This month, the Cambodian government reported that two people there died of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H5N1 bird flu, after being exposed to infected poultry. For people, the risk of getting infected is low, but outbreaks in animals have been rising worldwide, wiping out chicken flocks and wild bird populations. The virus is devastating to poultry producers, who are forced to slaughter infected flocks.

A growing number of countries are starting to vaccinate chickens against bird flu, while the United States and United Kingdom are still holding out because of uncertainties about immunization’s cost and effectiveness. Meanwhile, researchers in the UK have come up with another possible approach to protecting poultry flocks: gene editing. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, and the Pirbright Institute used the gene-editing tool Crispr to make the first chickens that are partially resistant to the virus. They published their results last week in the journal Nature Communications.

Like tiny molecular scissors, Crispr allows scientists to make targeted cuts to an organism’s genetic code. The UK team used the technology to tweak a chicken gene that is responsible for producing the protein ANP32A. During infection, the bird flu virus takes over this protein to help make copies of itself.

“All viruses are obligate parasites,” said Wendy Barclay, a study author and virologist at Imperial College London, during a press briefing on October 5. When viruses get inside a host cell, she said, “they hijack various proteins inside the cell to help themselves replicate.” In 2016, Barclay’s lab discovered that influenza viruses use the ANP32A protein in this way.

The researchers produced 10 chickens with this edited gene and exposed them to the H9N2 strain of bird flu, using a dose size that mimicked what animals would likely experience in the real world. They used this strain, rather than the more deadly H5N1, because it is the one chickens would most likely encounter during an outbreak. Only one of the 10 birds got infected, and the virus didn’t spread to other chickens.

The team then exposed the gene-edited birds to an artificially high dose of the virus. This time, five out of 10 birds became infected, but the gene edit still provided some level of protection. The amount of virus found in the infected animals was much lower than the level typically detected among chickens that are ill with bird flu.

The gene edit also helped limit the spread of the virus. Four ordinary chickens were placed in the same incubator with the gene-edited birds that had already been exposed to high levels of the virus. Out of the four, only one became infected.

Researchers monitored the gene-edited birds over the course of two years and found that the gene changes had no adverse effects on their health or egg production.

“This is showing a potential mechanism for reducing the susceptibility of chickens to avian flu,” says Carol Cardona, a veterinarian and professor of avian health at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, who wasn’t involved in the study. “But even if we protected every single chicken on the globe, flu wouldn't go anywhere.” Avian influenza has been identified in more than 100 different species of birds.

The fact that some breakthrough infections occurred means that the virus still has a chance to infect other birds, and could “escape” the vaccine’s effects by mutating away from using the ANP32A protein to reproduce. In fact, when the UK researchers took samples of the virus from the infected gene-edited chickens, they found some mutations in the part of the virus that this protein interacts with.“The flu virus replicates rapidly, and every time it enters a new host, there's an opportunity for that virus to adapt and change,” Cardona says.

During the press briefing, Barclay said those viral mutations didn’t make the chickens any sicker. The team also wanted to make sure those changes wouldn’t cause more severe infection in people, so they added the mutated viruses to human airway cells that had been cultivated in a dish. They found that the mutations didn’t help the virus grow in a way that would pose an increased risk to people.

It’s also not known how the gene-edited chickens will fare against the much more aggressive bird flu strains such as H5N1, which weren’t tested in the study. Barclay said they chose H9N2, considered a low pathogenicity virus that causes little to no signs of disease, in part because it’s more common. Also, deliberately infecting chickens with H5N1 raises animal welfare concerns, since it causes serious illness and is often fatal.

The authors identified two other related proteins, ANP32B and ANP32E, that they think would prevent virus replication. In chicken cells grown in the lab, they edited the genes that code for all three proteins and exposed them to the flu virus. The edits successfully blocked growth of the virus in the cells, but the researchers have not yet bred chickens with all three edits.

Susan Lamont, an expert on poultry genetics at Iowa State University, says that making multiple genetic modifications could reduce the possibility that the viruses will escape. “When you start doing that, it really makes it much more difficult for the virus population to find its way around the resistance properties of that animal,” she says.

But Brian Ladman, senior scientist at the University of Delaware Poultry Health System, says removing too many genes could be deleterious to the animals’ health. “These genes are there for a reason,” he says. For broiler chickens, which live only eight to 12 weeks before they are slaughtered, the health effects of gene editing may not have time to manifest during their lives, Ladman says. But laying chickens are kept commercially for two to three years.

While the research is still in very early stages and isn’t ready to be deployed widely, Lamont says she can imagine that future poultry producers may combine vaccination against avian flu with gene editing to boost viral resistance. “This disease is so prevalent and so important that any strategies that we can bring together to help protect the health of the birds is, in my view, very good,” she says.

Poultry producers already combine vaccination plus genetic selection—that is, choosing which chickens to breed based on certain traits—to prevent disease. Decades ago, scientists identified genetic variations that enhance resistance to the virus that causes Marek’s disease, a common and highly contagious illness that produces paralysis and tumors. Chicken producers began breeding birds with this trait while also vaccinating them against the disease. Lamont says this two-pronged approach is more protective than either on its own.

The UK researchers say their gene-edited chickens are a proof of concept that shows a possible way to make chickens resistant to bird flu. “We’re not there yet,” Barclay said. “We would need more edits, more robust edits to really shut down the virus replication.”

And in England at least, it will likely take some time for gene-edited chickens to make it to people’s plates. The government passed a law in March legalizing the commercial development of gene-edited foods, but a second vote is needed to allow farm animals with edited genomes. In the US, the first gene-edited food animal—a cow edited to have a short, slick-hair coat—was approved in 2022. The trait has been found to help cattle tolerate hot weather.

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It’s an age-old paradox—as we get older and have more wisdom and life experiences to share, our minds start playing tricks on us, and we find it more difficult to retrieve the information we want. We find it harder to remember key details about our lives and our loved ones, or mix up basic facts about the world. About one in 10 adults aged 65 and over have dementia, and 22% have some form of mild cognitive impairment.

What causes these kinds of impairments? And more importantly, what can we do about them? As medicine continues to improve physical health and lengthen people’s lifespans, three Tufts University researchers are investigating how we can improve memory and cognition as we age as well.

In disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, and nutrition, they are uncovering key insights that could help slow the decline of the brain as we age—and help us better cope with the deteriorations that inevitably occur.

Making Connections with Memories

As an undergrad, Elizabeth Race volunteered with a program called Grandfriends, in which students befriended seniors at assisted living facilities. “I was always struck by how much you can learn from older adults,” says Race, now an associate professor of psychology. “The amount they can contribute to the world is really undervalued.”

In graduate school, Race became fascinated with examining what makes some older adults stay mentally sharp as a tack, while others deteriorate into cognitive impairment and dementia.

At Tufts, her research examines both the physical deterioration in areas of the brain associated with memory storage and retrieval, as well as the connections between these areas. “With new brain imaging technology, we can visualize these networks in a way we couldn’t do 10 or 15 years ago,” she says. Knowing how these connections work, Race says, may help people develop strategies for drawing upon healthy brain regions to compensate for losses in impaired areas.

In her studies of the prefrontal cortex, the “command center” of the brain in charge of executive function, Race has noted that the outside edges, known as the lateral prefrontal cortex, deteriorate faster than the interior region, known as the medial prefrontal cortex. While the former is associated with task switching and short-term memory, the latter is associated with prior knowledge and personal information.

In experiments using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), she’s found that older adults can better remember new information by linking it to something they already know—like memorizing digits by envisioning a telephone keypad or associating new information with a personal hobby, such as types of birds and where they live.

In other experiments using EEG (electroencephalogram) technology, she’s explored the natural oscillations of brain waves. When exposed to music or rhythm in the environment, brain waves become synchronized with that beat. Since the medial prefrontal cortex is also associated with music, she’s found that presenting information rhythmically can also help better encode memories for later retrieval.

“When we are presenting important information,” says Race, “we can ask, are there really simple behavioral interventions we can do that could dramatically improve people’s ability to remember things clearly and vividly?”

How Stereotypes of Aging Affect Memory

When older people come into Ayanna Thomas’ lab for experiments on cognition, they often arrive with an apology. “They say to me or my students, ‘My memory’s terrible—I’m not going to do well,’” says Thomas, a psychology professor and dean of research for Arts and Sciences. “So they are already feeling pressure and anxiety about their cognitive functioning.”

In her research, Thomas investigates how such metacognition—thinking about thinking—affects people’s ability to remember in various contexts.

“The societal representations of what it means to become older are full of negative stereotypes associated with poor memory, and that can really affect the way people feel about themselves,” she says.

In some experiments, for example, she exposes people to a short video clip depicting a crime, and then has them read a narrative about the same incident that includes both correct and incorrect information. Afterwards, she asks them to recall details of the incident, and finds that when told not to worry about whether information is correct or not, they score similarly to younger participants, including both correct and erroneous information.

On the other hand, when told they will be penalized for incorrect information—thus activating their stereotype threat, which is when people are afraid that their actions will confirm negative stereotypes about their group—they tended to perform worse, by withholding correct details. The results have implications for witness testimony in court.

“They may be exercising a form of control by withholding both correct and incorrect information,” Thomas says. She has extrapolated these findings to other situations, such as a visit to a doctor’s office, where older people may feel anxiety over questions about brain function, exhibiting poor memory. They may feel more relaxed and do better, she says, if they are interviewed by an older person who they perceive to be more sympathetic to the challenges of aging.

Recently, Thomas has been collaborating with Race to examine whether giving older people a warning about incorrect information can help them weed out those details and remember more accurately.

In this case, study participants watch a crime video and then listen to a narrative report recounting the event that they are told could not be verified.

The researchers are exploring whether that warning reduces the likelihood that the incorrect information is incorporated into their final reports.

“We know that younger adults benefit from these kinds of warnings, but we’re not quite sure if older adults will be able to benefit as well, since that requires cognitive processes that may be difficult for them,” Thomas says. “However, if warnings prove effective, they could be helpful in dealing with cases of misinformation on the internet, or when they are being questioned by an investigator in a criminal justice situation.”

A Healthy Diet and a Healthy Brain

Incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S. dramatically increases with age. At age 65, it affects an estimated one out of every 20 adults, while at age 85, it affects one out every three, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. But the processes that lead to Alzheimer’s are believed to start years or even decades before, says Paul Jacques, a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

“It’s now believed that the progression to Alzheimer’s disease starts 20 or 30 years prior to diagnosis of the condition,” he says. “This may be the best window of opportunity to prevent the damage that leads to Alzheimer’s disease.”

As nutritional epidemiology team leader at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutritional Research Center on Aging at Tufts, he’s been looking at long-term data to tease out how diet might increase or decrease risk of the disease.

Much of his research focuses on data from the Framingham Heart Study, a longitudinal study tracking associations between lifestyle, diet, and health outcomes since 1948. Researchers have identified few modifiable risk factors when it comes to Alzheimer’s, Jacques says. In fact, changes in diet and nutrition may be one of the few ways to intervene in the disease.

Among the nutrients he’s found that could lower risk are flavonoids, plant pigments found in many fruits, vegetables, and other plant foods, including blueberries and strawberries, apples, red and purple grapes, and tea. They have been shown to prevent inflammation—one of the essential mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s. He’s also found an association between Alzheimer’s and low choline, an organic compound found in wide variety of foods, including eggs, meat, and leafy vegetables, that is essential for neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

In other research, Jacques and colleagues have shown that the vitamins B12 and folate (B9) may be protective against cognitive decline. However, this work has also suggested that high consumption of folic acid, the synthetic form of folate found in most supplements and fortified foods, is associated with worse cognitive function in older adults with inadequate B12 status. His current research is focused on addressing the role of these B vitamins on brain aging, including risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Taken as a whole, Jacques’ research provides important evidence that diet may affect cognitive decline and risk of Alzheimer’s disease, though determining exactly how diet relates to brain health is an ongoing process.  

For the average person, he says the best protection against cognitive decline is a healthy diet overall. “Focusing on one item, such as eating more berries, is not going to hurt you,” he says. “But the strongest evidence shows that the healthiest diet is one lower in red meat and higher in fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. It will lower your risk for cardiovascular disease—and Alzheimer’s disease as well.”

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Rich, high-fat foods such as ice cream are loved not only for their taste, but also for the physical sensations they produce in the mouth — their ‘mouthfeel’. Now scientists have identified a brain area that both responds to the smooth texture of fatty foods and uses that information to rate the morsel’s allure, guiding eating behaviour1.

These findings, published on 16 October in The Journal of Neuroscience, “add a new dimension” of the eating experience to scientists’ understanding of what motivates people to choose certain foods, says Ivan de Araujo, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, who was not involved in the study.

A tongue for texture

To explore how food textures influence eating habits, Fabian Grabenhorst, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, and his colleagues set out to quantify the mouthfeel of fatty foods. The authors prepared several milkshakes with varying fat and sugar contents and placed a sample of each between two pig tongues procured from a local butcher. The researchers then slid the tongues across each other and measured the amount of friction between the two surfaces, providing a numerical index of each shake’s smoothness.

The researchers then gave 22 participants milkshakes with the same compositions as those tested on the pig tongues. After tasting each milkshake, participants placed bids on how much they would spend to drink a full glass of it after the experiment.

Accompanying brain scans showed that activity patterns in an area called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which is involved in reward processing, reflected the shakes’ texture. The scans also identified OFC activity patterns that reflected participants’ bids, suggesting that this brain region links mouthfeel to the value placed on that food.

To find out whether this finding extends to food intake, the researchers invited the participants to return to the laboratory for a free lunch of several curry dishes with varying fat contents. Unbeknown to the participants, the researchers measured how much of each curry the participants ate. They found that those whose OFCs were most sensitive to fatty texture were more likely to eat more of the high-fat curry compared with those who weren’t as sensitive to fatty texture.

These findings could help to shape formulations of low-calorie foods and understand the neural mechanisms of overeating, Grabenhorst says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03243-8

References

1. Khorisantono, P. A., et al. J. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1473-23.2023 (2023).

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The Gulf Stream is almost certainly weakening, a new study has confirmed.

The flow of warm water through the Florida Straits has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with grave implications for the world's climate. 

The ocean current starts near Florida and threads a belt of warm water along the U.S. East Coast and Canada before crossing the Atlantic to Europe. The heat it transports is essential for maintaining temperate conditions and regulating sea levels. 

But this stream is slowing down, researchers wrote in a study published Sept. 25 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 

"This is the strongest, most definitive evidence we have of the weakening of this climatically-relevant ocean current," lead-author Christopher Piecuch, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said in a statement.

The Gulf Stream is just a small component of the thermohaline circulation — a global conveyor belt of ocean currents that moves oxygen, nutrients, carbon and heat around the planet, while also helping to control sea levels and hurricane activity. 

Beginning in Caribbean before flowing out into the Atlantic through the Florida Straits, the Gulf Stream brings warmer southerly waters (which are saltier and denser) northward to cool and sink in the North Atlantic. After dropping deep beneath the ocean and releasing its heat into the atmosphere, the water slowly drifts southward, where it heats up again and the cycle repeats.

This process is vital for maintaining temperatures and sea levels across the U.S. East Coast — whose waters are kept up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) lower than water further offshore by the sweeping motion of the current.

As Earth’s climate warms, an enormous influx of cold, fresh water from melting ice sheets is spilling into oceans, possibly causing the Gulf Stream to slow or even veer toward outright collapse, according to scientists. But due to the scale and complexity of the system, this is hard to prove.

To find definitive evidence that the stream is slowing, scientists analyzed data spanning 40 years from three separate sources — undersea cables, satellite altimetry and observations made on site — to observe the motions of the current around the Florida Straits.

Their statistical analysis revealed that the current had slowed by 4%, with just a 1% chance of their measurement being a fluke caused by random fluctuations.

At first glance, a 4% shift may seem like a miniscule change, but "the worry is that's just the slow start," Helen Czerski, an oceanographer at University College London (UCL) who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.

It's like those early days of COVID. People were like: 'Oh, there's only 60 cases. We don't care about this,'" she added. "There's only 60 cases, yeah, but yesterday there were 30 and the day before that there were 15. If you just think a week ahead, we've got a problem."

To find definitive proof that climate change is the culprit, scientists will need to tease apart the differences between the natural variability of the ocean systems and the impact made by global heating — a tricky task given the relatively short time that humans have been directly measuring the ocean flows in detail.

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Robots mimic evolutionary transitions

The researchers think that insect flight can be better understood in terms of oscillators. A person can keep a pendulum oscillating either by repeatedly pushing it or by placing the pendulum in a system where it is automatically pushed or pulled. Regardless of your method, the pendulum will take roughly the same time to complete one oscillation.

 

“A pendulum oscillates this way because of the force of gravity pulling on the pendulum and not any sort of predetermined pattern. Asynchronous insects also generate flapping wing motion based on the time history of the wing motion just a little time before. This process is called feedback-generated oscillations,” Nicholas Gravish, one of the study authors and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San Diego, told Ars Technica.

 

To further examine these two patterns of wing beats, the researchers developed two flapping robots. The first one was modeled on hawkmoths (Manduca sexta). These insects fly in a synchronous fashion, but the robot also has the necessary tools to perform asynchronous flight. The second robot was modeled after RoboBee, an autonomous flying robot developed by Harvard University researchers.

 

The RoboBee model had a body size similar to real hawk moths. It and other current flapping wing robots just follow the pattern of motion that is sent to them by a computer or microcontroller—much like synchronous flight. The first robot, on the other hand, was smaller in size compared to the real moths. It could perform asynchronous flight with stretch-generated wingbeats when placed in a liquid medium, mimicking the flight of small insects in the air.

 

The smaller robot could also switch to synchronous flight when connected to a controller that generated sinusoidal or periodic signals. “This paper includes the first insect-scale robot that uses this asynchronous, self-excited strategy for generating wingbeats, and it can even switch back and forth between the two modes,” Sponberg said.

 

The researchers wanted to engineer stretch-generated activation into the RoboBee model to enable asynchronous flight there, as well. In order to do this, they used a special fiber-optic sensor to measure how fast its wings moved. This speed data was uploaded in a computer program similar to the one that controlled wing flapping in the first model. This enabled a real-time feedback loop between wing velocity and actuator voltage, resulting in the generation of asynchronous wingbeats in the RoboBee.

 

This experiment suggests a simple mechanism for how the transition between the two styles of flight could occur and suggests that it was probably very easy for insect species to transition back and forth between the different flight modes.

Asynchronous flight and better robots

The current study suggests that the two flight strategies can actually be two regimes of the same system. This means that it could be much easier to switch between strategies in the same robot—and may mean that insects can switch, as well.

 

Beyond its implications for biology, this may also have some practical uses. For example, it could lead to the development of robots that could automatically stop and restart upon encountering an obstacle, or automatically adjust the frequency when perturbed.

 

“We also want to explore what the control and maneuverability tradeoffs are for using the two different strategies of flight. Faster is not always better for control, and we want to know what advantages and disadvantages each flight strategy provides. This is also really important for thinking about new robot designs, especially because we can now build flapping robots that are either synchronous or asynchronous or even switch between the two,” Sponberg said.

 

Additionally, the researchers are interested in looking more deeply within the different ultrafast flapping groups. Some of these groups (like flies) exclusively use asynchronous flight, while others, like the true bugs, have switched back and forth many times in their evolutionary history. The authors hope that their model might give some predictions about which groups might be able to switch more easily.

 

Nature, 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06606-3 (About DOIs)

 

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Brushing our teeth is a fundamental part of all our daily routines, but too many people skip the tongue.

Dr Rhona Eskander, dentist at Dental Phobia, explained that keeping our tongue fresh is vital for a number of reasons.

‘The tongue’s surface is covered with tiny crevices and taste buds where bacteria and food particles can accumulate,’ Dr Eskander explained.

‘If these are left unchecked, they can produce foul-smelling compounds and contribute to bad breath. By gently brushing your tongue, you remove this buildup of bacteria and food debris, reducing the potential for odorous compounds to form.’

The scientific name for bad breath is halitosis – but avoiding the embarrassment of bad breath isn’t the only reason to stay on top of dental hygiene.

‘Additionally, a cleaner tongue can enhance your sense of taste, as the taste buds are less obstructed by debris,’ she explained.

‘It also aids in preventing plaque formation on teeth, which can lead to dental issues.

‘So, incorporating tongue brushing into your oral care routine not only promotes better breath but also contributes to overall oral health and a more enjoyable eating experience.’

Not cleaning your tongue can also mean bacteria thrives, your tongue develops a ‘coated’ appearance, and there’s an increased risk of dental plaque, gum disease, oral infections and cavities.

It’s time to invest in a tongue scraper.

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Scientists at University College London report new dads, if they have a prior history of taking antidepressants, are over 30 times more likely to take these meds again in the first year after having a child. Researchers analyzed data provided by over 500,000 primary care electronic health records from the IQVIA Medical Research Database, spanning January 2007 to December 2016.

More specifically, this project encompassed 90,736 men who welcomed a newborn in the previous year and another 453,632 men who did not. The study authors then examined how many men in each cohort received an antidepressant prescription.

Notably, the team did not see any differences in antidepressant treatment between the two groups. However, researchers add that their findings indicate having a history of antidepressant treatment made fathers significantly more likely to need treatment again after having a child. Thus, the research team suggests it may be beneficial for such men to undergo a mental health check-up with their doctor within a year of having a child.

(© Сергей Чирков – stock.adobe.com)

“Our findings show that the relationship between depression and fatherhood is complex and that previous antidepressant treatment is a key determinant associated with antidepressant use in the year after having a child,” says the study’s lead author, PhD candidate Holly Smith from the UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health, in a university release.

“This may be because the men are continuing treatment they were on before having a child, or these men may be more susceptible to having feelings of depression again and the challenges of having a new child may exacerbate this,” Smith continues.

“After the birth of a child, attention is normally focused on the health of the mother and baby. However, we need to ensure that new dads get the care they need too by improving research on new fathers and how to engage with them about their mental health.”

Prior studies have suggested that men may be at a higher risk of depression directly following the birth of their child. Estimates show that as many as one in 10 new dads may deal with depression in the year after their child’s birth.

Antidepressants are one of the most widely prescribed treatments for depression. Still, there is very little information available tallying how many fathers are prescribed these drugs in the year after having a child, or how this compares to men who haven’t recently had a child.

Alongside previous antidepressant use, study authors also found that social deprivation appears to be a key factor regarding whether new fathers are prescribed antidepressants. It’s worth noting that dads living in deprived areas had an 18-percent higher risk of receiving an antidepressant prescription in comparison to fathers living in more affluent areas.

The study is published in JAMA Network Open.

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In 1848, when Louis Pasteur was a young chemist still years away from discovering how to sterilize milk, he discovered something peculiar about crystals that accidentally formed when an industrial chemist boiled wine for too long. Half of the crystals were recognizably tartaric acid, an industrially useful salt that grew naturally on the walls of wine barrels. The other crystals had exactly the same shape and symmetry, but one face was oriented in the opposite direction.

The difference was so stark that Pasteur could separate the crystals under a magnifying lens with tweezers. “They are in relation to each other what an image is, in a mirror, in relation to the real thing,” he wrote in a paper that year.

Though Pasteur didn’t know it, in the crystallized dregs of that wine, he had stumbled across one of the deepest mysteries about the origins of life on Earth.

What he was seeing was a mixture of tartaric acid molecules that had identical atomic compositions and mirror-image arrangements to those atoms in space. They had the property later called “chirality” after the Greek word for “hand”: Just as our left and right hands are symmetrical opposites of each other, the left- and right-handed versions (or enantiomers) of the tartaric acid molecules are distinct and nonequivalent.

The significance of Pasteur’s observation went beyond the discovery of chirality—there was also the remarkable reason he was seeing it. The synthetic crystals were a mixture of the tartaric acid enantiomers because the boiling process allowed left- and right-handed versions to form in equal numbers. But in the natural crystals from wine barrels, all the tartaric acid molecules were right-handed—because the grapes used for the wine, picked from living vines, only made that enantiomer.

Chirality is a signature of life as we know it. Over and over, biochemists have found that when living cells use chiral molecules, they use one chirality exclusively. The sugars that make up DNA, for example, are all right-handed. The amino acids that make up proteins are all left-handed. If the wrong enantiomers slip into pharmaceuticals, the effects can sometimes be toxic or even lethal.

Some event or series of events early in the history of life must have “broken the mirror,” as biochemists put it, throwing life into molecular asymmetry. Scientists have debated why life became homochiral, and whether it needed to happen or was purely a fluke. Were chiral preferences impressed on early life by biased samples of molecules arriving from space, or did they somehow evolve out of mixtures that started out as equal parts right- and left-handed?

“Scientists have been mystified by this observation,” said Soumitra Athavale, an assistant professor of organic chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They’ve come up with all sorts of proposals over the years, but it’s difficult to come up with proposals which are actually relevant geologically.” Moreover, while many theories could explain why one type of molecule might have become homochiral, none of them explained why whole networks of biomolecules did.

Recently, a group at Harvard University published a series of papers that present an intriguing solution for how life’s homochirality emerged. They suggest that magnetic surfaces on minerals in bodies of water on the primordial Earth, charged by the planet’s magnetic field, could have served as “chiral agents” that attracted some forms of molecules more than others, kicking off a process that amplified the chirality of biological molecules, from RNA precursors all the way to proteins and beyond. Their proposed mechanism would explain how a bias in the makeup of certain molecules could have cascaded outward to create a vast network of chiral chemistry supporting life.

It’s not the only plausible hypothesis, but “it’s one of the coolest because it ties geophysics to geochemistry to prebiotic chemistry [and] ultimately to biochemistry,” said Gerald Joyce, a biochemist and president of the Salk Institute who was not involved in the study. He is also impressed that the hypothesis is backed by “actual experiments” and that “they’re doing this under realistic conditions.”

The CISS Effect

The roots of the new theory about homochirality reach back almost a quarter century to when Ron Naaman, a professor of chemical physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and his team discovered a critical effect of chiral molecules. Their work focused on the fact that electrons have two key properties: They carry a negative charge, and they have “spin,” a quantum property analogous to intrinsic clockwise or counterclockwise rotation. When molecules interact with other molecules or surfaces, their electrons can redistribute themselves, polarizing the molecules by creating a negative charge at their destination and a positive charge at their starting point.

Ron Naaman of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel discovered the CISS effect in 1999.

Its applications and biological significance have continued to emerge since then.

Courtesy of Ron Naaman

Naaman and his team discovered that chiral molecules filter electrons based on the direction of their spin. Electrons with one spin orientation will move more efficiently across a chiral molecule in one direction than the other. Electrons with the opposite spin move more freely the other way.

To understand why, imagine throwing a Frisbee that glances off the wall of a hallway. If the Frisbee hits the right-hand wall, it will bounce forward only if it’s rotating clockwise; otherwise, it will bounce backward. The opposite will happen if you hit the Frisbee off the left-hand wall. Similarly, chiral molecules “scatter the electrons according to their direction of rotation,” Naaman said. He and his team named this phenomenon the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect.

Because of that scattering, electrons with a given spin end up aggregating at one pole of a chiral molecule (and the right-handed and left-handed versions of the molecule gather opposite spins at their respective poles). But that redistribution of spins affects how the chiral molecules interact with magnetic surfaces because electrons spinning in opposite directions attract one another, and those spinning in the same direction repel one another.

Consequently, when a chiral molecule approaches a magnetic surface, it will be drawn closer if the molecule and the surface have opposite spin biases. If their spins match, they will repel each other. (Because other chemical interactions are also going on, the molecule can’t simply flip to realign itself.) So a magnetic surface can act as a chiral agent, preferentially interacting with only one enantiomer of a compound.

In 2011, in collaboration with a team at the University of Münster in Germany, Naaman and his team measured the spin of electrons as they moved through double-stranded DNA, confirming that the CISS effect is both real and strong.

That’s when research into the effect and its possible applications “started to boom,” Naaman said. He and his team, for example, developed several ways to use the CISS effect to remove impurities from biomedicines, or to exclude the wrong enantiomers from drugs to prevent major side effects. They’ve also explored how the CISS effect might help to explain the mechanisms of anesthesia.

But they only began working seriously on the idea that the CISS effect plays a part in the rise of biological homochirality after they were invited to collaborate on a hypothesis by a team at Harvard led by the astronomer Dimitar Sasselov and his graduate student S. Furkan Ozturk.

A Physics Perspective

Ozturk, the young lead author on the recent papers, came across the homochirality problem in 2020 when he was a physics graduate student at Harvard. Unhappy with his research on quantum simulations using ultracold atoms, he flipped through a science magazine detailing 125 of the biggest mysteries in the world and learned about homochirality.

“It looked really like a physics question because it’s about symmetries,” he said. After reaching out to Sasselov, who is the director of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative and who was already interested in the question of homochirality, Ozturk switched over to become a student in his lab.

Dimitar Sasselov and Furkan Ozturk at Harvard University led experiments that suggested

magnetic surfaces in lakes could have imposed homochirality on vital biomolecules at the

beginning of life’s history.

Courtesy of Furkan Ozturk

Ozturk and Sasselov soon hit on an idea based on the CISS effect. They imagined a primordial setting like a shallow lake where there were surfaces full of magnetic minerals and the water contained a mixture of chiral precursors to nucleotides. They theorized that ultraviolet light could have ejected many electrons from the magnetic surfaces, and many of those electrons would have had the same spin. The ejected electrons might then have interacted preferentially with specific enantiomers, and the resulting chemical reactions might then have preferentially assembled right-handed RNA precursors.

In April 2022, Ozturk traveled to Naaman’s lab in Israel, thrilled by the prospect of testing their hypothesis. His excitement was short-lived. Over the next month as he worked with Naaman, the idea fell apart. It “did not work,” Ozturk said, and so he returned home, dejected.

But then Ozturk had another idea. What if the CISS effect wasn’t manifesting as a chemical process but as a physical one?

Naaman’s group had shown that they could use magnetic surfaces to crystallize enantiomers preferentially. And crystallization would be the easiest way for purified collections of enantiomers to assemble. Ozturk mentioned that to John Sutherland, their collaborator at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK. “And I said, ‘drop everything to do with electrons and just focus on the crystallization,’” Sutherland said.

Sutherland was excited by the crystallization aspect because he and his team had already independently discovered that an RNA precursor called ribo-aminooxazoline (RAO) can synthesize two of the four building blocks of RNA. RAO also “crystallizes beautifully,” Sutherland said. Once a crystal seed forms from the enantiomer that is attracted to the surface, the crystal preferentially grows by incorporating more of the same enantiomer.

Ozturk remembers Sutherland telling him that it would be “game over” if the CISS effect idea worked. “Because it was so simple,” Ozturk said. “It was doing it on a molecule that was so central to the origin of life chemistry that if you can manage to make that molecule homochiral, you can make the entire system homochiral.”

Ozturk got to work in the Harvard lab. He put magnetite surfaces onto a petri dish and filled it with a solution containing equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed RAO molecules. He then put the dish on a magnet, put the experiment in the fridge, and waited for the first crystals to appear. At first, the team found that 60 percent of the crystals were single-handed. When they repeated the process, their crystals were 100 percent of the same chirality.

Illustration: Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine

As they reported in a study published in June in Science Advances, if they magnetized the surface one way, they created crystals that were purely right-handed; if they magnetized it the other way, the crystals were purely left-handed. “I was very surprised, because I’m super familiar with experiments that do not work,” Ozturk said. But this one “worked like a charm.”

Behind his desk, Ozturk keeps the empty bottle of champagne that Sasselov and the team shared at a celebratory dinner.

Multiply and Amplify

But they still had a major problem: The magnet they used in their experiment was about 6,500 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field.

So Ozturk returned to the Weizmann Institute last November, and he and Naaman then worked on a follow-up experiment in which they didn’t use an external magnetic field at all. Instead, they found that when the chiral molecules were adsorbed onto the magnetic surfaces, they created a highly local magnetic field over the surface that was up to 50 times as strong as Earth’s magnetic field. Their findings have been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal but not yet published.

“You’re coercing the neighborhood to be magnetized, which makes it even easier for the crystals to keep forming,” Joyce said. That self-perpetuating effect makes the scenario plausible, he added.

Athavale agrees. The fact that you don’t need a highly magnetic field for the CISS effect to occur is “really nice, because now you have seen a possible geological setting,” he said.

On a magnetic surface, crystals of an RNA precursor called RAO can form as either left- or

right-handed structures.Photograph: S. Furkan Ozturk

But the real key to creating homochirality is to look at how the effect could have been amplified across a network of interacting molecules. “The most important aspect of all this is not that we managed to find yet another way to get a chiral product,” Sasselov said, but that his group had found a route to creating a homochiral network.

In a paper featured on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics in August, Ozturk, Sasselov, and Sutherland proposed a model for how chiral information might propagate across a prebiotic network. Sutherland and his group had previously shown that analogs of right-handed transfer RNA molecules—which bind amino acids and bring them to the ribosome to make proteins—link to left-handed amino acids 10 times faster than to right-handed ones. The finding suggests that chiral RNA preferentially makes proteins of the opposite chirality, as is seen in nature. As the researchers wrote in the paper: “Therefore, the biological homochirality problem may be reduced to ensuring that a single common RNA precursor (e.g., RAO) can be made homochiral.”

The study didn’t directly explain why life’s preferred nucleotides are right-handed and its amino acids are left-handed, Ozturk said. But these new findings suggest that the determining factor was the magnetization induced by the Earth’s field. Athavale noted that even if the crystallization process happened in 100 primordial lakes, Earth’s magnetic field would ensure that they all produced precursors with the same handedness rather than a mixture.

Joyce noted that there’s a “cool little twist” if the magnetic field gave such a bias: If life started in the northern hemisphere and favored molecules with one handedness, then it would have shown the opposite handedness if it had arisen in the southern hemisphere.

The propagation of chirality between families of molecules is still highly hypothetical, Athavale noted, though it’s good to get people thinking. Sasselov agrees. “The idea of this paper is to motivate people to go and do these experiments,” he said.

Wentao Ma, an origins-of-life researcher at Wuhan University in China, said that the new papers mark “interesting progress.” But he would need to see the CISS effect lead to the polymerization of RNA to see it as a complete answer. “If they can achieve this result, I think we’re not far away from the … solution,” he said.

“I really like the CISS effect,” said Noémie Globus, an astrophysicist who is working on the homochirality problem. What would be more persuasive, she said, would be for the researchers to check whether meteorites containing an excess of amino acids with a particular handedness (which have been found before) also contain excess magnetic particles. She also noted that different theorized mechanisms could all have been creating homochirality in different molecules.

Jeffrey Bada, an emeritus professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is skeptical of the idea. He doesn’t believe that RNA could have been synthesized in primordial conditions as the first self-replicating molecule. “No one’s made RNA in a prebiotic context,” he said, because there are too many issues with the stability of the molecule.

Ozturk and Sasselov survey a site in Pilbara, Australia, which they think might resemble the prebiotic lake in

their hypothesis.Photograph: S.Furkan Ozturk

Sutherland’s team is still working to show that the other two types of nucleotides can be made from the RNA precursor molecule. “I think we’re pretty damn close,” Sutherland said. “But my group will tell you that I’ve been saying that for 22 years.”

Whether the CISS effect represents the solution, part of the solution, or no solution at all, there are obvious next steps to testing it. “It’s got all the aspects of a nice hypothesis where you’re coming up with something creative, something which is feasible, and then something which can ultimately be tested,” Athavale said. The most convincing next step, he thinks, would be to show geological evidence that the process could have happened outside the lab.

Over a Zoom call, Ozturk held up a flat black rock that he had picked up on a trip to Australia, a place filled with magnetic iron rocks on which he’s hoping to replicate his experiments. He also wants to make future tests of the idea more dynamic: The primordial lakes where he thinks the early molecules formed would have had streams and flows of material, as well as natural “wet-dry” cycles driven by rains and high temperatures, that would allow crystals to form and dissolve, form and dissolve.

Though the mystery of homochirality is far from settled, Ozturk has received some enthusiastic encouragement from his mentors for his work on the CISS effect explanation. In April, he gave a talk at Harvard about the Sasselov group’s research, and one of his idols attended. Matthew Meselson, a geneticist and molecular biologist who experimentally confirmed how DNA is replicated, sat in the front row as Ozturk wrote out his findings on a chalkboard. The 93-year-old geneticist told Ozturk afterward that he was so glad he had lived long enough to see this problem being solved. He later gave Ozturk a signed copy of one of his books. “Already you have solved a deep problem,” he wrote in it. “I wish you the best fortune.”

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Researchers utilized magnetic resonance imaging to compare the volume of the cortex in various regions of the brains in people with alcohol use disorder who received treatment and subsequently either stopped drinking, resumed drinking but at low-risk levels, or resumed drinking at higher-risk levels. Approximately eight months after treatment, abstinence and reduced drinking at low and higher risk levels were associated with differences in brain volumes across the cortex.

Thirteen of the 34 regions of the brain studied showed significant differences by group. Compared to a control group of people without alcohol use disorder who don’t drink heavily, the higher-risk drinkers showed significantly less cortical volume in 12 of 13 regions of interest in the brain; low-risk drinkers had less cortical volume in nine of the 13 regions; abstainers in six of the regions. Specifically, the higher-risk drinkers showed less volume than abstainers in four frontal regions and in the fusiform and precentral cortical regions. In contrast, low-risk drinkers only significantly differed from abstainers in the precentral and rostral middle frontal cortex. The frontal regions of the brain play roles in decision-making, self-monitoring, and behavioral control and support higher-order cognitive functions, including emotion regulation, working memory, and executive functioning. Less volume in these regions may relate to less capacity to perform these activities.

Prior studies have suggested that reductions in drinking levels, even if not completely abstinent, are associated with better mental health, physical health, quality of life, brain structure, and neurocognition. The study provides support for the benefits of reduced drinking on brain health. The authors recommend that researchers and health care providers consider reduced drinking, not just abstinence, as a potentially viable outcome for people with alcohol use disorder.

Data for the study was collected from sixty-eight participants aged 28 to 70 with alcohol use disorder approximately eight months after treatment for alcohol use disorder was initiated. The control group consisted of 34 similarly aged people who were nondrinkers or light drinkers. Participants whose daily ethanol consumption was between 1 and 40 grams for men and 1 and 20 grams for women were categorized as low-risk drinkers, and those who drank higher amounts were grouped in the higher-risk drinker category.

The study’s modest sample size, particularly in the heavier drinker category, and the predominantly Armed Service Veteran sample may limit the generalizability of study findings. Future research might assess whether cortical volume differences correspond to differences in participants' quality of life or functioning. Overall, the study findings indicate abstinence and low-risk drinking after treatment were associated with better brain structural outcomes than resumption of higher-risk drinking levels.

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Of the continent's 162 ice shelves, 68 show significant shrinking between 1997 and 2021, while 29 grew, 62 didn't change and three lost mass but not in a way scientists can say shows a significant trend, according to a study in Thursday's Science Advances.

That melted ice, which usually pens larger glaciers behind it, then goes into the sea. Scientists worry that climate change -triggered melt from Antarctica and Greenland will cause dangerous and significant sea rise over many decades and centuries.

"Knowing exactly how, and how much, ice is being lost from these protective floating shelves is a key step in understanding how Antarctica is evolving," said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who wasn't part of the study.

Scambos said the study gives insight into fresh water that's melting into the Amundsen Sea—"the key region of Antarctica for sea level rise"—that not only adds height to the ocean, but makes it less dense and salty.

The biggest culprits were giant icebergs breaking off in 1999, 2000 and 2002 that were the size of Delaware, he said. The study also looks at ice melting from warm water below.

Ice shelves are floating extensions of glaciers that act "like the gatekeepers" and keep the larger glacier from flowing more quickly into the water, the study's lead author said.

This satellite image provided by NASA, shows icebergs that formed through an ice shelf collapse. Dozens of Antarctica’s ice shelves, floating extensions of glaciers, showed significant shrinking between 1997 and 2021, a study published Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, found. Credit: Dr. Christopher A. Shuman, UMBC/NASA via AP, File

All told, Antarctic ice shelves lost about 8.3 trillion tons (7.5 trillion metric tons) of ice in the 25-year period, the study found. That amounts to around 330 billion tons (300 billion metric tons) a year and is similar to previous studies.

But the overall total is not the real story, said study lead author Benjamin Davison, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

What's most important, he said, are the patterns of individual shelf loss. The new study shows the deep losses, with four glaciers losing more than a trillion tons on the continent's peninsula and western side.

"Some of them lost a lot of their mass over time," Davison said. "Wordie is barely an ice shelf anymore."

The Wordie ice shelve, which holds back four glaciers near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, had a big collapse in 1989, but has lost 87% of its remaining mass since 1997, Davison found. Neighboring Larsen A has lost 73% and Larsen B 57%. The largest of the Larsen ice shelves, Larsen C, has lost 1.8 billion tons (1.7 trillion metric tons) of ice, about one-eighth of its mass.

The biggest loss of all is in the Thwaites ice shelf, holding back the glacier nicknamed Doomsday because it is melting so fast and is so big. The shelf has lost 70% of its mass since 1997—about 4.1 trillion tons (3.7 trillion metric tons)—into the Amundsen Sea.

The ice shelves that grew were predominantly on the continent's east side, where there's a weather pattern isolates the land from warmer waters, Davison said. The ice shelves on the east were growing slower than the shelves losing ice to the west.

It's difficult to connect an individual ice shelf loss directly to human-caused climate change, but steady attrition is expected as the world warms, he said.

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The e-Safety Commission fined X, the platform Musk rebranded from Twitter, saying it failed to respond to questions including how long it took to respond to reports of child abuse material on the platform and the methods it used to detect it.

Though small compared to the $44 billion Musk paid for the website in October 2022, the fine is a reputational hit for a company that has seen a continuous revenue decline as advertisers cut spending on a platform that has stopped most content moderation and reinstated thousands of banned accounts.

Most recently the EU said it was investigating X for potential violation of its new tech rules after the platform was accused of failing to rein in disinformation in relation to Hamas's attack on Israel.

"If you've got answers to questions, if you're actually putting people, processes and technology in place to tackle illegal content at scale, and globally, and if it's your stated priority, it's pretty easy to say," Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in an interview.

"The only reason I can see to fail to answer important questions about illegal content and conduct happening on platforms would be if you don't have answers," added Inman Grant, who was a public policy director for X until 2016.

X closed its Australian office after Musk's buyout, so there was no local representative to respond to Reuters. A request for comment sent to the San Francisco-based company's media email address was not immediately answered.

Under Australian laws that took effect in 2021, the regulator can compel internet companies to give information about their online safety practices or face a fine. If X refuses to pay the fine, the regulator can pursue the company in court, Grant said.

After taking the company private, Musk said in a post that "removing child exploitation is priority #1". But the Australian regulator said that when it asked X how it prevented child grooming on the platform, X responded that it was "not a service used by large numbers of young people".

X told the regulator available anti-grooming technology was "not of sufficient capability or accuracy to be deployed on Twitter".

Inman Grant said the commission also issued a warning to Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google for noncompliance with its request for information about handling of child abuse content, calling the search engine giant's responses to some questions "generic". Google said it had cooperated with the regulator and was disappointed by the warning.

"We remain committed to these efforts and collaborating constructively and in good faith with the e-Safety Commissioner, government and industry on the shared goal of keeping Australians safer online," said Google's director of government affairs and public policy for Australia, Lucinda Longcroft.

X's noncompliance was more serious, the regulator said, including failure to answer questions about how long it took to respond to reports of child abuse, steps it took to detect child abuse in livestreams and its numbers of content moderation, safety and public policy staff.

The company confirmed to the regulator that it had cut 80% of its workforce globally and has no public policy staff in Australia, compared to two before Musk's takeover.

X told the regulator its proactive detection of child abuse material in public posts dropped after Musk took the company private.

The company told the regulator it did not use tools to detect the material in private messages because "the technology is still in development", the regulator said.

($1 = 1.5833 Australian dollars)

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As someone who regularly “cleans” my ear canals with cotton swabs, a question hangs over me basically every day: How bad is it…really?

I know I am not supposed to stick cotton swabs in my ears. We all know this. It says so right there on the Q-tip packaging: “Do not insert swab into ear canal.”

The American Academy of Otolaryngology is similarly unambiguous on the issue, noting that sticking Q-tips or other objects in your ear “may cause a cut in your ear canal, poke a hole in your ear drum, or hurt the hearing bones, leading to hearing loss, dizziness, ringing, and other symptoms of ear injury.”

And yet, many people do stick Q-tips in their ears. The Washington Post once called the swabs “the most bizarre thing people buy,” given that they are often used for something you are expressly not supposed to use them for. Surveys done at doctor’s offices report that over half of patients stick Q-tips in their ears. And yet … we’re not all walking around with “hearing loss, dizziness, ringing, and other symptoms of ear injury.” (Are we?) Could digging around in our ears with Q-tips really be so bad?

According to one ear, nose, and throat doctor I found: No, it’s actually not. “I don’t agree that swabbing your ears regularly is dangerous and should be avoided,” said William Portnoy, who also specializes in plastic surgery and is based in Miami, noting that he cleans his ears with cotton swabs and has his whole life. “I’m, like, the pariah of the otolaryngology community,” he added.

Portnoy made his case in a 2016 review paper in the International Journal of Head and Neck Surgery titled “To Swab or Not to Swab.” The use of cotton-tipped swabs to clean ears is “ubiquitous,” he wrote. Out of 100 patients that he surveyed at his office, 77 percent used cotton swabs, and nearly half did so on a daily basis. Just four reported “complications” from ear cleaning: in three cases, impacted wax; and in one, an “unspecified injury.” While “most otolaryngologists have seen injuries caused by ear canal swabs,” he wrote, there’s no clear data on just how often such injuries—which really do sound harrowing!—occur. Perhaps what’s needed is education on how to safely use Q-tips, given that they are used so widely anyway.

One thing that Portnoy does see as a problem: people sticking Q-tips in their ears after wax has built up. “You don’t want to start swabbing if your ear is impacted with wax to begin with,” Portnoy said. That just pushes the wax farther down. Another is, obviously, the fact that you should not push the Q-tip so far that it touches the eardrum.

That said, “it’s actually fairly unusual for people to stick it that far,” agreed Seth Schwartz, an otolaryngologist in Seattle.

What’s more common with ear cleaning, he said, is that people damage the skin in the ear canal, leading to swimmer’s ear—which, despite the name, you can get without swimming—and symptoms like itching, pain, and even difficulty hearing. But Schwartz told me that he sees even this kind of damage most often when people use bobby pins or small spatulas to clean their ears. Q-tips may be comparatively less risky because they are soft. Though, as one doctor told former Slate writer Seth Stevenson, who admitted in these pages to cleaning his own ears with a paper clip (!), they can still cause micro-abrasions and lacerations.

Schwartz emphasized that the main issue with Q-tips is that you really don’t need to clean wax out of your ears yourself, with a Q-tip or anything else—so why risk the potential complications? Wax naturally makes its way out of the ear canal, “facilitated by movement of the jaw that occurs during chewing,” he wrote in an explainer for an ENT magazine. Any wax that you see on a Q-tip you have stuck into your ear is regular, healthy wax that did not need your assistance in being removed. If you want to clean your ears, do so by gently wiping a washcloth on the entrance of the canal to clear away any wax that has made its way out, Schwartz told me. If wax farther in truly is a problem, a professional can help extract it via “manual removal with direct visualization,” he explained—meaning that they scrape it out while also peering into your ear so as not to do any damage.

I sent Portnoy’s review paper to Schwartz. He agreed that the exact risks of Q-tipping one’s ears were unclear. Doctors do see a lot of issues from Q-tips—but then again, many, many more people may be Q-tipping. “It would be great to know those numbers so that people could make more informed decisions,” he wrote me via email.

But would knowing really change anything, anyway? “Knowing better and doing it anyway is part of what makes us human,” wrote Vanessa Hua in the New York Times magazine in a letter of recommendation for ear spoons, which she learned about from her grandmother, noting that they are common in Asian households. In Portnoy’s informal survey, most people swabbed for perceived hygienic purposes, but a third said they did so because it feels good. Which is to say, there is a purpose, even if it’s not medical. It’s clearly a compelling one. After our conversation, Portnoy sent me a comment that appeared beneath the Washington Post story that had called Q-tips a “bizarre” purchase: “IDGAF about this. I always have, and always will, clean my ears with q-tips!”

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It's well-known that ‘full fat’ fizzy drinks such as colas, lemonades and energy drinks raise the risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. People who have one can or more a day have a 26% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Sugary drinks rapidly increase blood sugar levels and this can lead to tiredness and increased hunger even in people without diabetes.

Until now, their sugar-free diet equivalents have been regarded as the healthier alternative. While sugary drinks are generally off-limits for Britain’s 4.3 million registered diabetics (except in emergencies when their blood sugar levels need to rise rapidly), it’s not been thought that diet drinks pose a risk for diabetics or anyone trying to lose weight.

However, a leading medical expert says there is now strong evidence that many types of artificial sweeteners used in diet drinks (and some foods) affect our blood sugar levels, worsen insulin resistance and alter our gut flora.

Dr Avinash Hari Narayanan (MBChB), Clinical Lead at London Medical Laboratory, says: ‘The fact that many so-called “diet” drinks could be exacerbating symptoms for known diabetics, as well as severely affecting those who remain undiagnosed, is bad news.

‘London Medical Laboratory’s latest analysis reveals one million people in the UK are likely to have undiagnosed type 2 diabetes. This invisible killer shortens lives by up to ten years. That’s why we launched our “Give the finger to diabetes” campaign to identify undiagnosed cases with a simple fingerprick blood test. In 2019, there were almost 14,000 diabetes-related deaths in the UK. The earlier people are diagnosed, the better the outcome.

‘Increasingly, diabetics and health-conscious people have turned to sugar-free versions of their favourite drinks. However, our analysis of the latest research finds that saccharin and sucralose are likely to increase blood sugar or glucose levels and adversely impact the gut microbiome (the collection of organisms that live in our digestive tracts). Researchers at John Hopkins University recently tested random groups of healthy, non-diabetic people and found that participants taking saccharin and sucralose had noticeable spikes in their blood sugar levels.

‘The researchers discovered that these sweeteners were influencing changes in bacteria in the gut and mouth. Changes were also identified in their blood samples. In fact, the blood metabolite changes in those people consuming saccharin and sucralose were so marked they were similar to those in people with diabetes or vascular diseases.

‘The researchers concluded that “some commonly consumed non-nutritive sweeteners may not be physiologically inert in humans as previously contemplated.” Gut microbiome changes can cause spikes in blood glucose, impairing the body’s ability to effectively regulate glucose levels.

‘This finding has been strongly supported by a 2022 paper published in the journal “Microorganisms”, which concludes sucralose consumption can induce gut dysbiosis (imbalance) and altered glucose and insulin levels in healthy young adults.

‘Concerningly, it’s not just saccharin and sucralose-based sweeteners that are under investigation. Two recent trials reported in “Nutrition Reviews” have shown that consumption of another popular sweetener, aspartame, may affect our body’s concentrations of glucose, insulin and a hormone that reduces appetite and releases insulin called “glucagon-like peptide 1”.

‘The root cause of some of these results is still being debated. Intriguing research published in the “Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care” in 2020 investigated the possibility that ingestion of artificial sweeteners results in the erroneous release of insulin from the pancreas (due to their sweet taste). This increases the levels of insulin in our blood, eventually leading to decreased receptor activity due to insulin resistance.

‘Alarming discoveries like these latest artificial sweetener findings emphasize why Britain’s 4.3 million diabetics need regular, accurate blood testing. While “old school” traditional fingerprick tests using meters and strips are worthwhile, the next-gen “HbA1c” fingerprick tests are so sensitive that they could replace diabetics' annual visits to their surgery for a full HbA1c blood test.

‘London Medical Laboratory’s fingerprick HbA1c “Diabetes - Diagnosis and Monitoring” test is considered the gold standard in regular testing. It is used to measure the average level of blood glucose over the past two to three months and both accurately monitor and diagnose diabetes. It can be taken at home through the post, or at one of the many drop-in clinics that offer these tests across London and nationwide in over 95 selected pharmacies and health stores.

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The term "evening chronotype" refers to individuals who naturally lean towards later sleep and activity patterns, while "morning chronotype" individuals prefer earlier sleep and wake times. Evening chronotypes have previously been linked to unhealthy lifestyle choices, obesity, and disrupted blood sugar control, but this study provides important prospective data.

The research involved approximately 64,000 middle-aged women, predominantly white and middle-class, with no history of diabetes. Half of these women did not neatly fit into either chronotype category, indicating variability in their sleep patterns.

The findings showed that those with an evening chronotype were 1.5 times more likely to engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviours compared to those with a morning chronotype. Even more concerning, during an average follow-up period of 7.4 years, women with an evening chronotype were significantly more likely to develop diabetes, with a 20% increased risk.

In essence, this study highlights that a preference for staying up late at night, or having an evening chronotype, appears to be an independent risk factor for diabetes among women.

While it is crucial to address lifestyle factors, this research emphasises the importance of understanding individual sleep patterns and their impact on health, offering valuable insights for diabetes prevention and management strategies.

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According to radiation oncologist Dr Andrea McKee, the number one killer of women is not breast cancer but lung cancer and urged education about the disease.

Estimates revealed that this cancer kills around 164 women daily in the US.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted: "As smoking is seen as a primary cause of lung cancer, the rates of women using cigarettes declined significantly over the past couple of decades." 

"However, the number of women with cancer was rising, especially in those who never smoked."

The research published in the journal JAMA Oncology found that lung cancer diagnoses have risen 84% in women over the past 43 years while dropping 36% in men.

It was revealed that those who never smoked are twice as likely to get cancer than male non-smokers.

Scientists have tried to explain but could not find any concrete reason why it is attacking one gender.

Legislators intend to establish a specific centre aimed at increasing funding and official collaborators to ascertain the condition of preventive services being provided to women alongside awareness campaigns.

Studies indicated that only 15% of the budget of the National Institutes of Health is directed toward female-focused research, and lung cancer remains the top women killer.

American Cancer Society noted that other risk factors include family history, exposure to secondhand smoke, radon, asbestos, pollution and arsenic in drinking water.

Usually, lung cancer is diagnosed late therefore proving detrimental. It also remains very hard to treat.

Researchers hope that studies showing gender disparities in lung cancer will make healthcare providers aware of how this disease affects women so they can know to watch for it.

It is recommended to consult a doctor if a cough lasts more than six weeks, blood showing up while coughing, shortness of breath or hoarse for a few weeks, or unexplained weight loss.

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Also:  Why is lung cancer attacking more women than men?

Iron atoms probably dance within Earth's solid inner core, and hot, black, heavy ice – that's both solid and liquid at the same time – likely forms within the water-rich gas giants, Uranus and Neptune.

Five years ago, scientists recreated this exotic ice, called superionic ice, for the first time in lab experiments; and four years ago they confirmed its existence and crystalline structure.

Then just last year, researchers at several universities in the United States and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center laboratory in California (SLAC) discovered a new phase of superionic ice.

Their discovery deepens our understanding as to why Uranus and Neptune have such off-kilter magnetic fields with multiple poles.

From our earthly surrounds, you'd be forgiven for thinking water is a simple, elbow-shaped molecule made up of one oxygen atom linked to two hydrogens that settle into a fixed position when water freezes.

Superionic ice is strangely different, and yet it may be among the most abundant forms of water in the Universe – presumed to fill not only the interiors of Uranus, Neptune, but also similar exoplanets.

These planets have extreme pressures of 2 million times the Earth's atmosphere, and interiors as hot as the surface of the Sun – which is where water gets weird.

Scientists confirmed in 2019 what physicists had predicted back in 1988: a structure where the oxygen atoms in superionic ice are locked in a solid cubic lattice, while the ionized hydrogen atoms are let loose, flowing through that lattice like electrons through metals.

This gives superionic ice its conductive properties. It also raises its melting point such that the frozen water remains solid at blistering temperatures.

In this latest study, physicist Arianna Gleason of Stanford University and colleagues bombarded thin slivers of water, sandwiched between two diamond layers, with some ridiculously powerful lasers.

Successive shockwaves raised the pressure to 200 GPa (2 million atmospheres) and temperatures up to about 5,000 K (8,500 °F) – hotter than the temperatures of the 2019 experiments, but at lower pressures.

"Recent discoveries of water-rich Neptune-like exoplanets require a more detailed understanding of the phase diagram of [water] at pressure–temperature conditions relevant to their planetary interiors," Gleason and colleagues explain in their paper, from January 2022.

X-ray diffraction then revealed the hot, dense ice's crystal structure, despite the pressure and temperature conditions only being maintained for a fraction of a second.

The resulting diffraction patterns confirmed the ice crystals were in fact a new phase distinct from superionic ice observed in 2019. The newly discovered superionic ice, Ice XIX, has a body-centered cubic structure and increased conductivity compared to its predecessor from 2019, Ice XVIII.

Conductivity is important here because moving charged particles generate magnetic fields. This is the basis of dynamo theory, which describes how churning conductive fluids, such as Earth's mantle or inside another celestial body, give rise to magnetic fields.

If more of a Neptune-like ice giant's insides were taken up by a mushy solid, and less of by a swirling liquid, then it would change the kind of magnetic field produced.

And if towards its core that planet had two superionic layers of differing conductivity, as Gleason and colleagues suggest Neptune might contain, then the magnetic field generated by the outer liquid layer would interact with each of them differently, making things stranger still.

Neptune's interior structure with two layers of solid superionic ice (Ice XIX in blue; Ice XVIII in green) beneath an ionic liquid layer that is thought to generate the planet's magnetic field. (Gleason et al., Scientific Reports, 2023)

Gleason and colleagues conclude the enhanced conductivity of a layer of superionic ice akin to Ice XIX would promote the generation of wonky, multipolar magnetic fields like those emanating from Uranus and Neptune.

If so, it would be a satisfying result more than 30 years after NASA's Voyager II space probe, launched in 1977, flew by our Solar System's two ice giants and measured their highly unusual magnetic fields.

The study was published in Scientific Reports.

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For those who have followed India’s space journey to this point, the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission was not particularly surprising. As I wrote in 2021, the nation’s space ecosystem has been approaching an inflection point, wherein decades of investment, research, sweat and tears brought India to its current space maturity. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a perfect example of India crossing the threshold to a new era of space activity. While the August 2023 Moon landing is a shining star on India’s space lapel, Chandrayaan-3 is just one part of a larger Indian space ecosystem that is growing rapidly.

Indeed, the Moon landing was not the culmination of India’s space journey. It was simply the next step, and we should expect more activity, accomplishments and access to opportunity as India marches forward in space. To understand what is changing and why it is important for India’s trajectory, consider some of the vital ingredients in India’s space recipe that are helping it realize its grand space ambitions. 

Government Demand and Space Policy

A core challenge for any spacefaring nation is connecting government demand with private sector offerings. When businesses can directly satisfy the needs of government agencies, they have a reliable revenue stream that allows them to simultaneously develop intellectual property (IP) and look for other customers in the domestic and global space markets. This has been a stubborn hurdle for India’s private space sector. As Satsearch COO Dr. Narayan Prasad told me in 2021, the two opportunities for India to break through this logjam are opening up government end users directly to the private sector and developing a procurement mechanism for acquiring private sector services and solutions. 

Enter: Indian Space Policy 2023. The strategic approach is clear: “Indian consumers of space technology or services (such as communication, remote sensing, data services, launch services, etc.), whether from public or private sectors, shall be free to directly procure them from any source, whether private or public.”

The policy moves toward opening up government demand in part by standing up and defining three stakeholder organizations instrumental in connecting the dots. ISRO’s mandate is to focus on R&D and developing new technologies. NewSpace India Limited, a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU), is absorbing the operational components of ISRO’s activities, including launch vehicle assembly and integration. And the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) serves as the interface between ISRO and non-governmental organizations. Together, these three organizations provide entry points and advocates for the Indian private space sector, in turn unlocking IP, revenue, and the potential for companies to compete in the marketplace.

To be sure, change is hard, and a new space policy does not on its own resolve the challenge. 

“What I keep hearing from space startups, especially younger startups, is that IN-SPACe is dominated by leaders from the traditional contractors,” said Arpit Chaturvedi, CEO of Global Policy Insights. “The leaders don’t hear the concerns of the new startups. What happens is most startups are still working on delivering on demands for the government via ISRO.”

Still, the new space policy and delineation of responsibilities across three coordinated organizations shows that India is on a path that can open private sector opportunity to satisfy government demand. 

Launch Capabilities

India does not have just one indigenous launch vehicle; it has five operational with a sixth on the way. The PSLV and GSLV are reliable workhorses that have been sending items to orbit for years. A somewhat newer system, the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3), is showing its capabilities, including sending Chandrayaan-3 on its way to the Moon. 

There is an interesting development with the fourth launch system developed by ISRO, the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). Designed to lift small satellites into orbit at a lower cost compared to using one of the other systems, SSLV had its first successful flight and payload deployment in February this year. And almost as soon as it was ready, the announcement came that the SSLV would be transferred to private sector control. 

In addition to these systems, there are Indian companies developing private launch systems, and two in particular are ahead of the pack. Agnikul Cosmos is developing a single-stage, 3D-printed launch system, and in 2022, it opened India’s first private space launch facility. Skyroot Aerospace, meanwhile, is operating India’s first privately made launch system, the Vikram-1. 

“Right now, we are the only player who had a launch, and there is one more player who may launch soon [in the Indian launch market],” said Pawan Chandana, cofounder and CEO of Skyroot. “SSLV is being transferred to a private consortium, which is a two-year process. This would lead to there being three private players and amp up the competition. This is good for all. There will be a push to enable more launches and to develop infrastructure used by everyone. There are more pros than cons.”  

Ultimately, when it comes to accessing space, India’s options are many, and while an indigenous launch system is not necessarily a prerequisite for a country to lead in the global space ecosystem, the fact that India has so much lift capacity bodes well for ambitious missions and launch cadence.

National Security

Economic issues are national security issues. Because space today is appropriately viewed as critical infrastructure enabling core elements of the modern economy (e.g., telecommunications, Earth observation for agriculture), disruption to space access and operations is an economic concern and, thus, a national security priority. This is true for all spacefaring nations, but with India, the competition is close to home. 

India is bordered by regional geopolitical competitors, with Pakistan to the northwest and China to the northeast. While Pakistan’s space capabilities are at best nascent, China is rapidly maturing as a space power. In 2007, much to the world’s dismay, China tested an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) and destroyed one of its weather satellites, which resulted in debris speeding dangerously in Earth’s orbit. In 2019, India’s Mission Shakti tested an anti-satellite weapon, joining the small club of nations with the capability (also including the United States and Russia).

“India definitely is joining the Quad in space,” said Chaturvedi, referring to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which includes the United States, Australia, Japan and India. ”Once you look at areas of defense that might seem peripheral right now, such as space or artificial intelligence, there India finds a lot of collaboration with the United States, Australia and Japan, for two reasons. First, they have capabilities, and Russia does not have those capabilities. Second, all of these nations seem to be on the opposite side from China, and that’s really what drives what India is doing. You can shroud it in the words of common values, but a lot of it is finding your friends now because this space will grow. Even the Artemis Accords favor the early birds, and India’s idea is to join that early bird club.”

The insight is that India, like its peers, is approaching space as a potentially contested, warfighting domain, as well as critical infrastructure that must be protected like any other infrastructure. India’s Defence Space Agency was created in 2018 to run national security space operations, and a recently announced initiative holds the potential to connect government needs with private sector innovation. India’s Mission Defence Space is an initiative to develop offensive and defensive space capabilities for the Indian military branches by presenting the private sector with 75 challenges for innovative solutions that satisfy defense requirements. The opportunity could be significant for growing businesses, whether because government military acquisitions are lucrative or because the resulting IP can be used to create commercial products.

Pride and Inspiration

Few things are as inspirational as bold space missions. The final moments of the Chandrayaan-3 mission were watched live by millions of people worldwide. After the success, celebration erupted across India as people took to the streets to cheer and revel in the nation’s accomplishment. The Indian Prime Minister spoke at length to the country. ISRO leaders were surrounded by reporters. Indian expats published congratulatory op-eds in news outlets globally, while world leaders released statements congratulating India and promising ongoing collaboration.

It was a moment Indians will remember, particularly the young people and students who, full of pride and confidence in opportunity, contemplate their own future in the global space community. In the moments before and after the landing, untold numbers of young Indian minds were ignited with the idea that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and space accomplishments are exciting and available to them. One small roll for the Vikram lander yielded a giant leap in the passion and fascination that can lead someone on a lifelong journey of learning and participation in the space community. This pride and wonder will serve India as it develops the space workforce that can sustain and drive its space ambition.

“With our deep competence with high cost-efficiency, there is great potential,” said Chandana. “The temperament in India is going to grow with more missions. It is a great sense of pride that in one of the hardest sectors, space, we are among the top nations. There is a lot of inspiration that flows from the fact that we have the capability to be one of the top players in a deep technology industry, like space. It will inspire kids and attract more people into STEM fields, which will help the whole sector.” 

Just 10 days after the historic lunar landing, India launched the Aditya-L1 mission to study the sun. The scientific spacecraft is currently on its way to Lagrange point L1, nearly 1 million miles from Earth. Looking ahead, there is a planned IRSO science mission to Venus that could depart in late 2024. And there is growing momentum to send a crewed spacecraft into orbit as soon as 2025. These are the ambitions of an ascendant space power, and India has crossed its inflection point. Considering space policy, launch capacity, national security interests, and pride of country, India has the ingredients to pursue its space journey for the betterment of the country and people the world over.

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"I would firstly like to remind you that you have a particular obligation to protect the millions of children and teenagers using your platforms in the EU from violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos," he said in a letter to Pichai and posted on X social media platform.

The letter followed similar letters sent earlier this week to Elon Musk, Meta Platforms' Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew but without a 24 hour deadline to take measures to counter the disinformation.

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If a stone leaves the kidney and blocks urine from exiting, usually while in the ureter, it can cause urine to back up and lead to intense pain.

Kidney stones are common, affecting about 12% of the U.S. population. Kidney stone development usually begins when people are in their 20s or 30s, and the problem can continue for years.

Many things can increase your risk for stones, including family history, health factors like diabetes, dietary habits or if your urine lacks substances to prevent crystals from sticking together.

Types of kidney stones

There are four types of kidney stones. Knowing the type of your kidney stone will help determine its cause and give you clues on how to reduce your chance of developing more stones. If you pass a kidney stone, try to save it to give to your health care team for analysis. Types of kidney stones include:

Calcium stones: This is the most common type of kidney stone. About 70% to 80% of kidney stones are calcium stones, which are usually made of calcium and oxalate. Oxalate is a substance produced by the liver and also absorbed from your diet. Certain fruits and vegetables, like spinach, have high oxalate content. Taking high doses of vitamin D and vitamin C, gastric surgery and several metabolic disorders can increase the concentration of calcium or oxalate in your urine.

Calcium stones can also be made of calcium phosphate. This type of stone is more common in people with metabolic conditions like renal tubular acidosis. It may also be associated with some medications used to treat migraines (topiramate) or blood pressure (furosemide or triamterene).

Struvite stones: Struvite stones can form after a urinary tract infection. These stones can grow quickly and become large, sometimes with few symptoms or little warning.

Uric acid stones: Uric acid stones can form in people who lose too much fluid because of chronic diarrhea or malabsorption, eat a high-protein diet or who have gout. Certain genetic factors also may increase your risk of uric acid stones.

Cystine stones: These stones form in people with a hereditary disorder called cystinuria, which causes the kidneys to excrete too much of a specific amino acid.

Preventing kidney stones

Nearly 50% of people who have developed kidney stones will develop another stone in 10 years if they do not take steps to prevent a recurrence. Usually, this includes a combination of lifestyle changes and medications.

Lifestyle changes

You may reduce your risk of kidney stones if you:

• Drink water throughout the day. People with a history of kidney stones should drink enough fluids to pass about 80 oz (2.5 liters) of urine every day. This is the most effective therapy available to prevent future kidney stones. Your health care team may ask you to measure your urine output to ensure you drink enough water.

• Eat fewer oxalate-rich foods. Switching to a diet low in oxalates can reduce your risk of calcium oxalate stones. Foods that are highest in oxalates include spinach, rhubarb, baked potatoes, lentils, navy beans, bran, grits and almonds.

• A high amount of salt and animal protein in your diet can also increase your kidney stone risk. A diet lower in sodium and higher in potassium—contained in many fruits and vegetables—can reduce the risk of stone formation.

• Continue eating calcium-rich foods, but use caution with calcium supplements. Calcium in food can actually lower your risk of kidney stones. Continue eating calcium-rich foods unless your health care team recommends otherwise. Talk with your health care team before taking calcium supplements, however, because these may be linked to an increased risk of kidney stones.

• Take steps to reduce urinary tract infections. Some people are more susceptible to developing recurrent urinary tract infections. Fewer infections can reduce the risk of developing struvite stones. Get tips for preventing urinary tract infections.

Medications

Medications can control the amount of minerals and salts in the urine and may be helpful in people who form certain kinds of stones. The type of medication your doctor prescribes will depend on the type of kidney stones you have and the specific makeup of your urine, which is determined by testing. Some medications can reduce uric acid levels in the blood and reduce your risk of uric acid stones, while others increase the solubility of cystine in your urine and lower your risk of cystine stones.

Kidney stone formation is specific to each person, so it's important to work with your health care team to develop a personalized treatment plan. That plan should consider what kind of kidney stones you have, possible causes for their formation and specific steps to prevent them.

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DOZENS OF APPLICATIONS and interviews, hours spent tweaking resumes, and a conference and career fair-turned-Hunger Games. Finding a job in tech is a mess.

The past year has brought a reckoning for the once unsinkable industry. Tech companies around the world laid off more than 400,000 workers in 2022 and 2023, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job losses across the industry. A year after many of those cuts began, job seekers are still facing a tough market, fighting for a smaller number of spots in a job sector that once promised high salaries, lavish perks, and security.

The tech job market “doesn’t show any signs of turning around just yet,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist with online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter. After growing at a healthy pace before and during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the information sector has lost about 2.5 percent of its jobs over the past year, Pollak says. That’s keeping more people at the same jobs for longer, she adds, and stifling promotion opportunities. There is still demand for tech workers outside of the traditional tech industry, like in government and health care—though salaries here are often lower.

Big Tech companies, like Meta, Google, and Amazon, have cut tens of thousands of jobs in recent months. Hiring freezes at many firms have followed. Meta recently rehired dozens of the people it laid off beginning last November—a drop in the bucket compared to the 11,000 people it let go last fall—and then completed more layoffs in its metaverse-focused Reality Labs division. The layoffs came after historic periods of growth in 2020 as Covid-19 raged. Companies hired more than they could sustain—and workers continue to pay the price.

The prolonged downturn in the tech market is breeding anxiety and making people more aggressive in their job searches. In September, men showed up in droves to the Grace Hopper Celebration, an annual conference and career fair targeted toward female and nonbinary tech workers, who are underrepresented in the industry.

Videos from the conference showed long lines, with people running to the job expo as staffers yelled for them to slow down. The conference, meant to connect and celebrate women in tech, exemplified the desperation workers feel as they try to land jobs after completing computer science-related majors. The conference’s organizers did not return a request for comment.

Kari Groszewska, a senior at Vanderbilt University studying computer science and economics, says she attended the conference and arrived at the expo hall 15 minutes early one day, only to see that a line to speak with companies was already several hours long. The vibe, Groszewska says, had shifted from the year before. She felt discouraged—particularly because she does not yet have a job offer for when she graduates next year.

“I have done ‘everything right’ studying computer science,” she says, including following advice to work on personal projects, pursue internships, and join clubs. Groszewska says she is “disheartened” by the state of the job market she will soon enter.

Other unemployed people are already feeling the pressure. Nia McSwain has been looking to make a transition into tech from the hospitality industry for the past month, with hopes of becoming a project manager. She says she spends her days sending out job applications from morning to night and estimates that she has applied for about 40 roles each day. “It’s been a little rough,” says McSwain, who lives in Florida. “I’m trying to break into it.”

Full stack engineer Philip John Basile finished a contract in May and has been looking to land another one since August. In the past month, he estimates he’s had about three interviews a day and gotten close to a role in a few companies, but he hasn’t been picked yet.

Basile, who lives in the suburbs of New York City, says he has focused on networking by chatting with people on LinkedIn and Discord. Many of the recruiters he knew from previous positions are also out of a job, and he’s had to build new relationships.

Basile says he’s also spent his free time studying AI tools, and he keeps tweaking his resume, cutting it from 10 pages to two, then beefing it up to 24. “There’s a lot of jobs out there, but there’s a lot of people looking for work,” he says. So he wants to “try to be as unique as possible. If you’re competing with 1,000 other people, you have to try to stand out.”

The layoffs have been particularly stressful for foreign workers in the US, who have been left scrambling for sponsorship to stay in the country after losing jobs. But data shows that many were able to find new jobs after being laid off.

And in the tight market, supply of workers is high: Some 780,000 registrations were submitted as of July 31 for this year’s H-1B visa applications, the visa used by foreign workers to secure tech jobs in the US. That’s up more than 60 percent from the year before—leading the US Citizen and Immigration Services agency to suggest that some people may have submitted multiple registrations to game the system. There is an annual issuing cap of 85,000 H-1B visas.

Younger workers are also having to leap over additional hurdles to get a job. Rachel Sederberg, senior economist with labor market analytics firm Lightcast, has seen a downward trend in job posts seeking entry-level workers, and more skewed toward experienced employees. That has led the median salary for job postings in the US tech sector to jump from $61,000 a year ago to $79,000 this fall, Sederberg says. Companies “right-sized, realigned, and readjusted,” she says. “They started hiring back up. They’re likely hiring for different profiles.”

Then there’s everyone’s favorite new toy: ChatGPT. People are using the chatbot or other AI tech to help them write résumés and cover letters, which allows them to apply to more jobs in less time. But that can also give recruiters more noise to sift through.

All of these obstacles mean that looking for a job is a full-time job. Kimi Kaneshina, a San Diego-based product manager, says her 9-5 is spent applying for jobs, and she is even networking afterward or making videos for TikTok to document her process. Kaneshina has been looking for work since July, and while she feels like the process picked up speed in September, she hasn’t found a new role yet.

Still, the shift may have brought positive changes to the tech world: People are posting openly about their layoffs on LinkedIn and TikTok and connecting with each other and people employed at desirable companies. With so many people laid off, it’s become more acceptable to talk about it.

“I’ve had recruiters tell me, ‘Half of the candidates I’m interviewing have been laid off,’” says Kaneshina. That stigma, she says, has almost been removed.

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