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This year is the 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, one of the most successful international conventions. It was adopted in 1972 to protect globally significant heritage places as a common heritage of humankind. Renowned World Heritage sites include the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Yellowstone National Park and the Galápagos. The convention has been signed by 194 countries (known as states parties). More than 1,150 sites in 167 countries have been inscribed on the World Heritage List for their cultural and/or natural values. On average, around 25 more sites are added to the list at each of the annual meetings of the World Heritage Committee, even as existing sites come under threat from climate change.

The rise is the number of World Heritage sites and their increasing exposure to greenhouse gases responsible for climate change. Greg Terrill/UNESCO, Fourni par l'auteur

Climate change is now the most significant threat to many World Heritage sites, especially those inscribed for their natural values. Short- and long-term climate-related impacts are increasing. For example, by 2100 and depending on the emissions scenario used, complete glacier extinction is predicted for 8 to 21 World Heritage sites, within which glaciers are an attribute of their universal value. The number of African coastal heritage sites at risk from a 100-year extreme flooding and coastal-erosion event, including the Stone Town of Zanzibar and Mozambique Island, is projected to more than triple by 2050 under a moderate emissions scenario.

Impacts are cumulative and some will persist for centuries after the world achieves net-zero emissions. Climate change is a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing threats, impacting sites in increasingly complex ways, and demanding further resources for management and adaptation. Food insecurity, social stresses and the displacement of populations as a consequence of climate change will further increase pressures on World Heritage sites.

The concept of outstanding universal value is fundamental to the World Heritage Convention and its processes. OUV has generally been interpreted assuming that the environment is largely stationary, something that climate change has proved incorrect. It will ultimately be impossible to maintain the outstanding universal value for which many sites were inscribed, even if effective global and local mitigation strategies and local adaptation strategies are implemented.

In Venice, the effectiveness of massive retractable barriers constructed at the entrance to the lagoon will be tested by the projected sea-level rise of anywhere from 17cm to 120cm by 2100 that will bring increasingly frequent, longer-lasting and potentially permanent flooding. A restoration and adaptation program is attempting to develop a suite of safe, acceptable interventions to help the Great Barrier Reef resist, adapt to, and recover from the impacts of climate change. However, it will be challenging to operationalise interventions at scale across this large World Heritage Area.

Flooding has long been a threat in Venice, Italy, but with a projected sea-level rise of anywhere from 17cm to 120cm by 2100, higher water levels will be more frequent, longer-lasting and potentially permanent. A. Currell/Flickr, CC BY

Substantive reforms are necessary for the World Heritage system to address these challenges. Although amending international conventions is notoriously difficult, the convention is a treaty where many important matters are dealt with in subsidiary documents, especially its operational guidelines, which are much easier to change than the convention, if state parties so wish.

An open-ended working group is working to finalise a policy document on climate action for World Heritage and to develop an implementation plan. The document outlines high-level directives but says little about the operational reforms required to address the scale and complexity of the challenges. Meaningful operational reforms are likely to be highly contested because of the differing priorities of various states parties. For example, African nations are very concerned about the under-representation of African sites on the World Heritage List and the perceived over-representation of African sites on the list of World Heritage in Danger.

In 2021, the Australian Academy of Science bought together 18 experts – in climate science, climate vulnerability assessment, IPCC processes, cultural, natural and Indigenous heritage, outlook reporting, site management, World Heritage system processes, environmental law, international law and diplomacy – in a roundtable on reforms to the convention to address the consequences of climate change. Their ideas for change focused on three key areas:

• identification of climate-related threats to World Heritage sites;

• the processes for state party reporting to the World Heritage Committee;

• responses to climate impacts to outstanding universal value.

Identification of climate-related threats

Introducing a requirement for World Heritage nominations to include a standardised vulnerability assessment could provide a baseline against which climate-related impacts to its potential OUV could be monitored. Currently there is no agreed standard: several methods have been applied to individual sites and a thematic approach has also been used, assessing comparable sites or groups of sites facing similar risks. Clear guidelines around the requirements for such assessments need to be discussed and developed so that assessments are systematic, useful and comparable.

The World Heritage Committee responds to threats to outstanding universal value through complex and resource-hungry reporting processes – these include state-of-conservation reporting, reactive monitoring and a six-year cycle of periodic reporting based on geography. These processes are already under strain due to the large number of sites in the reporting cycle. In 2021, less than 20% of the state-of conservation reports were discussed by the committee. Given the anticipated increase in the number and severity of threats as a result of climate change, the reporting processes need reconsideration. Such change cannot take place without considerable discussion.

Responding to climate impacts

As climate change accelerates, the outstanding universal value of some World Heritage sites will be severely or permanently impacted. In others, the changes may be milder. Limits of acceptable change could be developed for each property to identify the amount or nature of change that each property’s attributes can sustain without irretrievable loss of OUV. Accepting that change is inevitable, improved methods are needed to assess significant and minor changes to each site’s statement of OUV as well as clearer guidelines and thresholds for including a site on the List of World Heritage in Danger or delisting it.

Arlington Reef, located in Queensland, is part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Developing a set of safe interventions to help this fragile World Heritage site minimise and adapt to the impacts of climate change is essential. Luka Peternel/Wikipedia, CC BY

These reforms could result in more systematic and comparable evidence for climate impacts as a basis for realistic adaptation strategies and greater transparency and objectivity in decision-making by the World Heritage Committee.

Substantive reform of the operational guidelines would be a fitting project to commence in 2022, the 50th anniversary of the convention. We hope this article will stimulate widespread discussion about these matters, which are existential to the future of the Convention and its capacity to protect the world’s most precious heritage places in the face of climate change.

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California is facing a new round of brutal storms that will bring torrential downpours and gale force winds in the north as the state scrambles to clean up and repair widespread damage amid a break in the weather.

The state has been ravaged by a relentless string of storms that have killed at least 17 people – a number the governor warned was likely to grow. The bout of extreme weather has closed highways, knocked out trees and infrastructure and cut power to thousands of people. More than half of California’s 58 counties have been declared disaster areas.

Streets submerged by floods in Central California

The newest round of storms is forecast to hit the northern coast, where the threat of flooding will persist until Friday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. A wind advisory is in effect in some areas, which could see gusts of up to 60mph (96.5km/h).

The plume of moisture lurking off the coast stretched all the way over the Pacific to Hawaii, making it “a true Pineapple Express”, the NWS said.

Meanwhile, southern California will see a break in rains until the weekend, when more wet weather is forecast.

Communities across the state are working to pick up the pieces after days of severe rain, wind and flooding. This week’s storm, which began on Monday, was one in a series that began in late December and repairing the damage may cost more than $1bn, said Adam Smith, a disaster expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Crews worked to reopen major highways that were closed by rockslides, swamped by flooding or smothered with mud. More than 10,000 people who were ordered out of seaside towns on the central coast were allowed to return home.

People salvage items from their flooded home in Merced, California. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

They included Montecito, a wealthy Santa Barbara county community that is home to Prince Harry, Meghan, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, where 23 people died and more than 100 homes were destroyed in a mudslide five years ago.

In the Rancho Oso area of the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, mud and debris across the roadway isolated about 400 people and 70 horses, the Santa Barbara county fire department said on Twitter, posting a photo of a vehicle stuck in the mud.

Officials in central California resumed the search for a five-year-old boy who was swept away by raging floodwaters this week near the small village of San Miguel, the local sheriff’s department said.

While some emergency orders were lifted, thousands of people living near rain-swollen creeks and rivers remained under evacuation. In the San Joaquin Valley, raging waters from Bear Creek flooded parts of the city of Merced and neighboring Planada, a small agricultural community along a highway leading to Yosemite national park. Neighborhoods were under water with cars submerged up to their roofs, and all 4,000 residents of Planada were ordered to leave Tuesday morning.

An aerial view of two cars in a large sinkhole in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, on 10 January. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Other evacuations were ordered because of levee breaches in parts of Monterey county.

The torrential rains, along with heavy snow in mountain areas, are caused by “atmospheric rivers” of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific.

The storms brought unprecedented amounts of rain coupled with furious winds and even hail and lightning that knocked down trees and damaged electrical lines in many areas. More than 52,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of early Wednesday, according to data from Poweroutage.us.

The wet and blustery weather has highlighted the grave risks facing California’s large unhoused population. At least two homeless people in Sacramento county died after trees fell on their tents and more than a dozen people were rescued from a homeless encampment on the Ventura River.

Theo Harris, who has lived on San Francisco’s streets since 2016, fortified his shelter with tarps and zip ties on Tuesday and took in his girlfriend after her tent flooded.

“The wind has been treacherous, but you just got to bundle up and make sure you stay dry,” Harris said. “Rain is part of life. It’s going to be sunny. It’s going to rain. I just got to strap my boots up and not give up.”

Flooded properties along Beer Creek in Merced, California. Photograph: Lipo Ching/EPA

In San Francisco, a tree fell on a commuter bus on Tuesday without causing injuries and lightning struck the city’s Transamerica Pyramid building without damage. High winds also ripped away part of the roof on a large apartment building.

Further south, mudslides damaged some homes in pricey Los Angeles hillside areas, while further up the coast a sinkhole damaged 15 homes in the rural Santa Barbara county community of Orcutt.

Kevin Costner, best actor winner in a television drama series for Yellowstone, was unable to attend Tuesday’s Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles because of the weather. The presenter Regina Hall said he was sheltering in place in Santa Barbara due to flooding.

The growing frequency and intensity of such storms, interspersed with extreme heat and dry spells, are symptoms of the climate crisis, experts say. Though the rain and snow will help replenish reservoirs and aquifers, a mere two weeks of precipitation will not solve two decades of drought.

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Elon Musk said in November that Twitter's top priority is eliminating content that sexually exploits children. But Twitter apparently didn't take action against a series of hashtags and keywords used to promote the sale of child sex abuse material (CSAM) until after NBC News identified the problem in a report published Friday.

Twitter blocked searches for the hashtags and keywords on Saturday, NBC News wrote yesterday.

"NBC News found that a series of hashtags on the platform related to the file-sharing service Mega served as rallying points for users seeking to trade or sell CSAM. NBC News observed the hashtags over a period of several weeks, and counted dozens of users who collectively published hundreds of tweets daily," the report said. "The accounts used thinly veiled keywords and terms related to CSAM to promote the content they said was stored on Mega, which they said was available for purchase or trade."

Some accounts had been using the CSAM hashtags for months, and "dozens of users had tagged Musk using the hashtags attempting to alert him to the issue," NBC News wrote.

"Nearly all of the tweets viewed by NBC News that advertised or promoted CSAM used hashtags that referred to Mega or another similar service, allowing users to search and locate their tweets. Despite the hashtags being active for months, they remain searchable on the platform," the report on Friday said.

Twitter laid off half its staff after Musk bought the company, then lost more people after Musk issued an ultimatum saying employees must commit to "working long hours at high intensity" to keep their jobs. Staff cuts reportedly left the team responsible for reviewing and escalating reports of CSAM with "an overwhelmed skeleton crew."

Twitter VP discusses hashtag bans

After the Friday report, Twitter VP of Product Trust and Safety Ella Irwin told NBC News that the department would review the content over the weekend. "As you probably know the links you shared relate to a file sharing service broadly used for a wide variety of purposes and so that makes it much harder to find the specific illegal content being posted using the hashtags in question," Irwin wrote in an email.

On Saturday, Irwin sent a follow-up email to NBC News reporting that Twitter had banned the hashtags. "We were already reviewing doing this in the coming weeks, given that we have banned other hashtags used commonly for trafficking [CSAM] material already, however we made the decision to accelerate this action for these terms," she wrote.

NBC News paraphrased Irwin as saying that "in the last six weeks Twitter had been analyzing thousands of hashtags for a project that was scheduled for completion in the next few weeks. She noted that the company did not want to ban hashtags that had a legitimate use, but in this case the company decided to act."

Irwin also wrote, "We definitely know we still have work to do in the space, and certainly believe we have been improving rapidly and detecting far more than Twitter has detected in a long time but we are deploying a number of things to continue to improve."

Despite extensive staff cuts, Irwin told NBC News that Twitter has "roughly 25% more staffing on this issue/problem space now than the company had at its peak last January."

Mega Executive Chairman Stephen Hall last week told NBC News that when a "public link is reported as containing CSAM, we immediately disable the link, permanently close the user's account, and provide full details to the New Zealand authorities, and any relevant international authority." An NBC News email yesterday said that "Hall reacted to the news of the Mega-related terms being blocked on Twitter by writing that it was 'a rather blunt reaction to a complex situation.'"

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Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean is home to one of the world’s weirdest lakes. Not only is Pitch Lake brimming with bizarre microbial life, but its "waters" are also such an odd consistency that you can walk across it. 

Found near La Brea on the southwestern tip of Trinidad, Pitch Lake is around 40 hectares (100 acres) in size and 76 meters (250 feet) deep. It is chocked full of some 10 million tons of asphalt, aka pitch, which makes it the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world. 

It’s located above the intersection of two of Earth's geological fault lines. The asphalt is thought to have emerged many thousands of years ago when the fault lines beneath split deep enough to tap into oil and gas reservoirs, causing this highly viscous form of petroleum to spring to the surface. 

The abundance of gloopy asphalt gives the lake a very peculiar quality. It essentially acts like a massive field of sludgy asphalt that’s dotted with pools of water. In some places, the lake is sturdy enough to stand on and wander across without too much trouble. In other patches, people who make a wrong step will slowly sink like a spoon falling through thick custard.

Dip stickin' at Pitch Lake. Image credit: maloff/Shutterstock.com

Owing to the flammable qualities of petroleum, smoking isn’t recommended. It’s said that if you drop a match in any of the water pools then a violent burst of flames will arise. 

Despite the unique qualities of this lake (if you can call it that) it hasn’t been investigated by that many scientific studies. However, researchers have looked into the microbial life of the lake and, unsurprisingly, it holds some surprises. 

A 2011 study concluded that the “microbial diversity at Pitch Lake was found to be unique when compared to microbial communities analyzed at other hydrocarbon-rich environments.” Along with discovering a bunch of never-before-seen species, the microbial communities that live here were found to be diverse, composed of “deeply branching lineages” of co-existing bacteria and archaea.

The lake is briefly mentioned in the accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to the Caribbean and South America in 1595. Realizing the quality of the asphalt, he used it as a sealant on his leaking ships. He reportedly described the asphalt as  "most excellent... It melteth not with the sun as the pitch of Norway". 

Walking on water? Pitch Lake is a major tourist magnet. Image credit: Anton_Ivanov/Shutterstock.com

As the influence of colonialism grew in the Caribbean, European powers exploited this valuable natural resource and shipped the high-quality asphalt all over the world. By the 19th and 20th centuries, commercial asphalt harvesting by the British was well underway and hundreds of thousands of tons were exported globally.

While the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh is often credited in history books for discovering the lake, it had a long history before European colonialism, as proven by archaeological evidence at the site that dates back to 500 BCE. According to the legends of local Indigenous communities, the lake was created by the Great Spirit as a punishment for the killing of hummingbirds, which were sacred to them.

Today, the lake is still used to extract asphalt, but operations are now controlled by the state-owned company Lake Asphalt of Trinidad and Tobago. The strange sight is also a major magnet for tourists who can join locals to embark on expeditions across the semi-solid lake. At their own risk, of course.

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The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere could vanish within five years if emergency water conservation measures are not imposed immediately. According to a new report, Utah’s Great Salt Lake is currently 3 meters (10 feet) below its minimum healthy level, and its disappearance could expose millions of people to toxic dust containing particles of arsenic and mercury, among other dangerous metals.

“At 19 feet [5.8 meters] below its average natural level since 1850, the lake is in uncharted territory,” explain the researchers. This, they say, equates to a loss of 60 percent of the lake’s surface area and 73 percent of its total water content.

Leaving little doubt as to the cause of this alarming decline, the authors state that “excessive water use is destroying Great Salt Lake.” This process began with the construction of dams, canals, and pipelines in the early 1900s, yet was briefly halted in the 1980s when “an extremely uncommon wet period” allowed the lake to refill.

However, since peaking in 1987, the Great Salt Lake has been in continual decline. The drop in water levels has accelerated since 2020, with water diversions depriving the lake of more than two-thirds of its natural streamflow and resulting in an average deficit of 1.2 million acre-feet per year.

“If this loss rate continues, the lake as we know it is on track to disappear in five years,” say the report authors.

In 2022, the lake dropped to its lowest ever level, and the researchers now estimate that an additional million acre-feet per year are required to refill the lake. Depending on weather conditions, achieving this figure is likely to require a reduction in water consumption of “a third to a half.”

“We are in an all-hands-on-deck emergency, and we need farmers, counties, cities, businesses, churches, universities, and other organizations to do everything in their power to reduce outdoor water use,” write the researchers. Climate change, meanwhile, is probably responsible for roughly nine percent of the lake’s decline, and global efforts to reduce emissions are therefore needed to help stop the rot. 

Aside from sustaining a thriving ecosystem that provides a habitat for around 10 million migratory birds, the Great Salt Lake also protects millions of people from hazardous pollutants. This is because toxic materials released by industrial and agricultural processes accumulate on the bottom of saline lakes, where they remain trapped.

Dangerous pollutants including arsenic, cadmium, mercury, nickel, chromium, lead, and cyanotoxins have all been detected in Great Salt Lake sediments, and could be released as dust particles if the water disappears. “Without a coordinated rescue, we can expect widespread air and water pollution, numerous Endangered Species Act listings, and declines in agriculture, industry, and overall quality of life,” say the researchers.

To prevent such catastrophic consequences, the authors call upon the governor’s office to “implement a watershed-wide emergency rescue” until the lake reaches a healthy level. “We need clear thresholds that trigger binding emergency conservation measures to stop the lake’s collapse,” they say.

“By taking a 'lake first' approach to water use, we can leave a legacy of wise stewardship for generations to come.”

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The remains of a luxurious home in the ancient Roman town of Pompeii have been opened up to the public after years of refurbishment. The Archaeological Park of Pompeii officially unveiled the refurbed property on Tuesday – and what a beautiful sight it is.

Known as La Casa Dei Vettii, the house was originally excavated between 1894 and 1896, but was subjected to an extensive restoration project in 2016. 

The opulent property, dotted with raunchy statues and erotic art, likely belonged to two men who were freed as slaves and made a fortune through the wine trade. It also appears that a Greek sex worker operated in the house alongside the two freedmen. 

The god Priapus in all his glory. Image credit: © Luigi Spina

The house has been described as a living museum that encapsulates the luxurious life of Roman elites in Pompeii, before volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius furiously rained hell on the town in 79 CE.

"The House of the Vettii represents the story of the Roman world encapsulated in a single house, the ‘house/ museum’ of the ‘Roman spirit’: it contains mythological frescoes and sculptures made of bronze and marble of exceptional artistic quality which reflect the complex relationship between Greek models and Roman copies, as well as the economic and social life of the city,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said in a statement.

“The owners, who were freedmen and thus former slaves, testify to a level of social mobility which would have been unthinkable two centuries previously. Their wealth stemmed from commerce in agricultural produce from the territory around Pompeii, but it would appear that prostitution was also practised in their house by a Greek slave woman who belonged to the most deprived groups of society," Zuchtriegel added.

Another shot of the beautiful garden. Image credit: © Luigi Spina

Look away, kids. Image credit: ©Silvia Vacca

The home features a beautiful enclosed garden that’s fitted with a complex system of water pipes and small fountains. Along with classical Roman pillars, the garden is decorated with many sculptures. The researchers say the most unique is a sculpture of Priapus, a god of fertility and the male genitalia. Unsurprisingly, the god is depicted with a startlingly large erect penis. 

As impressive as he may be, the structure is also adorned with an array of vibrantly colored frescoes. To restore the paintings to their former glory, archeologists had to remove of layers of wax that had naively been applied in the past with the intention of protecting them. 

Some of the frescoes were not naughty. Image credit: © Luigi Spina

Historians worked out that La Casa Dei Vettii was most likely owned by two freedmen who had been released from slavery and later acquired wealth through the wine trade. As for the relationship between the two men, that’s up for speculation.

Zuchtriegel told The Guardian: “It was uncommon to have biological siblings who were slaves and then set free, because family ties were cut with slavery so it’s very unlikely they were brothers. It’s more likely that they were buddies during their time as slaves and then set free.” 

“Buddies” would be one way to put it. However, it’s important to consider that ancient Romans certainly weren’t prudish about sexuality and same-sex relations. 

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Now, using a mouse model susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection, scientists demonstrated the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect different regions of the brain and to cause brain damage, and how the CNB-CSIC vaccine fully protects against infection of the brain. These findings are published in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience. The study was conducted a multidisciplinary team of Spanish researchers led by Dr. Javier Villadiego and Dr. Juan José Toledo-Aral (IBiS, CIBERNED and Department of Medical Physiology and Biophysics of the Faculty of Medicine of Seville) and Juan García-Arriaza (Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology of the CNB-CSIC, CIBERINFEC and PTI Global Health of CSIC), in collaboration with other groups from the University of Seville and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

A) Neuron of the cerebral cortex infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (viral particles in green). B and C) In B, cortical neurons infected by SARS-CoV-2 (in brown) and, in C, absence of infection in the same brain region of mice vaccinated with MVA-CoV2-S. Credit: IBiS

 

Researchers have studied the evolution of viral infection in different brain regions, noting that viral replication occurs mainly in neurons, producing neuropathological alterations such as neuronal loss, glial activation, and vascular damage. “We have carried out a very detailed anatomo-pathological and molecular study of the brain regions and the types of cells that have been infected by the virus. It is remarkable how the virus infects different areas and mainly neurons,” explains Javier Villadiego.

Once the pattern of infection in the brain by SARS-CoV-2 was established, the researchers evaluated the efficacy of the vaccine against COVID-19 developed at the CNB-CSIC. To do this, they immunized mice with one or two doses of the MVA-CoV2-S vaccine, based on the modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) expressing the spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2, and analyzed the capability to protect against infection and damage to the brain. “The results obtained were spectacular, demonstrating that even the administration of a single dose of the MVA-CoV2-S vaccine completely prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection in all brain regions studied and it prevents associated brain damage, even after a reinfection with the virus.  This demonstrates the great efficacy and immunogenic power of the vaccine that induces sterilizing immunity in the brain,” as Juan García-Arriaza indicates.

These results reinforce previous data on the immunogenicity and efficacy of the MVA-CoV2-S vaccine in various animal models. “We had previously shown in a series of publications that the MVA-CoV2-S vaccine that we developed at the CNB-CSIC induces in three animal models (mouse, hamster and macaque) a potent immune response of antibodies binding to the S protein of the virus and of neutralizing antibodies against different variants of concern of the virus, as well as T lymphocytes activation, essential markers for infection control,” says Mariano Esteban, CNB-CSIC researcher involved in the study.

The results have important long-term implications for understanding the infection caused by SARS-CoV-2. “The data we have obtained on SARS-CoV-2 infection in the brain are compatible with the neurological pathology observed in patients with COVID-19,” highlights José López-Barneo, IBiS researcher who participated in the publication. “Our work is the first study of a vaccine that is 100% effective against brain damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 in a susceptible mouse, and the results obtained strongly suggest that the vaccine could prevent persistent COVID-19 observed in several people infected with SARS-CoV-2,” highlights Juan José Toledo-Aral.

“The data provided in this study with complete inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 replication in the brain mediated by the MVA-CoV2-S vaccine, together with previous studies published by the group and collaborators on the immunogenicity and efficacy of the vaccine against different variants of SARS-CoV-2, support phase I clinical trials with such a vaccine, or similar prototypes, to assess their safety and immunogenicity,” the authors of the study emphasized.

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"In response to recent media reports of Twitter users' data being sold online, we conducted a thorough investigation and there is no evidence that data recently being sold was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems," the company said.

In August, the company confirmed that a data leak impacting 5.4 million Twitter users resulted from threat actors exploiting a vulnerability fixed in January 2022.

This flaw enabled the attackers to link email addresses and phone numbers to Twitter users' accounts.

Today, Twitter said that another dataset containing email addresses linked to 200 million Twitter users that reportedly got leaked online earlier this month was not obtained by exploiting the vulnerability patched in January 2022.

"[The] 200 million dataset could not be correlated with the previously reported incident or any data originating from an exploitation of Twitter systems," Twitter said.

"None of the datasets analyzed contained passwords or information that could lead to passwords being compromised."

The company added that "based on information and intel analyzed to investigate the issue, there is no evidence that the data being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems. The data is likely a collection of data already publicly available online through different sources."

However, Twitter failed to explain in today's statement how the Twitter users' leaked data was accurately linked to email addresses associated with their accounts.

Twitter added that it's currently in contact with Data Protection Authorities and other relevant data regulator bodies in multiple countries to provide additional details regarding the "alleged incidents."

In December 2022, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced that it launched an inquiry and "raised queries in relation to GDPR compliance" following news reports that the personal information of 5.4 million Twitter users was leaked online.

Two years before, in December 2020, the DPC fined Twitter €450,000 (~$550,000) after it failed to notify the data watchdog of a breach within the 72-hour timeframe required by EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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An FAA computer glitch grounded flights across the US

Animal testing has long been necessary for a drug to gain approval by the US Food and Drug Administration—but it may be on its way out. A new law seeks to replace some lab animal use with high-tech alternatives.

The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, signed by President Biden at the end of December with widespread bipartisan support, ends a 1938 federal mandate that experimental drugs must be tested on animals before they are used in human clinical trials. While the law doesn’t ban animal testing, it allows drugmakers to use other methods, such as microfluidic chips and miniature tissue models, which use human cells to mimic certain organ functions and structures.

“We have many important drugs that have been developed using animal tests. But as we get into some of these more difficult diseases, especially neurological diseases, the animal models just aren't serving us as well,” says Paul Locke, a scientist and lawyer at Johns Hopkins University who studies alternatives to animal testing. “We need new ways to really unlock the molecular mechanisms that are causing these diseases, and the alternatives I think hold great promise.”

Locke and other advocates point to studies that have shown animal testing to be an unreliable predictor of toxicity in humans. And plenty of drugs work in mice but aren’t effective in people. An estimated 90 percent of drug candidates in clinical trials never reach the market, and drugs that target the brain typically have an even higher failure rate. These inconsistencies, combined with the time, expense, and ethical issues associated with using animals, have led scientists to develop alternative testing methods that aim to better recapitulate human physiology. 

These include microfluidic organs-on-chips—clear, flexible polymer gadgets about the size of a computer memory stick that contain different kinds of human cells and push fluid through tiny channels to mimic blood flow. The first successful chip containing living human cells, a lung model, was described in 2010 by Donald Ingber and his team at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. The miniaturized device was able to carry out basic functions of the lung, including exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. Researchers at the Wyss Institute and elsewhere have gone on to create chips that simulate the liver, stomach and intestine, brain, skin, and more, using them to test the effects of drugs and environmental toxins. 

Then there are organoids—tiny, three-dimensional blobs of tissue grown in the lab. In 2008, Japanese biologist Yoshiki Sasai showed that, under the right conditions, it is possible to transform stem cells into neural tissue in a dish. By feeding cells certain nutrients and genetic instructions, scientists can coax them to self-organize into structures that resemble miniature organs and contain several cell types. Though no bigger than a pea, these models have some of the characteristics of full-size hearts and brains, and because they’re grown in a lab dish, they provide scientists with a detailed window into how organs form and develop. They’ve also been shown to predict patient responses to certain drugs, including cystic fibrosis medications and chemotherapy. 

Computer models that use artificial intelligence and machine learning trained on human data could also provide fast and cheap alternatives to animal testing. One 2018 study from the University of Oxford found that a computer simulation representing human heart cells outperformed animal tests in predicting adverse effects among cardiac drugs. 

Previously, the US government required that all investigational drugs be tested on animals before they could progress to initial trials in humans. But the new law allows drug developers to submit safety and efficacy data from sources other than animals.

This doesn’t mean it will be easier to get drugs approved, says Aysha Akhtar, a neurologist and president and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that advocates for human-based testing methods. “The decision is still up to the FDA to decide whether the method was adequate and whether to allow the drug to continue through the pipeline.”

Akhtar thinks the measures could eventually cut the cost of developing drugs by reducing reliance on animal testing, but she doesn’t think the effect will be instant. “What I suspect we're going to see is these other testing methods being used and being incorporated more and more into new drug applications to the FDA. They may not be in place of animal testing just yet, but they will be added in addition to the animal test results,” she says.

A reduction in lab animal use may be hard to measure, because no one knows exactly how many are used in the US every year. A 2021 study calculated that annual figure at more than 111 million mice and rats, which make up the vast majority of lab animals. But that study was criticized for extrapolating national numbers from a handful of institutions. Other estimates are much lower. For instance, Speaking of Research, an organization that advocates for the use of lab animals, puts the total—including rodents, primates, dogs, guinea pigs, and rabbits—around 12 million to 24 million per year.

Moving away from animal testing has been a priority for researchers for some time. Although animal experiments have been used since at least the sixth century BC, when physicians in Ancient Greece performed surgeries called “vivisections” on living animals to better understand anatomy, they’ve come under increasing scrutiny. In 2021, the European Union Parliament voted to phase out animal testing.

Research on nonhuman primates, including monkeys and baboons, is particularly controversial because of the animals’ advanced cognitive abilities. Primates are often considered the “gold standard” animal models for drug development because they are biologically and anatomically similar to people. But in the US, they make up less than 1 percent of research animals, and only a handful of primate research centers exist.

The US has phased out research on chimpanzees, humans’ closest genetic relatives. In 2013, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would significantly reduce government-supported research on chimps, following recommendations from an advisory committee. The agency initially planned to retain a colony of 50 animals for research but in 2015 announced that it would end chimp research altogether and retire them to sanctuaries. 

The Covid-19 crisis highlighted certain economic and welfare issues associated with using animals for research. Pandemic-related closures meant that many labs had to halt experiments and euthanize animals. Then the race to develop vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 meant monkeys were in short supply due to huge demand. 

While alternative methods are promising, they’re relatively new. Methods for developing organ chips, organoids, and computer models also vary from lab to lab, making it difficult to draw broad conclusions about their accuracy.  

Boston biotech company chip Emulate, cofounded by Ingber, is testing how well its liver-on-a-chip device does at flagging the presence of dangerous chemicals. Lorna Ewart, the company’s chief scientific officer, says liver toxicity is a major reason why clinical drug trials are stopped or products are pulled from the marketplace after approval. Animal models, she says, may not be accurate predictors of liver toxicities for people, because animals metabolize drugs differently than humans do.

Emulate scientists recently performed a blind test on the company’s liver chip of 27 drugs, some known to be toxic to the liver and some safe. They found that the chip correctly identified 87 percent of the drugs that cause liver injury in patients and did not falsely identify any drugs as toxic. Ewart says previous animal tests, used as a comparison, did not always predict safety issues. “In some cases, the animal models didn't fully inform the investigator of the true outcome,” she says. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications in December.

But organs-on-chips have their limitations. For one, they’re not ideal for testing some kinds of drugs and compounds, particularly those with a low molecular weight, which tend to absorb into the rubber polymer channels of the chip. Ewart says that's a problem, because if the drug is caught in the plastic and not actually exposed to the cells within, it will skew the test results. And organs-on-chips often require special instrumentation to conduct testing and read out data. 

“I don’t think the organ-on-chip will do it all. I think we’ll need a battery of different, complementary tests,” says Jeffrey Morgan, a professor of engineering and director of the Center for Alternatives to Animals in Testing at Brown University. He says organ chips tend to be better for shorter tests, over a week or two, but longer-term testing is an unmet need. For instance, in some cases the chronic toxicity of a drug or chemical is apparent only after long-term exposure, sometimes at low doses. Good alternative testing methods that replicate this kind of scenario don’t exist, he says. 

And while techniques to develop organoids have greatly advanced in recent years, the structures are still relatively simple. They don’t have all the cell types or characteristics of real human organs, which may limit their reliability. Organoids also take months to grow in the lab.

For its part, the FDA will need to thoroughly vet any new methods that are used in place of animals. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the agency wrote that the new law does not change the regulatory process for drugs: “The FDA will continue to ensure clinical investigations of drugs are reasonably safe for initial use in humans.” A spending bill passed at the end of 2022 also includes $5 million for an agency program aimed at evaluating alternative methods. 

And it may be that different methods are useful for testing different drugs or watching for certain side effects. “They have to be shown to be relevant and reliable and actually predict the endpoints that they're evaluating,” says Locke. “That's going to be a scientific challenge, and it's going to take a while to do that.”

The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing

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By at least one measure, China now leads the world in producing high-quality science. My research shows that Chinese scholars now publish a larger fraction of the top 1% most cited scientific papers globally than scientists from any other country.

I am a policy expert and analyst who studies how governmental investment in science, technology and innovation improves social welfare. While a country’s scientific prowess is somewhat difficult to quantify, I’d argue that the amount of money spent on scientific research, the number of scholarly papers published and the quality of those papers are good stand-in measures.

China is not the only nation to drastically improve its science capacity in recent years, but China’s rise has been particularly dramatic. This has left US policy experts and government officials worried about how China’s scientific supremacy will shift the global balance of power.

China’s recent ascendancy results from years of governmental policy aiming to be tops in science and technology. The country has taken explicit steps to get where it is today, and the US now has a choice to make about how to respond to a scientifically competitive China.

Growth across decades

In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the Four Modernizations, one of which was strengthening China’s science sector and technological progress. As recently as 2000, the US produced many times the number of scientific papers as China annually.

However, over the past three decades or so, China has invested funds to grow domestic research capabilities, to send students and researchers abroad to study, and to encourage Chinese businesses to shift to manufacturing high-tech products.

Since 2000, China has sent an estimated 5.2 million students and scholars to study abroad. The majority of them studied science or engineering. Many of these students remained where they studied, but an increasing number return to China to work in well-resourced laboratories and high-tech companies.

Today, China is second only to the US in how much it spends on science and technology. Chinese universities now produce the largest number of engineering PhDs in the world, and the quality of Chinese universities has dramatically improved in recent years.

Producing more and better science

Thanks to all this investment and a growing, capable workforce, China’s scientific output – as measured by the number of total published papers – has increased steadily over the years. In 2017, Chinese scholars published more scientific papers than US researchers for the first time.

Quantity does not necessarily mean quality though. For many years, researchers in the West wrote off Chinese research as low quality and often as simply imitating research from the US and Europe. During the 2000s and 2010s, much of the work coming from China did not receive significant attention from the global scientific community.

But as China has continued to invest in science, I began to wonder whether the explosion in the quantity of research was accompanied by improving quality.

To quantify China’s scientific strength, my colleagues and I looked at citations. A citation is when an academic paper is referenced – or cited – by another paper. We considered that the more times a paper has been cited, the higher quality and more influential the work. Given that logic, the top 1% most cited papers should represent the upper echelon of high-quality science.

My colleagues and I counted how many papers published by a country were in the top 1% of science as measured by the number of citations in various disciplines. Going year by year from 2015 to 2019, we then compared different countries.

We were surprised to find that in 2019, Chinese authors published a greater percentage of the most influential papers, with China claiming 8,422 articles in the top category, while the US had 7,959 and the European Union had 6,074.

In just one recent example, we found that in 2022, Chinese researchers published three times as many papers on artificial intelligence as US researchers; in the top 1% most cited AI research, Chinese papers outnumbered US papers by a 2-to-1 ratio. Similar patterns can be seen with China leading in the top 1% most cited papers in nanoscience, chemistry and transportation.

Our research also found that Chinese research was surprisingly novel and creative – and not simply copying western researchers. To measure this, we looked at the mix of disciplines referenced in scientific papers.

The more diverse and varied the referenced research was in a single paper, the more interdisciplinary and novel we considered the work. We found Chinese research to be as innovative as other top performing countries.

Taken together, these measures suggest that China is now no longer an imitator or producer of only low-quality science. China is now a scientific power on par with the U.S. and Europe, both in quantity and in quality.

On August 9, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law to support the growth of US research and technology firms as a way to counter China’s scientific growth. Photo: The White House / Flickr

Fear or collaboration?

Scientific capability is intricately tied to both military and economic power. Because of this relationship, many in the US – from politicians to policy experts – have expressed concern that China’s scientific rise is a threat to the US, and the government has taken steps to slow China’s growth.

The recent Chips and Science Act of 2022 explicitly limits cooperation with China in some areas of research and manufacturing. In October 2022, the Biden administration put restrictions in place to limit China’s access to key technologies with military applications.

A number of scholars, including me, see these fears and policy responses as rooted in a nationalistic view that doesn’t wholly map onto the global endeavor of science.

Academic research in the modern world is in large part driven by the exchange of ideas and information. The results are published in publicly available journals that anyone can read. Science is also becoming ever more international and collaborative, with researchers around the world depending on each other to push their fields forward.

Recent collaborative research on cancer, Covid-19 and agriculture are just a few of many examples. My own work has also shown that when researchers from China and the US collaborate, they produce higher quality science than either one alone.

China has joined the ranks of top scientific and technological nations, and some of the concerns over shifts of power are reasonable in my view. But the US can also benefit from China’s scientific rise.

With many global issues facing the planet – like climate change, to name just one – there may be wisdom in looking at this new situation as not only a threat, but also an opportunity.

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When Allison Holthoff entered a crowded Nova Scotia hospital at the end of December, the intense pain in her abdomen worsened with each hour she spent waiting for treatment. With the emergency room under renovations, overwhelmed staff triaged a stream of incoming patients in a makeshift treatment area.

“‘I feel like I’m dying. They’re going to let me die here,’” Holthoff told her husband, Gunther.

After more than seven hours of waiting, she went into cardiac arrest. She was resuscitated three times by health professionals, who spotted internal bleeding on an X-ray, but staff determined her organs had sustained too much damage and it was unlikely she would survive.

“It was a terrible situation for my wife, for my kids and a lot of people in the community,” Gunther Holthoff told reporters earlier this week at a press conference, saying his wife had been “neglected” as her condition deteriorated. “I’m just lost.”

While no cause of death has yet been identified, the case has nonetheless prompted calls by local politicians for an investigation into the Canadian province’s emergency room backlog. But Holthoff’s death is also the latest fatality to expose a mounting crisis in the country’s hospitals, which have been worn down by waves of respiratory viruses and exacerbated by a chronic staffing shortage.

Last summer, many emergency rooms in rural communities shut down. In larger cities, people waited dozens of hours for emergency care. At Canada’s largest children’s hospital, SickKids, a four-year-old child was separated from his family and flown more than 350km (217 miles) for treatment of a near-fatal sepsis infection amid overcrowding.

“Emergency rooms are the barometer for our healthcare system,” said David Carr, a physician and professor of emergency medicine at the University of Toronto. “We’re facing the ‘perfect storm’ – we’ve been thrown a virus that is crippled our healthcare system and while we’ve managed to get ahold of it in many ways, what we have not [is] coming to grips with is the sheer attrition of nurses and healthcare team members.”

While the winter months are typically the worst times for emergency rooms as respiratory viruses take hold, Canada’s shortage of health professionals – and the rising rate of burnout – is making a bad problem worse.

Nurses at Humber River hospital’s intensive care unit in Toronto, Canada, in April 2021 during an influx of Covid cases.

Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images

“Clearly the cracks have been exposed,” said Carr, pointing out that colleagues in other provinces often share “frightening numbers” that lay bare the overflowing waiting rooms and a struggle to allocate limited beds.

Further compounding the staffing shortage, healthcare systems across the country are experiencing a “geriatric tsunami” of ageing patients whose care requires a growing share of healthcare budgets and efforts.

In recent months, these crises have brought healthcare systems to a breaking point. As medicine falls under provincial jurisdiction – but is funded by the federal government – political leaders at various levels of government have feuded over fixes to a languishing system.

Amid a shortage of family doctors, more cases that should be addressed earlier are ending up in the country’s emergency rooms.

“Sometimes you will hear stories of terrible outcomes happening in emergency department waiting times. But what often isn’t seen is the effect of those delays,” said Carr. “The press picks up on these terrible catastrophes that happened in the waiting room. But they missed out on the morbidity of conditions that happen as a result of delay of care, of people not being able to assess a primary care physician.”

Making the shortage worse, Canadian medical students who study abroad are often unable to practice medicine when they return home due to arduous licensing requirements.

“I tell parents of prospective medical students, if you send your kid away, there’s a reasonable chance that he or she will never come back if they train abroad, even if it’s in the United States,” said Carr.

Provincial premiers recently floated a proposal that would make it easier for foreign-trained nurses and doctors to earn Canadian credentials. But experts warn the move cannot be made quickly and requires more resources than simply rubber-stamping paperwork.

Without a single factor alone breaking the emergency rooms, Carr fears no quick solution is possible – and worries political leaders remain unable to fix a crisis that healthcare workers have long warned was looming.

“I feel like for years, our complaints have fallen on deaf ears,” he said. “And now I worry that we’re facing a pandemic of significant mental health challenges in our healthcare community. We have a compounding threat that needs to be addressed today, not tomorrow.”

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For the trial, 70 children aged 6–18 years old with peanut allergies received 12-hour boiled peanuts for 12 weeks, 2-hour boiled peanuts for 20 weeks, and roasted peanuts for 20 weeks, to a target maintenance dose of 12 roasted peanuts daily.

Fifty-six of the 70 (80%) participants became desensitized to peanuts. Treatment-related adverse events were reported in 43 (61%) participants, 3 of whom withdrew from the trial.

"Oral immunotherapy using boiled followed by roasted peanuts represents a pragmatic approach that appears effective in inducing desensitization and is associated with a favourable safety profile," the authors wrote.

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Scientists just announced that they’ve detected what might be some of the earliest galaxies to form in the universe, a tantalizing discovery made thanks to NASA’s new flagship James Webb Space Telescope. 

“This is the first large sample of candidate galaxies beyond the reach of the Hubble Space Telescope,” astronomer Haojing Yan said yesterday at a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. Yan, who is at the University of Missouri, led the newly published study. Because the more sensitive JWST can see further into deep space than its predecessor Hubble does, it essentially sees further back in time. In the new catalog of 87 galaxies astronomers have spotted using it, some could date back to about 13.6 billion years ago, just 200 million years after the Big Bang. That’s when the galaxies emitted the light that we’re seeing today—although those systems of stars, gas, and dust would have changed dramatically since then, if they still exist at all.

While scientists have studied other faraway galaxies that date back to when the universe was still young, the discoveries by Yan and his colleagues could break those records by a few hundred million years or so. But at this point, they are all still considered “candidate galaxies,” which means that their birthdates still need confirmation. 

Dating a galaxy can be a challenging matter: It involves measuring its “redshift,” how much the light it emits is stretched toward longer red wavelengths, which tells astronomers how fast the galaxy is moving away from us in the quickly expanding universe. That, in turn, tells astronomers the galaxy’s distance from Earth—or more exactly, the distance that the photons from its stars had to travel at the speed of light before reaching a space telescope near the Earth, like JWST. Light from stars in the most distant galaxy in this collection may have been emitted 13.6 billion years ago, likely fairly soon after the young galaxy came together. 

These newly estimated distances will have to be confirmed with spectra, which means measuring the light the galaxies emit across the electromagnetic spectrum and pinpointing its unique signatures. Still, Yan expects many of them to be correctly dated to the early days of the cosmos: “I’ll bet $20 and a tall beer that the success rate will be higher than 50 percent,” he said.

Yan’s team imaged these galaxies with JWST’s NIRCam at six near-infrared wavelengths. To estimate their distances, the astronomers used a standard “dropout” technique: Hydrogen gas surrounding galaxies absorbs light at a particular wavelength, so the wavelengths at which an object can or can’t be seen puts a limit on how far away it is likely to be. These 87 candidate galaxies mostly look like blobs that can only be detected in the longer (and therefore redder) near-infrared wavelengths detectable by NIRCam, which could mean they’re very distant, and therefore very old. 

However, it’s possible that some of them could be much closer than expected—which would mean they aren’t so old after all. For example, it could be that their light is just too faint to be detected at some wavelengths. Until Yan can collect more detailed data, he won’t know for sure.

Many astronomers have been excited to use the new telescope to investigate early-universe galaxies, vast metropolises of millions and sometimes billions of stars. Each galaxy takes a long time to develop its unique shape: Many look sort of like a sombrero, with a bulgy inner part and a thinner disk of galaxies beyond that, while others only have the round, bulgy part. Astronomers previously thought few galaxies in the early universe had disks, but it turns out observers just couldn’t see dim ones before Webb came on the scene. 

Now, some astronomers are wondering if early galaxies might have complex structures like our own Milky Way’s huge spiral arms, says Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology who’s part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science survey and also presented work at the astronomy conference. “The increased resolution of JWST allows us to see the structure more clearly, and the high sensitivity of the NIRCam instrument allows us to see faint features that we just couldn’t see before,” she says.

Kartaltepe and her team examined 850 galaxies with Webb’s infrared camera. These galaxies date to between about 11.5 and 13 billion years in the past, and her group found that around 40 percent of them have disks. Their new study is currently going through peer review.

Another team of astronomers who used JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph, which measures the intensity of light over a range of wavelengths, also announced new research results yesterday: They found three objects dating to about 700 million years after the Big Bang that are akin to the small “green pea” galaxies people have already glimpsed in our nearby universe. (The moniker comes from citizen science volunteers with the Galaxy Zooproject, because the false-colour images they use from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to classify these galaxies make them look round and green.) 

James Rhoads, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, led this team, and their work was also published last week. “These are among the first three spectra from the cosmic dawn of the universe from JWST,” he said at yesterday’s press conference.

His team’s research suggests that 700 million years after the universe exploded into existence, these kinds of compact galaxies—which are thought to be young and forming stars—were probably common. We still sight similar galaxies today in nearby space, he says, but “green pea galaxies are much rarer in our cosmic backyard.” 

Astronomers May Have Just Spotted the Universe’s First Galaxies

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A Walmart cashier in his 80s, one of scores of Americans forced to continue working into old age, has been able to retire thanks to a collective act of kindness.

Warren “Butch” Marion, 82, a US navy veteran from Maryland, got the surprise of a lifetime when he received a check for more than $100,000 after a local business owner, Roy McCarty, organized a collection online.

McCarty, who owns the Bug Boys local extermination businesses and has a substantial TikTok following, met Marion while filming a video. He asked his followers on the social media channel to consider donating to a GoFundMe fundraiser last month, and soon surpassed his funding target.

“I was astounded seeing this little older man still grinding. Working 8 to 9 hour shifts,” McCarty wrote on the funding page. He said he was inspired by other social media fundraisers to help older people retire, and wanted Marion to be able to visit his children in Florida and get “off his feet for eight hours at a time”.

“Wow,” was Marion’s response when presented with the money. “All I can tell you is the Good Lord has blessed me for what I did in my younger years,” he told the Cumberland Times-News, saying that he would use the money to pay off his house and retire from Walmart.

Many Americans struggle to save enough money for retirement. According to the Federal Reserve, “one-quarter of the non-retired indicate that they have no retirement savings or pension whatsoever”.

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Through an act of kindness, one man, however, felt that it was truly worth it.

Chiew Wei, 27, shared a post on Facebook on January 6 about how he encountered an elderly rojak stall owner in Skudai, Johor on the way to meet clients.

According to him, he ordered one portion from inside his car to avoid the sun and called the ‘rojak uncle’ to bring his order to his car which was parked next to the stall.

Chiew quickly realised that the uncle required crutches to walk to his car. Chiew told him to stay at his stall as he rushed out of his car, but the vendor assured him that he was okay.

One portion of rojak costed RM7 but Chiew did not have any small change and neither did the uncle.

Chiew was about to cross the street when the hawker told Chiew that he could pay the next time he came to his stall.

Touched by the uncle’s humility, he paid the uncle RM50 for one portion of rojak.

“Seeing the uncle’s joy, the box of rojak was definitely worth it,” Chiew wrote in his post.

“The uncle kept saying that I had paid him too much with a big smile on his face.

“The uncle showed me that everyone is working hard to earn a decent living and improve their lives,” Chiew added.

He also said the uncle is very loving and warm, reminding Chiew of his father-in-law.

After the incident, Chiew returned to the hawker’s stall to help promote his rojak using Facebook live streams.

“I did not want anything in return from the uncle because I’m helping purely out of my own heart,” Chiew explained during a Facebook live stream today.

“I’m not a philanthropist or a great person, but one act of kindness can make someone’s whole day.”

Chiew hopes that more people will be able to find the uncle’s rojak stall and he will do what he can to promote the business.

In his live stream, Chiew also said that he would turn down interviews from major news outlets.

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The study found that performing acts of kindness led to improvements not seen in two other therapeutic techniques used to treat depression or anxiety.

Most importantly, the acts of kindness technique was the only intervention tested that helped people feel more connected to others, said study co-author David Cregg, who led the work as part of his Ph.D. dissertation in psychology at The Ohio State University.

"Social connection is one of the ingredients of life most strongly associated with well-being. Performing acts of kindness seems to be one of the best ways to promote those connections," Cregg said.

Cregg conducted the research with Jennifer Cheavens, professor of psychology at Ohio State. Their study was published recently in The Journal of Positive Psychology.

The research also revealed why performing acts of kindness worked so well: It helped people take their minds off their own depression and anxiety symptoms.

This finding suggests that one intuition many people have about people with depression may be wrong, Cheavens said.

"We often think that people with depression have enough to deal with, so we don't want to burden them by asking them to help others. But these results run counter to that," she said.

"Doing nice things for people and focusing on the needs of others may actually help people with depression and anxiety feel better about themselves."

The study involved 122 people in central Ohio who had moderate to severe symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.

After an introductory session, the participants were split into three groups. Two of the groups were assigned to techniques often used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression: planning social activities or cognitive reappraisal.

The social activities group was instructed to plan social activities for two days a week. Another group was instructed in one of the staples of CBT: cognitive reappraisal. These participants kept records for at least two days each week that helped them identify negative thought patterns and revise their thoughts in a way that could reduce depression and anxiety.

Members of the third group were instructed to perform three acts of kindness a day for two days out of the week. Acts of kindness were defined as "big or small acts that benefit others or make others happy, typically at some cost to you in terms of time or resources."

Some of the acts of kindness that participants later said they did included baking cookies for friends, offering to give a friend a ride, and leaving sticky notes for roommates with words of encouragement.

Participants followed their instructions for five weeks, after which they were evaluated again. The researchers then checked with the participants after another five weeks to see if the interventions were still effective.

The findings showed that participants in all three groups showed an increase in life satisfaction and a reduction of depression and anxiety symptoms after the 10 weeks of the study.

"These results are encouraging because they suggest that all three study interventions are effective at reducing distress and improving satisfaction," Cregg said.

"But acts of kindness still showed an advantage over both social activities and cognitive reappraisal by making people feel more connected to other people, which is an important part of well-being," he said.

In addition, the acts of kindness group showed greater improvements than the cognitive reappraisal group for life satisfaction and symptoms of depression and anxiety, results showed.

Cheavens noted that just participating in social activities did not improve feelings of social connection in this study.

"There's something specific about performing acts of kindness that makes people feel connected to others. It's not enough to just be around other people, participating in social activities," she said.

Cregg said that while this study used techniques of CBT, it is not the same experience as going through CBT. Those who undergo the full treatment may have better results than those in this study.

But the findings also show that even the limited CBT exposure given in this study can be helpful, Cheavens said.

"Not everyone who could benefit from psychotherapy has the opportunity to get that treatment," she said. "But we found that a relatively simple, one-time training had real effects on reducing depression and anxiety symptoms."

And beyond traditional CBT, acts of kindness may have additional benefits in creating social connections, Cregg said.

"Something as simple as helping other people can go above and beyond other treatments in helping heal people with depression and anxiety," he said.

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Chinese researchers have invented a way to keep drones airborne indefinitely by recharging them with laser beams, which may one day enable drones to complement or replace military satellites in some scenarios.

This week, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that scientists from Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU) fitted drones with photoelectric conversion modules that could convert light into electricity, enabling high-powered laser beams to power the drones remotely while in flight.

The report notes that the team from NPU’s school of artificial intelligence conducted a drone experiment that combined autonomous charging with intelligent signal transmission and processing technology.

“Highlights of the research are 24-hour intelligent vision tracking system and the autonomous long-range energy replenishment for optics-driven drones (ODD),” the team said in their official WeChat account, as cited by SCMP.

SCMP noted that the researchers mentioned that the first challenge they encountered was tracking the drones in the air. The source notes that the team was able to develop an algorithm based on intelligent visuals that could accurately track ODDs in the air.

The team also overcame the challenges of laser distortion and weakening due to atmospheric conditions and distance by using adaptive beam shaping technology that reportedly can autonomously adjust laser intensity, SCMP says.

Regarding safety features, the SCMP report says that the team added a protection algorithm that automatically adjusts laser intensity to safe levels once an obstacle is detected in its path.

The research team did not disclose specifics of their experiment due to its sensitive military applications, though it did say it had successfully conducted indoor follow-up, outdoor daytime and outdoor night flights.

China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University’s research team says it carried out three field tests. Photo: Northwestern Polytechnical University

China can use ODD drones to create a “low altitude satellite” or “artificial moon” and increase the combat effectiveness of drone swarms, the SCMP report said.

Meanwhile, the US has its own projects to power drones with lasers. In July 2022, The Warzone reported that the US is exploring converting aerial refueling tankers into “airborne energy wells” to recharge battery-powered drones.

The report said that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency requested that same month industry feedback on converting the US Air Force’s existing KC-135 and KC-46 Pegasus tankers with an “underwing beaming pod.”

The Warzone article mentions that the pod should contain a continuous-wave laser that can generate at least 100 kilowatts, have a thermal control unit and be able to cover a “nearly hemispherical field of regard,” to make sure it can charge drones where needed.

The report also cited other requirements for the airborne energy well concept, such as the need to generate more power aboard tanker aircraft with new or existing equipment.

In a September 2018 article, The Byte reported the US Army is developing a ground-based system that can power up drones in mid-flight at 500 meters.

The report said that the system aims a laser precisely at a photovoltaic cell mounted on the drone, which converts light into electricity. However, it notes that any excess laser energy not converted by the photovoltaic cell turns into heat, which can severely damage the drone.

Laser-charging drones face various technological hurdles. In a 2022 article in the peer-reviewed journal Micromachines, Syed Mohsan and other writers enumerate the challenges of powering up drones with lasers. They note that water, dust and air temperature can degrade the performance of lasers and that they grow weaker over distance.

Nevertheless, such technology may be used in drones as stand-ins for satellites. Asia Times has reported on China and Russia’s fielding various anti-satellite weapons, such as microwave-armed satellites, mobile anti-satellite missiles, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, and that the US is developing advanced anti-satellite weapons such as ground-based lasers, signal jammers and hunter-killer satellites.

These developments mean outer space is no longer a sanctuary for military satellites, which are costly to launch and difficult to repair or replace when damaged or destroyed.

Drones, on the other hand, are much cheaper to launch, operate and maintain than satellites. They are a feasible option to ensure multi-layered battlefield communication infrastructure, acting to reinforce, provide redundancy or in some situations replace satellite-based command, control, computers, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C5ISTAR) capabilities.

Given those developments, high-flying solar-powered drones may soon be a feasible replacement for military satellites, with laser charging potentially giving drones nearly unlimited endurance.

 A 2016 article by Futurism notes that such drones, called “high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS),” can perform all the functions of current satellites but at a lower cost.

Airbus’ Zephyr drone. Image: Airbus Defense and Space

The report notes HAPS have longer operating times than satellites and need to land only for maintenance and upgrades. It notes that these drones can be used for military monitoring, emergency communications, and high-speed internet.

One such drone is the Zephyr made by Airbus. It has a 25-meter wingspan and can fly continuously for months at an altitude of 21,000 meters, placing it above weather conditions and commercial air traffic. Airbus touts the Zephyr as capable of providing mobile connectivity to underserved or remote areas, earth observation and secure tactical communications.

Not to be outdone by Zephyr, in September 2022, SCMP reported that China unveiled its Morning Star 50 HAPS drone, which experts describe as a “pseudo-satellite.”  SCMP notes that Morning Star has a 50-meter wingspan that is twice the size of the Zephyr, flies at altitudes above 20 kilometers, and can stay airborne for months or even years.

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LauncherOne will likely be grounded for several months, at least, so those funds will not come from launch contracts. Perhaps the most likely source of such funds is the UK government, which stepped in with $500 million in 2020 to save the satellite company OneWeb from bankruptcy. The UK government's explanation for this deal is that it wanted a standalone navigation service.

Would the UK government be willing to do this for Virgin Orbit, which was founded by Sir Richard Branson? An argument could be made that basing Cosmic Girl in Cornwall would give the UK government a sovereign launch capability. However, there are several other UK-based companies, including Orbex and Skyrora, that are likely to come online in a year or two with domestically launched rockets. Accordingly, a UK government investment in Virgin Orbit would seem less justifiable.

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Moderna is considering raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by over 400 percent—from $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Ars has reached out to Moderna for comment but has not yet received a response. The plan, if realized, would match the previously announced price hike for Pfizer-BioNTech's rival COVID-19 vaccine.

The Journal spoke with Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco Monday, who said of the 400 percent price hike: "I would think this type of pricing is consistent with the value.”

Until now, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been purchased by the government and offered to Americans for free. In the latest federal contract from July, Moderna's updated booster shot cost the government $26 per dose, up from $15–$16 per dose in earlier supply contracts, the Journal notes. Similarly, the government paid a little over $30 per dose for Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine this past summer, up from $19.50 per dose in contracts from 2020.

But now that the federal government is backing away from distributing the vaccines, their makers are moving to the commercial market—with price adjustments. Financial analysts had previously anticipated Pfizer would set the commercial price for its vaccine at just $50 per dose but were taken aback in October when Pfizer announced plans of a price between $110 and $130. Analysts then anticipated that Pfizer's price would push Moderna and other vaccine makers to follow suit, which appears to be happening now.

Lawmakers have already lambasted Pfizer for the steep increase. In a letter sent last month to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) called the price hike "pure and deadly greed" and accused the company of "unseemly profiteering."

"We urge you to back off from your proposed price increases and ensure COVID-19 vaccines are reasonably priced and accessible to people across the United States," they wrote.

The revelation that Moderna may match Pfizer's price increase comes just a day after Moderna announced that its COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2022 totaled approximately $18.4 billion.

"We enter 2023 in a great position, with significant momentum across our clinical pipeline, a highly energized team and a strong balance sheet of over $18 billion of cash and cash equivalents," Moderna's Bancel said in a press release Monday.

Moderna also noted in the release that it expects to make a minimum of $5 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2023.

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A study looking at cannabis-related trips to the Emergency Department (ED) among Californians aged 65 and above has found a 1,808 percent increase from 2005 to 2019, as the drug became legal for medical and then recreational use in the state.

Using data on admissions to Californian emergency departments from the Department of Healthcare Access and Information, the team found that cannabis-related visits rose from 366 in 2005 to 12,167 in 2019 for those aged 65 and above. The biggest relative increase was in patients aged 75–84, who saw a 2,208 percent increase in weed-related visits. Older males accounted for more visits to the ED than older females, though females saw a bigger relative change between 2005 and 2019 at 2208 percent.

"Interestingly, the ED rate appeared to increase sharply between 2013 and 2017, but then the rate of increase levels off in 2017 after the implementation of Proposition 64 [which legalized personal use in the state]," the team wrote in their paper. 

"Therefore, the availability of recreational cannabis does not appear to correlate with a higher rate of increase in cannabis-related ED visits among older people. However, high ED rates among older adults with higher comorbidity are concerning as cannabis has been associated with acute cardiac, respiratory, and psychiatric effects."

The use of cannabis by older sections of the population has increased over the past two decades, following the legalization of the drug in California in 1996. Evidence suggests that older adults are self-medicating as well as using it recreationally, in an attempt to treat pain and other conditions.

“Many patients assume they aren’t going to have adverse side effects from cannabis because they often don’t view it as seriously as they would a prescription drug,” first author Dr Benjamin Han said in a statement.

“I do see a lot of older adults who are overly confident, saying they know how to handle it — yet as they have gotten older, their bodies are more sensitive, and the concentrations are very different from what they may have tried when they were younger.”

The team explains that increases in trips to the ED included injuries resulting from reduced reactions and impaired attention, plus conditions such as cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases which can be exacerbated by the drug.

"Additionally, there are potential drug interactions that can lead to adverse effects and cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome is related to cannabis use," the team writes. "Many of these complications have resulted in the need for acute clinical care in EDs."

According to the authors, current questionnaires designed to assess cannabis use may be off-putting to older patients, as they lump in cannabis with non-legal drugs such as cocaine and heroin, meaning they may be more likely to answer dishonestly.

Instead, they suggest asking about cannabis separately, to encourage honesty.

“Providers can then ask how frequently cannabis is used, for what purpose — such as medically for pain, sleep, or anxiety or recreationally to relax — in what form (smoked, eaten, applied topically) and if they know how much THC and CBD it contains," co-author Dr Alison Moore said.

"Once the provider has this type of information, they can then educate the patient about potential risks of use.”

The team notes that though use for older age groups has gone up, the perceived risk of regular risk by these age groups has gone down.

“Although cannabis may be helpful for some chronic symptoms, it is important to weigh that potential benefit with the risk," Moore added, "including ending up in an emergency department."

The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

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Polar sea ice typically forms in the winter months due to the cold temperatures. However, the sinking of colder, denser water should bring warmer water back to the surface and prevent the formation of sea ice. The researchers have recently published a study in the journal Science Advances explaining why this does not occur. According to their research, the lower salinity of surface water in the polar regions prevents the warmer water from rising to the surface, leading to the formation of sea ice.

“The salinity of the surface water is lower, thanks to the supply of freshwater from melting ice at the poles and precipitation to the ocean. The difference in salinity between the surface water and the deeper water is an important factor in the formation of sea ice at low temperatures at the poles. Without the difference in salinity, the water would not have become stratified, leading to continuous mixing of sea water, thus preventing the formation of ice,” says Fabien Roquet, professor of physical oceanography at the University of Gothenburg.

The difference in salinity creates a “lid”

The surface of the water, with its lower salinity, creates a “lid” that prevents warm water from rising to the surface. Without that lid, the cold polar temperatures would not be sufficient to freeze continuously moving warmer water.

The strength of this salinity lid is due to the unique properties of the seawater. In freshwater, water that is colder than 4 degrees Celsius has a lower density and therefore remains at the surface and freezes into ice, without mixing with water from greater depths. In the ocean, saltwater has a density that is lowest exactly at the freezing point, around -2C. However, the density of the water varies much less with the temperature in cold water than when it is warmer, which is very unusual for a fluid.

Sea ice inhibits the greenhouse effect

“The closer you get to the poles, the more important salinity is for limiting the mixing and evening out of water temperature throughout the water,” says Fabien Roquet.

This discovery shows how important the special properties of the water molecule are for Earth’s climate. The exchange of heat between the ocean and atmosphere is affected not only by temperature differences but also by the salinity of the ocean.

Without this fact, it would be impossible for sea ice to form to any greater extent. Sea ice is itself an important factor in impeding the greenhouse effect because it reflects sunlight away.

“With global warming, we see a decline in sea ice, which impairs the capacity of the polar seas to maintain the ‘lid’ of lower salinity that prevents carbon from rising into the atmosphere. But at the same time, warmer weather can lead to increased freshwater in the polar seas as glaciers melt and precipitation potentially increases. The difference in salinity can then increase, which may contribute to sustaining sea ice formation. But it’s difficult to predict which effect will be dominant; we just have to wait and see,” says Fabien Roquet.

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Getting the Artemis I mission off the ground marked the end of an important development era for NASA.

Trevor Mahlmann

 

This past year was a momentous one in spaceflight, bringing to a close many of the most significant storylines that have dominated this industry in the last 10 to 15 years.

 

Consider the state of play in 2010: A handful of large government space agencies controlled spaceflight activities. NASA was still flying the venerable space shuttle with no clear plan for deep space exploration. The James Webb Space Telescope remained in development hell. Russia was the world's dominant launch provider, putting as many rockets into space that year as the United States and China combined. At the time, China's longest human spaceflight was four days. Much has changed in the last decade or so.

 

2022 was a watershed moment because so many of the major stories since 2010 reached their denouement. In this sense, it feels like the end of an era and the opening of a new one in spaceflight. This story, therefore, will look back at five of these major space storylines and then attempt to forecast what some of the dominant storylines for the remainder of the 2020s will be.

 

An exciting but uncertain road lies ahead.

Looking back

James Webb Space Telescope. NASA spent about two decades and $10 billion developing this massive, complex space telescope. It was subject to countless articles describing all of its potential breakthroughs but also its endless cost overruns and delays.

 

The telescope finally launched on Christmas Day 2021 and then spent the first half of 2022 undergoing an extensive deployment process and commissioning of its scientific instruments. But when astronomers finally turned it toward the heavens, Webb delivered wonders.

 

The process of designing, building, and testing this telescope on the ground took so long and required so much money that we may never see such a telescope again. The next one may be assembled in space rather than on the ground. Regardless, the era of Webb's development is over. The era of its discovery has begun.

 

May it live long and prosper.

 

Space Launch System. This was another massive development program by NASA in the 2010s, during which the space agency sought to build a super heavy-lift rocket. The program consumed about $20 billion. But whereas the Webb space telescope incorporated many new elements and represented cutting-edge technology, the SLS rocket did not.

 

The rocket was controversial from the beginning because the SLS reconstituted parts of the space shuttle—its main engines, its solid rocket boosters, and even the diameter of its core stage was an exact match for the external fuel tank of the shuttle. This rocket was justifiably seen as a congressionally mandated program to keep workers at NASA and its large contractors, such as Boeing and Northrop, gainfully employed. The justification for this decision was increasingly insupportable as the 2010s progressed and private launch companies such as SpaceX proved far more efficient than the government.

 

An added pain point is that although the rocket was originally supposed to launch at the end of 2016, it did not take flight until November 2022.

 

However, once the SLS rocket launched, it performed its mission flawlessly. The Artemis I mission got off to an excellent start with the SLS rocket inserted Orion into its target orbit, a notable feat for a debut launch. So ends the saga of "Block 1" development of the SLS rocket. It's nice when space stories have a happy ending.

 

Last year marked the end of an era in spaceflight—here’s what we’re watching next

In a report released October 3rd, 2000, the Goddard Space Flight Center said satellites have observed an 11.5 million square-mile hole, a severe thinning of Earth’s protective ozone layer, over Antarctica. 

Image: Newsmakers via Getty Images

Earth’s ozone layer is on the mend