Archaeologists in war-torn Syria have unearthed a stunning mosaic from the Roman era that features events from the Trojan War, the chiseled muscles of the Roman demigod Hercules and the powerful ancient Roman god Neptune alongside 40 of his mistresses.  

The General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, a Syrian government agency, discovered the 65.5-foot-long by 20-foot-wide (20 by 6 meters) mural in Rastan, a town in central Syria near Homs, a key battleground during the Syrian revolution, agency representatives announced on Wednesday (Oct. 12), according to the Associated Press (opens in new tab) (AP).

The agency uncovered the well-preserved mural — painstakingly made in ancient times with colorful stones that each measured just 0.5 by 0.5 inches (1.2 by 1.2 centimeters) across — in a building that was held by civil war rebels until 2018, when Syrian government forces took the town, according to the BBC (opens in new tab). The ancient ruins under the building are still undergoing excavation.

"We can't identify the type of the building, whether it's a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet," Humam Saad, the associate director of excavation and archaeological research at the directorate, told the AP.

"[The mosaic] is not the oldest of its kind, but it's the most complete and the rarest," according to Syria's General Directorate of Museums.

(Image credit: Photo by Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images)

The mural is a rare find that is "rich in details," and is easily the most important archaeological find in the country since the civil war started in 2011 during the Arab Spring, Saad added.

The mural dates to the fourth century A.D., after the Western Roman Empire split from the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire). Businessmen from Lebanon's Nabu Museum had originally purchased the building, and then donated it to the Syrian state, the AP reported.

The mural includes depictions of the Trojan War, a legendary war fought between the Greeks and Trojans in ancient Troy (modern-day Turkey), as described in the epic poems "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," by Homer.

The mural also shows Hercules (known as Heracles to the Greeks) slaying Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazon warriors, after he went to retrieve her belt as the ninth of his 12 labors.

Many of Syria's artifacts have been destroyed and looted during the past 11 years of conflict. During its excavation, the mosaic faced an uncertain future[.]

"Unfortunately, there were armed groups that tried to sell the mosaic at one point in 2017 and listed it on social media platforms," Saad told the AP.

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An astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) has snapped a peculiar image of Earth from space that contains two bizarre blue blobs of light glimmering in our planet's atmosphere. The dazzling pair may look otherworldly. But in reality, they are the result of two unrelated natural phenomena that just happened to occur at the same time.

The image was captured last year by an unnamed member of the Expedition 66 crew as the ISS passed over the South China Sea. The photo was released online Oct. 9 by NASA's Earth Observatory (opens in new tab).

The first blob of light, which is visible at the bottom of the image, is a massive lightning strike somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. Lightning strikes are typically hard to see from the ISS, as they're usually covered by clouds. But this particular strike occurred next to a large, circular gap in the top of the clouds, which caused the lightning to illuminate the surrounding walls of the cloudy caldera-like structure, creating a striking luminous ring.  

The second blue blob, which can be seen in the top right of the image, is the result of warped light from the moon. The orientation of Earth's natural satellite in relation to the ISS means the light it reflects back from the sun passes straight through the planet's atmosphere, which transforms it into a bright blue blob with a fuzzy halo. This effect is caused by some of the moonlight scattering off tiny particles in Earth's atmosphere, according to Earth Observatory.

The first blue blob was the result of a lightning strike illuminating a large bowl of uncovered cloud in the Gulf of Thailand.

The second blue blob is the result of moonlight scattering of particles in Earth's atmospehre.

(Image credit: NASA Earth Obsrvatory)

Different colors of visible light have different wavelengths, which affects their interaction with atmospheric particles. Blue light has the shortest wavelength and is therefore the most likely to scatter, which caused the moon to turn blue in this image. The same effect also explains why the sky appears blue during the daytime: because blue wavelengths of sunlight scatter the most and become more visible to the human eye, according to NASA (opens in new tab).

Also visible in the photo is a glowing web of artificial lights coming from Thailand. The other prominent sources of light pollution in the image are emitted from Vietnam and Hainan Island, the southernmost region of China, though these light sources are largely obscured by clouds. The orange halo parallel to the curvature of the Earth is the edge of the atmosphere, which is commonly known as "Earth's limb" when viewed from space, according to Earth Observatory.

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Some seabirds don’t just survive storms. They ride them.

Streaked shearwaters nesting on islands off Japan sometimes head straight toward passing typhoons, where they fly near the eye of the storm for hours at a time, researchers report in the Oct. 11 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This strange behavior — not reported in any other bird species — might help streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) survive strong storms.

Birds and other animals living in areas with hurricanes and typhoons have adopted strategies to weather these deadly storms (SN: 10/2/15).  In recent years, a few studies using GPS trackers have revealed that some ocean-dwelling birds — such as the frigatebird (Fregata minor) — will take massive detours to avoid cyclones.

This is an understandable strategy for birds that spend most of their time at sea where “there is literally nowhere to hide,” says Emily Shepard, a behavior ecologist at Swansea University in Wales. To find out whether shearwaters also avoid storms, she and her colleagues used 11 years of tracking data from GPS locators attached to the wings of 75 birds nesting on Awashima Island in Japan.

By combining this information with data on wind speeds during typhoons, the researchers discovered that shearwaters that were caught out in the open ocean when a storm blew in would ride tailwinds around the edges of the storm. However, others that found themselves sandwiched between land and the eye of a strong cyclone would sometimes veer off their usual flight patterns and head toward the center of the storm.

Flight path

As Typhoon Cimaron moved across the Sea of Japan (black track) in August 2018, GPS trackers monitored the movements of 32 streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) just off the coast of Japan. The tracking data show three birds (seen here in red and teal) flew toward the eye of the storm through some of the highest winds. Two other birds (light green) began heading toward the eye as the storm swept past.

Tracking streaked shearwaters during Typhoon Cimaron

Of the 75 monitored shearwaters, 13 flew to within 60 kilometers of the eye — an area Shepherd calls the “eye socket,” where the winds were strongest — for up to eight hours, tracking the cyclone as it headed northward. “It was one of those moments where we couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Shepard says. “We had a few predictions for how they might behave, but this was not one of them.”

The shearwaters were more likely to head for the eye during stronger storms, soaring on winds as swift as 75 kilometers per hour. This suggest that the birds might be following the eye to avoid being blown inland, where they risk crashing onto land or being hit by flying debris, Shepard says.

While this is the first time this behavior has been spotted in any bird species, flying with the winds could be a common tactic for preserving energy during cyclones, says Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study. “It might seem counterintuitive,” he says. “But from the perspective of bird behavior, it makes a lot of sense.”

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Six UK universities will help to deliver a major upgrade to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment known as Simons Observatory (SO).

The SO is located in the high Atacama Desert in Northern Chile inside the Chajnator Science Preserve, at an altitude of 5,200 meters.

The facility, alongside the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Array have goals to study how the universe began, what it is made of, and how it evolved to its current state.

The CMB is the trail of heat left by the Big Bang, and studying its tiny fluctuations help scientists to understand how the universe was formed and how matter was distributed shortly after the event.

Prior to the new UK contribution, SO was comprised of a single large aperture telescope and 3 small aperture telescopes.

Observations with SO promise to provide further breakthrough discoveries that will help us understand how the Big Bang led to the formation of stars and galaxies.

The small aperture telescopes are focused on searching for signatures of primordial gravitational waves.

If detected, this signal would open a unique observational window on physics at very early times, and at ultra-high energies.

The large aperture telescope will address a range of unsolved questions including the nature of neutrinos and other relativistic species, the nature of dark matter and the physics that give rise to the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe.

The international project is led by the US, supported by the Simons Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation, and includes 85 institutes from 13 countries.

The government-backed body UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will provide £18m in funding for the six universities to deliver their contribution to the project.

This will see the UK leading on 2 additional telescopes to provide a major increase in the sensitivity of the facility. Under the funding, the UK will also be providing expertise in data processing and analysis.

The UK lead, professor Michael Brown, of The University of Manchester, said: “SO is poised to become the leading CMB project of the 2020s. It will address some of the most profound questions in all of science.

“With this major new funding, UK scientists will continue to play a world-leading role at the forefront of this high-profile science area.”

Dr Colin Vincent, associate director for astronomy at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said: “This major investment by UKRI will allow UK researchers to spearhead discoveries alongside partners in this international facility, uncovering the secrets from the very dawn of time.”

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The lockdown affected around one million residents of the Zhengzhou district. All the residents were ordered to stay at home starting Monday with only exceptions to people going for COVID testing being allowed outside. All the non-essential businesses have been shut down following government orders.

This is just one of the many instances where the Chinese government has forced lockdowns in the name of zero-COVID policy. Many manufacturing hubs around Shanghai and Beijing have also faced the wrath of the policy, including iPhone manufacturer Foxconn.

China's policy has dragged its own manufacturing capacity down at a heavy cost. It has directly incorporated for supply chain issues around the globe, as the world enters the third year of the pandemic. There are no signs of loosening the approach, while Chinese President Xi Jinping says the strict rules protect people's lives.

Source: Bloomberg

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Almost nine in 10 software and DevOps professionals have either quit or considered quitting their job during the past 12 months, a new industry report suggests.

The results from Uniting Cloud's Software Engineer and DevOps Industry Report 2022 found that 50% of developers and DevOps professionals have moved roles in the last year. Of the 50% who have not moved roles, 71% had considered doing do.

Of the 400 UK software developers and DevOps professionals surveyed by Uniting Cloud, just 13% had not considered quitting their job for a new role – meaning 87% of tech professionals have either changed jobs in the past year of thought about doing so.

The survey once again highlights the challenges employers face retaining technology staff as hiring competition escalates.

Reasons for quitting given by respondents included taking advantage of high salaries and benefits packages being offered by employers in return for in-demand tech skills, as well as a reluctance to return to the office.

Survey respondents said they would expect to see a 21.5% increase in salary as a result of moving to a new role. According to Uniting Cloud's data, software engineers with 3-5 years of experience can expect a salary averaging up to £64,000, while professionals with both experience in both software development and DevOps can land a salary of up to £84,000.

"Seasoned" professionals with 6-10 years of experience and skills in both software engineering and DevOps see an average base salary of £97,000 – while professionals with the same years of experience in software development alone can expect £82,000.

Uniting Cloud said programming languages Python and Go were "on a huge upward trajectory" in terms of demand, though added that "older skills, like HTML and CSS are not going away anything soon."

Tom Sillitto, head of DevOps at Uniting Cloud, warned employers had to think beyond pay if they hoped to attract and retain talent in a pressurized tech-hiring market.

"Not only is demand increasing for professionals with skills across development and DevOps, the number of roles available vastly outweighs the number of professionals in the field, and competition is at its peak," said Sillitto.

"To land premium experience won't just be a case of paying a higher salary but considering a whole package where career aspirations can be met alongside a rewarding benefits package."

Asides from pay, flexibility ranked high in software professionals' list of job must-haves.

Just over half (51%) of respondents said the option to work from home was the most important job benefit, followed by career progression (14%), flexible working hours (10%), a four-day workweek (6%), and health insurance (5%).

Overall, 85% of respondents said remote working was important to them. Nearly two-thirds (64%) said they were currently working remotely five days a week, the second most popular arrangement being three days (15%).

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WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - When a Washington state beauty salon charged Simran Bal $1,900 for training after she quit, she was shocked.

Not only was Bal a licensed esthetician with no need for instruction, she argued that the trainings were specific to the shop and low quality.

Bal's story mirrors that of dozens of people and advocates in healthcare, trucking, retail and other industries who complained recently to U.S. regulators that some companies charge employees who quit large sums of money for training.

Nearly 10% of American workers surveyed in 2020 were covered by a training repayment agreement, said the Cornell Survey Research Institute.

The practice, which critics call Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, or TRAPs, is drawing scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers.

On Capitol Hill, Senator Sherrod Brown is studying legislative options with an eye toward introducing a bill next year to rein in the practice, a Senate Democratic aide said.

At the state level, attorneys general like Minnesota's Keith Ellison are assessing how prevalent the practice is and could update guidance.

Ellison told Reuters he would be inclined to oppose reimbursement demands for job-specific instruction while it "could be different" if an employer wanted reimbursement for training for a certification like a commercial driving license that is widely recognized as valuable.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has begun reviewing the practice, while the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have received complaints about it.

The use of training agreements is growing even though unemployment is low, which presumably gives workers more power, said Jonathan Harris who teaches at the Loyola Law School Los Angeles.

"Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions," said Harris.

The CFPB, which announced in June it was looking into the agreements, has begun to focus on how they may prevent even skilled employees with years of schooling, like nurses, from finding new, better jobs, according to a CFPB official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

"We have heard from workers and worker organizations that the products may be restricting worker mobility," the official said.

TRAPs have been around in a small way since the late 1980s primarily in high-wage positions where workers received valuable training. But in recent years the agreements have become more widespread, said Loyola's Harris.

One critic of the CFPB effort was the National Federation of Independent Business, or NFIB, which said the issue was outside the agency's authority because it was unrelated to consumer financial products and services.

"(Some state governments) have authority to regulate employer-driven debt. CFPB should defer to those governments, which are closer to the people of the states than the CFPB," it added.

NURSING AND TRUCKING

Bal said she was happy when she was hired by the Oh Sweet salon near Seattle in August 2021.

But she soon found that before she could provide services for clients, and earn more, she was required to attend trainings on such things as sugaring to remove unwanted hair and lash and brow maintenance.

But, she said, the salon owner was slow to schedule the trainings, which would sometimes be postponed or cancelled. They were also not informative; Bal described them as "introductory level." While waiting to complete the training, Bal worked at the front desk, which paid less.

When she quit in October 2021, Bal received a bill for $1,900 for the instruction she did receive. "She was charging me for training for services that I was already licensed in," said Bal.

Karina Villalta, who runs Oh Sweet LLC, filed a lawsuit in small claims court to recover the money. Court records provided by Bal show the case was dismissed in September by a judge who ruled that Bal did not complete the promised training and owed nothing. Villalta declined requests for comment.

In comments to the CFPB, National Nurses United said they did a survey that found that the agreements are "increasingly ubiquitous in the health care sector," with new nurses often affected.

The survey found that 589 of the 1,698 nurses surveyed were required to take training programs and 326 of them were required to pay employers if they left before a certain time.

Many nurses said they were not told about the training repayment requirement before beginning work, and that classroom instruction often repeated what they learned in school.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in comments that training repayment demands were "particularly egregious" in commercial trucking. They said firms like CRST and C.R. England train people for a commercial drivers license but charge more than $6,000 if they leave the company before a certain time. Neither company responded to a request for comment.

The American Trucking Associations argues that the license is portable from one employer to another and required by the government. It urged the CFPB to not characterize it as employer-driven debt.

Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who spent six months training and then driving truck, said the issue deserved scrutiny.

"Anytime we have training contracts for low-skilled workers, we should be asking why," he said. "If you have a good job, you don't need a training contract. People are going to want to stay."

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After a world-famous radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed two years ago, many scientists hoped that the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which runs the facility, would eventually build a new one to replace it. Instead, the agency has announced that it will establish an educational centre for science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) at the site. The revised plan might ramp down or dramatically alter the remaining research being done at Arecibo.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says Héctor Arce, an astronomer at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who is from Puerto Rico and has worked on Arecibo advocacy efforts. “To many it seems like yet another unjust way of treating the colonial territory of Puerto Rico.”

The NSF says that it is following community recommendations in not planning to rebuild the large telescope and instead establishing the new educational centre. “We are not closing Arecibo,” says Sean Jones, head of the NSF’s directorate of mathematical and physical sciences. “We think this new approach and new centre will be catalytic in many areas.”

The agency announced its plans in a call for proposals on 13 October. It requests ideas for setting up and running an educational centre at Arecibo, at a cost of US$1 million to $3 million per year over five years starting in 2023. That money might or might not include funds to operate research facilities at Arecibo still in use, such as a 12-metre radio antenna and a lidar system that uses lasers to study Earth’s atmosphere.

The situation “could be worse,” says Abel Méndez, a planetary astronomer at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo who uses the 12-metre antenna for research and teaching. But “it could be much, much better”.

“It is devastating to know that that’s their ultimate decision,” says Desirée Cotto-Figueroa, an astronomer at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao. “Especially despite all the efforts made by the staff and scientists of the Arecibo Observatory and by the general scientific community to keep it working as the research centre of excellence that it has always been with the observing facilities that are left.”

A powerhouse of education

One major question is how the Arecibo site will draw students and teachers if there is little active research to participate in. “Yet the NSF calls for proposals for a world-class educational institution,” says Anne Virkki, a planetary scientist at the University of Helsinki in Finland. “How does anyone do that without the world-class scientists, engineers, and instruments?”

The NSF says that it is asking for precisely those sorts of ideas. The new centre could support ongoing work in astronomy and planetary science, or it could focus on other areas such as the biological sciences, says James L. Moore III, the head of the NSF’s education and human resources directorate. “Here’s an opportunity to reimagine what the possibilities could be,” he says.

Arecibo Observatory has long been a powerhouse of STEM education in Puerto Rico because of its renowned telescope and place in astronomical history. Students trained there have gone on to become professional astronomers and planetary scientists in many countries.

The 305-metre-wide radio telescope that collapsed in 2020 played a key role in many scientific fields for more than half a century, including the search for extraterrestrial life, the discovery of the first extrasolar planets and of gravitational waves, and the study of near-Earth asteroids and of fast radio bursts.

The NSF has run the observatory since the 1970s, working with a series of contractors. It has been trying to wind down investment at Arecibo since 2006, to shift funding to newer astronomical facilities. Advocates rallied and research continued, but the observatory faced fresh challenges in 2017, when Hurricane Maria damaged much of the facility, and in early 2020 when a series of earthquakes caused more damage.

Then came the collapse of the 305-metre dish. One of its crucial supporting cables failed in August 2020, then another in November of that year, and the NSF decided it was too structurally unsound to repair. An engineering investigation revealed five factors that contributed to the collapse, including the design of the cable system, deferred maintenance, and damage from hurricanes and earthquakes.

An observatory no more

Research has continued at the smaller facilities at Arecibo Observatory. Currently funded projects using those facilities will be able to finish up, Jones says, and scientists can propose to continue their use under the scope of the new educational centre.

The lidar facilities include a potassium laser that studies the temperature of layers in Earth’s atmosphere, and a planned new instrument to probe aerosols such as atmospheric dust. The 12-metre antenna serves as a node in a long-distance astronomical network operated by European astronomers. Other research projects that use it include Méndez’s studies of red dwarf stars and the habitability of planets around them.

Many who work with Arecibo instruments are now scrambling to figure out how to ramp down their research projects. Under the new plan, the site will no longer be called Arecibo Observatory — becoming instead the Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03293-4

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History of World Kindness Week

World Kindness Week first began as a week of observation by the World Kindness Movement. A group of associations and institutions based in countries like Thailand, England, Australia, and America came together because of their combined dedication to promoting kindness in society. The initial days of the World Kindness Movement started from this event. They created the written declaration of their inception, which stated that the movement pledges to build a kinder and more compassionate world. It was only natural that they would help launch the inaugural World Kindness Week in 1997.

We observe World Kindness Week to highlight good deeds in our communities. Acts of kindness and goodwill are common threads that bind us. This week has become globally recognized and is now widely celebrated everywhere. Participants from across the world come together to perform acts of kindness. The sole purpose of this week is to focus on the positivity that surrounds us every day. It’s a week to learn, teach, and share our kindness with others.

The root of the word ‘kindness’ originates from the Old English word ‘kyndnes,’ which is a derivative from the Middle English word ‘kindenes,’ a word for courtesy. This week of kindness is observed with activities like dance mobs, concerts, and random acts of kindness for those around us. At the moment, World Kindness Week is an unofficial celebration; however, enthusiasts hope that the World Kindness Movement will soon achieve official recognition status by the United Nations.

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On May 12, at nine simultaneous press conferences around the world, astrophysicists revealed the first image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. At first, awesome though it was, the painstakingly produced image of the ring of light around our galaxy’s central pit of darkness seemed to merely prove what experts already expected: The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole exists, it is spinning, and it obeys Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

And yet, on closer inspection, things don’t quite stack up.

From the brightness of the bagel of light, researchers have estimated how quickly matter is falling onto Sagittarius A*—the name given to the Milky Way’s central black hole. The answer is: not quickly at all. “It’s clogged up to a little trickle,” said Priya Natarajan, a cosmologist at Yale University, comparing the galaxy to a broken showerhead. Somehow only a thousandth of the matter that’s flowing into the Milky Way from the surrounding intergalactic medium makes it all the way down and into the hole. “That’s revealing a huge problem,” Natarajan said. “Where is this gas going? What is happening to the flow? It’s very clear that our understanding of black hole growth is suspect.”

Over the past quarter century, astrophysicists have come to recognize what a tight-knit, dynamic relationship exists between many galaxies and the black holes at their centers. “There’s been a really huge transition in the field,” says Ramesh Narayan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University. “The surprise was that black holes are important as shapers and controllers of how galaxies evolve.”

These giant holes—concentrations of matter so dense that gravity prevents even light from escaping—are like the engines of galaxies, but researchers are only beginning to understand how they operate. Gravity draws dust and gas inward to the galactic center, where it forms a swirling accretion disk around the supermassive black hole, heating up and turning into white-hot plasma. Then, when the black hole engulfs this matter (either in dribs and drabs or in sudden bursts), energy is spat back out into the galaxy in a feedback process. “When you grow a black hole, you are producing energy and dumping it into the surroundings more efficiently than through any other process we know of in nature,” said Eliot Quataert, a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton University. This feedback affects star formation rates and gas flow patterns throughout the galaxy.

But researchers have only vague ideas about supermassive black holes’ “active” episodes, which turn them into so-called active galactic nuclei (AGNs). “What is the triggering mechanism? What is the off switch? These are the fundamental questions that we’re still trying to get at,” said Kirsten Hall of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Stellar feedback, which occurs when a star explodes as a supernova, is known to have similar effects as AGN feedback on a smaller scale. These stellar engines are easily big enough to regulate small “dwarf” galaxies, whereas only the giant engines of supermassive black holes can dominate the evolution of the largest “elliptical” galaxies.

Size-wise, the Milky Way, a typical spiral galaxy, sits in the middle. With few obvious signs of activity at its center, our galaxy was long thought to be dominated by stellar feedback. But several recent observations suggest that AGN feedback shapes it as well. By studying the details of the interplay between these feedback mechanisms in our home galaxy—and grappling with puzzles like the current dimness of Sagittarius A*—astrophysicists hope to figure out how galaxies and black holes coevolve in general. The Milky Way “is becoming the most powerful astrophysical laboratory,” said Natarajan. By serving as a microcosm, it “may hold the key.”

Galactic Engines

By the late 1990s, astronomers generally accepted the presence of black holes in galaxies’ centers. By then they could see close enough to these invisible objects to deduce their mass from the movements of stars around them. A strange correlation emerged: The more massive a galaxy is, the heavier its central black hole. “This was particularly tight, and it was totally revolutionary. Somehow the black hole is talking to the galaxy,” said Tiziana Di Matteo, an astrophysicist at Carnegie Mellon University.

The correlation is surprising when you consider that the black hole—big as it is—is a scant fraction of the galaxy’s size. (Sagittarius A* weighs roughly 4 million suns, for instance, while the Milky Way measures some 1.5 trillion solar masses.) Because of this, the black hole’s gravity only pulls with any strength on the innermost region of the galaxy.

To Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal, AGN feedback offered a natural way to connect the relatively tiny black hole to the galaxy at large. Two decades earlier, in the 1970s, Rees correctly hypothesized that supermassive black holes power the luminous jets observed in some far-off, brightly glowing galaxies called quasars. He even proposed, along with Donald Lynden-Bell, that a black hole would explain why the Milky Way’s center glows. Could these be signs of a general phenomenon that governs the size of supermassive black holes everywhere?

The first-ever image of Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, was taken by a global consortium of radio telescopes known as the Event Horizon Telescope.Courtesy of EHT Collaboration

The idea was that the more matter a black hole swallows, the brighter it gets, and the increased energy and momentum blows gas outward. Eventually, the outward pressure stops gas from falling into the black hole. “That will terminate the growth. In a hand-wavy way, that was the reasoning,” said Rees. Or, in Di Matteo’s words, “the black hole eats and then swallows.” A very big galaxy puts more weight on the central black hole, making it harder to blow gas outward, and so the black hole grows bigger before it swallows.

Yet few astrophysicists were convinced that the energy of infalling matter could be ejected in such a dramatic way. “When I was doing my thesis, we were all obsessed with black holes as a point of no return—just gas going in,” said Natarajan, who helped develop the first AGN feedback models as Rees’ graduate student. “Everyone had to do it very cautiously and gingerly as it was so radical.”

Confirmation of the feedback idea came a few years later, from computer simulations developed by Di Matteo and the astrophysicists Volker Springel and Lars Hernquist. “We wanted to reproduce the amazing zoo of galaxies that we see in the real universe,” Di Matteo said. They knew the basic picture: Galaxies start out small and dense in the early universe. Wind the clock forward and gravity smashes these dwarfs together in a blaze of spectacular mergers, forming rings, whirlpools, cigars, and every shape in between. Galaxies grow in size and variety until, after enough collisions, they become big and smooth. “It ends up in a blob,” said Di Matteo. In the simulations, she and her colleagues could re-create these large featureless blobs, called elliptical galaxies, by merging spiral galaxies many times. But there was a problem.

While spiral galaxies like the Milky Way have many young stars that glow blue, giant elliptical galaxies only contain very old stars that glow red. “They are red and dead,” said Springel, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. But every time the team ran their simulation, it spat out ellipticals that glowed blue. Whatever was switching off star formation hadn’t been captured in their computer model.

Then, Springel said, “we had the idea to augment our galaxy mergers with supermassive black holes in the center. We let these black holes swallow gas and release energy until the whole thing flew apart, like a pressure cooker pot. Suddenly, the elliptical galaxy would stop star formation and would become red and dead.”

“My jaw dropped,” he added. “We did not expect the effect to be so extreme.”

By reproducing red-and-dead ellipticals, the simulation bolstered the black hole feedback theories of Rees and Natarajan. A black hole, despite its relatively tiny size, can talk to the galaxy as a whole through feedback. Over the last two decades, the computer models have been refined and expanded to simulate large swaths of the cosmos, and they broadly match the eclectic galaxy zoo we see around us. These simulations also show that ejected energy from black holes fills the space between galaxies with hot gas that otherwise should have already cooled and turned into stars. “People are convinced by now that supermassive black holes are very plausible engines,” said Springel. “No one has come up with a successful model without black holes.”

Mysteries of Feedback

Yet the computer simulations are still surprisingly blunt.

As matter creeps inward to the accretion disk around a black hole, friction causes energy to be pushed back out; the amount of energy lost this way is something the coders put into their simulations by hand through trial and error. It’s a sign that the details are still elusive. “There’s a possibility that in some instances we’re getting the right answer for the wrong reason,” said Quataert. “Maybe we’re not capturing what is actually the most important thing about how black holes grow and how they dump energy into their surroundings.”

The truth is that astrophysicists don’t really know how AGN feedback works. “We know how important it is. But it’s escaping us exactly what causes this feedback,” said Di Matteo. “The key, key problem is that we don’t understand feedback deeply, physically.”

They know that some energy is emitted as radiation, which gives the centers of active galaxies their characteristic bright glow. Strong magnetic fields cause matter to fly out from the accretion disk too, either as diffuse galactic winds or in powerful narrow jets. The mechanism by which black holes are thought to launch jets, called the Blandford-Znajek process, was identified in the 1970s, but what determines the beam’s power, and how much of its energy gets absorbed by the galaxy, is “still an open unsolved problem,” said Narayan. The galactic wind, which emanates spherically from the accretion disk and so tends to interact more directly with the galaxy than the narrow jets, is even more mysterious. “The billion-dollar question is: How is the energy coupling to the gas?” said Springel.

Jets emerging from the black hole in the center of the galaxy Cygnus A create massive interstellar blobs, visible here in radio waves.Photograph: NRAO/AUI/NSF

One sign that there’s still a problem is that the black holes in state-of-the-art cosmological simulations end up smaller than the observed sizes of real supermassive black holes in some systems. To switch off star formation and create red-and-dead galaxies, the simulations need black holes to eject so much energy that they choke off the inward flux of matter, so that the black holes stop growing. “The feedback in the simulations is too aggressive; it stunts the growth prematurely,” Natarajan said.

The Milky Way exemplifies the opposite problem: Simulations typically predict that a galaxy of its size should have a black hole between three and 10 times bigger than Sagittarius A* is.

By taking a closer look at the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, researchers hope we can begin to unravel precisely how AGN feedback works.

Milky Way Ecosystem

In December 2020, researchers with the eROSITA x-ray telescope reported that they had spotted a pair of bubbles stretching tens of thousands of light-years above and below the Milky Way. The vast bubbles of x-rays resembled equally baffling bubbles of gamma rays that, 10 years earlier, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected emanating from the galaxy.

Two origin theories of the Fermi bubbles were still being hotly debated. Some astrophysicists suggested that they were a relic of a jet that shot out of Sagittarius A* millions of years ago. Others thought the bubbles were the accumulated energy of many stars exploding near the galactic center—a kind of stellar feedback.

Giant bubbles of X-rays (blue) and gamma rays (red) extending off the plane of the Milky Way are thought to trace back to a jet that temporarily emanated from the galaxy’s central black hole.Courtesy of Peter Predehe

When Hsiang-Yi Karen Yang of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan saw the image of the eROSITA x-ray bubbles, she “started jumping up and down.” It was clear to Yang that the x-rays could have a common origin with the gamma rays if both were generated by the same AGN jet. (The x-rays would come from shocked gas in the Milky Way rather than from the jet itself.) Along with coauthors Ellen Zweibel and Mateusz Ruszkowski, she set about building a computer model. The results, published in Nature Astrophysics this past spring, not only replicate the shape of the observed bubbles and a bright shock front, but predict that they formed over the course of 2.6 million years (expanding outward from a jet that was active for 100,000 years)—far too quickly to be explained by stellar feedback.

The finding suggests that AGN feedback may be far more important in run-of-the-mill disk galaxies like the Milky Way than researchers used to think. The picture that’s emerging is akin to that of an ecosystem, Yang said, where AGN and stellar feedback are intertwined with the diffuse, hot gas that surrounds galaxies, called the circumgalactic medium. Different effects and flow patterns will dominate in different galaxy types and at different times.

A case study of the Milky Way’s past and present could unveil the interplay of these processes. Europe’s Gaia space telescope, for example, has mapped the precise positions and movements of millions of the Milky Way’s stars, allowing astrophysicists to retrace the history of its mergers with smaller galaxies. Such merger events have been hypothesized to activate supermassive black holes by shaking matter into them, causing them to suddenly brighten and even launch jets. “There’s a big debate in the field as to whether or not mergers are important,” said Quataert. The Gaia star data suggests that the Milky Way did not undergo a merger at the time that the Fermi and eROSITA bubbles formed, disfavoring mergers as the triggers of the AGN jet.

The Gaia spacecraft’s measurements of the positions and velocities of millions of stars and other objects in and around the Milky Way have allowed astronomers to unravel the history of the galaxy’s mergers with smaller galaxies. These mergers left traces in the form of streams of stars.Photograph: S. Payne-Wardenaar; K. Malhan/MPIA

Alternatively, blobs of gas may just happen to collide with the black hole and activate it. It might chaotically switch between eating, belching out energy as jets and galactic winds, and pausing.

 The Event Horizon Telescope’s recent image of Sagittarius A*, which reveals its current trickle of infalling matter, presents a new puzzle to solve. Astrophysicists already knew that not all of the gas that is drawn into a galaxy will make it to the black hole horizon, since galactic winds push outward against this accretion flow. But the strength of the winds required to explain such an extremely tapered flow is unrealistic. “When I do simulations, I don’t see a huge wind,” said Narayan. “It’s not the kind of wind you need for a complete explanation of what’s going on.”

Nested Simulations

Part of the challenge in understanding how galaxies work is the huge difference between the length scales at play in stars and black holes and the scales of entire galaxies and their surroundings. When simulating a physical process on a computer, researchers pick a scale and include relevant effects at that scale. But in galaxies, big and small effects interact.

“The black hole is truly tiny, compared to the big galaxy, and you cannot put them all in one single humongous simulation,” said Narayan. “Each regime needs information from the other guy, but doesn’t know how to make the connection.”

To try and bridge this gap, Narayan, Natarajan, and colleagues are launching a project that will use nested simulations to build a coherent model of how gas flows through the Milky Way and the nearby active galaxy Messier 87. “You allow information to come from the galaxy to tell the black hole what to do, and then you allow the information from the black hole to go back and tell the galaxy what to do,” Narayan said. “It’s a loop that goes round and round and round.”

The simulations should help clarify the flow pattern of the diffuse gas in and around galaxies. (Further observations of the circumgalactic medium by the James Webb Space Telescope will help as well.) “That’s a critical part of this whole ecosystem,” Quataert said. “How do you get the gas down to the black hole to drive all the energy that goes back out?”

Crucially, in the new scheme, all inputs and outputs between simulations of different scales must be consistent, leaving fewer dials to twiddle. “If the simulation is set up properly, it will self-consistently decide how much gas should reach the black hole,” Narayan said. “We can look into it and ask: Why did it not eat all the gas? Why was it so fussy and take so little of the available gas?” The group hopes to create a series of snapshots of the galaxies during different phases of their evolution.

For now, much about these galactic ecosystems is still a hunch. “It’s really a new era, where people are starting to think about these overlapping scenarios,” said Yang. “I don’t have a clear answer, but I hope I will in a few years.”

Editor’s note: Priya Natarajan currently serves on Quanta’s scientific advisory board.

What Drives Galaxies? The Milky Way’s Black Hole May Be the Key

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Science answers many questions but some questions test us because they are difficult by nature. They take us to the margins. Let’s look at some — why they test us:

At Big Think, theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel discusses five puzzles of fundamental physics, solving any one of which “could unlock our understanding of the universe.” They are, how did the universe begin, what explains neutrino mass, why is our universe matter-dominated, what is dark matter, and what is dark energy?: About our universe as matter-dominated:

 More matter than antimatter permeates the Universe. However, known physics cannot explain the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry.

The Big Bang produces matter, antimatter, and radiation, with slightly more matter being created at some point, leading to our Universe today. How that asymmetry came about, or arose from where there was no asymmetry to start, is still an open question, but we can be confident that the excess of up-and-down quarks over their antimatter counterparts is what enabled protons and neutrons to form in the early Universe in the first place.

Ethan Siegel, “The 5 greatest puzzles in fundamental physics” at Big Think (October 3, 2022)

No known science takes us behind the Big Bang when such initial conditions as the prevalence of matter were set. There we are into philosophy.

In another article, Dr. Siegel talks about the fact that our two descriptions of the universe, general relativity and quantum physics, work quite well but they don’t work together:

We don’t understand how to calculate gravity’s behavior at high energies, at small scales, near singularities, or when quantum particles exhibit their inherently quantum nature. Similarly, we don’t understand how the quantum field that underpins gravity — assuming there is one — behaves at all under any circumstances. This is why attempts to understand gravity at a more fundamental level must not be abandoned, even if everything we’re doing now turns out to be wrong. We’ve actually managed to identify the key problem that needs to be solved to push physics forward beyond its current limitations: a huge achievement that should never be underestimated. The only options are to keep trying or give up. Even if all of our attempts turn out to ultimately be in vain, it’s better than the alternative.

    Ethan Siegel, “The fundamental problem with gravity and quantum physics” at Big Think (September 27, 2022)

That’s an especially troublesome gap — not just because the two descriptions should work together — but because our universe gets on fine even though they don’t.

And then there is time. Asked at the BBC: “Why does time go forwards, not backwards?”

Here’s the problem: when you zoom in to the level of, say, one water molecule colliding and bouncing off another, the arrow of time disappears. If you watched a microscopic video of that collision and then you rewound it, it wouldn’t be obvious which way was forwards and which backwards. At the very smallest scale, the phenomenon that produces heat – collisions of molecules – is time-symmetric.

This means that the arrow of time from past to future only emerges when you take a step back from the microscopic world to the macroscopic – something first appreciated by the Austrian physicist-philosopher Ludwig Boltzmann.

Martha Henriques, “Why does time go forwards, not backwards?” at BBC (October 3, 2022)

Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli notes that time is bound up with entropy, the growing disorder in the universe:

“It’s not that the world is fundamentally oriented in space and time,” Rovelli says. It’s that when we look around, we see a direction in which medium-sized, everyday things have more entropy – the ripened apple fallen from the tree, the shuffled pack of cards.

Martha Henriques, “Why does time go forwards, not backwards?” at BBC (October 3, 2022)

We perceive time as flowing like a river, yet it really doesn’t. We are the ones who flow. And there is no obvious answer to the question of why time flows only in one direction except that our universe started on that path. Why? Again, back to philosophy. Somehow a die was cast or a decision was made but that may lie outside science.

There is also the vexed problem that mathematician Peter Cameron terms: “the mind-boggling mystery of infinity:”

This has been so since the time, two and a half millennia ago, when Malunkyaputta put his doubts to the Buddha and demanded answers: among them he wanted to know if the world is finite or infinite, and if it is eternal or not.

Peter Cameron, “Infinity: the question cosmology can’t answer” at IAI News (September 23, 2022)

Infinity works fine in math but not in the physical world where it descends into absurdities such as Hilbert’s Hotel, which is always full yet can always accommodate more guests… That raises a question: Is the world in which we live a limited subset of an ideal world? Again, this takes us to the boundaries of philosophy. But we got there by math, not mysticism.

Along those lines, Why can’t things just disappear forever? At Ars Technica, we learn:

This one-two punch of determinism and reversibility means that, in terms of physics, information must be preserved during any process. It can’t be either created or destroyed — if we were to add or remove information willy-nilly, we wouldn’t be able to predict the future or read the past. Any loss or gain means there would either be missing information or extra information, so all of physics would crumble to dust.

There are many processes that appear to destroy information, but that’s only because we’re not keeping careful enough track. Take, for example, the burning of a book. If I gave you a pile of ashes, this would appear to be irreversible: There’s no way you could put the book back together. But if you have a sufficiently powerful microscope at your disposal (and a lot of patience) and got to watch me in the act of burning the book, you could — in principle at least, which is good enough — watch and track the motion of every single molecule in the process. You could then reverse all those motions and all those interactions to reconstruct the book. Information is not lost when you burn a book; it’s merely scrambled.

Paul Sutter, “Black holes can’t trash info about what they swallow—and that’s a problem” at Ars Technica (October 3, 2022)

In any event, information is immaterial. The ideas in the burnt (or rescued) book could take any number of forms, including ideas that just stay in your mind. Many of the most important things in our world are not material.

Siegel asks pessimistically, “Is theoretical physics broken? Or is it just hard? When you don’t have enough clues to bring your detective story to a close, you should expect that your educated guesses will all be wrong.” It’s fashionable today to talk about a “crisis in cosmology” due to issues like these. But it is a static crisis, if such is possible. That is, things could go on this way indefinitely.

Will another discovery resolve the questions, as so often in the past? Or are we reaching the edge of the things science can tell us — the territory of “Why is there something rather than nothing”? We can only research and see what happens, as the questions that science is expected to answer grow more basic and more profound.

You may also wish to read: A recent Big Bang debate: Sheer politeness underscores a shakeup. Takehome point: “Everyone would be keen to abandon the theory if there’s a better alternative, nobody’s married to the Big Bang theory.” Such sudden, widespread cosmological doubt is bound to have a major cultural impact even if it’s too soon to see how it will play out in, say, science fiction.

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Friday, October 21

The first launch of the week is set for Friday and will take off from Vostochny Cosmodrome is Russia. A Roscosmos Soyuz 2.1b will carry three Gonets-M communication satellites to a low Earth orbit, where they will be used for commercial purposes in the Gonetz-D1M constellation. It’s unclear what time this mission will take off or whether it will be streamed live. As long as it does take off, it should be available in next week’s recap.

Saturday, October 22

The second and final launch of the week will see NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) launch an LVM3 (GSLV Mk. III) rocket carrying 36 OneWeb satellites. It’s unclear whether OneWeb was initially going to use this provider to launch its satellites, but it was using Soyuz rockets in Russia until the war in Ukraine began. Things escalated between Russia and OneWeb last month when Russia seized 36 of the company’s satellites. The launch from India will take place a 6:37 p.m. UTC from Sriharikota, India. Be sure to check the recap next week for footage if it goes ahead.

Recap

The first launch we have from last week is Japan’s Epsilon-6 carrying the Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration-3 mission. The mission carried several satellites and even more microsatellites and CubeSats.

Next, Russia launched a Proton-M rocket carrying AngoSat-2, Angola’s second comms satellite.

Wednesday saw the launch of a Long March-2C from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying the Huanjing-2 05 satellite. This satellite will be used to support disaster prevention and environmental protection.

While not a launch, this footage of the SpaceX Crew-4 splashdown is quite interesting.

On Friday, a Long March-2D rocket carrying Yaogan-36 took off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The satellite has successfully entered the desired orbit.

Finally, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched from Florida carrying the Eutelsat Hotbird 13F comms satellite. It will be used to enhance the broadcast of TV channels in Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East.

That’s all we have this time, check back next week!

TWIRL 87: OneWeb turns to India for its upcoming satellite launch

Dwarf galaxies are small, faint galaxies that are often found in or close to bigger galaxies or galaxy clusters. As a result, they could be impacted by their larger companions’ gravitational effects.

“We introduce an innovative way of testing the standard model based on how much dwarf galaxies are disturbed by gravitational tides’ from nearby larger galaxies,” said Elena Asencio, a Ph.D. student at the University of Bonn and the lead author of the story.

Tides occur when gravity from one body pulls on various areas of another body differently. These are comparable to tides on Earth, which form when the moon exerts a stronger pull on the side of the Earth that faces the moon.

The Fornax Cluster is home to a rich population of dwarf galaxies. Recent observations suggest that several of these dwarfs seem distorted as if the cluster environment had perturbed them. “Such perturbations in the Fornax dwarfs are not expected according to the Standard Model,” said Pavel Kroupa, Professor at the University of Bonn and Charles University in Prague. “This is because, according to the standard model, the dark matter halos of these dwarfs should partly shield them from tides raised by the cluster.”

The scientists examined the expected amount of disturbance of the dwarfs, which is determined by their internal properties and distance from the gravitationally powerful cluster center. Large galaxies with low stellar masses, as well as galaxies near the cluster center, are more easily perturbed or destroyed. They matched the findings to the amount of disturbance shown in photos taken by the European Southern Observatory’s VLT Survey Telescope.

“The comparison showed that, if one wants to explain the observations in the standard model” – said Elena Asencio – “the Fornax dwarfs should already be destroyed by gravity from the cluster center even when the tides it raises on a dwarf are sixty-four times weaker than the dwarf’s own self-gravity.” Not only is this counter-intuitive, she said, it also contradicts previous studies, which found that the external force needed to disturb a dwarf galaxy is about the same as the dwarf’s self-gravity.

Contradiction to the standard model

From this, the authors concluded that, in the standard model, it is not possible to explain the observed morphologies of the Fornax dwarfs in a self-consistent way. They repeated the analysis using Milgromian dynamics (MOND). Instead of assuming dark matter halos surrounding galaxies, the MOND theory proposes a correction to Newtonian dynamics by which gravity experiences a boost in the regime of low accelerations.

“We were not sure that the dwarf galaxies would be able to survive the extreme environment of a galaxy cluster in MOND, due to the absence of protective dark matter halos in this model – admitted Dr. Indranil Banik from the University of St. Andrews – “but our results show a remarkable agreement between observations and the MOND expectations for the level of disturbance of the Fornax dwarfs.”

“It is exciting to see that the data we obtained with the VLT survey telescope allowed such a thorough test of cosmological models,” said Aku Venhola from the University of Oulu (Finland) and Steffen Mieske from the European Southern Observatory, co-authors of the study.

This is not the first time that a study testing the effect of dark matter on the dynamics and evolution of galaxies concluded that observations are better explained when they are not surrounded by dark matter. “The number of publications showing incompatibilities between observations and the dark matter paradigm just keeps increasing every year. It is time to start investing more resources into more promising theories,” said Pavel Kroupa, a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Areas “Modelling” and “Matter” at the University of Bonn.

Dr. Hongsheng Zhao from the University of St. Andrews added: “Our results have major implications for fundamental physics. We expect to find more disturbed dwarfs in other clusters, a prediction which other teams should verify.”

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Harvard Medical School researchers have analyzed the molecular crosstalk between pain fibers in the gut and goblet cells that line the walls of the intestine. The work shows that chemical signals from pain neurons induce goblet cells to release protective mucus that coats the gut and shields it from damage. The findings show that intestinal pain is not a mere detection-and-signaling system but plays a direct protective role in the gut. Credit: Chiu Lab/Harvard Medical School

What if pain is more than just a mere alarm bell?

New research in mice illuminates how pain neurons shield the gut from damage.

Pain is one of evolution’s most effective mechanisms for detecting injury and letting us know that something is wrong. It acts as a warning system, telling us to stop and pay attention to our body.

But what if pain is more than just a mere alarm signal? What if pain is in itself a form of protection?

A new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School suggests that may well be the case in mice.

The surprising research reveals that pain neurons in the mouse gut regulate the presence of protective mucus under normal conditions and stimulate intestinal cells to release more mucus during states of inflammation. The study was published on October 14 in the journal Cell.

The work describes the steps of a complex signaling cascade, demonstrating that pain neurons engage in direct crosstalk with mucus-containing gut cells, known as goblet cells.

“It turns out that pain may protect us in more direct ways than its classic job to detect potential harm and dispatch signals to the brain. Our work shows how pain-mediating nerves in the gut talk to nearby epithelial cells that line the intestines,” said study senior investigator Isaac Chiu. “This means that the nervous system has a major role in the gut beyond just giving us an unpleasant sensation and that it’s a key player in gut barrier maintenance and a protective mechanism during inflammation.” Chiu is an associate professor of immunobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. 

A direct conversation

Our intestines and airways are studded with goblet cells. Named for their cup-like appearance, goblet cells contain gel-like mucus made of proteins and sugars that acts as protective coating that shields the surface of organs from abrasion and damage. The new research found that intestinal goblet cells release protective mucus when triggered by direct interaction with pain-sensing neurons in the gut.

In a set of experiments, the researchers observed that mice lacking pain neurons produced less protective mucus and experienced changes in their intestinal microbial composition — an imbalance in beneficial and harmful microbes known as dysbiosis.

To clarify just how this protective crosstalk occurs, the scientists analyzed the behavior of goblet cells in the presence and in the absence of pain neurons.

They found that the surfaces of goblet cells contain a type of receptor, called RAMP1, that ensures the cells can respond to adjacent pain neurons, which are activated by dietary and microbial signals, as well as mechanical pressure, chemical irritation or drastic changes in temperature.

The experiments further showed that these receptors connect with a chemical called CGRP, released by nearby pain neurons, when the neurons are stimulated. These RAMP1 receptors, the researchers found, are also present in both human and mouse goblet cells, thus rendering them responsive to pain signals.

Experiments further showed that the presence of certain gut microbes activated the release of CGRP to maintain gut homeostasis.

“This finding tells us that these nerves are triggered not only by acute inflammation, but also at baseline,” Chiu said. “Just having regular gut microbes around appears to tickle the nerves and causes the goblet cells to release mucus.”

This feedback loop, Chiu said, ensures that microbes signal to neurons, neurons regulate the mucus, and the mucus keeps gut microbes healthy.

In addition to microbial presence, dietary factors also played a role in activating pain receptors, the study showed. When researchers gave mice capsaicin, the main ingredient in chili peppers known for its ability to trigger intense, acute pain, the mice’s pain neurons got swiftly activated, causing goblet cells to release abundant amounts of protective mucus.

By contrast, mice lacking either pain neurons or goblet cell receptors for CGRP were more susceptible to colitis, a form of gut inflammation. The finding could explain why people with gut dysbiosis may be more prone to colitis.

When researchers gave pain-signaling CGRP to animals lacking pain neurons, the mice experienced rapid improvement in mucus production. The treatment protected mice against colitis even in the absence of pain neurons.

The finding demonstrates that CGRP is a key instigator of the signaling cascade that leads to the secretion of protective mucus.

“Pain is a common symptom of chronic inflammatory conditions of the gut, such as colitis, but our study shows that acute pain plays a direct protective role as well,” said study first author Daping Yang, a postdoctoral researcher in the Chiu Lab.

A possible downside to suppressing pain

The team’s experiments showed that mice lacking pain receptors also had worse damage from colitis when it occurred.

Given that pain medications are often used to treat patients with colitis, it may be important to consider the possible detrimental consequences of blocking pain, the researchers said.

“In people with inflammation of the gut, one of the major symptoms is pain, so you might think that we’d want to treat and block the pain to alleviate suffering,” Chiu said. “But some part of this pain signal could be directly protective as a neural reflex, which raises important questions about how to carefully manage pain in a way that does not lead to other harms.”

Additionally, a class of common migraine medications that suppress the secretion of CGRP may damage gut barrier tissues by interfering with this protective pain signaling, the researchers said.

“Given that CGRP is a mediator of goblet cell function and mucus production, if we are chronically blocking this protective mechanism in people with migraine and if they are taking these medications long-term, what happens?” Chiu said. “Are the drugs going to interfere with the mucosal lining and people’s microbiomes?”

Goblet cells have multiple other functions in the gut. They provide a passage for antigens — proteins found on viruses and bacteria that initiate a protective immune response by the body — and they produce antimicrobial chemicals that protect the gut from pathogens.

“One question that arises from our current work is whether pain fibers also regulate these other functions of goblet cells,” Yang said.

Another line of inquiry, Yang added, would be to explore disruptions in the CGRP signaling pathway and determine whether malfunctions are at play in patients with genetic predisposition to inflammatory bowel disease.

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Dennis Peek, a Down syndrome employee who was just fired from Wendy’s, is going to fulfill a lifetime desire by becoming a police officer. It turns out that Dennis is a major fan of “The Andy Griffith Show”; according to his sister Cona Young Turner, he particularly adored Barney Fife, the humorous deputy portrayed by Don Knotts.

Turnerclaimed that because Dennis is acquainted with a number of the law enforcement personnel in the neighboring town of Mount Holly, North Carolina, they appointed him to the force for a single day after learning what happened to him at Wendy’s.

Dennis will reportedly be sworn in on Thursday; once his shift is complete, he will be given a uniform and cap that he can keep. He’ll be busy, riding in a police car, a police boat, and the department’s golf cart to check in on a few businesses.

In case fans have missed it, Dennis’s story went viral after he was let go from the fast food business last week after 20 years of service. Cona stated that supervisors told her Dennis couldn’t perform his duties in a “normal” manner. Dennis is unaware that he has been fired because his family chose to inform him that he is merely retiring.

In addition to his position with the Mount Holly Police Department, Dennis is receiving a retirement send-off party from Stanley, North Carolina, which is also awarding him the key to the city and a memorial plaque. Dennis will finally be able to realize his aspirations [...].

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The extraordinary story spilled out in the most ordinary of ways: at a dinner party.

Jo Chim and Anisha Abraham were both living in Hong Kong at the time, and during a get together one night, Chim listened as Abraham talked about the day her family met Neil Armstrong’s family.

She listened as Abraham described how the encounter occurred months after the astronaut walked on the moon, an event that brought people together, even as other issues pulled them apart. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated only a year earlier.

She listened as Abraham described how she was a baby when her parents and grandmother, who had migrated from India to the United States, went on a road trip and found themselves passing a sign that announced the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, as the home of Neil Armstrong.

She listened as Abraham described the stares and whispers her mother, Nirmala Abraham, and grandmother, Elizabeth George, drew as they walked through the town in their flowing saris and how her father grew nervous when her grandmother suggested they knock on the door of Armstrong’s childhood home to pay their respect.

The family didn’t know if anyone would be home, and if they were, how they might react to immigrants standing on their doorstep. Elsewhere in the country, White people had set dogs on Black and Brown people who showed up uninvited on their property.

Abraham’s grandmother decided to knock anyway.

What happened next is the subject of a short film Chim wrote and directed called “One Small Visit.” The actress hadn’t written a screenplay before hearing that story, but it stayed with her, and in 2020, she started working on a draft.

“This story was just too wonderful to keep within one family,” Chim told me on a recent morning. “I thought we should share it.”

The film recently won Best Foreign Picture at the LA Shorts Film Festival and has been viewed at screenings across the world, including at NASA’s D.C. headquarters. It will also be shown at the Kennedy Center to high school students, at the DC South Asian Film Festival and at the newly reopened National Air and Space Museum.

I have watched it, but I am not a movie critic, and this is not a review. I don’t trust my film scrutinizing skills enough to offer you that. But I can tell you how a small family story grew into a big screen production, and why 53 years after that nervous knock came another one. This time on a D.C. door.

It’s not incidental that a story about a South Asian family’s experience comes at a time of increased anti-Asian hate crimes. As a Chinese Canadian woman who has lived in multiple countries, Chim found herself troubled by the global divides she was seeing during the pandemic.

With the film, she saw an opportunity to address issues of race, identity and belonging. The screenings, she said, have taken on the feel of symposiums, with audience members sharing their own experiences.

Chim has described the film in this way: “Ultimately, it’s a story between two very different families finding connection and a shared humanity; a testament to taking leaps of faith and small acts of openness and kindness that make a difference.”

Chim said she also sees it as a story about strong women. Abraham’s grandmother, Elizabeth George, didn’t let the perceptions of others limit her experiences. In the film, when people stare at her, she waves unbothered in a queenlike manner at them. She also teaches her granddaughter, Anisha, to do the same.

While making the film, Chim said, “There were so many times I was nervous and anxious and I literally sat back and said, ‘What would Elizabeth George do?’ ”

“I do come from a family of go-getter women who don’t take no for an answer,” said Anisha Abraham. “We had women who really didn’t perceive barriers.”

Abraham lives in D.C. and works as a pediatrician who specializes in adolescent medicine. She is also the author of the book “Raising Global Teens.” But in the film, she is depicted as an infant.

She was only months old when her family took that trip, making her too young to remember it. But she grew up hearing about it and seeing a reminder of it in her family’s photo album. In the photo, her parents and grandmother stand in front of Neil Armstrong’s childhood home, alongside his parents, Viola and Stephen Armstrong. In her arms, Viola holds Anisha.

The photo was taken after the Armstrong family invited the Abraham family inside and they spent time talking and connecting. But one of the most interesting details about that photo occurred out of the frame. The person who took it was Neil Armstrong, who had recently returned from a world tour that included India and happened to be at his parents’ house when the Abrahams showed up.

In the film, Neil Armstrong talks about how looking at earth from space made him feel small and the planet look fragile. He describes the view as allowing a person to see that borders between countries don’t exist. The phrase “the overview effect” does not appear in the film but it has been used to explain the shift in perspective that can occur when people travel to space and return feeling more connected to the planet and the humans on it.

“We’ve now done screenings in several places and it’s always interesting to see what people come in with and what they take away,” Anisha Abraham said. I asked what she hopes they take away, and she said: “The importance of compassion and tolerance and openness in a time when we’ve seen people more polarized than ever.”

Her father, who is called O.C. in the film, traveled to the United States on a Spanish cargo ship, she said. When her parents made that road trip in 1969, they were graduate students who didn’t have much. Chim interviewed Abraham’s parents for the film and Abraham said she learned things about them she hadn’t known. One of those things: Her dad had once been invited by a rotary club to give a speech at a restaurant, and when he went back to the same place the next day, without the rotary club members, he was told he couldn’t come through the front door.

“My dad is in his late 80s and my mom is about to turn 80,” Abraham said, “and it’s been such an empowering thing for them to be able to share their story.”

Several weeks ago, Abraham’s parents were at her home in Chevy Chase, along with the cast and crew of the film. Abraham was hosting them for breakfast before the screening at NASA. But she also had another reason for bringing everyone together.

Neil Armstrong’s son, Mark, had seen the film, and he and his wife, Wendy, wanted to surprise her parents.

That morning, the Armstrongs knocked on the door and the Abrahams opened it.

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China's three detectors – the Large High-Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), orbiting High Energy Burst Searcher (HEBS) and the "Insight" Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT) – observed the unusual bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation from a gamma-ray burst at 9:17 p.m. Beijing Time on October 9, according to the Institute of High Energy Physics under Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Called GRB 221009A, the explosion and its afterglow have been witnessed by scientists across the world.

The signal, originating from the direction of the constellation Sagitta, had traveled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth, said U.S. space agency NASA.

It's the first time China has detected a gamma-ray burst with an observatory on Earth and orbiting satellites at the same time. The joint application of the three detectors made a more precise observation in multiple spectral bands.

The graph shows where GRB 221009A is located in the view of the detector LHAASO marked as an X in the center.

/Institute of High Energy Physics under Chinese Academy of Sciences

Astrophysicist Brendan O'Connor told AFP that gamma-ray bursts that last hundreds of seconds, as occurred on Sunday, are thought to be caused by dying massive stars, greater than 30 times bigger than our sun.

"Gamma-ray bursts in general release the same amount of energy that our sun produces over its entire lifetime in the span of a few seconds – and this event is the brightest gamma-ray burst."

The star explodes in a supernova, collapses into a black hole, then matter forms in a disk around the black hole, falls inside, and is spewed out in a jet of energy that travels at 99.99 percent the speed of light.

The flash released photons carrying a record 18 teraelectronvolts of energy – that's 18 with 12 zeros behind it – and it has impacted long wave radio communications in Earth's ionosphere.

"It's really breaking records, both in the amount of photons, and the energy of the photons that are reaching us," said O'Connor.

Supernova explosions are also predicted to be responsible for producing heavy elements – such as gold, platinum, uranium – and astronomers will also be on the hunt for their signatures.

(With input from AFP)

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In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads. The picture, which looks like a kind of “cosmic thumbprint”, came from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship observatory.

The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some on the wild fringe even claimed it as evidence for “alien megastructures” of unknown origin.

Luckily, our team at the University of Sydney had already been studying this very star, known as WR140, for more than 20 years – so we were in prime position to use physics to interpret what we were seeing.

Our model, published in Nature, explains the strange process by which the star produces the dazzling pattern of rings seen in the Webb image (itself now published in Nature Astronomy).

The secrets of WR140

WR140 is what’s called a Wolf-Rayet star. These are among the most extreme stars known. In a rare but beautiful display, they can sometimes emit a plume of dust into space stretching hundreds of times the size of our entire Solar System.

The radiation field around Wolf-Rayets is so intense, dust and wind are swept outwards at thousands of kilometres per second, or about 1% the speed of light. While all stars have stellar winds, these overachievers drive something more like a stellar hurricane.

Critically, this wind contains elements such as carbon that stream out to form dust.

WR140 is one of a few dusty Wolf-Rayet stars found in a binary system. It is in orbit with another star, which is itself a massive blue supergiant with a ferocious wind of its own.

The binary stars of the WR140 system. Amanda Smith / IoA / University of Cambridge, Author provided

Only a handful of systems like WR140 are known in our whole galaxy, yet these select few deliver the most unexpected and beautiful gift to astronomers. Dust doesn’t simply stream out from the star to form a hazy ball as might be expected; instead it forms only in a cone-shaped area where the winds from the two stars collide.

Because the binary star is in constant orbital motion, this shock front must also rotate. The sooty plume then naturally gets wrapped into a spiral, in the same way as the jet from a rotating garden sprinkler.

WR140, however, has a few more tricks up its sleeve layering more rich complexity into its showy display. The two stars are not on circular but elliptical orbits, and furthermore dust production turns on and off episodically as the binary nears and departs the point of closest approach.

Whenever WR140 and its binary companion star are close enough together, a pulse of dust streams into space.

An almost perfect model

By modelling all these effects into the three-dimensional geometry of the dust plume, our team tracked the location of dust features in three-dimensional space.

By carefully tagging images of the expanding flow taken at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, one of the world’s largest optical telescopes, we found our model of the expanding flow fit the data almost perfectly.

Except for one niggle. Close in right near the star, the dust was not where it was supposed to be. Chasing that minor misfit turned out to lead us right to a phenomenon never before caught on camera.

The power of light

We know that light carries momentum, which means it can exert a push on matter known as radiation pressure. The outcome of this phenomenon, in the form of matter coasting at high speed around the cosmos, is evident everywhere.

But it has been a remarkably difficult process to catch in the act. The force fades quickly with distance, so to see material being accelerated you need to track very accurately the movement of matter in a strong radiation field.

This acceleration turned out to be the one missing element in the models for WR140. Our data did not fit because the expansion speed wasn’t constant: the dust was getting a boost from radiation pressure.

Catching that for the first time on camera was something new. In each orbit, it is as if the star unfurls a giant sail made of dust. When it catches the intense radiation streaming from the star, like a yacht catching a gust, the dusty sail makes a sudden leap forward.

Smoke rings in space

The final outcome of all this physics is arrestingly beautiful. Like a clockwork toy, WR140 puffs out precisely sculpted smoke rings with every eight-year orbit.

Each ring is engraved with all this wonderful physics written in the detail of its form. All we have to do is wait and the expanding wind inflates the dust shell like a balloon until it is big enough for our telescopes to image.

Then, eight years later, the binary returns in its orbit and another shell appears identical to the one before, growing inside the bubble of its predecessor. Shells keep accumulating like a ghostly set of giant nesting dolls.

However, the true extent to which we had hit on the right geometry to explain this intriguing star system was not brought home to us until the new Webb image arrived in June.

The image from the James Webb Space Telescope (left) confirmed in detail the predictions of the model (right).

Yinhuo Han / Peter Tuthill / Ryan Lau, Author provided

Here were not one or two, but more than 17 exquisitely sculpted shells, each one a nearly exact replica nested within the one preceding it. That means the oldest, outermost shell visible in the Webb image must have been launched about 150 years before the newest shell, which is still in its infancy and accelerating away from the luminous pair of stars driving the physics at the heart of the system.

With their spectacular plumes and wild fireworks, the Wolf-Rayets have delivered one of the most intriguing and intricately patterned images to have been released by the new Webb telescope.

This was one of the first images taken by Webb. Astronomers are all on the edge of our seats, waiting for what new wonders this observatory will beam down to us.

Peter Tuthill is an Astrophysicist at University of Sydney.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

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The multi-center randomized clinical trial of more than 12,000 patients at 21 trauma centers in the U.S. and Canada, is the largest-ever trial in orthopedic trauma patients. The trial was co-led by the Department of Orthopedics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium (METRC) based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"We expect our findings from this large-scale trial to have an important impact on clinical practice, and potentially even change the standard of care," said the study's principal investigator Robert V. O'Toole, MD, the Hansjörg Wyss Medical Foundation Endowed Professor in Orthopedic Trauma at UMSOM and head of the school's Division of Orthopedic Traumatology. "Orthopedic trauma patients are commonly prescribed the blood thinner low-molecular-weight heparin to prevent blood clots for weeks following surgery. Not only does the medication need to be injected, it can also be quite expensive compared to aspirin."

Blood clots cause as many as 100,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Patients who experience fractures that require surgery—an estimated 1 million people in the U.S. annually—are at increased risk of developing blood clots in the veins, including a fatal pulmonary embolism, which is a clot in the lung. Current guidelines recommend prescribing low-molecular-weight heparin (enoxaparin), although research in total joint replacement surgery suggested a potential benefit of aspirin as a less-expensive, widely available option.

Dr. O'Toole, who is also chief of orthopedics at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), presented the results of the landmark clinical trial at the OTA annual meeting.

The study enrolled 12,211 patients with leg or arm fractures that necessitated surgery or pelvic fractures regardless of the specific treatment. Half were randomly assigned to receive 30 mg of injectable low-molecular-weight heparin twice daily. The other half received 81 mg of aspirin twice daily. The follow-up period after surgery was 90 days.

The main finding of the study was that aspirin was "noninferior," or no worse, than low-molecular-weight heparin in preventing death from any cause—47 patients in the aspirin group died compared with 45 patients in the heparin group. Secondary outcomes noted no differences in non-fatal pulmonary embolism. The incidence of bleeding complications and all other safety outcomes was similar in both groups. Of all the outcomes studied, the one potential difference noted was fewer blood clots in the legs in the low-molecular-weight heparin group. This relatively small difference was driven by clots lower in the leg, which are of unclear clinical importance.

"With data from more than 12,000 patients, this study provides clear evidence that aspirin is a viable option for preventing blood clots in the lung and death in patients who require surgery for orthopedic trauma," said Andrew Pollak, MD, the James Lawrence Kernan Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopedics at UMSOM and Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer for the 11-hospital University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS).

The trial was called PREVENTion of CLots in Orthopedic Trauma, or PREVENT CLOT. Patients enrolled in the trial were treated at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at UMMC and 20 other trauma centers in 15 other states and two in Canada. Recruitment started in April 2017 and continued through 2021. Deborah Stein, MD, MPH, Professor of Surgery at UMSOM and Director of Adult Critical Care Services at UMMC, and Renan Castillo, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, are co-principal investigators.

"This exciting trial, the largest ever conducted in orthopedic trauma patients, provides important guidance to surgeons in helping to prevent potentially fatal blood clots after fracture surgery by using a medication that is both inexpensive and easy to administer," said Mark T. Gladwin, MD, vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

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The measures announced by President Yoweri Museveni mean residents of the central Ugandan districts of Mubende and Kassanda can't travel into or out of those areas by private or public means. Cargo vehicles and others transiting from Kampala, the capital, to southwestern Uganda are still allowed to operate, he said.

All entertainment places, including bars, as well as places of worship are ordered closed, and all burials in those districts must be supervised by health officials, he said. A nighttime curfew also has been imposed. The restrictions will last at least 21 days.

"These are temporary measures to control the spread of Ebola," Museveni said.

Ebola has infected 58 people in the East African country since Sept. 20, when authorities declared an outbreak. At least 19 people have died, including four health workers. Ugandan authorities were not quick in detecting the outbreak, which began infecting people in a farming community in August as the "strange illness" described by local authorities.

The new measures come amid concern that some patients in the Ebola hot spots could surreptitiously try to seek treatment elsewhere—as did one man who fled Mubende and died at a hospital in Kampala earlier this month, rattling health officials.

Ugandan authorities have documented more than 1,100 contacts of known Ebola patients, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Sudan strain of Ebola, for which there is no proven vaccine, is circulating in the country of 45 million people.

Ebola, which manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever, can be difficult to detect at first because fever is also a symptom of malaria.

Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Ebola first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River after which the disease is named.

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A new subvariant of the novel-coronavirus called XBB dramatically announced itself earlier this week, in Singapore. New COVID-19 cases more than doubled in a day, from 4,700 on Monday to 11,700 on Tuesday—and XBB is almost certainly why. The same subvariant just appeared in Hong Kong, too.

A highly mutated descendant of the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that drove a record wave of infections starting around a year ago, XBB is in many ways the worst form of the virus so far. It’s more contagious than any previous variant or subvariant. It also evades the antibodies from monoclonal therapies, potentially rendering a whole category of drugs ineffective as COVID treatments.

“It is likely the most immune-evasive and poses problems for current monoclonal antibody-based treatments and prevention strategy,” Amesh Adalja, a public-health expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told The Daily Beast.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the new “bivalent” vaccine boosters from Pfizer and Moderna seem to work just fine against XBB, even though the original vaccines are less effective against XBB. They won’t prevent all infections and reinfections, but they should significantly reduce the chance of severe infection potentially leading to hospitalization or death. “Even with immune-evasive variants, vaccine protection against what matters most—severe disease—remains intact,” Adalja said.

As the novel-coronavirus evolves to become more contagious and more resistant to certain types of drugs, keeping current on your boosters is “the most impactful thing you can do in preparation for what might come,” Peter Hotez, an expert in vaccine devel/opment at Baylor College, told The Daily Beast.

Scientists first identified XBB in August. It’s one of several major subvariants that have evolved from the basic Omicron variant, piling on more and more mutations on key parts of the virus—especially the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it grab onto and infect our cells.

XBB has at least seven new mutations along the spike. Mutations that, taken together, make the subvariant harder for our immune systems to recognize—and thus more likely to evade our antibodies and enter our cells to cause infection.

This accumulation of mutations isn’t surprising. Changes along the spike protein have characterized most of the major new variants and subvariants of SARS-CoV-2 as the pandemic grinds toward its fourth year.

What is surprising is how much competition XBB has as it fights to become the next dominant form of the novel-coronavirus. Several other Omicron subvariants are also in circulation. All of them are highly evolved. Many of them actually share a subset of key mutations, especially on the spike.

So while XBB appears to be gaining traction in Asia, a close cousin of XBB called BQ.1.1 is spreading fast in Europe and some U.S. states. There are others in contention, too, including BA.2.75.2. Hotez calls these viral cousins the “Scrabble” subvariants, a nod to the classic word game and the jumble of scientific designations of closely related viruses.

The Scrabble variants are indicative of what scientists call “convergent evolution.” That is, separate viral sublineages that are picking up more and more of the same mutations. It’s as though Omicron’s children are all separately learning how to be a better virus than their parent, and becoming more like each other in the process.

Immune-escape is the common quality. At least two of the Scrabble subvariants—XBB and BQ.1.1—are pretty much unrecognizable to existing antibody therapies and somewhat less recognizable to the antibodies produced by the prime doses of the leading messenger-RNA vaccines.

In evading some of our therapies and, to a lesser extent, our original vaccines, XBB and its cousins are showing us where the novel-coronavirus is heading, genetically speaking. The current surge in infections in places like Singapore is a preview of a potential global surge, this coming winter or spring, as XBB or one of its relatives becomes dominant everywhere.

It’s possible to mitigate the worst outcomes. Natural antibodies from past infection are still the best and most durable antibodies. They don’t last forever. But while they do last—a few months or potentially a whole year—the chance of catching a bad case of COVID is pretty low.

So if you had an earlier form of Omicron—say, during the wave of infections that started last Thanksgiving and peaked around February—you might still have good antibodies for a few months. More than enough time to reinforce those fading natural antibodies with a dose of the latest mRNA boosters.

Pfizer and Moderna formulated these new boosters to include some genetic instructions specifically for attacking the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron, which is still the dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 but is disappearing fast as XBB and the other Scrabble subvariants outcompete it.

A pharmacist gives a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot during an event hosted by the Chicago Department of Public Health at the Southwest Senior Center on Sept. 9, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. The recently authorized booster vaccine protects against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the more recent omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

The bivalent boosters should work pretty well against forms of the virus that are closely related to BA.5, including the Scrabbles. “That is because one of the two components [in the boosters] induces an immune response to BA.5, and most of the new Scrabble variants look more BA.5 like than [the] original China lineage,” Hotez told The Daily Beast.

The implication, of course, is that we’re eventually going to need another new booster in order to keep pace with the fast-evolving virus. Sure, the bivalent boosters work against BA.5 and BA.5’s immediate descendants. But what about the next generation of Omicron subvariants, the one after XBB and its cousins?

More and more health officials are coming around to the idea of an annual COVID booster. U.S. president Joe Biden even endorsed the idea in a statement last month. “As the virus continues to change, we will now be able to update our vaccines annually to target the dominant variant,” Biden said. “Just like your annual flu shot, you should get it sometime between Labor Day and Halloween.”

But one booster a year might not be enough if, as some epidemiologists fear, natural antibodies fade faster and the novel-coronavirus mutates at an accelerating rate. One concern, if it turns out we need twice-a-year new boosters, is whether industry can develop fresh jabs fast enough and health agencies can swiftly approve them.

There’s an even bigger question, however. “The more important factor is just having folks get a more recent booster,” James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told The Daily Beast.

Even if a new booster is available every six months or so, will enough people get it to make a difference in the overall rates of severe illness and death? Booster uptake is declining globally, but especially in the United States, where just 10 percent of people have gotten the bivalent booster since federal regulators approved them in August.

XBB is a nasty little subvariant. But it’s not the final word on COVID. The novel-coronavirus will keep mutating, and finding new ways to evade our antibodies, whether or not many people are paying attention.

The virus isn’t done with us. Which means we can’t be done with it. Get boosted. And be prepared to get boosted again in 2023.

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The practice of ancient religions and modern mindfulness heightens awareness and emotional health—faculties that decline with dementia like Alzheimer’s.

A strong point of the study was that the control group, meaning those who were used as a comparison to the meditators, were given another activity that has potential for fighting dementia—language learning.

In the study, French participants assigned to an 18 month meditation course did better than those given English lessons instead to keep their brains busy.

Author Dr. Gael Chetelat of the University of Caen-Normandy, said the meditation improved scores “reflecting attention regulation and socio-emotional capacities,” noting in particular that the attention regulation sub-score increased after meditation only.

“In the context of meditation practices, this capacity allows a heightened awareness and monitoring of the contents of experience without becoming absorbed by them,” said Dr. Chetelat. “Socio-emotional capacities decreased substantially after non-native language training, suggesting the difference observed may be due to maintenance of skills by meditation.”

The study included 137 men and women split into three groups. Meditation and English classes included two hour weekly sessions.

They also did home practice of at least 20 minutes a day. A control set carried on living their lives as normal, with no intervention.

The authors note that as meditation is becoming increasingly popular over recent years, it has helped people quit smoking, cope with cancer and even prevent skin condition psoriasis.

“Could meditation, a mental training approach toward attention and emotion regulation, preserve brain structure and function in cognitively unimpaired older adults?” said Dr. Chetelat.

Strategies to prevent dementia are urgently needed. Mental training that targets stress and attention regulation has the potential to improve both cognitive and emotional aspects of ageing.”

Staying ‘in the moment’ has been part of philosophical and contemplative practices for thousands of years. The hallmarks of many forms of mental illness is a preoccupation with one’s own thoughts, a condition meditation seems to affect.

“Mindfulness meditation can also reduce stress, anxiety and depression, including in older adults.”

One draw back to the study was that the sample population was not representative of the global aging population, as it included very healthy individuals.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which combines meditation with orthodox ‘thought training’, is already recommended for depression in Britain and is available at the British NHS.

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The compound, called solanimycin, combats a host of fungi that wreak havoc on crops. In these recent experiments, it killed Candida albicans, which causes possibly-dangerous infections, like thrush in women.

Most current therapeutic antibiotic compounds originate from soil microbes—and the solanimycin findings show that plant-based microorganisms should get a closer look.

The research team see the discovery as an encouraging sign that plant pathogens could be coaxed to make compounds that may be used not only against plant fungi in crops that have developed resistance to treatments, but also against the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance in humans.

“We have to open to the exploration of everything that’s out there to find new antibiotics,” said Microbiologist Rita Monson, Ph.D., at the University of Cambridge who co-led the study.

This week in mBio, the team reported the discovery of solanimycin, initially isolated from a pathogenic bacterium that infects potatoes, that appears to be produced by a broad spectrum of related plant pathogenic bacteria.

The pathogenic potato bacterium Dickeya solani, which produces solanimycin, was first identified more than 15 years ago—and researchers at Cambridge have been investigating its antibiotic potential for a decade.

“These strains emerged rapidly, and now they are widely distributed,” said the paper’s co-author, molecular microbiologist Miguel Matilla, Ph.D., at the Spanish Research Council’s Estación Experimental del Zaidín, in Granada.

Solanimycin isn’t the first antibiotic discovered from the microbe. In previous work, researchers found that D. solani produces an antibiotic called oocydin A, which is highly active against multiple fungal plant pathogens.

Those previous discoveries, together with the analysis of the genome of the bacterium, hinted that it might synthesize additional antibiotics, also with antifungal potential.

That hint paid off: Matilla, Monson, molecular microbiologist George Salmond found that when they silenced the genes responsible for the production of oocydin A, the bacterium continued to show antifungal activity.

That observation led to the identification of solanimycin and the identification of the gene clusters responsible for the proteins that make the compound.

The bacterium uses the compound sparingly, producing it in response to cell density. An acidic pH environment—as that present in a potato—also activates the solanimycin gene cluster. Monson said it almost looks like a clever protective mechanism.

“It’s an antifungal that we believe will work by killing fungal competitors, and the bacteria benefit so much from this,” said Monson. “But you don’t turn it on unless you’re in a potato.”

Monson said the researchers have begun collaborating with chemists to learn more about the molecular structure of solanimycin and better understand how it works.

She and Matilla hope for further testing of the compound using plant and animal models—and will focus near-term on trying to use this antibiotic antifungal for crop protection.

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It is well known that trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, protecting people from some of the harshest consequences of climate change. A recent study demonstrates the extent to which forests have been storing excess carbon.

According to the research, which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications, higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have boosted the biomass, or wood volume, of American forests.

The research discovered that increasing carbon levels consistently caused an increase in wood volume in 10 distinct temperate forest groups throughout the country, despite the fact that other factors like climate and pests may somewhat influence a tree’s volume. This indicates that trees’ rapid growth is helping to protect the Earth’s ecosystem from the effects of global warming.

“Forests are taking carbon out of the atmosphere at a rate of about 13% of our gross emissions,” said Brent Sohngen, co-author of the study and professor of environmental and resource economics at The Ohio State University. “While we’re putting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we’re actually taking much of it out just by letting our forests grow.”

This is known as carbon fertilization: An influx of carbon dioxide increases a plant’s rate of photosynthesis, which combines energy from the sun, water, and nutrients from the ground and air to produce fuel for life and spurs plant growth.

“It’s well known that when you put a ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it doesn’t stay up there forever,” Sohngen said. “A massive amount of it falls into the oceans, while the rest of it is taken up by trees and wetlands and those kinds of areas.”

Over the last two decades, forests in the United States have sequestered about 700-800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, which, according to the study, accounts for roughly 10% to 11% of the country’s total carbon dioxide emissions. While exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide can have ill effects on natural systems and infrastructure, trees have no issue gluttoning themselves on Earth’s extra supply of greenhouse gas.

To put it in perspective, if you imagine a tree as just a huge cylinder, the added volume the study finds essentially amounts to an extra tree ring, Sohngen said. Although such growth may not be noticeable to the average person, compared to the trees of 30 years ago, modern vegetation is about 20% to 30% bigger than it used to be. If applied to the Coast Redwood forests – home to some of the largest trees in the world – even a modest percentage increase means a lot of additional carbon storage in forests. Researchers also found that even older large trees continue adding biomass as they age due to elevated carbon dioxide levels.

Unlike the effects of climate change, which varies over location and in time, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere mixes almost evenly, so every place on Earth has nearly the same amount, Sohngen said.

So to test whether the chemical compound was responsible for beefing up our biome, Sohngen’s team used historical data from the U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (USFS-FIA) to compare how the wood volume of certain forest groups has changed over the past few decades. The study estimates that between 1970 and 2015, there was a significant increase in trees’ wood volume, which correlates with a distinct rise in carbon emissions.

Researchers were also able to use this method to test whether there were differences in naturally occurring trees versus trees that were planted. Sohngen thought that planted trees would undergo a bigger fertilization effect, as they have an advantage in that planters often pick the best seeds to plant in only the best locations. On the contrary, he was surprised to find that planted trees respond to carbon dioxide levels in the same way natural ones do.

Overall, Sohngen said this work shows that the wood volume response to carbon dioxide in our ecosystem is even higher than his colleagues predicted with experimental studies.

The results should show policymakers and others the value of trees in mitigating climate change. Sohngen said that carbon fertilization could one day make tree-growing efforts more efficient. For instance, if it costs $50 to plant one acre of trees today, with the help of carbon fertilization, that number could easily be decreased to $40. As climate change costs the United States about $2 trillion each year, that decrease could help drive down the cost of mitigating climate change, Sohngen said.

“Carbon fertilization certainly makes it cheaper to plant trees, avoid deforestation, or do other activities related to trying to enhance the carbon sink in forests,” Sohngen said. “We should be planting more trees and preserving older ones because at the end of the day they’re probably our best bet for mitigating climate change.”

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In the last 12 months, over half of males and one in five women, transgender people, and gender non-conforming participants engaged in a “bulk and cut” cycle, according to recent research that was recently published in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders – Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia, and Obesity.

In order to maximize the development of lean muscle mass and minimize body fat, an increasing number of people are practicing “bulking and cutting,” a dietary method that involves alternating between times of consuming excess calories (bulking) and reducing calorie intake (cutting), a practice that is in line with contemporary body ideals. Teenagers and young adults are particularly prone to it, especially those who are involved in the fitness world and who want to build a muscular and toned body. 

The researchers examined data from over 2,700 Canadian adolescents and young adults and discovered that, across all participant groups, bulking and cutting was associated with a greater desire to become more muscular, highlighting the connection between this dietary approach and desires to alter one’s body.

“Bulking and cutting is a common practice within the fitness community, and is popularized by social media,” says lead author Kyle T. Ganson, Ph.D., MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “Given body ideals that focus on bulk muscularity and leanness in boys and men, it is not surprising that this dietary method was highly common in our sample, but it should also be noted that girls, women, transgender, and gender non-confirming participants, also face unique pressures to adhere to specific body types. For girls and women, this ideal is transitioning away from the thin ideal to a toned and fit ideal.”

Few studies, however, have explored and characterized engagement in bulk and cut cycles, or whether this dietary method is linked with the drive for muscularity and eating disorder and muscle dysmorphia psychopathology.

“Our findings also showed that engagement in bulking and cutting was associated with symptoms of eating disorders, as well as muscle dysmorphia, which is characterized as the pathological pursuit of muscularity, for men and women in the study,” says Ganson. “These findings are particularly salient given the documented increased prevalence of eating disorders and related behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The study illuminates the importance of greater awareness of this unique dietary method, which may go unnoticed by healthcare and public health professionals.

“It is important that healthcare professionals screen for a vast array of dietary practices that may be harmful for young people, not just clinical eating disorder behaviors, like food restriction,” Ganson says. “We need to continue to research these forms of muscularity-oriented behaviors to better understand them and implement effective strategies to protect the health and well-being of Canadian young people.”

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