This cool new approach to refrigeration could replace harmful chemicals

If anyone accuses you of “living in a bubble” there is an astronomically correct, if not always convincing, response: we all do. The Sun sits inside what is known as the Local Bubble, a space within the Milky Way galaxy some 1,000 light-years across in which interstellar material is scarce. It can be hard to map something from the inside, but that’s what astronomers have tried to do with the Local Bubble’s magnetic fields.

It's easy to imagine that anything distinctive about our Solar System’s location must be connected to our apparent uniqueness. However, superbubbles like our own are not particularly rare; indeed, the galaxy has enough of them to prompt comparisons with Swiss cheese. They are left behind by supernova explosions that push gas and dust out of surrounding regions. The material swept out by the explosion concentrates on the bubble’s surface – still so thin it would be considered a vacuum by Earthly standards, but dense enough to trigger star formation.

Nevertheless, our knowledge of superbubbles in general and the Local Bubble, in particular, is almost as thin as the material inside. The magnetic mapping of the Local Bubble, presented at the American Astronomical Society’s 241st meeting, is an attempt to address that.

"Putting together this 3D map of the Local Bubble will help us examine superbubbles in new ways," said Theo O’Neill, of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, in a statement. Unusually, O’Neill got to lead the project while still an undergraduate at the University of Virginia.

"By learning more about the exact mechanics that drive the Local Bubble, in which the Sun lives today, we can learn more about the evolution and dynamics of superbubbles in general,” O’Neill added.

Magnetic fields are known to play a powerful role in galactic structures. However, the enormous but weak fields that stretch over thousands of light-years have proven difficult to map. “Today’s computer simulations and all-sky surveys may just finally be good enough to start really incorporating magnetic fields into our broader picture of how the universe works, from the motions of tiny dust grains on up to the dynamics of galaxy clusters,” said Harvard's Professor Alyssa Goodman, who mentored O’Neill on the work.

We can’t see magnetic fields in space directly; instead, their presence is established via the polarization of light. The team were able to infer these fields by using the movements of stars provided by the Gaia observatory and the location of galactic dust revealed by the Planck Space Telescope.

Nevertheless, to produce their 3D map the team had to make the – currently untestable – assumptions that both the dust and the magnetic fields that together produce the polarization are concentrated on the bubble’s expanding surface. Goodman expressed the hope that future technology will allow astronomers to confirm or refute these assumptions.

Meanwhile, "With this map, we can really start to probe the influences of magnetic fields on star formation in superbubbles," Goodman said. "And for that matter, get a better grasp on how these fields influence numerous other cosmic phenomena." 

Goodman regards the slow contribution of weak magnetic fields to star formation by influencing the movement of gas to have been neglected, and hopes to change this.

The work has yet to be published, but more information about the map can be found here. 

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Solar flares are intense explosions of energy that can disrupt radio communications, damage power grids, and affect navigation signals. They also pose a threat to spacecraft and astronauts.

An X1.9 class solar flare flashes on the left edge of the Sun on January 9, 2023. This video was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and shows a blend of light from the 171, 131 and 304 angstrom wavelengths. Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO

This flare is classified as an X1.9 flare.  It is categorized as an X-class flare, which is the most powerful class of solar flares. The number following the “X” indicates the relative strength of the flare, with larger numbers indicating stronger flares. An X1.9 flare is therefore a relatively strong flare, but less intense than an X2.0 or higher. These flares can cause disruptions to radio communications and power grids on Earth, and can also be potentially dangerous for spacecraft and astronauts.

For more details on how such space weather may affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and alerts. NASA works as a research arm of the nation’s space weather effort. NASA observes the Sun and our space environment constantly with a fleet of spacecraft that study everything from the Sun’s activity to the solar atmosphere, and to the particles and magnetic fields in the space surrounding Earth.

They say history repeats, but usually they don’t mean it quite this literally. The global average surface temperature in 2021 ended up ranking fifth warmest or sixth warmest, depending on the dataset. We now have the tally for 2022—and it’s the new fifth or sixth warmest, depending on the dataset.

Each year in mid-January, various centers that manage global temperature datasets release their results for the previous year. Because each group pulls from a slightly different collection of weather stations and uses a slightly different calculation process, they don’t get exactly the same numbers. The big picture is identical, but since just 0.01°C can separate years in the ranking, those small differences can alter the order.

In the European Copernicus ECMWF dataset and the Berkeley Earth dataset, 2022 is the fifth warmest in the global instrumental record going back to the mid-to-late 1800s. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and UK Met Office datasets pin it at No. 6, just below 2015 instead of just above it. NASA’s dataset has it tied with 2015 for fifth warmest. The total heat energy in the ocean, on the other hand, reached a new record. Over 90 percent of the total heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has gone into the oceans, and this value varies less from year to year.

There is nothing surprising about this. Berkeley Earth and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director Gavin Schmidt published predictions last year that 2022 was most likely to come in just slightly warmer than 2021.

Why were they able to do that? And why did 2022 end up where it did? The answer to both is that two factors tell you most of what you need to know about global temperature—the human-caused warming trend and the slow oscillation of La Niña and El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean.

This sloshing of surface water across the equatorial Pacific, with the wind sometimes piling up warm water on the western side (La Niña) and sometimes allowing it to stretch back across to the eastern side (El Niño), causes much of the year-to-year wiggling of average surface temperature. We’ve now been in a La Niña phase since late 2020, which has held the global average down—though this was the warmest of any La Niña year. These conditions can be forecast months ahead because they change slowly, which gives you a decent idea of how the global average will evolve.

Berkeley Earth notes that this year was the new record warmest over 8.5 percent of the area of the Earth, which happens to cover some 850 million people. The well-publicized Western European heatwaves occurred as part of the warmest summer—and year—on record in many places there, for example. Pakistan, which suffered extreme spring heatwaves followed by extreme flooding, didn’t quite set a new record for annual temperature, but neighboring Afghanistan did.

In the United States, 2022 was about the 18th warmest year on record. There were 18 weather disasters that exceeded $1 billion in (inflation-adjusted) damage, though—the third-worst tally going back to 1980.

Looking ahead, expectations are actually also similar to last year. The forecast is trending toward neutral conditions (in between La Niña and El Niño) by late spring. Last year, La Niña returned soon after, so the impact was small, but sustained neutral conditions would boost 2023 a bit above 2022 in the ranking. And if it fully transitions over to El Niño in the fall, the odds of 2024 setting a new record would then be pretty strong.

The climate system is complex enough that atmospheric temperatures wobble around a bit from year to year, but the human-caused warming trend is steadily lifting the baseline. That will remain true as long as we keep increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Wobbles or not, the eight warmest years in the instrumental record are the previous eight years. All eight were more than 1°C above preindustrial times, and we are drawing nearer to the 1.5° and 2° C marks that international negotiations have focused on keeping us below.

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Slowly but surely, the world’s reservoirs are getting gunked up with sediment. In an unblocked river, the flowing water carries bits of sediment along—picked up from river banks or swept into the river from rain. However, rivers whose flow has been interrupted by a dam deposit some of that sediment right behind the dam itself, in the reservoir. “Gradually, [over] years and years, it will be accumulating,” Duminda Perera, a researcher with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health in Hamilton, Ontario, told Ars.

According to Perera, the increased sedimentation in these reservoirs, and the resulting loss of volume, are rarely considered. However, he and some of his fellow researchers recently penned a new study, suggesting that nearly 50,000 large dams—defined as being 15 m tall or more or above 5 meters high and blocking more than 3 million cubic meters of water—are being robbed of their capacity.

This slowly accumulating sediment takes up volume in the reservoir, occupying cubic meters that would otherwise be filled with water that would ultimately flow through hydroelectric turbines or be diverted to agriculture. “If you fill a cup with water, and then you put soil… the water volume is reduced,” he said.

Take the L

To identify the scale of the problem, the team applied previously established storage-loss rates to large dams across 150 countries, gathered from a database by the International Commission on Large Dams (the data set contains information on around 59,000 dams). For their calculations, the team also looked at the dams’ initial storage capacities and the years they became operational—this data was only available for 47,403 dams.

Using these parameters, the team estimates that trapped sediment is robbing these large dams of between 13 and 19 percent of their reservoir’s original storage capacity. That total could reach between 23 and 28 percent by 2050, according to the paper. This drop would take the capacity of these reservoirs from 6.3 trillion to 4.7 trillion cubic meters—equivalent to the combined total annual water use of Canada, China, France, India, and Indonesia, according to the report.

The storage loss will differ based on country. And land-use changes, like deforestation (which is often linked with erosion), can increase the amount of material entering the rivers. The United Kingdom, Panama, and Japan, among others, will lose between 35 and 50 percent of their storage capacity by 2050. By contrast, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Bhutan are expected to lose less than 15 percent.

No “hard and fast” fix

This loss of storage can negatively impact humans in several ways. For dams that also have a hydroelectric generator, the sediment can act as an abrasive, damaging turbines and other parts of the facility, “decreasing their efficiency and increasing maintenance costs,” the paper noted. The thoroughly sedimented reservoirs also have less space to store flood water and hold less water to divert to agriculture. “Sometimes, our intended functions can’t be done because of the lack of storage,” Perera said.

A few things can be done to deal with this issue. One option is dredging, which uses machinery such as excavators or suction systems to remove the silt. Another option is flushing, or letting the sediment flow through the dam. However, the paper notes that dredging is costly and usually only a temporary solution, while flushing can result in unexpected consequences as a deluge of soil and other materials flow downstream. Further, some types of flushing, like "empty flushing," involve emptying the entire reservoir, temporarily cutting off a hydroelectric dam’s ability to generate power.

Another, and in Perera’s mind better, option is bypassing, or diverting sediment steadily to below the dam using tunnels. However, all of these options are likely case-specific, he said. “There is no hard and fast rule to say ‘this is the only way to … avoid sedimentation,’” he said.

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In 2015, investigative journalists from the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian made a shocking discovery. They found dozens of internal documents from Exxon and ExxonMobil scientists that clearly detailed how fossil fuel products contributed to the global climate crisis – one that could have "dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050".

Since these reports were first leaked, researchers have pored over and carefully analyzed the conclusions, mostly to point out the hypocrisy of ExxonMobil's decades-long campaign to deny the science of climate change.

Yet the exact numbers and graphs projected by industry-led scientists haven't faced the same level of scrutiny, even though they seem to be tracking closely with fossil fuel emissions and global warming today.

Researchers at Harvard University are the now first to evaluate how the outputs of ExxonMobil's internal climate models aligned with the actual scientific literature and our climate reality.

In the end, the authors found between 63 and 93 percent of the company's concealed projections produced between 1977 and 2003 were correct.

The graph below shows how well the projections line up with historically observed temperature changes.

How ExxonMobil's projected temperature changes (gray, lighter gray for earlier studies, and darker gray for later ones) coincided with the observed temperature changes (red) and independent climate data (dashed gray lines). (Geoffrey Supran)

"Our findings demonstrate that ExxonMobil didn't just know 'something' about global warming decades ago – they knew as much as academic and government scientists knew," the authors write.

"These findings corroborate and add quantitative precision to assertions by scholars, journalists, lawyers, politicians, and others that ExxonMobil accurately foresaw the threat of human-caused global warming, both prior and parallel to orchestrating lobbying and propaganda campaigns to delay climate action," they add.

The analysis is based on 32 internal documents produced by scientists at Exxon and ExxonMobil between 1977 and 2002 (the company Exxon merged with Mobil Oil Corp in 1999 to become ExxonMobil).

This data was then compared to 72 independent, peer-reviewed scientific papers Exxon and ExxonMobil scientists produced between 1982 and 2013.

On average, ExxonMobil's projected rate of warming was about 0.20°C a decade. That's roughly the same estimate that independent scientists and governments put forward in their own models.

Given the rate of human-produced carbon emissions, ExxonMobil scientists also predicted that the effects of the climate crisis would first become apparent at the turn of the century.

And so they did, even as ExxonMobil spokespeople denied the reality the company knew was unfolding.

In fact, compared to the climate models presented by NASA scientists to US Congress in 1988, the company's predictions were even more skillfully designed, Harvard researchers found.

For almost five decades now, officials at ExxonMobil tried to sow doubt by arguing that climate models are based on too many uncertainties to be reliable. For instance, in 1999, the CEO claimed that climate models were often based on "sheer speculation".

But as it turns out, the uncertainty in ExxonMobil's own internal research is the same as what independent climate scientists were finding – and is an accepted part of climate modeling that is steadily refined with every passing year.

"This is the nail in the coffin of ExxonMobil's claims that it has been falsely accused of climate malfeasance," says science historian and lead author of the study Geoffrey Supran, who is now at the University of Miami.

"Our analysis shows that ExxonMobil's own data contradicted its public statements, which included exaggerating uncertainties, criticizing climate models, mythologizing global cooling, and feigning ignorance about when – or if – human-caused global warming would be measurable, all while staying silent on the threat of stranded fossil fuel assets."

Officials at Exxon knew what the world was headed for. They just didn't seem to care.

The study was published in Science.

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Another year, another climate record broken. In 2022, an international team of scientists measured the hottest global ocean temperatures in human history.

That makes 2022 the seventh year in a row that ocean temperatures have hit new peaks.

The record is based on two international timelines of ocean heat data stretching back to the 1950s: one conducted by government researchers in the United States and the other by government researchers in China.

Both datasets show that ocean waters reaching up to 2,000 meters (about 6,600 feet) deep are now absorbing 10 zettajoules (ZJ) more heat than they were in 2021. That's a hundred times more energy than the world's electricity bill each year.

Having what's known as a high specific heat capacity, water is exceptionally good at absorbing huge amounts of heat energy without rising quickly in temperature. What's more, the oceans contain a lot of water. But storing 10 ZJs in an oceanic bank isn't without consequences.

On Earth, the world's oceans absorb 90 percent of the excess heat in our atmosphere, and like a sponge absorbs water, the effect is fundamentally changing the density, dynamics, and structure of the sea.

Today, the contrast in ocean salinity has reached an all-time high. In the Pacific Ocean and East Indian Ocean, scientists say seawater is growing much fresher. But in the midlatitude Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the West Indian Ocean, seawater is growing much saltier.

"Salty areas get saltier, and fresh areas get fresher, and so there is a continuing increase in intensity of the hydrological cycle," explains climate scientists Lijing Cheng from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In basic terms that means layers of ocean water are not mixing like they used to and this disrupts the natural circulation of heat, carbon, and oxygen from the atmosphere above.

In 2022, for instance, the heat content in the upper 2000 meters of the Pacific ocean reached a record level "by a large margin," researchers say, "which supports the extreme events witnessed, such as intensive heat waves and deoxygenation, and poses a substantial risk to marine life in this region."

A reduction in mixing most likely triggered an event known as the 'Blob'; a vast and persistent pool of warm water in the Pacific northwest that began circulating in 2013, devastating bird and marine life for years to come.

In 2022, this region's ocean heat content reached its third highest level on record, which means we probably haven't seen the last of the Blob.

It's not just sea life that's suffering, either.

The ocean and atmosphere are closely interconnected, which means that warmer or saltier waters could strongly influence global weather patterns and sea level rise.

If warmer waters and saltier waters become too stratified in the ocean, there's a risk the ocean may not be able to absorb as much carbon as it used to. Greenhouse gases would concentrate in the atmosphere, causing severe climate effects.

Earth's salty bodies of water have been called 'the greatest ally against climate change' because they serve as a bulletproof vest against the worst climate blows. But there are only so many hits the ocean can take before it, too, falls.

Despite warning after warning, very little action has been taken to curb the persistent rise of greenhouse gas emissions, which means oceans have continued to absorb our worsening pollution.

Since the 1980s, researchers have found a three- to four-fold increase in the rate of ocean warming. In 2022, the level of stratification measured in ocean waters was among the top seven on record.

"Until we reach net zero emissions, that heating will continue, and we'll continue to break ocean heat content records, as we did this year," says climate scientist Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania.

"Better awareness and understanding of the oceans are a basis for the actions to combat climate change."

An extreme climate is our reality and our future. How extreme is up to us.

The study was published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

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The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded.

Such an exceptional event is thought to occur only once every 1,300 years. And unless the buoy had been taken for a ride, we might never have known it even happened.

For centuries, rogue waves were considered nothing but nautical folklore. It wasn't until 1995 that myth became fact. On the first day of the new year, a nearly 26-meter-high wave (85 feet) suddenly struck an oil-drilling platform roughly 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of Norway.

At the time, the so-called Draupner wave defied all previous models scientists had put together.

Since then, dozens more rogue waves have been recorded (some even in lakes), and while the one that surfaced near Ucluelet, Vancouver Island was not the tallest, its relative size compared to the waves around it was unprecedented.

Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall.

In comparison, the Ucluelet wave was nearly three times the size of its peers.

"Proportionally, the Ucluelet wave is likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded," explained physicist Johannes Gemmrich from the University of Victoria in 2022.

"Only a few rogue waves in high sea states have been observed directly, and nothing of this magnitude."

Today, researchers are still trying to figure out how rogue waves are formed so we can better predict when they will arise. This includes measuring rogue waves in real time and also running models on the way they get whipped up by the wind.

The buoy that picked up the Ucluelet wave was placed offshore along with dozens of others by a research institute called MarineLabs in an attempt to learn more about hazards out in the deep.

Even when freak waves occur far offshore, they can still destroy marine operations, wind farms, or oil rigs. If they are big enough, they can even put the lives of beachgoers at risk.

Luckily, neither Ucluelet nor Draupner caused any severe damage or took any lives, but other rogue waves have.

Some ships that went missing in the 1970s, for instance, are now thought to have been sunk by sudden, looming waves. The leftover floating wreckage looks like the work of an immense white cap.

Unfortunately, a 2020 study predicted wave heights in the North Pacific are going to increase with climate change, which suggests the Ucluelet wave may not hold its record for as long as our current predictions suggest.

"We are aiming to improve safety and decision-making for marine operations and coastal communities through widespread measurement of the world's coastlines," said MarineLabs CEO Scott Beatty.

"Capturing this once-in-a-millennium wave, right in our backyard, is a thrilling indicator of the power of coastal intelligence to transform marine safety."

The study was published in Scientific Reports.

A version of this article was first published in February 2022.

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The study, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, suggests that uric acid may play an important role in the development of atrial fibrillation, or AFib, an irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart complications.

"People with elevated uric acid levels may benefit from regular cardiovascular examinations to facilitate early diagnosis of new-onset AFib," said lead study author Mozhu Ding, a postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Institute of Environmental Medicine in Stockholm, Sweden.

Uric acid is a chemical produced when the body breaks down purines, found in high amounts in alcohol, especially beer, and foods such as red meat, bacon, veal, organ meats, and some types of seafood, such as anchovies, sardines, scallops, herring and mussels. Uric acid is better known for its link to gout, a painful type of arthritis, and kidney stones. But studies also have linked high levels of uric acid to an increased risk for high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Recent studies suggest an association between high levels of uric acid and AFib, but evidence is limited, especially among younger, healthier adults.

Millions of U.S. adults have AFib. By 2030, it's estimated to affect 12.1 million, up from about 5.2 million in 2010. It is the most common reason for irregular heartbeats in older adults, and its prevalence has been increasing worldwide.

Traditional cardiovascular risk factors—including older age, male sex, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes—don't fully explain the increased risk for AFib, said Dr. Elsayed Soliman, a professor of cardiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"That's why it's important to look for other AFib risk factors that we can act upon," said Soliman, who was not involved in the new research.

In the study, researchers followed 339,604 participants from Sweden for an average of 26 years. Participants, recruited from 1985 to 1996, were 30 to 60 years old and free of cardiovascular disease at the time of enrollment. Uric acid was measured at least once using a blood test. Participants were then divided into groups, ranking uric acid levels from lowest to highest.

The study found AFib risk rose as uric acid levels rose. Overall, those with the highest uric acid levels had a 45% higher risk of AFib than those with the lowest levels.

Elevated uric acid levels increased AFib risk even among participants who had not developed high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease or heart failure during the follow-up period. That surprised Ding, who believes her study is the first to show this.

"This means that uric acid may not only operate through cardiometabolic mechanisms to increase the risk of AFib, but it may also have a direct influence on AFib development through other mechanisms," she said.

More research is needed to identify those mechanisms, she said, though "inflammation may play a role."

AFib cases still were more common among people who had developed high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease or heart failure than those who had not, regardless of uric acid level.

Soliman said the next step is to research whether lowering uric acid levels could help reduce AFib risk. Medications and dietary changes, such as reducing alcohol and purine-rich foods in the diet, can reduce uric acid levels, and "this study raises the question of whether we should be doing so to reduce AFib risk," he said.

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People with obesity or diabetes who consumed 20% or more of their daily calories from fast food had severely elevated levels of fat in their liver compared to those who ate less fast food or none.

Even the general U.S. population had moderate increases in liver fat when fast food made up one-fifth or more of their diet, the study found.

"Healthy livers contain a small amount of fat, usually less than 5%, and even a moderate increase in fat can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease," said lead study author Dr. Ani Kardashian. She is a hepatologist with University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, in Los Angeles.

"The severe rise in liver fat in those with obesity or diabetes is especially striking, and probably due to the fact that these conditions cause a greater susceptibility for fat to build up in the liver," Kardashian said in a university news release.

Kardashian said this is one of the first studies to demonstrate the negative impact of fast food on liver health.

Even a relatively modest amount can be harmful, she warned.

"If people eat one meal a day at a fast-food restaurant, they may think they aren't doing harm," Kardashian said. "However, if that one meal equals at least one-fifth of their daily calories, they are putting their livers at risk."

For the study, the researchers used data from a nationwide health and nutrition survey conducted in 2017 and 2018 to determine the impact of fast-food consumption on fatty liver disease, also called liver steatosis. The condition can cause cirrhosis, or scarring, of the liver, and potentially lead to cancer or liver failure.

For this study, fast food and pizza from either a drive-through restaurant or one without wait staff were included.

The investigators compared fast-food consumption with fatty liver measurements in 4,000 adults.

About 52% consumed some fast food. Of those, 29% got at least one-fifth of their daily calories from fast food. About 29% had a rise in liver fat levels.

"Our findings are particularly alarming as fast-food consumption has gone up in the last 50 years, regardless of socioeconomic status," Kardashian said. "We've also seen a substantial surge in fast-food dining during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is probably related to the decline in full-service restaurant dining and rising rates of food insecurity. We worry that the number of those with fatty livers has gone up even more since the time of the survey."

More than 30% of the U.S. population has liver steatosis, the study authors noted.

Kardashian said she hopes the study will encourage health care providers to offer patients, especially those with obesity or diabetes, more nutrition education. The only way to treat liver steatosis is through better diet.

The findings were published online Jan. 10 in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

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Tan Lai Zhou, from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and colleagues used data from 2,652 participants in the Maastricht Study to evaluate whether urinary sodium excretion and salt intake are associated with 24-hour BPV. Participants adhered to a seven-day low- and high-salt diet (50 and 250 mmol NaCl/24 hour, respectively) with a washout period of 14 days.

The researchers found that 24-hour urinary sodium excretion was not associated with 24-hour systolic or diastolic BPV (β, per 1 g/24-hour urinary sodium excretion: 0.05 mm Hg [95 percent confidence interval, −0.02 to 0.11] and 0.04 mm Hg [95 percent confidence interval, −0.01 to 0.09], respectively). There were no significant differences observed in mean difference in 24-hour systolic and diastolic BPV between the low- and high-salt diet (0.62 mm Hg [95 percent confidence interval, −0.10 to 1.35] and 0.04 mm Hg [95 percent confidence interval, −0.54 to 0.63], respectively).

"Our results do not indicate that salt restriction would be an effective strategy to lower BPV, at least not in a White population‐based setting with relatively healthy individuals," the authors write.

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This illustration reflects that exoplanet LHS 475 b is rocky and almost precisely the same size as Earth based on new evidence from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

NASA’s James Webb telescope discovers its first Earth-sized exoplanet

FAA outage that grounded flights blamed on old tech and damaged database file

In 2023, our understanding of the microbes that live inside the human gut will lead to new ideas for medicine. Today, we know that gut microbes help develop and sustain our immune system. They do that by producing high levels of three types of short-chain fatty acid molecules: acetic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid (or butyrate). The last of these, butyrate, promotes the activity of immune cells called regulatory T cells, or T regs. These cells are specialists at turning off the activity of other immune cells, which is vital to keep the immune system from damaging the body. The other short-chain fatty acids also affect immune cells, as well as the cells of the gut lining, although these other processes are not as well understood. 

Roughly speaking, high levels of fatty acid molecules quiet the immune system, creating an “anti-inflammatory” environment—not only locally in the gut, but for the whole body. There are many situations in which this function is important, including to manage or prevent allergies. 

Allergies are caused by undesirable immune responses against things that are mistakenly seen as harmful—what we might think of as overreactions of the immune system—so something that helps dampen immune responses or helps the body develop the capacity to do so could be helpful in preventing allergies.

There is some evidence that gut microbes do precisely this, helping the immune system develop in a way that doesn’t allow for allergies. For example, mice given a high-fibre diet produced high levels of short-chain fatty acids in their gut, which correlated with being less likely to develop a mouse version of asthma. A small study of young children also found that those with allergies had lower levels of short-chain fatty acids in their feces. Crucially, however, these observations are only correlations. We are at the frontier of knowledge here. 

In 2023, our understanding of gut microbes will deepen through the development of technology. First, laboratory hardware will be used to rapidly sequence large amounts of genetic material. Second, we have now developed computer hardware and software that will allow us to sort through all the different microbial gene sequences, seek patterns in the data and correlate results with other factors, such as a person’s diet or state of health. The endeavor to understand the human microbiome has become a flagship enterprise for big data science. 

Probiotics—foods or supplements with live bacteria added—are one prospect for manipulating the microbiome. There is some evidence they may ease the symptoms of an ongoing illness, such as irritable bowel syndrome, or perhaps help avoid the side effects of taking antibiotics. But the relevant authorities across Europe and the US have yet to approve any probiotic as a medicine. 

Right now, there’s a deep scientific problem: With immense variability in the precise makeup of each person’s gut microbes, we don’t really know what a “healthy” one is. A core set of various bacteria seems important, and there must be an absence of anything obviously dangerous. But beyond this, little is clear. Rather than a few types of microbes being needed, perhaps what’s important is an overarching ecology. When we understand this clearly, we will be able to design and manufacture healthy microbe cocktails that can be administered as medicine. 

Microbial Cocktails Are More Than a Gut Feeling

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The first ShadowCam image from orbit reveals the permanently shadowed wall and floor of Shackleton Crater in never-before-seen detail.

NASA/KARI/Arizona State University

 

After launching on a Falcon 9 rocket in August 2022, the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter slid into orbit around the Moon last month. This was South Korea's first lunar probe, and among its chief objectives was surveying the polar regions of the Moon for resources such as water ice.

 

One of the six instruments carried by the half-ton satellite was a hyper-sensitive camera built by NASA called ShadowCam. The camera was designed with maximum sensitivity to light, such that it could provide images of permanently shadowed regions of the poles—which is to say, capture images of things that are inherently very dark.

 

Earlier this week, the ShadowCam team released its first image, which reveals a wall and the floor of Shackleton Crater near the South Pole of the Moon. At first glance, there's nothing remarkable about the photo. It looks a lot like... the Moon.

 

However, what you're actually looking at is an area of the Moon that lies in total darkness. Here is a photograph taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009, shortly after it reached the Moon. That black area on the left of the photo? That's the region of Shackleton Crater imaged by ShadowCam. Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal.

 

 

There are a few ways to lighten darker images. A camera can take a longer exposure to gather more photons, it can have a much wider lens opening, or it can use a higher "ISO" setting. ISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization” and basically is a setting for light sensitivity. A higher ISO setting makes for a brighter image, but increasing ISO comes with a cost. At higher settings in a darker location, an image quickly becomes noisy or grainy.

 

The ShadowCam instrument on board the Korean orbiter was designed to capture dim light reflected from nearby topography and to allow for high ISO settings without compromising clarity. According to the imaging team, the camera's ability to capture clear images at high sensitivity is the equivalent of increasing from ISO 100 to greater than 12,800 without increasing grain.

 

The result is a stunningly clear image of Shackleton Crater. The top quarter of the image shows the base of a steep wall, and the remainder of the image shows the crater floor. Note the narrow line running down the wall—the ShadowCam scientists say that's the path carved by a 5-meter boulder rolling down the crater wall and coming to rest on the floor.

 

This image does not show any direct evidence of water ice or other elements of interest to scientists and explorers. However, scientists did not expect to find ice in this part of Shackleton Crater, as the temperature of this location rises above the water ice stability point during the "summer" months on the Moon.

 

This image, and future data gathered by ShadowCam and other instruments on the Korean orbiter, will significantly improve our understanding of the polar environment. Scientists hope to use orbiter data like this—as well as from NASA's Lunar Trailblazer, which is likely to launch in 2024—to better understand where water ice and other lunar resources exist.

 

The ShadowCam images will be particularly useful for planning future missions as scientists seek to ground-truth this data with lunar rovers and identify areas for the Artemis human missions to explore. Finally, it's a testament to the skill of investigators to glean data from places where it is difficult to obtain and to the value of international partners with NASA working alongside scientists and engineers in South Korea.

 

In short, this is exploration at its finest.

 

Here’s the story of a lunar image that doesn’t look remarkable, but really is

China’s space program is off to a fast start in 2023 with two successful launches, the first on January 8 by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and the second on January 9 by privately-owned Galactic Energy.

A Long March 7A rocket operated by CASC blasted three satellites into orbit: the Shijian 23, Shiyan-22A and Shiyan-22B. Developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, Shijian is a series of observation, monitoring and tracking satellites that are also used for scientific experiments and technical verification. Shijuan-23’s purpose is reportedly classified.

Shiyan satellites are used to test new technologies “such as space environment monitoring,” according to CASC. Gunter’s Space Page, a rocket and satellite information website named after German spaceflight historian Gunter D Krebs, notes that Shiyan 22A and 22B are “a pair Chinese satellites of unknown purpose.”

Classified satellites of unknown purpose are known to raise hackles at the Pentagon. In April 2021, General James Dickinson of the US Space Command wrote to the US Senate Armed Services Committee that, “Beijing actively seeks space superiority through space and space attack systems. One notable object is the Shijian-17, a Chinese satellite with a robotic arm. Space-based robotic arm technology could be used in a future system for grappling other satellites.”

A CERES-1 rocket operated by Galactic Energy put five satellites into orbit: the Tianmu-1 01 and 02 meteorological satellites, the Xiamen Keji-1 remote sensing satellite, the Tianqi-13 satellite for commercial space company Beijing Guodian Hi-Tech’s orbital “Internet of Things” constellation, and a science project satellite named Nantong Zhongxue, the elite Nantong Middle School from which many Chinese scientists and engineers have graduated.

Guodian Hi-Tech’s small Internet of Things communication satellites collect and transmit data for use in a wide range of applications including meteorology, geology, forestry, emergency services, smart cities and industry, and cover blind areas beyond the reach of land-based internet services. The constellation is designed to have 38 satellites when fully launched.

CASC’s rocket was launched from the Wenchang spaceport on the island of Hainan while Galactic Energy’s was blasted from Jiuquan spaceport in Inner Mongolia.

Long March rockets are the workhorse of China’s space program. More than 450 of them have been launched so far, starting with the Long March 1, which put China’s first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong 1 (The East is Red 1), into orbit in 1970. Long March refers to the 9,000-kilometer year-long strategic retreat of the Red Army during the Chinese Civil War.

The Long March 7A is a liquid-fuel rocket about 60 meters in length and 3.35 meters in diameter. It is capable of putting a payload of 13,500 kilograms into low earth orbit, 5,500 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers and 5,000 kilograms on a trajectory to the moon. After an initial failure in March 2020, China has had four consecutive successful launches of the rocket.

Last year, 53 Long March rockets put more than 140 payloads into space with no reported failures. More than 50 launches are planned for 2023.

A Ceres-1 Y5 carrier rocket is launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, January 9, 2023. Photo: Xinhua / Wang Jiangbo

The Ceres-1 is a much smaller four-stage rocket, with the first three stages solid-fueled and the fourth liquid-fueled. It is about 19 meters in length, 1.4 meters in diameter and capable of putting a payload of 400 kilograms into low earth orbit and 300 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers.

There have been five successful Ceres-1 launches and no failures since Galactic Energy became the second private Chinese company to put a satellite into orbit in November 2020. Private company i-Space (Glory Space Technology), which had a successful launch in 2019, was the first. Since then, however, i-Space has suffered three consecutive failures.

Other private Chinese space launch companies include LandSpace, LinkSpace, OneSpace and DeepBlue Aerospace. OneSpace became the first to launch a rocket (suborbital) in 2018. After a short distance test last year, DeepBlue Aerospace plans an orbital launch of its vertical take-off, vertical landing Nebula M1 rocket in 2024.

Galactic Energy plans to launch at least two more Ceres-1 rockets in early 2023, one from a platform in the Yellow Sea, and possibly several more later in the year.

In 2024, it aims to launch a larger rocket, the Pallas-1, which is about 42 meters long and capable of putting a 5,000-kilogram payload into low earth orbit and a 3,000-kilogram payload into sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers. The first stage of the Pallas-1 is designed to permit vertical landing like the Space X Falcon 9.

Galactic Energy is also developing a Pallas-2 rocket that will reportedly be capable of putting a 14,000-kilogram payload into low earth orbit.

Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1 resembles the Kairos rocket developed by the private Japanese company Space One. But while Space One is hoping for a successful launch on its third attempt in February, Galactic Energy has already established itself as a small satellite launch service. With the January 9 launch, the Chinese company has now put 19 satellites into orbit.

A view inside the payload fairing of the second Ceres-1. Credit: Galactic Energy

CASC puts the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) programs into practice. It is engaged in the research, design, manufacture, test and launch of rockets, satellites, manned, robotic and cargo space ships, deep space exploration vehicles, space stations, and strategic and tactical missile systems.

CASC also has R&D and industrial facilities in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Xian, Chengdu, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It is involved in satellite and ground station operations, space-related commerce and information services, and software and financial investment. CASC is the only broadcast and communications satellite operator in China.

It is not shy about its abilities and its mission. In a recent statement, CASC said: “Under the strategy of military-civil integration, CASC pays great attention to space technology applications such as satellite applications, information technology, new energy and materials, special space technology applications, and space biology… CASC is dedicating itself to building China into a space power.”

As part of Washington’s tech war on China, the US last year imposed sanctions on CASC. But that has not prevented some 50 Long March rocket launches, including six missions to the China Space Station, and the recent success of the Ceres-1 small satellite launch vehicle.

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As often happens in the first month of the new year, vast numbers of Americans are attempting a "Dry January" or even "Damp January — " a trendy challenge to abstain or moderate alcohol use. You can be sure that those who succeed will see an improvement in their health, as alcohol is not exactly known for its health benefits. But how profound will these changes be, and will they even be that significant? Indeed, while heavy drinkers might see quick shifts in mood and energy, moderate or light drinkers might be apt to wonder if much will be different in their lives at all.

Salon spoke to experts about the short-term health benefits of moderating one's alcohol consumption for a month.  As it turns out, time actually does play a big role in determining health benefits.

The long-term effects of Dry January depends on if the habit of not drinking or reduced alcohol consumption is maintained," Dr. Rami Hashish, an injury expert and founder of the National Biomechanics Institute, told Salon. "If somebody drinks relatively a lot, and then stops for a month, and then goes right back to that same habit, then you may not necessarily see so many great benefits. It sounds nice, but science doesn't really bear that out, that they're going to see these huge benefits long-term, if they just stop some sort of action for a given month."

In other words: alcohol abstinence is not unlike diet or exercise, in that finding a new routine for only a month probably won't trigger life-altering changes.

That said, the effects of quitting alcohol can become noticeable quite quickly. A recent study in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism found that for two-thirds of patients, cognitive abilities returned 18 days after detoxing from alcohol. This was a small study with just 32 subjects and it examined severe alcohol use disorder. Patients were also given thiamine, which may have helped improvement. More moderate drinkers may not experience the same extreme changes, but it's still a window into how profound even a short stint without alcohol can be.

Ethanol, the technical term for the drug in booze, is a promiscuous molecule. That means it likes to interact with a lot of different receptors in the body; it sometimes likened to a shotgun blast that doesn't discriminate where it hits. Almost every organ system in the body is affected by alcohol, from digestion to immunity, but nothing is as influenced as the brain. And this has a cascading effect from the top down. "If something affects the brain, it affects every other part of the body," Hashish says.

When alcohol enters the brain, it can gum up the way neurons and other cells communicate. Braincells send messages using chemicals called neurotransmitters. Ethanol can trigger the release of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which are associated with feelings of mood and reward. But the most noticeable effect ethanol has is on GABA receptors, which play a role in calming the nervous system. More GABA means a more sedating, relaxed effect.

"When one is drunk, the brain struggles to produce long-term memories, which account for blackouts," Dr. Sanam Hafeez, a neuropsychologist, founder and director of Comprehensive Consultation Psychological Services, told Salon in an email. "Alcohol also affects the temporal cortex, which is the area of the brain that makes new memories." In contrast, quitting drinking can improve memory.

The moment you take a sip of beer, wine or whatever, your body recognizes ethanol as a toxin and tries to flush it out. It's first absorbed through the stomach and small intestine, working its way through the bloodstream. An enzyme in the liver called ADH4, or alcohol dehydrogenase 4, breaks ethanol down, which eventually becomes carbon dioxide and water.

But there's an intermittent stage between ethanol and its harmless byproducts, when the liver produces acetaldehyde, a known carcinogen that can have many toxic effects on the body. The more you drink, the more this byproduct builds up. The liver can only break it down further so fast, at a rate of about one drink per hour. Acetaldehyde is often implicated as the cause of hangovers.

The more someone drinks, the more work their liver will have. This can lead to liver inflammation, also called hepatitis, which can result in scarring and a lower-functioning organ that can trigger more serious problems with the liver.

"The liver filters toxins in the body. Heavy drinking is toxic to your cells and can lead to cirrhosis, fatty liver disease and other issues," Hafeez says. "When you abstain from alcohol, the liver can repair itself, and in some cases, regenerate."

Of course, all of this depends on the frequency and volume of alcohol someone is consuming. Many people can responsibly manage the temporary side effects of alcohol and feel like the social and stress-relieving aspects outweigh the negative health effects. While a popular 2018 Lancet study concluded that there is "no safe level of alcohol consumption," a sentiment recently echoed by the World Health Organization, many have expressed criticism of such strict abstinence.

A 2019 article in JAMA Internal Medicine claimed the Lancet research miscalculated the harms associated with alcohol, using biased overestimates that overlooked underreported drinking. Problematic drinking gets far more medical attention, at least ideally, so the majority of people who drink and aren't experiencing harms may go uncounted.

Nonetheless, when you quit drinking for a while, it can have an immediate impact on your health — again, depending on how much alcohol is typically imbibed.

"Although a regular glass of red wine might be heart healthy, overindulging is bad for your heart and blood pressure," Hafeez says. "Quitting or cutting back may lower triglycerides, which reduces the chances of heart failure."

However, in severe alcohol use disorders, quitting cold turkey can be deadly, putting people at risk for fatal seizures. This is why Hafeez, Hashish and other experts recommend talking to a doctor about drinking habits and quitting. But if you do quit, it can change someone's health relatively quickly.

"People generally see a pretty immediate reduction within a month," Hashish says, "such as increased hydration, weight loss, reductions in blood pressure, better sleep... people may have better sex, they have greater immunity, so they may be able to heal better from injury or illness. So there's a lot of benefits."

Abstaining can also translate into increased energy, better concentration and memory and improved mood. It's worth emphasizing that there's nothing wrong with drinking alcohol. Humans do all kinds of activities that can be unhealthy, from eating sugar to sitting at a computer too long. The question here is one of moderation, assessing one's health and being informed about what is happening when ingesting certain drugs like alcohol.

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Jan. 11 (UPI) -- A jump-roping dog and his German owner broke a Guinness World Record by skipping over a rope together 32 times in 30 seconds.

Wolfgang Lauenburger, a dog trainer whose talented canines have performed in circus acts, taught one of his dogs, Balu, to jump rope on his hind legs.

The duo made an official attempt in Stuckenbrock, North Rhine-Westphalia, and earned the record for most skips by a dog on hind legs in 30 seconds when they both vaulted over the rope 32 times in half a minute.

Lauenburger and his dogs have set multiple Guinness World Records. His daughter, Alexa, is also a dog trainer and has appeared on Germany's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent.

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The Puerto Rican crested anole, a brown lizard with a bright orange throat fan, has sprouted special scales to better cling to smooth surfaces like walls and windows and grown larger limbs to sprint across open areas, scientists say.

“We are watching evolution as it’s unfolding,” said Kristin Winchell, a biology professor at NYU and main author of the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As urbanization intensifies around the world, it’s important to understand how organisms adapt and humans can design cities in ways that support all species, Winchell said.

The study analyzed 96 Anolis cristatellus lizards, comparing the genetic makeup of forest-dwellers to those living in Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, as well as the northern city of Arecibo and western city of Mayaguez. Scientists found that 33 genes within the lizard genome were repeatedly associated with urbanization.

“You can hardly get closer to a smoking gun!” said Wouter Halfwerk, an evolutionary ecologist and professor at Vrije University Amsterdam who was not involved in the study.

He said he was impressed that the scientists were able to detect such a clear genomic signature of adaptation: “The ultimate goal within the field of urban adaptive evolution is to find evidence for heritable traits and their genomic architecture.”

Winchell said the lizards’ physical differences appeared to be mirrored at the genomic level.

“If urban populations are evolving with parallel physical and genomic changes, we may even be able to predict how populations will respond to urbanization just by looking at genetic markers,” she said.

The changes in these lizards, whose lifespans are roughly 7 years, can occur very quickly, within 30 to 80 generations, enabling them to escape from predators and survive in urban areas, Winchell added. The larger limbs, for example, enable them to run more quickly across a hot parking lot, and the special scales to hold onto surfaces far more smooth than trees.

“They can’t dig their claws into it. ... (Or) squirrel around to the backside,” she noted.

The scientists chased after dozens of lizards for their study, catching them with their hands or using fishing poles with a tiny lasso to snag them.

“It takes some practice,” Winchell said.

On occasion, they had to ask permission to catch lizards off people’s homes.

Among Winchell’s favorite findings was a rare albino lizard. She also found a nearly 8-inch (20-centimeter) one, rather large for the species, that she nicknamed “Godzilla.”

The study focused on adult male lizards, so it’s unclear if females are changing in the same way or at the same rate as males, and at which point in a lizard’s life the changes are occurring.

Halfwerk, whose own research showed how one frog species changed its mating call in urban areas, said scientists should look next for possible constraints on the evolutionary response and how morphology relates to mating behavior.

“Ultimately, to cash in on adaptive traits for survival, they need to lead to higher reproduction,” he said.

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League One has already seen seven managerial changes so far this season – with football management being a notoriously insecure career path.

And the Shrewsbury Town boss says it is important to speak to other managers when they are out of work and show ‘kindness’ in the hope they return the favour.

He said: “When you are in work, it is 24/7 all the time, there are no stoppages in it whatsoever, and even when you’re not doing something you are thinking about it in the back of your mind.

“When you don’t work, and there is nothing to think about you find yourself at a loose end, and we hear a lot about mental health.

“It is funny because sometimes you cannot handle your workload so you need good staff around you to help you, and then you can’t handle it when you have nothing to do.

“And that is when you need to show kindness to those people who are not working or have been really unlucky to have lost their job. Phone them.

Phone them and ask them how they are.

“When managers go, I normally leave it a couple of days or so to see how they are.”

The experienced Cotterill has managed more than 800 league football matches since he began at Cheltenham in 1997.

The boss says he always tries to attend a game regardless of whether he is in a job or not.

And he most recently spoke to Grant McCann when he was let go by Peterborough United.

He said: “I love my football, I always have done.

“For me, it is an integral part of my life, whether I am working and managing or not, as I would still go to a game every week.

“I have invited lots of managers to come in to keep their coaching hand in when we have a clear week on a Tuesday.

“Put your best session on for the lads, and if it is good you can learn something else from somebody else if you know what I mean.

“I have always offered that and I have always offered tickets to out-of-work managers.

“I always invite them in – I have done that right from my Cheltenham days, as I think it is really important.

“While we are against each other, there is no reason why there cannot be that strength and that bond because you know they are going to be back in, and you won’t be working, and you will want the same kind of treatment.

“Strangely enough at Peterborough, a year ago I rang Darren Ferguson and then I rang Grant McCann the other day.”

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The staff of the Tanzania National Park in Africa recorded an amazing scene. A lioness escorted a single young wildebeest on the grassland. The lioness's loving behavior across species surprised the staff.

(Flip Twitter)

[Instant News/Comprehensive Report] The staff of Tanzania National Parks in Africa (Tanzania National Parks) recorded an amazing scene. A lioness escorted a single young wildebeest on the grassland. The lioness's loving behavior across species The staff were very surprised.

According to foreign media and Tanzania National Park’s official information on the 11th, the park staff recorded this special scene, a lioness took a young wildebeest for a leisurely stroll, and the young wildebeest fell for some reason Shan, who followed the lioness step by step in front of the camera; the lioness occasionally stopped to look around, and the calf would stick close to her, as intimate as a mother and child.

Please read on...

This scene surprised the staff very much, because the wildebeest runs slower than the antelope and the antelope, and is less aggressive than the bison. It is one of the main prey of the lion on the prairie. It is rare for a predator to overcome his hunting instincts and use his mother's love to escort a lone wildebeest back to the safety of a national park.

This is not the only record of lionesses’ maternal love across species. In 2015, a documentary recorded a newborn wildebeest cub face to face with a lioness. Instead of attacking, the lioness calmly let the wildebeest use He rubbed his nose against himself, then let the calf snuggle him, and watched it go back to find its biological mother.

In January 2002, Kenya's Samburu National Park discovered that a lioness "adopted" two duikers successively. The lioness not only helped the duikers groom, but also protected them from being attacked by other lions.

Experts initially thought that the lioness might have mistaken the antelopes for cubs, but the behavior of the lioness to let the mother antelope nurse the young antelopes refuted this hypothesis, and experts confirmed that the lionesses really intended to "care" for the antelopes.

Unfortunately, while the lioness was sleeping, the second duiker was ambushed and killed by other lions; a few weeks later, the park recorded that the lioness began routinely following the herd for non-hunting purposes Move, and choose a warthog as prey.

???????????? Caption this ! pic.twitter.com/J9fW62SIlY

— Tanzania National Parks (@tzparks) January 10, 2022

Source: ltn

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The authors of the study said their findings suggested that around 650,000 US children would not have developed asthma if their homes had electric or induction stovetops, comparing the impact on health to that of second-hand smoke.

But an expert who was involved in the study questioned its findings and cautioned that gas remains far healthier than cooking with wood, charcoal and coal, which are estimated to cause 3.2 million deaths a year from household air pollution, overwhelmingly in developing countries.

The peer-reviewed US study was published last month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

It is based on a calculation of the risk of developing asthma in homes with a gas stove from a 2013 review of 41 previous studies.

Combining that calculation with US census data, it linked 12.7 percent of US childhood asthma cases to gas cooking.

The same calculation was previously used in 2018 research that attributed 12.3 percent of childhood asthma cases in Australia to gas stoves.

A report released Monday used the same calculation to link 12 percent of childhood asthma to gas cooking in the European Union.

The report, which has not been peer-reviewed, was released by the energy efficiency group CLASP and the European Public Health Alliance.

N02 levels exceed limits

The European report included computer simulations conducted by the Netherlands' research organization TNO analyzing exposure to air pollution in different European household kitchens.

The level of nitrogen dioxide was found to exceed EU and World Health Organization guidelines several times a week in all scenarios except for a large kitchen with a range hood that vented outside the home.

Nitrogen dioxide, which is emitted when gas is burned, is "a pollutant closely linked to asthma and other respiratory conditions," according to the WHO.

This year, CLASP will collect air quality measurements from 280 kitchens across Europe in a bid to confirm the results.

The research comes amid heightened scrutiny of gas stoves in the United States.

Richard Trumka Jr, a commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, tweeted on Monday that the agency "will consider all approaches to regulation".

"To be clear, CPSC isn't coming for anyone's gas stoves. Regulations apply to new products," he later added.

The American Gas Association, a lobby group, denounced the US study as an "advocacy-based mathematical exercise that doesn't add any new science".

Brady Seals, a manager at the Rocky Mountain Institute and co-author of the study, rebuffed the lobby group's statement.

"Of course it's just math," she told AFP. "But it gives us a number that we never had before."

'Not clean'

Rob Jackson of Stanford University, who has previously published research showing that climate-warming methane can leak from gas stoves even when they are switched off, said the US paper was "supported by dozens of other studies concluding that breathing indoor pollution from gas can trigger asthma".

But researchers working to transition the three billion people still cooking with harmful solid fuels such as wood, coal and charcoal to cleaner sources expressed concern.

Daniel Pope, a professor of global public health at the UK's University of Liverpool, said that the link between asthma and pollution from gas stoves had yet to be definitively proven and that further research was needed.

Pope is part of a team conducting research commissioned by the WHO to summarize the effects different kinds of fuel for cooking and heating can have on health.

Pope told AFP that the results, which will be published later this year, indicate a "substantial reduction in risk" when people switched to gas from solid fuels and kerosene.

They found "negligible effects (mostly non-significant) of using gas compared to electricity for all health outcomes—including asthma," he added.

Seals responded by saying that the study did not assume a causal relationship between asthma and gas cooking, but instead reported the association between exposure and the disease using studies dating back to the 1970s.

"I think it's a real problem that the international community is not explicitly recognizing the very well known, very researched risk of gas stoves," Seals said.

"Gas is certainly better" than cooking with wood or coal, she said. "But it's not clean."

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Microsoft is to allow US staff to take unlimited time off in a policy change that is supposed to give them more flexibility but, unsurprisingly, will also have a cost benefit to Redmond.

"How, when, and where we do our jobs has dramatically changed," wrote Kathleen Hogan, chief people officer at Microsoft in a memo to staff, reported first by The Verge. "And as we've transformed, modernizing our vacation policy to a more flexible model was a natural next step."

Starting next week, the company is saying goodbye to its four-weeks-a-year policy for US-based salaried employees. Workers will be given 10 days of corporate holidays, alongside unlimited leave. They will also be allowed leave for sickness, mental health issues, bereavement and jury services.

New Microsoft employees will not need to wait to accrue holidays.

Anyone with unused holiday entitlement will receive a one-time payment for this in April, Microsoft confirmed. Contractors paid by the hour will not be subject to this policy.

The move isn't unique: it brings Microsoft in line with LinkedIn, which it purchased for $26.6 billion in 2016, and a raft of other big businesses including Oracle, Salesforce, Goldman Sachs and Netflix.

Controversial

Unlimited paid time off (PTO) is seen as a "very controversial topic" by some tax advisors and the "outcome of such a policy heavily depends on the company's internal environment and execution," said website John The CPA.

Tech mills that grind all they can out of staff – think Twitter 2.0, for example – may not view staff positively if they ask too often for discretionary leave.

For companies that do press ahead with unlimited time off, including no paid time off liability on the balance sheet, there are no tiered policies and less maintaining of financial and HR schedules for PTO hours.

The topic is being hotly debated on Hacker News. One commentator said: "All they do is benefit the company through removal of a liability in terms of PTO hours from the company books. The workers are very likely to face social pressures when taking time off when it's viewed as an approval bestowed by management and not an entitlement inherent to the agreement when you started working."

They added: "I don't have any hard data to back this up, but my personal intuition suggests this will result in companies saving money because workers will take less time off and won't get paid out for remaining balances when they quit. This is a very worker-unfriendly policy and in a just system would be illegal."

Another said that if a corporation "shoves enough 'critical work' down your throat, a manager will not be able to say yes [to discretionary time off]. So the corporation is in control of the amount of time off by setting unrealistic deadlines/workloads."

On Blind – billed as an anonymous community app for the workplace – the point was made that PTO is retained on the accounting books under compensation, added to the cost of labor.

"The company can't spend that money on anything else. Unlimited PTO has no accounting value, meaning the company is free to use that money for other things. Say you have a 100 employees with wages at $100/hr and they have 4 weeks vaca (160 hr), that's 100*100*160 = $1.6 Mil locked away. If you go to unlimited PTO, that's 1.6 Mil the company can spend on other things."

A fast track to stress and burnout? Possibly. As John The CPA concludes: "Good HR departments will keep track of the amount of leave taken by individuals under the new policy and compare it to the old policy to see the changes in employee behavior and how it can affect the organization."

Happening more and more

The popularity of such policies is growing, however. Job seeker site Glassdoor said in a report in July 2022 that more employers are offering unlimited paid time off and employees are asking for it. The share of benefit reviews mentioning unlimited policies increased from 3.7 percent in 2017 to 10.7 percent last year and 88 percent of employee reviews of unlimited time off policies in 2022 were positive.

The outcome of this shift can be a mixed bag for employees. It may help with managing the work-life balance and boosting morale. However, it also creates an environment with unclear expectations and puts the onus on employees to determine how much time to take off, which can lead to scheduling conflicts and workers being guilt tripped into pulling back on vacations.

According to recruitment services firm Zippia, employees at companies with discretionary time off policies often take less time off than those at organizations with traditional paid-time-off benefits, which can lead to more worker burnout.

A Microsoft spokesperson stressed that the policy only applies to US salaried staff. ®

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“I find unacceptable that train operators are allowed to drive while on their cellphones,” América Gómora, a Mexico City subway rider, tweeted on January 7. Metro drivers’ conduct has come  under particular scrutiny after two trains collided that day, leaving one dead and dozens injured.

Although there’s no evidence so far to suggest conductors using their phones played a role in the crash, many local subway riders took to social media to express concerns that distracted train operators might be putting commuters’ lives at risk. But one former and four current Metro workers told Rest of World that because the system is poorly maintained, drivers depend on their phones to communicate with each other and keep the trains running.

For years now, drivers have said that the Metro system’s faulty automatic pilot program has forced conductors to operate many of the trains manually. To do this, they need to be in close contact to avoid collisions, and workers say the trains’ radio-based communications system is not up to the task. So instead, they often have to use their own cellphones and WhatsApp chats to coordinate with the control center.

The use of cellphones during working hours is not condoned by Mexico City’s mass transit workers’ union (SNTSTC) as per the organization’s general guidelines which the union sometimes enforces through punitive action. “Cellphones, along with earphones, tablets, magazines, and newspapers are considered to be distracting materials so, on paper, we can’t use them,” Ernesto, a train operator who has worked for the Metro system for 17 years, told Rest of World. “But [phones] are essential for us now.” Ernesto asked to use a pseudonym, fearing professional repercussions. Rest of World reached out to the Metro authorities for comment on the proliferation of cell phone use among their operators, but received no response at the time of publication.

Investigations surrounding last week’s deadly collision are ongoing, and there has been no official declaration as to why the trains crashed. Until then, neither the drivers nor the experts Rest of World spoke to could establish the cause of the accident.

Opened in 1969, Mexico City’s Metro system has fallen into disrepair over the past twenty years, María, who has worked as a train operator since the early 2000s, told Rest of World. Using a pseudonym to protect her job, Maria said she believed this decline was due to a general reduction in funding, something the city government’s records also show. Between 2018 and 2021, the Metro system’s maintenance budget dropped by almost 40%. 

“The Mexico City subway is one of the cheapest in the world: 5 pesos [about 25 cents] per ride,” Gerardo Velarde, director of Política Básica, a public policy analysis center in Mexico City, told Rest of World. “The current budget only covers operative costs. It would require double its current budget to cover maintenance costs.”

José Alberto Lara Pulido, director of the University Transdisciplinary Center for Sustainability at Iberoamericana University, told Rest of World he worries that “highly subsidized tickets result in inefficient infrastructure maintenance. It’s absurd when you see videos in which the control center operates with Post-it notes because of a burnt [communications] cable.”

Following a string of accidents, fires, and mishaps over the past few years, the Metro has come under scrutiny by the media and in public debates. The system’s second most deadly accident on record occurred in May 2021, when an elevated railway collapsed, killing 26 people and leaving hundreds injured.

But an average of 4.6 million people depend on the Metro daily, so drivers told Rest of World they have to work around the system’s faults. Alfredo Pérez Varela, an engineer who helped build four of the subway’s 12 lines between 1987 and 1990, told Rest of World the Metro’s automatic pilot, if properly maintained, is safer than manual operations. “These types of accidents never happened before because everything worked automatically,” he said. “If they keep happening, it’s because it hasn’t been maintained properly.”

Previously, each train could automatically identify its proximity to another one. “It is designed to stop so trains don’t collide,” said Pérez Varela. Now, human operators, who had initially been hired as a fail-safe to manually halt a train if the automatic pilot failed, need to intervene more often. Trains usually run at 70 kilometers per hour, but when the autopilot signals that it is not working, operators must take immediate action to manually reduce the speed to 35 kilometers per hour to avoid derailment.

Since the trains are increasingly manually driven, real-time communication among operators is essential. “We are all provided with a radio but it doesn’t work properly,” Jaime, an operator who has worked at the Metro for 17 years, told Rest of World on condition of anonymity. “That’s why we started using our cellphones.”

Four current and former Metro employees confirmed to Rest of World that since the early 2000s, their personal cellphones have become their main form of communication — first through calls and currently through WhatsApp. “It is the way everyone is talking — from fellow operators to inspectors to station managers,” Jaime said.

Jimena, another current driver who asked for anonymity, told Rest of World that operators she knows have created at least two WhatsApp group chats — one with nearly 160 members — to warn each other about autopilot outages and other malfunctions on her line. Jaime belongs to two other groups from different shifts. If there is ever a WhatsApp outage, Metro workers have parallel Facebook chats to maintain communication.

Mobile coverage in a largely underground system is mostly not an issue, drivers told Rest of World. That’s thanks to a recent upgrade to the Metro’s cellular connectivity with the addition of a fiber optic network, according to Mony de Swaan, a founding member of the Center for Studies and Research in Public Affairs (CEIAP), a consultancy specializing in telecommunications, pharma, and public policy. It allows for reliable WhatsApp-based communication, he told Rest of World.

Despite good connectivity, some drivers can’t afford to stay online all the time, said Jaime. According to Jimena, about 98% of the train operators on her line use WhatsApp on the job, but some will often run out of data, which they must pay for out-of-pocket.

Metro workers’ reliance on their personal devices can also land them in trouble. “We are often reported by our supervisors for being on our cellphones even though we now depend on them,” said Jimena.

Esmeralda Espinosa, a former train operator who still has family members working in the Metro system and is familiar with its current issues, told Rest of World that while she agrees using a phone could be distracting for a conductor, it’s also a critical tool given the current conditions. “It’s a double-edged sword,” she said.

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Mr Pattel, 51, who is from the southern Indian state of Kerala, has been appointed a judge in the 240th Judicial District Court in Fort Bend County in Texas state.

He was sworn in on 1 January, five years after he became a US citizen - his journey, Mr Pattel says, was all about "hard work, determination and a lot of struggle".

"But there were also a lot of people who supported and helped me at every stage of my life," he says, saying that the list is topped by his mother, whom he calls "a symbol of sacrifice".

Mr Pattel spent his childhood in grinding poverty. His parents were labourers who depended on meagre daily wages to feed their six children.

As a child, Mr Pattel would roll beedis - traditional cigarettes made by wrapping raw tobacco in leaves - "so that we could have three meals a day".

"My elder sister and I used to sit late into the night doing this," he says.

As a teenager, he dropped out of school after not scoring well in his exams. He had almost accepted his lot in life when his eldest sister died, leaving behind a 15 month-old daughter.

"The case was determined to be a suicide but I felt that justice had not been done in the matter. It still haunts me," he told the BBC without giving more details about the incident.

The tragedy spurred him to redefine his future and he rejoined school and studied hard. When he was in a two-year, pre-degree course before going to college, Mr Pattel often had to skip classes because he had to work too.

In his first year, he had to plead with his teachers after they asked him not to take the final exams due to low attendance.

"I didn't want to tell them that I wasn't going to class because of my financial situation because I didn't want sympathy," he says.

His teachers gave him another chance - they only learnt later from his friends that he had no choice but to work.

When the results came out, Mr Pattel surprised everyone by ranking second in his class.

He also decided that his future lay in law. "I never wanted to do anything else. I am so passionate about it," he says.

Mr Pattel was sworn in as a district judge on 1 January

Mr Pattel's financial situation continued to pose challenges but he was helped by the generosity of people he met along the way.

One of them was a Mr Uttupp, who ran a hotel in Kerala.

"I told him if he did not give me a job, I would have to discontinue my education. He hired me as part of the housekeeping staff in the hotel," Mr Pattel says.

The relationship continued until Mr Uttupp's death.

"His brother Manuel even called me after the news broke that I had become a judge," Mr Pattel says.

Mr Pattel got a degree in political science in 1992 before studying law.

Four years later, he got a job with lawyer P Appukuttan and began working in the town of Hosdurg in Kerala's Kasaragod district.

"He was so enthusiastic that I trusted him. I entrusted all kinds of civil matters to him because he was capable of doing it," Mr Appukuttan told the BBC.

Mr Pattel worked there for a decade until his wife, Subha, got a job at a hospital in India's capital Delhi.

He decided to follow her because he "never wanted to come in the way of her career".

In Delhi, he worked with a Supreme Court lawyer for a few months before his wife had to move again - this time to the US.

"Even though I wasn't happy about leaving my profession behind, I followed her. Without her, I would not have been where I am today,'' Mr Pattel says.

Mr Pattel lives in Texas with his family

The couple moved to Texas in 2007, where Mr Pattel worked in a grocery store for some time before realising that he could take the Bar exam in Texas. He then went on to get a degree in international law.

When Mr Pattel decided to run for the post of the judge with the Democratic Party, he had some unpleasant experiences - for instance, he was mocked for his Indian accent while campaigning, he says.

"But I was not hurt by it. Campaigns can be nasty sometimes. I think it doesn't matter how long you live here - what matters is how long you have served the community," he adds.

The American journey, he says, has been a rewarding one: "I became a citizen only in 2017 and now in 2022, I have won an election. I don't think this can happen in any other country."

His victory is also special for a personal reason.

While practising in Texas, Mr Pattel became very close to a senior lawyer, Glenden B Adams.

When Mr Adams died, his wife Rosalie Adams asked Mr Pattel to be a pallbearer.

On Wednesday, when he began his new role, "it was Rosalie Adams who put the robes on me at my private investiture in my courtroom".

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