MENACHEM ELIMELECH NEVER made peace with reverse osmosis. Elimelech, who founded Yale’s environmental engineering program, is something of a rock star among those who develop filtration systems that turn seawater or wastewater into clean drinking water. And reverse osmosis is a rock star among filter technologies: It has dominated how the world desalinates seawater for about a quarter of a century. Yet nobody really knew how it worked. And Elimelech hated that.

Still, he had to teach the technology to his students. For many years, he showed them how to estimate the high pressures that push the water molecules in seawater across a plastic polyamide membrane, creating pure water on one side of the film and leaving an extra-salty brine on the other. But these calculations relied on an assumption that nagged Elimelech and other engineers: that water molecules diffuse through the membrane individually. “This always bothered me. It does not make any sense,” he says.

Autobiographic memory is essential to human functioning in areas such as self-concept, emotion regulation and problem-solving. Research has suggested that, among the cognitive processes disrupted by depression, the retrieval of autobiographical memory is often impaired.

In the new work, the researchers collected data on autographical memory for 50 students with a prior history of depression. Participants were asked to write details of specific personal memories in response to cue words. As a control condition, 25 of the students were then assigned to digitally color an image each day—an intervention which has been shown to decrease anxiety. The other 25 students were asked to participate in a daily 10-minute meditation which included visualizations of different individuals and a mantra encouraging happiness, health, loving-kindness and peace.

After four weeks, people who had been in the kindness meditation group had a greater increase in the retrieval of specific memories compared to those in the coloring group. Over time, the total memory specificity and levels of rumination improved for people who had been in the meditation intervention. Recall of positive-specific memories also improved for people in both the meditation and coloring groups. However, correlations between the meditation group's performance and the remoteness of memories were less clear.

The authors conclude that kindness and self-compassion meditations demonstrate initial promise as an intervention to influence autobiographic memory and make memories more specific and positive among people with depression.

The authors add, "Loving-kindness meditation was shown to improve features of autobiographical memory retrieval in remitted depression which might reduce a cognitive vulnerability to depression. The meditation further acted as a buffer for the effects of autobiographical memory when cognitive reactivity was induced."

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Muslims worldwide will be celebrating the first day of Eid al-Adha, or "Feast of Sacrifice," the most important Islamic holiday that commemorates the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim – also known as Abraham to Christians and Jews – to sacrifice his son before God stayed his hand.

During the three-day holiday, this year between June 28 to June 30 in Saudi Arabia, Muslims slaughter livestock, distributing part of the meat to the poor. The holiday begins on the 10th day of the Islamic lunar month of Dhul-Hijja, during the annual hajj pilgrimage.

In Saudi Arabia, one of the final rites of the hajj, symbolically stoning the devil, will precede Eid al-Adha.

Here's a look at the pilgrimage and what it means for Muslims:

What is the purpose of the hajj?

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all able-bodied Muslims are required to perform it once in their lifetime. The hajj is seen as a chance to wipe clean past sins and start fresh. Many seek to deepen their faith on the hajj, with women taking on the Islamic hair covering known as "hijab" upon returning from the pilgrimage.

Despite the physical challenges of the hajj, many people rely on canes or crutches and insist on walking the routes. Those who cannot afford the hajj are sometimes financed by charities or community leaders. Others save their entire lives to make the journey. A few even walk thousands of miles by foot to Saudi Arabia, taking months to arrive.

Muslim pilgrims perform Eid Al-Adha morning prayers at the grand mosque in Islam's holy city of Mecca in June. Credit: ABDULGHANI BASHEER - AFP

What is the history of the hajj?

While following a route the Prophet Muhammad once walked, the rites of hajj are believed to ultimately trace the footsteps of the prophets Ibrahim and Ismail, or Abraham and Ishmael as they are named in the Bible.

Muslims believe Ibrahim's faith was tested when God commanded him to sacrifice his only son Ismail. Ibrahim was prepared to submit to the command, but then God stayed his hand, sparing his son. In the Christian and Jewish version of the story, Abraham is ordered to kill his other son, Isaac.

Pilgrims also trace the path of Ibrahim's wife, Hagar, who Muslims believe ran between two hills seven times searching for water for her dying son. Tradition holds that God then brought forth a spring that runs to this day. That spring, known as the sacred well of Zamzam, is believed to possess healing powers and pilgrims often return from the hajj with bottles of its water as gifts.

Why is the Kaaba so important to Muslims?

Islamic tradition holds that the Kaaba was built by Ibrahim and Ismail as a house of monotheistic worship thousands of years ago. Over the years, the Kaaba was reconstructed and attracted different kinds of pilgrims, including early Christians who once lived in the Arabian Peninsula. In pre-Islamic times, the Kaaba was used to house pagan idols worshiped by local tribes.

Muslims do not worship the Kaaba, but it is Islam's most sacred site because it represents the metaphorical house of God and the oneness of God in Islam. Observant Muslims around the world face toward the Kaaba during the five daily prayers.

Muslim pilgrims perform Eid Al-Adha morning prayers at the grand mosque in Islam's holy city of Mecca in June. Credit: ABDULGHANI BASHEER - AFP

What are the rituals performed during the hajj?

Pilgrims enter into a state of spiritual purity known as "ihram" that is aimed at shedding symbols of materialism, giving up worldly pleasures and focusing on the inner self over outward appearance.

Women forgo makeup and perfume and wear loose-fitting clothing and a head covering, while men dress in seamless, white terrycloth garments.

The white garments are forbidden to contain any stitching – a restriction meant to emphasize the equality of all Muslims and prevent wealthier pilgrims from differentiating themselves with more elaborate garments.

Muslims are forbidden from engaging in sexual intercourse, cutting their hair or trimming nails while in ihram. It is also forbidden for pilgrims to argue, fight or lose their tempers during the hajj. Inevitably, though, the massive crowds and physical exhaustion of the journey test pilgrims' patience and tolerance.

The first day of the hajj

The hajj traditionally begins in Mecca, with a smaller pilgrimage called the "umrah," which can be performed year-round. To perform the umrah, Muslims circle the Kaaba counter-clockwise seven times while reciting supplications to God, then walk between the two hills traveled by Hagar. Mecca's Grand Mosque, the world's largest, encompasses the Kaaba and the two hills.

Before heading to Mecca, many pilgrims visit the city of Medina where the Prophet Muhammad is buried and where he built his first mosque.

Sunni Muslim worshippers perform the morning prayers for Eid al-Adha at the Mohamed al-Amin mosque on the eastern side of Iraq's northern city of Mosul in June.  Credit: ZAID AL-OBEIDI - AFP

The second day of the hajj

After spending the night in the massive valley of Mina, where 160,000 tents are set up to house them, the pilgrims head to Mount Arafat, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Mecca, for the pinnacle of the pilgrimage.

The Prophet Muhammad is believed to have said that hajj is Arafat, in reference to the day spent there and its importance. Pilgrims are packed shoulder to shoulder, with some men and women openly weeping and praying.

Tens of thousands scale a hill called Jabal al-Rahma, or mountain of mercy, in Arafat. It is here where Muhammad delivered his final sermon, calling for equality and for Muslim unity. He reminded his followers of women's rights and that every Muslim life and property is sacred.

Around sunset, pilgrims head to an area called Muzdalifa, nine kilometers (5.5 miles) west of Arafat. Many walk, while others use buses. They spend the night there and pick up pebbles along the way that will be used in a symbolic stoning of the devil back in Mina, where Muslims believe the devil tried to talk Ibrahim out of submitting to God's will.

The final three days of the hajj

The last three days of the hajj are marked by three events: a final circling of the Kaaba, casting stones in Mina and removing the ihram. Men often shave their heads at the end in a sign of renewal.

The final days of hajj coincide with Eid al-Adha, or the festival of sacrifice, celebrated by Muslims around the world to commemorate Ibrahim's test of faith. During the three-day Eid, Muslims slaughter livestock and distribute the meat to the poor.

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Monitoring HIV status could become easier than ever before, thanks to an innovative new device developed by a team at Johns Hopkins University. The device is powered by a smartphone and uses CRISPR technology to produce a result in just 15 minutes, giving patients a rapid and accurate measurement of their viral load.

“We want to develop a new diagnostic tool that can help the nearly 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world monitor their viral loads more regularly and without needing hospital visits,” first author Dr Hoan Ngo, on behalf of senior authors Drs Kuangwen Hsieh and Tza-Huei Wang, told IFLScience. “We are always interested in elegantly integrating new molecular tests, detection strategies, and artificial intelligence. We are excited that the clinical and technological aspects come together perfectly for this project.”

In the study, which has been posted as a preprint and has therefore not yet undergone peer review, the authors describe how they developed the palm-sized portable device and how it works.

“Currently, our device detects HIV RNA in four steps,” Ngo told IFLScience. “First, we add HIV RNA into the molecular test reagents. Next, we load the reagents into a microfluidic chip. Then we insert the chip into the device and use the smartphone app that we created for this device to initiate the testing protocol. Finally, at the end of the testing time, which can be as short as 15 minutes, we can directly visualize the presence of HIV RNA as an image from the app.”

“We can also export the results and use our artificial intelligence algorithm to quantify HIV RNA.”

CRISPR-based tests are at the vanguard of molecular diagnostics. Compared with the current gold standard of the quantitative polymerase chain reaction, or PCR test – something we’ve all heard a lot about since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic – CRISPR offers the prospect of highly accurate diagnostic tests that are cost-effective and easy to use. The authors told IFLScience that they believe they’ve hit on the right combination of cutting-edge tech solutions in this project.

For people living with HIV, it’s vital that they keep track of their viral load, the amount of virus circulating in their blood. It’s how doctors can tell whether treatments are working effectively, and also whether the individual is at risk of passing the virus on to others – thanks to advances in therapy, we can now say that people with an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the infection.

The speed and convenience of the new device could be a game-changer compared with other methods of monitoring HIV status, especially in areas with poorer access to healthcare.

“Most people living with HIV/AIDS are living in Africa where testing infrastructure is limited,” Ngo explained. “These patients often must wait for months to get viral load result, affecting treatment outcomes and risking HIV drug resistance development and HIV spread.”

The fact that the device is inexpensive to manufacture and battery-powered, as well as being easy to operate via a smartphone interface, would also make it more widely accessible.

It’s still early days for this technology. Next, the team hopes to redesign the device so that it can directly detect HIV RNA from a blood or plasma sample, reducing the number of initial sample processing steps that healthcare workers would have to carry out.

They also want to improve the dedicated smartphone app so that it can display the viral load result directly to the user in real time.

“While we are excited about our current device, we understand that we still have significant work ahead of us,” Ngo told IFLScience. “Nevertheless, we believe the current device provides a promising foundation, and we look forward to building on it and one day deliver a useful diagnostic tool for helping everyone living with HIV/AIDS in the world.”

The preprint, which has not undergone peer review, is posted to medRxiv.

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Lake Karachay is the most radioactive lake on planet Earth. Its waters are so extremely irradiated, an hour of sunbathing on its shores would be enough to kill a human.

The radiation-ridden lake is found in the southern Ural mountains of central Russia. Its name, Karachay, means "black water" or "black creek" in the local Turkic languages, alluding to the grim levels of contamination associated with its water. 

It became shockingly radioactive after serving as a waste dumping ground for the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War.

Not far from the lake is the vast Mayak nuclear complex, which sprawls for around 90 square kilometers (35 square miles). Constructed in the 1940s to create plutonium for the Soviet atomic bomb project, the colossal nuclear facility was part of Chelyabinsk-65, a closed city that was so secretive it didn’t appear on maps until 1989. 

Stalin and his generals were desperate to keep up with the US after they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so the construction of Mayak was rushed with little consideration of how to properly dispose of its waste material. By 1951, they were left with few other options than to use Lake Karachay as a reservoir in order to stop the radioactive waste from discharging into the Techa River.

It has been described as the "most polluted spot on Earth" by the DC-based think tank Worldwatch Institute, posing a serious problem for the local ecosystem.

Satellite image of the Mayak nuclear facility, showing Lake Karachay within.

An estimated 500 million Curies of beta-radioactive nuclides were poured into Lake Karachay in the 1950s, according to a report shared by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Not only are the reservoir’s contents a problem, but radioactive water has seeped into the groundwater and migrated some 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) from the lake.

The scale of contamination became starkly clear in the summer of 1967 when a drought hit the lake. The dried-out bed of the lake turned into dust that was blown over nearby settlements, showering dozens of local villages with significant levels of radiation.

In the 1990s, well after the lake ceased being a dumping ground, radiation levels of 600 roentgen were recorded just 10 meters (less than 33 feet) from the edge of the lake, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Standing here for too long would prove lethal. For context, exposure of 100 roentgen is enough to cause radiation sickness and 400 roentgen would likely kill most people within a month of exposure.

When the existence of Mayak was finally acknowledged amid the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the impact of Lake Karachay’s radioactive legacy was finally revealed. The incidence of cancer had reportedly increased 21 percent among people living in the local area, along with a 25 percent increase in birth defects and a 41 percent increase in leukemia.

Fortunately, a $263 million project to clear up the mess has had some success in recent years. In 2016, Nuclear Engineering International reported that Lake Karachay had been filled with dirt, rock, and specialized concrete blocks. A statement on Mayak’s website said that monitoring during the first 10 months after sealing off the lake has shown “clear reduction of the deposition of radionuclides on the surface”, while the level of underground waters is “within the norm and shows no reason for concern”.

Nevertheless, the legacy of Lake Karachay's radiation will continue to linger. As the report shared by the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded: "Even if Lake Karachay disappears forever from the Earth, problems related to it will remain."

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A plume of smoke and soot emanating from the ongoing wildfires in Canada has crossed the Atlantic and is now hovering over Western Europe. Images captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on Monday, June 26 show the enormous cloud of black carbon extending across more than 3,220 kilometers (2,000 miles) of ocean and invading the skies above Portugal and Spain.

According to the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), the foreign plume first reached the Azores islands on June 25 before continuing on to the Iberian Peninsula. Made up of fine particulate matter and gases such as carbon monoxide, the cloud is expected to leave a haze over parts of Europe before dissipating on June 29.

NASA's Terra Satellite captured this image of a smoke plume extending from Canada to Europe.

Canada is currently in the midst of its most severe fire season on record, with the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service estimating that a record 160 million tonnes of carbon have been released since May. As of June 28, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre is reporting that there are currently 487 active fires across the country, of which 253 are categorized as out of control.

The agency also says that an area covering 7.9 million hectares (almost 20 million acres) has now been burned by this year’s fires.

Aside from the destruction of massive amounts of forest, the relentless flames have also sparked a major public health concern as smoke spreads to populated areas. Air quality in Montreal is currently ranked as the worst in the world, while air quality warnings have been issued in numerous cities across the Midwestern US.

According to the BBC, air pollution in places like Chicago and Michigan has now reached a level considered “very unhealthy”, although the situation is not as severe as it was in New York earlier this month, when smoke contamination soared to more than five times the safe limit.

Over in Europe, the smoke is reported to be lingering at altitudes of over 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), which means it is unlikely to cause a deterioration in air quality or pose a threat to human health. However, sensors in France and Spain have detected a significant increase in aerosol optical depth, which provides a measure of how hazy the sky is.

According to the UK’s Met Office, the lingering smoke is likely to continue to affect the clarity of the air and sky over the coming days, and could make for some dramatic sunrises and sunsets.

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When researchers revisited a damning report from the early 1970s that predicted global collapse within the coming century, they reached a worrying conclusion: their decades-old data was proving to be surprisingly accurate. Worse still, the planet was still heading down the same path with little sign of change on the horizon.

In 1972, a team of scientists from MIT used a computer model to look into the future of humanity after receiving a commission from the Club of Rome, an international group of leading academics, scientists, business leaders, and politicians. 

The report – The Limits To Growth – used a system dynamics model known as World3 to look at the complex interactions between the human population, industrial output, pollution, food production, and Earth’s natural resources. 

It found that a “stabilized world” scenario – in which global collapse was avoided and living standards remained stable – could be possible, but dramatic shifts in priorities and societal values were required. If unfettered economic growth continued without regard for the environment, it could produce a global society wracked by food shortages and plummeting human welfare.

Ultimately, World3 showed that a “business as usual” scenario would most likely bring around the collapse of global society within the 21st century. 

"Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent to taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse," The Limits To Growth reads.

Collapse, in this context, doesn’t mean humanity would be thrown into extinction like the dinosaurs – instead referring to the total stagnation of industrial growth and a significant decline in human welfare.

The work attracted a bunch of criticisms and controversy, but another look at the data suggests that the model’s prediction, so far, has been surprisingly on track.

As reported in the Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020, Gaya Herrington, a director for the accountancy firm KPMG, looked at how the empirical data over the past decades lined up with the report’s predictions. 

Using the new data, she looked at four different possible scenarios: two different “business as usual” scenarios, a “stabilized world,” and “comprehensive technology,” in which humanity is able to innovate its way out of environmental constraints using technological development.

Both "business as usual" scenarios sparked a global collapse within the 21st century, one through the depletion of natural resources and the other through pollution, climate change, and/or environmental devastation. Comprehensive technology was able to avoid a total collapse within the century, although eventually declines in human welfare were caused due to the rising cost of technology.

The stabilized world scenario, in which the world has dramatically changed societal values and priorities, saw the human population stabilize by the end of the 21st century and living standards maintained. 

Above all, Herrington's work argues that the 50-year-old forecasts were surprisingly accurate, and it appears the world is still not on a path to a stable world. If there's one glimmer of hope, the work does suggest that a stabilized world and an optimistic future are still within our grasp. However, to achieve this, radical changes will be needed. 

“Hidden behind a seemingly ambiguous outcome of two best fit scenarios that marginally align closer than the other two, hails the message that it’s not yet too late for humankind to change course and alter the trajectory of future data points,” Herrington wrote in a LinkedIn post describing her work.  

“We have another choice. Although SW [stabilized world] tracks least closely, a deliberate trajectory change is still possible. That window of opportunity is closing fast."

An earlier version of this article was published in July 2021.

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When a hurricane hits land, the destruction can be visible for years or even decades. Less obvious, but also powerful, is the effect hurricanes have on the oceans.

In a new study, we show through real-time measurements that hurricanes don’t just churn water at the surface. They can also push heat deep into the ocean in ways that can lock it up for years and ultimately affect regions far from the storm.

Heat is the key component of this story. It has long been known that hurricanes gain their energy from warm sea surface temperatures. This heat helps moist air near the ocean surface rise like a hot air balloon and form clouds taller than Mount Everest. This is why hurricanes generally form in tropical regions.

What we discovered is that hurricanes ultimately help warm the ocean, too, by enhancing its ability to absorb and store heat. And that can have far-reaching consequences.

How hurricanes draw energy from the ocean’s heat.

When hurricanes mix heat into the ocean, that heat doesn’t just resurface in the same place. We showed how underwater waves produced by the storm can push the heat roughly four times deeper than mixing alone, sending it to a depth where the heat is trapped far from the surface. From there, deep sea currents can transport it thousands of miles. A hurricane that travels across the western Pacific Ocean and hits the Philippines could end up supplying warm water that heats up the coast of Ecuador years later.

At sea, looking for typhoons

For two months in the fall of 2018, we lived aboard the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson to record how the Philippine Sea responded to changing weather patterns. As ocean scientists, we study turbulent mixing in the ocean and hurricanes and other tropical storms that generate this turbulence.

Skies were clear and winds were calm during the first half of our experiment. But in the second half, three major typhoons – as hurricanes are known in this part of the world – stirred up the ocean.

Microstructure profilers are used to measure ocean turbulence. This one is designed and built by the Ocean Mixing Group at Oregon State University.

That shift allowed us to directly compare the ocean’s motions with and without the influence of the storms. In particular, we were interested in learning how turbulence below the ocean surface was helping transfer heat down into the deep ocean.

We measure ocean turbulence with an instrument called a microstructure profiler, which free-falls nearly 1,000 feet (300 meters) and uses a probe similar to a phonograph needle to measure turbulent motions of the water.

What happens when a hurricane comes through

Imagine the tropical ocean before a hurricane passes over it. At the surface is a layer of warm water, warmer than 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius), that is heated by the sun and extends roughly 160 feet (50 meters) below the surface. Below it are layers of colder water.

The temperature difference between the layers keeps the waters separated and virtually unable to affect each other. You can think of it like the division between the oil and vinegar in an unshaken bottle of salad dressing.

As a hurricane passes over the tropical ocean, its strong winds help stir the boundaries between the water layers, much like someone shaking the bottle of salad dressing. In the process, cold deep water is mixed up from below and warm surface water is mixed downward. This causes surface temperatures to cool, allowing the ocean to absorb heat more efficiently than usual in the days after a hurricane.

For over two decades, scientists have debated whether the warm waters that are mixed downward by hurricanes could heat ocean currents and thereby shape global climate patterns. At the heart of this question was whether hurricanes could pump heat deep enough so that it stays in the ocean for years.

These illustrations show what happens to ocean heat before, during, after and many months after a hurricane passes over the ocean.

By analyzing subsurface ocean measurements taken before and after three hurricanes, we found that underwater waves transport heat roughly four times deeper into the ocean than direct mixing during the hurricane. These waves, which are generated by the hurricane itself, transport the heat deep enough that it cannot be easily released back into the atmosphere.

Implications of heat in the deep ocean

Once this heat is picked up by large-scale ocean currents, it can be transported to distant parts of the ocean.

The heat injected by the typhoons we studied in the Philippine Sea may have flowed to the coasts of Ecuador or California, following current patterns that carry water from west to east across the equatorial Pacific.

At this point, the heat may be mixed back up to the surface by a combination of shoaling currents, upwelling and turbulent mixing. Once the heat is close to the surface again, it can warm the local climate and affect ecosystems.

For instance, coral reefs are particularly sensitive to extended periods of heat stress. El Niño events are the typical culprit behind coral bleaching in Ecuador, but the excess heat from the hurricanes that we observed may contribute to stressed reefs and bleached coral far from where the storms appeared.

It is also possible that the excess heat from hurricanes stays within the ocean for decades or more without returning to the surface. This would actually have a mitigating impact on climate change.

As hurricanes redistribute heat from the ocean surface to greater depths, they can help to slow down warming of the Earth’s atmosphere by keeping the heat sequestered in the ocean.

Scientists have long thought of hurricanes as extreme events fueled by ocean heat and shaped by the Earth’s climate. Our findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add a new dimension to this problem by showing that the interactions go both ways — hurricanes themselves have the ability to heat up the ocean and shape the Earth’s climate.

Noel Gutiérrez Brizuela, Ph.D. Candidate in Physical Oceanography, University of California, San Diego and Sally Warner, Associate Professor of Climate Science, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Growing up, most of the stories I heard about animals featured charismatic megafauna—“flagship species,” as they were called. Elephants and tigers were the main attraction in zoos; dolphin shows were the primary draw at aquariums; and nonprofit organizations like the World Wildlife Fund celebrated pandas. In the news, the biggest stories about animals featured species like gorillas, lions, and orcas. This is largely still true today, and in a way it makes sense. These animals, with their sheer size, enigmatic behavior, and endangered status, can captivate the human imagination and command attention like few other creatures can, eliciting deep emotional responses from people around the world.

Yet the past decade has seen increasing pushback against this idea of prioritizing the welfare of megafauna while ignoring less charismatic creatures. The view that we should extend our moral concern to more than just animals with faces is becoming more mainstream. But if we stop simply prioritizing the welfare of animals that are “majestic” or “cute,” how should we prioritize species? Should we be concerned about the welfare of fish, bivalves, or insects? What about microorganisms? If meat is murder, does that mean antibacterial soap is, too?

Most people can agree that all humans are part of the moral circle. That is, they fall within the imaginary boundary we draw around those we deem worthy of respect and consideration. Many vegetarians and vegans believe that animals—at least farmed land and aquatic animals—are too. But people often fail to consider the idea that insects, microbes, and even some future forms of artificial intelligence may deserve as much consideration as human beings because they might also have conscious experiences, like happiness and suffering. And if they can suffer, as Jeff Sebo, a philosophy professor at NYU, argues in a prescient new paper, we should probably try to prevent that pain.

Sebo considers these matters through the lens of utilitarianism—a moral theory that prioritizes doing “the greatest good for the greatest number”—and what philosopher Derek Parfit called the “repugnant conclusion.” Parfit argued that if we had to choose between (a) a small population where everyone has the potential for very high welfare and (b) a large population where everyone has a very low potential for welfare, we should consider choosing the one with the greatest total amount of welfare.

Counterintuitive or “repugnant” as it may seem, the better option may well be the larger population whose members have more happiness in total, even if they have less on average. Sebo follows Parfit’s reasoning to its logical conclusion: The planet’s incredibly large population of smaller life forms, like bugs, may actually have more welfare to consider than its much smaller human population.

Not long ago, the idea that any nonhuman animal deserved moral concern would have seemed very strange. The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas believed that only humans matter because only they have “immortal souls” and the ability to reason. If it’s wrong to torture an animal, he thought, that’s only because it may cause harm to another human’s property. Enlightenment thinker René Descartes famously popularized the view that nonhuman animals are automata, capable of responding to stimuli but not of thought or feeling. This thinking only started to change in the West after generations of ethical philosophers began to parse the meaning of a now-famous quote by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham: “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

It wasn’t until Peter Singer’s 1975 book, Animal Liberation, and Tom Regan’s 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights, that the idea of extending moral consideration to nonhuman animals became popularized in Western analytic philosophy. These days, we also have scientific evidence that animals can experience happiness and suffering, so it’s harder to argue that there’s a fundamental difference between human and nonhuman minds.

We can’t be sure that bugs experience happiness or suffering (though there is increasing evidence to suggest some do). You may think the chances are pretty small. You likely think the chances are even smaller that organisms like microbes or artificial intelligence systems can have these or other feelings. But even if the chance that they are sentient is a tiny fraction of a percent, Sebo argues, these creatures exist in such tremendously high numbers—there are, for example, roughly 57 billion nematodes for every human on Earth—that their expected total welfare may still outweigh that of humans.

Of course, none of this means that we should abandon our human projects and spend our lives protecting microbes. (Though if you’d like to try, researcher Brian Tomasik has some interesting suggestions, like abandoning antibacterial deodorant and refraining from boiling vegetables.) For one thing, we don’t know how to measure or quantify subjective experience, and we can only guess at the likelihood that different creatures may be sentient. Crucially, not everyone agrees that “total” welfare is more important than “average” welfare. Finally, even if you do believe in this moral calculus, does this line of reasoning extend indefinitely? Does it include plants?

Some believe it does. Paco Calvo, a philosopher at the Minimal Intelligence Lab at the University of Murcia in Spain, argues in a new book (cowritten with Natalie Lawrence) that plants have both cognitive and emotional capacities. The authors suggest that plant behavior, like leaning toward the sun or unfolding leaves, may be more than automatic reactions. Plants can learn and make decisions, they argue, and their behavior appears goal-directed. I’m skeptical that plants have a conscious experience, and even more skeptical that they can experience positive or negative feelings. But maybe, Calvo and Lawrence suggest, we’re so “entrenched in the dogma of neuronal intelligence, brain-centric consciousness, that we find it difficult to imagine alternative kinds of internal experience.”

If there’s not enough at stake on Earth with respect to these complex moral considerations, consider that there are people who want to “help humanity flourish among the stars.” They hope to colonize the galaxies, ensuring that trillions of people have the opportunity to exist. Folks like Elon Musk are already eyeing nearby planets. But Musk’s dream is my worst nightmare. Life on Earth is difficult enough—if we can’t effectively reduce the suffering that happens on Earth, why multiply it across the universe?

Progress is possible, but at this stage we know almost nothing about what smaller creatures like microbes and plants may experience. For that matter, we have very little information about what it takes for any creature to be sentient. As we learn more, it would be irresponsible not to consider the experiences of nonhuman creatures in our moral calculus. After all, we often make incorrect assumptions about other species, so it wouldn’t hurt to have a dose of humility about our current understanding of the world.

For these reasons and more, Sebo is right to caution us not to make “high-stakes decisions through classical utilitarian reasoning alone.” The real world is, and always will be, much more layered and complex than any philosophical thought experiment, by design. The conclusion he comes to (which I share) is not that we should necessarily prioritize microbial welfare over human welfare, but that we should at least consider the well-being of microbes much more carefully than we currently do (which is to say, hardly at all). In other words, even if we “matter” more than they do, the moral significance of individuals who differ from ourselves may still be far greater than we currently appreciate. We have a long history of excluding certain sets of individuals from our moral circle, only to later regret it. To not learn our lesson this time, when trillions upon trillions may depend on it, would be truly repugnant.

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To understand what can go wrong with our bodies, it helps to remember that they haven’t evolved much since we were hunting and gathering a few thousand years ago. Our greedy response to sugar, for instance, worked well when we could only get it from wild berries; now that it’s combined with salt and fat into foods we can’t stop eating, it can be a problem. Or consider our stress response: if the only time your body reroutes resources from the immune system to your fight-or-flight system is during the occasional sabre-toothed tiger attack, that’s fine. If every mean tweet, upsetting headline or twinge of worry about the mortgage sends your systems into panic mode, your body never gets a chance to recuperate.

Inflammation, one of the least understood and most debated topics in health, works a bit like this. There are hundreds of cookbooks that promise to deliver an “anti-inflammatory diet”, with supplements, gels, teas, workouts, saunas and cryotherapy chambers offering the possibility of even more dramatic results. But inflammation, at its core, is a vital part of the body’s immune response – not something to try to eliminate. It is a complex biological process that occurs when the body detects harmful stimuli and its purpose is to protect you and kickstart healing. Sometimes this process gets out of control, leading to chronic inflammation that damages rather than heals. The tricky part? Our understanding of this process is evolving: there is a chance that, if you tweak your knee on a five-a-side pitch, you will still be given medical advice that was flipped on its head a decade ago.

So how much do we really know about inflammation – and when should you let it work its magic?

What is inflammation for?

Can I kick it? … inflammation is a vital part of the body’s immune response. Photograph: Adam Burn/Getty Images/fStop

Inflammation is the immune system’s response to any traumatic event in the body tissues – from a demanding workout to a scraped knee to a bout of flu. Your immune system releases white blood cells to protect the area, and you will probably experience some redness, warmth and swelling in the affected spot – occasionally with soreness and pain where the process stimulates nerves. When you are injured, this happens in the affected spot. When you have flu, swelling and pain occur in the respiratory system, but might also contribute to the muscle and joint pain or headaches you experience.

“This is acute inflammation – it’s part of our defence system, and we all have it, happening in varying degrees and duration depending on what has caused it in the first place,” says Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London. “It’s only a problem when it goes wrong, usually by overreacting in some way.” Crucially, though, acute inflammation is usually what you want to happen, and trying to prevent it might cause even more problems. We’ll come back to this.

What is going wrong?

Chronic inflammation is more of a worry. This happens when the body continues to send white blood cells on the attack in the absence of any threat. This disrupts normal bodily functions and can result in healthy tissues and organs being attacked. Autoimmune disease can bring it about, and so can foreign agents entering the body: it could be a serious problem, even if it’s not immediately evident.

“I think we are realising that chronic inflammation is part of many diseases we didn’t think it was previously involved in,” says Spector. “Nearly every disease is associated with some disorder of inflammation and it’s now considered a key part of ageing. So chronic inflammation really is an issue and something we should be trying to reduce.”

It tends to be less obvious than acute inflammation – it often causes fatigue, but any pain will be less localised. Crucially, the causes still aren’t fully understood.

The most immediately dangerous and obvious autoimmune disorders occur when the immune system mistakenly targets and attacks the body’s cells, thinking that they are foreign invaders; or when a defect occurs in the systems that usually mediate acute inflammation. But these are breakdowns in the body’s communications systems, and deal with problems that don’t actually exist – like an overzealous guard dog barking at shadows. Chronic inflammation can also be a result of the body’s failure to deal with genuine problems – ranging from infectious organisms to industrial chemicals – and this is where we have to consider whether 21st-century living is promoting levels of chronic inflammation that didn’t exist before.

A modern problem

Bad news for night owls … disruption of circadian rhythms can increase inflammatory markers. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images

“Our modern environments have been markedly transformed, from the food we eat to the air we breathe, to how we move and relate to others,” says Dr Shilpa Ravella, assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Centre. “Our immune systems are constantly triggered in this new environment, leading to chronic and often low-level inflammation that is linked to various kinds of disease.”

Many inflammatory issues start in the gut, where a huge amount of the trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other organisms that make up every human’s microbiome live. Scientists are still unravelling the complexities of the relationship between us and these microbes – but it’s well accepted that one of the key interactions between them and our immune cells involves “training” our bodies to distinguish harmless food and germs from their more toxic counterparts. Keeping the bad stuff out without sending our immune systems into overdrive is a fine balance, but one where our foraging-friendly gut errs on the side of tolerance – offering a muted inflammatory response compared with other areas of the body. “Sometimes, this response can go awry, with genes and the environment colluding to disrupt the balance, creating food allergies, coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease or other problems,” explains Ravella.

What causes this disruption? For most people, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are likely to be a factor. Defined by researchers as “snacks, drinks, ready meals and other products created mostly or entirely from substances extracted from foods or derived from food constituents with little if any intact food” and often highly convenient and palatable, these form a substantial proportion of the typical western diet. A review published this year concluded that “evidence on the association between UPF consumption and inflammation is still limited”, but there is certainly evidence – in mice, at least – that artificial sweeteners and additives can alter the makeup of microorganisms found in the gut, making it a more inflammatory environment.

While they might alleviate pain, it appears that both ice and complete rest may delay healing, instead of helping

Other factors may conspire to leave us chronically inflamed. As explained above, life is full of long-term stressors that have been linked to increases in inflammatory markers. Sleep loss and the disruption of circadian rhythms can be a factor: bad news if you are staring at a screen well after sunset. There are less easily avoidable environmental factors to worry about too: recent studies, for instance, suggest an association with long-term exposure to air pollution.

If it’s not broken …

So how do you deal with all this? First, do not try to prevent inflammation when it’s actually doing you good. If you are injured in a sporting context, for instance, you might find a well-wisher suggesting you use the popular Rice protocol (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). But while it might alleviate pain, according to a 2015 blogpost by Dr Gabe Mirkin – the originator of the acronym – “it appears that both ice and complete rest may delay healing, instead of helping. Applying ice to injured tissue causes blood vessels near the injury to constrict and shut off the blood flow that brings in the healing cells of inflammation … anything that reduces inflammation also delays healing.” Rest doesn’t prevent inflammation – but a bit of movement can get blood to the affected areas, meaning that doing some very low-intensity exercise after an injury can help the healing process.

Hampering your own body’s attempts to fix itself also applies to other forms of anti-inflammatory pain relief, including ibuprofen, one of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. A study presented last year suggests that taking anti-inflammatories for conditions such as osteoarthritis might worsen inflammation in the knee joint over time, with regular NSAID users showing worse cartilage quality than a control group. In another study (admittedly, conducted on ultramarathoners), ibuprofen use was related to elevated indicators of inflammation. More research is needed, and the occasional ibuprofen tablet is unlikely to do lasting damage – but it is worth keeping an eye on.

Modern solutions

Eat a mixture of foods that are high in omega-3 fatty acids such as salmon. Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images

Of course, this still leaves you trying to limit chronic inflammation. There are a number of ways to do this, but one of the most effective is to start at the gut. “Reduce processed and refined foods while also limiting added sugars and sugary beverages,” says Dr Sunni Patel, a wellness coach with more than 15 years of clinical experience. “Focus on consuming whole, minimally processed foods that are rich in nutrients and have anti-inflammatory properties. Include plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins such as fish, poultry, beans, legumes and healthy fats. What you cook with also makes a difference – emphasise herbs and spices with anti-inflammatory properties, such as turmeric, ginger and garlic.”

There is also some evidence that the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA have anti-inflammatory effects – so try to eat a mixture of foods that are high in those, including fatty fish such as salmon or mackerel, flaxseeds, chia seeds and walnuts. Avoiding excess alcohol is also important – among other things, booze disrupts your gut bacteria.

What about not eating at all for periods of time? Part of the rationale for intermittent fasting is that it mimics the sporadic availability of food that would have been the norm for much of human history, and some research suggests that it can help to limit inflammation. “It goes back to this idea that if you give your body the time it needs to repair itself, it will help autophagy – or the destruction of damaged and unnecessary cells,” says Spector. Early research is promising, but more studies are needed.

What else? “There is some evidence that exercise can reduce inflammation and responses to stress,” says Spector. “Partly because it can help to prevent obesity, which causes inflammation in itself, and partly because it comes with its own benefits.”

Forest bathing … take your walks where there is greenery. Photograph: Maskot/Getty Images

Exercise doesn’t have to be too strenuous – a 2017 study conducted by the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that even one 20-minute session of moderate exercise can stimulate the immune system, producing an anti-inflammatory response – but older research suggests that resistance training also helps, implying that the best bet is a mixture of both. If you can, take your walks where there is greenery. “You can change your relationship to the microbes living on, in and around you by increasing your contact with the natural world,” says Ravella. “Forest bathing – essentially, taking a walk in the woods and being mindful of what is around you – can help us de-stress, but also exposes us to bacteria, viruses and fungi that can boost our own.”

De-stressing in other ways is helpful, too – and so is sleep. “If you can get your circadian rhythms in order by going to bed at a regular time, that allows repair to occur and makes blood sugar spikes less likely,” says Spector. “It all helps.”

If all this seems a lot to remember, the best advice is to do what a hunter-gatherer would do: go on long walks, occasionally indulge in some strenuous physical exertion and try not to worry too much. Oh, and don’t eat anything that you don’t recognise as food. We aren’t that evolved, after all.

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The global health body on May 5 announced that the COVID-19 pandemic was no longer deemed a "global health emergency."

"While it may not be a global public health emergency, however, COVID-19 has not gone away," WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge told reporters.

The WHO's European region comprises 53 countries, including several in central Asia.

"Close to 1,000 new COVID-19 deaths continue to occur across the region every week, and this is an underestimate due to a drop in countries regularly reporting COVID-19 deaths to WHO," Kluge added, and urged authorities to ensure vaccination coverage of at least 70 percent for vulnerable groups.

Kluge also said estimates showed that one in 30, or some 36 million people, in the region had experienced so called "long COVID" in the last three years, which "remains a complex condition we still know very little about."

"Unless we develop comprehensive diagnostics and treatment for long COVID, we will never truly recover from the pandemic," Kluge said, encouraging more research in the area which he called an under-recognized condition.

The health body also urged vigilance in the face of a resurgence of mpox, having recorded 22 new cases across the region in May, and the health impact of heat waves.

© 2023 AFP

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By testing how microplastics affect human intestinal organoids (small, self-organized tissue cultures that mimic real intestines), researchers found signs of potential inflammatory effects, including the release of cytokines linked to human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

This is significant, researchers explain, because while we know microplastics (along with even smaller nanoplastics) can accumulate in our intestines and other body tissues, we still know very little about how they affect our health.

That's partly because plastic particles have spread so thoroughly so quickly, swirling from obscurity to ubiquity within just a few human generations.

Formed as plastic products break down into smaller pieces over time, the particles can be incredibly durable and mobile, allowing them to end up seemingly anywhere on Earth.

Microplastics have pervaded environments and food webs worldwide, from cities and farms to oceans and ice sheets. We unwittingly eat, drink, and inhale them on a regular basis, with the average person now ingesting an estimated 74,000 tiny plastic particles every year.

"We know that particulate plastic is everywhere in the environment, and it has been found in human intestines and other tissues, like blood, and even in the brain and placenta," says study co-author Ying Chen, a Tufts University biomedical engineer.

Microplastic particles (yellow) are absorbed by microfold cells (magenta) in a lab model of the human intestinal lining. Green outlines indicate intact membranes for epithelial cells, which cover and protect the interior of the intestines. Cell nuclei are shown in blue. (Ying Chen/Tufts University)

Microplastics have become so widespread that scientists hoping to study their health effects in humans now struggle to find unaffected populations who can serve as control groups, the researchers note.

And while previous research has found a correlation between microplastics and IBD, evidence of causation remains elusive. Animal studies offer mixed results, showing a buildup of plastic particles in the intestines and other tissues, but no clear answer on toxicity or inflammation.

So Chen and her colleagues tried a different approach for the new study, using human intestinal organoids to help them learn what microplastics might do in a real human gut.

"The use of organoids allows us to study in detail the mechanisms of absorption and potential pathways to disease in a way that could help us make sense of the variable results in the literature up until now," Chen says, "and have a more direct tissue model for potential effects of plastic particles on humans."

The researchers created their model of a human gut by prompting stem cells (which were derived from other organoids) to differentiate into the various cell types that naturally occur in the walls of actual human intestines.

They wanted a ratio of cells similar to real intestinal walls, hoping to simulate the complex environment in which cells perform critical jobs like absorption, hormone production, mucus secretion, and inflammatory responses, among others.

"It's a significant step up from simpler cell models that often included only one or a few cell types, some of which were derived from cancer cells that might not demonstrate natural responses," Chen says.

The experiments showed different cell types absorbing different sizes of particles. The smallest nanoplastics were taken in by epithelial cells, which line the interior walls of the intestines, while microfold cells – which play a role in the gut's immune response – absorbed larger particles and sent them into the intestinal tissue.

The intestinal model only sustained damage when microfold cells were present and when there were higher concentrations of small plastic particles. According to the authors, the damage suggests microplastics could contribute to the formation of intestinal lesions.

The study found that higher levels of nanoplastics also triggered the organoid to release inflammatory cytokines. These proteins are part of a normal immune response but may also play a role in diseases like IBD when something disrupts their natural balance.

This, too, happened only in the presence of microfold cells, suggesting they may help mediate any potential harm from microplastics in the intestines.

More research is needed to flesh out these findings and to clarify how different types, sizes, and amounts of microplastics can affect our guts. Still, this study offers a potentially valuable model for demystifying the danger.

"The results in this study suggest that using human cell organoids could be an effective means to better understand the potential toxicity of microplastics and nanoplastics and environmental particles in general," says co-author David Kaplan, professor of engineering at Tufts University.

The study was published in Nanomedicine.

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Q: I was just diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. Am I destined to deal with its symptoms forever, or is there a cure?

The hallmark symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome are difficult to ignore — abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, gas.

It’s no wonder, then, that the millions of people who have the condition in the United States may wish for a treatment that helps them to completely recover.

But just as there is no cure for other chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, said Dr. Brian Lacy, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., there is no cure for I.B.S.

For Beth Rosen, a registered dietitian in New York who was diagnosed with I.B.S. in 2010, that reality was hard to accept.

“It took a while to come to terms with the fact that this was never going away,” Ms. Rosen said. “How was I going to manage it and live this way?”

She saw three gastroenterologists before she found one who took her symptoms seriously and could help her “work through the trials and errors of finding ways to feel better,” she said.

One reason I.B.S. can be so challenging to treat is that we don’t know exactly what causes it, said Dr. Baha Moshiree, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at Atrium Health Wake Forest in Charlotte, N.C.

I.B.S. is a result of impaired communication between the gut and the brain, with the nerves in the gut being exceptionally sensitive and signaling pain from what might be normal digestive processes.

Microbiome changes, GI infections, stress and issues with the way food moves through the gut can also contribute, Dr. Moshiree said.

What can help?

Finding effective treatments requires understanding the unique factors that contribute to each patient’s symptoms, Dr. Moshiree said, and often trying a combination of dietary, behavioral or pharmaceutical therapies.

Ms. Rosen often advises her clients to temporarily cut out foods that are high in certain sugars called FODMAPs, which are fermented by bacteria in the colon, resulting in gas and bloating that can worsen I.B.S. symptoms.

Many vegetables, fruits, dairy products, legumes, nuts, seeds and grains are considered high-FODMAP foods, making the diet very restrictive — and best attempted with the guidance of a registered dietitian and inappropriate for people with eating disorders, she said.

Ms. Rosen coaches her clients through three phases of the diet. First, eliminating high-FODMAP foods for two to six weeks (and no longer, because of the risks of nutrient deficiencies, microbiome changes and disordered eating). Then, if their symptoms have improved, she has them reintroduce high-FODMAP foods, one by one, to determine which ones trigger symptoms. Finally, she creates a personalized diet that includes all of the foods her clients can eat comfortably.

Over-the-counter enzyme supplements may help people more easily digest some high-FODMAP foods like dairy products, beans, lentils, garlic and onions, Ms. Rosen said.

Other nonprescription products that can improve I.B.S. symptoms include enteric-coated peppermint oil capsules, which can relax the smooth muscles of the gut, Dr. Moshiree said. Ms. Rosen added that psyllium fiber supplements can also be helpful.

Changes in the gut microbiome do seem to play a role in I.B.S., though there’s not enough evidence to recommend probiotic supplements or other therapies like fecal transplants for those with the condition, Dr. Moshiree said.

If stress is a trigger for I.B.S. symptoms, Dr. Moshiree often recommends that patients see a therapist or psychologist who specializes in gastrointestinal issues.

Cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy have also been shown to reduce I.B.S. symptoms, Dr. Lacy said. He would like to see these used more often, though certain barriers, including therapist shortages and lack of insurance coverage, have limited their use.

Some studies support the use of smartphone apps to deliver these psychotherapies. Dr. Lacy recommended Mahana I.B.S., a cognitive behavioral therapy app available by prescription, and some of Ms. Rosen’s clients have found the hypnotherapy app Nerva helpful.

Prescription medications — including lubiprostone, linaclotide, plecanatide and rifaximin — as well as tricyclic antidepressants can also be effective. But they usually work best when combined with other approaches.

The right mixture of therapies may be different for every patient, however. “That’s where the art of medicine comes in,” Dr. Moshiree said.

There are plenty of options to help people manage I.B.S. symptoms, Dr. Lacy said.

If you’re such a patient, he said, it’s important to be prepared to describe your history, symptoms, previous testing and therapies you have tried at health care appointments.

If your provider “doesn’t seem that interested or is stumped,” he said, find another one. “Don’t give up. Let’s keep plugging away, and let’s find the right thing for you.”

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Tuesday, June 27

The first launch of the week will be Russia’s Soyuz rocket carrying the fourth Meteor-M 2 polar-orbiting weather satellite and 42 other smaller satellites. The Meteor-M 2 satellite is carrying four instruments that allow it to obtain infrared and visible images of clouds and ice cover, measure the temperature and humidity in the atmosphere, and monitor the ozone layer.

The mission has been delayed a number of times since 2020. This time it’s scheduled for launch at 11:34 a.m. UTC from Vostochny Cosmodrome.

Saturday, July 1

The second and last launch of the week is a Falcon 9 carrying ESA’s Euclid space observatory. Euclid is a space telescope designed to explore the evolution of the dark universe.

The data collected by Euclid will be used to make a 3D map of the universe in a third of the sky. The galaxies it will snap for this 3D model will be up to 10 billion light-years away.

This mission has been delayed since 2020 and was initially going to be launched on a Soyuz rocket, then switched to an Ariane 6, and finally a Falcon 9.

It’ll take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 3:11 p.m. UTC. It will be available to watch on SpaceX’s website and possibly via ESA.

Recap

The first launch we got last week was a Falcon 9 carrying Indonesia’s Satria-1 satellite, the first stage then landed.

Next up, China launched a Long March 6 rocket carrying the Shiyan-25 satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre.

On Thursday, we saw the launch of a Falcon 9 carrying 47 Starlink satellites to space from California.

Also on Thursday, United Launch Alliance launched a Delta IV Heavy carrying a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office but it’s classified.

The final launch, on Friday, was another Falcon 9 taking more Starlink satellites to orbit.

That’s all for this week, check back next time.

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Current concerns

Ars spoke with a handful of NASA officials on background to discuss their concerns with the Mars Sample Return mission as it is conceived.

 

The biggest issue these officials have is that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has never built a lander this large or complex in-house. With a mass of 3.4 metric tons, it is far larger than anything NASA or any other space agency in the world has landed on Mars. NASA says that, when it is fully extended, the lander will be 7.7 meters wide and 2.1 meters tall—about the size of a two-car garage.

 

Much of this mass will consist of fuel, due to the lander's size and its need to land very near the Perseverance rover. The NASA sources questioned why the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is taking on such a massive project when there are already workforce issues there, and much of the facility's staff will be tied up with the Europa Clipper project through most of 2024.

 

Due to these reasons, and the complexity of the program, it is almost certain that the launch date will slip to 2030 and very probably later. This means that if the program is costing $1 billion a year, or even more, it will continue to blow a major hole in NASA's planetary science budget, which is about $3 billion a year, for the remainder of this decade.

 

And these probably are not the end of the cost increases. This mission has not even reached the "preliminary design review" stage, a formal analysis of the mission and its design. Many planetary missions experience cost growth after that, including the Curiosity and Perseverance missions sent to Mars.

Implications for planetary science

To be clear, the Mars Sample Return mission is a high priority for the planetary science community. In the influential "decadal" survey published last year, which set exploration priorities for the 2023 to 2032 period, scientists confirmed this. However, they added a caveat on costs.

 

"Mars Sample Return is of fundamental strategic importance to NASA, US leadership in planetary science, and international cooperation and should be completed as rapidly as possible," the report stated. "However, its cost should not be allowed to undermine the long-term programmatic balance of the planetary portfolio."

 

The report stated that if the cost of the sample-return mission increased substantially (defined as 20 percent or more) or exceed 35 percent of NASA's planetary science budget in any given year, then NASA should not take that money from other planetary programs. Instead, the agency should ask Congress for a "budget augmentation."

 

The concern, says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University, is that Mars Sample Return risks becoming the planetary community's James Webb Space Telescope. For the better part of a decade, the Webb instrument consumed most of the astrophysics budget, to the detriment of other projects.

 

Webb has been a phenomenal success now that it is in space, Byrne said. However, the Webb telescope has benefitted a very broad segment of the space science community, from astrophysicists to astronomers studying exoplanets to planetary scientists. It has observed all manner of phenomena, both locally in our Solar System and all the way to the edge of the universe. The Mars sample return mission, while it may produce some spectacular science, will only benefit a fairly narrow segment of planetary scientists.

 

"It's the same scope as Webb in terms of cost but a much, much narrower scope in terms of science," Byrne said. "That’s really problematic."

 

NASA is selling the sample return mission as a "life-detection mission," which may find evidence of life on Mars past or present. However, Byrne said most planetary scientists think the mission has only a very low chance of actually finding definitive evidence of life. And if the sample return mission does not, he said, the general public is likely to ask why NASA spent $10 billion to study the geological history of Mars.

 

The planetary science community has already started to feel the effects of the sample-return mission's costs. The Veritas mission to Venus was delayed by three years, and the inventive Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan is receiving less money than it needs to launch on time, Byrne said. Additionally, the planetary community's next high priority mission, an orbiter to Uranus, is likely to get pushed years into the future.

So what to do?

NASA and policymakers do have some options if they want to control the costs of the Mars Sample Return mission.

 

Foremost among them is having a competition for the development of the large lander that is the centerpiece of the mission—and which will probably comprise about half of the total cost.

 

“Why are we not putting out a call and having an industry competition for people like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and whoever else?" one NASA source asked. "They’re already building landers. Why can’t we ask them what they could do? JPL hasn’t even asked. We should be using a commercial, milestone-based approach.”

 

Zurbuchen said that NASA's current administration should be seriously considering this alternative if the Mars Sample Return mission is to continue.

 

"If I were in charge, I would develop a commercial option for the lander and seriously consider taking it away from JPL," he said. "Recall, this would be the first stationary lander done out of JPL. All others were built by Lockheed and that was before new capabilities by SpaceX and others."

 

Another option is removing the two Ingenuity-like helicopters currently attached to the mission. These are the "backup" plan to retrieve samples from Perseverance, if the rover is not healthy enough to deliver them to the stationary lander. Everyone loves Ingenuity, which has been a phenomenal success on Mars. But most likely Perseverance will be plenty healthy a decade from now, and adding two helicopters is akin to gold-plating the sample return mission while starving other missions like Veritas.

 

"To plan now for a failure on Perseverance, which may or may not ever happen, is such a luxury," one source said. "No robotic mission has ever done that before. If something does happen to Perseverance five years from now, why not deal with it then?"

 

For NASA, now is the time to make significant changes to the mission, before the agency completes a preliminary design review or goes through the Key Decision Point-C process later this year, after which NASA is more or less committed to the program.

 

Zurbuchen said that if the price really is escalating toward $10 billion at this early stage in the mission, NASA should think long and hard about whether this is really worth the cost.

 

"If the answer is this is not the decade to do it, my heart breaks because I put so much effort into it," he said. "But it is better to not do it than to torch the whole science community. We have to have the courage to say no. That’s the only way we earn the right to say yes."

 

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Runoff from irrigation has moved so much water from land to sea that Earth’s rotation might have measurably shifted.

Computer simulations suggest that from 1993 through 2010, irrigation alone nudged the North Pole by about 78 centimeters, researchers reported in the June 28 Geophysical Research Letters. That would make irrigation the second largest contributor to polar drift after the ongoing rebound of Earth’s surface following the retreat of glaciers since the last ice age.

Researchers have long known that the North Pole wanders across the Arctic seascape in a circle a few meters in diameter. Seasonal weather patterns cause part of this cyclical drift, and long-term variations in the temperature and salinity of ocean water help drive a 14-month-long oscillation dubbed the Chandler wobble (SN: 4/15/03).

But those repeated vacillations aren’t the only things that move the pole around, says Clark Wilson, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin. There is also a subtler, noncyclic polar drift caused by the movement of land-based water to the sea from melting glaciers worldwide and from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, he says.

Runoff from irrigation also plays a role — and a surprisingly large one at that.

In the first study to try and tease out the contributions of these water movements, Wilson and colleagues used computer simulations to assess how the impoundment of water behind dams, glacial melt, irrigation and several other factors might affect polar drift. Previous studies have suggested that irrigation shifted about 2 trillion metric tons of water from land-based aquifers to the oceans from 1993 through 2010 — enough to raise global sea level more than 6 millimeters.

Although seemingly minuscule, that redistribution of water was enough to shift the North Pole just over four centimeters each year on average during that period, the team found.

When all sources of water movement are considered — including the runoff of meltwater from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets — the North Pole drifted about 1.6 meters toward the east coast of Greenland in that time. The impact of irrigation was mostly to nudge the pole generally east of where it would have gone otherwise, the team found. Without irrigation, the pole would have drifted nearly the same amount, but toward the center of Greenland instead.

Unlike other drivers that vary over the course of a year, Wilson says, the polar drift due to irrigation is permanent and probably growing each year.

“The team’s findings all make sense,” says Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. “It’s important to realize that water is heavy, and when it moves around it’s going to affect Earth’s rotation.”

Besides shifting the North Pole, large-scale irrigation can also affect local and regional climates. Studies have shown that irrigation cools temperatures and boosts humidity in California’s Central Valley, as well as increasing rainfall in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest and enhancing flow volumes in the Colorado River (SN: 1/22/13).

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This definition works reasonably well on planet Earth, with viruses being one notable exception. But if life is elsewhere in the universe, it may not be made of the same stuff as us. It might not look, move, or communicate like we do. How, then, will we identify it as life?

Arizona State University astrobiologist Sara Walker and University of Glasgow chemist Lee Cronin think they've found a way.

They argue that chance alone cannot consistently produce the highly complex molecules found in all living creatures.

To produce billions of copies of intricate objects like proteins, human hands, or iPhones, the universe needs a 'memory' and a way of creating and reproducing complex information – a process that sounds very much like 'life'.

"An electron can be made anywhere in the universe and has no history," Walker told New Scientist.

"You are also a fundamental object, but with a lot of historical dependency. You might want to cite your age counting back to when you were born, but parts of you are billions of years older.

"From this perspective, we should think of ourselves as lineages of propagating information that temporarily finds itself aggregated in an individual."

Walker and Cronin's 'assembly theory' predicts that molecules produced by biological processes must be more complex than those produced by non-biological processes.

To test this prediction, their team analyzed a range of organic and inorganic compounds from around the world and outer space, including E. coli bacteria, yeast, urine, seawater, meteorites, drugs, home-brewed beer, and Scottish whisky.

They smashed the compounds into pieces and used mass spectrometry to identify their molecular building blocks.

They calculated the smallest number of steps required to reassemble each compound from these blocks – which they called the 'molecular assembly index'.

The molecular assembly index (MA) was over 15 for all biological samples (green) and some blinded samples (dark blue) but was below 15 for all inorganic, abiotic, or dead samples. (Marshall et al., Nature Communications, 2021)

The only compounds with 15 or more assembly steps came from living systems or technological processes.

"This could be a cell that constructs high-assembly molecules like proteins, or a chemist that makes molecules with an even higher assembly value, such as the anti- cancer drug Taxol," explain Walker and Cronin.

While some compounds from living systems had less than 15 assembly steps, no inorganic compounds made it above this threshold.

"Our system … allows us to search the universe agnostically for evidence of what life does rather than attempting to define what life is," Walker, Cronin, and others wrote in a 2021 Nature Communications article.

Just like arranging blocks or writing a word, the assembly of a molecule has a minimum number of steps. (Marshall et al., Nature Communications, 2021)

The beauty of the assembly index is that it does not require that aliens be made of the same carbon-based organic materials as creatures that live on Earth to be identified.

The assembly index is also indifferent to whether alien life is just starting to emerge or has moved into a technological stage beyond our comprehension. All these states produce complex molecules that could not have occurred without a living system.

Walker and Cronin's team is now applying the idea of an assembly index of 15 to future NASA missions.

In the mid-2030s, NASA's Dragonfly will fly through Titan's thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, moving from one site to another.

Saturn's moon Titan is the only place in the Solar System other than Earth to have standing bodies of liquid. It has liquid hydrocarbon lakes on its surface and is thought to harbor liquid water underground.

The robotic rotorcraft will drill into the icy surface at each landing site and extract a less-than-1-gram-in-size sample. This sample will be blasted with an onboard laser, which will break apart larger molecules so that the rock's chemical composition can be analyzed.

"It's a good example of the advantage of taking a more general approach to what life is because Titan is very different to Earth," says Walker.

"We don't expect anything like Earth life to evolve or live in this environment, so if we want to find out if life is on Titan, we need an agnostic technique.

"My group is now working on determining how we might be able to detect high assembly molecules. We're working with NASA to ensure that their existing mass spectrometry instrumentation has high enough resolution to detect high assembly molecules."

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Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded "regime shifts" like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystems where tipping points have been passed. Across the world, more than 20 percent of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.

These collapses might happen sooner than you'd think. Humans are already putting ecosystems under pressure in many different ways – what we refer to as stresses. And when you combine these stresses with an increase in climate-driven extreme weather, the date these tipping points are crossed could be brought forward by as much as 80 percent.

This means an ecosystem collapse that we might previously have expected to avoid until late this century could happen as soon as in the next few decades. That's the gloomy conclusion of our latest research, published in Nature Sustainability.

Human population growth, increased economic demands, and greenhouse gas concentrations put pressures on ecosystems and landscapes to supply food and maintain key services such as clean water. The number of extreme climate events is also increasing and will only get worse.

What really worries us is that climate extremes could hit already stressed ecosystems, which in turn transfer new or heightened stresses to some other ecosystem, and so on. This means one collapsing ecosystem could have a knock-on effect on neighboring ecosystems through successive feedback loops: an "ecological doom-loop" scenario, with catastrophic consequences.

Collapsing ecosystems could have a knock-on effect on nearby ecosystems. (Karolina Grabowska/Pexels)

How long until a collapse?

In our new research, we wanted to get a sense of the amount of stress that ecosystems can take before collapsing. We did this using models – computer programs that simulate how an ecosystem will work in future, and how it will react to changes in circumstance.

We used two general ecological models representing forests and lake water quality, and two location-specific models representing the Chilika lagoon fishery in the eastern Indian state of Odisha and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the Pacific Ocean. These latter two models both explicitly include interactions between human activities and the natural environment.

The key characteristic of each model is the presence of feedback mechanisms, which help to keep the system balanced and stable when stresses are sufficiently weak to be absorbed. For example, fishers on Lake Chilika tend to prefer catching adult fish while the fish stock is abundant. So long as enough adults are left to breed, this can be stable.

However, when stresses can no longer be absorbed, the ecosystem abruptly passes a point of no return – the tipping point – and collapses. In Chilika, this might occur when fishers increase the catch of juvenile fish during shortages, which further undermines the renewal of the fish stock.

We used the software to model more than 70,000 different simulations. Across all four models, the combinations of stress and extreme events brought forward the date of a predicted tipping point by between 30 percent and 80 percent.

This means an ecosystem predicted to collapse in the 2090s owing to the creeping rise of a single source of stress, such as global temperatures, could, in a worst-case scenario, collapse in the 2030s once we factor in other issues like extreme rainfall, pollution, or a sudden spike in natural resource use.

Importantly, around 15 percent of ecosystem collapses in our simulations occurred as a result of new stresses or extreme events, while the main stress was kept constant.

In other words, even if we believe we are managing ecosystems sustainably by keeping the main stress levels constant – for example, by regulating fish catches – we had better keep an eye out for new stresses and extreme events.

There are no ecological bailouts

Previous studies have suggested significant costs from going past tipping points in large ecosystems will kick in from the second half of this century onwards. But our findings suggest these costs could occur much sooner.

We found the speed at which stress is applied is vital to understanding system collapse, which is probably relevant to non-ecological systems too. Indeed, the increased speed of both news coverage and mobile banking processes has recently been invoked as raising the risk of bank collapse. As the journalist Gillian Tett has observed:

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank provided one horrifying lesson in how tech innovation can unexpectedly change finance (in this case by intensifying digital herding). Recent flash crashes offer another. However, these are probably a small foretaste of the future of viral feedback loops.

But there the comparison between ecological and economic systems runs out. Banks can be saved as long as governments provide sufficient financial capital in bailouts. In contrast, no government can provide the immediate natural capital needed to restore a collapsed ecosystem.

There is no way to restore collapsed ecosystems within any reasonable timeframe. There are no ecological bailouts. In the financial vernacular, we will just have to take the hit.

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A magical material that could effortlessly conduct electricity at room temperatures would likely transform civilization, reclaiming energy otherwise lost to electrical resistance and opening possibilities for novel technologies.

Yet a claim of such a room-temperature superconductor published in March in the prestigious journal Nature, drew doubts, even suspicion by some that the results had been fabricated.

But now, a group of researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago reports that it has verified a critical measurement: the apparent vanishing of electrical resistance.

This result does not prove that the material is a room-temperature superconductor, but it may motivate other scientists to take a closer look.

Ranga P. Dias, a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the University of Rochester in New York and a key figure in the original research, had reported that the material appeared to be a superconductor at temperatures as warm as 70 degrees Fahrenheit — much warmer than other superconductors — when squeezed at a pressure of 145,000 pounds per square inch, or about 10 times what is exerted at the bottom of the ocean’s deepest trenches.

The high pressure means the material is unlikely to find practical use, but if the discovery is true, it could point the way to other superconductors that truly work in everyday conditions.

The claim was met with skepticism because several scientific controversies have swirled around Dr. Dias, and other scientists trying to replicate the results had failed to detect any signs of superconductivity.

Dr. Dias has founded a company, Unearthly Materials, to commercialize the research, raising $16.5 million in financing so far from investors.

The new measurements, revealed in a preprint paper posted this month, come from a team led by Russell J. Hemley, a professor of physics and chemistry at the University of Illinois Chicago. Dr. Hemley declined to comment because the paper had not yet been accepted by a scientific journal.

Nonetheless, he is well regarded in the field, and his report could lead to a more positive reconsideration of Dr. Dias’s superconducting claim.

“It may convince some people,” said James J. Hamlin, a professor of physics at the University of Florida who has been a persistent critic of Dr. Dias’s research. “It makes me think there might be something to it.”

Dr. Dias’s material is made of lutetium, a silvery-white rare earth metal, along with hydrogen and a little bit of nitrogen. Using a sample provided by Dr. Dias, Dr. Hemley’s laboratory performed independent measurements of the electrical resistance as the material was cooled under high pressure.

Dr. Hemley and his colleagues observed sharp drops in electrical resistance in the material. Although those occurred at temperatures of up to 37 degrees Fahrenheit, about 30 degrees cooler than Dr. Dias described, that would still be warm compared to other superconductors. The transition temperatures varied depending on how tightly the material was squeezed.

“They have done the electrical resistance measurements to confirm our results,” Dr. Dias said in an interview. “It does show the pressure dependence of the transition temperature, which goes very well with what we reported in our Nature paper in March.”

Dr. Hemley’s measurements do not provide proof of superconductivity. It is possible that the material is simply a very good conductor and not a superconductor.

The report did not include measurements to determine whether there were zero magnetic fields inside. That phenomenon, known as the Meissner effect, is considered to be definitive evidence of a superconductor.

Some of Dr. Dias’s earlier papers have provoked heated debate. Critics including Dr. Hamlin say crucial details were sometimes left out about how data from experiments were processed. The journal Nature even retracted a paper published in 2020 that made an earlier superconductor claim despite the objections of Dr. Dias and the other authors who say the findings remain valid.

Dr. Hamlin has also pointed out that swathes of Dr. Dias’s doctoral thesis at Washington State University in 2013 were copied, virtually word for word, from the work of other scientists, including Dr. Hamlin’s own doctoral thesis.

Dr. Dias acknowledges that he copied other people’s work in his thesis, saying he should have included citations. He denies scientific wrongdoing in his earlier papers.

“I have never knowingly or intentionally engaged in any act of plagiarism of anybody’s scientific work,” Dr. Dias said. “It was an oversight.”

The results of the research from Dr. Hemley’s team argue that Dr. Dias has indeed discovered something new in the lutetium-hydrogen-nitrogen material.

Lilia Boeri, a professor of physics at Sapienza University of Rome, said it was evident that this was not a repeat of a scientific scandal two decades ago when it turned out that J. Hendrik Schön, a researcher at Bell Labs in New Jersey, had made up his data in claiming a series of breakthrough discoveries.

“This is a completely different story in the sense that he, for sure, has produced something and measured something,” Dr. Boeri said of Dr. Dias.

But, she added, “It’s really unclear whether this is an indication of superconductivity or simply that he has found some interesting electronic transmission of some type.”

In recent years, materials known as hydrides have proved promising in the search for superconductors that work at warmer temperatures, although so far they all require crushing pressures. Dr. Dias said it was hydrides that led him to the lutetium-hydrogen-nitrogen mixture.

However, Dr. Boeri said that while other hydrides fit with the standard theory of superconductivity, Dr. Dias’s substance does not.

An earlier paper, by Dr. Hemley, along with Adam Denchfield, a graduate student in physics at the University of Illinois Chicago, and Hyowon Park, an assistant professor of physics at the same university, attempts to explain why, saying researchers have overlooked subtleties in the electronic structure of the lutetium-hydrogen-nitrogen compound that could provide an explanation of a higher superconducting temperature.

They propose that the elements in Dr. Dias’s material could be configured in different structures. The most prevalent structure could be responsible for the color change and other observed properties, while the superconducting currents flow through a smaller amount of a different structure in the compound. That could explain why not all of the samples, not even all of those created in Dr. Dias’s laboratory, are superconducting.

But Dr. Boeri is not swayed.

“The theoretical arguments are completely strange,” she said. Dr. Boeri said a material with high superconducting temperature requires a very stiff lattice structure that this material does not possess, and the paper does not discuss this issue.

Eva Zurek, a professor of chemistry at the University at Buffalo who has collaborated with both Dr. Hemley and Dr. Dias on other projects, was initially skeptical but now has partially changed her mind.

Numerical simulations of superconductors include simplifications to make the calculations. Dr. Hemley’s paper argues that the calculations should be performed somewhat differently, and when Dr. Zurek’s group tried those modifications, they arrived at the same answers.

“I realized it’s not impossible,” Dr. Zurek said. “I wouldn’t rule it out right away, let’s put it like that.”

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