Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Miami looked at four decades of data from the Florida Straits, including measurements of the volume of seawater transported through the region in that time.

They found that Gulf Stream transport has decreased by about 4 percent over the past 40 years, which they describe as the first "conclusive, unambiguous observational evidence" of a slowing. Though the underlying reasons weren't assessed as part of the study, there's a 99 percent chance that this weakening isn't a random event, the researchers say.

The study looked at current flow around Florida. (Piecuch et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 2023)

"This is the strongest, most definitive evidence we have of the weakening of this climatically-relevant ocean current," says physical oceanographer Chris Piecuch, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

"While we can definitively say this weakening is happening, we are unable to say to what extent it is related to climate change or whether it is a natural variation."

The Florida Straits are a good showcase for the effects of the Gulf Stream, which flows out from the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida, up the east coast of the US, and then across the Atlantic. The current takes with it warmer water, which then affects temperatures, precipitation, sea level, hurricane activity and more. It also transports nutrients across the ocean, including carbon.

Some of the data used was gathered from field recordings. (Paloma Cartwright)

In this case, a complex Bayesian model – one which works out probabilities and uncertainties to high levels of precision – was applied to the data collected from satellite readings, undersea cables, and field recordings.

As well as being a worrying report on the changing state of Earth's climate, the study is also evidence of how important long-term ocean observations are in identifying trends that last over several decades or even longer.

It's now clear that the Gulf Stream is weakening – and that global warming is a likely cause – but we're less sure about what will happen next. The stream and its associated weather patterns are crucial components in the planet's climate, influencing extreme weather events as well as average temperatures and levels of rainfall.

What also needs to be considered is how shifts in climate are going to feed back on themselves, causing further disruption to weather systems. The researchers behind this current study are hopeful that the data analysis they've used can be applied to other regions of the ocean.

"The Gulf Stream is a vital artery of the ocean's circulation, and so the ramifications of its weakening are global," says oceanographer Lisa Beal, from the University of Miami.

"I think there is potential for this technique to extract other climate change signals from among the scattered observations we have in the ocean."

The research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

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It was the first time that water has been used to detect a particle known as an antineutrino, which originated from a nuclear reactor more than 240 kilometers (150 miles) away. This incredible breakthrough promises neutrino experiments and monitoring technology that use inexpensive, easily acquirable and safe materials.

As some of the most abundant particles in the Universe, neutrinos are odd little things with a lot of potential for revealing deeper insights into the Universe. Unfortunately they are almost massless, carry no charge, and barely interact with other particles at all. They mostly stream through space and rock alike, as though all matter was incorporeal. There's a reason they're known as ghost particles.

Antineutrinos are the antiparticle counterpart to neutrinos. Usually, an antiparticle has the opposite charge to its particle equivalent; the antiparticle of the negatively charged electron, for example, is the positively charged positron. Since neutrinos don't carry a charge, scientists can only tell the two apart based on the fact an electron neutrino will pop into existence alongside a positron, while an electron antineutrino appears with an electron.

Electron antineutrinos are emitted during nuclear beta decay, a type of radioactive decay in which a neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and antineutrino. One of these electron antineutrinos can then interact with a proton to produce a positron and a neutron, a reaction known as inverse beta decay.

Large, liquid filled tanks lined with photomultiplier tubes are used to detect this particular kind of decay. They're designed to capture the faint glow of Cherenkov radiation created by charged particles moving faster than light can travel through the liquid, similar to the sonic boom generated by breaking the sound barrier. So they're very sensitive to very faint light.

Antineutrinos are produced in prodigious quantities by nuclear reactors, but they're relatively low energy, which makes them difficult to detect.

Enter SNO+. Buried beneath more than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) of rock, it's the world's deepest underground laboratory. This rock shielding provides an effective barrier against interference by cosmic rays, allowing scientists to obtain exceptionally well resolved signals.

Today the lab's 780-tonne spherical tank is filled with linear alkylbenzene, a liquid scintillator that amplifies light. Back in 2018, while the facility was undergoing calibration, it was filled with ultrapure water.

Combing through the 190 days' worth of data collected during that calibration phase back in 2018, the SNO+ collaboration found evidence of inverse beta decay. The neutron produced during this process is captured by a hydrogen nucleus in the water, which in turn produces a soft bloom of light at a very specific energy level, 2.2 megaelectronvolts.

Water Cherenkov detectors generally struggle to detect signals below 3 megaelectronvolts; but a water-filled SNO+ was able to detect down to 1.4 megaelectronvolts. This produces an efficiency of around 50 percent for detecting signals at 2.2 megaelectronvolts, so the team thought it was worth their luck looking for signs of inverse beta decay.

An analysis of a candidate signal determined that it was likely produced by an antineutrino, with a confidence level of 3 sigma – a 99.7 percent probability.

The result suggests that water detectors could be used to monitor the power production of nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile, SNO+ is being put to use to help understand neutrinos and antineutrinos better. Because neutrinos are impossible to measure directly, we don't know much about them. One of the biggest questions is whether neutrinos and antineutrinos are the exact same particle. A rare, never-before-seen decay would answer this question. SNO+ is currently looking for this decay.

"It intrigues us that pure water can be used to measure antineutrinos from reactors and at such large distances," said physicist Logan Lebanowski of the SNO+ collaboration and the University of California, Berkeley, back in March 2023.

"We spent significant effort to extract a handful of signals from 190 days of data. The result is gratifying."

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

A version of this article was first published in April 2023.

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The road to a Nobel Prize, the most prestigious scientific award in the world, is growing ever longer, with almost half of laureates now waiting more than 20 years from making a Nobel-worthy discovery to receiving the prize.

One analysis shows that the average time between publishing the work and receiving one of the science prizes has nearly doubled in the past 60 years1. Across the three science prizes, chemistry now has the longest ‘Nobel lag’ — an average of 30 years over the past decade — and physiology or medicine has the shortest, at 26 years (see ‘Decades-long delay’).

Source: Mitsis, P. Humanit. Soc. Sci. Commun. 9, 407 (2022).

Alfred Nobel’s will stated that the prizes should be awarded “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.” In reality this has only happened a few times. But in the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for Nobel prize recipients to be in their 30s — and that is unheard of now, says Santo Fortunato, now a computational social scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington, who published a 2014 analysis on Nobel prizewinners since the award’s conception in 19012. His results showed that the time between laureates’ prize-winning research and their Nobel had slowly increased over the years, with a steeper slope after the 1960s than in the early years of the prize.

There are a number of possible reasons for this trend, says Yian Yin, a computational social scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It could be that the overall number of breakthroughs is increasing each year, so awards cannot keep up with the number of people who deserve to be recognized, he says. It is also the case that the importance of some works, which Yin describes as ‘sleeping beauties’, are only realized years or decades later.

Alternatively, the lengthening gap could be a sign that there has been a decrease in ‘disruptive’ science — important studies or discoveries that change the paradigm of their field. This could be causing the Nobel committees to focus more on the past.

The number of ‘big-splash’ discoveries are diminishing, but when they do happen, they tend to get recognized quickly, says Fortunato. For example, biochemists Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier at the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry just eight years after their development of the CRISPR–Cas9 system as a genome-editing tool. Some researchers speculate that the inventors of mRNA vaccines, which was rolled out to millions of people worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, could receive similar recognition.

Fortunato points out that, if the gap continues to grow, prominent scientists could miss out on the award owing to the Nobel Committee’s rule banning posthumous prizes (with the exception of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, a share of which was awarded to physician Ralph Steinman, who had passed away three days before the announcement, unbeknownst to the committee). “It has to stop at some point,” he says, adding that a rethink of the posthumous-awarding ban would allow more people’s work to get the recognition that it deserves.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03086-3

References

1. Mitsis, P. Humanit. Soc. Sci. Commun. 9, 407 (2022).
2. Fortunato, S. Nature 508, 186 (2014).

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Billionaire Elon Musk delved into German politics on Friday by sharing a post that denounced the country’s handling of migrants and giving kudos to the nation’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany.

Video clips on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, appear to show German non-government organizations rescuing migrants crossing the Mediterranean and bringing them to Italy. Musk responded to a video of the rescues, posted by an account called “RadioGenoa,” asking, “Is the German public aware of this?”

Germany’s Foreign Office wasted no time in responding to Musk’s comment. “Yes. And it’s called saving lives,” wrote the office’s account on X.

“So you’re actually proud of it. Interesting,” Musk replied, before expressing doubt that the German public supports migrant rescue. The video had “invasion vibes,” he added, invoking a characterization of immigration that has long existed in white nationalist circles.

The source of the controversy—and Musk’s latest foray into international politics—is a German plan to finance charities aiding migrants crossing the Mediterranean, which its foreign ministry has called a “legal, humanitarian and moral duty.” It is unclear whether the clip Musk responded to is of a charity financed by the German government.

The plan drew criticism from Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, leader of the country’s post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party, whose tenure has been marked by anti-migrant rhetoric and policy. Early last week, Meloni wrote to German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz to express her “astonishment” that the German government was funding nonprofit rescue operations. Musk met with Meloni in Rome in June during a tour of Europe.

This year, more than 2,500 people have died or gone missing during the perilous cross from northern Africa to southern Europe, a steep rise from last year. Over 200,000 people have applied for asylum in Germany so far this year, an increase of 77 percent from 2022.

Musk’s comments came a day after he visited the Texas border to meet with local politicians and law enforcement at Eagle Pass, which has seen a sharp increase in unauthorized border crossings.

“The (USA) border needs to be secured. This is not a partisan issue – even the elected Democrat Party leaders of New York are saying this is a severe crisis,” Musk wrote on Wednesday, referencing New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who said recently that the migrant crisis “will destroy” the city.

Musk’s Tesla operates factories in both Germany and Texas.

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(CNN) -- Some of the most brilliant minds in science will be catapulted from academic obscurity next week when the Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine or physiology are announced.

The honors, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago, represent the pinnacle of scientific achievement, celebrating transformative breakthroughs that are often decades in the making.

In addition to the huge publicity, the prizes also draw their share of flak, sometimes triggering controversy and resentment over who gets chosen and who is left out, said Martin Rees, British cosmologist and physicist and former president of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific society.

Rees said one challenge for the Nobel committees is the increasingly collaborative nature of most scientific research. The image of the lone genius having a eureka moment is long gone, if it ever truly existed. Additionally, discoveries can be made simultaneously by different teams.

However, the Nobel selection committees, according to the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in 1895, can only honor up to three people per prize. This requirement can prove to be a headache, Rees said.

“It may be a project where several people have done work in parallel, and they single out some and not others. It may be that there’s a team, and it’s not obvious that the ones they’ve singled from the team are the dominant figures,” said Rees, who is the UK’s astronomer royal and author of “If Science Is to Save Us.”

For example, the 2017 Nobel in physics recognized the detection of gravitational waves — “ripples” in space generated by colliding black holes 1 billion or more light-years away. The key papers reporting this discovery had almost 1,000 authors, Rees noted. However, only three were rewarded the prize — Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne.

Similarly, one often discussed candidate for the medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize is the mapping of the human genome, a transformative project that was only fully completed in 2022 and involved hundreds of people.

David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, who identifies “Nobel worthy” individuals by analyzing how often fellow scientists cite their key scientific papers throughout the years, agrees that the three-person rule is a constraint.  

“It really has become a huge transformation in science that it’s more and more team science — huge groups tackling more difficult problems, international collaborative networks,” Pendlebury said. “This rule of three does seem to be an impediment if they wanted to recognize a team.”

The rule that a prize can only be awarded to three people comes from the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, which is responsible for fulfilling the intentions of Nobel’s will, according to the Nobel Prize website. Peter Brzezinski, the secretary of the committee for the Nobel chemistry prize, said there were no plans to change the rule. However, he said that the committee follows a detailed process once the nominations have been made by the end of January.

“We start the process by asking a number of experts from around the world to write reports describing the field in which the discovery has been made, to outline the main discoveries in this field and also to mention individuals who have made the most important contributions,” he explained via email.

“We read all relevant literature, attend conferences and write reports also within the committee,” Brzezinski added. “With time, we often succeed in identifying a limited number of scientists who have made the discovery. If this is not possible, we are not able to propose a Prize to the Academy.”

Retrospective view

The Nobel committees typically single out work that happened decades earlier — a retrospective view that’s often needed given that it can take time for the significance of some scientific research to become clear.

The Nobels also focus on three scientific disciplines, as designated in the will of Alfred Nobel. Fields including mathematics, computer science, earth and climate science and oceanography are excluded.

Even within the fields of chemistry, physics and medicine and physiology, just five areas out of 114 different scientific subdisciplines account for more than half of Nobel Prizes awarded from 1995 to 2017, according to one 2020 study. These are particle physics, atomic physics, cell biology, neuroscience and molecular chemistry.

Rees, however, noted that taking the long view and giving greater recognition to certain fields can, at times, make the Nobel committees seem out of touch with the scientific priorities of the day.

One example is artificial intelligence, or AI, which is transforming people’s lives at an unprecedented pace.

Two hot names in the field are Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, the Google DeepMind inventors of AlphaFold — an AI program that decodes the 3D structures of proteins from amino acid sequences. They won the $250,000 Lasker Prize this year and the Breakthrough Prize a year earlier.

Since their key paper was published just over two years ago, it has been cited more than 8,500 times, Pendlebury said.

“That is, in my experience, just incredible in terms of the speed at which the citations have accrued, so obviously, it’s a huge, important intellectual discovery,” said Pendlebury, who has been compiling his list of “citation laureates” since 2002.

The Nobel committees have on occasion awarded accolades to recent breakthroughs — such as when the chemistry prize went to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in 2020, less than 10 years after their key 2012 paper on the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique — but Pendlebury thinks a Nobel Prize for AI this year is still a long shot.

He said the Nobel Prize committees, at least for science prizes, are “innately conservative.”  

Diversity

Other criticism leveled at the Nobel Prizes includes the lack of diversity among winners. More female scientists have gotten the call from Stockholm in recent years, but it’s been a trickle rather than a torrent.

Last year, Carolyn Bertozzi, who won the chemistry prize, was the only female winner of a science prize. There were no female science recipients in 2021 or in 2019, when the Nobel committee asked nominators to consider diversity in gender, geography and field. Astrophysicist Andrea Ghez shared the physics prize in 2020, the same year as Doudna and Charpentier’s chemistry win.

Pendlebury said he believes lack of diversity on the Nobel stage is essentially a pipeline problem.

“They’re looking at work typically published 20 or 30 years ago, when the number of women in science at elite levels was not as much as it is today,” he said. “And so I think as time goes forward, you see more and more women being selected.”

Others point to the issue as more evidence of systemic bias in science, with women already less likely to be given credit or named as lead author on scientific papers.

“There are several women who made Nobel-level contributions to science, contributions for which male colleagues were awarded, but they were not,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Henry Charles Lea Professor of the history of science and an affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. “These examples prove that even when there were qualified women, they were systematically passed over.”

Rees attributes the diversity problem to a lack of transparency. The Nobel short list is secret, as are the nominators, and documents revealing the details of the selection process are sealed from public view for 50 years.   

Of course, these flaws and gaps only matter because the Nobels are far better known than other science prizes, Rees added. He prefers so-called challenge prizes, such as the XPrize, which incentivize future efforts to tackle an important problem, rather than rewarding past success.

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine will be announced on Monday, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday. The Nobel Prize for literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

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The medications varenicline and cytisine, as well as nicotine e-cigarettes proved to be the most successful among the interventions reviewed by a UK team.

A total of 157,179 smokers were included in the analysis of 319 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), that tracked success in quitting for at least six months.

"The best thing someone who smokes can do for their health is to quit smoking," says public health scientist Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, at the time from the University of Oxford.

"Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death worldwide, and though many people want to quit smoking, it can be hard to do so."

The main addictive ingredient, nicotine, is one of the most widely used substances and the third most addictive, exerting a powerful grip on brains.

The data showed that without assistance, only about 6 in 100 people have a chance of successfully quitting.

Varenicline and cytisine work by activating brain nicotinic receptors – which release dopamine when activated by nicotine – and preventing nicotine from activating them.

There was no significant difference in the effectiveness of cytisine (brand name Tabex) and varenicline (brand names Chantix and Champix), and nicotine e-cigarettes. According to the findings, about 14 percent of smokers who try to quit with the help of these methods will be successful for six months or longer.

The next most effective strategy was to combine two kinds of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), such as nicotine patches and gum or lozenges.

"However, using a single form of NRT, like the patch or gum alone, resulted in fewer additional quitters," says University of Oxford medical scientist Nicola Lindson.

"Around 12 in 100 people using two forms of NRT together will quit successfully, compared to around 9 in 100 people using only one type."

Gradually reducing nicotine may be slightly more effective than quitting abruptly, the data showed. Whether someone starts nicotine treatment before or after quitting, and the dose taken, doesn't seem to affect efficacy.

Another medication called bupropion (brand name Wellbutrin), showed effectiveness in 9 percent of quitters.

The data on safety found that bupropion might have a very small increase in serious adverse events compared to not using any medication. In general, the treatments studied were safe, with few severe side effects, though the authors note that not all the RCTs included data on side effects.

"Pooling together all of the available trials comparing smoking cessation medications with control interventions is a really important way in which we can assess what works to help people quit smoking," says social scientist Caitlin Notley from the UK University of East Anglia, in an expert reaction.

"This network meta-analysis shows that e-cigarettes, varenicline and cytisine are all effective smoking cessation aids. Twice as many people managed to quit smoking using one of these aids compared to control conditions."

The authors don't think more evidence will change the clear results, though more data in terms of side effects and the best combinations of medications and behavioral support, would be helpful.

Like the majority of research, most studies were conducted in countries with higher incomes, so evidence from lower-income countries is scarce.

The team hopes future studies will look at how socioeconomic status affects quitting smoking.

"It is very difficult to quit. There are several products available to help with this, but the relative effectiveness of these methods has long been uncertain," Lindson says.

"Our research dives deep into the world of smoking cessation… providing people who smoke, healthcare professionals and policymakers with reliable data to make informed decisions."

The study has been published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

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Using artificial intelligence, researchers have discovered mysterious "fairy circles" in hundreds of locations across the globe.

These unusual round vegetation patterns have long puzzled experts, dotting the landscapes in the Namib Desert and the Australian outback.

But according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the unusual phenomenon could be far more widespread than previously thought, cracking the case wide open and raising plenty more questions than answers.

The international research team trained a neural network by feeding it more than 15,000 satellite images of locations in Namibia and Australia, roughly half of which contained fairy circles.

Then the team used the AI system to analyze satellite views of over half a million 2.5-acre plots of land found in other parts of the world. The AI identified more fairy circles across 263 dryland locations in 15 countries, similar to those previously identified in Namibia and Australia.

These new spots were found across Africa, Madagascar, Western Asia, and Southwest Australia, and were predominantly hot and sandy locations that received anywhere between four to 12 inches of rainfall a year.

But whether all of these instances are in fact arising from the same naturally-occurring mechanisms remains to be seen.

"In all arid regions of the world various types of bare patches exist, which are caused by different processes," Norbert Jürgens, an emeritus ecologist at the University of Hamburg, who was not involved in the research, told the New York Times.

The topic of fairy circles remains a "hotly debated topic," as co-author Fernando Maestre, an ecologist at the University of Alicante in Spain, conceded to the NYT. "We are not trying to fight with anyone."

For one, there's no consensus around how they form. Some experts believe they're the result of termite activity underneath the soil, as CNN reports.

Others suggest that they're created by self-organizing plants.

Some experts questioned whether the newly identified sites even fell under the current, albeit loose, definition of fairy circles.

"Unfortunately, the only guardians of the term 'fairy circle' are self-appointed," Michael Cramer, an ecophysiologist at the University of Cape Town, who was not involved, told the NYT.

In short, the new finding adds to the mystery around the peculiar circles, and plenty more research will be needed to find consensus.

"I think that the world can be complex and that all the hypotheses of the formation of fairy circles could have a place depending on the site or the moment," co-author Emilio Guirado, from the University of Alicante in Spain, told Newsweek.

"It is likely that all of them are valid where they have been described and that some could be combined in a few places at once," he added. "For example, our results show that the importance of termites is greater in the Namibian zone than in Australia or the Sahel zone."

But "more specialized fieldwork is required to provide more information and results on the formation of these intriguing vegetation patterns," Guirado said.

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STOCKHOLM -- Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here.

The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards.

First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which will be announced Monday by a panel of judges at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9.

Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes:

The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel, a 19th-century businessman and chemist from Sweden. He held more than 300 patents but his claim to fame before the Nobel Prizes was having invented dynamite by mixing nitroglycerine with a compound that made the explosive more stable.

Dynamite soon became popular in construction and mining as well as in the weapons industry. It made Nobel a very rich man. Perhaps it also made him think about his legacy, because toward the end of his life he decided to use his vast fortune to fund annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

The first Nobel Prizes were presented in 1901, five years after his death. In 1968, a sixth prize was created, for economics, by Sweden’s central bank. Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it’s always presented together with the others.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, Nobel decided that the peace prize should be awarded in Norway and the other prizes in Sweden. Nobel historians suspect Sweden’s history of militarism may have been a factor.

During Nobel’s lifetime, Sweden and Norway were in a union, which the Norwegians reluctantly joined after the Swedes invaded their country in 1814. It’s possible that Nobel thought Norway would be a more suitable location for a prize meant to encourage “fellowship among nations.”

To this day, the Nobel Peace Prize is a completely Norwegian affair, with the winners selected and announced by a Norwegian committee. The peace prize even has its own ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death — while the other prizes are presented in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prizes project an aura of being above the political fray, focused solely on the benefit of humanity. But the peace and literature awards, in particular, are sometimes accused of being politicized. Critics question whether winners are selected because their work is truly outstanding or because it aligns with the political preferences of the judges.

The scrutiny can get intense for high-profile awards, such as in 2009, when President Barack Obama won the peace prize less than a year after taking office.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is an independent body that insists its only mission is to carry out the will of Alfred Nobel. However, it does have links to Norway's political system. The five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, so the panel's composition reflects the power balance in the legislature.

To avoid the perception that the prizes are influenced by Norway’s political leaders, sitting members of the Norwegian government or Parliament are barred from serving on the committee. Even so, the panel isn't always viewed as independent by foreign countries. When imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the peace prize in 2010, Beijing responded by freezing trade talks with Norway. It took years for Norway-China relations to be restored.

One reason the prizes are so famous is they come with a generous amount of cash. The Nobel Foundation, which administers the awards, raised the prize money by 10% this year to 11 million kronor (about $1 million). In addition to the money, the winners receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.

Most winners are proud and humbled by joining the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa. But two winners refused their Nobel Prizes: French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, who turned down the literature prize in 1964, and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, who declined the peace prize that he was meant to share with U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973.

Several others were not able to receive their awards because they were imprisoned, such as Belarusian pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, who shared last year’s peace prize with human rights groups in Ukraine and Russia.

Historically, the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners have been white men. Though that’s started to change, there is still little diversity among Nobel winners, particularly in the science categories.

To date, 60 women have won Nobel Prizes, including 25 in the scientific categories. Only four women have won the Nobel Prize in physics and just two have won the economics prize.

In the early days of the Nobel Prizes, the lack of diversity among winners could be explained by the lack of diversity among scientists in general. But today critics say the judges need to do a better job at highlighting discoveries made by women and scientists outside Europe and North America.

The prize committees say their decisions are based on scientific merit, not gender, nationality or race. However, they are not deaf to the criticism. Five years ago, the head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it had started to ask nominating bodies to make sure they don’t overlook “women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations.”

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Studying maths before bed leads to better retention of what you’ve learned according to UK researchers. Their findings are published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Leading the research was Dr Jayne Spiller, a lecturer at the University of Leicester department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour.

The study “tested the hypothesis that learning complex multiplication problems (e.g. 8 × 23 = 184) prior to sleep would benefit recall in adult participants compared with learning the problems prior to a period of wakefulness,” the authors write.

They completed an evening learning session followed by sleep and a test to see how much they had remembered. About 10.5 hours separated the learning session and the test. They also completed another learning session in the morning and a recall test about 10.5 hours later.

Participants were randomly selected to do the evening or morning test first and a week separated the two conditions.

The scores of participants improved under conditions where they had done the learning exercise before sleep and completed the test in the morning. The improvement averaged out to be the equivalent of “one additional fact recalled,” according to the researchers.

They note that the benefit of sleep in memory retention parallels, but is slightly smaller than, the effect already identified in the recall of words.

Overall, the study adds to the growing weight of evidence for the benefits of sleep on memory and learning.

Now tell me what 6 × 26 equals. But go to sleep after you do so you remember the answer.

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A doctor is warning people to avoid going on their phones while on the toilet. If you often find yourself scrolling through your phone while doing your business, it might be time to find something else to take with you, like a book or even a newspaper.

Taking to TikTok to voice his warning, Dr Sethi, a gastroenterologist, shared a video explaining all. In the clip, he goes into depth as to why we should stop using our phones on the toilet.

He says while it may "seem harmless to scroll through your social media feed or answer some emails", it could have "some serious consequences."

The health expert added: "First, using your phone while doing a number two can lead to prolonged sitting on the toilet which can cause strain and pressure on your rectum and anus.

"This can lead to issues such as haemorrhoids, anal fissures and even rectal prolapse." He continued: "Another issue is that it can be a breeding ground for bacteria. Studies have found that an average smartphone is dirtier than a public toilet seat."

Offering advice in case you simply cannot be away from your phone for that long, Dr Sethi suggested: "At least have a disinfectant wipe around to clean the phone after you’re done with the business".

Social media users rushed to the comments section to give their thoughts. Vaibhavvaibhav wrote: "Me watching this video, from toilet commode".

Mawunyo said: "THANK you so much." Mohdahmad9118 commented: "Thanks, I won’t do anymore". Dghfrgh asked: "Oh wow they teach that in med school now?"

This isn't the only bad habit that people might need to break. A study by Dreams recently found that working from home could be affecting your health with the rise in the number of people working from their bed.

Working in bed might seem to be the most comfortable option however it can lead to a number of risks including a disturbed sleep, poor hygiene, reduced productivity and poor support.

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The research paper, published in The Lancet Public Health, is the first to find evidence of higher levels of depression and anxiety among higher education students compared with their peers.

The authors found that by age 25, the difference had disappeared between graduates and non-graduates.

In recent years in the UK we have seen an increase in mental health problems among young people, so there has been an increased focus on how to support students. Here we have found concerning evidence that students may have a higher risk of depression and anxiety than their peers of the same age who are not in higher education.

The first couple of years of higher education are a crucial time for development, so if we could improve the mental health of young people during this time it could have long term benefits for their health and wellbeing, as well as for their educational achievement and longer-term success."

Dr Gemma Lewis, Lead author, UCL Psychiatry

The researchers used data from the Longitudinal Studies of Young People in England (LSYPE1 and LSYPE2). The first study included 4,832 young people born in 1989-90, who were aged 18-19 in the years 2007-9. The second study included 6,128 participants born in 1998-99, who were aged 18-19 in the years 2016-18 (i.e., prior to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic). In both studies, just over half attended higher education.

Participants in the studies have completed surveys about their general mental health, to investigate symptoms of depression, anxiety, and social dysfunction, at multiple time points over the years.

The researchers found a small difference in symptoms of depression and anxiety at age 18-19 between students (including those at university and other higher education institutions) and non-students.

This association persisted after adjustment for potentially confounding factors including, among others, socioeconomic status, parents' education, and alcohol use.

The analysis suggests that if the potential mental health risks of attending higher education were eliminated, the incidence of depression and anxiety could potentially be reduced by 6% among people aged 18-19.

First author Dr Tayla McCloud (UCL Psychiatry) said: "Based on our findings, we cannot say why students might be more at risk of depression and anxiety than their peers, but it could be related to academic or financial pressure. This increased risk among students has not been found in studies in the past, so if the association has only recently emerged, it may be related to increased financial pressures and worries about achieving high results in the wider economic and social context.

"We would have expected higher education students to have better mental health than their non-student peers as they tend to be from more privileged backgrounds on average, so these results are particularly concerning. More research is needed to clarify the mental health risks facing students.

"Improving our understanding of modifiable risk factors for depression and anxiety is a global health priority, and it is clear that supporting the mental health of our young people is vitally important."

The study was commissioned and funded by England's Department for Education.

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This is Explainer, a column that answers questions we all have (or should have). 

As someone who depends on corrective lenses, it sometimes strikes me how thin the line is between my life and a dangerous one. If I got lost in the woods or stumbled into a Hunger Games situation, I figure I’d have a day or two before my contacts dried up, and I wandered off a cliff or fell victim to an attack that my nearsightedness simply did not see coming. It’s the stuff of horror movies. No, really, they’ve actually made horror movies about it.

According to online wellness influencer Samantha Lotus, though, all I would need is some eye exercises and verbal affirmations, and I could wave bye-bye to my glasses. Lotus went viral recently after she claimed that people “do not need glasses.” Instead, per a TikTokker who goes by @mallorysthoughts who attended Lotus’ $11 master class on healing vision, Lotus suggested “eye yoga” and affirmations like “I SEE WITH LOVE AND JOY.” She also, per Mallory, recommended “rubbing essential oils around the eyes,” which makes more sense when you learn she’s a rep for doTerra, a company that sells essential oils. (Lotus, for her part, told Rolling Stone that she is “reviewing the presentation, sources and studies cited to ensure the materials presented are compliant and safe.”)

But when it comes to the idea that you can self-care your way out of needing glasses, “there’s zero evidence that any of that works,” ophthalmologist Christopher Starr of Weill Cornell in New York emphasized to me. “Especially not the oils.”

While Lotus’ claims were swiftly shut down by TikTok doctors, her fearmongering campaign against Big Optometry stems from a common question that pops up in optometrists’ offices around the world, which is: Can glasses or contact lenses, as useful as they are, make eyesight worse in the long run?

A significant portion of the global population believes so. Last year in Saudi Arabia, 22 percent of surveyed young adults said that glasses cause harm to eyesight. That number was 23 percent among parents surveyed in India, and as high as 64 percent among undergraduates in Nigeria. In rural China, focus groups of children, parents, and teachers all expressed concerns that wearing glasses could cause eye problems to progress faster. While studies suggest lower percentages in the United States, it’s clear that the belief proliferates here, too.

One of the most devout anti-glasses campaigners was American. Long before Samantha Lotus, there was William Horatio Bates, an ophthalmologist at the turn of the 20th century who developed the so-called Bates method for improving vision. He later wrote about the method —which included removing your glasses, imagining the color black, and, horrifyingly, looking at the sun—in his 1920 self-published book Perfect Sight Without Glasses.

The concept of “natural vision improvement” has stuck around for decades, championed by occasional evangelists—which included writer Aldous Huxley—and fringe organizations. Set in that context, it’s perhaps not so crazy that online influencers like Lotus without any medical background can successfully sell a natural vision healing course to curious consumers.

The premise behind Bates’ doctrine is that vision problems like nearsightedness are caused by problems with the muscles around the eye and that a person can cure their vision problems by reducing “mental strain.” If you think of vision problems as a muscle problem, the notion might make some sense. After all, don’t your muscles atrophy in the leg that wears a cast?

But take a look at the anatomy of the eye, and the proof is in the pudding: “There’s just no good, clear scientific mechanism why the eyes would deteriorate faster,” says Starr, if you’re wearing glasses versus not.

The most common vision problems, which include nearsightedness and farsightedness, are related to refraction—that is, how light bends when it enters the eye. And that is determined (as scientists have known since before Bates’ time) by the shape of the eye. In the front of the eye is the cornea, the window where light enters (and where a contact lens would sit). In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts like the film of a camera; it processes the light and sends the signal to the brain. In between the cornea and the retina is the lens. The cornea and lens work together to guide light that comes into the eye onto the retina. It has to refract—bend—just so in order to produce a clear, sharp image.

If the eye is too long, or the curve of the cornea is too steep, the rays will focus in front of the retina; that’s what causes nearsightedness (or myopia). Too short or too flat, the rays will focus behind the retina, and you have farsightedness (hyperopia). Corrective lenses on the cornea (or in front of, in the case of glasses) help to bend the light so that it lands directly on your retina and you can see a clearer image.

“That’s all that glasses do,” says Starr. “They don’t weaken the eye, they don’t strengthen the eye, they don’t have any impact on eye health. They just purely focus the light so that you can see it clearly.”

Still, patients often come into Starr’s office with questions about when and how to wear glasses. For older adults, a common concern is that starting on reading glasses too soon will cause their eyes to get worse faster, or make them “dependent” on glasses. But there’s no truth to that, says Starr.

As we age, our lenses—between the retina and the cornea—stiffen and thicken, making it harder to focus light when seeing close-up. While wearing reading glasses helps correct blurry vision, it doesn’t affect the shape of the eye, so it won’t worsen (or improve) refractive problems over the long term.

It’s a different matter when it comes to kids, whose eyes are still growing. In fact, not wearing glasses—or wearing glasses that are too weak—can accelerate vision declines in kids with myopia. That’s because if a kid hasn’t fully corrected their vision, the eye will work to find a clearer image. The eyeball can’t shrink, but it can grow, says Bryce St. Clair, an optometrist at John Hopkins in Maryland. So it elongates, causing the light rays to fall in front of the retina and the myopia to progress.

Myopia cases have spiked in recent years; over 40 percent of Americans have myopia, up from 25 percent in the 1970s, and it’s projected that half of the globe will have myopia by 2050. Risk factors include too much close-up work and not enough sunlight—so the pandemic saw a rise in cases. Once a kid has myopia, the condition tends to be progressive. Current interventions to slow the progression include specialty pediatric contact lenses and FDA-approved eye drops containing atropine.

One very small point in favor of the glasses-skeptical here: Overcorrecting of vision is fairly common in kids, because children have extremely malleable inner eye muscles that compensate for vision issues (a process called accommodation) and make it hard to get an accurate prescription during eye exams. A prescription that is too strong will not accelerate vision declines, but it can cause headaches and other symptoms because those inner eye muscles are working harder than they have to. The fix here is pretty simple: return to the ophthalmologist’s chair for a “cycloplegic refraction,” which temporarily paralyzes those inner eye muscles so you can get an accurate prescription. But the lesson in that case is not that you don’t need glasses—just that wearing the wrong prescription can lead to annoying symptoms.

There aren’t many studies that look at the impact of corrective lenses over time aside from research into myopia control. Part of that may be because a randomized control trial on the long-term effects of glasses would—in addition to not being necessary based on what we know about eyes—be a hard study to conduct. If some people in a trial couldn’t wear glasses, “half of them will be dead,” jokes Starr. “Because they got in car accidents or didn’t see a car coming on the street and got run over.” Much like if I got thrown glasses-less into the Hunger Games, where I would instantly die. But with the right prescription? I’m unstoppable.

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A recent surge in laxative use has been causing nationwide shortages, and consumers are noticing emptier drugstore shelves as a result of our growing obsession with pooping.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, quoting analytics company Pattern, says searches for laxative pills on Amazon have more than tripled in the past year.

We all contend with constipation from time to time, and it tends to be something we encounter more and more as we age. Perhaps there are other reasons for our growing need for laxatives—most Americans also don’t eat enough fiber, don’t exercise enough, have rising levels of stress, and are on an increasing number of medications—all factors that contribute to constipation and other problems in the bathroom.

Laxative Use and Dementia

This new trend is worrisome, as long-term laxative use can have consequences. Recent research suggests that those who use laxatives regularly have an increased risk of dementia—as high as 50 percent. One prospective cohort study published in 2023 of 502,229 participants aged 40–69 found that those who regularly used laxatives had an increased risk of all-cause dementia, and that those who used multiple laxative types or osmotic laxatives had a significantly increased risk.

Different Kinds of Laxatives

There are different kinds of laxatives, and they each work in different ways. Below are some of the laxative types and how they work.

• Stool Softeners

This type increases the amount of water your stool absorbs, making it easier to pass.

• Bulk Forming laxatives (fiber supplements)

These laxatives increase the bulk of your stools. Although this may seem counterintuitive, a larger stool causes the bowel to contract, helping to push it out. When taking these types of laxatives, you must drink lots of water to avoid becoming dehydrated.

• Stimulant

These laxatives cause muscle contractions in the intestines to produce a bowel movement.

• Osmotic

These laxatives draw water into the bowel to soften the stools, making them easier to pass.

• Lubricant

These laxatives coat the bowel and stool, making them slippery and easier to pass.

Some Reasons You May Be Constipated

There are a variety of factors that cause constipation, and some are listed below.

• Certain medications.

• Not drinking enough water.

• Eating an unhealthy diet without enough fiber.

• Sedentary behavior, or lack of movement/exercise.

• Stress.

• Not going to the bathroom when you first feel the urge.

• Changes in routine (like traveling, working a new job, or starting school).

• Age—incidence of constipation tends to increase with age.

Constipation is defined as having a bowel movement fewer than three times a week. Although the occasional bout of constipation is normal, if it is prolonged, or you need laxatives over the long term to keep things moving, consider seeing your physician or a health care provider to ensure it isn’t a symptom of more serious problems.

Things to Do

There are many things you can try if you are having problems pooping regularly. Here are some things you can try to get things going again.

Drink More Water

Many of us don’t drink enough water, and being well-hydrated keeps things moving through the digestive system. If you are constipated, try drinking more water, which will help keep stools soft and easier to pass. Also, drinking a lot of coffee or tea, because they are diuretics, can cause you to lose fluids. A good rule of thumb is for every cup of tea or coffee (or caffeinated beverage) you drink, drink a glass of water to keep fluid levels balanced.

Exercise

Our increasingly sedentary lifestyles can undoubtedly contribute to constipation. Moving your body—even simply getting up from your desk and walking around for a few minutes—will help move your energy and things through your bowels. Regular daily exercise is even better and doesn’t have to be extreme—the simple act of walking will help.

A Japanese study found a relationship between the severity of constipation and exercise status in a cross-sectional study of 556 participants.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that exercises such as qi gong, walking, and physical movement significantly improved the symptoms of constipation.

Adjust Your Position

Before the advent of the modern toilet, most people squatted when they went to the bathroom. This position is more natural for complete elimination of the bowels and squatting straightens your colon so that you can poop more efficiently without straining.

Many cultures still squat when going to the bathroom, and research suggests that may alleviate many colon issues. Here is a helpful video that explains why squatting is the way humans were designed to eliminate.

Things to Take

Aloe

Aloe vera juice, or the gel from inside the leaves of the aloe vera plant, can be used as a natural laxative. Aloe vera juice is an excellent source of vitamin C. It is low in calories making it a great alternative to sugary drinks and fruit juices, especially if you have diabetes and sugar is a concern.

When using aloe vera for constipation, use small amounts of the fresh gel in water or juice as it is stronger than the commercial aloe vera “juice” you buy at the store.

One study found that aloe vera is safe and works for the short-term treatment of irritable bowel syndrome.

Because aloe vera stimulates uterine contractions, pregnant women should not take it. Aloe is also excreted in the mother’s milk, so it should be avoided by breastfeeding women as it may cause a laxative effect on the baby.

Kiwi Fruit

Plenty of foods can help with constipation—many we are familiar with, like prunes. But, if you have diabetes and are keeping track of your blood sugar or are watching your weight, kiwis are a better option. Prunes are much higher in calories, carbohydrates, and sugar than kiwi’s, and several studies have found that kiwi fruit is an effective remedy for constipation.

One randomized clinical trial published in Nutrients in 2022 found that eating two golden kiwi fruit daily was as effective as fiber-matched psyllium for treating constipation in adults.

Another randomized controlled trial found that consuming two green kiwi fruits demonstrated clinically significant increases in bowel movements and decreased GI discomfort in constipated patients. The researchers also noted that no adverse events were reported throughout the study.

Chia Seeds

Chia seeds are rich in fiber and act as a prebiotic, helping to stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria in your gut. Chia seeds form a gel when combined with liquid, so when using them for constipation, soak them in water before taking them.

A common recipe for constipation is to soak between 1–2 tablespoons (start slow and build up depending on how you tolerate them) in a glass of water for at least 20 minutes before drinking them. If you want to increase chia seeds’ gel-like consistency, you can soak them overnight—this essentially “sprouts” them and makes them easier to digest. With the addition of lemon, this drink was popularized on TikTok and called the “internal shower” because of its ability to relieve constipation.

Magnesium Citrate

Magnesium citrate is an osmotic laxative, and benefits constipation by drawing water into the intestines, making your poop softer and easier to pass. Because magnesium citrate draws water into the intestines from other parts of the body, it is crucial to drink a lot of water while taking it, so you don’t become dehydrated. Magnesium citrate is usually considered safe for treating occasional constipation, but it can interact with certain drugs, including some antibiotics. If you are taking medications, consult your doctor before taking magnesium citrate.

You can also add magnesium-rich foods to your diet when constipated, which include dark leafy greens, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and fish.

Papaya

Papaya is high in fiber and has a high water content, making it a natural laxative. Papaya also contains an enzyme called papain that makes protein easier to digest and benefits digestion. Papayas are also high in vitamin C, which can help soften stool and make it easier to pass.

In one double-blind, placebo-controlled study, those with irritable bowel syndrome reported significant improvements in constipation and bloating after taking 20ml of concentrated papaya enzymes daily for 40 days.

Although we all suffer from constipation occasionally, chronic constipation may point to something more serious. If you have tried natural alternatives and they haven’t helped, seek a health care professional to ensure that your constipation isn’t a symptom of a more significant problem.

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A coordinated cleanup that happens in the gut in between meals might have big implications for anyone who struggles with digestive issues.

After eating, a mechanism called the migrating motor complex sends special contractions to rid the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract of debris, such as bacteria and mucus.

These aren’t the same contractions as those used in gastrointestinal peristalsis, which involves waves of muscle action to move and mix food throughout all the digestive organs. The migrating motor complex (MMC) has been described as a sweeping process, much like a street cleaner following behind a parade.

This MMC is a vital—and somewhat time-consuming—part of optimal digestion that can only take place when we are not eating. Its job is keeping microbes and their byproducts in the right place of the GI tract by sweeping away remnant food particles that gut bacteria like to feed on.

Without this mechanism working properly, bacteria can wander out of the colon where they belong and into the small intestine in search of undigested food. They’re not disease-causing bacteria; they’re only doing their job, just in the wrong location. This condition is known as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), and it leads to gas and bloating, among other symptoms.

Without the MMC mechanism, food matter and bacteria can stagnate in the small intestine, according to “Clinical and Basic Neurogastroenterology and Motility,” a medical book published in 2020.

“It has been found that individuals who suffer disruption or damage to this system are far more likely to develop (SIBO),” according to the book “The large intestine has different bacteria strains, and a much higher volume of bacteria than the small intestine. The progressive flushing mechanism of the MMC helps to prevent bacteria strains from the colon moving up into the terminal ileum, where they could begin to colonise the small intestine.”

But SIBO isn’t the only GI issue that’s associated with the migrating motor complex. It’s been linked also to gut infections, gastroparesis (a condition that prevents the stomach from emptying properly), and intestinal pseudo-obstruction, according to a review in Nature that detailed its role in disease.

There’s even concern that dietary advice to eat smaller meals but more often could be contributing to inefficient functioning of the MMC.

Overburdening the gut with too many feeding episodes could be a contributing factor to uncomfortable GI symptoms, warn experts.

“I know we’ve been told we should be eating six small meals a day, but when you look at it from a motility perspective, that’s not helpful,” naturopath Nicole Peasnell with Kirsten Greene SIBO Clinic told The Epoch Times. “What happens is if we are sitting there grazing all day long on our food, this MMC doesn’t get as much time as we might want for it to run and do that clearing out to run our motility.”

A Detailed Look at the MMC

Gut motility, the transit time for our food from the moment it hits our mouth until it works its way all the way through and out of the body, is the major role of the MMC. The MMC has a complex interplay with the nervous system and the endocrine system with some details understood and clues that offer only suggestions.

It operates on a cycle that has four stages with patterns of electromechanical activity every 90 to 120 minutes. There’s virtually no contractions in the first phase, which is the longest. The second phase is intermittent, irregular contractions.

The most active is the third phase, which has short bursts of regular high-amplitude contractions. They can result in gurgling or rumbling noises often misinterpreted as hunger. Eating will squelch the noise, but it will interrupt the cycle upon the first bite, starting the lengthy process all over again. The fourth phase is a short transition back to phase one.

There is no one diagnostic tool for a dysfunctional MMC; tests for associated conditions can help hone in on whether it might be playing a role. A study in 2018 suggested that assessing gut sounds could be an adequate biomarker in much the same way auscultation—listening for sounds—is used to assess breathing and heart function.

Published in Sensors, the study involved a personal computer and software program, along with a low-cost acoustic sensing device to detect MMC cycles.

When the MMC Isn’t Working

Researchers also learn clues about the MMC by studying its intimate link with gut hormones, such as motilin, as well as the nervous system.

The enteric nervous system—sometimes called the second brain—initiates MMC activity. Part of the autonomic nervous system, the enteric nervous system is a web of neurons that communicates using neurotransmitters—chemical messengers. They  coordinate activity with muscles, secretory glands, and the vasculature of the GI tract, according to “Clinical and Basic Neurogastroenterology and Motility.”

An absence of MMC phase three contractions for eight hours is considered severe enteric neuromuscular dysfunction. But there’s another component of the nervous system that’s also at play—the vagus nerve, a long nerve that connects the brain to the body’s major organs, including the gut.

Patients who've had vagotomy, removal of part of their vagus nerve, still have MMC impulses in the small intestine, but not the stomach. This shows how two independent parts of the nervous system are at play in this one mechanism.

The gut hormone motilin, which triggers muscle contractions that move food from the small intestine to the large intestine, is also involved. It ebbs and flows with MMC phases. When motilin is administered to a patient, it can induce phase three contractions.

MMC and Illness

The MMC is important not only for aiding in digestion, but also pushing food through the GI tract, allowing for nutrient absorption, and preventing intestinal blockages.

Several disorders are linked to a disturbed MMC, according to a 2021 review in Nature. 

Two of them are intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a painful condition of partially digested food building up in the colon, and gastroparesis, the inability of the stomach to empty properly.

A 2012 study in the Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility found that patients with Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infections were more likely to have a lack of phase three activity, which returned once H. pylori was eradicated.

“It is assumed that this abnormal motility might be a predisposing condition for bacterial colonization of the gastric mucosa rather than its consequence,” the study said.

Fasting and the MMC

One simple way to restore the MMC function is to allow it to do its job, meaning spreading out eating.

“If you put food in your mouth every hour of the daytime, you will never have cleaning waves. So the first recommendation is to eat the same amount as you normally do but that you eat it as distinct meals,” according to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “We previously recommended five hours between meals but this can be difficult for some people. At least four hours is now what we recommend.”

Other tips are to refrain from snacking and eating right before bed. Cassie Madsen, registered dietitian with Gut Health and Nutrition, told The Epoch Times it’s best to eat at regular intervals.

“Our bodies like cycles. When you’re not feeding yourself on a regular cycle, gut function can slow down and stop working,” she said. “Is spacing our meals enough to make a difference? I don’t think we really know at this point.”

Still, it’s common advice—so long as patients aren’t experiencing nutritional deficiencies, which can be common in some with GI issues. Getting sufficient nutrients always takes precedence over meal timing, Madsen said.

But if patients can keep a four to five hour period between at least two meals and extend their nighttime fast as long as possible, that could prove beneficial, she said. Those who’ve had SIBO could potentially prevent recurrence by practicing meal spacing.

Other Possible Rebalancing Tools

Prokinetics—agents that promote gut motility—are being explored from a pharmacological standpoint. You can also find natural prokinetics including probiotics, traditional Chinese and Japanese herbs, ginger, curcumin, and even specialized supplement blends.

Vagus nerve stimulation is a popular social media trend for gut motility, Madsen said, but it doesn’t have a lot of evidence. Still, she said it doesn’t hurt to try yoga, meditation, regular exercise, and deep breathing practices.

“I do think there’s some value in some of the techniques that are promoted because they also promote overall relaxation and stress reduction, which can have a big impact on gut health as well,” she said.

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Friday, 6 October

• Who: United Launch Alliance
• What: Atlas V 501
• When: 6:00 p.m. UTC
• Where: Cape Canaveral AFS Launch Complex 41, Titan III Rd, Titusville, Florida, US
• Why: United Launch Alliance will be launching an Atlas V rocket carrying two prototype satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation. These are the first satellites Amazon is launching for its Kuiper constellation and they will carry much of the same technology that the final versions of the satellite will be equipped with. One of the prototypes will also have a sunshade to help reduce the reflectivity of the satellite. This aspect will be of importance to astronomers who are concerned by the increasing number of satellites and the impact they are having on their astronomy work. Similar to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, Project Kuiper aims to beam the internet back to Earth. This could increase competition in satellite internet and could potentially lower prices for consumers.

Saturday, 7 October

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9 B5
• When: Unknown
• Where: Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 4, California, US
• Why: SpaceX will be launching a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 Starlink mini satellites into a low Earth orbit. Unlike Amazon’s Kuiper satellites which will use a sunshade, the Starlink satellites are painted with anti-reflective coatings. The satellites are known as Starlink Group 7-4. You can use various mobile apps to try to find these specific satellites when they’re in orbit with this group identifier.

• Who: Arianespace
• What: Vega
• When: 1:36 a.m. UTC
• Where: French Guiana
• Why: Arianespace will be using a Vega rocket to launch 12 satellites including the THEOS 2, Triton, and ProbaV-CC into orbit. The THEOS 2 satellite is an Earth observation satellite built by AIrbus for Thailand and complements THEOS 1 which launched in 2008. The Triton satellite was built by the Taiwanese Space Agency (TASA) and is a global navigation satellite system-reflectometry tool to help gather ocean wind data to better predict the direction and intensity of typhoons.

Recap

• The first launch last week was a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites into orbit where they will beam internet to the Earth.

• Starlink launches are a frequent occurrence as any reader knows, just a few days after the mission above, SpaceX launched another Starlink mission.

• On Tuesday evening (UTC), China launched a Long March 4C carrying the Yaogan 33 04 remote sensing satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. It will be used for scientific experiments, land resource surveys, crop yield estimates, disaster prevention, and relief work.

• Last week was a bit strange because we got the launch of the Iranian Qased rocket carrying the Noor 3 satellite. We don’t normally see many launches from Iran so it’s interesting to get a look at their rockets.

• Finally, SpaceX launched yet another batch of Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9.

That’s all for today, be sure to check in next time!

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Every year between September and December, Lubna Dada makes clouds. Dada, an atmospheric scientist, convenes with dozens of her colleagues to run experiments in a 7,000-gallon stainless steel chamber at CERN in Switzerland. “It's like science camp,” says Dada, who studies how natural emissions react with ozone to create aerosols that affect the climate.

Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty in climate predictions. Depending on location, cloud cover can reflect sunlight away from land and ocean that would otherwise absorb its heat—a rare perk in the warming world. But clouds can also trap heat over Arctic and Antarctic ice. Scientists want to know more about what causes clouds to form, and if that effect is cooling or heating. And most of all, says Dada, “We want to know how we humans have changed clouds.”

In the sky, aerosol particles attract water vapor or ice. When the tiny wet globs get large enough, they become seeds for clouds. Half of Earth’s cloud cover forms around stuff like sand, salt, soot, smoke, and dust. The other half nucleates around vapors released by living things or machines, like the sulfur dioxide that arises from burning fossil fuels.

At CERN, scientists replicate that process by injecting the steel chamber with vapors that represent specific environments. (It’s called the CLOUD chamber, for Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets.) For example, they can mimic the gases found above cities. But Dada, who normally works at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, went to CERN to peer into the past. Her team of scientists from around the world wanted to recreate the air above forests, because a “pristine” atmosphere hints at what cloud formation was like before industrialization. “We need this comparison to the time when there were no human emissions,” she says, “so we can fix our climate models.”

In a paper published this month in Science Advances, Dada’s team establishes a new heavy hitter in cloud creation: a kind of chemical released by trees. Trees emit natural volatiles like isoprene and monoterpenes, which can spark cloud-forming chemical reactions. Dada’s new work focuses on an overlooked class of less abundant volatiles called sesquiterpenes, which smell woody, earthy, citrusy, or spicy, depending on the molecule and type of plant or microbe that emits them.

The team shows that sesquiterpenes are more effective than expected for seeding clouds. A mere 1-to-50 ratio of sesquiterpene to other volatiles doubled cloud formation.

The role of trees in seeding clouds is important, because it suggests what the sky above some regions might be like if governments manage to tamp down sulfur emissions. In a world with less pollution, plants and trees will become more dominant drivers of cloud formation, an echo of the premodern world.

This research could help refine estimates of what the atmosphere was like before industrialization. Maybe we’ve been undercounting the world’s aerosol population by overlooking a large portion of those that come from trees. If so, climate models will need retooling.

“New particle formation is a pretty hot topic right now,” says Paquita Zuidema, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami who was not part of the study. “We’re coming to realize more and more that we don't really know exactly what a pristine atmosphere is like.”

While anthropogenic emissions dominate cloud formation in populated areas, plant volatiles dominate over more pristine land elsewhere. Lab tools have only recently become sensitive enough to understand which ones contribute the most.

Many discoveries about sesquiterpenes are relatively recent. In 2010, researchers detected them near the Amazon’s forest floor. Higher up in the canopy, sesquiterpenes were harder to track. This suggested that ozone was turning sesquiterpenes into cloud-seeding aerosols. Dada reported a similar system in Finnish forests and peatlands last year. “We are seeing more and more because our instruments are much better now,” she says. “They are not only in the Amazon.”

When Dada and her colleagues started the new study, they aimed to test sesquiterpenes’ cloud-making abilities by mimicking the air in a forest that hasn't been corrupted by anthropogenic emissions. They began with a baseline—measuring what happens after ionizing an atmospheric mix of the most common “biogenic” volatiles: isoprene and α-pinene, a monoterpene. This combination seeded clouds, as expected. Then, the team did the same and mixed in a sesquiterpene called β-caryophyllene. It comes from pine and citrus trees and smells like cracked pepper.

Dada hypothesized that β-caryophyllene should react chemically, forming aerosols and eventually a cloud. She and her team stood in the control room monitoring 15 screens displaying real-time readouts of data like aerosol sizes and concentrations. They would know she was right if a graph of particle sizes on one of the screens changed colour. It would grow and turn from blue to banana yellow as cloud seeds become more numerous.

On the first run, the graph turned yellow. Dada was right. (“We were all screaming ‘Banana! Banana! Banana!’” she recalls.) Adding just 2 percent by volume of β-caryophyllene to the mix doubled cloud formation and caused particles to grow faster. It was the first experiment demonstrating how sesquiterpenes seed clouds. Dada says it showed that even though these are only a fraction of the compounds that trees exhale, “the contribution is huge.”

“A little bit of sesquiterpene added has a very large effect,” says Jiwen Fan, an atmospheric scientist with Argonne National Lab not involved in the study. Even when sesquiterpenes create “ultrafine” aerosols that aren’t large enough to seed clouds, they can still affect weather. In 2018, Fan showed that when huge rainclouds “ingest” ultrafine aerosols, they form new droplets that invigorate thunderstorms.

To Fan, the new data suggests that sesquiterpenes may help better account for the global flow of aerosols. Aerosols make clouds deflect more heat away from Earth—an effect known as “radiative forcing.” (That’s the idea behind plots to geoengineer the atmosphere with aerosols: Artificially seeding clouds that can cool the ground.) More aerosols mean more reflective clouds that look whiter, last longer, and rain less.

But scientists have trouble simulating just how many aerosols should be accounted for in models. “It’s been a long-standing problem,” Fan says. “A lot of climate models overestimate anthropogenic aerosol forcing.” Perhaps that is because they are underestimating the prevalence of natural aerosols—from microbes, plants, and trees—before the industrial revolution. “Maybe what we're using as our reference point may actually not be as low-aerosol as we thought,” agrees Zuidema.

By quantifying how trees make clouds, scientists could better predict the climate’s future—and past. Industrial emissions reduce some warming through radiative forcing, since sulfur aerosols can create reflective clouds. But if biogenic aerosols were more abundant than expected before industrialization, then the contributions from industry matter less.

It’s hard to predict what this recalculation will tell us about global warming, because there are so many moving parts in a dynamic climate. For example, heat stress, extreme weather, and droughts cause plants to release more biogenic volatiles—which seed more clouds. Deforestation and heat stress are pushing treelines to migrate to higher altitudes and latitudes. That affects where clouds form.

“It’s a feedback loop,” Dada says. “The climate is affecting the cloud formation, and the clouds are affecting the climate.”

Better climate models will help scientists predict the best mitigations: “If we need more clouds, if we need less clouds,” Dada says. The catch, though, is that climate models are incredibly computationally demanding. It may not be easy to incorporate the physics of something as tiny as these tree aerosols.

Dada is back at CERN this autumn for more tests. Her team now wants to see how anthropogenic emissions, like sulfur dioxide, affect the ability of plants to seed clouds. They might slow each other down—or speed each other up. Their goal is to broaden their conclusions to regions that aren’t as pristine as a forest, where there are many kinds of intermingled emissions. “We're trying to add anthropogenic factors, to have a more realistic view about almost everywhere around the world,” she says.

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NEW YORK AND the surrounding areas are under a flash flood warning, and the city and state have issued emergency declarations. Parts of Brooklyn received more than 5 inches of rain this morning; Central Park and Midtown Manhattan had around 4 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Trains were stalled or suspended. Students were in schools with no immediate safe way home. The downpour comes after days of rain that made the region susceptible to flooding.

Water has been rushing down subway stairs in Brooklyn, while a terminal in LaGuardia Airport flooded and shuttered. Cars have been stranded and trash cans sent floating by dangerous flood waters, with one bus continuing on its route despite several inches of water on board.

“This changing weather pattern is the result of climate change,” Rohit Aggarwala, commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, said during a press conference. “And the sad reality is that our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond.”

The physics of this sort of flooding are abundantly clear to atmospheric scientists: For every 1 degree Celsius of warming, air can hold 6 to 7 percent more water. That means more moisture is available for storms to dump. At the same time, as the planet warms, it sheds more energy by evaporation—essentially, it “sweats” more. What goes up must come down as rain.

All the while, metropolises like New York are working with infrastructure that may be centuries old. City planners considered their climate then when building sewers and canals—the basic idea being to whisk away stormwater as quickly as possible. Today, storms are fiercer, and the extra precipitation is overwhelming that infrastructure, accumulating and causing widespread flooding.

Stormwater strategies are shifting, though. Cities are increasingly deploying “sponge” infrastructure that absorbs water instead of funneling it away. So instead of impermeable surfaces like concrete, more green spaces allow rain to soak into the ground, ideally into aquifers for withdrawal in times of need.

At the time of writing there are no known fatalities, but first responders have performed several rescues of people stranded in basements and cars, said Laura Kavanagh, New York City’s Fire Commissioner, during the press conference. The flood watch remains in effect into the afternoon, and officials have urged people to stay off the roads.

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The finding underscores the extent to which the small particles have invaded nearly every part of the Earth, where they can harm living creatures and even potentially influence the climate, the researchers wrote in their paper.

The researchers collected samples of cloud water above Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest mountain, and Mount Oyama over several months. Using advanced imaging techniques on the samples, they identified nine different plastic polymers, along with some rubber.

Their presence in clouds is especially concerning, the researchers wrote, because some of the microplastics they found had molecular structures that could help to seed clouds, spurring them to produce rain or snow. The particles could also contribute to cloud formation, which would affect their cooling impact on the Earth.

Microplastics have previously appeared in oceans, rivers, and even in the lungs of wild birds. They take centuries to decompose, which makes them a growing threat to most ecosystems as humans continue to use and discard plastic. Discovering microplastics in the free troposphere — the part of the atmosphere where clouds form — is more reason to suspect that the number of plastic-free areas on Earth is dwindling.

According to a statement about the study from Waseda University, these microplastics could also fall to the ground and infiltrate even more areas of the globe.

“Microplastics may have become an essential component of clouds, contaminating nearly everything we eat and drink via ‘plastic rainfall,’” the statement reads.

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On Friday, the US Supreme Court agreed to take on two landmark social media cases with enormous implications for online speech, as reported by The Washington Post. The conservative-dominated court will determine if laws passed by Texas and Florida are violating First Amendment rights by requiring social platforms to host content they would otherwise block.

Tech industry groups, including Meta, X (formerly Twitter) and Google, say the laws are unconstitutional and violate private companies’ First Amendment rights. “Telling private websites they must give equal treatment to extremist hate isn’t just unwise, it is unconstitutional, and we look forward to demonstrating that to the Court,” Matt Schruers of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), one of the trade associations challenging the legislation, told The Washington Post. The CCIA called the order “encouraging.”

The groups representing the tech companies contesting the laws say platforms would be at legal risk for removing violent or hateful content, propaganda from hostile governments and spam. However, leaving the content online could be bad for their bottom lines as they would risk advertiser and user boycotts.

Supporters of the Republican-sponsored state laws claim that social media companies are biased against conservatives and are illegally censoring their views. “These massive corporate entities cannot continue to go unchecked as they silence the voices of millions of Americans,” said TX Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who recently survived an impeachment trial accusing him of abuses of office, bribery and corruption. Appeals courts (all with Republican-appointed judges) have issued conflicting rulings on the laws.

The US Supreme Court voted five to four in 2022 to put the Texas law on hold while the legal sparring continued. Justices John Roberts, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to prevent the law from taking effect. Meanwhile, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the temporary hold. Alito (joined by Thomas and Gorsuch) said he hadn’t decided on the law’s constitutionality but would have let it stand in the interim. The dissenting Kagan didn’t sign off on Alito’s statement or provide separate reasoning.

The Biden administration is against the laws. “The act of culling and curating the content that users see is inherently expressive, even if the speech that is collected is almost wholly provided by users,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said to the justices. “And especially because the covered platforms’ only products are displays of expressive content, a government requirement that they display different content — for example, by including content they wish to exclude or organizing content in a different way — plainly implicates the First Amendment.”

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The landing was a win for India's low-cost space engineering, and science, as well as a quiet initiative to rebrand India's 54-year-old space agency as approachable, according to more than a dozen current and former employees, and 10 consultants and industry experts.

"ISRO used to be a very closed organization. There was hesitation in talking about its missions and somewhat of a culture of secrecy," said Namrata Goswami, a space policy expert and professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. "Fast forward to 2023, I was surprised by the amount of transparency from them. That is very new, and very welcome."

The stakes are high: the $400 billion global commercial space market is expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2030, but at the moment India has only a 2% share - about $8 billion - which the government wants to change. India expects to have a $40 billion worth of slice of the pie by 2040, the government has said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on the agency to make India into a profitable space superpower. To get there, the country needs to rope in young scientists, startups, investors, and private industry partners, none of whom respond well to a closed-off approach, senior ISRO scientists said.

"The point is to be open and engage the next generation," said BHM Darukesha 49, who drafts and manages ISRO's social media posts. "We want people to see us as friendly. ... This represents a new focus at ISRO."

That has caught the attention of university students who might otherwise have steered clear of the industry. Sruthi Parupudi, 18, who is studying interaction design in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, said she had long been interested in space, but thought such careers were closed off to non-scientists.

"Now I see the many facets of the industry open up," she said. "I stand a chance to work with ISRO, being a design student."

ISRO insiders credit S. Somanath, who took over as chairman in 2022, as being instrumental in getting everyone at the organisation onboard with the changes. Many scientists initially worried about job security and ISRO's relevance after opening the sector to private industry, said seven senior scientists, who did not wish to be named because they are not authorised to talk to media.

Somanath said he implemented other small changes, such as encouraging break time, informal problem-solving chats and refreshment kiosks where employees can meet for tea. His goal was to make it all add up to a more attractive place to work and partner with.

"These small things that global companies have are not automatically available in government organisations all the time, and these are important for young people, whom we want to attract as we expand our reach," Somanath said. "Many ideas can be discussed better over a cup of tea."

Employees and experts say that they have felt more autonomy, and that a new atmosphere of straight talk helps projects move faster. Publicising ISRO scientists' achievements has given them more confidence and brought space startups to the door, asking for guidance as they plan private launches.

A more responsive agency makes such partnerships more attractive, private space insiders say.

"Private industry does not need help, they need predictability," said D S Govindrajan, president of Aniara Communications, which provides satellite services for emerging markets. "That kind of predictability is certainly there now."

ABOVE AND BEYOND

From its humble beginnings - stories of scientists' using a church as a "mission control room" for the agency's first launch and transporting rocket parts by bicycle are legendary in the country - ISRO has hit recent highs, becoming the first nation to land a rover on the moon's south pole.

It has now set sights on studying the sun, putting astronauts in orbit, exploring Venus, and is a partner with NASA for planetary defence and deep space exploration.

"Space is a critical place through which you ascertain yourself as a superpower. The U.S. is there, China is there, so India has to be there," said Ashok Sharma, visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales, Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Modi's government, heading for elections next year, is pushing the development of India's space industry. Insiders say he has shown a personal interest in inviting foreign investment in the sector.

"He wants space to do what India has been able to do with IT," a person familiar with discussions between the prime minister's office and the industry said. The person declined to be named because the discussions are not public.

The government is widely expected to open the doors to foreign investment in the sector this year. ISRO will focus on exploration and new science, while three different bodies - the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) and the Indian Space Association (ISpA) - will interact the private sector, negotiate launches and boost business.

There are many obstacles: space launches are dominated by established companies and organisations, and a costly failure or economic downturn could undo the momentum.

"You are using public money, so you have to show the public what the money is being used for," said Somak Raychaudhury, an astrophysicist and vice chancellor at Ashoka University.

But for now, the increased openness has led to optimism that the positive changes will be long-lived.

"People can now see scientists are normal human beings, and in some ways, maybe that can inspire young minds to study science further," Raychaudhury said.

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The two most famous prizes in the world are the Academy Award for work in film and the Nobel Prize for work in science and medicine. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences grants posthumous awards for people who won in their category but died before they could attend the ceremony and, occasionally, for special recognition, as when Audrey Hepburn was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993. It's time the Nobel Assembly did the same thing and awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize to British chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose research laid the foundation for the modern understanding of DNA.

Franklin was passed over for the prize in physiology or medicine when it was awarded in 1962 to biologists James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. Previously no one could figure out how a simple molecule like DNA could carry large amounts of information. The double-helix structure solved the problem: DNA encodes information in the sequences of base pairs that sit inside the helix, and it replicates this information when the helical strands separate and re-create the matching strand.

The 1962 prize remains controversial, not just because three men won it while their female colleague was left out but also because the men relied on crucial information that they took from Franklin without her knowledge or consent: a set of x-ray diffraction images of DNA's crystal structure.

Franklin provided essential quantitative data on the structure in a report she shared with a colleague, who shared it with Watson and Crick. Later analysis of her laboratory notebooks showed not only that she had deduced the double-helix structure but also that she recognized that a structure based on complementary strands could explain how the molecule carried large amounts of genetic information because “an infinite variety of nucleotide sequences would be possible.”

Franklin published a paper on her research (with her graduate student, Raymond Gosling) in the same 1953 issue of Nature where Watson and Crick announced the conclusions for which they would be awarded the Nobel. But Franklin and Gosling's paper, boringly entitled “Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate,” lacked the impact of Watson and Crick's declaration that they had discovered DNA's structure. In 1958 Franklin died of ovarian cancer, probably caused by her exposure to x-rays at a time when lab precautions were not what they are today.

Nobel rules state that prizes can be awarded only to living scientists, but many people believe that even had Franklin lived, the Nobel Assembly would have passed her over, just as it had all but three women before her: physicist Marie Curie for her role in explaining radioactivity and for isolating radium; radiochemist Irène Joliot-Curie for discovering induced radioactivity; and biochemist Gerty Cori, who showed how cells convert sugar into energy. Moreover, the award citation for the DNA work barely mentioned Franklin's role. (Wilkins was not an author on the key 1953 DNA paper, either, yet he was included in the Nobel Prize.)

Scholars have argued that Franklin has been misrepresented. In a commentary published in Nature earlier this year, zoologist Matthew Cobb and historian of science Nathaniel Comfort explain that Watson's best-selling 1968 book The Double Helix implied that Franklin didn't comprehend the implications of her own data and in so doing minimized her role in the discovery. In fact, Cobb and Comfort demonstrate, “Franklin did not fail to grasp the structure of DNA. She was an equal contributor to solving it.”

The Nobel Assembly should right this wrong by awarding a posthumous Nobel to Franklin for her central role in the discovery of the double-helix structure. While they are at it, they ought to honor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars only to see the 1974 physics Nobel awarded to her thesis adviser—despite the fact that he had initially disbelieved her observations. Ditto for Chien-Shiung Wu, who proved that the “law of parity conservation”—that subatomic objects and their mirror images must behave the same way—was no law at all. (Eugene Wigner shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics in part for formulating that “law,” even though two male colleagues of Wu had won the prize in 1957 for disproving it!) And then there is Lise Meitner, the co-discoverer, with Otto Hahn, of nuclear fission. It was Meitner, along with her nephew, Otto Frisch, who proposed the term “fission” to describe what they had found, but Hahn won the prize.

It is the essence of science to recognize errors and correct them. It's time for the Nobel Assembly to embody this ideal and do the same.

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