, which would give them a metabolic advantage, they adapted by overproducing chitinases to extract nutrients from chitin.
Van Dijken and his team will next follow up on the results of the human study to determine whether chitin can be added to the human diet to help control obesity.
“There are several ways to inhibit gastric chitinases,” he says. “Combining these approaches with chitin-containing foods could have enormous metabolic benefits.”
Reference: “The gastric type 2 immune circuit controls mammalian adaptation to dietary chitin” Do-Hyun Kim, Yilin Wang, Haerin Jung, Rachael L. Field, Xinya Zhang, Ta-Chiang Liu, Changqing Ma, James Written by S. Fraser, Jonathan R. Brestoff and Stephen J. Van Dyken, September 7, 2023. science. DOI: 10.1126/science.add5649
This study was supported by the Children’s Discovery Institute, Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation, Rheumatic Disease Research Resource Base Center, National Institutes of Healthand Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
Texas A&M University researchers are co-leading a $20 million project to develop a $1 cancer treatment.
What if a single dose of $1 could cure cancer?
A multi-university research team is receiving federal funding to develop a highly efficient bacterial therapy that targets cancer more precisely and makes treatment safer at a cost of $1 per dose.
Traditionally, cancer treatments have had limited effectiveness in treating patients. Some treatments, such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy, can cause harmful side effects, while others tend to have poor patient response, not to mention the high cost of treatment.Survey results from American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network reports that 73% of cancer survivors and patients are concerned about how they will pay for their cancer treatment, and 51% say they have medical debt from their treatment. For example, cutting-edge cancer treatment can cost up to $1,000,000.
Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri are leading efforts to develop low-cost, safe and controlled cancer treatments. Researchers received a $20 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to fight cancer. The four-year project is part of the current administration’s cancer moonshot plan to boost cancer research and increase funding. It is funded by a newly established agency that aims to accelerate improved health outcomes for all by supporting the development of highly effective solutions to society’s most challenging health problems. It was one of my first projects.
Rapid analysis of cells
$12 million of the grant will go to the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station/Texas A&M. Alam Han, Jim Song, and Chelsea Hu are developing programmable synthetic bacteria for immune-induced killing in the tumor environment (SPIKE). The idea is to engineer the bacteria so that the T cells kill the cancerous tissue, and once the cancer is gone, they destroy themselves and are safely excreted out of the body as human waste.
“SPIKE can specifically target tumor cells,” said Han, a professor in Texas Instruments’ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “And because we only target the cancerous tissue and not the surrounding healthy cells, patient safety is dramatically increased. I’m excited to be part of this team tackling a critical health issue that affects so many people. I am very honored.”
Han’s lab is developing high-throughput microfluidic systems that can rapidly process and screen large bacterial therapeutic libraries one cell at a time to rapidly identify the most promising treatments. By fusing microfabrication techniques and biotechnology, these systems create picoliter-scale liquid handling systems that can accurately analyze single cells with high precision and speed, and devices that rapidly analyze individual cells. Realize.
“The big challenge is figuring out how to actually develop these sophisticated microdevices that can run millions of fully automated tests with very little manual or human intervention,” Han said. said. “That’s the engineering challenge.”
Rescue anti-tumor immune cells
While Han innovates and designs microdevices, Song, an immunologist with a background in microbial pathogenesis, T-cell biology, and T-cell-based immunotherapy, has spent the past five years working in bacterial immunotherapy. We are working on this.certain bacteria known as Brucella melitensis At least four types of cancer can be treated by manipulating the human body’s microenvironment and promoting T cell-mediated antitumor immunity.
“We are working on improving Brucella melitensis We can more effectively prevent or suppress tumor growth,” said Song, a professor at Texas A&M School of Medicine. “Our current approach involves finding ways to manipulate bacteria to rescue anti-tumor immune cells and make them more effective at killing tumor cells.
“According to the data so far, BrucellaThe efficiency is dramatically higher than other cancer treatments such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy and T-cell receptor therapy, with a response rate of over 70%,” said Song.
Safe and controllable treatment
While Professor Song continues to test the effectiveness of bacteria using cancer models, Professor Hu, an assistant professor in Artie McFerrin’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a synthetic biologist, has demonstrated that live bacterial treatments are safe and controllable. We are working to confirm.
” Brucella The strain we are using is attenuated and has been shown to be safe for the host as it lacks key genes required for bacterial virulence,” Hu said. Told. “Ultimately, we want to control the rate at which bacteria multiply within the tumor environment and their ability to self-destruct when their mission is completed.”
To control the rate of growth, the bacteria’s genes are modified to regulate its population, which fluctuates around a certain set point. Hu also plans to incorporate biosensors into the bacteria, allowing them to distinguish between healthy and tumor tissue, allowing them to grow only within the tumor microenvironment.
The bacteria are engineered with receptors that allow patients to take antibiotics after the cancer has gone away. This sends a signal to the bacteria to essentially shred itself and safely remove it from the patient’s body.
“We humans are actually covered in bacteria, and many diseases are caused by imbalances in these bacterial communities,” Hu said. “For example, some people have incredibly fragile stomachs, while others have strong stomachs. The science behind this is that people with strong immune and digestive systems have a healthy gut. It means that it has a population of bacterial cells. There are many possibilities for biological therapy.”
“It’s a really great opportunity to have a great team with the expertise and the ability to push this technology to the forefront,” Hu said. “So the goal is to go into the clinic and provide patients with effective cancer treatment for less than $1 per treatment.”
Tackling difficult problems with unconventional approaches
Other collaborators include Dr. Zhilei Chen of Texas A&M Health Science Center, Dr. Xiaoning Qian of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Principal Investigator Dr. Paul de Figueiredo of the University of Missouri.
“The three important advantages of this study are high safety, low cost, and specific targeting of cancerous tumors,” Han said. “We are very excited to be one of the first teams to receive support from ARPA-H, a brand new agency supported by Congress. We take an unconventional approach to tackling difficult problems. High risk, high impact is the hallmark of our approach.”
And the future applications of bacterial engineering that this research unlocks are limitless.
“For our next big project, we will work together to develop bacteria that fight autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis,” Song said. Bacteria-based immunotherapy is an exciting frontier in medicine and offers the potential to revolutionize the treatment of autoimmune diseases. With the power of beneficial microorganisms harnessed to modulate the immune system, we are changing the future of medicine. Our research and expertise promises to transform the lives of millions of people, giving them new hope and a healthier tomorrow. ”
Researchers have conducted a new study on the runaway greenhouse effect, revealing how a critical threshold of water vapor could cause catastrophic climate change on Earth and other planets. This study reveals key cloud patterns contributing to this irreversible climate change and provides insight into exoplanets’ climates and their potential to support life. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
The UNIGE team, in collaboration with CNRS, successfully simulated an entire runaway greenhouse effect that could render Earth completely uninhabitable.
Earth is a wonderful blue and green dot covered with oceans and life, Venus It is a yellowish sterile sphere that is not only inhospitable but also sterile. However, the temperature difference between the two is only a few degrees.
A team of astronomers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and members of the National Center for Research Competence (NCCR) PlanetS achieved a world first by managing the entire simulation, with support from the CNRS laboratories in Paris and Bordeaux. Achieved. A runaway greenhouse process that could change Earth’s climate from an idyllic environment perfect for life to a harsh and more than hostile place.
Scientists have also demonstrated that from the early stages of the process, atmospheric structure and cloud cover change significantly, making reversing the nearly uncontrollable and runaway greenhouse effect extremely complex. On Earth, an increase in the average temperature of the Earth by a few tens of degrees after a slight increase in the sun’s brightness is enough to start this phenomenon and make our planet habitable.
The idea of a runaway greenhouse effect is not new. In this scenario, the planet could evolve from an Earth-like temperate state to a true hell with surface temperatures exceeding her 1000 degrees. Cause? Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas. Water vapor prevents solar radiation absorbed by the Earth from being re-emitted into space as thermal radiation. It traps some heat like a rescue blanket. A little greenhouse effect would be helpful, but without it, the average temperature of Earth would drop below the freezing point of water, making it a ball of ice and hostile to life.
Conversely, if the greenhouse effect is too strong, it increases evaporation in the oceans and increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. “There is a critical threshold for this amount of water vapor, beyond which the Earth can no longer cool down. From there, everything ramps up until the oceans completely evaporate and temperatures reach hundreds of degrees.” , explains Guillaume Chabelo, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Science at UNIGE and lead author of the study.
Groundbreaking research on climate change
“Other important studies in climatology to date have focused solely on either temperate states before the runaway or habitable states after the runaway,” says a study from the CNRS Institute in Paris and Bordeaux. Martin Tarbet, author and co-author of this paper, explains: study. “This is the first time a research team has used a 3D global climate model to study the transition itself and see how the climate and atmosphere evolve during the process.”
One of the key points of the study explains the emergence of very unique cloud patterns, increasing the runaway effect and making the process irreversible. “From the beginning of the transition, we can observe the development of very dense clouds in the upper atmosphere. In fact, the latter are responsible for the separation of the Earth’s atmosphere and its two main layers, the troposphere and the stratosphere. It no longer exhibits the characteristics of a temperature inversion. The structure of the atmosphere has changed significantly,” points out Guillaume Chavelot.
Serious consequences of searching for life elsewhere
This discovery is an important feature for studying the climate of other planets, especially exoplanets orbiting stars other than the Sun. “By studying the climates of other planets, one of our most powerful motivations is to determine the likelihood of them harboring life,” said Dr. said Emmeline Bolmont, director and co-author of “Extraterrestrial Research” study.
LUC leads cutting-edge interdisciplinary research projects on the origins of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond planetary systems. “After previous studies, we had already suspected the existence of a water vapor threshold, but the appearance of this cloud pattern is a real surprise!” reveals Emmeline Bolmont. “We also studied in parallel how this cloud pattern produces specific signatures, or ‘fingerprints’, that can be detected when observed. exoplanet atmosphere. The next generation of equipment should be able to detect it, ”he reveals Martin Turbet. The team also doesn’t aim to stop there. Guillaume Chabelo received a research grant to continue this work at the Grenoble Institute for Planetary Observation and Astrophysics (IPAG). This new phase of the research project will focus on specific cases from Earth.
Earth in fragile equilibrium
Using a new climate model, scientists have shown that a very small increase in solar radiation of just a few tens of degrees, leading to a rise in global temperatures, is enough to trigger this irreversible runaway process on Earth. I calculated that. It would make our planet as inhospitable as Venus. One of the current climate goals is to limit global warming caused by greenhouse gases to just 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. One of the problems with Guillaume Chavelot’s research grant is to determine whether a small increase in greenhouse gases could cause a runaway process. The brightness of the sun may be enough. If so, the next question becomes determining whether the threshold temperatures for both processes are the same.
Therefore, Earth is not far from this apocalyptic scenario. “Assuming this runaway process begins on Earth, evaporation of just 10 meters of ocean surface would raise atmospheric pressure at the surface by 1 bar. Within just a few hundred years, surface temperatures would exceed 500°C. Then the surface pressure would rise to 273 bar, the temperature would exceed 1500 degrees, and eventually all oceans would completely evaporate,” concludes Guillaume Chavelot.
Reference: “First Exploration of Runaway Greenhouse Transitions Using 3D General Circulation Models” by Guillaume Chaverot, Emeline Bolmont, and Martin Turbet, December 18, 2023. astronomy and astrophysics.
Exoplanets in Geneva: 25 years of expertise wins Nobel Prize
The first exoplanet was discovered in 1995 by two University of Geneva researchers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. With this discovery, Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva The construction and installation of has put us at the forefront of research in this field. harp upon ESO3.6 meter telescope at La Silla in 2003.
For 20 years, this spectrometer was the world’s most powerful at determining the masses of exoplanets. However, HARPS was surpassed in 2018 by ESPRESSO, another Earth-based spectrometer built in Geneva. very large telescope (VLT) Paranal, Chile.
Switzerland is also working on space-based exoplanet observations with the CHEOPS mission. This is the result of the expertise of two countries. University of Bern, the on-ground experience of the University of Geneva in collaboration with the universities of Geneva and with the support of the universities of the Swiss capital. These two areas of scientific and technical expertise are PlanetS National Center for Research Capability (NCCR).
Life in the Universe Center (LUC): A pillar of interdisciplinary excellence
of Life in the Universe Center (LUC) is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), established in 2021 following the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Professors Michel Mayor and Didier Quelot. Thanks to advances over the past decade in both the fields of solar system exploration, exoplanets, and the organic structure of life, it is now possible to address the question of the emergence of life on other planets in a concrete way. Ta. It’s no longer just a guess. Located at the intersection of astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, and the earth and climate sciences, LUC aims to understand the origin and distribution of life in the universe. Led by the Department of Astronomy, LUC brings together researchers from numerous institutes and departments at UNIGE, as well as from our international partner universities.
New research shows that cutting back on salt can significantly lower your blood pressure, whether you have hypertension or are on medication. The study, which included 213 participants from diverse backgrounds, found that a low-salt diet lowered systolic blood pressure by an average of 7 mmHg. These results apply to a wide range of individuals and suggest that salt restriction is as effective as common hypertension medications in controlling blood pressure.
Research has shown that a low-salt diet significantly lowers blood pressure and is beneficial for people with and without high blood pressure, and even for people taking blood pressure medications.
Reducing sodium intake significantly lowered blood pressure in most people, even those who were already taking blood pressure medications.
The findings suggest that reducing sodium intake may have health benefits for a wide range of people.
Half of Americans have high blood pressure. If the systolic reading (the upper number, the pressure at which blood is pumped out of the heart) is consistently above 130 mm Hg, or the diastolic reading (the lower number, the pressure when the heart is filling with blood) Blood pressure is considered high if the pressure between heartbeats) exceeds 80 mm Hg. mmHg or higher.
Role of sodium in hypertension
Sodium is essential for the human body, but too much sodium can cause high blood pressure. However, blood pressure sensitivity to sodium varies from person to person. This makes it difficult to determine what counts as a healthy amount of sodium in someone’s diet. Also, most studies on low-salt diets exclude people who take blood pressure-lowering medications. Therefore, it is unclear how much salt reduction affects people taking these drugs.
Research on dietary sodium and blood pressure
An NIH-funded research team led by Dr. Deepak Gupta of Vanderbilt University Medical Center studied the effects of dietary sodium on blood pressure in 213 people (65% female, 64% black) between the ages of 50 and 75. Both normotensive and hypertensive participants were enrolled from April 2021 to February 2023 in Chicago, Illinois, and Birmingham, Alabama. Some were taking medication to control high blood pressure.
Participants were randomly assigned to either a high-sodium diet or a low-sodium diet for one week. Those on a high-sodium diet added 2,200 mg of sodium per day to their regular diet. Those on a low-salt diet were provided with a week’s worth of low-sodium meals, snacks, and drinks. This diet provided an average of 500 mg of sodium per day.
The researchers measured the participants’ blood pressure a week later. The participant was then switched to another diet for one week and her blood pressure was measured again. Blood pressure was the average value she measured over a 24-hour period during normal daily activities. The results were: Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association November 11, 2023.
Important discoveries and implications
Almost 75% of participants had lower systolic blood pressure on the low-sodium diet than on the high-sodium diet, with an average decrease of 7 mmHg. Compared to a regular diet, the low-sodium diet lowered systolic blood pressure in 72% of participants, with an average drop of 6 mmHg. The effect of dietary sodium did not depend on whether a person had high blood pressure in the first place. It was also unaffected by whether people were taking medication for high blood pressure.
This reduction in blood pressure can have significant health benefits. This finding supports reducing sodium in the diet to lower blood pressure. The effects of a low-salt diet were similar to those of common first-line drugs for hypertension. The results also suggest that reducing salt intake may help a wide range of people, including those already taking blood pressure-lowering drugs.
“Just as any physical activity is better than none for most people, reducing salt from your current normal diet is likely to be better than none,” says Gupta. To tell.
For more information about this study, see New study reveals universal blood pressure-lowering strategy.
Reference: “Effects of dietary sodium on blood pressure: a cross-over study”, Deepak K. Gupta, Cora E. Lewis, Krista A. Varady, Yan Ru Su, Meena S. Madhur, Daniel T. Lackland, Jared P. Reis , Thomas J. Wang, Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, Norina B. Allen, November 11, 2023, Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2023.23651
Funding: NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), National Cancer Institute (NCI), and National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS). American Heart Association.
Scientists have discovered a new instability in plasma, revolutionizing our understanding of cosmic rays. This groundbreaking discovery reveals that cosmic rays generate electromagnetic waves within plasma and influence their paths. This collective behavior of cosmic rays, similar to waves formed by water molecules, challenges previous theories and holds promise for insights into intragalactic cosmic ray transport and its role in galaxy evolution. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Scientists at the Potsdam Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics (AIP) have discovered a new substance. plasma This instability is expected to revolutionize our understanding of the origin of cosmic rays and their dynamic impact on galaxies.
At the beginning of the last century, Victor Hess discovered a new phenomenon called cosmic rays, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. He conducted high-altitude balloon flights and discovered that the Earth’s atmosphere was not ionized by ground radiation. Instead, he confirmed that the origin of ionization was extraterrestrial. Later, it was discovered that cosmic “rays” are composed of charged particles that travel from space at speeds close to the speed of light. radiation. However, the name “cosmic rays” outlasted these discoveries.
Recent advances in cosmic ray research
In the new study, AIP scientist and lead author of the study, Dr. Mohammad Shalaby, and his collaborators performed numerical simulations to trace the trajectories of many cosmic ray particles, showing that these particles We studied how the plasma interacts with the surrounding plasma, which is made up of electrons and electrons. proton.
Simulation of cosmic rays flowing in the opposite direction to the background plasma and causing plasma instability. The distribution of background particles in response to streaming cosmic rays is shown in phase space spanned by the particle’s position (horizontal axis) and velocity (vertical axis). Color visualizes number density, and holes in phase space represent the highly dynamic nature of instabilities that break up ordered motion into random motion. Credit: Shalaby/AIP
When researchers studied cosmic rays flying from one side of the simulation to the other, they discovered a new phenomenon that excites electromagnetic waves in the background plasma. These waves exert a force on the cosmic rays, causing them to change their meandering paths.
Understanding cosmic rays as a collective phenomenon
Most importantly, this new phenomenon is best understood if we think of cosmic rays as supporting collective electromagnetic waves rather than acting as individual particles. When these waves interact with the background fundamental waves, they are strongly amplified and a transfer of energy occurs.
“This insight allows us to think of cosmic rays in this context as behaving more like radiation than individual particles, as Victor Hess originally believed,” said AIP Cosmology and High Energy Astrophysics. says Professor Christoph Pfrommer, head of the section. .
Momentum distribution of protons (dashed lines) and electrons (solid lines). The appearance of a high-energy electron tail in a slowly moving shock is shown. This is the result of interactions with electromagnetic waves caused by newly discovered plasma instabilities (red) that are absent from faster shocks (black). This shows the importance of understanding the physics of the acceleration process, since only high-energy electrons produce observable radio radiation. Credit: Shalaby/AIP
A good analogy for this behavior is that individual water molecules come together to form waves that break on the shore. “This progress was only made possible by taking into account smaller scales, which had been overlooked until now and called into question the use of effective fluid dynamics theory when studying plasma processes,” explains Dr. Mohammad Shalaby. To do.
Meaning and application
This newly discovered plasma instability has many applications, including the first study of how electrons from thermal interstellar plasma are accelerated to high energies in supernova remnants. It also includes an explanation.
“This newly discovered plasma instability represents a major advance in our understanding of acceleration processes and finally explains why these supernova remnants glow in radio waves and gamma rays.” Mohammad Shalaby reports.
Moreover, this breakthrough opens the door to a deeper understanding of the fundamental processes of cosmic ray transport in galaxies. This represents the biggest mystery in understanding the processes that form galaxies during the evolution of the universe.
References:
“Deciphering the physical basis of mesoscale instability” by Mohammad Shalaby, Timon Thomas, Christoph Pfrommer, Reuven Lemmerz, and Virginia Bresci, December 12, 2023, Plasma Physics Journal. DOI: 10.1017/S0022377823001289
“Mechanism of efficient electron acceleration in parallel non-relativistic shocks” by Mohammad Shalaby, Reuven Lemmerz, Timon Thomas, and Christoph Pfromer, May 4, 2022, Astrophysics > High-energy astrophysical phenomena. arXiv:2202.05288
“New Cosmic Ray Instabilities” by Mohammad Shalaby, Timon Thomas, and Christoph Pfrommer, February 24, 2021, of astrophysical journal. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abd02d
NINDS Research on High Blood Pressure and Cognitive Decline
NINDS Research on High Blood Pressure and Cognitive Decline
by National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) December 14, 2023
NIH-funded researchers have found that high blood pressure leads to an increase in interleukin-17 in the brain, which activates immune cells and causes cognitive decline. The discovery, made using a mouse model, points to the possibility of new treatments by targeting T cells in the brain’s protective membranes. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
An NIH-funded study in mice suggests a potential new target for treating hypertension. Research supported by National Institutes of Health The findings suggest that a response of immune system cells within the protective membrane that surrounds the brain may contribute to the cognitive decline that can occur in people with chronic hypertension. This discovery is natural neuroscience, may shed light on new ways to counter the effects of high blood pressure on cognition. This study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the NIH. “Understanding the role of immune signaling in cognitive decline is critical,” said Dr. Roderick Corriveau, NINDS program director. “These findings provide insight into how signaling from the immune system contributes to the symptoms of cognitive decline that ultimately lead to the diagnosis of dementia.”
Global impact of hypertension and its impact on cognition
High blood pressure affects more than 1 billion people worldwide and can cause cognitive decline not only when a stroke occurs, but even when a person with high blood pressure does not have a stroke. However, efforts to control cognitive decline in people who have not had a stroke with blood pressure-lowering treatments have shown mixed results. The results of this mouse study suggest that under conditions that mimic common hypertension, immune cells around and within the brain become abnormally activated, and that this activation leads to impaired brain function. Fluorescent staining reveals an extensive vascular network of the dura mater. These blood vessels contain her T cells, which are activated in mouse models of chronic hypertension, causing a condition that can lead to dementia-like symptoms. Credit: Iadecola Lab
Research Insights: Mouse models of hypertension
Researchers led by Costantino Iadecola, MD, director and director of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Institute in New York City, used a mouse model of hypertension to investigate interleukin-17 (IL-17). It was discovered that the levels of A chemical normally released in the body, cerebrospinal fluid, and brain to activate the immune system. Previously, Dr. Iadekola’s team showed that a high-salt diet increases IL-17 in the intestine, followed by cognitive impairment. These new findings further deepen the story by showing that IL-17 is acting within the brain itself. It is also worth noting that these experiments used a different mouse model called the DOCA salt model, which more closely mimics common hypertension in humans. “This is the most realistic model of hypertension that we have at this time,” Dr. Iadecola said. “DOCA mice simulate low-renin hypertension, a type of hypertension that is common in people, especially black Americans.”
Role of IL-17 and brain macrophages
Further research has shown that when IL-17 enters the brain, it activates immune cells known as macrophages, which are responsible for activating inflammation and fighting infections. A series of experiments showed that both mice with brain macrophage deletion of IL-17 receptors and mice with brain macrophage depletion showed no effect of hypertension on cognitive function, and therefore these macrophages were not associated with the observed cognitive function. It was confirmed that this is important for the reduction of Functioning despite other hypertension symptoms. Researchers were still looking for a source of IL-17 that acts on brain macrophages. Based on previous studies, the researchers’ initial hypothesis was that the gut releases IL-17, which travels to the brain through the bloodstream. Once there, a reaction is triggered that damages the ability of the brain’s blood vessels to respond appropriately to increased brain activity. However, blocking the ability of cerebral blood vessels to respond to IL-17 only partially reversed the cognitive impairment, suggesting that another source of IL-17 is acting on the brain. Uncovering IL-17 pathways and protective barriers One clue suggests that one layer of the brain’s protective layer, known as the dura mater, contains immune T cells that secrete IL-17 and may influence mouse behavior. taken from other recent studies. Using special mice whose cells glow fluorescent green when they make IL-17, the researchers found that high blood pressure increases IL-17 in the dura mater, which is then released into the tissues. Normally, a barrier exists within the brain’s protective covering called the meninges to prevent unwanted spillage into the brain. However, in mice with experimentally induced hypertension, this barrier appears to be disrupted, allowing IL-17 to enter the cerebrospinal fluid. Two additional experiments helped confirm this hypothesis. First, drugs were used to block the migration of her T cells from the lymph nodes to the meninges. Second, antibodies were used to block the activity of her T cells within the meninges. In both cases, the hypertensive mice recovered cognitive function, suggesting that targeting hyperactive T cells may be a new therapeutic approach worth exploring. “Taken together, our data suggest that hypertension causes two distinct effects,” Dr. Iadecola said. “One is that IL-17 has an effect on blood vessels, but this seems to be relatively minor. The more prominent central effect is that IL-17 releases IL-17, which has a direct effect on immune cells in the brain. It is caused by cells in the meninges. These immune cells, activated by signaling from the meninges, affect the brain in a way that ultimately causes cognitive impairment.”
Future Research Directions
Dr. Iadekola and his team are now trying to connect the dots between activation of immune cells in the meninges and cognitive decline. Previous works by the group The researchers suggested a link between a high-salt diet, which suppresses the production of the chemical nitric oxide in brain blood vessels, and the resulting accumulation of tau, a toxic protein that forms clumps within affected neurons. Alzheimer’s disease disease. The findings also indicate suppression of nitric oxide production in cerebral blood vessels, and whether this also leads to increased tau production is currently being investigated.
Reference: “Meningeal interleukin-17-producing T cells mediate cognitive impairment in a mouse model of salt-sensitive hypertension” Monica M. Santisteban, Samantha Schaeffer, Antoine Anfray, Giuseppe Faraco, David Brea, Gang Wang, Melissa J. Sobanko , Rose Sciortino, Gianfranco Rachumi, Ali Wiseman, Rybaik Park, Joseph Anraser, Costantino Iadecola, December 4, 2023, natural neuroscience.DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01497-z of NINDS’ Mind Your Risks® Campaign This paper highlights the relationship between high blood pressure and brain health (including risk of stroke and dementia), particularly in Black men aged 28 to 45, and provides recommendations to prevent and reduce the impact of high blood pressure on brain health. We offer strategies. This research was funded by NINDS (NS089323, NS095441, NS123507), the Leon Levy Fellowship in Neuroscience, and the Feil Family Foundation.
Every Christmas season, it becomes clear once again that there are amazingly accomplished singers like Mariah Carey and George Michael. Their songs stir strong emotions. Singing involves perhaps the most complex and mostly hidden movements that humans and animals can perform. To become a good singer, you need to learn how to coordinate the movements of hundreds of muscles in your body with great precision. Therefore, it requires a lot of talent and practice.
Voice box training: unexplored territory We all know that athletes spend a lot of time exercising their limbs and body muscles, but why not try training your voice box muscles? “Surprisingly, little is known about the effects of exercise on these muscles or whether they respond to training in humans,” said Professor Koen Elemans of the University of Southern Denmark, an expert in sound production. says. Close to their precious voice box.
This study found that male songbirds require daily singing practice to improve vocal muscle health and song quality. This is an important factor in attracting mates and maintaining social bonds.
Insights from Songbirds
New research published today (December 12th) in a prestigious journal nature communications Male songbirds report that they need to sing daily to strengthen their vocal muscles and produce beautiful songs. And if the female didn’t notice, she notices. “Singing is extremely important for songbirds. They sing to impress potential partners, protect their territory, and maintain social bonds,” said Iris, lead author of the study. Dr. Adam says.
Researchers have shown that songbirds’ vocal muscles require training to keep them at peak performance. And it’s not just training; what’s especially important is singing practice. The study was carried out by an international team of researchers from the University of Southern Denmark, Leiden University, Umeå University and the University of Vermont, and led by Assistant Professor Iris Adam and Professor Koen Elemans from the Department of Biology at the University of Southern Denmark. .
Vocal muscles also need exercise
“It has long been known that songbird calls are controlled by fast vocal muscles, but it remains to be seen whether and how these muscles respond to exercise, similar to leg muscles. “Until now, we knew very little about it,” says Iris Adam. In their study, the researchers showed that when songbirds don’t use their vocal muscles at all, their voices become significantly slower and weaker within a few days. But even if the bird only made a mumble, after seven days the vocal muscles had already lost 50% of their power.
Therefore, in order for songbirds to remain attractive, they may need to invest a lot of time and energy into singing every day.
Unique features of the vocal muscles While studying the vocal muscles of zebra finches, the research team made another very important discovery. “When we go to the gym to work out our leg and arm muscles, we typically slow down our movements,” said study author Pell Stoll, an expert in human muscle exercise physiology. To tell. But songbird vocal muscles, like the muscles in their limbs, don’t get stronger or slower with exercise, they get weaker and faster. This is the opposite of normal limb and body muscles. “We think this reverse training may be unique to the vocal muscles and may be true for everyone.” vertebrateBecause all vocal muscles are developmentally related, ”says Iris Adam.
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