Quote of the Day: “I’m just moving clouds today; tomorrow I’ll try mountains.” – Ashleigh Brilliant
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An international team of physicists from the US, UK, and Italy, have co-authored two papers that finally resolve a problem confounding scientists for nearly half a century.
With new calculations they have demonstrated that black holes have a gravitational field at the quantum level which encodes information about how they were formed. It is the missing key to Stephen Hawking’s paradox when he suggested there was no remnant of their past.
“It turns out that black holes are in fact good children, holding onto the memory of the stars that gave birth to them,” said Xavier Calmet, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sussex.
In the 1960s, eminent physicist John Archibald Wheeler expressed the fact that black holes are lacking any observable features beyond their total mass, spin, and charge with the phrase “black holes have no hair.” This is known as the no-hair theorem.
Having demonstrated that black holes do in fact have this additional characteristic, in their first collaborative paper Professor Stephen Hsu, Calmet, Folkert Kuipers, also of the University of Sussex, and Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna have labelled their discovery as ‘quantum hair from gravity,’ in a nod to Wheeler’s phrase.
“Black holes have long been considered the perfect laboratory to study how to merge Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics,” Calmet explained. “It was generally assumed within the scientific community that resolving this paradox would require a huge paradigm shift in physics, forcing the potential reformulation of either quantum mechanics or general relativity.
“What we found—and I think is particularly exciting—is that this isn’t necessary,” Calmet continued. “Our solution doesn’t require any speculative idea, instead our research demonstrates that the two theories can be used to make consistent calculations for black holes and explain how information is stored without the need for radical new physics.”
Using mathematical methods developed over the past 10 years to perform calculations in quantum gravity, the scientists have shown explicitly that matter that collapses into a black hole leaves an imprint in the gravitational field of the black hole when quantum gravitational corrections are taken into account. This imprint is what the scientists refer to as ‘quantum hair.’
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Specifically, they compared gravitational fields of two stars with the same total mass and radii but different compositions. At the classical level, the two stars have the same gravitational potential, but at the quantum level, the potential depends on the star composition. When the stars collapse into black holes, their gravitational fields preserve the memory of what the stars were made of and lead to the conclusion that black holes do have hair, after all.
“The concept of a causal or event horizon is central to the notion of a black hole,” Hsu explained. “What is behind the horizon cannot, in classical physics, influence the exterior. We showed that there are intricate entanglements between the quantum state of the matter behind the horizon (inside the hole) and the state of gravitons outside. This entanglement makes it possible to encode quantum information about the black hole interior in Hawking radiation that escapes to infinity.”
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It’s in their follow-up paper, published in a separate journal, Physics Letters B, that Calmet and Hsu show that their ‘quantum hair’ resolves Hawking’s Black Hole Information Paradox, which arose from Professor Stephen Hawking’s suggestion in 1976 that, as they evaporate and emit thermal radiation, black holes destroy information about what had formed them. This appeared to violate a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states that any process in physics can be mathematically reversed.
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The scientists’ ‘quantum hair’, however, provides the mechanism by which information is preserved during the collapse of a black hole and as such resolves one of modern science’s most famous quandaries.
“As we know from Einstein, gravitational forces arise from the very geometry of spacetime itself,” Hsu said. “Hence, when we quantize gravity, we expect to discover new things about quantum spacetime. In this case, we learn that the Hawking radiation from a black hole is entangled with the quantum state of spacetime itself!”
This work appears in the journal Physical Review Letters, and in Physics Letters B.
Source: Michigan State University
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The archeological site of Pompeii is employing a pair of robots to help monitor the state of preservation of ancient structures, and to gather information underground where it’s too dangerous or precarious for humans to go.
A robotic pooch built by Boston Dynamics to help archeologists in many ways, SPOT will spend most of the days wandering around Pompeii identifying structural and safety issues.
Pompeii is a delicate site, and in 2013 UNESCO almost placed it under the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger.
Not only are the ruins in need of constant monitoring for various forms of degradation, but over the years it’s also been lousy with graverobbers, or tombaroli who skip the line to visit the site and opt for digging long tunnels underneath Pompeii to unearth artifacts to sell to the global antiquities market.
“Today, thanks to collaboration with high-tech companies and in the wake of these successful experiments, we wish to test the use of these robots in the underground tunnels that were made by illegal excavators and which we are uncovering in the area around Pompeii,” said Pompeii Director General Gabriel Zuchtriegel.
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“Often the safety conditions within the tunnels dug by graverobbers are extremely precarious, as a consequence of which the use of a robot could signify a breakthrough that would allow us to proceed with greater speed and in total safety.”
SPOT’s eyes in the sky are provided by Leica BLK2FLY, a laser-scanning drone that hovers around producing detailed 3D images of the entire 163-acre site, allowing restoration experts an unparalleled view of all the buildings and strata.
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These images can be used to find new tunnels, potential new excavation sites, and areas of danger where existing structures or ground layers may be at risk.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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A dolphin that lives alone among harbor porpoises has been found to change its vocalization in an attempt to pick up the langue of its neighbors.
This has never been confirmed in the wild before, but must be taking place since the dolphin has completely abandoned its normal sounds for the porpoises’ clicks—even when she’s completely alone.
It may be that Kylie, a common dolphin in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland, isn’t trying to talk to the porpoises, but that she identifies as one. After all, she often lives alone in the Firth, and biologists believe she may have been separated from her natal pod during a storm.
One such biologist is David Nairn, working at the research, education, and advocacy program Clyde Porpoises. Nairn towed a hydroacoustic microphone behind his sailing yacht to capture multiple audio recordings between Kylie the dolphin and her porpoise neighbors.
“While harbor porpoises basically produce one type of sound: highly stereotyped high-frequency clicks, common dolphins have a wide repertoire, emitting clicks as well as whistles,” writes Mel Constentino, a bioacoustics expert at the Center for Ultrasonic Engineering at the Univ. of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
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Constentino was able to study Nairn’s recordings and publish a paper on them last year.
Harbor porpoises exclusively talk in narrow-band high frequency clicks at a pitch six-times higher than the highest pitch humans can hear: around 130 kilohertz. Dolphins have a variety of lower frequency sounds, and also whistles. Only the thing is Kylie never whistles, even when alone.
“The results are tantalizing,” dolphin expert Denise Herzing told National Geographic. “What’s really telling is that Kylie doesn’t make any whistles, because dolphins always make whistles and porpoises never do.”
Not all of Kylie’s clicks reach 130 kilohertz: some are much higher and others lower, suggesting that perhaps she’s attempting to communicate. Herzing offers the insight that she is making an attempt to communicate which the porpoises probably recognize.
Almost more striking than the communication is the position Kylie enjoys in the porpoise circles. Some of the females bring their calves to interact and meet Kylie, and the young ones even swim with her “in echelon,” a marine mammal term for the position just behind the pectoral fin, and the equivalent of being carried.
Furthermore, Nairn says some of the males have tried to mount her, adding in the most Scottish of dialogue “I would even say she courts, aye.” GNN reported earlier this year on an orphan narwhal that has been adopted by a pod of beluga whales that swim regularly down the St. Lawrence River in Canada.
In the same way, it’s been proven a narwhal-whale hybrid has existed before. The anatomical structure of a porpoise and dolphin make a “dorpoise” theoretically plausible, but it’s never been confirmed.
From all this we can deduce that cetaceans, the family which include all these marine mega-mammals, is a very loving one.
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Individuals in the USA showed greater financial generosity when under threat from COVID-19, according to new research.
The researchers used the world’s largest tracker of financial charity from the years leading up to and then proceeding into the pandemic, while also conducting controlled experimental games. Both inquiries found that the pandemic made Americans more generous with their capital.
Lead author Ariel Fridman and colleagues examined the relationship between the presence of threat from COVID-19 and generosity, first using a dataset, provided by Charity Navigator, the world’s largest independent charity evaluator. This first dataset consisted of actual charitable-giving data spanning July 2016 through December 2020, and contained various information on 696,942 individual donations.
This dataset found that 78% of U.S. counties with a COVID-19 threat increased the total amount donated in March 2020 compared to March 2019. Even more encouraging, the charitable amounts increased the most when the degree of danger from the virus was highest: 32.9% under high threat vs 28.5% under medium threat compared to no threat.
The second data set of 1,000 people came from a controlled experiment using the “dictator game” in which one player (the dictator) receives $10 and makes a unilateral decision on how to divide it between themselves and a stranger.
Normally, across the many uses of this game in social science research, the dictator almost always gives a portion of it to the stranger, but evaluated over the same timespan as the Charity Navigator dataset, Fridman et al. found that dictators were almost 10% more generous with their $10 stake after COVID-19 arrived in the individual’s country.
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Like in the first finding, the participants who got to be the dictator gave away the most money if they lived in an area with a high threat level compared to when the threat level was low.
Perhaps even more encouraging, amounts given had nothing statistically to do with the age, or political affiliation of the people involved. Furthermore, the authors note it was the first-ever extended duration use of the dictator game to monitor charitable habits.
The findings are consistent with those of the recently-made Most Thoughtful Societies Index. GNN reported that this index found that the USA ranked highest in the world for compassion in society, and internationally-bound private charitable contributions.
“The increased generosity observed across both datasets is particularly intriguing in light of
expert predictions, based on historical data, that the economic downturn caused by the pandemic would lead to reduced giving, and the fact that a record-high majority of Americans reported a worsening financial situation during the same period,” the authors say.
“Prior work suggests that when people experience such financial scarcity, they may
engage in extreme, even immoral, behaviors to acquire financial wealth. Yet analyses of both our datasets clearly shows that in this particular circumstance, individuals were, on average, more willing to part with their financial resources.”
“Amidst the uncertainty, fear, and tragedy of the pandemic, we find a silver lining: people became more financially generous toward others.”
This research has been published in Nature.
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Quote of the Day: “Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.” – Luther Burbank
Photo by: Bonnie Kittle
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Methanotrophic bacteria consume 30 million metric tons of methane per year and have captivated researchers for their natural ability to convert the potent greenhouse gas into usable fuel. Yet we know very little about how the complex reaction occurs, limiting our ability to use the double benefit to our advantage.
By studying the enzyme the bacteria use to catalyze the reaction, a team at Northwestern University now has discovered key structures that may drive the process.
Their findings ultimately could lead to the development of human-made biological catalysts that convert methane gas into methanol.
“Methane has a very strong bond, so it’s pretty remarkable there’s an enzyme that can do this,” said Northwestern’s Amy Rosenzweig, senior author of the paper. “If we don’t understand exactly how the enzyme performs this difficult chemistry, we’re not going to be able to engineer and optimize it for biotechnological applications.”
The enzyme, called particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO), is a particularly difficult protein to study because it’s embedded in the cell membrane of the bacteria.
Typically, when researchers study these methanotrophic bacteria, they use a harsh process in which the proteins are ripped out of the cell membranes using a detergent solution. While this procedure effectively isolates the enzyme, it also kills all enzyme activity and limits how much information researchers can gather—like monitoring a heart without the heartbeat.
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“By recreating the enzyme’s native environment within the nanodisc, we were able to restore activity to the enzyme,” Koo said. “Then, we were able to use structural techniques to determine at the atomic level how the lipid bilayer restored activity. In doing so, we discovered the full arrangement of the copper site in the enzyme where methane oxidation likely occurs.”
The researchers used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), a technique well-suited to membrane proteins because the lipid membrane environment is undisturbed throughout the experiment. This allowed them to visualize the atomic structure of the active enzyme at high resolution for the first time.
“As a consequence of the recent ‘resolution revolution’ in cryo-EM, we were able to see the structure in atomic detail,” Rosenzweig said. “What we saw completely changed the way we were thinking about the active site of this enzyme.”
Rosenzweig said that the cryo-EM structures provide a new starting point to answer the questions that continue to pile on. How does methane travel to the enzyme active site? Or methanol travel out of the enzyme? How does the copper in the active site do the chemical reaction? Next, the team plans to study the enzyme directly within the bacterial cell using a forefront imaging technique called cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET).
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If successful, the researchers will be able to see exactly how the enzyme is arranged in the cell membrane, determine how it operates in its truly native environment and learn whether other proteins around the enzyme interact with it. These discoveries would provide a key missing link to engineers.
“If you want to optimize the enzyme to plug it into biomanufacturing pathways or to consume pollutants other than methane, then we need to know what it looks like in its native environment and where the methane binds,” Rosenzweig said. “You could use bacteria with an engineered enzyme to harvest methane from fracking sites or to clean up oil spills.”
This research has been published in the in the journal Science.
Source: Northwestern University
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Meet the man with Britain’s lowest fuel bill as he drives the world’s smallest car, which costs just £7 ($9) to fill up.
Alex Orchin is seen buzzing round his village on his daily chores in his quirky blue Peel P50.
The 5ft 11ins (180 meter) car enthusiast drives around in the tiny motor, posting letters and filling up with fuel.
The car is just 134cm (53 inch) long, 98cm (39 inch) wide, and 100cm (39 inch) high and has a five-litre (1.3 gallon) gas tank.
Eccentric Alex, who’s 31 years old, is an avid motoring collector who loves driving around in the tiny three-wheeler.
He says he became obsessed with the cars since watching Jeremy Clarkson drive one on Top Gear.
Last year he drove the length of the UK in the car, which has a top speed of just 23mph (37/kmh). Latest pictures show him running errands in the tiny motor.
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Alex said, “I have always had an interest in old, vintage, and unusual cars since I was a kid. No-one in my family was into it. It was a bit of a random obsession I used to be a chauffer for vintage cars and have had a 1914 Model T and a 1968 Morris Minor too.
“I got fixated on this idea of having a P50 just because it was so tiny, but when I saw an original was £100,000 ($131,000) it kind of killed it off.
“But about four years ago I bought one of the newer ones from the Isle of Man, so I’m only the second owner. The car always gets attention—it is quite staggering because to me it’s just a tiny car.’
“It’s much smaller than you think it is—everyone says that when they see the car in person. I can fit a shopping bag down the left of the car by the handbrake, but nothing else”.
His car, a P50, was first made on the Isle of Man in the 1960s and in 2010 the model was named the smallest production car ever built in the book of Guinness World Records.
The vehicle was built in 2017, but is based on the original design from the first production models in the 1960s.
The mini-motor allows Alex comfortable journeys to and from his home in Wivelsfield in Sussex.
Alex started his 1,488-mile (2,395-km) journey from John O’Groats on November 13 and arrived in Land’s End on December 4.
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He was just in time for his three-week goal, and raised over £11,000 ($14,464) for Children in Need.
Alex said, “I’ve owned a lot of cars and none of them get as much attention as this one. Normally if I pull up in a Morris Minor it is car people and enthusiasts that want to come and talk with me. But my Peel P50 attracts absolutely everyone, including people who aren’t interested in cars.
“They think it’s so hilarious and children love it! The under-ten-year-olds especially go mad for it.”
You can visit Alex’s Youtube channel Forward to The Past here to see more on his tiny car obsession.
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Reprinted with permission from World At Large, a news website of nature, science, health, politics, and travel.
To create his fictional world of Middle-Earth, English author J.R.R. Tolkien used nearly every creative tool at man’s disposal, be it calligraphy, cartography, prose, poetry, or painting.
To grease the gears of his mind so as to churn out the endless layering and details typical of the novels and appendixes, Tolkien often turned to ink and graphite, and many of his sketches and paintings are available to view on the recently-updated section on the Tolkien Estate website.
Enduring audience members can also enjoy images and paintings done outside of his work on Middle-Earth, as well as audio clips and other documents related to his personal life and efforts as a mapmaker, calligrapher, and artist.
Debuting on February the 26th, the date at the beginning of the second book of The Lord of the Rings at which the Fellowship of the Ring was broken after the death of Boromir, the new website also includes paintings done for his four children, for whom the stories which became The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were first made.
Further illustrations were included from his work on The Silmarillion, which very much like the book, take on a much-deeper element of myth, with wild-colors blending with scenery that melds into image in the background as if from a half-remembered dream.
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The new audio section is also particular striking. “Tolkien was first introduced to a tape-recorder by his friend George Sayer in 1952,” the estate details. “He was so impressed with the sound quality that he sat down and read out passages from his manuscript of The Lord of the Rings”.
Not only because he created an entire universe (albeit with extensive help from other mythologies) but because he created perhaps the most beloved and revered such universe in literary history.
Tolkien became a man in perhaps the worst single moment in history to do so, around 1914, at the dawning of World War I.
“In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly,” he wrote in a letter to his son Christopher later in life. “It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage”.
He was a junior officer at the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest of the war. Catching trench fever, he was shipped back to England just days before nearly every young man in his battalion was killed during an attack. Talk about a Hobbit’s luck.
He wrote The Hobbit in the 1930s, after which it became so tremendously popular that public urging convinced him to write more about the quaint little people who live under the hills.
“In spite of the darkness of the next five years [World War II] I found that the story could not now wholly be abandoned and I plodded on, mostly by night,” he recalled in a foreword to the Fellowship of the Ring, wherein he also details how more and more as he continued advancing the story, he felt more and more strongly that he needed to retro-march, towards what he called “the Elder Days,” referring to the tales which would become The Silmarillion.
Tolkien created parts of the Middle-Earth universe in different batches in different parts of his life, often jumping around. Paintings, maps, and calligraphy from the languages he invented were sometimes made years before or after his novels’ publication, and other times they were done alongside the words which the book contains to describe what he was illustrating.
The maps are also typical of the man. Growing outward from theaters of action in the books, sometimes to such richness as they had to be joined to other sheets of cartography paper with brown packing tape.
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“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade without further introduction,” — Mark Twain.
How much can a cat mean to a man? As it turns out, nearly everything, in the case of David Giovanni, a homeless immigrant and “cat daddy” living on the streets of New York City.
His struggle to hold onto his cat Lucky during the COVID-19 pandemic is the heart-wrenching subject of a new film Cat Daddies that explores modern masculinity through the lives of eight unique male cat owners.
The idea arose after director Mye Hoang noticed a softening of her husband after the pair adopted their first cat: a change deep down that was hard to understand. Taking to Instagram, she found a number of men hopelessly devoted to doting on their furry friends, and wanted to find out more; to document the changing conditions of masculinity in society.
But as COVID threw the country into disarray, and Giovanni went from being homeless, to homeless during a pandemic, to homeless in a pandemic with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, the film took on a more heartfelt direction and focused on the inestimable value of the companionship of the cat in our lives.
An actor/influencer, a truck driver, a school teacher, a firefighter, a software engineer, a police officer—these men lead very different lives and can be found all over the country.
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Yet they’re united in the love for their cats. An experienced directing/producing team captured how each and every cat proved the catalyst for something special and unique in their companions’ lives, from adventure, to comfort, to a feeling of purpose.
“It’s about being ok for men to show their compassionate and vulnerable side and how that should all be part of the definition of strength and leadership,” said Hoang in an interview. “Cats promote caring for others, both animal and man. Now during a pandemic, we know very plainly how pets contribute to our mental health and wellbeing. In the end, this is a film about taking care of each other.”
“This little creature saved my life,” says Giovanni in the film, having gone through unimaginable difficulty alongside a stray cat he adopted, and which also adopted him.
Cat Daddies has picked up five major awards on the independent film circuit, and made its premier in New York on March 30th.
Interested movie-goers can write their cinemas and alert them to Cat Daddies to try and get them to have a screening, or they can watch through an online screening that will raise money for cat shelters.
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The first online screening will premier on April 9th at 7:30PM EST (4:30pm PDT), with all proceeds from the $20 tickets going to Flatbush Cats, a rescue shelter operated by one of the cat dads in the film.
The second will be in Long Beach CA at the Art Theater on April 16th. Proceeds will go to Long Beach’s first and only kitten nursery: Little Lion Foundation. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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Quote of the Day: “Those who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening their own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.” – Thomas Merton [shortened in the version above for space] (#StandingWithChris)
Photo by: William Farlow
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
In the future, you may have a squid to thank for your coffee staying hot on a cold day. Drawing inspiration from cephalopod skin, engineers at the University of California, Irvine invented an adaptive composite material that can insulate beverage cups, restaurant to-go bags, parcel boxes and even shipping containers.
The innovation is an infrared-reflecting metallized polymer film developed in the laboratory of Alon Gorodetsky, UCI associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.
Gorodetsky and his team members describe a large-area composite material that regulates heat by means of reconfigurable metal structures that can reversibly separate from one another and come back together under different strain levels.
The invention will go easy on the environment due its environmental sustainability, said lead author Mohsin Badshah, a former UCI postdoctoral scholar in chemical and biomolecular engineering. “The composite material can be recycled in bulk by removing the copper with vinegar and using established commercial methods to repurpose the remaining stretchable polymer,” he said.
“The metal islands in our composite material are next to one another when the material is relaxed and become separated when the material is stretched, allowing for control of the reflection and transmission of infrared light or heat dissipation,” said Gorodetsky. “The mechanism is analogous to chromatophore expansion and contraction in a squid’s skin, which alters the reflection and transmission of visible light.”
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Chromatophore size changes help squids communicate and camouflage their bodies to evade predators and hide from prey. Gorodetsky said by mimicking this approach, his team has enabled “tunable thermoregulation” in their material, which can lead to improved energy efficiency and protect sensitive fingers from hot surfaces.
A key breakthrough of this project was the UCI researchers’ development of a cost-effective production method of their composite material at application-relevant quantities. The copper and rubber raw materials start at about a dime per square meter with the costs reduced further by economies of scale, according to the paper. The team’s fabrication technique involves depositing a copper film onto a reusable substrate such as aluminum foil and then spraying multiple polymer layers onto the copper film, all of which can be done in nearly any batch size imaginable.
“The combined manufacturing strategy that we have now perfected in our lab is a real game changer,” said Gorodetsky. “We have been working with cephalopod-inspired adaptive materials and systems for years but previously have only been able to fabricate them over relatively small areas. Now there is finally a path to making this stuff roll-by-roll in a factory.”
The developed strategy and economies of scale should make it possible for the composite material to be used in a wide range of applications, from the coffee cup cozy up to tents, or in any container in which tunable temperature regulation is desired.
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The team conducted universally relatable coffee cup testing in their laboratory on the UCI campus, where they proved they could control the cooling of the coffee. They were able to accurately and theoretically predict and then experimentally confirm the changes in temperature for the beverage-filled cups. The team was also able to achieve a 20-fold modulation of infrared radiation transmittance and a 30-fold regulation of thermal fluxes under standardized testing conditions. The stable material even worked well for high levels of mechanical deformation and after repeated mechanical cycling.
“There is an enormous array of applications for this material,” said Gorodetsky. “Think of all the perishable goods that have been delivered to people’s homes during the pandemic. Any package that Amazon or another company sends that needs to be temperature-controlled can use a lining made from our squid-inspired adaptive composite material. Now that we can make large sheets of it at a time, we have something that can benefit many aspects of our lives.”
This research is published in Nature Sustainability.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
Source: UCI
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A legitimate quality-of-life enhancing treatment is now available for a class of patient for whom treatments come few and far between.
These patients are sometimes called “butterfly children,” as they are born with a disease that prevents their skin cells from coding certain proteins, resulting in a skin organ so delicate that the slightest touch can cause it to rupture and blister for months.
A DNA-coding skin cell represents a genetic therapy option for those suffering from this disease, known scientifically as epidermolysis bullosa (EB). When a few drops were applied onto a wound, which under normal conditions of EB might never heal, a trial in nine human patients found substantial improvement.
The gel is known as B-VEC, and consists of the non-replicating shell of a Herpes Type 1 virus that’s been engineered to carry the genetic codes to make a protein called collagen VII. The lack of a strong fibral anchor—or component for anchoring different layers of the skin and internal organs together—resulting from an inability to produce collagen VII is the primary mutation that causes EB.
In phase 1 and 2 trials on mice and then on humans, goals for wound surface area reduction, time to wound closure, and duration of wound closure post treatment following B-VEC application were all met, and the parent pharmaceutical company, Krystal Biotech, is now seeking to jump Phase III trials since efficacy was already demonstrated. They are seeking regulatory approval directly to ensure the gel can be available for suffering children as soon as possible.
No side effects in the trials were reported. Herpes is extremely difficult to detect, which makes it an excellent vector for gene therapies, as host immune responses are very rarely triggered. While it seems strange to heap praise on Herpes, it’s not only difficult to detect, but one of the only genetic therapy deliver vectors that can hold the large biological computer file that codes for collagen VII.
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The gel had to be spread by a bandage to prevent further skin damage, and the patients were treated every 1 to 3 days, for 25 days. In all but one patient, the wounds were healed 3 months after treatment, and didn’t reopen. Compared to placebo, the wounds healed better and stayed shut longer.
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“It’s not a permanent cure, but it’s a way to really keep on top of the wounds,” study lead and Director of the Blistering Disease Clinic at Stanford Health Care Dr. Peter Marinkovich said in a statement. “It significantly improves patients’ quality of life.”
Since the phase II results were published, Markinovich also revealed the positive results of second, larger trial of the gel at the 2022 American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in Boston, Mass.
Since EB is not limited to the skin, but also affects internal organs subject to friction against others like the esophagus, corneas, and anus, Markinovich is launching a trial to test an endogenous form of the gel to treat these injuries while Krystal seeks approval from the FDA.
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A ten-year-old boy who found an 800-year-old medieval priory seal matrix with his metal detector has raked in a small fortune after it sold for £4,000 ($5,239).
George Henderson was with his dad Paul when he stumbled across the ancient oval seal during a charity dig last November.
The pair had been scouring a field in Woodbridge, Suffolk for just ten minutes when George uncovered the 13th-century copper alloy artefact five inches below the ground.
It displays the Virgin Mary and Child with a Latin seal which translates to Seal of the Priory and Convent of Butley, of Adam, Canon Regular.
The relic, which was used by priests centuries ago, went under the hammer at Hansons Auctioneers in Etwall in Derbyshire on Thursday where it sold to a private UK buyer.
The proceeds will now be shared between lucky finder George and the farmer whose land the treasure was discovered on.
Dad Paul, a windscreen fitter from Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire said his son’s discovery had beaten anything he had found during his years of metal detecting.
He added, “The seal’s historical importance rather than value is what’s important to both me and George. It’s the most exciting find either of us have ever made.
“George has been metal detecting on and off since the age of five but he doesn’t always come out with me. He’s found one or two interesting things over the years.
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“He knew the seal was special when he dug it up but he didn’t know what it was. I did. I knew it was a medieval seal matrix.
“What I didn’t know then was how unusual or valuable it was.
“George was laidback about it at first but, as the day wore on, people kept asking to look at it and he got more excited.
“He seems to be better at making important finds than me. Having said that, there have been plenty of times when he’s come back with nothing.
“I always tell him to keep at it, and he got his reward.”
George, whose find was designated as of ‘Regional Importance’ on the PAS (Portable Antiquities Scheme) database, said, “I’m happy I discovered it.”
The area where it was found is connected to Butley Priory, a religious house for canons founded near Woodbridge in 1171. Adam served as its prior from 1219 to 1235.
The priory remained in use until 1538 as a religious base for priests and was a site dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Madonna figure on the seal would have been pressed into wax to seal official correspondence.
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Depictions of the Madonna and Child were popular at the time ,as the Virgin Mary was the subject of great devotion.
Adam Staples, a consultant valuer at Hansons Auctioneers, said, “This is an exceptional find for any metal detectorist to make but to discover something like this when you’re only ten is astounding.
“George must have the Midas touch. I hope it will inspire him to keep metal detecting and unearthing more history.”
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Oaks with lives stretching back to the founding of modern England are being utilized to create “super forests” that support a new quality-over-quantity reforestation strategy.
The trees, the oldest of which is thought to be 1,046 years old, contain the genetic lineage of multiple shifts in Earth’s climate, and untold episodes of disease, pests, fires, and more, and are thought to be able to pass that information on through their acorns.
At Blenheim Palace and Estates in Oxfordshire, nature has a special role in even a developed area of the country like the southeast. GNN reported last year that a bee expert found 800,000 native honey bees spread across dozens of hives from a species once thought extinct, all sheltering in trees on Blenheim’s measly 400 acres.
Even more remarkably, those 400 acres, which are the subject of a major rewilding project, also contain the largest concentration of ancient oak trees anywhere in Europe. Blenheim recently received a grant from the British government of £1 million ($1.3 milllion) to plant 270,000 trees across nine separate locations totaling around 250 acres near the rivers Dorn and Glyme—part of Boris Johnson’s plan to increase the environmental resiliency and richness of rural areas by paying landowners to plant and maintain forests with public access.
Blenheim Palace has a chief forester, and a tree nursery for bringing up the descendants of its timeless residents. 2020 was a “mast year” for acorns, the term for a bumper crop in forestry science.
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The seedlings are currently turning into saplings, and the slow-growing hardwoods will form the anchors of a new method of reforestation, dubbed by the media as “super forests.”
After it became clear in the early 2000s that there was a potential to mitigate humanity’s impact on CO2 emissions by planting trees, enormous projects were launched all over the world. However many of them were short-sighted, and involved essentially corn or rice mono-cropping, only with trees instead.
CHECK OUT: Ancient Trees Have Incredible Lifespans That Also Help Keep The Surrounding Forests Alive
Now, a new concept of reforestation involves combining species of deciduous and coniferous trees—together with native ground cover and shrubs—to create a diverse mosaic of native vegetation that looks far more like the forests that covered England when the Blenheim oaks were yet young.
The Blenheim project along the Dorn and Glyme will involve no fewer than 27 tree species. Conifers will soak up carbon more rapidly, while a mixture of hard and soft broad-leaf trees will host hundreds of species of insects, birds, and fungi. Parkland trees will line the borders of the forests and provide valuable timber to help the forests pay their own way.
“If we can say, look—there is a model that works both financially and from an asset value perspective, then this hopefully will encourage others to follow at scale,” Forester Nathan Fall, who works on the project, told the BBC.
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The Blenheim oak saplings will become the most important part of the puzzle. They will provide the forests with teachers and knowledge, for contained within the genetic material of ancient trees, it was recently shown, lies the information whole forests need to stay resilient and long-lived, and to overcome climatic shifts and disease.
The number of these ancient trees in a forest biome tends to correlate with the resilience of that ecosystem, and the fewer there are, the more often the forest suffers massive damage from environmental effects. Blenheim hopes their oak saplings can grow to fill this role in the super forests.
They will be planted in at the entrances and in groves to create nurseries and classrooms where they can grow to support each other, and the forest at large.
Currently, some of the oaks are already in the ground, alongside sycamores, lime, and hornbeams, but the forest will need several decades before it’s really rocking and rolling.
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Quote of the Day: “Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.” – G.K. Chesterton (#StandUpWithChris)
Photo by: JoshSpoon, CC license
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The security guards at the Baltimore Museum of Art get asked a lot in an average day: “Where’s the bathroom,” “Where’s the Impressionist wing,” or “How do I get back to the lobby?” are all standard.
So when their bosses asked them, “Which pieces of art were the most meaningful to you?” It was a change of pace for the 47-strong security team, but one they took to like a gaggle of artistic geese to water.
Guarding the Art is a special exhibition at the BMA curated entirely by the security detail. 17 members were each asked to select three pieces that they wanted to exhibit, and over the early days of the pandemic they were tutored on how to curate, set lighting, and write placards.
Guarding the Art was first imagined back in February 2020 when BMA trustee Amy Elias and Chief Curator Asma Naeem were talking over dinner about how to get the security guards more involved, and how to get different perspectives into the museum.
What they found is that the team had more than enough love, curiosity, and knowledge of the art profession to curate an entire exhibition.
With 95,000 pieces in the museum’s collection, and only 1,800 on display at any given period, it’s no wonder the men and women who spend all day looking at them did an excellent job.
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“Our guards are always looking at the art and listening to people as they talk about the art,” Naeem told the Washington Post. “People enjoy talking to them, and their education is really a ‘hands on’ gallery experience. We wanted to see things from their perspective.”
“There are certainly pieces of art that haven’t been seen in decades,” she said, noting the 95,000-piece collection. “That’s part of what makes all of this so fascinating.”
Among guard Alex Lei’s three chosen works was Winslow Homer’s Waiting for an Answer (1872). He stated of the painting, “it’s strangely reflective of the experience of being a guard — a job mostly made up of waiting.”
“I’ve always thought that these are the best moments to create conversation among visitors, where we can have a commonality already,” said another guard, Rob Kempton, who selected two abstract paintings, Interior ‘The Creek’ and Evening Glow, as they were paintings he often felt drawn to.
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“I hope that visitors come away from this with a new experience, and that they’re sort of challenged and inspired by seeing such disparate objects in conversation with each other,” he told CNN.
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“It’s a simple idea,” Naeem said of the exhibition. “But it’s asking some very profound questions about who is art for? Who are museums for? Who gets to talk about the arts? Who holds the knowledge? Are there other kinds of people who have knowledge about art that we want to be hearing from? And the answer is: Yes, absolutely.”
The exhibit runs from now until mid-July.
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In a Da Vinci Code-esque moment of discovery, archaeologists have uncovered multiple stone tombs and a lead sarcophagus under the floor of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
They are described as a “remarkable scientific discovery,” and consist of several slot tombs and a “completely preserved, human-shaped sarcophagus made of lead,” which the excavators believe still contains human remains.
Suspected as originating in the 13th century, the find was uncovered under the floor during preparatory work to reconstruct the cathedral’s spire above where the transept crosses the nave, which was destroyed by the 2019 fire.
Lead is so much part of the story of the cathedral, and so it’s perhaps unsurprising to find a sarcophagus made of the stuff—restorers have been spending years cleaning the toxic metal off of stones and timbers onto which the heavy metal melted during the fire.
The sarcophagus had buckled under the weight of debris falling from the ceiling, but it was still intact, and researchers used a mini endoscopic camera to peer inside it.
#Maddow
— Firecaptain (@Firecaptain16) April 1, 2022
Science break.
Notre-Dame Repair Crews Discover an Ancient Graveyard With a Sealed Lead Sarcophagus. Items included painted sculptures, including the bust of an unidentified bearded man, carved hands and vegetables, and could date to as early as the 13th century. pic.twitter.com/gdWy85kYi8
“You can glimpse pieces of fabric, hair and a pillow of leaves on top of the head, a well known phenomenon when religious leaders were buried,” said Christophe Besnier, the lead archaeologist.
France’s culture ministry describes the finding as being “of remarkable scientific quality."#AncientCivilizations #Archaeology #Death #France #NotreDame https://t.co/lyCG30hmMU
— ForeverScholars (@ForeverScholars) March 28, 2022
“The fact that these plant elements are still inside means the body is in a very good state of conservation.”
Along with the tombs and sarcophagus, remains of painted sculptures were also found, including a nearly undamaged bearded male head, some hands with painted sleeves, and sculpted vegetables. A 19th-century hot water heating system was also found.
The discovery offers excellent insight into funerary practices in France during the Middle Ages, and it’s another reminder of the value of that magnificent building, currently on course to be reopened in 2024.
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Forget Harry Potter’s cloak, a British company claim to have made a real-life invisibility shield.
London-based Invisibility Shield Co. say the fully functional shields can hide a whole person.
The firm explains the innovation uses a precision engineered lens array to direct much of the light reflected from the subject away from the observer. This sends it sideways across the face of the shield to the left and right.
From the observer’s perspective, background light is effectively smeared horizontally across the front face of the shield, over the area where the subject would ordinarily be seen.
Invisibility Shield Co. say, “The shields perform at their absolute best against uniform backgrounds such as foliage, grass, rendered walls, sand, sky, and asphalt.
“Backgrounds with defined horizontal lines work really well too and these can be natural features such as the horizon or man-made features like walls, rails, or painted lines.”
The makers are offering a small shield (310 x 210mm) to hide ‘everyday items for £49 ($64).
There is also a full-size 950 x 650mm version that can hide a person. Estimated delivery is expected by December.
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Currently, 25 shields have been developed, and the team is funding on Kickstarter to ramp-up capacity to develop more.
They explain, “Disappointed by the lack of progress and the continued unavailability of actual working invisibility shields, we decided to step things up and go all in on our project to create one.
“We went through countless iterations, tested a lot of materials, and experienced a lot of failure.
“But along the way, we managed to develop a reliable, scalable, and efficient manufacturing process and created what we believe are the best invisibility shields ever made.”
(WATCH the USA Today video for this story below.)
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Drinking coffee—particularly two to three cups a day—is not only associated with a lower risk of heart disease and dangerous heart rhythms but also with living longer, according to new studies.
These trends held true for both people with and without cardiovascular disease. Researchers said the analyses—the largest to look at coffee’s potential role in heart disease and death—provide reassurance that coffee isn’t tied to new or worsening heart disease and may actually be heart protective.
“Because coffee can quicken heart rate, some people worry that drinking it could trigger or worsen certain heart issues. This is where general medical advice to stop drinking coffee may come from. But our data suggest that daily coffee intake shouldn’t be discouraged, but rather included as a part of a healthy diet for people with and without heart disease,” said Peter M. Kistler, MD, professor and head of arrhythmia research at the Alfred Hospital and Baker Heart Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and the study’s senior author.
“We found coffee drinking had either a neutral effect—meaning that it did no harm—or was associated with benefits to heart health.”
Kistler and his team used data from the UK BioBank, a large-scale prospective database with health information from over half a million people who were followed for at least 10 years.
Researchers looked at varying levels of coffee consumption ranging from up to a cup to more than six cups a day and the relationship with heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias); cardiovascular disease, including coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke; and total and heart-related deaths among people both with and without cardiovascular disease. Patients were grouped by how much coffee they reported drinking each day: 0, <1, 1, 2-3, 4-5, >5 cups/day.
Coffee drinking was assessed from questionnaires completed upon entry into the registry. Overall, they either found no effect or, in many cases, significant reductions in cardiovascular risk after controlling for exercise, alcohol, smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure that could also play a role in heart health and longevity.
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For the first study, researchers examined data from 382,535 individuals without known heart disease to see whether coffee drinking played a role in the development of heart disease or stroke during the 10 years of follow up. Participants’ average age was 57 years and half were women.
In general, having two to three cups of coffee a day was associated with the greatest benefit, translating to a 10%-15% lower risk of developing coronary heart disease, heart failure, a heart rhythm problem, or dying for any reason. The risk of stroke or heart-related death was lowest among people who drank one cup of coffee a day.
Researchers did observe a U-shaped relationship with coffee intake and new heart rhythm problems. The maximum benefit was seen among people drinking two to three cups of coffee a day with less benefit seen among those drinking more or less.
The second study included 34,279 individuals who had some form of cardiovascular disease at baseline. Coffee intake at two to three cups a day was associated with lower odds of dying compared with having no coffee. Importantly, consuming any amount of coffee was not associated with a higher risk of heart rhythm problems, including atrial fibrillation (AFib) or atrial flutter, which Kistler said is often what clinicians are concerned about.
Of the 24,111 people included in the analysis who had an arrhythmia at baseline, drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death. For example, people with AFib who drank one cup of coffee a day were nearly 20% less likely to die than non-coffee drinkers.
“Clinicians generally have some apprehension about people with known cardiovascular disease or arrhythmias continuing to drink coffee, so they often err on the side of caution and advise them to stop drinking it altogether due to fears that it may trigger dangerous heart rhythms,” Kistler said. “But our study shows that regular coffee intake is safe and could be part of a healthy diet for people with heart disease.”
Although two to three cups of coffee a day seemed to be the most favorable overall, Kistler said that people shouldn’t increase their coffee intake, particularly if it makes them feel anxious or uncomfortable.
“There is a whole range of mechanisms through which coffee may reduce mortality and have these favorable effects on cardiovascular disease,” he said. “Coffee drinkers should feel reassured that they can continue to enjoy coffee even if they have heart disease. Coffee is the most common cognitive enhancer—it wakes you up, makes you mentally sharper and it’s a very important component of many people’s daily lives.”
So how might coffee beans benefit the heart? People often equate coffee with caffeine, but coffee beans actually have over 100 biologically active compounds. These substances can help reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, boost metabolism, inhibit the gut’s absorption of fat and block receptors known to be involved with abnormal heart rhythms, Kistler said.
In a third study, researchers looked at whether there were any differences in the relationship between coffee and cardiovascular disease depending on whether someone drank instant or ground coffee or caffeinated or decaf. They found, once again, two to three cups a day to be associated with the lowest risk of arrhythmias, blockages in the heart’s arteries, stroke or heart failure regardless of whether they had ground or instant coffee. Lower rates of death were seen across all coffee types. Decaf coffee did not have favorable effects against incident arrhythmia but did reduce cardiovascular disease, with the exception of heart failure. Kistler said the findings suggest caffeinated coffee is preferable across the board, and there are no cardiovascular benefits to choosing decaf over caffeinated coffees.
There are several important limitations to these studies. Researchers were unable to control for dietary factors that may play a role in cardiovascular disease, nor were they able to adjust for any creamers, milk or sugar consumed. Participants were predominantly white, so additional studies are needed to determine whether these findings extend to other populations.
Finally, coffee intake was based on self-report via a questionnaire fielded at study entry. This should be considered when interpreting the study findings, though Kistler noted that research suggests people’s dietary habits don’t change much in adulthood or over time. Kistler said the results should be validated in randomized trials.
Source: American College of Cardiology
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