Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts chastised Elon Musk on Sunday after the billionaire had a snarky response to the lawmaker’s request for information about Twitter’s new verification policies. “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?” Musk tweeted Sunday morning after Markey shared a recent letter he sent criticizing the company’s new $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription. “And why does your pp have a mask!?” Musk added a few hours later, referring to Markey’s profile picture, which shows the senator wearing a face covering.

One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will. https://t.co/lE178gPRoM

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) November 13, 2022

Markey wasn’t impressed by Musk’s response. “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online,” he said. “Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

Markey sent the letter that prompted the exchange on November 11th. In the letter, Markey asks Musk to explain how The Washington Post was able to create a verified account impersonating him and why an official pop-up told Twitter users the verification was due to a role in government. Musk has until November 25th to answer those questions and others in writing.

Twitter suspended paid account verification less than two days after launching its new Blue subscription. While the service was available, trolls used it to impersonate celebrities, politicians and brands, leading to chaos on the platform. One account pretending to be LeBron James claimed the NBA star had requested to be traded by the Los Angeles Lakers. Another one tanked the stock of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

While there’s no certainty Markey’s warning will translate to government action, the likelihood of a regulatory response became more solid on Sunday after Democrats secured a Senate majority. Markey is also a member of the Subcommittee on Communication, Media, and Broadband, the Senate panel most likely to recommend action against Twitter.

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Eleven-year-old Yusuf Shah of England took the Mensa IQ test on a whim — and earned the highest possible score of 162, according to local news reports.

Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are estimated to have had IQs of around 160.

“Everyone at school thinks I am very smart, and I have always wanted to know if I was in the top 2% of the people who take the test,” the sixth-grader from Leeds told Yorkshire Evening Post.

Shah, a student at Wigton Moor Primary School, glided through the test, according to the report.

The family celebrated with Nando’s Portuguese-style chicken.

Shah and his parents had decided that he would prepare for the Mensa test while prepping for high-school applications, which included similar material.

“It is a difficult test to prepare for,” his father, Irfan Shah, told the paper. “We just did what we were already doing – nothing specific for the IQ test.”

“I still tell him that ‘your dad is still smarter than you’. … We take it all lightheartedly. Even if you are talented, you have to be the hardest worker,” the dad said.

Yusuf’s dad jokingly says, “I still tell him that ‘your dad is still smarter than you.’ ”
Yorkshire Post / SWNS

Yusuf Shah with brothers Zaki and Khalid, mother Sana and father Irfan.
Yorkshire Post / SWNS

Yusuf — who wants to study math at Oxford or Cambridge universities — has shown signs of genius since he was very young, Irfan told LeedsLive.

“Even in nursery, we just noticed that he was doing the alphabet and things quicker than other children, but you just thought some kids may pick up the ABCs a bit quicker,” the proud papa said.

“He just has this natural flair for math, and I guess that’s when we sort of realized. Even his school teachers, every time we get school reports, they’re amazing, they say, ‘There’s nothing for us to teach.’ “

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But there is another demographic that is struggling with putting down their devices: Baby boomers. Smartphones came into their lives late, but they were quickly won over. Now some of their children say they are hooked, staring at their screens constantly, even when they should be paying attention to their own grandchildren. Two-thirds of boomers own a smartphone and about 6 in 10 are on social media, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.

“My mother has become very attached to her phone over the last five years. Whenever we’re together, she’s often on her phone, usually scrolling through social media,” says Angela, 37, who declined to use her last name to avoid hurting her parents’ feelings. “It really only bothers me when my children are around because they’re often trying to get her attention, and she’s unaware they’re trying to get her attention because she’s on her phone.”

We asked more than 100 millennials and Gen Xers about their parents’ phone habits. Around half said their parents are good about not being on their phones too much and being present in the moment — frequently because they are not tech savvy or are still using flip phones.

The rest, however, are absorbed in their devices. They are playing Words with Friends, Candy Crush and card games, often with the volume turned up. They are looking at the news, checking sports scores, scrolling Facebook and texting. Some are even using them as actual phones.

“Phone calls are the worst,” says Richard Husk, a parent of two. “They will take a 45-plus-minute phone call with some random golf buddy while I am over with the kids trying to visit with them.”

Tyler McClure said his mom is on Facebook constantly and can’t do anything without her phone, while his dad “Googles the things he’s watching on television as he watches television.” Both parents are prone to staring at their phones instead of their grandchildren.

“My 75-year-old Vietnam vet dad, who once called smartphones ‘a time waster’ in 2009, today has his Bluetooth hearing-aid connected to his phone and his truck,” says McClure, who lives in Tennessee with his family. “Honestly, his iPhone may as well be a Borg implant the way he lives with it like a teenager.”

There can be a good reason for it

Not all screen time is the same. Sometimes the additional minutes spent staring is them figuring out the phone itself. Angela’s father is better about his screen time than her mom is, but he still takes 10 minutes to write each text message. (He signs them all, “XO.”)

“They’re spending more time on just looking at their phone just figuring out what they’re actually looking at,” says Abbie Richie, the founder and CEO of tech-support company Senior Savvy. “For the first couple of seconds, an older adult really needs to figure out what they’re seeing. They have to process it. Their time on the device is longer because of the processing required.”

The phone is also a tool for grandparents to connect with people in their lives. Many people we spoke to said their parents enjoy reading things out loud from their phones, telling their families or anyone nearby about the weather, the headlines or viral stories that may or may not be true.
 

Many grandparents may struggle to keep up physically or talk to their grandchildren. Emily Lakdawalla says her parents are pretty good about not using their phones in family situations, but her dad still does not interact much with the two grandkids, ages 13 and 16. “He just stands in the kitchen and smiles bemusedly at them,” she says.

Alex Ebens’ father uses his phone to help make a connection. “He’s physically not able to keep up with the kiddos so he takes them down YouTube rabbit holes, as much as I ask him not to,” says Ebens.

Kids, of course, can find screens more interesting than their older relatives. Doing things together on them is a way to bond.

They learned it from their own children

Everyone struggles with looking at their phones too much. It is likely grandparents picked up some of their habits from their own children and their children.

“The somewhat embarrassing reality is that they’re much better at not being distracted by their devices than my partner and I are,” says Lucas Mitchell, a dad of two from Vancouver. His parents use their iPhone and iPad frequently but are good at focusing on the family.

“You have to model the behavior you want them to have,” says Richie. “It’s almost like a boomer is using their phone as if they’re a 12-year-old who first got their phone and they’re screenager.”

Have a chat, buy them a smartwatch

Along with setting a good example, there are other ways family members can get their parents off the phone. Having a talk, without phones, is a good way to start, but it is not always easy.

 “It’s an awkward subject,” says Richie. “You typically don’t have to think about parenting the grandparents.”

Having the conversations can set a good example to your own kids, showing them how to ask for the attention they need. (If you’re on your own phone a lot, this could backfire.)

Depending on your budget, buying them a smartwatch like the Apple Watch is another option. It lets users glance at incoming messages and news alerts without the danger of getting distracted by other apps on the phone. You can show them how to use screen-time tools on their devices. If they are not aware of the problem, a weekly report spelling out how many hours they spent scrolling might be a wake-up call.

You can also teach them to use “Do Not Disturb” modes so when they are playing with kids — whether it is kicking a ball or watching YouTube videos of professionals kicking balls — they are not going to be distracted.

Parents have also relied on their youngest, cutest family members to apply a touch of guilt. They will ask grandpa to put down his device for a while, or at least share it.

“My daughter has learned to entertain herself when she’s visiting,” says Andrea Button-Schnick, whose stepmother is either working or trading gossip about her small town on her phone. “But she enforces the rule that dinner time is no-phone-grandma time.”

Source

If they could relive any decade of their life, seniors would mostly opt for their 30s (30%) or 20s (25%), remembering these years as the happiest of their lives.

Conducted by OnePoll for BrightStar Care, the survey also found that if they had the chance to redo one major decision, people would have saved more money (20%) or invested earlier (14%), which may be why many wish they received better advice about money (39%) and education (38%) when they were younger.

However, half of seniors admit they’ve received advice from someone they didn’t think much of at the time, but followed later on. Similarly, 49 percent ignored some advice they were given. Still, 36 percent say, regardless of the past, they’re happy with their life as it is and the same percentage believe the errors they made in the past benefitted them by teaching valuable life lessons in the long run.

“It’s healthy to reminisce about your youth and take a deep look at all you have accomplished and learned through the years,” says Shelly Sun, founder and CEO of BrightStar Care, Shelly Sun, in a statement. “With age comes wisdom, and reflecting on past experiences can serve not only as cherished memories but as grounds to impart knowledge to younger generations.”

What advice would seniors give their younger selves?

Another 42 percent would miss their current life if things were different than they are now. When asked what advice they would give to their own selves in their 20s, respondents would “accept challenges,” tell themselves to “follow your intuition,” and “don’t be afraid to seize life.”

With the knowledge they have now, seniors would feel confident advising the younger generations about education (41%), money (37%), and health (36%). They’d also share wise words like “always be prepared,” “be humble at all times,” and “eliminate negative thoughts.”

Other respondents would tell people in their 20s that it’s important to “be patient and open to hearing and listening at the same time,” not “let others decide your choice for you,” and “enjoy every step in life.”

“Aging is a privilege that should be celebrated at every stage of one’s life,” Sun continues. “In your twenties, it’s hard to imagine what your life will be when you’re 65+, however, if you sit back and listen to the powerful advice seniors have to offer, you’ll find worthwhile insights that can help prepare you for your future.”

Source

Tuesday, November 15

• The first mission this week will launch from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. A Long March 4C will take the third Yaogan satellite into orbit, where it will be used for optical remote sensing. Some of its jobs include territorial surveying, urban planning, land right confirmation, road network design, crop yield estimation, and disaster prevention and mitigation. This mission is set to launch at 1:20 a.m. UTC.

Wednesday, November 16

• We have two launches on Wednesday, the first is NASA’s Artemis I mission taking off between 6:04 a.m. and 8:04 a.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As mentioned earlier, it will send mannequins in the Orion spacecraft on a lunar flyby mission, paving the way for humanity’s return to the lunar surface, later this decade. Aside from the primary objective, the mission will be carrying 10 CubeSats. The launch should be quite prominent, expect to see it on news cycles. You can also see a live feed now.

• The final launch of the week is a Galactic Energy's Ceres 1 (GX-1) rocket that will orbit five satellites for the Jilin 1 constellation. This mission will also take off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, this time at 6:26 a.m. It’ll be an interesting launch, as we don’t usually see missions from Galactic Energy, a private Chinese space launch company.

Recap

• The first launch we got last week was a Northrop Grumman Antares 230+ rocket carrying the CRS-18 Cygnus spacecraft, which went to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. The launch happened on November 7 and the cargo arrived on November 9. The Cygnus spacecraft was called S.S. Sally Ride after NASA astronaut Sally Ride.

• On the 10th, United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched its Atlas V rocket carrying to Joint Polar Satellite System 2 (JPSS-2) along with an inflatable decelerator called LOFTID. Read last week’s TWIRL to learn more about this interesting mission.

• You can see LOFTID’s splashdown below.

• On the 11th, a Long March 6A carried the Yunhai-3 satellite into orbit where it will perform atmospheric and marine surveys, disaster prevention and reduction, and scientific experiments.

• Earlier today, China launched a Long March 7 Y6 carrying Tianzhou-5, a cargo spacecraft on a mission to the Chinese Space Station.

• Finally, SpaceX used a Falcon 9 to orbit the Galaxy 31 and Galaxy 32 comms satellites.

That's all we've got this week, check in next time and be sure to share this article!

TWIRL 91: NASA will try to launch Artemis I moon mission this week

A road sign in Bursa, Turkey, warns drivers of the presence of dung beetles, stating "Attention! It may come out, don’t crush it please!"

Ugur Ulu/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

 

If the TV series Dirty Jobs covered animals as well as humans, it would probably start with dung beetles. These hardworking critters are among the insect world’s most important recyclers. They eat and bury manure from many other species, recycling nutrients and improving soil as they go.

 

Dung beetles are found on every continent except Antarctica, in forests, grasslands, prairies, and deserts. And now, like many other species, they are coping with the effects of climate change.

 

I am an ecologist who has spent nearly 20 years studying dung beetles. My research spans tropical and temperate ecosystems and focuses on how these beneficial animals respond to temperature changes.

 

Insects don’t use internally generated heat to maintain their body temperature. Adults can take actions such as moving to warmer or colder areas. However, earlier life stages such as larvae are often less mobile, so they can be strongly affected by changing temperatures.

 

But dung beetles appear to have a defense: I have found that adult dung beetles modify their nesting behaviors in response to temperature changes by burying their brood balls deeper in the soil, which protects their developing offspring.

 

Champion recyclers

It’s easy to joke about these busy insects, but by collecting and burying manure, dung beetles provide many ecological benefits. They recycle nutrients, aerate soil, lessen greenhouse gas emissions from cattle farming, and reduce pest and parasite populations that harm livestock.

 

Dung beetles are also important secondary seed dispersers. Dung from other animals, such as bears and monkeys, contains seeds that the beetles bury underground. This protects the seeds from being eaten, makes them more likely to germinate, and improves plant growth.

 

There are roughly 6,000 species of dung beetles around the world. Most feed exclusively on dung, though some will feed on dead animals, decaying fruit, and fungi.

 

Some species use stars and even the Milky Way to navigate along straight paths. One species, the bull-headed dung beetle (Onthophagus taurus), is the world’s strongest insect, able to pull over 1,000 times its own body weight.

 

That strength comes in handy for dung beetles’ best-known behavior: gathering manure.

Rolling and tunneling

Most popular images of dung beetles show them collecting manure and rolling it into balls to spirit away. In fact, some species are rollers and others are tunnelers that dig into the ground under a dung pat, bring dung down into the tunnel and pack it into a clump or sphere, called a brood ball. The female then lays an egg in each brood ball and backfills the tunnel with soil. Rollers do the same once they get their dung ball safely away from the competition.

 

When the egg hatches, the larva feeds on dung from the brood ball, pupates, and emerges as an adult. It thus goes through complete metamorphosis—from egg to larva to pupa to adult—inside the brood ball.

Warmer temperatures, smaller beetles

Dung beetle parents don’t provide care for their offspring, but their nesting behaviors affect the next generation. If a female places a brood ball deeper underground, the larva in the brood ball experiences cooler, less variable temperatures than it would nearer the surface.

 

This matters because temperatures during development can affect offspring survival and other traits, such as adult body size. If temperatures are too hot, offspring perish. Below that point, warmer, more variable temperatures lead to smaller-bodied beetles, which can affect the next generation’s reproductive success.

 

 

Smaller males can’t compete as well as larger males, and smaller females have lower reproductive output than larger females. In addition, smaller-bodied beetles remove less dung, so they provide fewer benefits to humans and ecosystems, such as nutrient cycling.

Dung beetle moms protect their offspring from a warming world by digging deeper

NASA says its SLS rocket is good to go for a launch attempt next Wednesday

• Out of 28 survivors of cardiac arrest interviewed as part of the study, 11 recalled memories suggesting consciousness while undergoing CPR.

• Additional cardiac arrest survivors provided self-reports about what they experienced while their hearts stopped.

• Reports included perceiving separating from their bodies and meaningful examinations of their lives.

• Researchers discovered spikes of brain activity up to an hour into CPR.

While finishing his medical degree at the University of London in the mid-90s, Dr. Sam Parnia watched as doctors attempted to revive a man in cardiac arrest. As he stood there, Dr. Parnia wondered whether the patient could hear the medical staff as they worked to revive him. Dr. Parnia asked himself, “What is life? When does it really end?”

Dr. Parnia, an intensive care physician, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health, as well as the organization’s director of critical care and resuscitation research, decided, right there in the hospital, that he was going to figure out the answer himself.

He thought the research might take a year or two. “Here we are 25 years later, and I’m still doing it,” Dr. Parnia told Medical News Today.

On November 6, Dr. Parnia presented “AWAreness during REsuscitation II: A multi-center study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest” at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022 in Chicago.

Dr. Parnia, who served as lead investigator of the study, explained that he and the other researchers undertook this research in an attempt to scientifically explore something that health professionals have discussed anecdotally for decades: The similar stories people revived by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) often tell about the time when their hearts stopped.

“For decades now, millions of people who’ve gone through this have reported having lucid heightened consciousness, even though from the perspective of their doctors they were not conscious and they were in death,” Dr. Parnia told MNT.

A multiphase and multi-site study

The study centered around 567 men and women who received CPR after their hearts stopped beating while at one of 25 participating hospitals in the United States and the United Kingdom.

When health practitioners began CPR on a patient whose heart stopped, researchers rushed to the scene, bringing along a portable electroencephalogram, or EEG, to monitor electrical activity in different parts of the brain, and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to measure oxygen saturation of superficial brain cortex regions.

Taking care not to get in the way of health practitioners performing CPR, researchers also clamped a tablet computer above the patient’s head. The tablet was connected to Bluetooth headphones which were placed on the patient’s ears.

The tablet projected one of 10 stored images onto the screen. After 5 minutes, the computer played a recorded voice saying the words “apple,” “pear,” and “banana” every minute for 5 minutes.

“So when we designed this study, we wanted to not only have brain monitoring systems, but also to have a system to look for possible unconscious learning,” Dr. Parnia explained.

Of 567 subjects, 213 or about 38% experienced sustained return of spontaneous circulation, meaning their pulse was restored for 20 minutes or longer. Only 53, or fewer than 10% of the participants, lived to be discharged from the hospital.

Of those 53, 25 were unable to be interviewed by researchers due to poor health. The remaining 28 participants were interviewed 2 to 4 weeks after cardiac arrest depending on their recovery.

First, researchers gave survivors an Abbreviated Mental Test Score to assess deficits in their brains’ abilities to function. Patients who scored higher than six, indicating they likely did not have moderate cognitive impairment, underwent stage 1 interviews, which included questions about their memories of the time when they underwent CPR.

For stage 2 interviews, researchers used open-ended questions to learn about the patients’ experiences during cardiac arrest, and completed the 16-item near-death scale. Patients who recalled hearing or seeing things during their experiences went on to a stage 3 interview which was more in-depth.

Additionally, researchers asked participants to select one image out of ten and to state the names of three fruits they heard while receiving CPR.

The research also included a cross-sectional study to make up for the fact that so few people lived following cardiac arrest in the study conducted in hospitals. This larger population of survivors provided self-reports of their experiences.

Reports of transcendent experiences

Of the 28 participants interviewed, 11 — or 39% — reported having memories during cardiac arrest. Two of the 28 participants could hear the medical staff working while receiving CPR. One participant recalled seeing the medical staff working and could feel someone rubbing his chest.

Using the near-death scale, six participants had transcendent experiences. Three participants reported dream-like experiences, which included a singing fisherman.

Six of the 28 participants interviewed remembered the experience of dying. These recollections included one person who heard a deceased grandmother telling her to return to her body.

“We characterize the testimonies that people had and were able to identify that there is a unique recalled experience of death that is different to other experiences that people may have in the hospital or elsewhere,” Dr. Parnia said, “and that these are not hallucinations, they are not illusions, they are not delusions, they are real experiences that emerge when you die.”

From the 126 cardiac survivors who provided self-reports about their experiences, five themes emerged. Some participants recalled feeling the impact of CPR on their bodies or hearing the medical team talk. Others recalled activities in the intensive care unit following CPR.

Other self-reports detailed an experience of death. Some individuals perceived they were heading to a destination. Others underwent an evaluation of their lives.

These included realizations about how their actions impacted others. Some perceived they were returning to a place described as home. Some of the self-reported recollections included participants reporting frightening memories.

These, Dr. Parnia told MNT, were likely misinterpretations of medical events. For example, one participant believed he was burning in hell; however, researchers in the study write that he was likely feeling a burning from a “tissued” potassium intravenous line.

Biomarkers of clinical consciousness

Of the 28 participants interviewed, not one described seeing the image depicted on the tablet when they received CPR or remembered hearing the auditory stimuli. When provided with 10 photos to examine, no participants identified the displayed image. Only one of the 28 participants chose the fruits named when the participants received CPR.

Fifty-three participants had interpretable EEG data. Researchers discovered spikes of brain activity, including so-called gamma, delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves emerging up to 60 minutes into CPR.

Some of these brain waves normally occur when people are conscious and performing functions like memory retrieval and thinking. According to the researchers, this is the first time such biomarkers of consciousness have been identified during CPR for cardiac arrest.

“We found the brain electrical markers of heightened […] lucid consciousness, the same markers as you get in people who are having memory retrievals who are having […] high order cognitive processes, except that this was occurring when the brain had shut down and would suddenly appear as a surge.”

    – Dr. Sam Parnia

Survivors may need psychological support

Dr. Lance Becker, chair of emergency medicine at Northwell Health in New York and professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in Manhasset, NY, who was not involved in the study, pointed out that Dr. Parnia measured brain waves and brain oxygen of the participants.

“So he was super scientific-y, but he’s also pretty out of the box,” Dr. Becker told MNT.

As a medical student, Dr. Becker said he was taught that people who were in cardiac arrest were unconscious.

Dr. Parnia, Dr. Becker argued, did not believe everything he was taught. Instead, he questioned whether the patients receiving CPR had awareness of what was happening in the room despite the fact that the patients showed no signs of consciousness. “He is a pioneer,” Dr. Becker said.

For Dr. Tom Aufderheide, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Resuscitation Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who was also not involved in the study, the presentation prompted him to give thought to how to respond to patients experiencing cardiac arrest.

“There needs to be a wider recognition of patient cognitive experiences during cardiac arrest among treating physicians and healthcare providers with [the] incorporation of this reality into the compassionate care of our patients,” he told MNT.

Dr. Becker said the study may change how he deals with patients who have survived cardiac arrest.

“It taught me that we need to talk to patients afterward,” he told MNT. “And kind of see how they’re feeling about surviving the cardiac arrest. Dr. Parnia has identified that many of those patients have some very positive things [to report following cardiac arrest] […] but, on the other hand, some of the patients had negative experiences: anxiety and depression afterward.”

Source

All suffered from severe or complete paralysis as a result of damage to their spinal cord. Incredibly, the volunteers all saw improvements immediately, and continued to show improvements five months later.

A recent study by researchers from the Swiss research group NeuroRestore has identified the exact nerve groups stimulated by the therapy, using mice as a starting point.

The nerve cells that orchestrate walking are found in the section of spinal cord running through our lower backs. Injuries to our spinal cord can interrupt the chain of signals from the brain, preventing us from walking even when these specific lumbar neurons are still intact.

Unable to receive commands, these 'walking' neurons effectively become nonfunctional, potentially leading to a permanent paralysis of the legs.

Previous research demonstrated electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can reverse such paralysis, but how this occurred wasn't clear. So neuroscientist Claudia Kathe from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and colleagues tested a technology called epidural electrical stimulation in nine individuals, as well as in an animal model.

The spinal cord was stimulated by a surgically implanted neurotransmitter. Meanwhile, patients also underwent a process of intensive neurorehabilitation that involved a robotic support system assisting them while they moved in multiple directions.

The patients went through five months of stimulation and rehabilitation, four to five times per week. Amazingly, all of the volunteers were then able to take steps with the aid of a walker.

To the researchers' surprise, the recovered patients actually showed a reduction in neural activity in the lumbar spinal cord during walking. The team believes this is due to the activity being refined to a specific subset of neurons that are essential for walking.

"When you think about it, it should not be a surprise," Courtine told Dyani Lewis at Nature, "because in the brain, when you learn a task, that's exactly what you see – there are less and less neurons activated" as you get better at it.

So Kathe and team modeled the process in mice and used a combination of RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics – a technique that allows scientists to measure and map gene activity in specific tissues – to understand which cells were doing what.

They identified a single population of previously unknown neurons that can step up to take over after an injury, found within the intermediate laminae of the lumbar spinal cord.

This tissue, made up of cells called SCVsx2::Hoxa10 neurons, don't appear to be needed for walking in healthy animals, but they seem to be essential for recovering after a spinal injury, as destroying them prevented mice from recovering. Their recruitment is, however, activity dependent.

SCVsx2::Hoxa10 neurons are "uniquely positioned" to transform information from the brainstem into executive commands. These are then broadcast to the neurons that are responsible for the production of walking, Kathe and colleagues explain in their paper.

This is only one component of a very complicated chain of messaging and receiving cells, so there's still a lot that remains to be investigated.

But, "these experiments confirmed that the participation of SCVsx2::Hoxa10 neurons is a fundamental requirement for the recovery of walking after paralysis," the researchers concluded.

This new understanding could in time lead to more treatment options, and may provide a better quality of life for people with all sorts of other spinal cord injuries too.

Their research was published in Nature.

Source

Nearly a decade's worth of data collected across Singapore suggests increased concentrations of tiny particles in the air can trigger cardiac arrests, making the need to cut air pollution levels around the world even more urgent.

Researchers looked for particles at least 25 times smaller than the width of a human hair known as PM2.5 particles (for 2.5 micrometers in diameter). Their small size means they can be easily inhaled, and they've been linked to a host of health problems, including autoimmune diseases.

Here, pollution levels in Singapore were tracked against more than 18,000 reported cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) between July 2010 and December 2018. Through statistical analysis, 492 of the cases could be attributed to increases in PM2.5 concentrations.

"We have produced clear evidence of a short-term association of PM2.5 with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, which is a catastrophic event that often results in sudden death," says epidemiologist Joel Aik, from the Duke–NUS Medical School at the National University of Singapore.

This is an observational study, meaning we can only speculate over the relationship between the pollution levels and the cardiac arrests. What's more, air pollution measurements taken at air quality stations can't be assumed to reflect individual exposure.

However, there's enough in the data to indicate it's a link worth exploring further. The data showed that daily PM2.5 concentrations averaged out at 18.44 micrograms per cubic meter. Testing hypothetical reductions in air pollution, the researchers found that a drop of 1 microgram per cubic meter correlated to an 8 percent reduction in heart attack events, while a drop of 3 micrograms per cubic meter saw a 30 percent reduction.

Hypothetically, those reductions translate to 39 and 149 fewer heart attacks, respectively.

There was also a clear drop in the risk of having a heart attack 3 to 5 days after exposure to higher levels of pollution, suggesting that the effects are short term. The researchers say cleaning up city air could save lives and reduce strain on hospitals.

"These results make it clear that efforts to reduce the levels of air pollution particles in the 2.5 micrograms or lower range, and steps to protect against exposure to these particles, could play a part in reducing sudden cardiac arrests in Singapore's population, while also reducing the burden on health services," says Aik.

OHCAs have a typical survival rate of around 10 percent, much lower than the chances of surviving a heart attack in hospital. So it's no exaggeration to say that reducing the number of these cases saves lives. We can add it to the long list of reasons we ought to clean up our air.

While this link has been spotted before, in cities such as New York and Melbourne, Australia, results have been inconsistent with data collected in other places such as Denmark. These inconsistencies tend to arise at pollution concentrations below the World Health Organization's air quality guideline values, but research shows there is no 'safe' level of exposure for population heart health.

What is clear is that the majority of us are breathing in air of poor quality, which is thought to be responsible for millions of premature deaths in both urban and rural areas each year.

The team behind the new study wants to see more done to control air quality in places like Singapore. With everything from traffic congestion to wildfires playing a part, there are a lot of places to start making progress, including indoors.

"This study provides strong evidence for the impact of air quality on health and should stimulate policy and ground efforts to manage emissions from key sources that can lead to PM2.5 increases and prevent potential harm to public health," says Marcus Ong, a clinician-scientist from the Duke–NUS Medical School.

"New policy interventions, such as phasing out internal combustion engine vehicles, can help to reduce the dangers."

The research has been published in The Lancet Public Health.

Source

Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro sent an email to employees, seen by TechCrunch, that said it is "Twitter itself (not individual employees) who is a party and therefore only Twitter the company that could be liable".

In 2011, Twitter agreed to a consent decree with the US regulator after being found to have misused user data.

The FTC this week said that "no CEO or company is above the law".

Spiro said in the email that it is the company's obligation.

"I understand that there have been employees at Twitter who do not even work on the FTC matter commenting that they could (go) to jail if we were not in compliance - that is simply not how this works. It is the company's obligation. It is the company's burden. It is the company's liability," he wrote.

The lawyer said that they will remain in compliance with the consent decree.

Meanwhile, instances of racial slurs on Twitter have increased since Musk bought the influential platform, despite assurances from the platform that it has reduced hate activity.

The researchers at the Centre for Countering Digital Hate discovered that in the week following Musk's purchase of Twitter, the number of tweets containing one of several different racial slurs increased dramatically.

The number of racial epithets used to attack Black people was more than 26,000, which is three times the average for 2022.

Also, several Twitter users on Friday reported that the new $7.99 Blue subscription service suddenly disappeared from their iOS app, as Elon Musk claimed the platform has hit an "all-time high of active users".

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If you’ve been seeing any of Elon’s recent replies on Twitter, you might have seen that he has jokingly been asking people for $8 whenever they criticize the dual-verification checkmarks that were being trialled. It seems like Elon’s requests for $8 aren’t really a joke after all, and that the company desperately needs money.

On Thursday, we reported that Elon has told employees to prepare for difficult times ahead and that remote work was now being banned at the company. It will be interesting to see what happens to the company going forward and whether Elon can turn the company’s fortunes around.

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The discovery not only identified a potential future risk for neurodegenerative conditions in people who have had COVID-19, but suggested also a possible treatment.

The UQ team was led by Professor Trent Woodruff and Dr. Eduardo Albornoz Balmaceda from UQ’s School of Biomedical Sciences, and virologists from the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.

“We studied the effect of the virus on the brain’s immune cells, ‘microglia’ which are the key cells involved in the progression of brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s,” Professor Woodruff said.

“Our team grew human microglia in the laboratory and infected the cells with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“We found the cells effectively became ‘angry’, activating the same pathway that Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s proteins can activate in disease, the inflammasomes.”

A COVID-19-infected mouse brain showing ‘angry’ microglia in green and SARS-CoV-2 in red. Credit: University of Queensland

 

Dr. Albornoz Balmaceda said triggering the inflammasome pathway sparked a ‘fire’ in the brain, which begins a chronic and sustained process of killing off neurons.

“It’s kind of a silent killer, because you don’t see any outward symptoms for many years,” Dr. Albornoz Balmaceda said.

“It may explain why some people who’ve had COVID-19 are more vulnerable to developing neurological symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease.”

The researchers found the spike protein of the virus was enough to start the process and was further exacerbated when there were already proteins in the brain linked to Parkinson’s.

“So if someone is already pre-disposed to Parkinson’s, having COVID-19 could be like pouring more fuel on that ‘fire’ in the brain,” Professor Woodruff said.

“The same would apply for a predisposition for Alzheimer’s and other dementias that have been linked to inflammasomes.”

But the study also found a potential treatment.

The researchers administered a class of UQ-developed inhibitory drugs that are currently in clinical trials with Parkinson’s patients.

“We found it successfully blocked the inflammatory pathway activated by COVID-19, essentially putting out the fire,” Dr. Albornoz Balmaceda said.

“The drug reduced inflammation in both COVID-19-infected mice and the microglia cells from humans, suggesting a possible treatment approach to prevent neurodegeneration in the future.”

Professor Woodruff said while the similarity between how COVID-19 and dementia diseases affect the brain was concerning, it also meant a possible treatment was already in existence.

“Further research is needed, but this is potentially a new approach to treating a virus that could otherwise have untold long-term health ramifications.”  

The research was co-led by Dr. Alberto Amarilla Ortiz and Associate Professor Daniel Watterson and involved 33 co-authors across UQ and internationally.

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‘Protein hunger’ drives overeating, a large-scale population study shows.

Growing evidence that highly processed and refined foods are the leading contributor to rising obesity rates in the Western world is backed by a year-long study of the dietary habits of 9,341 Australians.

The new study was based on a national nutrition and physical activity survey undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and further backs the ‘Protein Leverage Hypothesis’. It was conducted by the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre (CPC) and published in the latest issue of the journal Obesity.

First put forward in 2005 by professors Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson, the Protein Leverage Hypothesis argues that people overeat fats and carbohydrates because of the body’s strong appetite for protein, which the body actively favors over everything else. Because so much of modern diets consist of highly processed and refined foods – which are low in protein – people are driven to consume more energy-dense foods until they satisfy their protein demand.

David Raubenheimer (right) at work in Nepal’s Annapurna Conservation Area. Credit: David Raubenheimer

Processed foods lack protein and drive craving

“As people consume more junk foods or highly processed and refined foods, they dilute their dietary protein and increase their risk of being overweight and obese, which we know increases the risk of chronic disease,” said lead author Dr. Amanda Grech, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the CPC and the university’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

“It’s increasingly clear that our bodies eat to satisfy a protein target,” added Professor David Raubenheimer, the Leonard Ullmann Chair in Nutritional Ecology at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. “But the problem is that the food in Western diets has increasingly less protein. So, you have to consume more of it to reach your protein target, which effectively elevates your daily energy intake.

“Humans, like many other species, have a stronger appetite for protein than for the main energy-providing nutrients of fats and carbohydrates. That means that if the protein in our diet is diluted with fats and carbohydrates, we will eat more energy to get the protein that our bodies crave.”

Researchers at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney. Credit: University of Sydney

Protein essential to good health

Proteins are the building blocks of life: every cell in the body contains them, and they are used to repair cells or make new ones; and it’s estimated that over a million forms of protein are needed to allow a human body to function. Protein sources include meats, milk, fish, eggs, soy, legumes, beans, and some grains such as wheat germ and quinoa.

The University of Sydney scientists analyzed data from a cross-sectional survey of nutrition and physical activity in 9,341 adults, known as the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey which was conducted from May 2011 to June 2012, with a mean age of 46.3 years. They found the population’s mean energy intake was 8,671 kilojoules (kJ), with the mean percentage of energy from protein being just 18.4 percent, compared with 43.5 percent from carbohydrates and from 30.9 percent from fat, and just 2.2 percent from fiber and 4.3 percent from alcohol.

They then plotted energy intake versus the time of consumption and found that the pattern matched that predicted by the Protein Leverage Hypothesis. Those who consumed lower amounts of protein in their first meal of the day went on to increase their overall food intake in subsequent meals, whereas those who received the recommended amount of protein did not – and, in fact, declined their food intake throughout the day.

Prof Stephen Simpson, Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. Credit: University of Sydney

‘Protein hunger’ found to drive overeating

They also found a statistically significant difference between groups by the third meal of the day: those with a higher proportion of energy from protein at the start of the day had much lower total energy intake for the day. Meanwhile, those who consumed foods low in protein at the start of the day proceeded to increase consumption, indicating they were seeking to compensate with a higher consumption of overall energy. This is despite the fact the first meal was the smallest for both groups, with the least amount of energy and food consumed, whereas the last meal was the largest.

Participants with a lower proportion of protein than recommended at the first meal consumed more discretionary foods – energy-dense foods high in saturated fats, sugars, salt, or alcohol – throughout the day, and less of the recommended five food groups (grains; vegetables/legumes; fruit; dairy and meats). Consequently, they had an overall poorer diet at each mealtime, with their percentage of protein energy decreasing even as their discretionary food intake rose – an effect the scientists call ‘protein dilution’.

David Raubenheimer with hunter-gatherers in the Congo basin. Credit: David Raubenheimer

Effect seen in other studies

Professor Raubenheimer and colleagues have seen this effect before in other studies for more than a decade, including randomized control trials.

“The problem with randomized controlled trials is that it treats diet as a disease, when it’s not,” said Dr. Grech. “Laboratory studies may not be indicative of what people are actually eating and doing at a population level. So this study is important as it builds on work, showing that people do seek out protein. And it confirms that, at a population level, as the proportion of energy from protein increases in the diet, people eat less fats and carbohydrates.”

While many factors contribute to excess weight gain – including eating patterns, physical activity levels, and sleep routines – the University of Sydney scientists argue the body’s powerful demand for protein, and its lack in highly processed and refined foods, is a key driver of energy overconsumption and obesity in the Western world.

Explanation for obesity

“The results support an integrated ecological and mechanistic explanation for obesity, in which low-protein, highly processed foods lead to higher energy intake in response to a nutrient imbalance driven by a dominant appetite for protein,” said Professor Raubenheimer. “It supports a central role for protein in the obesity epidemic, with significant implications for global health.”

Seeking to understand how protein drives human nutrition has also sought taken Professor Raubenheimer to study the diets of people in some of the most remote places, from the Congo to the Himalayas. “The protein mechanism in appetite is a revolutionary insight,” he said. “Obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease – they’re all driven by diet, and we have to use what we’re learning to bring them under control.”

The CPC team’s study was chosen by the editors of Obesity as one of the year’s top five papers, with the study’s leader, Professor Raubenheimer, invited to speak at the annual Obesity Journal Symposium in San Diego on November 4.

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Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) do not view things in the same way that humans do (through configural shape perception), which might be harmful in real-world AI applications. This is according to Professor James Elder, co-author of a York University study recently published in the journal iScience.

The study, which conducted by Elder, who holds the York Research Chair in Human and Computer Vision and is Co-Director of York’s Centre for AI & Society, and Nicholas Baker, an assistant psychology professor at Loyola College in Chicago and a former VISTA postdoctoral fellow at York, finds that deep learning models fail to capture the configural nature of human shape perception.

In order to investigate how the human brain and DCNNs perceive holistic, configural object properties, the research used novel visual stimuli known as “Frankensteins.”

“Frankensteins are simply objects that have been taken apart and put back together the wrong way around,” says Elder. “As a result, they have all the right local features, but in the wrong places.”

The researchers discovered that whereas Frankensteins confuse the human visual system, DCNNs do not, revealing an insensitivity to configural object properties.

“Our results explain why deep AI models fail under certain conditions and point to the need to consider tasks beyond object recognition in order to understand visual processing in the brain,” Elder says. “These deep models tend to take ‘shortcuts’ when solving complex recognition tasks. While these shortcuts may work in many cases, they can be dangerous in some of the real-world AI applications we are currently working on with our industry and government partners,” Elder points out.

One such application is traffic video safety systems: “The objects in a busy traffic scene – the vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians – obstruct each other and arrive at the eye of a driver as a jumble of disconnected fragments,” explains Elder. “The brain needs to correctly group those fragments to identify the correct categories and locations of the objects. An AI system for traffic safety monitoring that is only able to perceive the fragments individually will fail at this task, potentially misunderstanding risks to vulnerable road users.”

According to the researchers, modifications to training and architecture aimed at making networks more brain-like did not lead to configural processing, and none of the networks could accurately predict trial-by-trial human object judgments. “We speculate that to match human configurable sensitivity, networks must be trained to solve a broader range of object tasks beyond category recognition,” notes Elder.

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According to results from a rat study presented at the 60th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting, regular exposure to blue light through tablets and smartphones may change hormone levels and raise the risk of early puberty.

Longer blue light exposure was linked to early puberty onset in female rats, which also had lower levels of melatonin, higher levels of certain reproductive hormones, and physical changes in their ovaries. Blue-light emitting mobile device use has already been related to disrupted sleeping patterns in children, but current results indicate that there may be additional hazards for childhood development and future fertility.

Blue light-producing gadgets, such as tablets and smartphones, have previously been linked to decreased sleep quality in both children and adults. This is considered to occur because blue light interferes with the evening increase in levels of the hormone melatonin, which prepares our bodies for rest and sleep. Melatonin levels are greater generally during pre-puberty than throughout puberty, which is thought to have a role in delaying the onset of puberty. Puberty is a complicated process involving the coordination of several body systems and hormones.

In recent years, several studies have reported increases in early puberty onset for girls, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The link between blue light exposure and reduced melatonin levels suggests that increased screen time, such as during the pandemic restrictions, may be playing a role in this reported increase. However, it is very difficult to assess this in children.

In this study, Dr. Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu and colleagues in Ankara, Turkey, used a rat model to investigate the effects of blue light exposure on reproductive hormone levels and the time of puberty onset. Female rats were divided into three groups of six and exposed to either a normal light cycle, 6 hours, or 12 hours of blue light. The first signs of puberty occurred significantly earlier in both groups exposed to blue light, and the longer the duration of exposure, the earlier the onset of puberty. Rats exposed to blue light also had reduced melatonin levels and elevated levels of specific reproductive hormones (oestradiol and luteinizing hormone), as well as physical changes in their ovarian tissue, all consistent with puberty onset. At the 12 hours of exposure, rats also showed some signs of cell damage and inflammation in their ovaries.

Dr. Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu comments, “We have found that blue light exposure, sufficient to alter melatonin levels, is also able to alter reproductive hormone levels and cause earlier puberty onset in our rat model. In addition, the longer the exposure, the earlier the onset.”

Although Dr. Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu, cautions, “As this a rat study, we can’t be sure that these findings would be replicated in children but these data suggest that blue light exposure could be considered as a risk factor for earlier puberty onset.”

It is difficult to mimic blue light exposure equivalent to a child’s tablet use in rats but the time-point of puberty in rats is roughly equivalent to that of humans if adjusted for rats’ lower life expectancy. The hormonal and ovulation changes that occur during pre-puberty and puberty in female rats are also comparable to humans. So, despite the study limitations, these findings support further investigation of the potential health impacts of blue light exposure on hormone levels and puberty onset in children.

The team plans to investigate the cell damage and inflammatory effects detected after longer blue light exposure since this could have long-term impacts on reproductive health and fertility. They will also assess whether the use of blue light minimizing ‘night light’ mobile device features can reduce the effects observed in the rat model.

Dr. Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu adds, “Although not conclusive, we would advise that the use of blue light emitting devices should be minimized in pre-pubertal children, especially in the evening when exposure may have the most hormone-altering effects.”

Reference: “Blue Light Exposure and Exposure Duration Effects on Rats’ Puberty Process” by Aylin Kılınç Uğurlu, Aysun Bideci, Ayşe Mürşide Demirel, Gülnur Take Kaplanoğlu, Duygu Dayanır, Özlem Gülbahar, Tuba Saadet Deveci Bulut, Esra Döğer and M. Orhun Çamurdan, 16 September 2022, 60th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting.

Abstract

Introduction: In the last 10 years, blue light (BL) sources such as tablets and phones has increased in every age group. Especially due to the Covid-19 pandemic, screen exposure has also increased in childhood. However, the effects of BL exposure in the puberty process aren’t clear. We aimed to examine the effect of BL exposure and exposure time on puberty.

Methods: Immature eighteen 21-day-old female Sprague Dawley rats were divided into three groups consisting of six rats in each group: Control Group (CG), Experiment Group-1 (EG-1), Experiment Group-2 (EG-2). CG rats were maintained under standard conditions with 12/12-hour light-dark cycles . The rats of EG-1 and EG-2 were exposed to BL (450-470 nm / irradiance level 0.03 uW/cm2) for 6 hours and 12 hours, respectively. Rats were exposed to BL until the first signs of puberty and then they were euthanasiad. Serum FSH, LH, Estrodiol, testosterone, DHEA-S, leptin, melatonin were studied by ELISA method. Ovaries and uterus were dissected for histomorphological examination

Results: The medians of the pubertal entry days of the CG, EG-1, and EG-2 were 38th, 32nd, and 30th  days, respectively. (p: 0.001) A negative correlation was found between the puberty entry day of the groups and the exposure to BL and the duration of exposure. (r:-0.910, p<0.001)

The FSH, testosterone, DHEA-S, leptin levels of all groups were similar. (p> 0.05) However, LH and estradiol levels of EG-1 were higher compared CG. (p:0.027) There was a negative correlation between BL exposure, exposure time and melatonin levels (ro:- 0.537, p: 0.048)  Ovarian tissue was compatible with pubertal period in all groups. As the BL exposure time increased, capillary dilatation and edema in the over tissue increased. Prolonged exposure caused polycystic over like (PCO-like) morphological changes and apoptosis in granulosa cells.

Conclusion: Our study is the first to show the effects of BL exposure on puberty. In our study, we showed that exposure of BL and the duration of exposure lead to early puberty. PCO-like, inflammation and apoptosis were detected in the ovaries with the increase in BL exposure time.

There are studies showing that there is an increase in cases with precocious puberty and acceleration in puberty pace during the closure period compared to the pre-pandemic period. In our study, we experimentally demonstrated the effects of BL exposure on puberty and the relationship between increased exposure time.

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Blast from the Past Caught in Episodes Due to Gravitational Lensing

Light from a star that exploded over 11 billion years ago was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. It was not just one postcard from the remote past but three messages that chronicle the fading fireball over a period of one week.

For starters, the feeble light from the supernova was amplified by the gravitational field of an enormous foreground galaxy cluster, Abell 370. The gravitational warp in space acts as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova, which was located far behind the cluster.

A bonus for astronomers is that not one but three images of the supernova appear in the photo, strung along the cluster. They show the explosion over different times that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously. A clue is that the cooling supernova fireball appears in slightly different colors among the supernova images. The images arrived at different times because the length of the pathways the supernova light followed is different. The later images were delayed due to taking a longer route across “valleys” of warped space.

Through a “trick” of light-bending gravity, the Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in the explosion of a very far-off supernova — all in one snapshot! Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Hubble Captures 3 Faces of Evolving Supernova in Early Universe

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion in a single snapshot. When the star exploded more than 11 billion years ago, the universe was less than a fifth of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

In fact, this is the first detailed look at a supernova so early in the universe’s history. The research could help scientists learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies in the early universe. The supernova images are also special because they show the early stages of a stellar explosion.

“It is quite rare that a supernova can be detected at a very early stage, because that stage is really short,” explained Wenlei Chen, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy. “It only lasts for hours to a few days, and it can be easily missed even for a nearby detection. In the same exposure, we are able to see a sequence of the images—like multiple faces of a supernova.”

This was possible through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which was first predicted in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In this case, the immense gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 acted as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster.

The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Earth at the same time and were caught in one Hubble image. That was possible only because the magnified images took different routes through the cluster due both to differences in the length of the pathways the supernova light followed, and to the slowing of time and curvature of space due to gravity.

The Hubble exposure also captured the fading supernova’s rapid change of color, which indicates temperature change. The bluer the color means the hotter the supernova is. The earliest phase captured appears blue. As the supernova cooled its light turned redder.

Through the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in the explosion of a very far-off supernova—all in one picture! In this case, the immense gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 acted as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster. The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously.
The top box shows a portion of Abell 370. The box-within-the-box marks the area where the distant supernova was multiply lensed. The bottom image is a magnified version of this area with the light paths marked for the three images of the supernova. The right side of the bottom image shows the distant galaxy in which the supernova exploded. The lines show how the light traveled through the gravitational lens, with some of the light taking longer routes across “valleys” of warped space. The warping produced three images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

 

“You see different colors in the three different images,” said Patrick Kelly, study leader and an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s School of Physics and Astronomy. “You’ve got the massive star, the core collapses, it produces a shock, it heats up, and then you’re seeing it cool over a week. I think that’s probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen!”

This is also the first time astronomers were able to measure the size of a dying star in the early universe. This was based on the supernova’s brightness and rate of cooling, both of which depend on the size of the progenitor star. Hubble observations show that the red supergiant whose supernova explosion the researchers discovered was about 500 times larger than the Sun.

Chen, Kelly, and an international team of astronomers found this supernova by sifting through the Hubble data archives, looking for transient events. Chen wrote machine-learning algorithms to find these events, but this was the only multiply imaged supernova identified.

Chen and Kelly both have time planned for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to observe even more distant supernovae. They hope to contribute to a catalog of very far-off supernovae to help astronomers understand if the stars that existed many billions of years ago are different from those in the nearby universe.

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According to Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University researchers, the body’s wear and tear from chronic and lifelong stress may also raise the chance of dying from cancer.

That wear and tear, called allostatic load, refers to the cumulative effects of stress over time. “As a response to external stressors, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol, and then once the stress is over, these levels should go back down,”

says Dr. Justin Xavier Moore, an epidemiologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Cancer Center. “However, if you have chronic, ongoing psychosocial stressors, that never allow you to ‘come down,’ then that can cause wear and tear on your body at a biological level.”

More than 41,000 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, which was conducted from 1988 to 2019 were retrospectively analyzed by researchers under Moore’s direction. Body mass index, diastolic and systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C (higher levels indicate a risk for diabetes), albumin and creatinine (both measures of kidney function), and C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation) are baseline biological measurements that the researchers used to calculate the allostatic load. A high allostatic load was defined as having a score greater than 3.

Dr. Justin X. Moore. Credit: Mike Holahan, Augusta University

 

The National Death Index, which is maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was then compared with those participants to identify who had died from cancer and when.

“To date, there has been limited research on the relationship between allostatic load and cancer among a current, nationally representative sample of US adults,” Moore and his colleagues write in the journal SSM Population Health. “Examining the association of allostatic load on cancer outcomes, and whether these associations vary by race may give insight to novel approaches in mitigating cancer disparities.”

The researchers found that, even without adjusting for any potential confounders like age, social demographics like race and sex, poverty to income ratio, and educational level, those with a high allostatic load were 2.4 times more likely to die from cancer than those with low allostatic loads.

“But you have to adjust for confounding factors,” Moore explains. “We know there are differences in allostatic loads based on age, race, and gender.”

In fact, in previous research, he and his colleagues observed that when looking at trends in allostatic load over 30 years among 50,671 individuals, adults aged 40 and older had greater than a 100% increased risk of high allostatic load when compared to adults under 30. Further, regardless of the time period, Black and Latino adults had an increased risk of high allostatic load when compared with their white counterparts. Much of that, Moore says, can be attributed to structural racism — things like difficulty navigating better educational opportunities or fair and equitable home loans.

“If you’re born into an environment where your opportunities are much different than your white male counterparts, for example being a black female, your life course trajectory involves dealing with more adversity,” he says.

Even when controlling for age, the researchers found that people with a high allostatic load still have a 28% increased risk of dying from cancer. “That means that if you were to have two people of the same age if one of those people had a high allostatic load, they are 28% more likely to die from cancer,” Moore says.

Adjusting for sociodemographic factors including sex and race and educational level, high allostatic load led to a 21% increase; and further adjusting the model for other risk factors like whether participants smoked, previously had a heart attack, or been previously diagnosed with cancer or congestive heart failure, led to a 14% increase.

Moore and colleagues further examined the relationship between allostatic load and cancer mortality specifically among each racial/ethnic group (e.g., non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic white, and Hispanic adults). However, allostatic load was not as strongly related when broken down by race categories. These findings could be explained by the sheer size of the original sample.

“Epidemiologically, when looking at 41,000 people, there are many cancer-related-death events,” Moore explains. “However, it is more difficult to ascertain a relationship between x (allostatic load) and y (cancer death) when you essentially have fewer data points to measure.” For example, limiting the sample to just non-Hispanic Blacks would mean analyzing a sample of just 11,000 people, so the relationship may look diminished or attenuated.

“The reason race even matters is because there are systemic factors that disproportionately affect people of color,” he says. “But even if you take race out, the bottom line is that the environments in which we live, work, and play, where you are rewarded for working more and sometimes seen as weak for taking time for yourself, is conducive to high stress which in turn may lead to cancer development and increased morbidity and mortality.”

In the United States, cancer is the second leading cause of death and it was responsible for an estimated 1.9 million cases and nearly 609,000 deaths in 2021.

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According to a study comparing the effects of protein and calorie restriction diets in humans, reducing protein consumption may help control metabolic syndrome and some of its primary symptoms, such as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure (hypertension). The study’s findings were recently published in the journal Nutrients.

The term “metabolic syndrome” refers to a group of diseases, including hypertension, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol levels, that increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.

“The study showed that cutting protein intake to 0.8 g per kg of body weight was sufficient to achieve almost the same clinical results as restricting calories, but without the need to reduce calorie intake. The results suggest that protein restriction may be one of the key factors leading to the known benefits of dietary restriction. Protein restriction dieting may therefore be a more attractive nutritional strategy and easier to follow for people with metabolic syndrome,” said Rafael Ferraz-Bannitz, first author of the article and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Harvard Medical School in the United States.

Controlled diet

The research involved 21 individuals with metabolic syndrome who were monitored for 27 days. Throughout the period, they were inpatients at FMRP-USP’s teaching hospital (Hospital das Clnicas in Ribeiro Preto).

The daily calorie intake of each participant was determined as a function of their baseline metabolism (energy expenditure at rest). A conventional Western diet of 50% carbohydrates, 20% protein, and 30% fat was served to one group, but it contained 25% fewer calories.

Protein consumption was lowered to 10% in the second group. Each volunteer’s calorie intake was matched to their baseline energy expenditure. 4 grams of salt were consumed daily by both groups.

The results showed that both the calorie and protein restriction groups lost weight owing to a decrease in body fat and that the symptoms of metabolic syndrome improved. Decreased body fat is known to be associated with reduced blood sugar and more normal levels of lipids and blood pressure.

“After 27 days of monitoring, both groups had similar results in terms of lower blood sugar, weight loss, controlled blood pressure, and lower levels of triglycerides and cholesterol. Both diets improved insulin sensitivity after treatment. Body fat decreased, as did waist and hip circumference, but without loss of muscle mass,” said Maria Cristina Foss de Freitas, the last author of the article and a professor at FMRP-USP.

The findings confirmed those of previous studies involving experiments on mice. “Here, however, we succeeded in conducting a fully controlled randomized clinical trial lasting 27 days, with a personalized menu designed to meet each patient’s needs,” Foss de Freitas said.

Manipulation of dietary macronutrients – protein, carbohydrate, and fat – is sufficient to obtain the beneficial effects of dietary restriction. “We demonstrated that protein restriction reduces body fat while maintaining muscle mass. That’s important since the weight loss resulting from restrictive diets is often associated with loss of muscle mass,” Ferraz-Bannitz said.

The study did not investigate the molecular mechanisms that could explain the beneficial effects of protein restriction diets, but the researchers believe low protein intake triggered a change in the metabolism or enhanced the organism’s energy management by leading it to burn fat in order to produce energy for cells. “We only have hypotheses so far. One is that molecular pathways are activated to interpret the reduction in essential amino acids as being a signal to reduce food intake while leading to the production of hormones that typically increase when we’re fasting,” Mori said. “Studies in animal models have shown the involvement of such pathways in the effects of both protein and calorie restriction, both of which lead to fat loss.”

Despite the promising results of their studies, the researchers point out that the diets involved were personalized. Mori also stressed that they focused on a specific population of patients with metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and abnormal levels of cholesterol).

“Nevertheless, it’s tempting to extrapolate the results. We know research has shown vegan diets to be positive for cases of metabolic syndrome. It’s also been found that the excessive protein intake common in the standard Western diet can be a problem. Every case should be analyzed on its own merits. We shouldn’t forget protein deficiency can lead to severe health problems, as has been well-described in pregnant women, for example,” he added.

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Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas after CO2 in terms of volume in the atmosphere, but it has a much stronger greenhouse effect. Therefore, whether negative climatic impacts would arise from this incident is a key concern worldwide. Although a news article published in the journal Nature commented on this issue, no quantitative conclusions were made.

Recently, scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, estimated the possible climatic impact of the leaked methane by adopting the energy-conservation framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6), released in 2021. Their findings were published today (November 11) in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

First, the researchers collected all estimates of the total amount of leaked methane available in the world’s media after the incident. It was found that the earliest estimates (1–2 days after) reached up to 0.5 million tonnes (Mt). However, it later became clear that the quantity of methane that leaked was likely to be much lower than first estimated. In particular, a team from Nanjing University, China, provided a more accurate estimate of 0.22 ± 0.03 Mt by drawing upon multiple observations including those from high-resolution satellites.

This value established that this was the largest methane emission in a single event in human history—more than two times that of the Aliso Canyon accident in California in 2015. However, according to IPCC AR6, annual emissions of methane from the oil and gas sectors amounted to as much as 70 Mt during 2008–2017. This means that the leaked methane from the Nord Stream pipelines was equivalent to only 1 day of emissions from these sectors.

IPCC AR6 also highlighted that methane in the atmosphere is gradually removed by reacting with certain radicals, such as hydroxyl radical, resulting in an approximate 10-year lifetime, which is short-lived compared to CO2. This means that the climatic impact of methane depends on the time horizon, which complicates matters when trying to calculate it directly.

Instead, the researchers made an indirect estimate with the help of the concept of “global warming potential.” Specifically, they determined that the quantity of heat accumulated per unit mass of methane in the next 20 years after its emission into the atmosphere is 82.5 times that of CO2. Then, armed with this information, they were able to calculate that, when considering a time horizon of 20 years, the climatic impact of the leaked methane is equivalent to that of 20.6 Mt of CO2, which would raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration by only 0.0026 ppm.

Based on the newest assessments in IPCC AR6 of the effective radiative forcing under doubled CO2, climate feedback, and ocean heat uptake efficiency, under the energy conservation framework, the global mean surface air temperature would in theory increase by 1.8×10-5 °C.

“Such a tiny warming cannot be perceived in ecosystems or human society,” explains Dr. Xiaolong Chen, first author of the study. “Still, anthropogenic methane has been the second largest driver of global warming, and is emitted from multiple sectors of agriculture and industry. If we are going to achieve the warming target of below 1.5°C or 2°C set out in the Paris Agreement, damage to infrastructure such as this should be avoided so that we can better control and reduce methane emissions.”

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A guided mindfulness-based stress reduction program was as effective as the use of the gold-standard drug – the common antidepressant drug escitalopram – for patients with anxiety disorders. This is according to the results of a first-of-its-kind, randomized clinical trial led by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center.

The findings were published on November 9, 2022m, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. This follows the announcement on October 11, 2022, by the United States Preventive Services Task Force that, for the first time, recommended screening for anxiety disorders due to the high prevalence of these conditions.

“Our study provides evidence for clinicians, insurers, and healthcare systems to recommend, include and provide reimbursement for mindfulness-based stress reduction as an effective treatment for anxiety disorders because mindfulness meditation currently is reimbursed by very few providers,” says Elizabeth Hoge, MD, director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program and associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown and first author. “A big advantage of mindfulness meditation is that it doesn’t require a clinical degree to train someone to become a mindfulness facilitator. Additionally, sessions can be done outside of a medical setting, such as at a school or community center.”

Anxiety disorders can be highly distressing; they include generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic disorder, and fear of certain places or situations, including crowds and public transportation. All of these can lead to an increased risk for suicide, disability, and distress and therefore are commonly treated in psychiatric clinics.

Drugs that are currently prescribed for the disorders can be very effective, but many patients either have difficulty getting them, do not respond to them, or find the side effects (e.g., nausea, sexual dysfunction, and drowsiness) as a barrier to consistent treatment.

Standardized mindfulness-based interventions, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), can reduce anxiety. However, prior to this study, the interventions had not been studied in comparison to effective anti-anxiety drugs. Of note, approximately 15% of the U.S. population tried some form of meditation in 2017.

The clinicians recruited 276 patients between June 2018 and February 2020 from three hospitals in Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C., and randomly assigned people to either mindfulness-based stress reduction or the antidepressant drug escitalopram. MBSR was offered weekly for eight weeks via two-and-a-half-hour in-person classes, a day-long retreat weekend class during the 5th or 6th week, and 45-minute daily home practice exercises. Patients’ anxiety symptoms were assessed upon enrollment and again at the completion of the intervention at 8 weeks, along with post-treatment assessments at 12 and 24 weeks after enrollment. The assessments were conducted in a blinded manner – the trained clinical evaluators did not know whether the patients they were assessing received the drug or MBSR.

At the end of the trial, 102 patients had completed MBSR and 106 had completed their medication course. The patients were relatively young, with a mean age of 33, and included 156 women, which comprised 75% of the enrollees, mirroring the disease prevalence in the U.S.

The researchers used a validated assessment measure to rate the severity of symptoms of anxiety across all of the disorders using a scale of 1 to 7 (with 7 being severe anxiety). Both groups saw a reduction in their anxiety symptoms (a 1.35 point mean reduction for MBSR and 1.43 point mean reduction for the drug, which was a statistically equivalent outcome), dropping from a mean of about 4.5 for both, which translates to a significant 30% or so drop in the severity of peoples’ anxiety.

Olga Cannistraro, 52, says she utilizes her MBSR techniques as needed, but more than a decade ago, the practice transformed her life. She was selected for an MBSR study after responding to an advertisement asking, “Do you worry?”

“I didn’t think of myself as anxious – I just thought my life was stressful because I had taken on too much,” she recalls. “But I thought ‘yeah, I do worry.’ There was something excessive about the way I responded to my environment.”

After participating in an earlier study led by Hoge, she learned two key MBSR techniques. “It gave me the tools to spy on myself. Once you have awareness of an anxious reaction, then you can make a choice for how to deal with it. It’s not like a magic cure, but it was a life-long kind of training. Instead of my anxiety progressing, it went in the other direction and I’m very grateful for that.”

“It is important to note that although mindfulness meditation works, not everyone is willing to invest the time and effort to successfully complete all of the necessary sessions and do regular home practice which enhances the effect,” Hoge said. “Also, virtual delivery via videoconference is likely to be effective, so long as the ‘live’ components are retained, such as question-and-answer periods and group discussion.”

Hoge points out that there are many phone apps that offer guided meditation, however, researchers don’t know how apps compare with the full in-person, weekly group class experience.

Trial enrollment was wrapping up as the COVID pandemic started in early 2020 but most enrollees completed their eight-week course of treatment before the pandemic started. Additionally, the researchers conducted a second phase of the study during the pandemic that involved moving the treatments to an online, videoconference, and that will be the focus of future analyses. The researchers also hope to explore the effects of MBSR on sleep and depression.

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Back in 2008, a small but very cute study asked people to stand at the bottom of a hill, look up and guess how steep it was. Some people were there alone, others accompanied by friends. The hill, on the campus of the University of Virginia, had an incline of 26°. But to the people who were there with friends, it looked a lot less. Compared with those who turned up on their own, they significantly underestimated the gradient. The feel-good lesson? Everything looks easier when there’s a friend by your side.

Yes, mate, the benefits of friendship are profound. Having a strong social circle is associated with a longer life and fewer illnesses. Your pals lower your blood pressure and trigger positive chemicals in your brain. People with a strong social network are less stressed, more resilient and more optimistic. They’re more likely to be a healthy weight and less likely to suffer cognitive decline. They also enjoy some protection from cancer, heart disease and depression.

But there’s one group – a big one – that is missing out on these benefits. Men are lonely. Growing numbers of men are standing at the bottom of that hill, alone and overwhelmed, as surveys point to a recession of social connection among those of us with a Y chromosome.

A YouGov poll in 2019 concluded that one in five men have no close friends, twice as many as women. In 2021, the Survey Center on American Life found that since 1995, the number of American men reporting that they had no close friends jumped from 3 to 15 per cent. In the same research, the number of men saying they had at least six close friends halved from 55 per cent to 27 per cent.

Why can't men make friends?

Why do men struggle to make or maintain friendships? And what can we do about it, not just as individuals but on a societal level? Because the sad truth is, an empty social calendar is the least of Billy No-Mates’ problems. Loneliness is a health hazard, as dangerous as smoking or alcoholism, according to some research.

A major study by scientists at Brigham Young University in the US found that long-term social isolation can increase a person’s risk of premature death by as much as 32 per cent. For this reason, some have called it the ‘shadow pandemic’. It was brought into focus during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when all of us were isolated and friendship became a hot research topic again, but it had spread around the world long before the novel coronavirus had.

Teeangers are some of the loneliest people in society, according to some data © Getty Images

“It’s a story I’ve been telling for 30 years,” says Prof Niobe Way, of New York University. As a developmental psychologist, Way has spent much of her career interviewing boys and men about their relationships, and how they change over time (documented in her book, Deep Secrets). She believes that hyper-masculine ideals are stripping young men of close friendships and the intimacy that goes with them.

“When you speak to boys aged 11, 12 or 13, they have this natural capacity and desire for closeness. And it’s not a bromance thing, it’s not just wanting to have dudes to hang out with. It’s wanting someone they can share their secrets with,” she says. “Then you speak to them again around 15 or 16 and you get this stereotype creeping into the responses. They start saying things like, ‘Oh sure, I have friends, everyone’s my best friend, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.’”

Way admits that young men being macho about their friendships is nothing new, but she thinks it’s telling that a change occurs in adolescence that – seemingly – frames the way a lot of men form and maintain their relationships all the way through adulthood.

How do male and female friendships differ?

If you’ve ever watched a sitcom, you know how it goes: men have superficial or transactional relationships with each other and bond by banter as they watch sport or drink beer. Women, in contrast, have deep and emotionally vulnerable conversations marked by shared secrets and interpersonal closeness. The funny thing is, these sitcom stereotypes are borne out by research.

“One of the main things we’ve shown is that the two sexes are very different in their social style,” says Prof Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford whose work centres on social bonding. “The girls’ social world has been built around personalised relationships. It matters who you are, not what you are.

“For men, what makes the difference is investing time in doing something together. It might be meeting up for a pint or arranging to climb Ben Nevis. The activity is irrelevant as long as it’s a group activity – and that often doesn’t involve a lot of conversation. There’s a bit of banter but really, the content is close to zero.”

The difference between male and female friendship is often characterised as side-by-side versus face-to-face relationships. When men meet their friends, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder: at the bar, at the football ground, fishing at a river. When women meet up, they often sit across a table from each other and talk.

The emotional investment and frequent contact that women prize is not as important for men, Dunbar says. Men can go months without seeing a mate but still consider that person a close friend. Could this superficial approach to friendship explain why men are losing friends and more likely to feel lonely?

It’s almost certainly a factor, but it’s not the only one. Sociological and generational changes also play a part. It was only a few generations ago that, for the majority of people, friends were constants in our lives, like family. People moved less, travelled less, changed jobs less. Today, our mobility – literal and figurative – means that friendships can more easily come and go.

Why are men lonely?

Loneliness and isolation can also happen as a consequence of other things, says Dr Mike Jestico, a psychologist at the University of Leeds who also works with local men’s groups in the city. “Homelessness, addiction, breakdown of family home… Men are more likely to experience these than women, leading to isolation,” he says.

“Isolation is more likely to happen to men with lower incomes, as social experiences tend to cost money. One of the men in my research sang in a social singing group. But when the group moved venues, he couldn’t afford the bus fare to travel, thus increasing his isolation.”

Jestico says that a kind of ‘structural’ isolation can also be a factor. Single men are more likely to live alone in high-rise tower blocks, for example, and are less likely to be the primary caregiver of children.

“The bedroom tax meant single men could not afford to live in accommodation with more than one bedroom and moved into smaller accommodation with some high-rise flats in Leeds having 75 to 80 per cent male residents in 2016.

“One of my participants, who did not live with his children’s mother, was moved 15 miles from his two-bedroom flat to an affordable one-bedroom flat. This meant he lived further from his friends and children, who were much less likely to stay with him as he only had one bedroom.”

There’s more too. Throw in working from home, the closure of pubs, declining engagement in religious activities or social clubs, not to mention smartphone addiction and so-called social media, and perhaps the statistics on men’s shrinking friendship circles aren’t that surprising after all.

Men are more likely to live alone in blocks of flats © Getty Images

Another important factor is, of course, that men are a bit useless. When it comes to making plans or staying in contact with friends, men are socially lazy. This appears to be especially true in middle age when something strange happens with men’s friendships. At this age, men don’t appear to be lonely, on the surface.

“Data including men and women has often found a U-shaped relationship, where teenagers and the oldest people in society are the loneliest,” says John Ratcliffe, a researcher at the Centre of Loneliness Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. “That said, the highest suicide rates are in single men in their 40s and 50s.”

Men show a stronger link between marital status and loneliness than women, Ratcliffe says. Which is to say, unmarried women are less lonely than unmarried men. “I would link this statistical trend to a greater ‘reliance’ on partners for intimacy in men, and a greater ideation of the family role. For men who don’t have a partner, loneliness can be particularly severe.”

But even for men who are coupled up, middle age is tricky territory. At this stage of life, guys might drop out of the five-a-side team, or family commitments keep them from the after-work drinks or the hobbies they once had more time for. They may have fewer peers in the workplace, and the friends they see on a regular basis may not be particularly close ones.

“Because males are socially lazy, what tends to happen is the wife ends up driving the social environment for the household,” says Dunbar. “The guys end up becoming friends with the partners of their wives’ friends – because they’re there.”

Men’s reliance on their partners can also lead to further problems. For one, it places a lot of pressure on the women (in heterosexual relationships, at least), and if the relationship breaks down or the man is widowed, it can leave him abruptly isolated. “When you have a divorce or you’re widowed, suddenly half your social world vanishes overnight,” Dunbar says.

How can men make more friends?

So what’s to be done? Way says that it has to start with boys, addressing the culture of masculinity that young men grow up in.

“The lack of friendships amongst men is just a symptom of the bigger problem. I feel like journalists – and social scientists – bring the microscope in too much. And so we only focus on this specific symptom,” she says. “If you bring up the microscope just a tiny bit, you begin to see this is just a symptom. Because boys do have and want close friendships.”

Way believes we should try to foster boys’ latent caring and emotional side. Being socially and emotionally intelligent is not a female trait, she says: it’s a human one. “We don’t have to teach it, we just have to nurture it.”

Dunbar is more cautious about dismantling the way boys and men socialise, arguing that you see the same behaviours in monkeys and apes that you see at nurseries, schools and workplaces. He pictures two Mediterranean men sitting outside a cafe in the sunshine. They smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and stay there for hours saying almost nothing to one another.

“Don’t knock it!” he says. “This is boys bonding. Girls would never do that because they would want to talk to each other, but for boys you can sit down in complete silence and still build a relationship, providing there’s an activity or some kind of focus.”

For Dunbar, finding a shared activity is key, and his advice to lonely men is to start there, by finding a club or something you’re interested in.

“Dancing, singing, playing rugby or tennis, climbing hills – you name it. They all trigger endorphins. And when you do it with other people, you end up bonding. It’s a very powerful mechanism,” he says.

Volunteering work can be beneficial for your mental health, and is also a good way to make new friends © Getty Images

Volunteering has a similar effect, whether it’s something charitable, or getting involved in your children’s sports teams, or local political or environmental movements. In 2020, Dunbar and his colleagues published a pan-European study in which they found that your future risk of depression is lower if you take part in three voluntary activities.

This taps into another stereotype about men: as much as we want to be loved, we also want to be useful. “In my research, a sense of ‘worth’ is often central to non-loneliness in men,” says Ratcliffe. “That is, feeling accepted, respected, loved, and/or admired. It also appeared related to neurological stimulation – the idea of being positively occupied.”

Ratcliffe believes that building self-worth in young boys and lonely men alike is important to undo the pandemic of disconnection. At the same time, he wants to deconstruct masculine expectations that say you have to be invulnerable, that compel men to say they’re okay when they’re not, or that they’re not lonely when they are.

Part of this is realising that you’re not alone in feeling alone, adds Way. “We have to normalise it so that people don’t somehow think they’re weird, but that it’s actually that culture has made it very hard for you to find meaningful relationships.”

Want to make a start? Way suggests sending this article to men you know, whether or not you think they are lonely. “Lots of men need a jumping-off point to start having conversations with other men about this kind of stuff. Send them the article and just ask them: ‘What do you think?’” It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Buddy systems

Scientific ways to make friends and influence your long-term health

• Ask questions Harvard neuroscientists found that talking about yourself triggers neural reward systems, just like food or sex do. So make your new acquaintance feel good by asking them about themselves and listening.

• Put the time in According to a study at the University of Kansas, it takes 200 hours of socialising for somebody to become a close friend. That includes around 50 hours to upgrade from an acquaintance to a casual friend.

• Find common ground No surprise here: you need a few things in common. Anthropologist Prof Robin Dunbar’s seven pillars of friendship include things like world view (religion, morals or ethics), educational trajectories, as well as shared hobbies or tastes in music or humour.

• Go to the shed Psychologist Dr Mike Jestico recommends seeking out local community groups, walking clubs or menssheds.org.uk. The latter is a network of community spaces where men are invited to connect and converse while doing things like crafts and DIY.

• Check in Don’t underestimate the power of a quick call or message to a friend you haven’t seen or spoken to in a while. New research from the University of Pittsburgh found that check-ins like this are more deeply appreciated than most of us realise.

• Sing your heart out Joining a club or group is one of the surefire ways to enhance your social circle, but if all else fails, join a choir. Dunbar says that singing has a seemingly unique ice-breaking effect, and people who sing together bond remarkably quickly.

• This article first appeared in issue 383 of BBC Science Focus

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Rocket Report: Indian commercial rocket has launch date; Branson must face lawsuit

While it would be awesome for people to be able to live in space, a "weightless" environment poses some serious challenges. Humans function best on Earth’s surface, where they are affected by a constant gravitational force. Without it, there are well-known consequences of long-term exposure to microgravity, including bone mass loss and muscle atrophy.

So if we want to live in space, we’ll need to create an artificial gravity environment. We only have one method for doing that: Build a vehicle that moves with a constant acceleration. The most common concept is to create a spacecraft that spins. But that’s not quite as easy as it sounds. Here’s why.

Feeling Weight

First, let’s go over the basics of gravity and what it means to feel your weight.

Gravity is an attraction between objects that have mass. Since both your body and the Earth have mass, there is an attractive force that pulls you toward the Earth and keeps you on the ground. Even though this force is constantly acting on you, you don’t feel it, because the Earth simultaneously pulls on all parts of your body, making the effect undetectable.

I know what you are thinking: "I'm sitting here on this chair, and I can absolutely feel my weight." Actually, what you are feeling isn’t gravity. It’s the force of the chair (and the ground) pushing up on you. We call this upward-pushing force your "apparent weight."

We can get a good feel for the concept of apparent weight by taking a quick trip in an elevator. The elevator starts at rest. But when you push a button, it begins moving upwards. That means it must have an upward acceleration—at least for a very short amount of time, until the elevator gets up to its traveling speed. During this upward acceleration, you feel a bit heavier. Then once the elevator gets near its programmed floor, it has to slow down. That means it accelerates in the downward direction. During this time, you feel lighter.

But, of course, your actual weight never fluctuated. Your real weight is a measure of how much force gravity exerts on your body, and it is the result of the interaction between your mass (m) as well as the mass of the Earth and your distance from its center. On Earth, gravity exerts a force of 9.8 newtons per kilogram. (Mass and weight are different things, so on a planet with different gravity, your weight would be different, even though your mass would be the same.)

Riding an elevator changes none of these factors. What it does change is your apparent weight. It's a little strange, but this effect is super useful for a spacecraft.

Linear Acceleration

Let's say you are in space where there’s no gravity—or even in low Earth orbit, where there is microgravity, which is the name we give to a “weightless” environment. What if your spacecraft had a giant elevator that constantly accelerated upwards? If the acceleration of the elevator had the same value as the gravitational field on the surface of the Earth, your weight would feel exactly like it does now.

Of course, a spaceship with an infinite elevator is impractical. It would be easier to just make the whole vehicle accelerate. That would absolutely create artificial gravity. In fact, this is the primary method used on ships in the science fiction series The Expanse.

But there's a problem. In order to make a spacecraft accelerate continuously, you need to keep firing its rockets. That would require preposterous amounts of fuel. Still, you can’t turn off the rockets, because if you do, your acceleration would fall to zero. So much for your nice artificial gravity. (They fix this problem in The Expanse with the invention of the “Epstein drive,” which might as well be magic.)

For us humans of the current era, we are going to need another method of acceleration to produce artificial gravity.

Circular Motion

We define acceleration as the rate of change of velocity. So, if a car goes from 10 meters per second to 20 m/s in a time of 1 second, that car would have an acceleration of 10 meters per second per second. (We often write that as 10 m/s2.)

But velocity is actually a vector. That means that the velocity doesn't just tell you how fast something is moving, but also in which direction.

Suppose a car is driving 20 m/s going west. Then it makes a turn so that after 1 second it is traveling 20 m/s to the north. Even though the car is moving at the same speed, it experienced an acceleration because it changed direction. We can calculate the magnitude of the acceleration if we know the radius (R) of the path the car takes in this turn, and the speed (v).

Illustration: Rhett Allain

But you don’t really need this math. You already intuitively know that turning in a car is an acceleration, because you can feel something pushing you to the side of the car as you turn, just as you can feel the acceleration in a moving elevator.

That’s why we can use a turning object to create artificial acceleration. You don't need to actually make the spacecraft or space station turn in a circle, the way a car would. Instead, imagine a large rotating object with people standing inside. It would look something like this:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Here, three people are standing inside a rotating cylinder. Since they are all moving in circular paths, each of them has an acceleration and feels something like gravity. (To them, the "up" direction is toward the center of the cylinder.)

It turns out that we can describe their motion with the angular velocity of the spacecraft (ω) instead of their velocities (v). With that, each person would have an acceleration of:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

The angular velocity (ω) is measured in radians per second. If this acceleration has a value of 9.8 m/s2—the same as the gravitational field on the surface of the Earth—then that person would almost feel like they are standing on the planet's surface. (We will get to the differences shortly.)

The best thing about a rotating spaceship or space station is that once you get it spinning, you don't need to use any more rocket fuel to keep it going. It will just keep going until something stops it. This is why you see this method for artificial gravity in science fiction TV series and movies like The Martian, Babylon 5, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, and many more.

And this equation tells us something important for spaceship design. You could either make a small vehicle (with a small R) and have it spin very fast (with a large ω), or you could have a large ship with a small rotation rate.

Smallest Rotating Spacecraft

If you decrease the radius of a rotating spacecraft, it must increase its angular velocity in order to obtain the desired acceleration. (Let's say 9.8 m/s2. That's 1 g, the acceleration equivalent of standing on the surface of the Earth.)

But again there's a problem—this time it’s humans. Yes, we have some problems with rotation. (Personally, I can't handle any of the spinning rides at amusement parks, like the Mad Tea Party at Disney World. It makes me a little sick just thinking about it.) Based on laboratory testing, most people can handle rotation rates of about one revolution per minute, or 1 rpm. Other data suggest that an angular velocity of up to 4 rpm could be possible. Another study concludes that by exposing humans to increasing periods of higher and higher rotation rates, they might be able to function at 26 rpm.

Let's assume that we have some extremely not-queasy astronauts that can handle a 26-rpm rotation rate. (Maybe they practice on the teacup ride.) How small of a spacecraft could you build to produce a 1-g artificial gravity?

First, we need to convert the angular velocity from revolutions per minute to radians per second. That would give a value of ω = 2.72 radians/second. (Remember, 1 revolution is equal to 2π radians.)

Next, we just use an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2 and solve for R (the radius). This gives a circular spacecraft with a radius of 1.3 meters and a diameter of 2.6 meters. That is super tiny. It's even smaller than the diameter of an International Space Station module, which is about 4.2 meters. If you go with a more reasonable angular velocity of 4 rpm, the spacecraft would have a diameter of 112 meters. That's much bigger, like the size of a football field or soccer pitch.

If you don't want to make a rotating spaceship that's 112 meters wide, there's a little trick you can use. Instead of one large vessel, you can use two smaller ones and connect them by a cable. These two smaller parts would then rotate around a common center of mass. You can put humans in one (or both) of these parts so that they experience an artificial gravitational field. You can see an example of this type of rotating ship in the Netflix movie Stowaway.

Differential Gravity

Still, there are two things that can happen on a rotating spacecraft that would make you realize you are not on the surface of the Earth. The first is that it's possible that the artificial gravitational field at your head could have a different value than the field strength at your feet. To see why this would happen, let's consider a person standing in a fairly small rotating spacecraft.

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Since the person is in a rotating vehicle, both their head and their feet have the same angular velocity (ω). However, they are not moving in a circle of the same size. The head is closer to the center of the rotating craft than the feet, so that the circular path radius of the head (Rh) is smaller than that for the feet (Rf). Remember that the value of the acceleration (and thus the artificial gravity) decreases with the radius of motion. The person's head will experience a smaller gravitational field than their feet. That's a little weird.

But it can even be worse than that. Imagine that super-small spacecraft with a radius of just 1.3 meters. That's shorter than a typical person—which could put the astronaut’s head past the center of rotation. In this case, their head would be pulled towards the one side of the spacecraft (let’s call it the ceiling) and their feet would be pulled to the other side, which we can call the floor. If spinning really fast isn't enough to make this astronaut sick, this weird artificial gravity would surely do the trick.

This "differential gravity" isn't as much of a problem with larger rotating ships. Let's consider our previous example of a rotating craft that’s 112 meters wide. It has a 55.8-meter radius with an angular velocity of 4 rpm. The gravitational field at the "floor" would be 9.8 m/s2, which is just like on Earth. If an astronaut has a height of 1.75 meters, then their head would be moving in a circular radius of 54.1 meters. This means that at their head, the gravitational field would be 9.49 m/s2. That's just a decrease of 3.2 percent compared to the field at their feet—so not a big deal.

Coriolis Force

There's another consequence of living in a rotating vehicle, which is called the Coriolis force. This force is sort of complicated, so let's start off with an example using a rotating merry-go-round. Suppose there are two people (labeled A and standing on this merry-go-round, one at the edge and one closer to the middle. Here is a top view:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

Notice that both people are moving around circular paths with the same angular velocity. However, person B has to travel a larger distance to get all the way around the circle in the same time that it takes A to travel around. This means that B will have a larger linear speed (v) than A.

That's not a big deal unless person B decides to move towards the center of the circle. By moving to a new circular path with a smaller radius, person B will be moving too fast for that new radius. This faster speed at this new circular radius will mean that this person's path will tend to curve to the side. This extra force is called the Coriolis force.

If person B rolled a ball to person A, it would roll along a curved path, like this:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

The magnitude of this Coriolis force depends on both the velocity of the moving object (with respect to the rotating frame) and the angular velocity of the rotating merry-go-round. And the same thing would happen in a spacecraft.

There are a lot of factors that make the Coriolis force complicated to calculate, but I'm going to write it down as an equation anyway:

Illustration: Rhett Allain

The important thing to notice is that this force is always perpendicular to the velocity and is zero if the object is stationary in the rotating frame.

What would this do to an astronaut in a spinning spacecraft? If the person is just sitting still, nothing would happen. But what if they stand up? During the process of standing up, they would have a velocity towards the center of the circle, since the person’s center of mass is moving upwards as they go from sitting to standing.

The Coriolis force would push on them sideways, in relation to their velocity. And depending on the orientation of the chair, this force could push them in different directions. If the chair is facing the same direction as the spacecraft is rotating, the Coriolis force will push the person forward when they stand up. If the chair is facing backwards, it will push them backwards. If the chair is facing to one side, it will push them to the other. And it’s not just standing up. If you move your hand, there will be a sideways force acting on it. If you try to pour a drink into a glass, there will always be a sideways force on the liquid. Maybe you can adapt to a sideways force for every motion, but I think that would get super frustrating.

Is there anything you could do about the Coriolis force? Yes. You can minimize this sideways-pushing force by designing a spacecraft with a lower angular velocity, meaning it takes longer to complete one rotation. But that would mean less artificial gravity.

If you want your spacecraft to have artificial gravity that mimics Earth’s and a reduced Coriolis effect, you are just going to need a bigger spaceship. It's a tough choice: You can build a small, cheap spacecraft and deal with annoying Coriolis forces, or you can build a large, expensive spaceship with all the comforts of home—but that’ll be big, and it’s going to cost you.

The Problem With Spinning Spacecraft

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Sharing the distress of others is considered key to empathy and our motivation to help others. With people greatly differing in their ability to empathize, and some psychiatric patients lacking the ability to empathize, understanding how our brain makes the pain of others feel painful is key to understanding the origin of these individual differences.

So far, we have had to rely on fMRI studies to identify brain regions that become activated while we perceive the pain of others. Unfortunately, fMRI cannot directly measure the activity of neurons. Instead it measures changes in blood-flow that help pinpoint brain regions that are associated with empathy.

To understand where in the brain neurons help us share the distress of others, we would need to insert electrodes into the brain, and directly measure the electrical activity through which neurons process information. For obvious reasons, this is not possible in humans, or is it?

Epilepsy patients

In certain cases of epilepsy that cannot be treated using pharmacological treatments, surgeons implant electrodes directly into the brain of patients, to localize the origin of the epilepsy.

The patients then have to stay in the hospital for about a week, while the surgical team records their brain activity and waits for an epileptic event to occur. To add purpose to this waiting, some patients volunteer a unique opportunity to better understand the human mind: they engage in psychological tasks while their brain activity is measured through these medical electrodes.

In a new paper published in eLife, a collaboration between NIN researchers Efe Soyman, Rune Bruls, Kalliopi Ioumpa under the supervision of professors Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola leveraged this unique opportunity to test the notion that neurons in brain regions involved in our own pain, like the insula, contain neurons with activity that directly mirrors the pain of others.

They showed patients short video-clips of a woman experiencing various levels of pain, and measured how strongly neurons in the insula—a brain region involved in the patient's own pain experiences—respond to the pain they observe the woman in the video-clip to experience.

Specifically, they could measure intracranial local field potentials, which measure the activity of some hundreds of insula neurons close to the electrode, from 7epilepsy patients. In addition, they could zoom into the activity of individual neurons in the insula of 3 epilepsy patients.

Background: The insula and our own emotions

The insula, a brain region hidden inside of the brain, is known to play a critical role in our own emotions. It can sense the state of our body through input from our inner organs and skin, and integrates this information with what we see, hear and smell, and is thought to give rise to these conscious feelings we call emotions. In particular, it has also been shown to contain many neurons that respond when we experience pain in or on our own body, with the level of its activity scaling with how unpleasant we find this pain.

The novelty: Coding the pain of others

The team therefore explored whether neurons in this region would also represent the level of pain experiences by others. Because the movies they showed participants varied in how much pain the actress in the movies was experiencing, the team could explore whether movies in which the patients perceived others to be in more pain would be movies in which the insular neurons would show more activity—serving as a mirror for other people's pain.

This is exactly what they found: throughout the insula, they could record electrical activity that scaled with the pain the people reported perceiving in the movies. This was true in the local field potentials, and even in individual neurons, providing the first evidence, that a brain region involved in our own pain, contains a fine-grained representation of how much pain others experience.

Using advanced data analysis methods, the team could take the level of electrical activity in the insula during each movie, and predict how the patient would respond to the question: "how intense do you think the pain was that the person in the movie experienced".

By offering the unique opportunity to directly record from their brain, the patients thus provided us with a key insight into human empathy: it really looks as though we empathize with the pain of others because our brains are wired to transform their pain into activity in regions involved in our own pain.

How do we perceive the pain of others?

The team provided further insights into how we perceive the pain of others. In half the videos, the camera was focused on the facial expression of the actress, which was seen to unfold from a neutral expression to one of varying degree of pain in a period of about one second.

Analyzing the electrical responses in the insula and the muscle movements of the actress in the movies revealed that what the brain appears to use to perceive the pain of others was not the movement per se, but simply how contracted the eyes of the actress ended up being. In the other half, the camera was focusing on the hand of the actress, and showed a belt hitting the hand. In that case, the brain appeared to deduce the amount of pain from processing how much the hand was moving under the action of the belt.

Together, this revealed intricate details of how flexibly the human brain transforms what we see others do into a fine-grained perception of their inner states.

While this study focused on a single brain region, the insula, that fMRI studies had suggested to be important for empathy, future research of the team will aim to combine the data from all recorded electrodes. They can then develop a map of where in the brain, the pain of others is transformed into the nuanced empathy we can have for other people's emotions, and pinpoint the locations in which differences across individuals could account for the striking differences in empathy we can observe around us.

Christian Keysers says, "As a neuroscientist, our dream is to understand how neurons make us who we are. What these patients do, by allowing us to record from these electrodes, is to make that dream come true: we could see in real time, how the pain of someone else is mirrored in the neurons of an observer. After decades of working on empathy, we could see empathy unfold in the human insula."

Efe Soyman says, "Other people's suffering can be inferred from a variety of indicators: a painful expression, the intensity of the event that inflicts pain in them, etc. With this incredibly valuable data we collected from the patients, we see how the human insula might tune into whichever is available among these various cues when we experience the pain of other people."

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