When rainwater falls, it soaks down into an aquifer, a layer of porous rock or loose materials like sand or gravel. For thousands of years, humans have been digging into these bands of liquid to bring up drinking water. But interest is growing in another clever use for these subterranean pools: aquifer thermal energy storage, or ATES. 

A battery holds energy to be used later. Aquifers can be leveraged to do something similar: They can exploit the insulating properties of the Earth to conserve thermal energy and transfer it to and from buildings above ground. The temperature of water in an aquifer tends to stay fairly stable. This provides a way to heat and cool nearby structures with energy stored in water, instead of burning natural gas in furnaces or tapping into fossil-fuel-derived electricity to run air conditioners.

ATES systems consist of two separate wells—one warm, one cold—that run between the surface and the aquifer below. In the winter, you pump groundwater up from a warm well that’s around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and run it through a heat exchanger. Combined with a heat pump, this process extracts heat from the groundwater to keep the structures’ interiors warm. 

Then you pump that now-cooler groundwater down into the second well. This gives you a cold pool of water—around 45 degrees F—to pump out of in the summer to chill buildings. “You heat up the groundwater by taking out the heat from the building and directly inject it into the other well,” says hydrogeologist Martin Bloemendal, who studies ATES at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “Then in winter, you extract from your warm well.” This process alternates indefinitely as the seasons roll on because the groundwater is reused, not consumed. The system could even take advantage of brackish or contaminated aquifers that can’t be tapped for drinking water. 

Because the water pumps and other equipment are run on renewable power, like solar or wind, this hyper-efficient energy storage would lower fossil fuel demand and keep a lot of carbon from entering the atmosphere. Heating and cooling are responsible for a third of energy consumption in the US, and half of energy consumption in Europe. In fact, a new paper in the journal Applied Energy found that ATES could reduce the use of natural gas and electricity in heating and cooling US homes and businesses by 40 percent. 

It’s a way to store massive amounts of energy for long periods of time—an underground battery of sorts, always ready to exploit. “In a local city, you can store heat, and you can store cold, and now you don’t have to pay for that later,” says Erick Burns, the United States Geological Survey’s leader for the Geothermal Resource Investigations Project. (The USGS is part of a new international consortium that’s investigating city-scale geothermal energy.) “The cool thing about it is it doesn’t need critical minerals, like batteries do.”

The technique is ideal for large buildings, like hospitals, or a cluster of buildings, like on a college campus, because they can share a dedicated facility for the well and other equipment. It would be particularly effective in times of high demand on the grid. In the US, demand spikes on late summer afternoons when people switch on their energy-hungry AC units. ATES uses far less power, which would lighten the load on the grid and help avoid crashes. If these systems could not only run off solar or wind energy, but be backed up by a distributed network of lithium-ion batteries, they could be resilient against power outages altogether. 

“These systems are quite ideal when integrating renewables,” says energy systems researcher A.T.D. Perera, lead author of the new paper. (Perera is now at Princeton University but did the research while at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)

This technology is not yet widely deployed globally. Some 85 percent of the ATES systems are in the Netherlands, which has both the right geology and stringent national standards for energy efficiency. But one study found that swathes of Germany are suited for it; another found that almost a third of Spain’s population lives in areas suitable for ATES. 

Not every area is a good fit, though. Unlike, say, a natural-gas power plant, a geothermal energy system depends on a host of complex geological factors. “It would be really, really difficult to say ‘OK, this system works well where I live in Illinois’ and then try to translate it to your home in California,” says Yu-Feng Lin, a geoscientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (Lin is part of the international consortium with Burns but wasn’t involved in the new paper.) “It’s not as simple as copy-paste.”

For example, a city built on solid rock has no easy access to an aquifer. And even one that does have access needs sufficient “hydraulic conductivity,” meaning that water easily flows through underground materials like sand and gravel. The better the water flows, the easier and less energy-intensive it’ll be to pump it out. 

That said, it can’t flow too much, because when you pump water down it may migrate elsewhere across the landscape. “You want it to flow when you want it to flow,” says Peter Nico, a geoscientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who coauthored the paper with Perera. Luckily for the United States, Nico adds, “there are large swaths of the country that are in good shape for it.”

But there is another challenger: ATES is expensive. It requires thoroughly studying a given city’s geology, then paying to drill and set up the pumping equipment. But at least that cost is up front: Once you’ve got wells and pumps, it all runs on abundant, free solar or wind power. Plus, it’s not taking up much space at the surface, leaving room for urban gardens and other open green areas that cities need more than ever. “If you’re willing to pay a little bit more in order to improve climate resilience or become more sustainable,” says Perera, “this would be an ideal way to go.”

The Massive ‘Batteries’ Hidden Beneath Your Feet

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Last December, researchers at California’s National Ignition Facility achieved what many in the fusion industry have called its “Wright brothers” moment. Using a laser, they zapped a golden vessel with a microseconds-long pulse of energy and received a dividend in return: About 50 percent more energy than they put in. That feat is called ignition, and it’s a triumph that’s been awaited since the 1970s. The perpetually 30-years-out technology of fusion power suddenly looks closer.

Well, not all that much closer. The ignition experiment still consumed energy overall, because the laser burned a lot more power than it delivered to its target. And there’s still plenty to figure out about how to harness fusion energy for electricity. But the result has prompted a revival of long-established predictions that fusion will solve all humanity’s energy needs. Startups working on fusion have reported a surge of interest from investors this year. The US government has announced a record $1.4 billion in funding for research, the beginning of a 10-year drive toward practical fusion. The potential payoff is big: Figure out the science, the wisdom goes, and fusion will unlock “unlimited clean energy.”

In many ways, that’s accurate. Just look up there, at that burning ball in the sky. It’s got 5 billion years left in the tank. Various national programs, a big international effort called ITER, and at least 40 private companies are trying to ignite simulacra of that process here on Earth. The goal is to smush atoms together—typically two hydrogen atoms, forming helium—and in the process lose a little bit of mass which, because e = mc², means releasing energy, too. So you can argue that fusion energy is as limitless as there are hydrogen atoms in the universe.

When you put it that way, wind farms and solar panels can also look limitless, fed by an infinite stream of pressure waves and photons. In reality, of course, they are constrained by practical concerns. Permits. Financing. The construction and supply chains that produce turbine blades and photovoltaic films. The restrictions of a complicated grid that demands power at the wrong times, or doesn’t have wires in the right places. 

Which is why, as the physics progresses, some are now beginning to explore the likely practical and economic limits on fusion. The early conclusion is that fusion energy ain’t going to be cheap—certainly not the cheapest source of electricity over the coming decades as more solar and wind come online. But fusion may still find its place, because the grid needs energy in different forms and at different times.

“I was wondering how the heck could fusion ever compete economically with the amazing gains in renewable energy,“ says Jacob Schwartz, a physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. It was a question that inspired a pivot from working on the superheated details of fusion engineering to energy grid economics. In a paper published this month in the journal Joule, Schwartz and his colleagues tapped a sophisticated model of the US grid between 2036 and 2050 to study the conditions under which it would be economical to build 100 gigawatts worth of fusion plants, enough to power approximately 75 million homes. Basically, how cheap would fusion have to be to build it?

The results suggest the answer could vary a lot depending on the cost and mix of other energy sources on the decarbonized grid, like renewables, nuclear fission, or natural gas plants outfitted with carbon capture devices. In most scenarios, fusion appears likely to end up in a niche much like that held by good ol’ nuclear fission today, albeit without the same safety and waste headaches. Both are essentially gargantuan systems that use a lot of specialized equipment to extract energy from atoms so it can boil water and drive steam turbines, meaning high up-front costs. But while the electricity they provide may be more expensive than that from renewables like solar, that electricity is clean and reliable regardless of time of day or weather.

So, on those terms, can fusion compete? The point of the study wasn’t to estimate costs for an individual reactor. But the good news is that Schwartz was able to find at least one design that could produce energy for the right price: the Aries-AT, a relatively detailed model of a fusion power plant outlined by physicists at UC San Diego in the early 2000s. It’s just one point of comparison, Schwartz cautions, and other fusion plants may very well have different cost profiles, or fit into the grid differently depending on how they’re used. Plus, geography will matter. On the East Coast of the US, for example, where renewable energy resources are limited and transmission is constrained, the modeling suggested that fusion could be useful at higher price points than it is in the West. Overall, it’s fair to envision a future in which fusion becomes part of the US grid's “varied energy diet,” he says.

In an earlier analysis from 2021, Samuel Ward, a physicist then at the University of York, and his colleagues developed a warier outlook. They outline a number of scenarios that could sideline fusion, some of which may be good news for the world: that wind and solar can do much of the work of decarbonizing the grid by the time fusion comes around, for example, or that batteries get really good and really cheap. Even fission itself could become more spry with the development of so-called “small modular reactors,” which are designed to be cheaper to build. Plus, says Ward, now at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, fusion cost projections involve materials and supply chains that in many cases do not yet exist. 

“Fundamentally, it comes down to big uncertainties,” he says. “It's a tricky feeling, especially when people have pushed this idea of a ‘holy grail’ or ‘limitless’ energy. They use these words, and I don't think it's done fusion any favors.”

Fusion companies—unsurprisingly—are keen to explain why their designs will not only crack the physics of fusion but also be uniquely economical. Proposed reactors can be broadly grouped into two categories: One, known as tokamaks, use powerful magnets to produce plasma. (Fusing atoms takes a lot of heat, pressure, or both.) The other uses an approach called inertial confinement that aims to crush and energize a target by striking it with a laser, as in NIF’s ignition experiment, or high-speed projectiles.

“It’s not a question I get very often,” says Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies, when asked about the economics of his company’s design. People are more likely to query how he plans to get plasma in his reactor heated to 1 billion degrees Celsius, up from the 75 million the company has demonstrated so far. But the questions are intertwined, he says.

That extreme temperature is required because TAE uses boron as fuel, alongside hydrogen, which Binderbauer thinks will ultimately simplify the fusion reactor and result in a power plant that’s cheaper to build. He puts the costs somewhere between fission and renewables—roughly where the Princeton modelers say it needs to be. He points out that while fusion plants will be expensive to build, the fuel will be extremely cheap. Plus, a lower risk of accidents and less high-level radioactive waste should mean a reprieve from expensive regulations that have driven up costs for fission plants.  

Bob Mumgaard, the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff, says he was happy to see the Princeton modeling, because he thinks their tokamak can smash those cost requirements. That claim principally rests in a superpowerful magnet the company hopes will allow it to operate tokamaks—and hence power plants—at smaller scale, saving money. CFS is building a scaled-down prototype of its fusion design in Massachusetts that will include most of the components required of a working plant. “You can actually go and see it and touch it and look at the machines,” he says. 

Nicholas Hawker, CEO of First Light Fusion, an inertial fusion company, published his own economic analysis for fusion power in 2020 and was surprised to find that the biggest drivers of cost were not in the fusion chamber and its unusual materials, but in the capacitors and turbines any power plant needs. 

Still, Hawker expects a slower ramp-up than some of his colleagues. “The first plants are going to break all the time,” he says, and the industry will require significant government support—just like the solar industry has over the past two decades. That’s why he thinks it’s a good thing that lots of governments and companies are trying out different approaches: It increases the chance that some technologies will survive. 

Schwartz agrees. “It would be weird if the universe only permits one form of fusion energy to exist,” he says. That diversity is important, he says, because otherwise the industry risks figuring out the science only to back itself into an uneconomical corner. Both nuclear fission and solar panels went through similar periods of experimentation earlier in their technological trajectories. Over time, both converged on single designs—photovoltaics and massive pressurized water reactors seen around the world—that were built all over the globe. 

For fusion, however, first things first: the science. It might not work anytime soon. Perhaps it will take another 30 years. But Ward, in spite of his caution about the limits of fusion on the grid, still thinks the research is already paying for itself, generating new advances in basic science and in the creation of new materials. “I still think it’s totally worth it,” he says.

Updated 4-11-2023, 1:10 pm EDT: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to TAE's reactor design as a tokamak.

No, Fusion Energy Won’t Be ‘Limitless’

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Lockheed Martin makes a big bet on commercial space and the Moon

At an old shoe factory on the outskirts of Paris, new life is taking shape. Behind a heavy door, a bank of PCR machines multiplies plant DNA molecules by hundreds of billions every few hours. Inside a gleaming white chamber, tiny emerald shoots are coaxed from single cells, unfurling in millimeters over a period of months.

“It’s like a biologist’s wet dream,” says Patrick Torbey, chief technology officer of Neoplants, a Parisian startup taking a multimillion-dollar punt on the air we breathe. Torbey grabs one of the small, plastic receptacles from inside the chamber and squints at his verdant creation: Nestled in a jelly-like growing medium, it looks like a canapé—or, possibly, the future.

This is the Neo P1—a genetically modified houseplant that the company claims could help combat indoor air pollution. P1 is a modified form of golden pothos—more commonly known as devil’s ivy—one of the world’s most ubiquitous and easy-going houseplants. Although its yellow-green hues appear familiar, P1’s DNA has been tweaked to enhance its ability to extract volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air, including formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, which are prevalent in indoor spaces.

These genetic adjustments also—crucially in the case of the P1—allow the plant to convert the VOCs it absorbs into substances like sugar and CO2 that it can use to carry on growing. Once it’s outgrown the agar, P1 will be planted in soil enriched with biochar (a common gardening additive) in a pot designed to maximize airflow, and sold with a pack of three Power Drops (bacteria, to be added to the soil each month to help the plant metabolize the VOCs it absorbs). Due on shelves later this year, P1 will retail for $179, or around £145—roughly 10 times the cost of an ordinary golden pothos plant, or comparable to that of a keenly priced Honeywell HEPA purifier.

So far, Torbey, who has a PhD in genome editing, and his cofounder Lionel Mora, an ex-Google product marketer, have collected $20 million in venture funding from firms including True Ventures and Collaborative Fund.

Much of the money has gone toward fitting out Neoplants’ new space on the north side of the French capital. Over the past two years, it’s been stripped and gutted, whitewashed, and then refitted to spec with every gadget Torbey could tick off his wishlist. There are mass spectrometers, fume cupboards, and growth chambers. Magnetic stirrers fidget next to cabinets stocked with glass flasks and petri dishes.

There are two rooms whose insides are coated in a greenish non-adsorbent material (meaning organic compounds won’t stick to it). In the months to come, they’ll be used to mimic bedrooms, for a more accurate measurement of how well Neo P1 strips toxins from the air. 
Neoplants’ proposition is an attractive one: neatly pairing something that looks nice in people’s homes and brings them joy (houseplants) with one of the biggest existential challenges facing humanity at large (slowly choking to death from pollutants). But proving that it actually works is where things get thorny.

Browse most plant shops and you’ll be met with the promise of purified air: peace lilies and snake plants and ivy with little tags—pale blue or white, or some other colour suggestive of purity—declaring that “this plant cleans air.” Patch, a popular online retailer, reserves an entire section of its website for “air-purifying indoor plants.” Another vendor, Plantler, offers an Air So Pure package of spider plants, palms, and ferns.

Much of the support for these marketing efforts stems from 1989, when NASA worked with the Associated Landscape Contractors of America to assess the ability of houseplants to remove toxins from the air. The resulting Clean Air Study suggested that, yes, houseplants could absorb certain pollutants—including VOCs like benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. Less touted was the fact that these results mostly could not be applied to the houses these plants are often placed in. Putting a plant in a sealed chamber, blowing pollutants over it for multiple hours (or days), and then recording the results, the researchers admitted, was not an accurate replication of normal houseplant conditions. This has not stopped many researchers since from conducting almost exactly the same experiment. 

In 2019, however, researchers at Drexel University concluded that, in order for the effects measured in these chamber experiments to be reproduced at any livable scale, and to even match the rate of toxin removal already achieved by just opening a window, you’d need anywhere between 10 and 1,000 plants per square meter. 

Richard Corsi, dean of the College of Engineering at UC Davis, also takes umbrage with what he calls these “little glass chamber studies.” The issue, he says, is that to get their results, researchers exaggerate the amount of air that would ever flow over a plant in normal conditions. The industry’s standard metric for the effectiveness of air filters is clean air delivery rate, or CADR, which combines separate measures for airflow and how efficiently particles are removed. The idea is that, by combining these measurements into a single metric, consumers are less likely to be misled by, for instance, an air filter that is incredibly efficient at removing toxins, but only for a small amount of air.

Using data from past plant studies and calculations based on the best case scenario for CADR, Corsi says that a bedroom of approximately 200 square feet would need as many as 315 individual plants to bring formaldehyde (and other VOC) levels down by 50 percent. To get a 90 percent reduction would require more like 2,800 plants. Scale that up to a whole flat or house, and you’re nurturing a dense jungle.

So is Neoplants’ genetically modified houseplant any better? The company’s sales materials reference the 1989 study, and claim the P1 is “30 times better than top NASA plants” when it comes to removing VOCs. But this was a lab-based study: Neoplants pumped formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, and xylene over a P1 sample contained inside a 35-liter glass chamber, and then compared the outputs. Field tests are yet to yield reliable results, but the hope is that the new lab, with its specially designed non-adsorbent rooms, will allow more true-to-life testing in the future.

There’s no CADR measurement to compare the P1 with mechanical air purifiers either. Instead, Neoplants offers a “CADR by weight” to reflect the varying sizes of different plants. Even if the P1 is 30 times better than a traditional houseplant, you would still need a lot of them to clean the dirtiest air. 

A new metric might be required for this product category, Mora argues, because plants—unlike traditional air purifiers—don’t get switched on and off (although they do have extended dormant periods in most years). Neoplants has hired two people to devise a measurement that better suits its purposes.

Right now, P1 amounts to trays of tiny shoots stored in growth chambers. It takes six months to take each plant from a single cell to a shoot of a few inches in height. More than 30,000 people have signed up for a waiting list via the Neoplants website; interested parties include hoteliers and real estate developers. Mora is cutting deals with growers in Florida who’ll be able to reproduce their plants at scale. (The US, where the regulatory process for clearing genetically modified products is more straightforward, will be Neoplants’ launch market).

The lab move-in isn’t quite complete—a workman’s brush props open the front door, fresh tarmac is being flattened into potholes in the courtyard—but the new facilities will enable Mora and Torbey to run more rigorous, realistic tests. P2 is already in the works, and the business is already exploring how its gene-editing technology could be deployed in carbon capture or phytoremediation, through which plants are used to absorb toxins from contaminated environments.

The company is banking on a bit of patience and a dose of belief—green shoots need time to grow. “It will be the first time in history that such a product exists,” says Mora. “The first computers, they weren’t so great. But they were revolutionary.”

Genetically Modified Houseplants Are Coming to Clean Your Air

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During the Capitanian age 260 million years ago, the oceans suffered a drastic loss of oxygen causing, or perhaps amplifying, widespread global extinctions. Then 3 million years later the same thing happened again, sediment records reveal. The findings could explain a major point of confusion about the Permian period, a time overshadowed by its catastrophic ending in the greatest mass extinction event of all.

The Earth has suffered five agreed-upon mass extinctions when a large proportion of the planet’s life died out. We are probably in the early stages of a sixth, brought on by our own recklessness. There have, however, been many other points in the Earth’s history where species disappeared much faster than they were replaced, and palaeontologists have long debated whether any of these deserve to be considered mass extinctions as well.

A particular focus has been events at the end of the Capitanian age (also known as the end-Guadalupian). According to some estimates, species loss at this point was worse than when the asteroid killed the non-avian dinosaurs, or indeed two earlier mass extinctions. These estimates remain debated, however, and a new study suggests this may be a consequence of mixing up two events.

A team led by Dr Huyue Song of the China University of Geosciences measured uranium isotope ratios in marine sediments deposited during the Guadalupian stage 272 to 259 million years ago in what is now the South China Sea. Marine microbes convert uranium (VI) to uranium (IV), but process uranium 235 and U-238 slightly differently. When a decline in ocean oxygen levels causes a microbial die-off this is reflected both in lower uranium concentrations in seawater and a shift in the ratios of the two main isotopes. 

Although the change in isotope ratio is tiny – just 0.2-0.4 percent – it can still be read in rocks 260 million years old, and from this, Song and co-authors concluded, the oceans became drastically depleted in oxygen twice during the Permian, 262 and 259 million years ago. Each of these would have caused a mass marine extinction, which we would expect to have been replicated on land, taking out species such as Titanophoneus or “titanic murderer”.

Professor Thomas Algeo with a collection of rock cores used to measure the uranium abundance, and isotope ratios from the late Permian era.Image Credit: Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand

The authors blame immense volcanic eruptions, like those suspected of causing the other mass extinctions, the dinosaur-killing one aside. Ash from these eruptions caused short-term cooling, followed by longer-term warming as the ash washed out of the skies and carbon dioxide remained. 

"Dissolved oxygen has to be taken up by the surface layer and supplied to the deep ocean,” said Professor Thomas Algeo of the University of Cincinnati in a statement. “But warmer water is lower density. When you increase the density differential, you prevent any overturn and there's no way to get dissolved oxygen into the deeper layers."

"Today, we are facing several global change issues, including global warming, ocean hypoxia, seawater acidification and biodiversity decline, which are similar to the environmental changes during the Middle Permian biological crisis interval," Song said. The changes today are far less extreme, at least so far, but they’re also probably happening much faster.

The Capitanian extinction event is acknowledged as seeing the disappearance of tropical species on a scale to match almost any other global catastrophe. Evidence is much more sparse, however, from temperate and polar latitudes, although even Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard, has provided support for the view this was a worldwide event.

Perhaps part of the reason the Capitanian event has not been fully accepted as a mass extinction is that it has been overshadowed by the unquestioned largest extinction event of all, the end-Permian, also known as the Great Dying. Confusion between the two events may have also played a part. 

Although volcanic eruptions have been the primary suspect, a confirmed cause has also been lacking until now. Why the Earth should have suffered three such devastating eruptions in the space of 10 million years remains unknown.

The study is published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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A stone disk depicting an ancient Maya ball game has been unearthed at the iconic site of Chichén Itzá in southern Mexico. Known simply as ‘pelota’ (‘ball’), the sport is believed to have played a significant role in the social and political life of the Maya Empire, and archaeologists think the artifact may commemorate a match that was played more than 1,100 years ago.

The piece has been named the Disk of the Pelota Players and is engraved with the image of two figures wearing traditional pelota kit, surrounded by a band of glyphic text. Within the inscription, researchers found a reference to a date in the Maya calendar which equates to the year 894 CE.

Measuring 32.5 centimeters (12.8 inches) in diameter and weighing 40 kilograms (88.2 pounds), the artifact was found within a structure called the Casa Colorada (Colorful House). Named in honor of its red-painted interiors, the complex – also known as Chichanchob – featured its own pelota court.

“It’s rare to find hieroglyphic writing at this site, and even rarer to find a complete text,” said archaeologist Francisco Pérez Ruiz in a statement released by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). “It’s been 11 years since that happened.”

Based on the date mentioned in the inscription, the disk likely dates back to the Terminal Classic or Early Postclassic Maya period. According to Pérez Ruiz, the piece probably marked an important event regarding a pelota match that took place at the Casa Colorada at this time.

Describing the engraved image, archaeologist Santiago Alberto Sobrino Fernández explained that “the character on the left is wearing a feathered headdress and a sash that features a flower-shaped element, probably a water lily. In line with the face is a scroll, which may be interpreted as breath or voice.

“The opposing player wears a headdress known as a ‘snake turban’, which has been seen represented numerous times at Chichén Itzá. The individual wears protective clothing for playing pelota.”

The identity of the players commemorated on the disk remains unknown, as does the outcome of the match – although further interpretation of the inscription may reveal both the nature of the contest and the final score.

Chichén Itzá is located in the Yucatan Peninsula and was one of the largest Maya cities. The site features a central pelota court which is significantly bigger than that at the Casa Colorada, and is thought to have hosted countless matches during its heyday.

Pelota was typically played with a rubber ball that players propelled using their hip, elbow, or knee. Researchers believe the game carried a symbolic significance, and previous studies have indicated that some pelota balls even contained the ashes of dead Mayan rulers.

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There's nothing more frustrating than losing sleep night after night and not knowing what's causing it. Sure, sometimes everyone has an off night or two -- but if it's a consistent problem that's affecting your quality of life, it could be something that needs more attention.

Besides making you feel just plain blah, missing sleep isn't great for your health, especially if it's chronic. Lack of sleep is linked to serious health problems like obesity, heart disease and mood disorders.

Whether you have full-on insomnia, or have noticed that your sleep quality is taking a hit lately, there could be underlying issues that are impacting you. In honor of Sleep Awareness Week, let's explore five common health issues that could be keeping you from good rest.

"If sleep has become problematic, and you either can't fall asleep, are waking up in the middle of the night or are waking up still tired, definitely check into what's going on inside of your body," said functional medicine nurse practitioner Maggie Berghoff. She recommends seeking out testing with your doctor to try to get a bigger picture of what's happening in your body to help detect any issues that could be messing with sleep.

Everyone is unique and you should seek out medical attention if you can't sleep. Below are common (but sometimes undetected) health issues that are often lurking behind a sleep problem.

Your diet

Poor nutrition habits can affect your sleep for a variety of reasons. If you're not eating a proper balance of protein, fat and carbs your blood sugar could be all over the place. And if you're blood sugar isn't regulated throughout the day, it can spike and fall again at night, which may wake you up.

"Diet plays a large role in sleep regulation. Decreasing inflammatory foods that spike blood sugar levels such as sugar or simple carbs may improve sleep. Ridding the body of processed foods and items one is intolerant to (these can even be "healthy" foods like lettuce or lemons!) will also improve sleep quality and quantity," Berghoff says. If you think you're eating pretty healthy, but still experiencing problems, you can ask your doctor for a food intolerance test which can help you pinpoint potentially problematic foods.

Specific vitamins and minerals are needed for good sleep, so if you have any type of deficiency, it could be affecting your sleep. "Vitamin B is typically linked to sleep quality, but if a person's vitamin B is actually optimal, the culprit for that individual may be magnesium, zinc, or other nutrient deficiencies they may have.

Another tip is to reconsider that bedtime snack. "I recommend avoiding eating just prior to bedtime. In fact, if you really want to raise your standards, stop eating three hours prior to going to bed," Berghoff said.

Hormonal imbalance or thyroid issues

Your hormones are like little messengers in your body that tell it what to do, and that includes sleep (among other vital functions). If you suspect you may have hormonal balances or even a thyroid issue, you should ask your doctor about getting tested.

"If hormones are not properly regulated, it could impact sleep and your body temperature throughout the night. The same can be said for those racing thoughts keeping one from falling asleep," Berghoff said.

Another issue to look out for is overactive thyroid or hyperthyroidism. "If your thyroid gland is overactive, it can be especially problematic for a restful night of sleep, as your body is essentially in overdrive and not conducive to sleep," Berghoff says.

Circadian rhythm disruption

Many people know that tech is messing with our sleep, and one of the biggest culprits is thought to be blue light.

"The circadian rhythm is the biological clock of the body. It helps to regulate your sleep and wake cycles. When it is improperly wired, such as when one has irregular sleep habits, or is exposed to blue light all day long and before bedtime, it will negatively impact sleep," Berghoff says.

One way to help "set" your circadian rhythm properly is by going outside and getting sunlight in the morning, afternoon and in the evening before it gets dark.

"Wearing blue light blocking glasses in the evening, turning your phone on nighttime mode, and using f.lux to red tint your computer screens in the evening will help," Berghoff says.

Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is a serious condition that can not only affect your sleep quality, but can also put you at risk for different types of other health issues, like stroke. Sleep apnea causes you to stop breathing throughout the night. Oftentimes when you stop breathing you briefly wake up, which is not good for promoting deep, restorative sleep.

If you have sleep apnea a doctor may have you use a C-PAP machine that helps you breathe at night. Sleep apnea is associated with being overweight, and oftentimes people find relief after losing enough weight to help them breathe better. Sleep apnea requires testing to confirm, so check with your doctor if you suspect you may have it.

Anxiety and stress

A stressful day or week can keep anyone up at night, but sometimes it can lead to more chronic sleep problems. Even though everyone experiences stress, if you aren't dealing with it in a healthy way or are too overwhelmed, it can put your body into a chronic stress state.

"A heightened sympathetic nervous system can impact sleep. This means your body is in "fight or flight" mode often, and you may not be properly balancing that stress-inducing system properly," Berghoff said.

It can be helpful to try incorporating relaxing activities before bed, like reading or journaling.

"Before bed, activate your parasympathetic (rest and digest) system with breathing techniques. I recommend to breathe in through your nose for five seconds, hold for five, exhale for five, and hold for five. Repeat this two to three times to relax your body and calm your mind in preparation for healing sleep," Berghoff suggests. 

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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By the usual measures, Loretta Liu had it made. She graduated in 2018 from one of China’s top universities, rented an apartment in the glamorous city of Shenzhen, and had been hired as a visual designer at a series of high-flying companies, even as youth unemployment in China was reaching record highs.

Then, last year, she quit. She now works as a groomer at a chain pet store, for one-fifth of her previous salary. She spends hours on her feet, wearing a uniform in place of her once carefully selected outfits.

And she is delighted.

“I was tired of living like that. I didn’t feel like I was getting anything from the work,” Ms. Liu said of her previous job, where she said she had little creative freedom, often worked overtime, and felt her mental and physical health deteriorating. “So I thought, there’s no need anymore.”

Ms. Liu is part of a phenomenon attracting growing attention in China: young people trading high-pressure, prestigious white-collar jobs for manual labor. The scale of the trend is hard to measure, but widely shared social media posts have documented a tech worker becoming a grocery store cashier; an accountant peddling street sausages; a content manager delivering takeout. On Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app, the hashtag “My first experience with physical labor” has more than 28 million views.

Proponents describe the joy of predictable hours and a less competitive atmosphere. They acknowledge that the change requires sacrifices — Ms. Liu said she saved about $15,000 before quitting and has cut her spending dramatically — but say that they are worth escaping the spiritual draining of their former jobs. Ms. Liu said she much preferred the physical exhaustion of wrestling with uncooperative dogs to the mental toll of poring over design assignments she had not chosen. Many also say they are looking for light physical labor, not intensive work like construction or factory jobs.

Around the world, the coronavirus pandemic spurred people to reassess the value of their work — see the “Great Resignation” in the United States. But in China, the forces fueling the disillusionment of young people are particularly intense. Long working hours and domineering managers are common. The economy is slowing, dimming the prospect of upward mobility for a generation that has known only explosive growth.

And then there were China’s three years of “zero Covid” restrictions, which forced many to endure prolonged lockdowns, layoffs and the realization of how little control their hard work gave them over their futures.

“Emotionally, everyone probably can’t bear it anymore, because during the pandemic we saw many unfair and strange things, like being locked up,” Ms. Liu said.

The job-changing trend has revived a debate about the futility of the rat race. Two years ago, a similar call to quit work and enjoy life, dubbed “lying flat,” spread widely online. Critics accused adherents of wasting their parents’ investment and abandoning the industriousness that helped build China into a superpower. But others blamed a values system that had prioritized one, consumerist path to success, for their disenchantment.

Since then, competition for white-collar jobs has grown only more cutthroat. A record number of students are expected to graduate from universities this year, even as companies have cut back on hiring. The unemployment rate among people ages 16 to 24 was nearly 20 percent last summer, according to official statistics, with the rate higher among college graduates.

So rather than trying even harder to compete, some find the traditionally less coveted route attractive.

“The purpose of studying and accumulating knowledge is not to land an impressive job, but to have the bravery to accept more possibilities,” reads the description for one online forum, which invited its more than 39,000 members to ask how tiring setting up a street stall is, or to describe their experience waiting tables.

When Eunice Wang, 25, was offered a consulting job in Beijing last year after finishing her master’s degree, she immediately accepted. She was proud of having stood out among so much competition, and she wanted to see how much further she could go.

But China’s corporate culture is notoriously demanding, with employee deaths at internet companies prompting questions about overwork and mental health. Soon, Ms. Wang said, she fell into a vicious cycle: She developed anxiety from her heavy workload, but was too busy to decompress. She also had not seen her parents in nearly a year, because of Covid travel restrictions.

Last fall, she quit. She now works at a coffee shop in her hometown Shenyang, in northeastern China, making one-fifth of her previous salary. She is living with her parents and earning extra money through freelance illustrating, a hobby she’d given up in Beijing.

Ms. Wang, who described her family as comfortably middle class, acknowledged that she was lucky she could afford such a choice. She would return to white-collar work if her parents one day needed financial support, she said. But until then, she valued the opportunity to challenge her long-held notions of success.

“Everyone thought that conquering a project or securing a client was such a great thing, and I wanted to force myself to believe the same,” she said of her former job. But she discovered that she found enough gratification in befriending a customer, or being praised for a well-made latte. “I don’t need other people to tell me what my future will hold.”

Those who have made the change are likely still a tiny minority. Many who have posted in online forums are asking questions rather than jumping in. Some who left their higher-earning positions acknowledge that they do not know how long they will stay in their new occupations; some say they are now spending more than they earn.

Online critics have slammed the job switchers as naïve, suggesting that they are playacting at poverty or taking blue-collar jobs from less educated people who need them.

But criticism has also flowed in the opposite direction: China’s state broadcaster recently blamed the unemployment problem in part on young, educated Chinese being too unwilling to take on blue-collar work, suggesting that they were spoiled.

Social media users responded furiously, pointing out that society had long prized education above all else and, especially since China’s economic reform began, cast manual labor as something to be shaken off.

The problem was not that young people thought they were too good for that work, but that it did not offer a real chance at a better life, because of lower wages and persistent discrimination, said Nie Riming, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law. Until China offered better-paid blue-collar jobs and accorded them most respect, young people were being pragmatic, not picky.

“If society isn’t diverse, it’s impossible to expect students to make diverse choices,” he said.

Even some of the young Chinese praising their new, less prestigious jobs had not initially planned to take them.

When Yolanda Jiang, 24, resigned last summer from her architectural design job in Shenzhen, after being asked to work 30 days straight, she hoped to find another office job. It was only after three months of unsuccessful searching, her savings dwindling, that she took a job as a security guard in a university residential complex.

At first, she was embarrassed to tell her family or friends, but she grew to appreciate the role. Her 12-hour shifts, though long, were leisurely. She got off work on time. The job came with free dormitory housing. Her salary of about $870 a month was even about 20 percent higher than her take-home pay before — a symptom of how the glut of college graduates has started to flatten wages for that group.

But Ms. Jiang said her ultimate goal is still to return to an office, where she hoped to find more intellectual challenges. She had been taking advantage of the slow pace at her security job to study English, which she hoped would help her land her next role, perhaps at a foreign trade company.

“I’m not actually lying flat,” Ms. Jiang said. “I’m treating this as a time to rest, transition, learn, charge my batteries and think about the direction of my life.”

Joy Dong contributed reporting.

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A new study shows that weight loss in older adults is associated with early death and life-limiting conditions.

Weight gain, on the other hand, was not associated with mortality, according to the study published Monday in JAMA Network Open.

Medical professionals have known to be concerned when older people with health conditions lose weight but researchers have not fully understood the impact of weight change on healthy older adults, according to lead study author Dr. Monira Hussain, a clinical epidemiologist and senior research fellow in public health and preventative medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

The study looked at nearly 17,000 adults at least 70 years old in Australia and more than 2,000 adults in the United States who were at least 65 years old. Everyone who participated in the study was weighed at their annual checkup between 2010 and 2014, according to the study.

“Our study found that even a 5% weight loss increases mortality risk, particularly in older men,” Hussain said.

Weight gain in healthy older people, on the other hand, showed no association, she added.

The association was found across starting weights, meaning people who are medically classified as obese also were at an increased risk when losing weight, said Perri Halperin, the clinical nutrition director for the Mount Sinai Health System. Halperin was not involved in the study.

Other health issues

The study was able to account for health issues at the start. It excluded people who had conditions like cardiovascular disease, dementia, physical disabilities or chronic illness, Hussain said.

 “It also excluded those with recent hospitalizations, which is important because hospitalization is often followed by weight loss due to acute conditions,” Halperin said in an email.

But the study wasn’t able to distinguish if people involved lost weight intentionally or unintentionally, Hussain added.

“No questions were asked about changes in activity level and diet quality between the baseline study visit and subsequent study visits, so we do not have any information on how those factors may have impacted the results,” Haperin said.

Why weight loss can be a risk

Weight loss may be a risk factor for mortality because it can signal underlying issues.

Weight loss may be a warning sign for conditions like cancer and dementia, and it is “often linked to reduced appetite influenced by inflammation and hormones,” Hussain said.

Underlying chronic health conditions can also trigger weight loss in older adults by impacting appetite, metabolism and eating habits, Halperin said. Mobility issues and medication side effects can also affect weight.

 Changes in weight can also signal concerns in lifestyle, Halperin said.

“A major contributing factor to weight loss in older adults is social isolation. Other concerns include financial constraints and pain and discomfort,” she added.

In studies like these, remembering that correlation is not causation is important, Halperin said. Weight loss was associated with mortality, which means it’s correlated – but that doesn’t mean the weight loss caused a person’s death.

“It’s also important to say that the opposite cannot be extrapolated nor recommended – ie gaining weight would not necessarily decrease your mortality risk,” she said in an email. “As always, discuss your weight changes with your doctor or other medical professional.”

The takeaway is for older adults to monitor their weight change, Halperin said.

“If they notice a decrease in the number on the scale (weight loss) or perhaps pants that were once snug fitting looser (decreased waist circumference),” she added, “bring it up with their doctor for possible further screening or testing.”

But the advice also goes for the medical community, she said. Doctors and health care providers need to know that changes in weight require further investigation.

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How cancer cells escape detection and destruction by the immune system is not completely understood, with many working to better understand it over the last few years. This latest discovery, published in Nature Communications, has implications for the development of novel strategies for cancer treatment.

The immune system searches and destroys abnormal cells such as cancer cells. However, in some instances, cancer cells avoid being detected and killed by the immune system and are able to develop and spread more easily. Metastasis, a process when cancer cells break away from the primary tumor and form in other parts of the body, makes cancer harder to treat and results in poorer prognosis.

For this reason, the team decided to investigate early onset of metastasis which typically occurs when cancer cells are detected in lymph nodes near the primary tumor.

"Like an unethical employer that forces their employees to work continuously, cancer forces the immune cells to work overtime and become exhausted, rendering them incapable of functioning normally," said Professor Gopal Iyer, senior author of the study and Head and Senior Consultant, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, Division of Surgery and Surgical Oncology, Singapore General Hospital and NCCS.

"Using a treatment to alleviate stress on immune cells, we found that immune cells were able to kill cancer cells more effectively. Still, just like some employees who are too burnt out to work properly even with a bonus, some immune cells were seen to remain exhausted even after treatment, which is how cancer may not be detected and effectively destroyed by the immune system."

Uncovering cancer immune system suppression: A three-part investigation

As the basis of their investigation, the team profiled primary and metastatic lymph node tumors from 14 patients with head and neck squamous cell cancers, using single cell RNA sequencing. They found pre-metastatic cells within the primary tumors with the capacity to metastasize to the lymph nodes.

They also found that a substantial proportion of CD8+ cells, a key component of the immune system that searches and kills abnormal cells such as cancer, were 'exhausted' and unable to perform their protective role. This occurred when the immune cells were repeatedly exposed to cancer and unable to eliminate it.

Next, the team identified and targeted pathways that exclusively affected cancer cells, immune cells, as well as pathways that cancer cells utilize to negatively influence immune cells, and were able to prevent some cancer spread and rejuvenate immune cells. However, despite these promising results, cancer cells continued to show their ability to escape immune surveillance.

Using a mouse model, engrafted with pre-metastatic cancer cells, the team analyzed a subgroup of CD8+ T cells expressing Midkine (MDK) receptors. One group in the model was treated with anti-PD1, while the other was a control arm.

There was an increase in exhausted MDK-receptor expressing CD8+ T cells even after anti-PD1 treatment, suggesting that the MDK-signaling pathway instigates immune suppression that undoes the effects of anti-PD1 treatment. Taken together, the results implicate MDK-signaling as a pathway which pre-metastatic cancer cells use to evade CD8-mediated immune surveillance. It also explains why some patients do not respond as well as others to anti-PD1 therapy.

Finding solutions to improve treatment outcomes

"Our investigations indicate that we can use multiple pathways to effectively treat cancer—by targeting cancer cells, the immune system and using existing therapies to counter immune system evasion by cancer cells. We know we need an increased arsenal of weapons to use against cancer and have to put it together to improve treatment outcomes," said Professor Iyer, who is also head of the Division of Medical Sciences at NCCS.

Along with exploiting the targets found in their research, the team plans to identify therapies that they can combine with anti-PD1 therapy to successfully counter CD8+ T cells expressing MDK-receptors.

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In the paper, "Longevity of centenarians is reflected by the gut microbiome with youth-associated signatures," published in Nature Aging, the researchers studied the microbiomes of 1,575 individuals aged 20 up to 117, with 297 of them reported to be 100 years old or older. A Research Briefing on the study, titled "Youth-associated signatures in the gut microbiome of centenarians," has been published in the same journal issue.

Participants were evaluated in five age-related groups. Young adults (n = 314, 20–44 years), a middle-aged group (n = 277, 45–65 years), old adults (n = 386, 66–85 years), a nonagenarian group (n = 301, 90–99 years), and a centenarian cohort (n = 297, 100–117 years).

The researchers discovered that the gut microbiome signature in centenarians resembles that of young adults with an overrepresentation of Bacteroides spp., an increase in species evenness (species have a similar abundance), an enrichment of potentially beneficial species from the Bacteroidetes phylum and depletion of potential pathobionts (harmless but can become pathogenic under certain circumstances).

A smaller group of 45 centenarians was tested twice over a year and a half. Results from the group indicated that as centenarians age, the signature species evenness and low pathobionts continued to develop and were enhanced or conserved.

The researchers propose that this microbiome signature is associated with longevity, as they observed in their study, and state that this may counteract the senescence or chronic diseases that generally accompany aging, which this study could not have observed.

The researchers are currently isolating thousands of bacteria strains from the centenarians and testing their benefits on animal models in search of microorganisms that are able to extend the human lifespan. This future research should be incredibly useful to AIage Life Science, the company the researchers work for, as it already sells a probiotic product that claims to do just that.

How old?

A quick side note to anyone wondering if the oldest living person on the planet took part in this study (up to 117): It is unclear and remarkably unstated anywhere in the paper whether there is a participant who claims to be 117 years old, or if this is an arbitrary range on the part of the researchers. The way it is written implies the former and so must be explored briefly as it highlights a potential issue with interpreting the study.

The ages of the participants were derived by participant self-reporting (at some point in their lives) as birth records did not exist in Guangxi province before 1949. This places anyone over age 72 at the time of the study into the category of having an unverifiable age.

Unlike the West, there is no emphasis on staying young in Chinese culture, quite the opposite. It is possible that in a society where elders hold high status, some might seek to exaggerate when asked about their age. That or we can believe, without evidence, that the world's oldest living person wandered into a study on aging completely unnoticed.

According to the researchers, "All participants were community-dwelling and permanently lived in Guangxi province, China." The community is renowned for the high number of centenarians in the population. This is notably the same community that produced Luo Meizhen, a previous claimant to the world record for the oldest person ever to have lived, reaching the age of 127. Chinese authorities somehow confirmed her age, but it could not be verified otherwise because, again, no birth records existed in Guangxi province previous to 1949. There was also a potential math problem as she would have been 61 when giving birth to her son, which would have also made her the oldest person to have given birth at the time.

There are plenty of places in the world with people over the age of 100 that have verifiable birth records where this study could be repeated. Guangxi province in China will not be on that list for centenarians for at least another 26 years.

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The study, published Monday, April 10, in Circulation, found people with higher scores for cardiovascular health lived up to nine years longer on average than those with the lowest scores. The scores measure adherence to a set of lifestyle behaviors and health factors developed by the American Heart Association known as Life's Essential 8.

These measures encourage not using tobacco products, being physically active, eating a healthy diet, getting the right amount of sleep, managing weight and controlling blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels. A prior study found adults with greater adherence to these metrics lived longer without chronic disease than those with lower scores.

The new findings provide evidence "that you can modify your lifestyle to live longer," said lead study author Dr. Lu Qi, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Tulane University Obesity Research Center in New Orleans.

Qi and his colleagues analyzed data for 23,003 adults who participated in the 2005–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, linking it to data from the National Death Index through Dec. 31, 2019. Participants were 20 to 79 years old and were followed for a median of 7.8 years.

Using a 100-point scale, the researchers determined whether participants had low (scoring under 50), moderate (50 to 79) or high (80 or higher) cardiovascular health scores for each of the eight components. They also calculated an overall cardiovascular health score.

People with the highest overall scores had an average 8.9 more years of life expectancy at age 50 than those with the lowest scores. Among the individual components, tobacco use, sleep, physical activity and blood glucose levels had the greatest impact on life expectancy.

Compared to people who smoked the most, those who did not smoke lived 7.4 years longer. Those who slept the recommended seven to nine hours per night lived five years longer than those who slept too much or not enough. People who were most physically active lived 4.6 years longer than those who were least active. And those who scored higher for maintaining control of blood glucose lived 4.9 years longer than those with poor blood glucose control.

"What this shows us is how important an overall assessment of one's cardiovascular health is, based on these eight factors," said Nathan Wong, a professor and director of the Heart Disease Prevention Program in the division of cardiology at the University of California, Irvine. "It's not just one or two things."

About 42% of the gain in life expectancy was attributable to fewer cardiovascular-related deaths.

But that means nearly 58% of life years gained from having a better cardiovascular health profile were not related to cardiovascular disease, said Wong, who was not involved in the research. "That indicates the impact of maintaining good cardiovascular health extends to other causes of death."

Wong said the findings should motivate people to better understand their own cardiovascular health risks through annual health exams and the use of online tools, such as the AHA's My Life Check, which can provide a personalized cardiovascular health score based on Life's Essential 8. "The consumer can get a good idea of their cardiovascular health from such an assessment and what they can do to improve their cardiovascular health risk," he said.

While Life's Essential 8 includes many key metrics of cardiovascular health, Wong said, future research should look at the extent to which other factors might also play a part.

"Information on psychosocial factors such as stress and depression, as well as on social determinants of health such as access to health care, may also play an important role and modify the impact that the key cardiovascular health metrics have on cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular outcomes," he said. "As the study looked exclusively at mortality, effects on non-fatal cardiovascular outcomes should also be examined, given their substantial impact on health care utilization."

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The Romans tried it first, in 250 BC, to transport 100 elephants captured in battle from Palermo, on the island of Sicily, to Rome. According to the Greek historian Strabo, they used empty barrels and wooden planks to build a temporary bridge across the Strait of Messina, a 3.2-kilometer-wide waterway buffeted by strong currents and winds. The elephants made it to Rome, but history doesn’t record if they did so by bridge.

More than two millennia later, the idea of a bridge across the strait might be closer than ever to realization. After decades of political and technical debate, the Italian government may finally sign off on building the world’s longest suspension bridge. 

“I am cautiously optimistic,” says Giuseppe Muscolino, a professor of engineering at the University of Messina, who was part of a governmental scientific committee on the bridge until 2012. “But all will be decided in the next few months.”

The idea of connecting Sicily to what Sicilians often call “the Continent” is as symbolic as it is practical. Here, in the country’s deep south, high unemployment and poverty rates are in contrast with the relative prosperity of the north. 

“Since Italy was united in 1861, the bridge has been hailed as the savior of the rural south, to bring it in step with the industrialized north and the rest of Europe,” says Aurelio Angelini, a professor of sociology at the University of Palermo and author of The Mythical Bridge on the Strait of Messina. However, the idea has long been opposed by locals on both sides—on political, economic, and environmental grounds. But also, Angelini says, because of resistance to change. “Sicilians and Calabrians are divided, but the majority is against the bridge. Some don’t want to give up traversing by ferry, because anthropologically that is what’s always represented the connection to the Continent,” he says.

The first modern engineering study into a crossing was made in 1866. Engineers decided that a bridge wouldn’t be feasible and proposed an underwater tunnel. In 1876, then minister of public works Giuseppe Zanardelli declared: “Above or below the waves, Sicily must be united to the Continent.” But the tunnel was deemed too expensive and complex, and instead efforts were put into starting a ferry service, which began in 1896.

The bridge returned to public discourse in 1950, after the popular weekly magazine Tempo published an article titled “The World’s Longest Bridge.” Geological surveys were conducted, and then in 1969 the government launched an international competition to design a crossing. There were 143 submissions, of which—confusingly—six were declared winners, ranging from an underwater tunnel to a suspension bridge with five spans. None made it past the conceptual stage.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that a definitive design was agreed upon—a single-span suspension bridge. That’s also when the project morphed into a political issue, after Silvio Berlusconi, a media mogul turned politician—infamous for his “bunga bunga” parties and describing Barack Obama as “tanned”—made the bridge a core election pledge. When he was elected as prime minister in a center-right coalition in 2001, Berlusconi had the project approved and financed, only to have it shut down by his left-wing political opponents after he lost the following general election in 2006. 

Berlusconi was reelected as prime minister in 2008 and revived the project, which was once again approved three years later—though the price had risen from €6.16 billion ($6.72 billion) to €8.5 billion. But shortly after, amid the backdrop of an acute debt crisis in the Euro zone, Berlusconi lost his majority and resigned. His successor, Mario Monti, a respected technocrat, canceled the project a final time in 2013.

Now, the same project has been resurrected by the current government, which in mid-March approved a decree paving the way for the construction of the bridge. This time it’s championed by Matteo Salvini, deputy PM and leader of the populist League party—with support from Berlusconi, now 86, who wrote, “They won’t stop us this time” in an Instagram post on the day the decree was signed.

One of the reasons the project keeps getting revived is that there are so many people profiting from the work of planning for it, according to Nicola Chielotti, a lecturer in diplomacy and international governance at the Loughborough University in London: “They constantly spend money on it, even if it never materializes, and there are some interest groups who are happy to capture that money.” 

Salvini himself has acknowledged that “it’s less expensive to build the bridge than to not build it.”

Another issue, Chielotti adds, is that the project is a useful political pawn for a government that has so far been quiet on some key electoral promises, such as tax reform and an aggressive stance towards international finance.

But the project’s strong politicization—which has resulted mainly in support from the right and opposition from the left—might also be a case of “infrastructure populism,” according to Angelini. “The rhetoric around the bridge is oozing nationalism,”  he says, “and the idea is seen as a symbol of Italy’s grandeur, or the ability to build a bridge longer than anyone ever has.”

The current design for the crossing is a single-span suspension bridge with a length of 3,300 meters. That’s 60 percent longer than the Canakkale Bridge in Turkey, currently the world’s longest suspension bridge, which spans 2,023 meters. With pylons towering in at 380 meters (1,250 feet), the Messina Strait bridge would also be the world’s tallest by structural height, edging out the Millau Viaduct in France, which is 342 meters tall. It would be able to carry 6,000 road vehicles per hour and 200 trains per day, and since the span would be 65 meters above the water, naval traffic would be able to pass undisturbed beneath it. 

Travel time by train between the island and the mainland—currently around two hours including the ferry journey–would be cut to under 10 minutes, bringing the nearly 5 million people who live on Sicily much closer to the rest of Italy. 

Previous plans were for three spans, Muscolino says, with two pylons built in the sea, each sunk between 80 and 100 meters below sea level. These would have been unworkable, given the strong currents in the strait, and would have created a risk to shipping.

“The single span has the advantage that the pylons are built on land. The only issue could be the length, which at over 3 kilometers is certainly something new. The main problem is the wind, but the design has been perfected in the wind tunnel, and I’m confident that it can be built safely and successfully,” Muscolino says.

Construction could take between six and 10 years, according to Muscolino. But Enzo Siviero, an engineer and bridge designer who has long been a vocal supporter of the project, believes it could take even less: “As little as five years—it just depends on how much they want to spend,” he says, citing the example of the Saint George Bridge in Genoa. It was built during the pandemic in just a year and a half by working around the clock, to replace a highway viaduct that had collapsed, killing 43 people. “If they worked like that, it could be done in three and a half years.”

Siviero believes that most of the work done for the project canceled in 2013 is still valid. “It was already based on very restrictive regulations,” he says. “Some of the building technologies and materials will need to be updated, especially the cables, and there is some more work to be done on the architectural quality of the new infrastructure on land, which was not up to the standard of the bridge itself. But all of this can take just a few months. The project is highly doable.”

He agrees that a single-span suspension bridge is the only logical design choice, with wind being the main risk factor. “Wind could sway the bridge up to 4 or 5 meters,” he says. “If it gets too severe, vehicle access might need to be closed for a few hours, but that kind of event happens every five or 10 years, and it usually stops ferry traffic too,” he says.

Because suspension bridges are naturally flexible, there is less concern regarding earthquakes, even though this is a highly seismic area. In 1908, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake almost destroyed Messina and killed more than 80,000 people. However, a suspension bridge would be safe, according to Giovanni Barreca, a geologist at the University of Catania. “There is a fault line here, making Sicily and Calabria move away from each other by 3.5 millimeters a year,” he says, “but the bridge would have its pylons on the same side, so from a geological and technical standpoint, the project is doable.”

The biggest objection to the bridge might be environmental. Even though Salvini billed the project as “the greenest in the world,” environmental organizations have long opposed it.

“We’re still at a stage where there is no evidence that this is feasible economically, technically, and environmentally,” says Dante Caserta, vice president of the Italian branch of the World Wildlife Fund.

The Messina Strait also sits across two environmentally protected zones, Caserta says, which are crucial to the migratory movements of seabirds and sea mammals.

The WWF is also critical of the project’s economics. “For 30 years we’ve done conceptual elaborations that led nowhere but cost Italian taxpayers €312 million,” Caserta says, adding that the overall cost estimate of €8.5 billion euros from 2011 is destined to rise due to the increased prices of materials and inflation.

The bridge would need to be built between the two closest points in the Strait, which are not where the current ferry lines depart from. That means new roads would have to be built on both sides of the strait. Those works could make up half the overall cost of the project, according to Muscolino.

Caserta says it’s not clear that the economics support the cost. “There would not be enough traffic to pay for the project through tolls, because over 75 percent of the people who cross the strait do so without a car,” he says, “so doing all this just to shave off 15 minutes doesn’t make sense, especially because it connects two areas with severe infrastructure problems.” 

Nevertheless, Salvini has already promised that construction will start by the summer of 2024. Will that be the moment the “mythical” bridge will finally become a reality? “This government is in an advantageous position, because the project already exists on paper. However, they are still lacking an executive plan, so claims that construction will start in 2024 are dubious,” says Angelini.

“The bridge has no real connection to the social and economic interests of the country, and people and goods are already moving through other means,” he adds. “I think the chances of ever seeing it built are slim.”

The World’s Longest Suspension Bridge Is History in the Making

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SpaceX’s Starship vehicle is ready to fly, just waiting for a launch license

Robert Signer sees himself as an auto mechanic for human cells. The professor of regenerative medicine at UC San Diego is intrigued by the elusive secrets of the stem cells in our blood. These are a class of rejuvenating entities that replenish supplies of red and white blood cells and platelets. Their job is to help keep our bodies healthy, but as we age their performance dips. When they fail, it can lead to blood cancers, anemia, clotting issues, and immune problems. Signer’s job is to understand why, and he thinks the answer has to do with how they handle their garbage.

Our cells assemble around 20,000 specific proteins that allow us to do everything from digesting dairy to killing tumors. But the process isn’t perfect. When cells mess up, they wind up with what’s essentially junk: proteins with missing, extra, or incorrect amino acids in their chains. These can settle into unexpected shapes and malfunction—or worse. “They start to stick together, and they form these aggregates,” Signer says. Aggregates gum up the machine. Misfolded proteins can actually be toxic. (Researchers have linked Alzheimer’s disease to gummed-up clumps of protein.)

Most mature blood and immune cells live fast and die hard. They thrive by churning out protein after protein, and mistakes are part of the deal. But life moves slowly for a stem cell. “Even modest increases in protein production can be very catastrophic,” says Signer. If they make a mistake, waste leads to worse performance, which leads to more waste. So stem cells trying to survive for the long haul must manage their waste like pros.

A healthy stem cell keeps tight control over protein’s production and destruction, and this ability to maintain what researchers call “protein homeostasis” is what fades with age. “We think that if we can jump in and prevent this from happening, or improve the ability of stem cells to maintain this protein homeostasis, then we might be able to prevent the decline in stem cell function and the diseases that are associated with those changes,” says Signer.

Biologists have long known that stem cells run a tight ship, but not how. So writing in the journal Cell Stem Cell in March, Signer’s team reported an up-close look at what happens inside the stem cells of young and old mice. (“You can't be a good mechanic if you've never looked under the hood,” Signer says.)

What they learned was surprising. Biologists had previously assumed that stem cells stay tidy by breaking down waste as fast as it arises, reducing junk proteins into amino acid fodder they can reuse immediately. But Signer’s group found that blood's stem cells actually squirrel away their misfolded waste and only recycle it when they need it. Scientists had seen this behavior before, but they thought that cells did it in rare cases, when under extreme stress. Signer now believes that healthy stem cells do this as a baseline—it’s a way of pacing themselves in order to maintain control. The mouse data showed that this sophisticated process breaks down with age.

This revelation offers insight into why we age and what critical cellular machinery we must keep running to combat age-related diseases, according to Maria Carolina Florian, a stem cell biologist at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies who was not involved in the work. To Florian, it suggests the possibility of creating drugs that can maintain this control for stem cells. It looks particularly important, she says, “because of this possibility to be targeted—to be able to reverse aging.”

Signer’s lab studied blood stem cells taken from mouse bone marrow. Doctoral researcher Bernadette Chua first extracted marrow from young mice (ages 6 to 12 weeks) and isolated several types of cells—stem cells as well as blood and immune cells—to observe them during an early stage of development. Then, using fluorescent molecules that stick to specific components of the cell, she snooped on each to see how it was managing its trash.

Cells use proteasomes, protein complexes containing enzymes that immediately chew up their misfolded proteins. But Signer’s lab had previously found that, like neural stem cells, blood stem cells in young mice don’t rely on proteasomes very much. In this new experiment, Chua and Signer found that instead of breaking down misfolded proteins right away, stem cells swept them out of the way, collecting them into piles, like mini junk yards. Later, they disintegrated them with a different protein complex called an aggresome. “We believe that by storing these misfolded proteins in one place, they're basically holding onto those resources for when they need them,” Signer says. Collecting piles of waste may let cells control the pace of their recycling and, as a result, avoid living too fast or too slow.

Yet when Chua next examined marrow from 2-year-old mice, she found a shocking breakdown in this waste management system. Older mice lost their ability to form aggresomes almost entirely— at least 70 percent of the stem cells in young mice do it, but only 5 percent in old mice. Instead, old mice swapped to using more proteasomes, a move Signer likens to slapping a spare tire onto an aging car. “That was definitely a surprise,” Signer says.

This change in waste control machinery is bad news for stem cells. Mice that were genetically engineered to not cache their trash had four times fewer surviving stem cells in their bone marrow in old age. It suggests that those cells are aging, and expiring, faster than they were before.

This distinction between enzymes, wonky as it sounds, could prove crucial for efforts to harness stem cells as anti-aging therapies because it runs counter to previous assumptions. “Let's say that you want to engineer a stem cell for regenerative medicine,” says Dan Jarosz, a systems biologist from Stanford University who was not involved in the work. “Before reading this, I might have thought that a really good thing to do would be to amp up the proteasome activity.”

The idea that young, healthy stem cells control the pace of their lives by collecting debris into a “storage center,” instead of consuming it immediately, “is very cool,” he continues. “This suggests that we need a much more nuanced understanding of how protein quality control functions in aging.”

Why older stem cells change their behavior remains an open question. Florian suspects it has something to do with how cells change shape as they age. A healthy cell is typically lopsided, as its contents are sectioned into distinct compartments—this asymmetric shape is referred to as being “polarized.” But stem cells lose their polarity with age, and this affects their ability to shuttle waste to their storage center.

Florian’s lab is developing drugs that maintain cell polarization. Last year, she reported rejuvenating mouse stem cells with a treatment that tamps down the activity of an overactive enzyme that messes with cell polarity. When transplanted into immunocompromised mice, the stem cell treatment extended their median lifespans by over 12 weeks, or 10 percent. “It has a very profound effect on the blood,” she says. “Basically, you rejuvenate the blood of the mice, and they leave healthier and longer.” (Florian serves on the advisory board for rejuvenation start-up Mogling Bio.)

For his part, Signer imagines a drug that maintains the equipment that stem cells use to compost malformed proteins—he doesn’t yet know what that would be, but the new experiment gives researchers an idea of where to look. Figuring out that stem cells’ trash collection system falls apart as the cells age is important, he says, because pinpointing what goes wrong with age gives us an idea of how to target future fixes.

Signer and Florian admit that any drug meant to keep cells young and active carries some cancer risk. Older cells activate genes that prevent tumors and suppress stem cells. It’s possible that helping stem cells survive in old age will help cancer cells do the same.

“But I also think that there is an alternative possibility happening in parallel,” Signer says. Maybe helping stem cells clear their trash slowly and steadily prevents the cascade of effects that lead to problems like cancer, he says: “If we can prevent some of those changes, we might be able to prevent multiple types of age-related diseases.”

Stem Cell ‘Junk Yards’ Reveal a New Clue About Aging

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In a series of four experiments led by the University of Amsterdam, researchers showed 534 people letters of the Western alphabet in actual and mirrored orientations.

After some participants were shown an interference slide with random letters designed to scramble the original memory, all participants were asked to recall a target letter from the first slide.

Half a second after viewing the first slide, almost 20 percent of people had formed an illusory memory of the target letter; this increased to 30 percent after 3 seconds.

The human brain alters memories according to what it expects to see. Because people included in the study were so familiar with the Western alphabet, their brains expected to see the letters in their actual orientation.

When letters appeared mirrored (Ɔ instead of C), people were more likely to remember the pseudo-letter as a real letter, even after only milliseconds had passed.

"It seems that short-term memory is not always an accurate representation of what was just perceived," the researchers write. "Instead, memory is shaped by what we expected to see, right from the formation of the first memory trace."

Study participants were shown six or eight letters on a screen. They were then shown a 'memory display' with a box marking out the location of the target letter. Then there was an interference condition containing random letters, which was designed to scramble the original memory. At the end, they were asked to recall which letter was in the target region in the first slide and whether it was a pseudo-letter. (Otten et al., PLOS One, 2023)

The researchers showed these were false memories rather than wrong guesses by asking the participants how confident they were in their memories on a score of one to four.

"Participants consistently report, with high confidence, that they have seen the real counterpart of a pseudo-letter target," the researchers write.

People were more likely to switch a pseudo-letter for a real letter than the other way around, suggesting that memory illusions are mediated by world knowledge of how things usually look.

The researchers differentiated these false memories from errors in initial perception by taking measurements at two time points. The only opportunity was during the 0.25 seconds in which the letters were flashed.

If perception errors were driving the mistakes, the error rate would be the same 500 milliseconds and 3 seconds later. When the error rate increased over time, this suggested that false memories were forming.

People were more likely to have false memories of pseudo-letter targets than real letter targets, and the error rate increased with time and memory interference.

(Otten et al., PLOS One, 2023)

We know from experiments led by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and others that false long-term memories can be easily generated.

For instance, adults can be persuaded to recall a vivid but fake memory of getting lost in a shopping center and crying as a child. In another study, people generated false, rich memories of committing crimes such as theft or assault.

Fake long-term memories are thought to be driven by the 'fuzzy trace theory', which states that memory comes from two parts: a verbatim part, which is what happened in real life, and a gist part, where the person interprets the meaning of the event based on semantic analysis.

A previous study showed that when people were given a picture of a face and a profession, they were more likely to link criminal labels such as 'drug dealer' to faces with Black features, indicating that internal biases were shaping memories.

In another study, people were given a list of three or four interrelated words (such as nap, doze, bed, and awake). When given a second list, participants were more likely to remember semantically related words not on the original list, such as sleep.

Fuzzy trace theory may also be driving short-term memory illusions but "cannot entirely explain the current findings", the researchers write.

These experiments suggest that our verbatim memory input is immediately integrated with previous experiences and expectations.

This paper was published in PLOS One.

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Loyalty may be a virtue, but it can be a vulnerability, too.

Although managers tend to value employees perceived as loyal, for example, a new study shows they also tend to exploit loyal workers when assigning unpaid work or extra tasks.

These managers are not necessarily nefarious, the researchers note. Some may be oblivious, failing to grasp the ethical results of their decisions.

Yet, that's little comfort for dedicated workers, left with excessive workloads as the apparent price of their loyalty.

"Companies want loyal workers, and there is a ton of research showing that loyal workers provide all sorts of positive benefits to companies," says lead author Matthew Stanley, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in the US.

"But it seems like managers are apt to target them for exploitative practices," he states.

Stanley and his colleagues recruited close to 1,400 managers on the internet to participate in the study, in which the managers were presented with various scenarios starring a fictional 29-year-old employee named John.

John works for a company that's trying to cut costs, the managers were told. To that end, the managers rated their willingness to assign John extra hours and duties without extra pay.

They consistently gave John more work if he had a reputation for loyalty, the study found, regardless of how else researchers framed the scenario.

After managers read recommendation letters about John, those highlighting his loyalty apparently raised their willingness to assign him unpaid labor, the researchers found.

Different letters praising John for other positive traits, like honesty or fairness, didn't have the same effect, suggesting it was specifically loyalty that made managers more comfortable with giving the work to him.

Furthermore, John accepting that work could further reinforce managers' treatment of him, the study found. When managers read descriptions of John as open to extra hours and duties, they rated him as more loyal than alternate Johns with reputations for declining optional extra work.

"It's a vicious cycle," Stanley says. "Loyal workers tend to get picked out for exploitation. And then when they do something that's exploitative, they end up getting a boost in their reputation as a loyal worker, making them more likely to get picked out in the future."

Some cases of exploitation are more obvious than others, the researchers acknowledge, and it could be argued that optional work isn't exploitative if managers merely ask workers to do it, rather than demanding it.

But given the power dynamic between employees and managers, who may control access to vital resources like pay or health insurance for their workers, previous research suggests workers often feel like they can't safely decline requests to take on extra work without pay.

For their part, managers seem to perceive this as normal, the study found, with extra work naturally going to more loyal employees as a function of their loyalty.

Some of this could be less malevolent than it sounds, the researchers note. While it wouldn't excuse mistreatment, managers' tendency to exploit loyal workers could be at least partly a result of "ethical blindness," or ignorance about the unfairness of their behavior.

"Most people want to be good," Stanley says. "Yet they transgress with surprising frequency in their everyday lives. A lot of it is due to ethical blindness, where people don't see how what they're doing is inconsistent with whatever principles or values they tend to profess."

In that case, one way to reduce exploitation might be to raise awareness of this phenomenon among managers, the researchers suggest, to help them anticipate their ethical blind spots.

The researchers also caution that loyalty isn't necessarily negative, and workers shouldn't always avoid going beyond the call of duty.

"I don't want to suggest that the take-away of the paper is to not be loyal to anybody because it just leads to disaster," Stanley says.

"We value people who are loyal. We think about them in positive terms. They get awarded often. It's not just the negative side. It's really tricky and complex."

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

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If you saw a similar streak in one of your photos, you'd probably take a few moments to clean off the lens. But the streak, in this case, was in an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, which is not affected by the schmutz that daily life leaves on Earth-bound hardware. So, a team of researchers decided to figure out what the long, thin smear might represent.

 

They're still not certain, but the best explanation appears to be the wake left behind by a supermassive black hole that's been shot free of the galaxy that used to host it. Its liberation likely resulted from two additional supermassive black holes, all brought together by a merger of galaxies. If this is right, it'll be the first instance of this behavior we've ever seen.

What is that?

Back in the days of film cameras, when it was sometimes possible to go months or even years between taking a photo and getting it developed, it wasn't unusual to pick up your newly developed snapshots and find yourself wondering what it was you had taken a picture of. You can almost hear echoes of those days in astronomers' description of seeing the smear across one of Hubble's images: "an almost-straight, thin streak was readily apparent in a visual assessment of the data quality."

 

A close look revealed that the streak extended toward a somewhat odd-looking galaxy. "Not having encountered something quite like this before in our own images or in the literature, we decided to include the feature in the observing plan for a scheduled Keck [telescope] run."

 

Based on the redshift of light from the object, both it and the galaxy are roughly the same distance from Earth, suggesting that the two are related. The researchers estimate that the streak is about 200,000 light-years long. While the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies can emit jets of material that long (and even longer), those jets tend to spread out as they get further from the galaxy. In this case, the streak remained thin throughout its entire length.

 

A look at the emission of the stars present in the streak suggests that, in general, the stars get younger as you move down the streak away from the galaxy. Putting everything together, it appears that the streak started forming about 40 million years ago, and its tip has been progressively moving away from the galaxy at about 1,600 kilometers a second since.

Old theories

One possible explanation for that movement is that the galaxy ejected a supermassive black hole. This is inevitable due to two observations: Almost all galaxies seem to have a supermassive black hole at their core, and most galaxies are built by multiple mergers. As a result, the supermassive black holes of the pre-merger galaxies will eventually run into each other. There are two ways this can lead to an ejection. One is that if two of these supermassive black holes undergo a merger where the production of gravitational energy is uneven, that can impart a directional kick to the post-merger product.

 

An alternative road to ejection occurs if one or more galaxy mergers happen in relatively quick (in astronomical terms) succession, it's possible that not all of their central black holes will have merged yet. In these cases, you can potentially have three or more of these giants looping around each other, allowing gravitational interactions to throw one out.

 

Black hole is soaring between galaxies, leaving stars in its wake

We readily sign up for that gym membership and commit to extra walks with the dog, believing if we exercise enough, the number on the scales will drop.

Perhaps also unsurprisingly, many of us are disheartened when we follow this routine for months and don't see any change on the scales.

This is why I'm frequently asked: Does exercise help you lose weight, or is it just diet?

Like all things related to weight loss, the short answer is: It's complicated.

What does the research say about exercise and weight?

There have been many studies over the past 70 years examining the role exercise plays in weight management. Recent research on the topic has predominantly found exercise alone has minimal impact on weight loss.

This includes a meta study examining all the relevant studies in the area, which found those who used exercise alone lost minimal weight compared with those who exercised and also reduced their energy intake.

A 2018 study found substantial weight loss was unlikely when participants followed the minimum governing guidelines for physical activity.

This prescribes 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity each week.

The overall volume of exercise had to be significantly above the minimum recommended levels in order to achieve significant weight loss without dieting.

Studies show you need to be doing about 60 minutes of moderate activity per day to achieve significant weight loss.

But before you cancel that gym membership, we also need to consider the substantial body of research confirming it's vital to focus on exercise as part of any weight loss program.

Exercise helps keep weight off long term

Exercise will improve your body composition and prevent muscle decline. Our metabolic rate – how much energy we burn at rest – is determined by how much muscle and fat we have, and muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more kilojoules.

Relying on diet alone to lose weight will reduce muscle along with body fat, slowing your metabolism. So it's essential to make sure you've incorporated sufficient and appropriate exercise into your weight-loss plan to hold onto your muscle mass stores.

Incorporating strength-building resistance training is also important. This doesn't mean you need to be in the gym every day. Just two days per week and in the comfort of your own home is perfectly fine.

Research confirms moderate-volume resistance training (three sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) is just as effective as high-volume resistance training (five sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) for maintaining lean mass and muscle when you're following a diet incorporating moderate calorie restriction.

Studies also show physical activity and exercise have a substantial effect in preventing weight regain after weight loss.

A longer-term study found those sustaining high exercise levels (expending more than 10,500 kilojoules or 2,500 calories each week, for example by walking 75 minutes per day) maintained a significantly larger weight loss than participants exercising less.

Exercise has overall health benefits

Before you start to see the results of exercise on the scales, you're almost guaranteed to experience the many physical and mental health benefits that come with exercise.

Even low levels of exercise reduce your chance of developing diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Research shows exercise is just as important as weight loss for improving health because most diabetes and heart disease risk markers associated with obesity can be improved with exercise, even if you don't lose weight.

A physically active person with obesity can be considered metabolically healthy if they maintain good blood pressure, cholesterol, and insulin levels. There is good evidence to show the risk of early death associated with obesity is largely reduced or eliminated by moderate-to-high levels of fitness.

Alongside improving your health, regular exercise has other physical benefits, such as improving strength and mobility. It also reduces stress levels, and even low levels of exercise will prompt a decrease in depressive symptoms, improve mood and promote better sleep.

This, in turn, will help you manage your diet better, with the boost to your mood helping you choose healthier foods and prevent impulsive food choices.

The bottom line?

Exercise will help you lose weight and prevent you putting on weight again – it's just that it won't help you achieve your weight loss goals in isolation.

Exercise is one of the key pillars of long-term weight management. It plays an essential role in weight loss and maintenance, as do our diet and sleep choices.

To encourage more exercise, take up something you enjoy. Be sure to include variety, as always doing the same daily routine is a surefire way to get bored and give up.

Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney

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

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WHEN METEOROLOGIST JOHN Haynes moved to Washington, DC, 20 years ago, he could stand on the rooftop of NASA headquarters and see airborne traces of the nearby interstate highway—there was that much pollution. “There was a cloud of smog that just followed the freeway,” he says, “all the way out into Virginia.” 

A decade later, NASA started planting the seeds of a global effort to monitor urban air quality and its effects on health. Those seeds are now beginning to sprout: Just after midnight, the agency launched its first instrument capable of hovering over North America to spy on urban pollution. This summer, the team will enhance that data with measurements taken by aircraft. NASA also just announced its first satellite mission that will be done in partnership with health experts to reveal the relationship between specific health conditions and the toxic airborne particles lingering above some of the world’s largest cities. 

Overall, they want to create a granular portrait of what exactly is in the sky, and how it got there—one that can’t be detailed with ground-based pollution monitors alone. Seventy-nine percent of US counties lack an Environmental Protection Agency monitor on the ground, so the EPA’s information isn’t representative of the air most Americans are breathing. Data from other parts of the world is even more sparse.

This is not NASA’s first foray into environmental surveillance. The agency has been measuring the ozone layer—the topmost part of the atmosphere—for decades, and monitoring closer to the Earth since the 1990s by flying small aircraft over the ocean, rainforests, and parts of Asia and Africa. “That was sort of what we call the exploratory days,” says Earth scientist Barry Lefer, manager of NASA’s Tropospheric Composition Program, which focuses on the chemical makeup of pollutants inhabiting the atmosphere underneath the ozone layer. “But,” he continues, “the transition to urban air quality is relatively new.” 

Let’s face it: There are challenges to monitoring emissions over anything as small as a city—much less a neighborhood—from a space as gigantic as the sky. The agency’s first satellite dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, launched in 2014 and is still active. Its successor, OCO-3, is now mounted on the International Space Station. The two have produced detailed area maps of carbon emissions over the Los Angeles basin and from Europe’s largest power plant.

But while OCO-3 passes over nearly every city on Earth, its information is still limited because it lacks continuous monitoring of any location over long periods.

Enter Tempo, short for Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, the NASA air quality mission that launched early this morning. Unlike previous Earth-observing satellites, it will be the first instrument locked in a geostationary orbit—meaning it’ll rotate at the same speed and direction as the planet so it can loiter over a single part of the globe. For the first time, NASA will be able to make hourly daytime observations of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, formaldehyde, and more across North America, including the continental United States, the Caribbean islands, and most of Canada and Mexico. “We’re going to get from sunrise to sunset,” Lefer says, with data taken frequently enough to see spikes during rush hour traffic.

Tempo will also be able to track variations in pollution at the neighborhood scale. Lefer foresees this being especially useful for exposing environmental injustice, since lower-income and racially segregated areas are more likely to be near emissions sources, like ports and refineries. “And satellite data can show that,” he says. Weather forecasting will benefit, too: With information constantly collected across greater North America, agencies will be able to more accurately infer future conditions, particularly in places where data currently exists for only a certain time of day. 

But this mission has its limits: Satellites only look down, just as remote-sensing ground monitors only look up. A lot gets missed that way, like details about which pollutants are at different altitudes, says chemist Gregory Frost of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s why this summer NASA will partner with NOAA, the National Science Foundation, and several other institutions to fill in the gaps between space and the ground. Instruments aboard NASA’s DC-8, Gulfstream III and V, and other jets will characterize trace gases and aerosols above urban areas like New York City, Los Angeles, and DC, as well as coastal regions. 

These readings will calibrate Tempo’s space data and add to it in areas that lack good satellite or ground coverage. Combine all of this data with information from EPA monitors and weather models, and scientists will soon be able to analyze the atmosphere from multiple points of view. “Once we do that,” Frost says, “it’s going to be like having an air pollution monitor everywhere.”

Scientists are particularly interested in chasing pollutants called PM 2.5, or particles with a diameter less than 2.5 micrometers. Aerosols like these make up less than 1 percent of the atmosphere. That’s not a lot, Frost says, but all air quality problems have to do with these trace components. They harm crops, worsen visibility, and are small enough to lodge themselves into people’s lungs, which can lead to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Tinier particles—less than one micrometer across—can even get into the bloodstream. 

“Airborne particulate matter is considered to be the top environmental health risk worldwide,” says David Diner, a planetary scientist at NASA. But which types of PM 2.5 are most harmful to humans is still mostly a mystery. “There’s always this question about whether our bodies are more sensitive to the size of these particles or their chemical composition,” he says.

To find out, Diner is heading up NASA’s first collaboration with major health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the Italian Space Agency, the groups are aiming to launch an observatory next year called MAIA, or Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols, which will sample the air over 11 of the planet’s most populous metropolitan areas, including Boston, Johannesburg, and Tel Aviv. The imager will measure sunlight scattering off of aerosols to learn about their sizes and chemical makeup. That data will be passed off to epidemiologists, who will combine it with information from ground-based monitors and compare it against public health records to figure out what sizes and mixtures of particles correlate with specific health problems, like emphysema, pregnancy complications, and premature death. 

Working with health experts is key, Diner says, because they’re trained to obtain and properly analyze birth, death, and hospitalization records while respecting patient privacy. Once the mission team understands which toxins, or blends of them, are most harmful, and can track down their sources, “then perhaps society can more effectively regulate the particles that have the most detrimental impacts on human health,” he says. 

NASA’s not the only agency tracking pollution from the skies. Tempo’s predecessor is a South Korean instrument called the Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer, or GEMS, which has been observing pollution patterns over greater Asia since 2020. Within the next few years, the European Space Agency will launch the Copernicus Sentinel-4 satellite to do the same over Europe and North Africa. This satellite constellation will provide the first comprehensive view of air quality over the entire northern hemisphere, letting scientists track how pollution travels over great distances, when it leaves the range of one spacecraft and pops up in another. 

No such network is planned for the southern hemisphere—yet. But, Lefer says, research is underway with NOAA to convert measurements from existing satellites into viable PM 2.5 readings for parts of the planet that lack ground-based monitors. Haynes leads NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applications program and its Applied Remote Sensing Training Program, which runs free workshops to teach the public how to use NASA data for issues related to air quality, fire risk, and conservation. Both NASA scientists envision a future with international teams running satellites, aircraft, and ground-sensing instruments while working with epidemiologists, socioeconomic experts, policymakers, and citizen scientists. “All of these are coming together to really make a golden age of using Earth observations for understanding air quality and health,” Haynes says. 

Satellite data is already showing that the atmosphere is clearing up. Sulfur levels are so low, Haynes says, that they’re getting hard to measure from space. Nitrogen dioxide has decreased 50 percent in some areas. And Haynes can’t see the smog over the interstate anymore: “Air quality in the United States is cleaner now than at any time in the modern industrial age,” he says. “We can have a clean environment, and also a healthy economy and healthy population—all at the same time.” 

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High above the Peruvian Amazon, the forests beam with gold. While the glittering pits might look pretty from low-Earth orbit, the image actually highlights a worrying problem back home on planet Earth.

An astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of gold prospecting pits while drifting above eastern Peru on Christmas Eve 2020. Perfectly hit by the Sun’s beams, the gold-rich pits beam back with a radiant reflection. 

As explained by NASA Earth Observatory, the prospecting pits consist of hundreds of tightly packed water-filled basins surrounded by de-vegetated areas of mud. 

The worm-like interwoven channels on the left side of the image are the Inambari River and the Tambopata National Reserve, which is legally protected from mining, is also visible just below the clouds in the top right of the photo. Although the photograph has been lightly edited to improve contrast, it was simply taken with a commercially available Nikon D5 digital camera. 

A zoomed-in version of the image above with labeled locations. Image credit: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit/NASA Johnson Space Center

Gold mining is big business in Peru, the sixth-largest producer of the precious metal in the world. Unfortunately, some of this extraction is fueled by illegal mining, involving destructive processes that devastate the local environment and Amazonian communities. 

In recent years, there have been ongoing troubles in Peru’s Madre de Dios where a modern-day gold rush has seen makeshift cities pop up and recklessly exploit the environment for metals. Along with extensive deforestation – an area roughly the size of New York City, by some counts – it’s also introduced floods of polluted water in the surrounding ecosystem. 

One of the main concerns is mercury and its highly toxic cousin methylmercury. Gold miners sometimes use mercury to separate their gold ore from soil and sediments, often without adequate safety precautions. The mercury, itself a potent neurotoxin, seeps into ponds and can then be converted into the super-toxic chemical methylmercury through microbial processes.

This has become a growing problem in Peru and other parts of South America. On top of dealing with mercury poisoning and the environmental impact of illegal gold mining, Amazonian communities have also been subject to violence from gold mining encroaching on their land. 

In the early 1990s, for example, a group of miners entered the village of Haximú in Brazil and massacred 16 Yanomami people, including a baby, eventually resulting in five miners being found guilty of genocide. More recently in 2020, two Yanomami people were reportedly killed after a confrontation with gold miners in northern Brazil.

As of 2023, Brazil’s new government has taken steps to crack down on illegal gold mining in the Amazon rainforest, but the problem continues to linger across South America.

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A seemingly simple but extremely puzzling mirror experiment has gone viral on TikTok and other video platforms. Place a sheet of paper on a mirror and place an object behind it. As you move, the object will appear in the mirror even though it is separated from the mirror by the piece of paper. TikTok user Baileycaviness12 is heard asking “How does the mirror know that is there?” And that’s just a fantastic excuse to talk about how weird mirrors are.

Despite being a common object, mirrors easily break our brains. The first straightforward mistake that we automatically make is assuming that mirrors flip left and right. We do that because we are a species that has evolved by looking at others. When we raise our right hand in the mirror, the mirrorverse counterpart appears to be lifting the left – but it's not really its left, it’s still the hand on the same side.

A mirror does not actually flip things around. Don’t believe what your brain suggests when you look at it. In reality, a mirror turns things inside out. Consider gloves that are designed specifically for each hand. If you turn them inside out, a left-hand glove would fit the right hand and vice versa. That’s what the mirror is doing: creating an inside-out version of the world.

So how is this inside-out flip work key to answering the mystery of “How does the mirror knows that is there?” 

Imagine that when you look at an object straight lines go from your eyes to every bit of that object you can see. If you were looking at yourself, you would see those rays just bouncing back at you. It would be like wearing a perfect mask of your face and then taking it off and pushing it outward. Those are the same inside-out features.

But for the object behind the paper, the magic happens when you move, because you can see the law of reflection in clearer action. 

This is how the apparent trick works. Image Credit: (C) IFLScience.

The light is still moving in a straight light but once it encounters the mirror it's reflected towards our eyes with the same angle. This will create a virtual image inside the mirror. As long as there is a path between the object and our eyes that hits the mirror with the same angle, then the image of that object will appear “inside" the mirror.

Mirrors are fascinating objects and even though they are “simple” employ some pretty hardcore science.

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For skiers it has been an epic winter in California, with more than 16 metres of snow recorded at the Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada. But for many people the excessively stormy winter has brought misery, submerging homes in snow, and causing widespread flooding and landslides across the state. The source of this string of powerful storms has been an “atmospheric river”, with clouds carrying as much moisture as the Mississippi.

Atmospheric rivers are nothing new, but they do appear to be growing more intense and frequent, driven by warmer temperatures and faster evaporation from the world’s oceans. Now scientists have devised an intensity scale for atmospheric rivers, enabling forecasters to rank the severity and identify extremes. The scale, described in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, mirrors the hurricane scale and runs from AR-1 to AR-5, with AR-5 being the most intense.

The storms that hit California this winter reached AR-4, while the atmospheric river responsible for Pakistan’s devastating floods in 2022 was AR-5. The scale enables meteorologists to compare atmospheric river events around the world, map out the most probable locations and help people better prepare. Strong El Niño years are more likely to have intense atmospheric rivers, and current forecasts indicate an El Niño is likely to develop by the end of this year.

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Thieves reportedly(Opens in a new window) stole $500,000 worth of iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches from a Washington Apple Store after cutting through the bathroom wall of a neighboring espresso machine store to gain entry to the back room.

As local news outlet KOMO News reports, the burglars made away with more than 400 different Apple products after breaking into the closed Alderwood Mall store at around 7 p.m. on April 2.

Seattle Coffee Gear Regional Manager Eric Marks was quoted in KOMO News as saying: “Our front door was locked. They pried our front door open. [It was a] 24 by 18 hole cut in the wall into what appears to be the back room of the Apple Store. I’m surprised we were the conduit for them to get to the Apple Store. I had no idea we were so close or adjacent to them.”

According to 9to5Mac(Opens in a new window), the thieves carried their Apple haul through the hole they had cut before walking out of the espresso store.

Maren McKay, communications manager of Lynnwood Police, which is investigating the break-in, told KOMO News the operation was “well-organized,” and added that “no fingerprints” were left behind. Footage of the break-in has not been shared with media outlets due to the ongoing investigation.

Brookfield Properties, the owners of the Alderwood Mall store, told KOMO News that they had a robust security system and the break-in was an isolated incident.

Seattle Coffee Gear said they had replaced their locks and the break-in, which left a significant hole in the wall, and cost them $1,800 in damages.

As 9to5Mac notes, if resold, any potential buyer of the stolen Apple products will not be able to activate their devices because Apple can remotely block the serial numbers and IMEI numbers for stolen iPhones, iPads, and smartwatches.

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The Unbeatable Game

We know what you're thinking: isn't roulette a game of chance? To most people, sure, but apparently not to everyone.

According to Bloomberg, there's a man out there who's beaten the game, no computer required — and all he says it took was a little practice. Easy!

That man's name is Niko Tosa, a Croatian math and physics savant who travels the world, sometimes with fake documents and wearing some type of disguise, to win the game that even Stephen Hawking once said is pretty much impossible to beat.

"It is practically impossible to predict the number that will come up," Hawking once wrote about the game, as noted in the Bloomberg profile of Tosa. "Otherwise physicists would make a fortune at casinos."

Beating roulette and Stephen Hawking? Wildly impressive.

Practice Makes Perfect

Tosa — that's a pseudonym — is so good at winning, in fact, that the London police launched a full-scale against him and two colleagues back in 2004, under the theory that they'd been using some type of computerized device to cheat. They weren't, but the investigation did reveal that, under perfect conditions, the game can be bested, as long as the wheel itself is ideal.

"Those conditions are, in effect, imperfections of one sort or another," explains Bloomberg writer Kit Chellel. "On a perfect wheel, the ball would always fall in a random way. But over time, wheels develop flaws, which turn into patterns. A wheel that's even marginally tilted could develop... a 'drop zone.' When the tilt forces the ball to climb a slope, the ball decelerates and falls from the outer rim at the same spot on almost every spin.

A similar thing can happen on equipment worn from repeated use, or if a croupier's hand lotion has left residue, or for a dizzying number of other reasons."

"A drop zone is the Achilles' heel of roulette," he continues. "That morsel of predictability is enough for software to overcome the random skidding and bouncing that happens after the drop."

In other words: no computer needed. Just practice, the perfect wheel, and Tosa's computer-like brain.

"You can call me Nikola Tesla," Tosa told Chellel, when, after the reporter had tracked him down in Croatia, he was asked if he'd ever used some kind of computing machine to beat the unbeatable game, "if I have such a device!"

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