Refusal to drink alcohol can prolong life by 28 years, writes Express, citing data from scientists from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden.
Experts have monitored the life expectancy of alcoholics in Denmark, Finland and Sweden for 20 years. Mortality from various diseases and ailments was noticeably higher in the drinking group of study participants. On average, their life expectancy was reduced by 28 years.
Doctors have repeatedly warned about the negative effects of alcohol on the body. In particular, alcohol, even in small doses, significantly increases the risk of cancer, dementia, impotence and infertility. Alcohol also negatively affects the functioning of the heart, brain and liver.
Earlier, American scientists named four habits that can increase life expectancy by ten years.
A Mediterranean diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains is recommended. It is also necessary to reduce stress levels and look for joyful moments in life. In addition, you should stop drinking and smoking.
The world is facing an “antibiotic apocalypse” because of the resistance of bacteria, warned former British chief physician Dr. Sally Davis, quoted by Eurekalert.
Antimicrobial or antibiotic resistance could be the “bell ringing to announce the death of modern medicine” and lead to an “antibiotic apocalypse,” she announced before the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Sally Davis is the UK’s special envoy for antimicrobial resistance. @MasterSallyTrin
According to her, minimal progress has been made in limiting the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. This poses very serious dangers.
The British expert warned that the market for antibiotics is in a very difficult situation.
“The profits from cancer drugs are $ 8 billion, and the losses from antimicrobials are $ 100 million. This means that our drug cabinets are becoming increasingly empty – because of bankruptcies, not because of a lack of scientific potential, “she said.
Sally Davis urges governments to “act now”. “It’s too late for many – they’re dead.”
The G7 countries announced last month that they would increase their budgets for antibiotic research, and Britain and the United States were subsidizing the development of new drugs.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes that “infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria are complex and sometimes impossible to cure.”
Emirati national Aisha Al Yazeedi, a research scientist at the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics, has published her first research paper, featuring some key findings on the evolution of galaxies.
Galaxies eventually undergo a phase in which they lose most of their gas, which results in a change into their properties over the course of their evolution. Current models for galaxy evolution suggest this should eventually happen to all galaxies, including our own Milky Way; Al Yazeedi and her team are delving into this process.
Composite RGB image of the Blob Source extracted from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (Dey et al.(2019), legacysurvey.org). MaNGA _eld of view is shown in orange. Gray box corresponds to the GMOS _eld of view. Credit: Dey et al.(2019), legacysurvey.org
Commenting on the findings, Al Yazeedi said: “The evolution of galaxies is directly linked to the activity of their central supermassive black hole (SMBH). However, the connection between the activity of SMBHs and the ejection of gas from the entire galaxy is poorly understood. Observational studies, including our research, are essential to clarify how the central SMBH can influence the evolution of its entire host galaxy and prove key theoretical concepts in the field of astrophysics.”
Titled “The impact of low luminosity AGN on their host galaxies: A radio and optical investigation of the kpc-scale outflow in MaNGA 1-166919,” the paper has been published in Astronomical Journal. Its findings outline gas ejection mechanisms, outflow properties, and how they are related to the activity of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the host galaxy.
To that end, the paper presents a detailed optical and radio study of the MaNGA 1-166919 galaxy, which appears to have an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). Radio morphology shows two lobes (jets) emanating from the center of the galaxy, a clear sign of AGN activity that could be driving the optical outflow. By measuring the outflow properties, the NYUAD researchers documented how the extent of the optical outflow matches the extent of radio emission.
Superposition of optical z-band MzLS image isophotes (gray color) and our highest spatial resolution radio image in S band (in blue). Optical image has a spatial resolution of 0:0084, while S-band radio data { 0:009. Credit: NYU Abu Dhabi
Al Yazeedi is a member of NYUAD’s Kawader program, a national capacity-building research fellowship that allows outstanding graduates to gain experience in cutting-edge academic research. The three-year, individually tailored, intensive program is designed for graduates considering a graduate degree or a career in research.
Her paper adds to the growing body of UAE space research and activities. The UAE has sent an Emirati into space, a spacecraft around Mars, and recently announced plans to send a robotic rover to the Moon in 2022, ahead of the ultimate goal to build a city on Mars by 2117.
The above figure is a GMOS outflow map with radio contours overlaid in black. The outflow velocities show a clear spatial separation of “red” and “blue” components. It strongly suggests a biconical outflow and nicely shows the correspondence between the optical outflow and radio emission. Credit: NYU Abu Dhabi
Emirati women are playing a key role in the research and development behind these projects. The Mars Hope probe science team, which is 80 percent female, was led by Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and chairperson of the country’s space agency.
Reference: “The impact of low luminosity AGN on their host galaxies: A radio and optical investigation of the kpc-scale outflow in MaNGA 1-166919” 3 August 2021, Astronomical Journal. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abf5e1
Of all the animals, the chimpanzee’s kiss most closely resembles a human’s. Dogs, horses and Canadian hedgehogs also kiss on the lips.
In ancient Egypt, they knew nothing about kissing. It is possible that Queen Cleopatra, known for her victories over men, never really kissed. Only if Caesar did not teach her…
In the Middle Ages in Italy, a man kissing a girl in front of people was obliged to marry her. In Naples, the laws were harshest: those kissing on the street were imprisoned, and if this happened in front of a High Priest, they could be killed.
In 1979, David Bowie invented a device called a “LIPOGRAPH” that took fingerprints to identify a person. Then in America they held an assembly for lipograms of famous people. All the proceeds, amounting to $ 16,000, went to the Child Protection Fund. At this auction, a fingerprint from Mick Jagger was sold for $ 1,600. Unfortunately, “Lipograph” never came into use in forensics.
In Japan, it is considered very indecent to kiss in front of witnesses. That’s why you’ll almost never see a kiss in a Japanese movie. What is called a “Japanese” kiss all over the world is performed as follows: You stand one step away from each other, lean forward and, stretching your lips, touch them to your partner’s lips. The mouth does not open!
Each of us knows that sooner or later he will die. But it turns out that even after death, the human body is capable of showing signs of life. Some of them seem incredible.
And scary and awkward
As the medical encyclopedia says, death is an irreversible cessation of the life of an organism, a natural and inevitable final stage of its individual existence. In warm-blooded animals and humans, it is primarily associated with a complete cessation of respiration and blood circulation.
In fact, death can consist of several stages and terminal states. And signs of biological death (when all physiological processes in cells and tissues are stopped) were constantly refined with the development of medicine. This question is vitally important in the literal sense of the word. And the point is not that a person can be buried alive (in our time it is difficult to imagine this, but it used to happen regularly) – it depends on the exact statement of death when it is possible to stop resuscitation measures, as well as to remove organs for their further transplantation. That is, to save someone’s life.
What happens to the body when all vital processes stop? The very first cells to die are brain cells. They are most sensitive to lack of oxygen.
Nevertheless, some nerve cells are able to live for so long that scientists are not quite sure whether such a person should be considered dead? After all, it seems that he continues to perceive something and (who knows!), Possibly, think!
Swedish scientists from the Karolinska Institute conducted research and came to the conclusion: the brain activity of the deceased fluctuates greatly. Either it is near zero, which indicates that death has come, then suddenly it rises to a value corresponding to the state of wakefulness. And then it falls again. What happens in the brain of the deceased remains unclear. It is possible that he has some thoughts and feelings even after the heart has stopped beating.
Scientists suggest that the nerve cells in the brain at this moment emit the last impulse. This also explains the phenomenon of experiences in a state of clinical death – the feeling of flight, the light at the end of the tunnel, a meeting with a higher being, etc.
“It is unlikely that a person is conscious during such brain activity,” said researcher at the Karolinska Institute Lars Ohlsson. “The only ones who came close to this and can at least tell something about it are those who have experienced a state close to death.” And according to believers, a flash of brain activity corresponds to the moment when the soul of the deceased leaves the body.
If you ask the deceased what he is thinking, it is not possible, then it is quite possible to see his movements and hear sounds. The fact is that after death, the body twitches for a couple of seconds, spasms occur in it. The muscles then relax, returning to their original state, and this can be perceived as movement or twitching of the limbs. There were times when a person gave up the spirit, and his chest moved, giving the impression that he was still breathing. The reason is that after death the nervous system sends signals to the spinal cord “by inertia” for some time.
Sometimes the dead make strange sounds, which, of course, horrifies relatives and those who have gathered to accompany him on his last journey. These sounds are similar to moaning, whistling, sighing, or muffled crying. There is no mysticism here: the body of every person is filled with liquids and gases. As soon as the body begins to decompose, additional gases are formed that need an outlet. They find it through the trachea. Hence the sounds.
Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Solve – and overcome!
A huge number of bacteria live in the human body – scientists have about 10 thousand of their species, and the mass of these microorganisms can reach 3 kg. When the immune system ceases to function with our last breath, these countless hordes of “little friends” are no longer held back. The microflora begins to devour the deceased from the inside. Bacteria move freely throughout the body, absorb the intestines, and then the surrounding tissues, invade the blood capillaries of the digestive system and lymph nodes. They penetrate first into the liver and spleen, and then into the heart and brain.
Simultaneously with the activity of microbes, cadaveric spots are formed – they appear where stopped blood settles in the tissues. After 12-18 hours, the spots reach their maximum coverage, and after a few days they turn dirty green.
But it turns out that at the same time, some parts of the body of the deceased remain quite viable.
For example, despite the fact that the heart has stopped long ago, its valves may still persist. The fact is that they have connective tissue cells that live for a long time. This means that heart valves can be used for transplants. And this is after a day and a half after death!
The Kiev authorities are making a big mistake, believing that ordinary Ukrainians will silently accept all decisions made by the center. This opinion is shared by political analyst Alexei Martynov.
There are enough problems in Ukraine today. A lot has already been said about the rapid rise in utility tariffs and gas prices, the closure of industrial enterprises and the unprecedented level of unemployment. If we add to this the still depressing economic situation in which the state finds itself, being hooked on the IMF’s financial needle, social problems and a complete failure in negotiations with the West on the import of a vaccine against coronavirus, the situation looks quite critical.
However, the real catastrophe will happen when the so-called land law comes into force, on which Western creditors of Ukraine insist. At the same time, the leadership of Nezalezhnaya, striving to fulfill all instructions from the United States and Europe, does not even think that this step will actually lead to the death of small farms. Well, this will be followed by “feudalization” of life in the countryside and civil conflicts in society. Political scientist Aleksey Martynov also adheres to this point of view.
“In Ukraine, this is not particularly discussed, it all goes to the side. But I will tell you that when they begin to take away the land, especially in the South-East of Ukraine, there is even nothing to do there, because the local population itself will take up the pitchfork and raise a peasant revolt, “- said the specialist on the air of the TV channel” Russia 1 ” …
Earlier, the political scientist Rostislav Ishchenko said that the regions that disagree with the policy of Kiev will soon begin to pull the blanket over themselves and move on to more active actions. More details – in the material “PolitPazl”.
Ukrainian diplomat reminded Kiev of voluntary abandonment of Crimea
Kiev has actually renounced the Crimean peninsula on its own, said former Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Chaly. The diplomat recalled that for the sake of joining NATO, the Ukrainian side voluntarily renounced the Agreement on the status and conditions of the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the territory of Ukraine. However, this was the only treaty in which Sevastopol was recognized as Ukrainian territory.
Oleksandr Chaly also criticized the Kiev leadership for the fact that the country had no allies left.
For small creatures, the surface of the water is not nearly as permeable as it is for us. Water striders glide over it easily using surface tension. And biologists John Gould and Jose Valdez have found that some beetles are able to navigate the film from below and feel great about constantly walking on the ceiling. Scientists describe this behavior in an article published in the journal Ethology, according to Naked science.
Australian Gould accidentally noticed these tiny beetles while working on an expedition in Watagans National Park in New South Wales. He managed to immediately capture the insect moving along the film of water, calmly changing direction, stopping and continuing its course again. And all this is upside down. According to the scientist, in the scientific literature, such behavior has so far been described extremely poorly.
With the support of a colleague from Germany, Jose Valdes, Gould identified the insect as a representative of the order Hydraenidae – small (usually one to three millimeters) aquatic beetles. Scientists believe that the air bubble, which was able to be seen on the abdomen turned up, helps them to stay “on the ceiling”. It presses the insect to the surface film, allowing it to push off with its paws. However, a better understanding of this mechanism will require new studies of the anatomy and morphology of the beetle limbs, as well as their hydrophobic properties. It is possible that the body of the water freak itself is hydrophobic, and the legs are hydrophilic.
The authors believe that such an unusual ability allows the beetles to stay in the water, but keep as far away from local predators that hunt closer to the bottom as possible. Perhaps, in case of danger, insects are able to jump to the opposite side of the surface film and move in the usual way, like the same water striders.
The US Special Operations Command SOCOM will begin testing an anti-aging drug next year, Breaking Defense said.
The magazine dealing with defense issues quotes SOCOM chief Tim Hawkins.
“These efforts are not aimed at creating physical traits that no longer exist naturally,” Hawkins said.
“This is about increasing the readiness of our forces for a mission by improving performance, which usually decreases with age,” he said.
According to the article, SOCOM is partnering with the Metro International Biotech laboratory to develop the drug.
“We are essentially working with leading industry partners and clinical research institutes to develop a nutraceutical in pill form that is suitable for a variety of uses, both civilian and military, the benefits of which may include improved human performance,” such as increased endurance and faster recovery from injury, “Hawkins said.
Microbes found in the stomach of cows can break down certain types of plastic, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET), used in non-alcoholic bottles, some food packaging and synthetic fabrics.
Scientists have found these microbes in fluid extracted from the stomach – the largest compartment in the stomach of ruminants. These are ungulates such as cattle and sheep, which rely on microorganisms to help break down the coarse vegetation they feed on.
The stomach acts as an incubator for those microbes that digest or ferment food consumed by cattle or other ruminants.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota suspect that some microbes in a cow’s stomach may be able to absorb polyesters, substances whose constituent molecules are linked by so-called ester groups.
In their herbivorous diet, cattle consume a natural polyester produced by plants called quince. As a synthetic polyester, PET has a similar chemical structure to this natural substance.
Quince makes up most of the cuticle, the outer waxy layer of plant cell walls, and can be found in abundance in tomato and apple peels, said study co-author Doris Ribitsch, a scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. in Vienna.
In their new study, published in the journal Frontiers in Bioingineering and Biotechnology, the researchers found that bovine germs could break down not only PET but two other plastics, polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT), used in biodegradable plastic bags and polyethylene. (PEF), made from renewable plant materials.
To assess how well these microbes can break down plastic, the team incubated each type of plastic in a liquid extracted from the stomach for one to three days. They then measure the by-products to determine the extent to which the micro-organisms have degraded the materials of their components.
Abdominal fluid breaks down all three types of plastic, making PEF most effective.
The team then takes DNA samples from the fluid in the abdomen to determine which specific species may be responsible for the breakdown of the plastic.
About 98 percent of DNA belongs to the bacterial kingdom, with the predominant genus being Pseudomonas, which has previously been shown to break down plastics according to publications in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology and the Journal of Hazardous Materials.
Bacteria of the genus Acinetobacter are also found in large quantities in the liquid and several species have also been shown to degrade synthetic polyesters, according to a 2017 publication in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Ribic and her team hope to fully characterize the bacteria in the stomachs of cattle that break down plastics and determine which enzymes they use for the purpose.
If enzymes that could potentially be used for recycling are identified, it is possible for microbes to be genetically modified to produce them in large quantities without the need to be extracted directly from the stomachs of cows.
Thus, enzymes can be produced easily, cheaply and in large quantities, for use on an industrial scale, Ribic said.
She and her team have already patented a recycling method in which textiles are exposed sequentially to various enzymes identified in previous developments.
Degrading PET, researchers are still looking for microbes that can handle polyethylene and polypropylene, which have strong bonds between their carbon atoms, Levin said.
He and his colleagues have identified several promising candidates on this front, but it remains to be seen how to maximize the degradability of plastics.
Ribic says her team is also looking for germs that can consume polyethylene, and they wonder if they are also hiding in the cattle’s stomach.
Acidification of the oceans could dissolve some of the compounds that make up plankton and coral reefs, as well as the materials they need to survive.
As the oceans become more acidic, the global food web could collapse and bring humanity to ruin in just a few decades. The side effect of greenhouse gas emissions is especially dangerous, writes Futurism.
A new study by scientists from the University of Edinburgh argues that even a small increase in acidity will cause profound changes in ocean ecosystems – changes that will then have global consequences in the future.
“Ocean acidification caused by plastic and toxic chemicals will trigger a plankton crisis that will devastate humanity for the next 25 years if we don’t take immediate action to stop pollution,” the authors of the article write.
The researchers’ main argument is that a more acidic ocean could dissolve some of the compounds that make up organisms such as plankton and coral reefs, as well as the materials they need to survive.
And while other species will eventually take their place, life forms that can survive in harsher conditions are much less suited to providing the backbone of the food chain, with the result that this phenomenon will destroy the main food source.
At the end of these events, experts say, food supplies for about 3 billion people could disappear completely. The impact of climate change on the oceans is already wreaking havoc on the planet, but some aspects of the study should be viewed with skepticism.
The authors make a number of surprising claims, without any reference, including that toxic microbes will poison the atmosphere when powerful winds blow them out of the ocean and into the air.
Still, these dubious claims aside, the study provides a dire warning for the planet’s future.
Given how difficult it is to control the ocean microbes on which the planet depends, and how little monitoring has been done, the study argues that we must change our behavior today if we want future generations to have a chance of salvation.
A drone flying through smoke to visualize the complex aerodynamic effects. Credit: Robotics and Perception Group, University of Zurich
To be useful, drones need to be quick. Because of their limited battery life, they must complete whatever task they have — searching for survivors on a disaster site, inspecting a building, delivering cargo — in the shortest possible time. And they may have to do it by going through a series of waypoints like windows, rooms, or specific locations to inspect, adopting the best trajectory and the right acceleration or deceleration at each segment.
Algorithm outperforms professional pilots
The best human drone pilots are very good at doing this and have so far always outperformed autonomous systems in drone racing. Now, a research group at the University of Zurich (UZH) has created an algorithm that can find the quickest trajectory to guide a quadrotor — a drone with four propellers — through a series of waypoints on a circuit. “Our drone beat the fastest lap of two world-class human pilots on an experimental race track,” says Davide Scaramuzza, who heads the Robotics and Perception Group at UZH and the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge of the NCCR Robotics, which funded the research.
“The novelty of the algorithm is that it is the first to generate time-optimal trajectories that fully consider the drones’ limitations,” says Scaramuzza. Previous works relied on simplifications of either the quadrotor system or the description of the flight path, and thus they were sub-optimal. “The key idea is, rather than assigning sections of the flight path to specific waypoints, that our algorithm just tells the drone to pass through all waypoints, but not how or when to do that,” adds Philipp Foehn, PhD student and first author of the paper.
External cameras provide position information in real-time
The researchers had the algorithm and two human pilots fly the same quadrotor through a race circuit. They employed external cameras to precisely capture the motion of the drones and — in the case of the autonomous drone — to give real-time information to the algorithm on where the drone was at any moment. To ensure a fair comparison, the human pilots were given the opportunity to train on the circuit before the race. But the algorithm won: all its laps were faster than the human ones, and the performance was more consistent. This is not surprising, because once the algorithm has found the best trajectory it can reproduce it faithfully many times, unlike human pilots.
Before commercial applications, the algorithm will need to become less computationally demanding, as it now takes up to an hour for the computer to calculate the time-optimal trajectory for the drone. Also, at the moment, the drone relies on external cameras to compute where it was at any moment. In future work, the scientists want to use onboard cameras. But the demonstration that an autonomous drone can in principle fly faster than human pilots is promising. “This algorithm can have huge applications in package delivery with drones, inspection, search and rescue, and more,” says Scaramuzza.
Reference: 21 July 2021, Science Robotics. DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.abh1221
When the Sun evolves to become a red giant star, the Earth may be swallowed by our star’s atmosphere, and with a much more unstable solar wind, even the resilient and protective magnetospheres of the giant outer planets may be stripped away. Credit: MSFC / NASA
Any life identified on planets orbiting white dwarf stars almost certainly evolved after the star’s death, says a new study led by the University of Warwick that reveals the consequences of the intense and furious stellar winds that will batter a planet as its star is dying. The research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and lead author Dr. Dimitri Veras presented it today (July 21, 2021) at the online National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021).
The research provides new insight for astronomers searching for signs of life around these dead stars by examining the impact that their winds will have on orbiting planets during the star’s transition to the white dwarf stage. The study concludes that it is nearly impossible for life to survive cataclysmic stellar evolution unless the planet has an intensely strong magnetic field — or magnetosphere — that can shield it from the worst effects.
In the case of Earth, solar wind particles can erode the protective layers of the atmosphere that shield humans from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The terrestrial magnetosphere acts like a shield to divert those particles away through its magnetic field. Not all planets have a magnetosphere, but Earth’s is generated by its iron core, which rotates like a dynamo to create its magnetic field.
“We know that the solar wind in the past eroded the Martian atmosphere, which, unlike Earth, does not have a large-scale magnetosphere. What we were not expecting to find is that the solar wind in the future could be as damaging even to those planets that are protected by a magnetic field”, says Dr Aline Vidotto of Trinity College Dublin, the co-author of the study.
All stars eventually run out of available hydrogen that fuels the nuclear fusion in their cores. In the Sun the core will then contract and heat up, driving an enormous expansion of the outer atmosphere of the star into a ‘red giant’. The Sun will then stretch to a diameter of tens of millions of kilometers, swallowing the inner planets, possibly including the Earth. At the same time the loss of mass in the star means it has a weaker gravitational pull, so the remaining planets move further away.
During the red giant phase, the solar wind will be far stronger than today, and it will fluctuate dramatically. Veras and Vidotto modeled the winds from 11 different types of stars, with masses ranging from one to seven times the mass of our Sun.
Their model demonstrated how the density and speed of the stellar wind, combined with an expanding planetary orbit, conspires to alternatively shrink and expand the magnetosphere of a planet over time. For any planet to maintain its magnetosphere throughout all stages of stellar evolution, its magnetic field needs to be at least one hundred times stronger than Jupiter’s current magnetic field.
The process of stellar evolution also results in a shift in a star’s habitable zone, which is the distance that would allow a planet to be the right temperature to support liquid water. In our solar system, the habitable zone would move from about 150 million km from the Sun — where Earth is currently positioned — up to 6 billion km, or beyond Neptune. Although an orbiting planet would also change position during the giant branch phases, the scientists found that the habitable zone moves outward more quickly than the planet, posing additional challenges to any existing life hoping to survive the process.
Eventually, the red giant sheds its entire outer atmosphere, leaving behind the dense hot white dwarf remnant. These do not emit stellar winds, so once the star reaches this stage the danger to surviving planets has passed.
Dr. Veras said: “This study demonstrates the difficulty of a planet maintaining its protective magnetosphere throughout the entirety of the giant branch phases of stellar evolution.”
“One conclusion is that life on a planet in the habitable zone around a white dwarf would almost certainly develop during the white dwarf phase unless that life was able to withstand multiple extreme and sudden changes in its environment.”
Future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope due to be launched later this year should reveal more about planets that orbit white dwarf stars, including whether planets within their habitable zones show biomarkers that indicate the presence of life, so the study provides valuable context to any potential discoveries.
So far no terrestrial planet that could support life around a white dwarf has been found, but two known gas giants are close enough to their star’s habitable zone to suggest that such a planet could exist. These planets likely moved in closer to the white dwarf as a result of interactions with other planets further out.
Dr. Veras adds: “These examples show that giant planets can approach very close to the habitable zone. The habitable zone for a white dwarf is very close to the star because they emit much less light than a Sun-like star. However, white dwarfs are also very steady stars as they have no winds. A planet that’s parked in the white dwarf habitable zone could remain there for billions of years, allowing time for life to develop provided that the conditions are suitable.”
Meeting: Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting
Artist’s depiction of a neutron star. Credit: ESO / L. Calçada
New models of neutron stars show that their tallest mountains may be only fractions of millimeters high, due to the huge gravity on the ultra-dense objects. The research is presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021.
Neutron stars are some of the densest objects in the Universe: they weigh about as much as the Sun, yet measure only around 10km across, similar in size to a large city.
Because of their compactness, neutron stars have an enormous gravitational pull around a billion times stronger than the Earth. This squashes every feature on the surface to minuscule dimensions, and means that the stellar remnant is an almost perfect sphere.
Whilst they are billions of times smaller than on Earth, these deformations from a perfect sphere are nevertheless known as mountains. The team behind the work, led by PhD student Fabian Gittins at the University of Southampton, used computational modeling to build realistic neutron stars and subject them to a range of mathematical forces to identify how the mountains are created.
The team also studied the role of the ultra-dense nuclear matter in supporting the mountains, and found that the largest mountains produced were only a fraction of a millimeter tall, one hundred times smaller than previous estimates.
Fabian comments, “For the past two decades, there has been much interest in understanding how large these mountains can be before the crust of the neutron star breaks, and the mountain can no longer be supported.”
Past work has suggested that neutron stars can sustain deviations from a perfect sphere of up to a few parts in one million, implying the mountains could be as large as a few centimeters. These calculations assumed the neutron star was strained in such a way that the crust was close to breaking at every point. However, the new models indicate that such conditions are not physically realistic.
Fabian adds: “These results show how neutron stars truly are remarkably spherical objects. Additionally, they suggest that observing gravitational waves from rotating neutron stars may be even more challenging than previously thought.”
Although they are single objects, due to their intense gravitation, spinning neutron stars with slight deformations should produce ripples in the fabric of spacetime known as gravitational waves. Gravitational waves from rotations of single neutron stars have yet to be observed, although future advances in extremely sensitive detectors such as advanced LIGO and Virgo may hold the key to probing these unique objects.
A CT scan image of the spiral intestine of a Pacific spiny dogfish shark (Squalus suckleyi). The beginning of the intestine is on the left, and the end is on the right. Credit: Samantha Leigh/California State University Dominguez Hills
Contrary to what popular media portrays, we actually don’t know much about what sharks eat. Even less is known about how they digest their food, and the role they play in the larger ocean ecosystem.
For more than a century, researchers have relied on flat sketches of sharks’ digestive systems to discern how they function — and how what they eat and excrete impacts other species in the ocean. Now, researchers have produced a series of high-resolution, 3D scans of intestines from nearly three dozen shark species that will advance the understanding of how sharks eat and digest their food.
Three smooth dogfish sharks (Mustelus canis). Credit: Elizabeth Roberts/Wikimedia Commons
“It’s high time that some modern technology was used to look at these really amazing spiral intestines of sharks,” said lead author Samantha Leigh, assistant professor at California State University Dominguez Hills. “We developed a new method to digitally scan these tissues and now can look at the soft tissues in such great detail without having to slice into them.”
The research team from California State University Dominguez Hills, the University of Washington, and University of California, Irvine, published its findings July 21 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
A CT scan image of a dogfish shark spiral intestine, shown from the top looking down. Credit: Samantha Leigh/California State University Dominguez Hills
The researchers primarily used a computerized tomography (CT) scanner at the UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories to create 3D images of shark intestines, which came from specimens preserved at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. The machine works like a standard CT scanner used in hospitals: A series of X-ray images is taken from different angles, then combined using computer processing to create three-dimensional images. This allows researchers to see the complexities of a shark intestine without having to dissect or disturb it.
A live Pacific spiny dogfish shark (Squalus suckleyi). Credit: Samantha Leigh/California State University Dominguez Hills
“CT scanning is one of the only ways to understand the shape of shark intestines in three dimensions,” said co-author Adam Summers, a professor based at UW Friday Harbor Labs who has led a worldwide effort to scan the skeletons of fishes and other vertebrate animals. “Intestines are so complex — with so many overlapping layers, that dissection destroys the context and connectivity of the tissue. It would be like trying to understand what was reported in a newspaper by taking scissors to a rolled-up copy. The story just won’t hang together.”
A CT scan image of a smooth dogfish shark (Mustelus canis) spiral intestine, shown from the top looking down. Credit: Samantha Leigh/California State University Dominguez Hills
From their scans, the researchers discovered several new aspects about how shark intestines function. It appears these spiral-shaped organs slow the movement of food and direct it downward through the gut, relying on gravity in addition to peristalsis, the rhythmic contraction of the gut’s smooth muscle. Its function resembles the one-way valve designed by Nikola Tesla more than a century ago that allows fluid to flow in one direction, without backflow or assistance from any moving parts.
This finding could shed new light on how sharks eat and process their food. Most sharks usually go days or even weeks between eating large meals, so they rely on being able to hold food in their system and absorb as many nutrients as possible, Leigh explained. The slowed movement of food through their gut caused by the spiral intestine probably allows sharks to retain their food longer, and they also use less energy processing that food.
This video shows the 3D image of a Pacific spiny dogfish (Squalus suckleyi) spiral intestine. Credit: Samantha Leigh/California State University Dominguez Hills
Because sharks are top predators in the ocean and also eat a lot of different things — invertebrates, fish, mammals and even seagrass — they naturally control the biodiversity of many species, the researchers said. Knowing how sharks process what they eat, and how they excrete waste, is important for understanding the larger ecosystem.
“The vast majority of shark species, and the majority of their physiology, are completely unknown. Every single natural history observation, internal visualization and anatomical investigation shows us things we could not have guessed at,” Summers said. “We need to look harder at sharks and, in particular, we need to look harder at parts other than the jaws, and the species that don’t interact with people.”
This video shows the soft tissue of a Pacific spiny dogfish (Squalus suckleyi) spiral intestine, rotated and viewed from different angles. Credit: Samantha Leigh/California State University Dominguez Hills
The authors plan to use a 3D printer to create models of several different shark intestines to test how materials move through the structures in real time. They also hope to collaborate with engineers to use shark intestines as inspiration for industrial applications such as wastewater treatment or filtering microplastics out of the water column.
Reference: 20 July 2021, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1359
Other co-authors on the paper are Donovan German of University of California, Irvine, and Sarah Hoffmann of Applied Biological Services.
This research was funded by Friday Harbor Laboratories, the UC Irvine OCEANS Graduate Research Fellowship, the Newkirk Center Graduate Research Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and UC Irvine.
In the mountains of northern Spain, 30 meters underground, archaeologists have found remains that they believe are human. As incredible as it is, the story becomes even stranger – because the remains were not of Homo sapiens, nor were they of Neanderthals. They are something completely new.
So what are these mysterious skeletons and why they were there, BBC Reel reports.
In the 60s of last century in the Atapuerca Mountains
a cave has been discovered in Spain that answers as many questions as it creates new ones.
As workers dig for a railroad through the mountains, a karst hole reveals an underground cave complex that contains a wealth of archaeological artifacts.
In the following decades, archaeologists dug deeper and deeper, until in 1983 they discovered a 13-meter-long vertical shaft that led to a mysterious bone pit.
At first they assumed that the remains were human.
But after they began examining the bones, the scientists found that they were different from those of modern Homo sapiens. Were these Neanderthal remains? Not exactly. Were these the remains of our inhuman relatives, the primates? Like monkeys or gorillas? No. Unable to link the remains to known species, archaeologists began to wonder if they had found a missing part of human evolution.
Then they dated the bones and found that they were 400,000 years old …
The human-like remains were of an entirely new species, probably the ancestor of the Neanderthals, and were unofficially named Sima Hominins because of the cave in which they were found.
While the scientific community rejoiced at the discovery, they also began to wonder: how did these bones end up at the bottom of a cave, 30 meters underground?
There are several theories. There are also remains of 175 bears in the cave, along with those of foxes and lions. One theory is that Hominins were brought by the bears themselves. But this is not very likely, as humans are not easy prey.
There is evidence to suggest mass murder may have played a role. This is due to signs of blunt force injuries (received as a result of a blow with a blunt object) and injuries received during combat, found on some of the skulls of Hominins.
But even if they were killed, that still can’t explain how they got there. The presence of an ax named “Escalibur” supports the theory that the cave is actually a cemetery. If this is true, it will shift back the date of the first human ritual practices.
Another interesting discovery is that of naturally deformed skulls of young children and the remains of crippled adults. The fact that they lived to such an age with their disability suggests that there was someone in the community to care for them. This is one of the earliest known archaeological evidence of behavior similar to modern.
While there is still debate about how and why the path of these ancient people ended
in such a strange place, there is no doubt that the discovery has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in the history of human evolution.
Photo: An artist’s interpretation of the hominins that lived near the Sima de los Huesos cave in Spain.Credit…Javier Trueba, Madrid Scientific Films
The new Habitat 2.0 simulation platform allows researchers to accelerate the training of their robots in a virtual environment
Facebook has announced a new step in what it calls “artificial intelligence in the body,” a technology expected to make robots perform routine tasks in a mundane environment, such as loading the refrigerator with groceries or taking out the trash. The development method promises fast results and will probably catalyze the development of all types of robotic “servants”.
The social media platform introduced Habitat 2.0 – an upgrade of the Habitat simulation platform, which allows researchers to train their robots faster – using a virtual environment, ZDNet reported. This training covers simulations of situations with extremely accurate reproduction of the smallest details that machines would encounter in an ordinary environment such as a kitchen or living room.
Training robots through a simulated, virtual environment brings a number of benefits in terms of cost and time savings compared to training them in a real-world setting. This could mean seeing real robot assistants in action soon who can help with housework.
Such machines will be able, for example, to help the person by taking items on command – put goods in the refrigerator, load the dishwasher, do the laundry. More sophisticated applications can be expected, such as a robot to guide a visually impaired person when walking outdoors.
In order for machines to perform useful real tasks, it is necessary to provide them with “experience” in hundreds of different real environments – all the way to baby toys scattered on the floor and the folded corners of the carpet.
In this respect, the simulation changes the game. Instead of physically bringing the robot into various apartments, houses and offices for months and years, Facebook scientists believe that a much more pragmatic approach is to place the robot in a virtual environment. This speeds up his learning. For this purpose, they use a set of data Replica – a compilation of 18 3D scans of real situations, ranging from office conference rooms to two-story houses.
Replica is described as an ultra-realistic library that incorporates some of the finest details in any real setting, including mirror reflections and carpet textures. Until recently, this had its limitations: Replica was a static data set, ie. while the robot can move through cyberspace, it cannot interact with any of the objects.
Now, however, with the new version of the Habitat 2.0 framework, this challenge has been overcome. The robots can not only rotate around the virtual environment in the new platform, but can also interact with objects they would find in an ordinary kitchen, dining room or other commonly used space.
To make the virtual environment so realistic, the project involved the work of over 900 hours of work by 3D artists who created 111 unique layouts of living space, including 92 objects. Special attention is paid to the material composition, geometry and texture of the objects, as well as whether they have specific mechanisms, such as the mechanisms for opening and closing doors and refrigerators. Even trifles such as kitchen utensils, books and furniture have been recreated.
Facebook isn’t the only company interested in virtual AI in-body simulations. Earlier this year, Seattle-based Alan Institute for Artificial Intelligence released ManipulaTHOR, an advanced, virtually robotic arm capable of manipulating objects in more than 100 simulated environments.
However, a significant improvement in the Facebook project is the speed of learning through the new virtual environment. This allows orders of magnitude faster training of artificial intelligence. The speed significantly reduces the experimentation time, allowing researchers to complete trials that would normally take several months in just two days.
In turn, the shortened experiment time allows researchers to try new ideas much faster and more often. And this leads to the completion of a much larger number of simulations and paving the way for more significant progress in the field.
The approach is also relevant to another area of robot development – training a machine to perform many different tasks. Typically, robots currently perform “individual” skills such as picking fruit, placing or opening a drawer. However, home assistants must “know” how to perform many tasks and arrange them in a chain without accumulating mistakes.
In addition, Facebook hopes to expand its data set and environments to include more types of spaces, typical of different cultures, layouts and types of objects. To this end, the company opened Habitat for 3D assets to third parties and announced a partnership with the spatial data company Matterport.
For a start, this partnership will mean the inclusion in the platform of a set of 1000 digital “twins” of real objects – bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and corridors of different styles, sizes and complexity.
A SuperBIT optical and ultraviolet composite image of the ‘Pillars of Creation’, trunks of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Serpens. Credit: SuperBIT team, from Romualdez et al. (2018) SPIE 10702
SuperBIT: A Low-Cost Telescope To Rival Hubble – Carried by a Balloon the Size of a Football Stadium
Durham, Toronto and Princeton Universities have teamed up with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to build a new kind of astronomical telescope. SuperBIT flies above 99.5% of the Earth’s atmosphere, carried by a helium balloon the size of a football stadium. The telescope will make its operational debut next April and when deployed should obtain high-resolution images rivaling those of the Hubble Space Telescope. Mohamed Shaaban, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, will describe SuperBIT in his talk tomorrow (Wednesday, July 21, 2021) at the online RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021).
Light from a distant galaxy can travel for billions of years to reach our telescopes. In the final fraction of a second, the light has to pass through the Earth’s swirling, turbulent atmosphere. Our view of the universe becomes blurred. Observatories on the ground are built at high altitude sites to overcome some of this, but until now only placing a telescope in space escapes the effect of the atmosphere.
The Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (or SuperBIT) has a 0.5 meter diameter mirror and is carried to 40km altitude by a helium balloon with a volume of 532,000 cubic meters, about the size of a football stadium.
SuperBIT’s final preparations for launch from Timmins Stratospheric Balloon Base Canada, in September 2019. Credit: Steven Benton, Princeton University
Its final test flight in 2019 demonstrated extraordinary pointing stability, with variation of less than one thirty-six thousandth of a degree for more than an hour. This should enable a telescope to obtain images as sharp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Nobody has done this before, not only because it is exceedingly difficult, but also because balloons could stay aloft for only a few nights: too short for an ambitious experiment. However, NASA recently developed ‘superpressure’ balloons able to contain helium for months. SuperBIT is scheduled to launch on the next long duration balloon, from Wanaka, New Zealand, in April. Carried by seasonally stable winds, it will circumnavigate the Earth several times – imaging the sky all night, then using solar panels to recharge its batteries during the day.
With a budget for construction and operation for the first telescope of US$5 million (£3.62 million), SuperBIT cost almost 1000 times less than a similar satellite. Not only are balloons cheaper than rocket fuel, but the ability to return the payload to Earth and relaunch it means that its design has been tweaked and improved over several test flights. Satellites must work first time, so typically have (phenomenally expensive) redundancy, and decade-old technology that had to be space-qualified by the previous mission. Modern digital cameras improve every year – so the development team bought the cutting-edge camera for SuperBIT’s latest test flight a few weeks before launch. This space telescope will continue to be upgradable, or have new instruments on every future flight.
The SuperBIT balloon in flight, above NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, Texas, in June 2016. Credit: Richard Massey / Durham University
In the longer term, the Hubble Space Telescope will not be repaired again when it inevitably fails. For 20 years after that, ESA/NASA missions will enable imaging only at infrared wavelengths (like the James Webb Space Telescope due to launch this autumn), or a single optical band (like the Euclid observatory due to launch next year).
By then SuperBIT will be the only facility in the world capable of high-resolution multicolor optical and ultraviolet observations. The team already has funding to design an upgrade from SuperBIT’s 0.5 meter aperture telescope to 1.5 meters (the maximum carrying capacity of the balloon is a telescope with a mirror about 2 metres across). Boosting light gathering power tenfold, combined with its wider angle lens and more megapixels, will make this larger instrument even better than Hubble. The cheap cost even makes it possible to have a fleet of space telescopes offering time to astronomers around the world.
“New balloon technology makes visiting space cheap, easy, and environmentally friendly,” said Shaaban. “SuperBIT can be continually reconfigured and upgraded, but its first mission will watch the largest particle accelerators in the Universe: collisions between clusters of galaxies.”
The science goal for the 2022 flight is to measure the properties of dark matter particles. Although dark matter is invisible, astronomers map the way it bends rays of light, a technique known as gravitational lensing. SuperBIT will test whether dark matter slows down during collisions. No particle colliders on Earth can accelerate dark matter, but this is a key signature predicted by theories that might explain recent observations of weirdly behaving muons.
“Cavemen could smash rocks together, to see what they’re made of,” added Prof. Richard Massey of Durham University. “SuperBIT is looking for the crunch of dark matter. It’s the same experiment, you just need a space telescope to see it.”
Meeting: Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting
THE EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS CONTINUE WHAT 60,000 CITIZENS AND MAYORS FROM ALL OVER EUROPE HAVE DEMANDED” – M.CAPPATO (STOPGLOBALWARMING.EU)
The proposal presented by the European Commission with the FIT FOR 55 package represents an important step towards the goal of the StopGlobalWarming.eu campaign, launched two years ago by EUMANS through the activation of the European Citizens’ Initiative: the implementation of a European minimum price on CO2 emissions, gradually destined to increase and to be adopted also at a global level, to stem climate change.
The request made by over 60,000 European citizens, 100 mayors from across the EU (including Rome, Dublin, Florence, Riga, Bruges, Frankfurt) and a long list of supporters from the world of politics, culture, entertainment and civil society, aims to activate the European legislative initiative to fix a price on all emissions, starting from 50 euros per ton up to 100 euros in 5 years. This would be accompanied by a tax on CO2 emissions of non-European imports (carbon border adjustment mechanism) and investments for energy saving, renewable sources and social measures to reduce the tax burden on the lower classes.
The European Commission has today finally activated the legislative initiative, incorporating some of our proposals, in particular by reducing the issue of free emission certificates to sectors such as aviation and extending the application of emission rights (ETS) to new sectors. Further, the proposal involves creating the carbon border adjustment mechanism and introducing some social compensation measures.
We are grateful to the tens of thousands of citizens, activists and personalities who have accompanied us on this journey. Now that the Commission has put its proposal on the table, the StopGlobalWarming.Eu campaign will aim to strengthen and improve the texts when they are considered by the European Parliament, in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe and also to turn it into a solution to be adopted globally in view of COP26 in Milan and Glasgow.
Shifting taxes from labour to CO2 emissions – as recognised by 21 Nobel laureates – is today the most effective tool to govern not only the climate crisis, but also the economic and social crisis caused by the pandemic. The Commission’s proposal is a step in the right direction, but it will now be necessary to proceed with more speed and courage also at the global level.
In this spirit EUMANS and the promoting committee of the European Citizens’ Initiative StopGlobalWarming.eu handed over on 9th July to the staff of European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, the proposal for a European carbon price and the signatures of 60,000 European citizens and 100 mayors in support of the slogan Hey EU Tax CO2 (photo attached) and called for a public meeting on 22nd July at 6 PM CEST (link to register).
info@stopglobalwarming.eu Virginia Fiume: +32493158956
Additional Resources:
Official site https://stopglobalwarming.eu
Supporters list https://stopglobalwarming.eu/supporters
Official registration link on the Commission website https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/initiatives/details/2019/000011_en
Link delivery of signatures to the European Commission on 9 July 2021 https://eumans.eu/carbon-pricing
Carbon Pricing proposal link for the Conference on the Future of Europe https://futureu.europa.eu/processes/GreenDeal/f/1/proposals/1588
Cells undergoing cell death protect their neighbors to maintain tissue integrity.
To enable tissue renewal, human tissues constantly eliminate millions of cells, without jeopardizing tissue integrity, form, and connectivity. The mechanisms involved in maintaining this integrity remain unknown. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS recently revealed a new process that allows eliminated cells to temporarily protect their neighbors from cell death, thereby maintaining tissue integrity. This protective mechanism is vital, and if disrupted can lead to a temporary loss of connectivity. The scientists observed that when the mechanism is deactivated, the simultaneous elimination of several neighboring cells compromises tissue integrity. This lack of integrity could be responsible for chronic inflammation. The results of the research were published in the journal Developmental Cell on June 2, 2021.
Human epithelia are tissues found in several parts of the body (such as the epidermis and internal mucosa). They are composed of layers of contiguous cells that serve as a physical and chemical barrier. This role is constantly being put to the test by both the outside environment and their own renewal. Tissue renewal involves the formation of new cells by cell division and the elimination of dead cells. The mechanisms that regulate the ability of epithelia to maintain their integrity in contexts involving large numbers of eliminated cells remain poorly understood, despite the fact that this situation occurs regularly during embryogenesis or the maintenance of adult tissues. For example, more than ten billion cells can be eliminated every day in an adult intestine. How are these eliminations orchestrated to maintain tissue integrity and connectivity?
Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS set out to identify the mechanisms involved in epithelial integrity and the conditions that can affect epithelial connectivity by using Drosophila (or vinegar flies), an organism studied in the laboratory with a similar epithelial architecture to humans.
Using protein-sensitive fluorescent markers, the research team revealed that when a cell dies, the EGFR-ERK pathway – a cell activation signaling pathway known for its involvement in the regulation of cell survival – is temporarily activated in the neighboring cells. The scientists observed that the activation of the EGFR-ERK pathway protected neighboring cells from cell death for approximately one hour, thereby preventing the simultaneous elimination of a group of cells. “We already knew that this pathway plays a key role in regulating cell survival in epithelial tissue, but we were surprised to observe such protective dynamics between cells,” comments Romain Levayer, Head of the Cell Death and Epithelial Homeostasis Unit at the Institut Pasteur and last author of the study.
The scientists’ research also shows that inhibiting this protective mechanism has a drastic effect on epithelial tissue: cell elimination becomes random and neighboring cells can be eliminated simultaneously, leading to repeated losses of connectivity. The elimination of groups of neighboring cells is never observed in epithelial tissue in normal conditions, when the EGFR-ERK pathway is not deliberately inhibited, even if a large number of cells are eliminated.
By using a new optogenetic tool that can control cell death in time and space and bypass the protective mechanism, the scientists confirmed that epithelial integrity was compromised when neighboring cells were eliminated simultaneously. “Surprisingly, epithelial tissue is highly sensitive to the spatial distribution of eliminated cells. Although it can withstand the elimination of a large number of cells, epithelial integrity is affected if just three neighboring cells are eliminated simultaneously,” explains Léo Valon, a scientist in the Cell Death and Epithelial Homeostasis Unit at the Institut Pasteur and first author of the study.
The scientists’ observations confirm that tissues need to develop mechanisms preventing the elimination of neighboring groups of cells. “These observations are important as they illustrate the incredible self-organizing ability of biological tissues, a property that enables them to withstand stressful conditions. So there is no need for a conductor to orchestrate where and when the cells should die; everything is based on highly local communications between neighboring cells,” adds Romain Levayer.
This process seems to have been conserved during evolution. The same protective mechanism based on local EGFR-ERK activation was discovered independently in human cell lines by the research group led by Olivier Pertz at the University of Bern in Switzerland (the results are published in the same journal2). The results of the other study suggest that the protective mechanism is conserved between species separated by hundreds of millions of years, indicating that it is a relatively universal mechanism.
Future research will reveal whether disruption to this cell death coordination mechanism and repeated loss of connectivity in epithelial tissue could be one of the roots of chronic inflammation, a phenomenon responsible for various diseases that are currently among the leading causes of death worldwide.
Distribution of cell deaths in a Drosophila epithelium:
“Robustness of epithelial sealing is an emerging property of local ERK feedback driven by cell elimination” by Léo Valon, Anđela Davidović, Florence Levillayer, Alexis Villars, Mathilde Chouly, Fabiana Cerqueira-Campos and Romain Levayer, 2 June 2021, Developmental Cell. DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2021.05.006
“Collective ERK/Akt activity waves orchestrate epithelial homeostasis by driving apoptosis-induced survival” by Paolo Armando Gagliardi, Maciej Dobrzyński, Marc-Antoine Jacques, Coralie Dessauges, Pascal Ender, Yannick Blum, Robert M. Hughes, Andrew R. Cohen and Olivier Pertz, 2 June 2021, Developmental Cell. DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2021.05.007
This research project was supported by the European Research Council (ERC), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellowship, the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (FRM) et the Cercle Fondation Schlumberger pour l’Education et la Recherche (FSER), R.Levayer 2019 laureate.
Using datasets from neurosurgical patients and those with brain lesions, investigators mapped lesion locations associated with spiritual and religious belief to a specific human brain circuit.
More than 80 percent of people around the world consider themselves to be religious or spiritual. But research on the neuroscience of spirituality and religiosity has been sparse. Previous studies have used functional neuroimaging, in which an individual undergoes a brain scan while performing a task to see what areas of the brain light up. But these correlative studies have given a spotty and often inconsistent picture of spirituality.
A new study led by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital takes a new approach to mapping spirituality and religiosity and finds that spiritual acceptance can be localized to a specific brain circuit. This brain circuit is centered in the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a brainstem region that has been implicated in numerous functions, including fear conditioning, pain modulation, altruistic behaviors and unconditional love. The team’s findings are published in Biological Psychiatry.
“Our results suggest that spirituality and religiosity are rooted in fundamental, neurobiological dynamics and deeply woven into our neuro-fabric,” said corresponding author Michael Ferguson, PhD, a principal investigator in the Brigham’s Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics. “We were astonished to find that this brain circuit for spirituality is centered in one of the most evolutionarily preserved structures in the brain.”
Scientists have recently discovered a relationship between spirituality and an evolutionarily-ancient brain circuit. Credit: Michael Ferguson
To conduct their study, Ferguson and colleagues used a technique called lesion network mapping that allows investigators to map complex human behaviors to specific brain circuits based on the locations of brain lesions in patients. The team leveraged a previously published dataset that included 88 neurosurgical patients who were undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor. Lesion locations were distributed throughout the brain. Patients completed a survey that included questions about spiritual acceptance before and after surgery. The team validated their results using a second dataset made up of more than 100 patients with lesions caused by penetrating head trauma from combat during the Vietnam War. These participants also completed questionnaires that included questions about religiosity (such as, “Do you consider yourself a religious person? Yes or No?”).
Of the 88 neurosurgical patients, 30 showed a decrease in self-reported spiritual belief before and after neurosurgical brain tumor resection, 29 showed an increase, and 29 showed no change. Using lesion network mapping, the team found that self-reported spirituality mapped to a specific brain circuit centered on the PAG. The circuit included positive nodes and negative nodes — lesions that disrupted these respective nodes either decreased or increased self-reported spiritual beliefs. Results on religiosity from the second dataset aligned with these findings. In addition, in a review of the literature, the researchers found several case reports of patients who became hyper-religious after experiencing brain lesions that affected the negative nodes of the circuit.
Lesion locations associated with other neurological and psychiatric symptoms also intersected with the spirituality circuit. Specifically, lesions causing parkinsonism intersected positive areas of the circuit, as did lesions associated with decreased spirituality. Lesions causing delusions and alien limb syndrome intersected with negative regions, associated with increased spirituality and religiosity.
“It’s important to note that these overlaps may be helpful for understanding shared features and associations, but these results should not be over-interpreted,” said Ferguson. “For example, our results do not imply that religion is a delusion, that historical religious figures suffered from alien limb syndrome, or that Parkinson’s disease arises due to a lack of religious faith. Instead, our results point to the deep roots of spiritual beliefs in a part of our brain that’s been implicated in many important functions.”
The authors note that the datasets they used do not provide rich information about the patient’s upbringing, which can have an influence over spiritual beliefs, and that patients in both datasets were from predominantly Christian cultures. To understand the generalizability of their results, they would need to replicate their study across many backgrounds. The team is also interested in untangling religiosity and spirituality to understand brain circuits that may be driving differences. Additionally, Ferguson would like to pursue clinical and translational applications for the findings, including understanding the role that spirituality and compassion may have in clinical treatment.
“Only recently have medicine and spirituality been fractionated from one another. There seems to be this perennial union between healing and spirituality across cultures and civilizations,” said Ferguson. “I’m interested in the degree to which our understanding of brain circuits could help craft scientifically grounded, clinically-translatable questions about how healing and spirituality can co-inform each other.”
Reference: “A neural circuit for spirituality and religiosity derived from patients with brain lesions” by Michael A. Ferguson, Frederic L.W.V.J. Schaper, Alexander Cohen, Shan Siddiqi, Sarah M. Merrill, Jared A. Nielsen, Jordan Grafman, Cosimo Urgesi, Franco Fabbro and Michael D. Fox, 29 June 2021, Biological Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.06.016
Funding for this work was provided by an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Institutional Research Training Grant (T32MH112510), the Shields Research Grant from the Child Neurology Foundation, the Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Foundation, the Nancy Lurie Marks Foundation, the Mather’s Foundation, the Kaye Family Research Endowment, and the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 MH113929, R01 MH115949, and R01 AG060987).
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