In 2019 and 2020, the out-of-control blazes sent clouds of smoke across the Pacific, where they brightened clouds and cooled the ocean.

A personalized mRNA vaccine against an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer has shown early promise in a phase 1 clinical trial, where it was found to induce a significant immune response and potentially delay relapse.

When used in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, the individualized vaccine – called adjuvant autogene cevumeran – triggered a substantial T cell response in half of the patients. Remarkably, 18 months later, none of these individuals showed signs of cancer progression, whereas, in the group that did not respond to the vaccine, median time to recurrence was 13.4 months.

This, it is hoped, could open up a new and much-needed therapeutic avenue for a notoriously aggressive and difficult-to-treat form of pancreatic cancer: pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

PDAC is the third largest cause of cancer death in the US and is lethal in 88 percent of patients. Current treatments include surgeries and medicines, but these have had limited success. 

One type of immunotherapy that has gained traction in recent years, revolutionizing cancer treatment, involves drugs known as immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). ICIs work by directing the immune system toward mutated proteins, called neoantigens, that can emerge on the surface of tumors. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancers generally don’t respond to this type of treatment.

The latest trial, which is the subject of a newly published paper, challenges this by demonstrating that T cells specific to PDAC neoantigens can in fact be activated by an individualized mRNA vaccine.

“[The authors] have established the feasibility of using mRNA-based neoantigen vaccines for pancreatic cancer, a disease that has previously been considered too aggressive for personalized therapeutics,” concludes a News & Views article accompanying the study.

“The data also highlight the potency of pancreatic cancer neoantigens, giving hope that they might lead to the development of new treatment options for this refractory cancer.”

In the trial, 16 individuals with PDAC underwent surgery to remove their tumors. Using these resected tumors, the team tailor-made mRNA vaccines containing neoantigens specific to each individual. Nine weeks after surgery, the vaccines were administered alongside an immunotherapy called atezolizumab and, four weeks later, chemotherapy.

“Despite the limited sample size, these early results warrant larger studies of individualized mRNA neoantigen vaccines in PDAC,” the authors write in their discussion.

And hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long for the results: a follow-up trial is imminent, they add.

Personalized mRNA vaccines have previously shown promise in trials for skin cancer, as well as head and neck cancers.

The study is published in Nature, along with a companion News & Views article.

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Source:  University of Colorado at Boulder

Summary:  For three years at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of students spent an estimated 56,000 hours analyzing the behavior of hundreds of solar flares. Their results could help astrophysicists understand how the sun's corona reaches temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

For a new study, a team of physicists recruited roughly 1,000 undergraduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder to help answer one of the most enduring questions about the sun: How does the star's outermost atmosphere, or "corona," get so hot?

The research represents a nearly-unprecedented feat of data analysis: From 2020 to 2022, the small army of mostly first- and second-year students examined the physics of more than 600 real solar flares -- gigantic eruptions of energy from the sun's roiling corona.

The researchers, including 995 undergraduate and graduate students, published their finding May 9 in The Astrophysical Journal. The results suggest that solar flares may not be responsible for superheating the sun's corona, as a popular theory in astrophysics suggests.

"We really wanted to emphasize to these students that they were doing actual scientific research," said James Mason, lead author of the study and an astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Study co-author Heather Lewandowski agreed, noting that the study wouldn't be possible without the undergrads who contributed an estimated 56,000 hours of work to the project.

"It was a massive effort from everyone involved," said Lewandowski, professor of physics and fellow of JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Campfire physics

The study zeroes in on a mystery that has left even senior astrophysicists scratching their heads.

Telescope observations suggest that the sun's corona sizzles at temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the sun, in contrast, is much cooler, registering only in the thousands of degrees.

"That's like standing right in front of a campfire, and as you back away, it gets a lot hotter," Mason said. "It makes no sense."

Some scientists suspect that especially tiny flares, or "nanoflares," which are too small for even the most advanced telescopes to spot, may be responsible. If such events exist, they may pop up across the sun on a nearly constant basis. And, the theory goes, they could add up to make the corona toasty. Think of boiling a pot of water using thousands of individual matches.

The students' results cast doubt on this theory, Mason said, although he thinks it's too early to say for sure.

"I was hoping our result was going to be different. I still feel like nanoflares are an important driver of coronal heating," Mason said. "But the evidence from our paper suggests the opposite. I'm a scientist. I have to go where the evidence is pointing."

Peak pandemic times

The effort began at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In spring 2020, CU Boulder, like most universities around the country, had moved its courses entirely online. Lewandowski, however, faced a predicament: She was teaching a class on hands-on research called "Experimental Physics I" that fall, and she had nothing for her students to do.

"This was peak pandemic times," Lewandowski said. "It's sometimes hard to remember back to what life was like then. These students were very isolated. They were really stressed."

Mason, who was then a researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder, offered an idea.

The scientist had long wanted to dig into the mathematics of solar flares. In particular, he had tried examining a dataset of thousands of flares that occurred between 2011 and 2018 and had been spotted by instruments in space. They included the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series and NASA's Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS), a CubeSat mission designed and built at LASP.

The problem: There were just too many flares to examine on his own.

That's when Mason and Lewandowski turned to the students for help.

Mason explained that you can infer details about the behavior of nanoflares by studying the physics of larger flares, which scientists have observed directly for decades.

To do just that, students split into groups of three or four and picked a normal flare they wanted to analyze over the course of the semester. Then, through a series of lengthy calculations, they added up how much heat could each of these events pour into the sun's corona.

Their calculations painted a clear picture: The sum of the sun's nanoflares likely wouldn't be powerful enough to heat up its corona to millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

Educational experiences

What is making the corona so hot isn't clear. A competing theory suggests that waves in the sun's magnetic field carry energy from inside the sun to its atmosphere.

But the study's actual findings aren't its only important results. Lewandowski said her students were able to have opportunities that are rare for scientists and engineers so early in their careers -- to learn first-hand about the collaborative and often-messy way that scientific research works in the real world.

"We still hear students talking about this course in the halls," she said. "Our students were able to build a community and support each other at a time that was really tough."

CU Boulder co-authors of the new study include Alexandra Werth, postdoctoral researcher at JILA; Colin West, teaching associate professor in physics; Allison Youngblood, astrophysicist at LASP now at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Donald Woodraska, data systems team lead at LASP; and Courtney Peck, data systems software engineer at LASP and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Funding for the research came from NASA through the MinXSS mission and the U.S. National Science Foundation through the STROBE Science & Technology Center and JILA Physics Frontier Center.

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The report comes from CNBC, which said the news came earlier today via a company-wide email from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The email also reportedly said that performance bonuses for top executives will be down compared to last year and that standard bonuses and stock option rewards would be more in line with previous normal levels.

These new budget-trimming measures come even as Microsoft is trying its best to lead the way in generative AI development with its Bing Chat chatbot. Those efforts were also mentioned in Nadella's email. according to CNBC:

“We are clear that we are helping drive a major platform shift in this new era of Al, and doing so in a dynamic, competitive environment while also facing global macroeconomic uncertainties,” Nadella wrote.

The email comes even as Microsoft prepares for some big events in the next month. On May 23, it begins its annual Build developers conference, and on June 11, it will stream the Xbox Games Showcase.

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Also:  Microsoft skips salary increases for full-time employees this year

Deep sleep could be key to forestalling slow declines in brain health that may one day lead to Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia.

Based on their investigation involving 62 older, cognitively healthy adults, researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley, Stanford University, and UC Irvine in the US found individuals with brain changes associated with Alzheimer's performed better on memory function tests as they got more deep sleep.

This was irrespective of education and physical activity, two factors along with social connection known to contribute to cognitive resilience in older age.

Those with similar Alzheimer's-linked changes who failed to get as much deep sleep didn't fare quite as well on the same tests. By comparison, sleep made little difference to those individuals with few deposits.

Taken together, the results imply having a generous amount of solid shut-eye could help support the decline in memory that sets in as dementia begins to take hold.

"Think of deep sleep almost like a life raft that keeps memory afloat, rather than memory getting dragged down by the weight of Alzheimer's disease pathology," says University of California (UC) Berkeley neuroscientist Matthew Walker, senior author of the study.

"This is especially exciting because we can do something about it. There are ways we can improve sleep, even in older adults," Walker adds.

The new study echoes previous research which has found a build-up of amyloid-beta proteins in the brains of people with disrupted sleep. But poor sleep is both a risk factor for and a symptom of Alzheimer's disease, making it tricky to tease apart cause and effect. Likewise, clumpy amyloid-beta proteins might only be a sign of Alzheimer's disease, not its root cause.

Even so, levels of amyloid-beta proteins are commonly used as a marker of Alzheimer's disease, as research suggests they – and another protein called tau – can start clogging up brain cells decades before symptoms of the disease arise.

Past research from Walker's group found significant levels of amyloid-beta aggregating in the brains of older adults can disrupt deep sleep – also known as non-rapid eye movement slow wave sleep – and impair memory function.

But some folk appear to stave off the decline that comes with Alzheimer's disease, even when levels of amyloid-beta proteins are relatively high. To find out why, Walker and colleagues monitored participants' brain waves as they slept, and then asked them to complete a memory test the next day.

Among those whose brain scans revealed similarly high levels of beta-amyloid deposits, getting a good night's sleep seemed to make a critical difference in cognitive function. This effect was only seen when the researchers looked specifically at non-rapid eye movement slow wave sleep, and not at other sleep wave frequencies or sleep stages.

Longer-term studies in older adults are needed to test whether increasing deep sleep over a number of years can actually help preserve a person's cognitive function in that time, even as levels of amyloid-beta increase.

For now, this research adds to scores of studies suggesting that sleep could be a modifiable risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, one that could potentially forestall molecular changes by giving the brain time to clean up waste products that accumulate during the day. It also points to sleep quality being important.

"With a certain level of brain pathology, you're not destined for cognitive symptoms or memory issues," UC Berkeley neuroscientist and lead author Zsófia Zavecz says of the study findings.

Although people may display molecular changes indicating a progression toward Alzheimer's disease, Zavecz says their findings suggest lifestyle factors can help buffer against those effects. "One of those factors is sleep and, specifically, deep sleep," she says.

The study, though small, also hints at why getting good sleep naturally might be a better option than taking sleeping pills to get some shut-eye.

Recent research shows users of sleeping pills appear to have lower levels of amyloid proteins in their cerebrospinal fluid, which washes the brain clean at night. But these medications come with side effects; they may also lull people into shallow bouts of sleep rather than deep sleep phases.

Instead, to set yourself up for a good night's sleep, Zavecz suggests cutting out coffee late in the day, doing some exercise, avoiding screen time, and taking a hot shower before bed.

While you snooze, rest assured scientists are working hard to figure out the knotty problems of Alzheimer's disease, which affects millions of people worldwide.

The study has been published in BMC Medicine.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has increased individual stress levels, and doctors are recommending special diets (such as switching to plant-based meal plans) that are tailor-made for stress reduction. If nothing else, people want to avoid stress because they understand that it makes you miserable: You feel tired, you're always in an unhappy mood, and your body ages faster than if it was just able to relax.

"Biological age increased in situations of several physiological stress but was stored when the stressful situation resolved."

Indeed, that last symptom is particularly dreaded because — unlike the other symptoms of stress — it would seem to be permanent. Yet a recent study in the journal Cell Metabolism demonstrates for the first time that the rapid aging caused by stress can be reversed when the stress itself goes away. These findings have major implications both for the treating of stress and for the treating of aging.

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham, gathered data from existing studies about situations that are likely to lead to severe physiological stress. These included elderly patients undergoing emergency situations, pregnant people (as well as pregnant mice) during phases of the pregnancy and birth and patients who had been admitted to an intensive care unit for COVID-19. The scientists then analyzed levels of DNA methylation in cells to detect molecular changes indicating an increase in morbidity and mortality risks. That is all to say that, in layman's terms, they were seeking "biological clocks."

"In all of the analyses, the researchers saw indications that biological age increased in situations of several physiological stress but was stored when the stressful situation resolved," the researchers wrote. The major caveat to this is that the biomarkers could reflect factors other than biological age. Even so, "the work does point to a new understanding of the nature of biological aging, with implications for the study of anti-aging interventions," explained the study's authors.

"Those with better emotion regulation and higher levels of self-control were observed to have less age acceleration even at similar levels of stress."

"Our findings challenge the concept that biological age can only increase over a person's lifetime and suggest that it may be possible to identify interventions that could slow or even partially reverse biological age," senior author Vadim Gladyshev, of the Brigham's Division of Genetics, said in a statement. "When stress was relieved, biological age could be restored. This means that that finding ways to help the body recover from stress could increase longevity."

If there is any hope for people who fear they are aging rapidly due to stress and do not want to wait for new medications, it is that there is a more accessible alternative: Emotional regulation.

According to a 2021 study in the journal Translation Psychiatry that measured subjects based on their GrimAge (an epigenetic clock), "those with better emotion regulation and higher levels of self-control were observed to have less age acceleration even at similar levels of stress," with stress harming people's GrimAge as much as their BMI if they had poor emotional regulation.

In this context, emotional regulation is defined as people who have skills such as "emotional awareness, goals, clarity, strategies, acceptance, and impulse control in managing emotions." Although GrimAge could have increased in people with higher levels of stress because they were more likely to adopt unhealthy habits such as drinking, smoking, overeating and being sedentary, the tendency existed even when held for those lifestyle factors. By contrast, healthy distractions like exercising and creative hobbies can help alleviate stress and depression by providing outlets for negative energy that do not trigger negative, stress-inducing emotions.

None of this means that one should avoid all forms of stress. The difference between healthy stress and unhealthy stress is that the latter if prolonged shrinks the parts of the brain that control emotions and metabolism, causes memory problems and can lead to mental illness later in life. While positive stress can be rewarding and some negative stress is tolerable, "toxic stress" exists when a person experiences so many negative psychological and/or physical consequences from stress that it interferes with normal functioning.

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Qubits 30 meters apart used to confirm Einstein was wrong about quantum

Lathering up with soap might seem a reasonable mosquito-evasion strategy on the basis that if they can’t smell you, they can’t bite you.

However, a study suggests that rather than helping you go incognito, soapy fragrances could make you a more attractive target, with mosquitoes favouring the scent of volunteers who washed with three out of four popular soap brands tested.

The scientists behind the research said mosquitoes may be attracted to soap because, when they are not feeding on blood, they supplement their sugar intake with plant nectars.

“The fact we are taking those flowery, fruity smells and putting them on our bodies means that now the same object smells like a flower and a person at the same time,” said Clément Vinauger, who led the work at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “It would be like waking up and smelling something that was like both coffee and muffins. Very appealing.”

However, the study also noted that the effects of soaps differed somewhat between people, possibly due to interactions between the soaps and each person’s unique odour profile.

Vinauger said: “It’s remarkable that the same individual that is extremely attractive to mosquitoes when they are unwashed can be turned even more attractive to mosquitoes with one soap, and then become repellent or repulsive to mosquitoes with another soap.”

The scientists concluded that soap choice could partially explain why some people are mosquito magnets while others get off bite-free.

The study, published in the journal iScience, recruited four volunteers who submitted fabric samples that they had worn as a sleeve while either unwashed or after washing with four different brands of soap – Dial, Dove, Native, and Simple Truth. Female mosquitoes – only females feed on blood – were observed landing on the fabric samples to give an indication of their preference. Fabric was used rather than exposing the volunteers themselves, to exclude the effects of exhaled carbon dioxide, which is another important cue for mosquitoes.

Washing with Dove, Dial and Simple Truth increased the attractiveness of some, but not all, volunteers, while washing with Native soap tended to repel mosquitoes. The relatively repellent effect of Native could be linked to its coconut scent, the scientists said, as there is some evidence that coconut oils are a natural deterrent for mosquitoes.

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In February, Google announced it also tested restricting Canadians' access to news in preparation for the passing of the Online News Act, which is currently before the Senate.

The two tech giants have criticized as overbroad the bill meant to help a news sector a government official has said "is in crisis" after hundreds of news publications closed in the last decade.

Their position and news blocking plans were outlined again by a Meta Canada executive in testimony this week at a Commons committee.

Trudeau said their arguments against the proposals are "not just flawed, it's dangerous to our democracy, to our economy."

"Woodward and Bernstein weren't influencers," he commented, in reference to the pair of Washington Post journalists who led reporting on the Watergate scandal that saw President Richard Nixon resign in 1974.

"Someone reporting on the horrors in Bucha (in Ukraine) is not trying to get likes on their Facebook page," he said.

"Rigorous, challenging, independent journalism is essential and the fact that Facebook is still saying that it doesn't want to pay journalists for the work they do shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are."

The new law would require digital giants to make fair commercial deals with Canadian outlets for the news and information that is shared on their platforms, or face binding arbitration.

It builds on Australia's New Media Bargaining Code, which was a world first, aimed at making Google and Meta pay for news content on their platforms.

Australian regulators, too, had accused the companies, who dominate online advertising, of draining cash away from traditional news organizations while using their content for free.

Big tech firms had fiercely opposed the Australian legislation initially, fearing it would threaten their business models, but with amendments it was easily passed by lawmakers.

amc/jh

The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. This story was produced by AFP. For more information go to AFP.com.

© Agence France-Presse

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Most of their DNA comes from their two parents and around 0.1% from a third, donor woman.

The pioneering technique is an attempt to prevent children being born with devastating mitochondrial diseases.

Fewer than five such babies have been born, but no further details have been released.

Mitochondrial diseases are incurable and can be fatal within days or even hours of birth. Some families have lost multiple children and this technique is seen as the only option for them to have a healthy child of their own.

Mitochondria are the tiny compartments inside nearly every cell of the body that convert food into useable energy.

Defective mitochondria fail to fuel the body and lead to brain damage, muscle wasting, heart failure and blindness.

They are passed down only by the mother. So mitochondrial donation treatment is a modified form of IVF that uses mitochondria from a healthy donor egg.

There are two techniques for performing mitochondrial donation. One takes places after the mother's egg has been fertilised by the father's sperm and the other takes place before fertilisation.

However, mitochondria have their own genetic information or DNA which means that technically the resulting children inherit DNA from their parents and a smidge from the donor as well. This is a permanent change that would be passed down through the generations.

This donor DNA is only relevant for making effective mitochondria, does not affect other traits such as appearance and does not constitute a "third parent".

The technique was pioneered in Newcastle and laws were introduced to allow the creation of such babies in the UK in 2015.

However, the UK did not immediately press ahead. The first baby born via this technique was to a Jordanian family having treatment in the US in 2016.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (the HFEA) is saying "less than five" babies have been born as of 20 April 2023. It is not giving precise numbers to prevent the families being identified.

These limited details have emerged after a Freedom of Information request by the Guardian newspaper.

"News that a small number of babies with donated mitochondria have now been born in the UK is the next step, in what will probably remain a slow and cautious process of assessing and refining mitochondrial donation," said Sarah Norcross, the director of the Progress Educational Trust.

There has been no word from the teams in Newcastle so it is still uncertain whether the technique was successful.

Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, from the Francis Crick Research Institute, said: "It will be interesting to know how well the mitochondrial replacement therapy technique worked at a practical level, whether the babies are free of mitochondrial disease, and whether there is any risk of them developing problems later in life."

There is technically a risk of "reversion" where any defective mitochondria that are carried over could gain in number and still result in disease.

It had once been estimated that up to 150 such babies could eventually be born each year in the UK.

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Male friendships are often presented in the media and popular culture as relatively superficial, competitive and lacking in emotional depth. With this in mind, it’s not entirely surprising that some people seem to think men have a problem with friendships. While women may be especially quick to draw this conclusion, the idea exists in society as a whole.

Men, we are led to believe, either have low quality friendships, or not enough of them. They lean on women for intimacy, shying away from deep and real connections elsewhere. All of this supposedly increases their chances of loneliness, dysfunction and even suicide. But is this the whole story?

Although we know some men do struggle with friendships – indeed, some men have discussed having no male friends at all – such representations tell a selective, and, we would argue, ultimately inaccurate story of the relationships men build and sustain.

It’s true that men often relate to others differently than women. For example, they might talk less about their emotions. But if we look closely at the way men express themselves and connect to other people, we can begin to see the beating heart of male friendships that’s rarely acknowledged, and often dismissed.

While women may be more skilled at emotional expressions, not all of their conversations are helpful. Some female-to-female friendships can lack empathy and understanding, or the support expected of friends during life’s trials and tribulations.

By focusing on the relative lack of verbal expression to suggest that male friendships are not close, we risk limiting our understanding of what intimacy is. We then do not see how men demonstrate closeness less obviously, in coded ways, or even silently.

Humor is one example

Contrary to the notion that it’s used to “put up walls,” humor, such as the use of provocative nicknames, can promote a sense of closeness. Humor in the military, for instance, is used to express the hardships of the work and channel aggression, all the while creating a sense of togetherness.

The bromance is healthy for men of all ages. (© LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS – stock.adobe.com)

There’s an irony in the fact that talk between men which might be construed as offensive to an outside observer, instead can signify an emotional closeness that could only be established between good friends. As one participant in an Australian study of male insults said: “Maybe down the track you might become close enough and then you might start ripping into each other […] I think if people hear you talking like that to other blokes, then they definitely know you’re good mates.”

Resisting masculinity

Amid unspoken rules that men should be “macho” and not express weakness, it’s no wonder they sometimes struggle to open up emotionally.

But readings of male friendships as shallow assume that men are unable to negotiate the rules of masculinity. The truth is that regimes of masculinity are largely imposed on men, and they do their best to play the game, or subvert masculinity if they can.

Many men resist competitive masculinity enough to express vulnerabilities and create deep connections. Still, some men (especially “traditional” men) bury emotions so deeply that it can be hard for them to know what they feel, or even how to name their emotions. Feelings can become foreign, frightening territory, with the temptation to use alcohol and drugs to deal with them.

For some men, opening up and expressing vulnerability is not an option, or perhaps only becomes possible in certain contexts. Drinking is one such context. “Lads will only talk when there’s beer on board, you know, when the guard is down”, as one participant noted in a different study of communication in male friendship.

The risks of opening up include rejection and shaming. But emotional intimacy is possible even in the most unlikely situations, such as stag parties, where emotional expressions of male-to-male love are common (for example, during speeches), and are not scorned.

Why bromances are healthy

Despite simplistic depictions of men, male friendships are diverse and evolving. Hysteria around homosexuality has undergone a long decline over the decades, and the threat of the gay label no longer instils such panic in young men who dare to express sensitivity and seek intimacy with other men, sexual or non-sexual.

No phenomenon illustrates this better than the rise of the “bromance.” The term may have emerged from skateboarding in the 1990s, when heterosexual men commonly shared hotel rooms while on tour. The idea of this strong male-to-male bond has even been given a nod in popular culture, with films like I Love You, Man.

(Credit: William Fortunato from Pexels)

Bromances can offer a high level of intimacy and support. Young men talk about how their bromances are on another level to friendships in terms of trust, expression of vulnerability and physical affection.

One participant in a study of bromances noted: “I hug him and kiss him and tell him I love him.” Another said a bromance involves “someone you can share secrets and pain with, and love, but there is no sort of sexual attraction”. A third stated: “It doesn’t matter what you tell him, he is always there to listen.”

‘Leveling up’ male friendships

Research shows younger men are engaging in close male friendships and expressing their feelings like never before. They are adept at negotiating the rules of masculinity. They will open up to others in safe contexts – although not all men have these safe spaces.

We believe creating more of these safe zones for young men is key. For example, it seems that by encouraging men to do activities side by side, or that have a “purpose” (such as volunteering or attending men’s sheds to create things), male bonding and important conversations naturally emerge.

Although there are concerns that some online activities and forums can be dangerous (for example, potentially increasing the risk of recruitment into online misogyny groups), anonymous online discussion forums can help men connect and express themselves about the things that matter without fear of judgement.

And with the caveat that alcohol has obvious problems, if men are going to drink then doing so with friends may not be the worst way of encouraging emotional connections.

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Microsoft just signed a jaw-dropping agreement to purchase electricity from a nuclear fusion generator. Nuclear fusion, often called the Holy Grail of energy, is a potentially limitless source of clean energy that scientists have been chasing for the better part of a century.

A company called Helion Energy thinks it can deliver that Holy Grail to Microsoft by 2028. It announced a power purchase agreement with Microsoft this morning that would see it plug in the world’s first commercial fusion generator to a power grid in Washington. The goal is to generate at least 50 megawatts of power — a small but significant amount and more than the 42MW that the US’s first two offshore wind farms have the capacity to generate today.

“It’s the most audacious thing I’ve ever heard.”

To say that’s a tall order would be the understatement of the year. “I would say it’s the most audacious thing I’ve ever heard,” says University of Chicago theoretical physicist Robert Rosner. “In these kinds of issues, I will never say never. But it would be astonishing if they succeed.”

Experts’ optimistic estimates for when the world might see its first nuclear fusion power plant have ranged from the end of the decade to several decades from now. Helion’s success depends on achieving remarkable breakthroughs in an incredibly short span of time and then commercializing its technology to make it cost-competitive with other energy sources. Nevertheless, Helion is unfazed.

“This is a binding agreement that has financial penalties if we can’t build a fusion system,” Helion founder and CEO David Kirtley tells The Verge. “We’ve committed to be able to build a system and sell it commercially to [Microsoft].”

How might a fusion system work? Simply put, nuclear fusion mimics the way stars create their own light and heat. In our sun, hydrogen nuclei fuse together, creating helium and generating a tremendous amount of energy. 

Scientists have been trying to replicate this process in a controlled way since the 1950s. (They’ve been able to replicate it in an uncontrolled manner, aka a hydrogen bomb.) This is the opposite of nuclear power plants we have today that release energy through fission, or splitting atoms apart. A major downside of fission is that it leaves behind unstable nuclei that can stay radioactive for millions of years. Fusion avoids the radioactive waste problem because it’s essentially just creating new helium atoms.

The most advanced attempts at generating electricity through nuclear fusion involve shooting powerful laser beams at a tiny target or relying on magnetic fields to confine superheated matter called plasma with a machine called a tokamak.

Helion uses neither of those methods. The company is developing a 40-foot device called a plasma accelerator that heats fuel to 100 million degrees Celsius. It heats deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) and helium-3 into a plasma and then uses pulsed magnetic fields to compress the plasma until fusion happens. (The company has a Youtube video that illustrates the process in much more detail.)

Helion claims that the machine should eventually be able to recapture the electricity used to trigger the reaction, which can be used to recharge the device’s magnets. “We electrically recover all the energy we put into fusion so that we can actually build systems that are smaller and cheaper and we can iterate on them a lot quicker,” Kirtley says.

Images of two plasmas merging inside Trenta, Helion’s 6th fusion prototype. Image: Helion

“This is an exciting announcement and many in the community will be keen to see the technical details,” MIT School of Engineering distinguished professor Anne White says in an email to The Verge. “Forthcoming publications and results will help clarify the approach and understand the timeline.”

Figuring out how to be energy efficient is crucial to make fusion power a reality. After all, you need extreme heat and pressure to force atoms to fuse together. And until recently, researchers hadn’t been able to do this without burning through more energy than the fusion reaction actually produced. In December, lasers achieved a huge breakthrough called “fusion ignition” — meaning that for the first time, researchers were able to trigger a fusion reaction that resulted in a net energy gain. That’s a major milestone Helion has yet to accomplish.

Getting enough helium-3 fuel could be another big challenge, Rosner says, without a way of producing commercial quantities of it. It’s a very rare isotope that’s used in quantum computing and medical imaging. Helion, however, says that it has patented a process to make helium-3 itself by fusing deuterium atoms together in its plasma accelerator. Part of the appeal of nuclear fusion in the first place is that it can run on hydrogen, the simplest and most abundant element in the universe.

Assuming Helion can pull this all off, it still has to ensure that it can do so in an affordable way. The cost of the electricity it generates for consumers would need to be comparable to or cheaper than today’s power plants, solar, and wind farms. The company isn’t sharing what price it agreed to in its power purchase agreement with Microsoft, but Kirtley says the company’s goal is to one day get costs down to a cent a kilowatt hour.

Can AI help crack the code of fusion power?

Helion’s funders include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Microsoft has made a multibillion dollar investment in OpenAI to boost its development of popular tools like ChatGPT. Altman is Helion’s board chair and largest investor, The Washington Post reports, and may have been involved in brokering Helion’s power purchase agreement with Microsoft. Kirtley tells The Verge his company has been working closely with Microsoft’s data center group for the past few years to better understand their energy needs and get Microsoft comfortable with its technology.

“Helion’s announcement supports our own long term clean energy goals and will advance the market to establish a new, efficient method for bringing more clean energy to the grid, faster,” Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft, said in a press release.

But as has been the case with dreams of nuclear fusion for decades — we’ll have to wait and see.

Update May 10, 10:00AM ET: This story has been updated with information about Sam Altman’s involvement with Helion and its deal with Microsoft and to clarify that the US’ offshore wind farms have the capacity to generate 42 MW.

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Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a female lineage connection between Native Americans and ancient populations in northern coastal China. The study found evidence of two migrations from China to the Americas, with another branch of the same lineage migrating to Japan, explaining archeological similarities between the three regions.

Scientists have used mitochondrial DNA to trace a female lineage from northern coastal China to the Americas. By integrating contemporary and ancient mitochondrial DNA, the team found evidence of at least two migrations: one during the last ice age, and one during the subsequent melting period. Around the same time as the second migration, another branch of the same lineage migrated to Japan, which could explain Paleolithic archeological similarities between the Americas, China, and Japan. The study was published on May 9 in the journal Cell Reports.

“The Asian ancestry of Native Americans is more complicated than previously indicated,” says first author Yu-Chun Li, a molecular anthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “In addition to previously described ancestral sources in Siberia, Australo-Melanesia, and Southeast Asia, we show that northern coastal China also contributed to the gene pool of Native Americans.”

Though it was long assumed that Native Americans descended from Siberians who crossed over the Bering Strait’s ephemeral land bridge, more recent genetic, geological, and archeological evidence suggests that multiple waves of humans journeyed to the Americas from various parts of Eurasia.

To shed light on the history of Native Americans in Asia, a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences followed the trail of an ancestral lineage that might link East Asian Paleolithic-age populations to founding populations in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and California. The lineage in question is present in mitochondrial DNA, which can be used to trace kinship through the female line.

The researchers scoured over 100,000 contemporary and 15,000 ancient DNA samples from across Eurasia to eventually identify 216 contemporary and 39 ancient individuals belonging to the rare lineage. By comparing the accumulated mutations, geographic locations, and carbon-dated age of each of these individuals, the researchers were able to trace the lineage’s branching path. They identified two migration events from northern coastal China to the Americas, and in both cases, they think that the travelers probably set dock in America via the Pacific coast rather than by crossing the inland ice-free corridor (which would not have opened at the time).

The first radiation event occurred between 19,500 and 26,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheet coverage was at its greatest and conditions in northern China were likely inhospitable for humans. The second radiation occurred during the subsequent deglaciation or melting period, between 19,000 and 11,500 years ago. There was a rapid increase in human populations at this time, probably due to the improved climate, which may have fueled expansion into other geographical regions.

The researchers also uncovered an unexpected genetic link between Native Americans and Japanese people. During the deglaciation period, another group branched out from northern coastal China and traveled to Japan. “We were surprised to find that this ancestral source also contributed to the Japanese gene pool, especially the indigenous Ainus,” says Li.

This discovery helps to explain archeological similarities between the Paleolithic peoples of China, Japan, and the Americas. Specifically, the three regions share similarities in how they crafted stemmed projectile points for arrowheads and spears. “This suggests that the Pleistocene connection among the Americas, China, and Japan was not confined to culture but also to genetics,” says senior author Qing-Peng Kong, an evolutionary geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Though the study focused on mitochondrial DNA, complementary evidence from Y chromosomal DNA suggests that male ancestors of Native Americans also lived in northern China at around the same time as these female ancestors.

This study adds another piece to the puzzle that is Native American ancestry, but many other elements remain unclear. “The origins of several founder groups are still elusive or controversial,” says Kong. “Next, we plan to collect and investigate more Eurasian lineages to obtain a more complete picture on the origin of Native Americans.”

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Last year, Vast announced its ambitious plan to construct a modular artificial space station spanning 100 meters, complete with artificial gravity driven by rotational velocity. The company has now revealed that its inaugural station will be named Haven-1.

While the station is designed to function autonomously at first, it will eventually link up with additional Vast modules launched in the future to create a larger space station.

Image courtesy of Vast

With dimensions compact enough to allow it to be carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Haven-1 is capable of hosting a crew of up to four individuals at a time. The station has been fitted with a docking hatch tailored for use with Crew Dragon, and appears to be just over twice the height of SpaceX's human-rated spacecraft.

During its initial phase, Vast's single-module station, Haven-1, will primarily serve as a prolonged stay option for Dragon missions, providing a more spacious environment for up to four individuals to conduct scientific research, engage in in-space manufacturing, and simply stretch their legs during stays of up to 30 days in orbit. Additionally, the station will offer round-the-clock connectivity via onboard wifi, power, and consumables to ensure a comfortable experience for its guests.

Vast-1, the inaugural mission that will ferry the first four human occupants to the Haven-1 space station, is now open for booking. Vast is offering up to four seats on this mission to both space agencies and their professional astronauts, as well as private individuals interested in conducting scientific or philanthropic work. In addition, Vast has secured an option with SpaceX for a second mission, Vast-2, set to launch in 2026, the timing of which will probably depend on the level of demand.

Image courtesy of Vast

If Vast is able to meet its projected timeline, the Haven-1 space station will beat out other commercial space stations currently in development to become the first to achieve operational status. Competing projects, such as the private Starlab venture involving Nanoracks, Lockheed Martin, and Voyager Space, are aiming for a 2027 launch date, while Axiom plans to launch the first section of its orbital platform by "late 2025."

A busy season for SpaceX

At the start of this month, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy mission successfully delivered three payloads, including the ViaSat 3 Americas broadband communications satellite, the first of three next-generation geostationary satellites built by Boeing for ViaSat.

The mission also saw the farthest recovery and landing of fairings to date, with one fairing reentering the Earth's atmosphere at a record-breaking speed and distance. Although the boosters lacked sufficient fuel to return and land, the mission accomplished another milestone in SpaceX's goal of developing reusable rockets. SpaceX has already scheduled its next Falcon Heavy mission for later this month.

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“Sleep language” could enable communication during lucid dreams

Ambitious Arab mission to explore seven asteroids, including a very red one

Frogs in Puerto Rico are croaking at a higher pitch due to global heating, scientists have found.

The frogs appear to be decreasing in size at warmer temperatures, which causes their croaks to become high pitched. If the trends continue, the heat could become too much for the sensitive amphibians to survive successfully, researchers have said.

The call of the coquí frog is well known to most who have spent time in Puerto Rico. It is named for its two-note call “co-qui”, which rings out throughout the island every night.

Male coquí frogs use their distinctive call to mark their territory and warn off rivals, but scientists have noticed that it is changing.

Peter Narins of the University of California, Los Angeles, has been studying their croaks for 23 years. While recording the sounds along the slopes of El Yunque mountain in Puerto Rico, he and his team found that the calls changed depending on the altitude of the frogs.

Amphibians are very sensitive to changes in temperature, and the higher on the mountains they were, the cooler it was. The frogs on the mountain peaks, therefore, were found to be larger than ones sitting in warm valleys, and this meant their call was different.

Nairns said: “Coquí that produced short, high-pitched calls at high rates lived near the base of the mountain, while the calls of animals living near the mountain’s peak were longer, lower-pitched, and repeated less frequently.”

Two decades after first recording their sound, Nairns returned to the mountains with a colleague, Sebastiaan Meenderink. The pair found that every frog call, no matter where it was on the mountain, had become higher pitched.

“In order to record a call with certain characteristics we had to move to a slightly higher altitude,” said Meenderink. “It was as if all the animals had moved up the mountain.”

The scientists are concerned that the frogs will keep crawling up the mountain to escape higher temperatures at the bottom, but they will eventually run out of room.

“For now, the consequences are not dire,” said Meenderink. “A barely perceptible change in frog body size and call has little impact on the environment. However, if left unabated, the temperature increase will eventually cause a collapse of the coquí population, which will be catastrophic for the Puerto Rican ecosystem.”

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Some of the first humans to arrive in the Americas included people from what is now China, who arrived in two distinct migrations during and after the last ice age, a new genetics study has found.

“Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, the northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors.

Li added that during the second migration, the same lineage of people settled in Japan, which could help explain similarities in prehistoric arrowheads and spears found in the Americas, China and Japan.

It was once believed that ancient Siberians, who crossed over a land bridge that existed in the Bering Strait linking modern Russia and Alaska, were the sole ancestors of Native Americans.

More recent research, from the late 2000s onwards, has signaled that more diverse sources from Asia could be connected to an ancient lineage responsible for founding populations across the Americas, including in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and California.

Known as D4h, this lineage is found in mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from mothers and is used to trace maternal ancestry.

The team from the Kunming Institute of Zoology embarked on a 10-year hunt for D4h, combing through 100,000 modern and 15,000 ancient DNA samples across Eurasia, eventually landing on 216 contemporary and 39 ancient individuals who came from the ancient lineage.

By analyzing the mutations that had accrued over time, looking at the samples’ geographic locations and using carbon dating, they were able to reconstruct the D4h’s origins and expansion history.

The results revealed two migration events. The first was between 19,500 and 26,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheet coverage was at its greatest and climate conditions in northern China were probably inhospitable.

The second occurred during the melting period, between 19,000 and 11,500 years ago. Increasing human populations during this period might have triggered migrations.

It was during this second migration that the scientists found a surprising genetic link between Native Americans and Japanese people, particularly the indigenous Ainu.

In the melting period, a subgroup branched out from northern coastal China to Japan, contributing to the Japanese people, the study said, a finding that chimes with archeological similarities between ancient people in the Americas, China and Japan.

Li said a strength of the study was the number of samples they discovered, and complementary evidence from Y chromosomal DNA showing that male ancestors of Native Americans lived in northern China at the same time as female ancestors made researchers confident of their findings.

“However, we don’t know in which specific place in northern coastal China this expansion occurred and what specific events promoted these migrations,” he said.

“More evidence, especially ancient genomes, are needed to answer these questions.”

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Processing moved from preserving food, enhancing vitamin content, and improving safety to creating entirely new foodstuffs: breaded nuggets of mechanically separated chicken bits; irresistibly crispy snacks of refined flour, salt, and flavorings; sweet drinks that never saw a piece of fruit; and all manner of foods with few if any ingredients in their intact, natural form. Most of these products have undergone intense processes, such as refining, high-temperature extrusion, or molding. They typically include colors, flavorings, emulsifiers, and other artificial ingredients designed to enhance flavor, mouth feel, and cravings. Although that description isn't very appetizing, these "ultraprocessed" foods are often attractive, hyper-palatable, cheap, ready-to-eat—and the major source of calories in many countries, including the U.S.

In contrast to ultraprocessed foods, unprocessed foods are in their original form (such as fruit, nuts, or eggs). Minimally processed foods are changed just enough to make them ready or safe to eat or preserve them (through processes such as cutting, pasteurizing, cooking, and freezing).

Serious health consequences

Diseases and conditions in which diet plays a role—like obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers—are collectively responsible for almost 70% of deaths worldwide. A rapidly growing body of evidence suggests the increasing prevalence of these diseases and the worldwide obesity epidemic are related to the rise in highly palatable, readily available ultraprocessed foods.

For foods like sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats, a link to negative health consequences has already been well established. But these highly processed products are not the only culprits. The evidence that many ultraprocessed foods are a problem is piling up, and many of these foods are common in our pantries. Processed carbs, like many products made with refined grains; breakfast cereals; energy bars; and chips and other savory snacks, make up the largest overall group of these ubiquitous products.

A large observational study conducted in France in 2019 found that higher intake of ultraprocessed foods, such as packaged snacks, desserts, sugary drinks, processed meats, and ready-made meals, was associated with higher death risk among middle-aged adults. In 2020, another large observational study conducted in France found that a higher proportion of ultraprocessed foods in the diet was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

A 2021 review of all available research found high consumption of ultraprocessed foods was associated with increased risk of overweight, obesity, abdominal obesity, all-cause mortality, metabolic syndrome, cardiometabolic diseases, frailty, irritable bowel syndrome, recurring indigestion, cancer (breast and overall), and depression in adults. It was also associated with wheezing (but not asthma) and, of particular concern, metabolic syndrome in adolescents and dyslipidemia (unfavorable blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides) in children.

Other studies have found and association between intake of ultraprocessed foods and unfavorable changes in blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in adults and increased levels of inflammatory markers in the blood.

A weighty matter

Carrying extra weight is strongly associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. A recent study shed light on the link between intake of ultraprocessed foods and weight gain. In this randomized, controlled trial, 20 normal-weight adults lived in a lab at the National Institutes of Health for four weeks.

For two weeks, they were fed only ultra-processed foods (like hot dogs, French fries, white bread, sugary cereals, chips, and processed cheese); for another two weeks, only unprocessed foods (like fresh fruits, unsweetened yogurt, nuts, and freshly prepared vegetables, beans, seafood, poultry, meats, and grains). Meals and available snacks were designed to have the same number of calories and were matched for protein, carbs, fat, sugar, salt, and fiber.

Participants were allowed to eat as much or as little of each meal as they desired. Although they reported enjoying both menus equally, participants unconsciously consumed about 500 calories a day more on the ultraprocessed diet than on the unprocessed diet. That increase in calories resulted in an unintentional weight gain of an average of two pounds in just two weeks—while on the unprocessed diet, they unintentionally lost about two pounds over just two weeks.

This convenient ultraprocessed meal includes a patty made of "mechanically separated chicken, pork, water, beef, soy protein concentrate" and other highly processed ingredients (plus "flavoring"), and macaroni and cheese made with refined flour and "process cheese spread."

A blow to nutrition

Even without weight gain, a dietary pattern high in modern ultraprocessed foods is bad for health. "Dietary patterns rich in whole and minimally processed foods—particularly plant foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, and whole grains—provide plenty of health-promoting, slowly digesting fiber, antioxidants, unsaturated fat, vitamins, and minerals without a lot of refined starches, added sugars, salt, and additives associated with health problems," says Dariush Mozaffarian, dean for policy of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and editor-in-chief of Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter. "Ultraprocessed foods tend to be the opposite."

A 2018 study that analyzed over 230,000 products in U.S. grocery stores found that 71% of products were ultraprocessed. The rise in ultraprocessed food availability in the last half century has coincided with a fall in the nutritional quality of diets. A study that analyzed the diets of over 9,000 participants ages one and older in the U.S. found that, as intake of ultraprocessed foods went up, intake of key nutrients (such as fiber, vitamins A and D, and calcium) went down.

Additionally, studies have found higher intake of ultraprocessed foods causes unfavorable changes in the gut microbiota—bacteria that play an important role in our metabolism and health. "Ultraprocessed foods lack natural food structure, speeding their digestion in the stomach and small intestine," says Mozaffarian. "This not only increases the flow of sugar into our bloodstream, but also starves our natural gut bacteria."

The dangers of consuming processed meats like hot dogs (and also bacon, sausage, ham, and cold cuts) is well understood. Now the health harms of other ultraprocessed foods are becoming clear.

What to do

Approaching each meal and food purchase with an eye toward eating more whole and minimally processed foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, whole grains, yogurt, milk, cheese, eggs, and fresh or frozen seafood, poultry, and lean meats is a great way to automatically limit ultraprocessed choices.

"Take a look at your pantry, fridge, and freezer," says Alice Lichtenstein, senior scientist and director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Team at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging and executive editor of Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter. "How much of the food in your home is processed or ultraprocessed? Which items are you willing to swap out for a less-processed or unprocessed version? As you use up what you have, replace it with a less processed version," Lichtenstein adds.

"You only have to set aside some extra food-shopping time once or twice to identify less processed options you enjoy. Once you do, restocking won't take additional time and you may find new products you like even better than the ultraprocessed ones."

All packaged foods are processed to some degree. Ingredient lists that are short and contain mostly names of real foods are a good start when looking for less-processed convenience foods (but long lists are fine if most of the words are recognizable, as with a soup with a long list of vegetables.) Canned foods are more processed than frozen or fresh, but those with only a few ingredients (like low-sodium canned vegetables, fruits in 100% juice, and tuna fish) are still a much better choice than ultraprocessed meat nuggets and packaged products full of artificial flavors, colors, emulsifiers, and preservatives.

"Given the wide range of items available, you will likely find most of the less processed options won't add too much time to food preparation once they become part of your habitual routine," Lichtenstein says.

If you cannot find an unprocessed replacement you are willing to consider, look for minimally processed products with the least artificial ingredients, added sugars and sodium (less than 5% Daily Value of sodium per serving is generally low, and more than 20% is high). For grain products (cereals, crackers, breads, grain dishes, look for items that have at least one gram of Dietary Fiber for every 10 grams of Total Carbohydrate per serving, which are likely to be less processed, more nutritious choices overall.

When eating out or ordering in, choose restaurants that prepare meals from scratch when possible. Fast food items are often highly processed, but fast-food chains focusing on minimally processed options are popping up nationwide. Build-your-own salads, Mexican-style bowls, and other options built from fresh ingredients are increasingly available (just avoid processed meat toppings, like diced ham, bacon bits, and chorizo sausage). Look for menu items that include more vegetables, whole grains, and fish, seafood, poultry, and (occasionally) red meats similar to their natural form when they are served. Even swapping that hotdog, fries, and soda or a milkshake for a grilled chicken sandwich with water is a big step.

We live in a fast-paced world where home cooking is not the norm and quick food options abound. Don't beat yourself up if preparing all your meals from scratch with whole ingredients is not an option for you. Take advantage of things like skinless, boneless chicken breast, spiralized vegetables, and prewashed salad greens. Looking for ways to minimize ultraprocessed foods is an excellent step toward improving the quality of your diet and, ultimately, protecting your health.

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THE FAR NORTH is both a massive carbon sink and a potent environmental time bomb. The region stores a huge amount of CO2 in boreal forests and underlying soils. Organic peat soil, for instance, covers just 3 percent of the Earth’s land area (there’s some in tropical regions too), yet it contains a third of its terrestrial carbon. And Arctic permafrost has locked away thousands of years’ worth of plant matter, preventing rot that would release clouds of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane. 

But in a pair of recent papers, scientists have found that wildfires and human meddling are reducing northern ecosystems’ ability to sequester carbon, threatening to turn them into carbon sources. That will in turn accelerate climate change, which is already warming the Arctic four and a half times faster than the rest of the world, triggering the release of still more carbon—a gnarly feedback loop. 

In fact, over 100 wildfires are burning across Alberta, Canada, right now, forcing nearly 30,000 people from their homes—an “unprecedented situation” in the region. The annual area burned in Canada has doubled since the 1970s, says Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at Thompson Rivers University. (He wasn't involved in either of the new studies.) “A warmer world means more fire,” he says. “As the temperature warms, the atmosphere gets very efficient at sucking moisture out of dead fuels. So it means more fuels available to burn, which leads to high-intensity fires, which are difficult to impossible to extinguish.”

Northern boreal forests are the largest land biomes on the planet. When they burn, they release greenhouse gases from both vegetation and carbon-rich soils, which the first new paper, released in March, quantified. In fact, burning boreal forests spew between 10 and 20 times more carbon than fires in other ecosystems. Typically, the blazes account for 10 percent of global fire CO2 emissions annually, but they contributed 23 percent in 2021, thanks to severe heat waves and drought. 

“We are facing a dangerous positive feedback between climate and boreal fires,” says lead author Bo Zheng of China’s Tsinghua University. “The slow recovery of soil microbial communities in forests after extreme wildfires weakens carbon sinks, and makes it difficult for them to fully absorb the large amount of carbon dioxide released during combustion.” That, Zheng adds, “will increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and promote global warming, further increasing the likelihood of extreme wildfires.”

Zheng’s team found that the geographic range of boreal fires has been expanding since 2000—and that alarms Carly Phillips, a research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who studies these fires but wasn’t involved in the paper. “Given the carbon density in those ecosystems, that translates to a lot of emissions," she says.

Climate change makes these blazes more likely. As northern landscapes dry out, they accumulate dead brush that’s ready to burn catastrophically. Warming also creates more opportunities to ignite vegetation. The region has gotten so hot that lightning—typically a warm-weather phenomenon—is now striking within 300 miles of the North Pole, and strikes could double in the Arctic by the end of the century. 

The more the Arctic burns, the worse its emissions problem gets. Wildfires dramatically accelerate the development of thermokarst, a phenomenon in which permafrost thaws so quickly the ground craters. This provides the perfect wet conditions for microbes to eat organic matter and spew methane, which is 80 times as potent a planet-warming gas as CO2. 

A second paper, released in April, points out how badly wildfires degrade peatlands. A healthy peatland is made of plant material that has built up over hundreds of years—maybe even a millennium—resisting decay because the soil is wet and oxygen-poor. If a lightning strike causes a fire, a thin top layer might burn, but the rest stays soggy. “In their pristine state, these are resilient ecosystems, in that they can still continue to store carbon after they have a small fire,” says coauthor Mike Waddington, an ecohydrologist at McMaster University. 

But because people have been draining swaths of peatlands to make way for agriculture and development, that concentrated carbon dries out. This stuff is many feet thick, so a fire can burrow deeply into the ground, releasing up to 200 tons of carbon per hectare. (For perspective, a car emits 5 tons a year.) These peat fires are so relentless that they might start in the summer and smolder underground all winter, only to pop up again at the surface once the snow melts—”zombie fires,” as scientists have dubbed them.

Ultimately, this new paper finds that while northern peatlands remain a net carbon sink, degradation and wildfires could push them toward becoming sources of planet-heating gases by the end of the century. “We were quite shocked that by 2100, it's not looking like we'll have any sort of peatland carbon sink of any sort of significant size,” says Sophie Wilkinson, a wildfire scientist at the University of Toronto and the paper’s lead author. “It could be worsening the climate change problem, because it could be adding carbon into the atmosphere.”

There’s a bit of good news: Peatlands can bounce back. They're fairly easy to restore by simply re-wetting them, though particularly degraded ones might need a transplant of “donor” moss. 

Peatlands are essentially the world’s simplest—and most abundant—carbon capture devices, if we just take care of them, says Waddington. “It's a little shocking, to be honest. There's all these technologies about how we're going to store carbon and get carbon out of the atmosphere—and we already know what it is,” he says. “It's not rocket science. It's peat science, and it's great technology.”

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However, this idyllic picture may not be accurate. Like many other locations around the world, the island and its natural habitat are facing the threat of mass extinction, and in just a matter of a few decades, the abundant flora and diverse fauna could be almost gone.

At least if the extinction of the many plants and animals on the island continues. They are part of a particularly sensitive ecosystem where animals help plants spread their seeds. However, if the animals disappear or are replaced by completely new species, the seeds will not spread in the same way as before. And that’s a big problem, according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen.

“Many plants, especially on tropical islands like Mauritius, rely on animals to help spread their seeds. If the animals that can help spread the seeds become extinct, the plants get into trouble because the animals which humans have brought to the island destroy the seeds instead. This increases the risk of the plants that are still on the island dying out,” says Julia Heinen. She is a postdoc at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the first author of the new study.

If the plants die, the fruits growing on them will also disappear from the island. And this, in turn, creates new problems for the island’s own small ecosystem, because the animal species that feed on the fruits will also have problems.

Humans came with new animal species – but they don’t help

Probably the most famous Mauritian bird that no longer exists is the dodo. It was last seen on the island in the 1600s. And it is nowhere else.

The same fate has befallen other of the island’s special plants and animals such as giant tortoises. And even though new animals have come to the island, they will not have the same characteristics as, for example, the dodo and giant tortoises, says Julia Heinen.

“After the dodo and other Mauritian animals have become extinct, other animals have come to the island. They have either come with the people or they have found their way to the island themselves. But they cannot replace the function of extinct animals in the ecosystem,” she says.

This is because they do not quite behave in the same way as the animals that no longer live on the island.

“Now there are rats, pigs, monkeys, and some other types of birds. And they actually eat the same fruits, but they handle them in a different way, and it doesn’t have a positive effect on the plants,” she says and adds:

“If we remove one species from the island, for example, the dodo, we destroy the connection to others. It’s like a house of cards. Then the plants that were eaten by the dodo and other animals in Mauritius will also be at risk of extinction.”

The rats are the big villains

It all started about 400 years ago when people came sailing to the island in their boats. On the ships, they had uninvited guests.

“Rats are a big problem when they arrive on an island. They hide on the ships with the humans, so when the humans came to the island, the rats were there. The rats eat and destroy seeds, but they are also fond of birds’ eggs,” says Julia Heinen.

In this way, since humans came to the island, the rats have helped destroy the small ecosystem. But there are still animals and plants that make the ecosystem run around. One of them is a special bat.

“The Mauritian fruit bat is a very unique and endangered animal that plays a vital role in the ecosystem because it is one of the few remaining animals that can disperse the plants over the island. But the authorities are actively killing the bats because they are noisy and eat the mangoes in people’s backyards,” explains Julia Heinen and continues:

“People are very frustrated, but the authorities ignore the science. And Mauritius is the last place on Earth the bat lives.”

The remaining animals protect the plants

It is only a few hundred years after humans arrived on the island that several plants and animals belonging to the island and the island’s ecosystem have become extinct. And now we are beginning to see the consequences of the animals no longer being on the island.

If we are to save the ecosystem on the island and other small, colorful, and lush islands, we must help it along the way.

“We don’t know yet how to stop extinctions on islands worldwide, but this study makes it clear that on Mauritius we can prevent the loss of the native plants if we stop culling the flying foxes, start conservation projects focused on the Mauritian Bulbul and continue to protect the Telfair’s skink.”

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"Psychological problems were common in young adults and had strong links with cardiovascular health," said study author Professor Eue-Keun Choi of Seoul National University College of Medicine, Republic of Korea.

"The findings indicate that these individuals should receive regular health check-ups and medication if appropriate to prevent myocardial infarction and stroke. While lifestyle behaviors did not explain the excess cardiovascular risk, this does not mean that healthier habits would not improve prognosis. Lifestyle modification should therefore be recommended to young adults with mental disorders to boost heart health."

This study investigated the association between mental disorders in adults aged 20–39 years and the risks of developing myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke. The study used the Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database which covers the country's entire population. A total of 6,557,727 individuals aged 20 to 39 years who underwent health examinations between 2009 and 2012 and had no history of myocardial infarction or stroke were included in the study.

The average age was 31 years, and more than half (58%) of participants were 30 years or older.

Some 856,927 (13.1%) participants had at least one mental disorder. Among those with mental disorders, nearly half (47.9%) had anxiety, more than one in five (21.2%) had depression and one in five (20.0%) had insomnia. More than one-quarter (27.9%) of participants with mental health problems had somatoform disorder, while 2.7% had substance use disorder, 1.3% had bipolar disorder, 0.9% had schizophrenia, 0.9% had an eating disorder, 0.7% had personality disorder and 0.4% had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Participants were followed until December 2018 for new-onset myocardial infarction and stroke. During a median follow up of 7.6 years, there were 16,133 myocardial infarctions and 10,509 strokes. The authors analyzed the association between mental disorders and cardiovascular outcomes after adjusting for factors that could influence the relationships including age, sex, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and income.

Participants with any mental disorder had a 58% higher likelihood of myocardial infarction and 42% greater risk of stroke compared to those with no mental disorder. The risk of myocardial infarction was elevated for all mental disorders studied, with the magnitude ranging from 1.49- to 3.13-fold.

Looking at each condition separately, compared to participants with no mental disorder, the risk of myocardial infarction was 3.13 times higher in those with PTSD, 2.61 times higher for schizophrenia, 2.47 times higher for substance use disorder, 2.40 times higher for bipolar disorder, 2.29 times higher for personality disorder, 1.97 times higher for eating disorders, 1.73 times higher for insomnia, 1.72 times higher for depression, 1.53 times higher for anxiety and 1.49 times higher for somatoform disorder.

The risk of stroke was elevated for all mental health issues except PTSD and eating disorders, with hazard ratios ranging from 1.25 to 3.06. The hazard ratios for each condition were 3.06 for personality disorder, 2.95 for schizophrenia, 2.64 for bipolar disorder, 2.44 for substance use disorder, 1.60 for depression, 1.45 for insomnia, 1.38 for anxiety and 1.25 for somatoform disorder.

The authors also analyzed the associations according to age and sex. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and personality disorder were associated with higher risks of myocardial infarction for participants in their 20s compared with those in their 30s. In addition, depression and insomnia were linked with greater risks of heart attack and stroke in women than men.

Study author Dr. Chan Soon Park of Seoul National University Hospital, Republic of Korea, said, "Patients with mental health problems are known to have a shorter life expectancy than the general population, with the majority of deaths due to physical illnesses. Our study shows that substantial numbers of young adults have at least one mental health problem, which may predispose them to heart attack and stroke. Future research should examine the cardiovascular benefits of managing psychological problems and monitoring heart health in this vulnerable group."

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