South Australia spent the last week of December generating 100% of its power demand from wind and solar.
This isn’t unheard of for the sunny southern state in the Land Down Under, but rather the first time it’s happened for so many days in a row.
Wind turbines supplied 64.4% of power, while rooftop PV panel generation provided 29.5%, and utility-scale solar averaged 6.2%.
The state would have actually generated more than 100% of its demand but for a brief curtailment of semi-scheduled generation which reduced the totals by 8.2%.
Over that period the contribution from natural gas averaged just 114 megawatts.
The territory is populated by around 1.7 million people, mostly centered around the coast and in Adelaide, its capital city.
The conditions for solar and wind energy has allowed the renewable energy market to flourish, highlighted by the fact that in the same period of last year, 142% of needs were met with these elements.
Being in the Southern Hemisphere, the hottest, driest, and windiest months are all in what Northern Hemisphere dwellers would describe as winter. The solar energy from 110°F (43°C) is generous, as is the wind power from speeds which average 10mph.
In order to harness these, the South Aussies built the Hornsdale Power Reserve. In 2017 it was the world’s largest lithium-ion battery, capable of storing 129 megawatt-hours of energy.
ENERGIZE Those News Feeds With This Good News From Down Under…
The world’s first proven flying car just received its airworthiness certificate by the Slovakian Transport Authority.
Last June, this car deployed some mechanical wings and took off from a runway in the city of Nitra in Slovakia, and landed in Bratislava 35 minutes later. After it folded up its wings, the exotic-looking sports car drove off down the highway.
The aptly-named AirCar then did this 200 more times across 700 hours of flight time before the aviation authorities decided that it was reliable and safe.
“AirCar certification opens the door for mass production of very efficient flying cars,” its creator, Prof Stefan Klein, said. “It is official and the final confirmation of our ability to change mid-distance travel forever.”
The dramatic, watershed-moment-tone is perhaps appropriate, as the car can reach 100 mph on the road, and 8,000 feet of altitude, while needing only around 2 minutes and 15 seconds to deploy or store its wings.
Last year, GNN reported that the prototype was developed by a company called KleinVision, founded by Stefan Klein, who spent 20 years turning his dream into a reality. For an unbelievably small amount of money—about 2 million euro—the Slovak created the world’s first flying car to travel between two airports.
Dr. Stephen Wright, a research fellow of avionics at the University of West England, told the BBC at the point of the test flight that he had reservations but that he “[couldn’t] wait to see the piece of paper that says this is safe to fly and safe to sell.” Eat your heart out, Wright.
Klein Vision has specified that they are looking to take a share out of the aircraft market with the AirCar, not the auto market—and Morgan Stanley estimates the flying car market over the next 20 years will be worth over a trillion dollars, similar to the buzz that arose around the recent boom in private spaceflight.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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Human laughter is common, but it’s a somewhat mysterious part of our evolution. It’s clear to evolutionary scholars that we laugh as a part of play, signaling our cooperation or friendliness. But how did laughter evolve? And are humans the only ones who do it?
Not a chance: Animals laugh too, researchers have observed.
Primatologist and UCLA anthropology graduate student Sasha Winkler and UCLA professor of communication Greg Bryant have taken a closer look at the phenomenon of laughter across the animal kingdom.
The pair combed through the existing scientific literature on animal play behavior, looking for mentions of vocal play signals—or what might be thought of as laughter.
They found such vocal play behavior documented in at least 65 species. That list includes a variety of primates, domestic cows and dogs, foxes, seals, and mongooses, as well as three bird species, including parakeets and Australian magpies.
“This work lays out nicely how a phenomenon once thought to be particularly human turns out to be closely tied to behavior shared with species separated from humans by tens of millions of years,” Bryant said.
The researchers looked for information on whether the animal vocalizations were recorded as noisy or tonal, loud or quiet, high-pitched or low-pitched, short or long, a single call or a rhythmic pattern—seeking known features of play sounds.
There’s much existing documentation of play-based body language among animals, such as what is known as “play face” in primates or “play bows” in canines, the researchers noted.
Since what constitutes “play” in much of the animal kingdom is rough-and-tumble and can also resemble fighting, play sounds can help emphasize non-aggression during such physical moments, the article suggests.
“When we laugh, we are often providing information to others that we are having fun and also inviting others to join,” Winkler said. “Some scholars have suggested that this kind of vocal behavior is shared across many animals who play, and as such, laughter is our human version of an evolutionarily old vocal play signal.”
While Winkler and Bryant say that further observation and research into vocalizations would be fruitful, they also note that such observations can be hard to come by in the wild, especially for animals whose play sounds might be quieter.
Paying attention to other species in this way sheds light on the form and function of human laughter, the researchers write, and helps us to better understand the evolution of human social behavior.
The article for this research was published in Bioacoustics.
(WATCH the National Geographic Video of Rats ‘Laughing’ While Being Tickled)
Quote of the Day: “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.” – Les Brown
Photo: by Ambrose Chua
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Australian researchers have developed a smart and super-efficient new way of capturing carbon dioxide and converting it to solid carbon, to help advance the decarbonization of heavy industries.
The carbon dioxide utilization technology from researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, is designed to be smoothly integrated into existing industrial processes.
Decarbonization is an immense technical challenge for heavy industries like cement and steel, which are not only energy-intensive but also directly emit CO2 as part of the production process.
The new technology offers a pathway for instantly converting carbon dioxide as it is produced and locking it permanently in a solid state, keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Co-lead researcher Associate Professor Torben Daeneke said the work built on an earlier experimental approach that used liquid metals as a catalyst.
“Our new method still harnesses the power of liquid metals but the design has been modified for smoother integration into standard industrial processes,” Daeneke said.
“As well as being simpler to scale up, the new tech is radically more efficient and can break down CO2 to carbon in an instant.
“We hope this could be a significant new tool in the push towards decarbonization, to help industries and governments deliver on their climate commitments and bring us radically closer to net zero.”
A provisional patent application has been filed for the technology and researchers have recently signed a $AUD2.6 million ($1.85 million) agreement with Australian environmental technology company ABR, who are commercializing technologies to decarbonize the cement and steel manufacturing industries.
Co-lead researcher Dr Ken Chiang said the team was keen to hear from other companies to understand the challenges in difficult-to-decarbonize industries and identify other potential applications of the technology.
“To accelerate the sustainable industrial revolution and the zero carbon economy, we need smart technical solutions and effective research-industry collaborations,” Chiang said.
The steel and cement industries are each responsible for about 7% of total global CO2 emissions (International Energy Agency), with both sectors expected to continue growing over coming decades as demand is fuelled by population growth and urbanization.
Technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) have largely focused on compressing the gas into a liquid and injecting it underground, but this comes with significant engineering challenges and environmental concerns. CCS has also drawn criticism for being too expensive and energy-intensive for widespread use.
Daeneke, an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, said the new approach offered a sustainable alternative, with the aim of both preventing CO2 emissions and delivering value-added reutilization of carbon.
“Turning CO2 into a solid avoids potential issues of leakage and locks it away securely and indefinitely,” he said.
“And because our process does not use very high temperatures, it would be feasible to power the reaction with renewable energy.”
The Australian Government has highlighted CCS as a priority technology for investment in its net zero plan, announcing a AUD$1 billion fund ($7,156,666) for the development of new low emissions technologies.
How the tech works
The RMIT team, with lead author and PhD researcher Karma Zuraiqi, employed thermal chemistry methods widely used by industry in their development of the new CCS tech.
The “bubble column” method starts with liquid metal being heated to about 100-120C.
Carbon dioxide is injected into the liquid metal, with the gas bubbles rising up just like bubbles in a champagne glass.
As the bubbles move through the liquid metal, the gas molecule splits up to form flakes of solid carbon, with the reaction taking just a split second.
“It’s the extraordinary speed of the chemical reaction we have achieved that makes our technology commercially viable, where so many alternative approaches have struggled,” Chiang said.
The next stage in the research is scaling up the proof-of-concept to a modularized prototype the size of a shipping container, in collaboration with industry partner ABR.
ABR Project Director David Ngo said the RMIT process turns a waste product into a core ingredient in the next generation of cement blends.
“Climate change will not be solved by one single solution, however, the collaboration between ABR and RMIT will yield an efficient and effective technology for our net-zero goals,” Ngo said.
The team is also investigating potential applications for the converted carbon, including in construction materials.
“Ideally the carbon we make could be turned into a value-added product, contributing to the circular economy and enabling the CCS technology to pay for itself over time,” Daeneke said.
Meet “the world’s biggest cat,” a kitty so large people think it’s a dog—and he’s still growing.
The oversized puss belongs to Yulia Minina, who lives in the small Russian town of Stary Oskol.
She bought Kefir—named after a popular, milky fermented drink—almost two years ago as a little Maine Coon kitten. Now she says most people think Kefir is a dog.
Yulia explains of her pet, “I couldn’t imagine an ordinary kitten could become so big. He’s very smart though, and always behaves calmly.
While Kefir has a formidable appearance, she says he is a very affectionate cat.
“When friends and acquaintances come to the house—all the attention is on him and he willingly allows himself to be stroked.
”But when strangers come to the house, everyone confuses him with a dog.
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Kefir does have one tricky habit. At night, he likes to climb on Yulia and sleep. “When he was a kitten, it didn’t cause me any inconvenience,” she says. ”But now he has become big and heavy, of course it’s difficult to sleep like that.”
Car-free zones, bike lanes, pedestrian-friendly urban design; these aren’t the features of a typical American suburb. This sounds like something in The Netherlands rather than in Utah, where a new “one-car community” is being built in an experimental suburb.
Called The Point, it’s located on 600 acres of federal land in Draper that once housed a prison, and will be purpose-built for businesses, families, and individuals to be able to access every quarter with a 15-minute walk or bike ride.
The Point
Utah is famous for having 60% of its land under various forms of state and federal protection, due to its majestic and one-of-a-kind desert and scrub landscapes. As the population grows, planners and developers are wondering how to grant access to one of the most beautiful states without impacting nature too overtly.
In order to figure this out, town hall-type meetings revealed that local opinions favored a more walking-friendly, planned community.
“We heard loud and clear from them that the principles of having more convenient, less car-focused development, and a little more compact and amenity-rich community, would be appealing,” Alan Matheson, executive director of The Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, told Fast Company.
About 7,400 houses together, built by global engineering and development firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will sit in acreage connected by veins of greenery to every chief area in the city.
The Point
Occasional streets which allow cars will also have bike lanes and wide sidewalks. Buses will operate around the perimeter, maybe automatically, to ferry people into the main areas, as well as to downtown Salt Lake City.
The Point will be connected with the Jordan River Parkway to take hikers and cyclists to the nearby mountain trail systems. This path will also help wildlife move between the river and the mountains.
“The idea here is that it’s an economic driver for the state to attract younger workers who are in the tech sector or the science sector, and we know that they don’t want to live in the suburbs, oftentimes, as the suburbs are currently configured,” Peter Kindel, one of the developers, told Fast Company.
“They want more urban features, they want to know their neighbors, they want to be part of a community. They don’t want to spend their day driving.”
The Point has been created in three different configurations, all of which preserve the fundamental “points” of the idea, namely community, connecting with nature, smart, less car-focused transit, and economic opportunity, as well as a 45% coverage of the city in greenery. These configurations, the developers hope, will influence future building growth opportunities.
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The energy systems that power our lives also produce wasted heat—like heat that radiates off hot water pipes in buildings and exhaust pipes on vehicles. A new flexible thermoelectric generator can wrap around pipes and other hot surfaces and convert wasted heat into electricity more efficiently than previously possible, according to scientists at Penn State and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“A large amount of heat from the energy we consume is essentially being thrown away, often dispersed right into the atmosphere,” said Shashank Priya, associate vice president for research and professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. “We haven’t had cost-effective ways with conformal shapes to trap and convert that heat to useable energy. This research opens that door.”
Penn State researchers have been working to improve the performance of thermoelectric generators—devices that can convert differences in temperature to electricity. When the devices are placed near a heat source, electrons moving from the hot side to the cold side produce an electric current, the scientists said.
In prior work, the team created rigid devices that were more efficient than commercial units in high-temperature applications. Now the team has developed a new manufacturing process to produce flexible devices that offer higher power output and efficiency, the scientists said.
“These results provide a promising pathway toward widespread utilization of thermoelectric technology into waste heat recovery application,” said Wenjie Li, assistant research professor at Penn State. “This could have a significant impact on the development of practical thermal to electrical generators.”
Flexible devices better fit the most attractive waste heat sources, like pipes in industrial and residential buildings and on vehicles, the scientists said. And they don’t have to be glued on surfaces like traditional, rigid devices, which further decreases efficiency.
Positive results
In tests being conducted on a gas flue, the new device exhibited 150% higher power density than other state-of-the-art units, the scientists reported in Applied Materials & Interfaces. A scaled-up version, just over 3-inches squared, maintained a 115% power density advantage. That version exhibited a total power output of 56.6 watts when placed on the hot surface, the scientists said.
“Think about an industrial power plant with pipes hundreds of feet long,” Priya said. “If you can wrap these devices around an area that large, you could generate kilowatts of energy from wasted heat that’s normally just being thrown away. You could convert discarded heat into something useful.”
Thermoelectric devices are made up of small couples, each resembling a table with two legs. Many of these two-leg couples are connected together, typically forming a flat, square device.
In creating the new device, scientists placed six couples along a thin strip. They then used flexible metal foil to connect 12 of the strips together, creating a device with 72 couples. Liquid metal was used between the layers of each strip to improve device performance, the scientist said.
“As you scale up these devices, you often lose power density, making it challenging to fabricate large-scale thermoelectric generators,” said Bed Poudel, associate research professor at Penn State. “This illustrates the extraordinary performance of our 72-couple device.”
The 72-couple device exhibited the highest reported output power and device power density from a single thermoelectric generator, the scientists said.
The gaps between the strips provide the flexibility to fit around shapes like pipes. The gaps also allow for flexibility in altering the fill factor, or the ratio between the area of thermoelectric material and the area of the device, which can be used to optimize thermoelectric devices for different heat sources, the scientists said.
Quote of the Day: “Appreciation can make a day – even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” – Margaret Cousins
Photo: by Carrie Beth Williams
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How does a view of nature gain its gloss of beauty? We know that the sight of beautiful landscapes engages the brain’s reward systems. But how does the brain transform visual signals into aesthetic ones? Why do we perceive a mountain vista or passing clouds as beautiful?
A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics has taken up this question and investigated how our brains proceed from merely seeing a landscape to feeling its aesthetic impact.
In their study, the research team presented artistic landscape videos to 24 participants. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they measured the participants’ brain activity as they viewed and rated the videos.
First author of the study, A. Ilkay Isik, encapsulates, “We would have expected the aesthetic signals to be limited to the brain’s reward systems, but surprisingly, we found them already present in visual areas of the brain while the participants were watching the videos.
“The activations occurred right next to brain regions deployed in recognizing physical features in movies, such as the layout of a scene or the presence of motion.”
Senior author Edward Vessel suggests that these signals may reflect an early, elemental form of beauty perception, saying, “When we see something beyond our expectations, local patches of brain tissue generate small ‘atoms’ of positive affect.
“The combination of many such surprise signals across the visual system adds up to make for an aesthetically appealing experience.”
With this new knowledge, the study—published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience—not only contributes to our understanding of beauty, but may also help clarify how interactions with the natural environment can affect our sense of well-being.
The results might have potential applications in a variety of fields where the link between perception and emotion is important, such as clinical health care and artificial intelligence.
Mark Cuban has officially launched his newest venture—the online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs.
GNN previously reported on Cuban’s support for Texas radiologist Dr. Alex Oshymansky, who started a public benefit company to provide cheap pharmaceutical drugs.
The launch comes just weeks after the company’s pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) operation was established; both are efforts in the pursuit to help shield consumers from inflated drug prices.
According to a September 2021 Gallup poll, 18 million Americans were recently unable to pay for at least one prescription medication for their household due to ever-rising costs, and 1 in 10 Americans have skipped doses to save money. The pharmacy’s launch represents the first milestone in bringing affordable medications to millions.
Notable medications that epitomize the pharmacy’s savings include Imatinib, a leukemia treatment that has a retail price of $9,657 per month but with MCCPDC costs $47 per month; Mesalamine, an aulcerative colitis treatment that retails at $940 per month comes in at $32.40 per month with MCCPDC; the gout treatment Colchicine retails at $182 month, the lowest price with a common voucher is $32 per month, and with MCCPDC it costs $8.70 per month.
Consumer-first pricing
“We will do whatever it takes to get affordable pharmaceuticals to patients,” said Alex Oshmyansky, CEO of Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug. “The markup on potentially lifesaving drugs that people depend on is a problem that can’t be ignored. It is imperative that we take action and help expand access to these medications for those who need them most.”
As a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler, MCCPDC can bypass inflated markups. The pharmacy’s prices reflect actual manufacturer prices plus a flat 15% margin and pharmacist fee.
Because the company refuses to pay spread prices to third-party PBM administrators in order to be allowed to process insurance claims, the online pharmacy will be a cash pay venture.
However, its model means patients can immediately purchase a broad array of medications at prices often less than what most insurance plans’ deductible and copay requirements would total.
In November 2021, MCCPDC entered the PBM industry to serve companies providing prescription coverage in their employee benefit plans. MCCPDC has pledged to be “radically transparent” in its own negotiations with drug companies as a PBM, revealing the true costs it pays for drugs and eliminating spread pricing and misaligned rebate incentives.
MCCPDC anticipates its PBM could save companies millions of dollars with no changes to its benefits, depending on the size of the employer, because it will eliminate the traditional PBM model.
The company plans to integrate its pharmacy and wholesaler with its PBM, so any company that uses such services will have access to wholesale pricing through its online pharmacy.
Recycling doesn’t always mean chemically separating things into component parts, or finding a new life for an old object. An LA-based startup is proving that landfills need not be dug for plastics, if one can merely smash enough of them together into a Minecraft-like block.
103 tons of nonrecyclable plastics, in fact, have been diverted from entombment since the company was founded, all through ByFusion’s patented machines known as “Blockers.” Blockers have a simple yet ingenious design. They shred the plastic, and then apply mass multiplied by acceleration repeatedly, until the “nonrecyclable plastic” is so squished together that it fuses.
Composite plastics have advanced the world standard of living no end, but often they tend to be unrecyclable.
Many minds are trying to develop thermal or chemical methods of separating the polymers in these materials to allow them to be recycled. ByFusion have avoided this problem by cutting out that middleman and simply turning the material as is into a new, composite, and ridiculously durable construction block.
Called “ByBlocks,” they are a simple 16x8x8 shape and can be used to build bus stops, fences, retaining walls, curtain walls, public terraces, and more.
They have partnered with cities across the country, from the island of Kauai, to Boise in Idaho, to get as many blockers into the hands of people who want to use them.
ByFusion
A big advantage of the Blockers is their indiscrimination; they turn every kind of plastic, even fishing nets, into blocks of the same material properties. The only thing they can’t tackle is polystyrene or Styrofoam.
ByFusion
Not one ounce of adhesive glue, mortar, or any kind of extra substance is used. If 22 pounds of plastic go in, a 22 pound block comes out.
The machines come in two sizes, one for industry, and another for community. The latter comes in a shipping container, while the former features an array of blockers for companies that really crank out the plastic waste.
A pufferfish was recently rushed to an animal dentist to have her teeth sawed in half, after they grew so long she was unable to eat.
Goldie the porcupine pufferfish was losing weight because of her giant gnashers.
Her worried owner Mark Byatt rushed the five-year-old fish to the vets who sedated her by filling her water bowl with a mild anaesthetic solution.
Expert animal dentists at Linnaeus-owned Sandhole Veterinary Center in Snodland, Kent, then used a special saw to gently trim her inch-long teeth in half to allow her to eat.
Vet Daniel Calvo Carrasco said, “Porcupine pufferfish teeth are known as beaks and grow continuously throughout their lives.
“They’re usually kept short naturally, as they’re worn down on their regular diet of hard-shelled foods but, while these foods are provided in her home environment, she is not as forthcoming in eating them as her other tank mates.
“As a result, her upper beak grew to the point where it was hindering her ability to eat effectively.
“Goldie was brought into the practice in a large watertight container containing water from her home tank and a licensed fish anaesthetic was placed into the water until she achieved a light plane of anaesthesia.
“To support her further, the water was oxygenated throughout.
“This meant she was still breathing nicely throughout but was able to be held for brief periods out of the water without becoming too stressed.”
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Veterinary nurse Debbie Addison held Goldie in a damp towel to prevent her from drying out or triggering a defence mechanism which can see pufferfish inflate to twice their size.
Daniel added, “Debbie was able to hold Goldie in a damp towel to prevent her becoming too dry, while also ensuring she was protected if she did trigger her defence mechanism to inflate her body and activate her spines.
“It was during those brief periods out of the anaesthetic water that I was able to use a dental burr to cut through her upper beak and reduce its length by half.
“Once the procedure had been completed, Goldie was placed into a second large
container with water from her home tank to recover from the anaesthetic.
“She responded well. Within five minutes, she was able to stay up right in the water and within ten minutes she was back to happily swimming around.
“The whole procedure went swimmingly and was conducted in under an hour without any stress at all and Goldie was back home and eating well within two hours.”
Goldie is now back in her tank at home in Leybourne, England following her trip to the dentist earlier this month.
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Relieved owner Mark said, “About three months ago, we noticed her front beak was growing very quickly even though she was eating cockle in shell every day.
“We aren’t sure why Goldie’s teeth never really managed to grind themselves naturally but we knew we needed to get them filed, although we were unsure about how to achieve this.
Quote of the Day: “We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.” – Lao Tzu
Photo: by Erik Mclean
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Learning to navigate social relationships is a skill that is critical for surviving in human societies. For babies and young children, that means learning who they can count on to take care of them.
By Stephen Andrews
MIT neuroscientists have now identified a specific signal that young children and even babies use to determine whether two people have a strong relationship and a mutual obligation to help each other: whether those two people kiss, share food, or otherwise share saliva.
In a new study, the researchers found that babies actually expect those who share saliva to come to one another’s aid if any one person is in distress—much more so than when people share toys or interact in other ways that do not involve the mouth.
The findings suggest that babies can use these cues to try to figure out who around them is most likely to offer help, the researchers say.
“Babies don’t know in advance which relationships are the close and morally obligating ones, so they have to have some way of learning this by looking at what happens around them,” says Rebecca Saxe, the John W. Jarve Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and senior author of the new study in the journal Science.
Sharing saliva
In human societies, people typically distinguish between “thick” and “thin” relationships. Thick relationships, usually found between family members, feature strong levels of attachment, obligation, and mutual responsiveness. Anthropologists have also observed that people in thick relationships are more willing to share bodily fluids like saliva.
“That inspired both the question of whether infants distinguish between those types of relationships, and whether saliva sharing might be a really good cue they could use to recognize them,” Thomas says.
To study those questions, the researchers observed toddlers (16.5 to 18.5 months) and babies (8.5 to 10 months) as they watched interactions between human actors and puppets. In the first set of experiments, a puppet shared an orange with one actor, then tossed a ball back and forth with a different actor.
After the children watched these initial interactions, the researchers observed the children’s reactions when the puppet showed distress while sitting between the two actors. Based on an earlier study of nonhuman primates, the researchers hypothesized that babies would look first at the person whom they expected to help. That study showed that when baby monkeys cry, other members of the troop look to the baby’s parents, as if expecting them to step in.
The MIT team found that the children were more likely to look toward the actor who had shared food with the puppet, not the one who had shared a toy.
In a second set of experiments, designed to focus more specifically on saliva, the actor either placed her finger in her mouth and then into the mouth of the puppet, or placed her finger on her forehead and then onto the forehead of the puppet. Later, when the actor expressed distress while standing between the two puppets, children watching the video were more likely to look toward the puppet with whom she had shared saliva.
Social cues
The findings suggest that saliva sharing is likely an important cue that helps infants to learn about their own social relationships and those of people around them, the researchers say.
“The general skill of learning about social relationships is very useful,” Thomas says. “One reason why this distinction between thick and thin might be important for infants in particular, especially human infants, who depend on adults for longer than many other species, is that it might be a good way to figure out who else can provide the support that they depend on to survive.”
In future work, the researchers hope to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study what parts of the brain are involved in making saliva-based assessments about social relationships.
When a famous soprano was solo performing a Verdi aria that’s normally a duet, she received a helping hand by a fan—who happened to be a tenor—in the audience.
In a beautiful story that highlights the international confluences in opera singing, Chinese music student Liu Jianwei was in Parma, Italy, to watch a Cuban-American soprano, Lisette Oropesa, perform a recital.
“Sempre Libera,” or forever free, from Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, is meant to be sung principally by a female, with a male tenor’s voice from off stage, as if singing from below a balcony.
After Oropesa finished the first bar without any male voice responding to her, Liu summoned the lion’s share of his courage and joined in during the second bar. Captured on social media, Oropesa’s voice and face is one of sheer delight and surprise, and the video has gone properly viral.
Violette, Oropesa’s character, is written as saying “Oh” in the libretto, but the soprano’s subsequent “Oh Grazie” was a bit of clever improvisation, one which the crowd caught and enjoyed.
Liu, the perfect gentleman, took to Chinese social media after the videos took off on TikTok, to renounce his actions and remind people not to disturb singers while they are performing.
“It is definitely not something worthy of pride, nor something worthy of being advocated,” Liu stated in a video. “Please don’t interrupt singers when they are singing on stage. It’s impolite behavior. Don’t imitate me and I will never do this again in the future.”
Despite his regret, he was welcomed back stage with autographed photos and selfies.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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A new study suggests that people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease who regularly got one to two hours of moderate exercise twice a week, like walking or gardening, may have less trouble balancing, walking, and doing daily activities later.
Researchers found that those who exercised regularly over five years did better on cognitive tests and had slower progression of the disease in several aspects.
“Our results are exciting, because they suggest it may never be too late for someone with Parkinson’s to start an exercise program to improve the course of their disease,” said study author Kazuto Tsukita, MD, of Kyoto University in Japan and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “That’s because we found that to slow progression of the disease, it was more important for people with Parkinson’s to maintain an exercise program than it was to be active at the beginning of the disease.”
The study looked at 237 people with early-stage Parkinson’s. They had an average age of 63 and were followed by researchers for up to six years.
Participants’ exercise levels at the start of the study were determined using a questionnaire that measures time and intensity during the previous week of leisure activity, like walking and biking; household activity, like gardening; and occupational activity, like taking care of others. Common cognitive tests were used to measure people’s verbal and memory skills and how much time it took to complete mental tasks.
Researchers found that people’s physical activity level at the start of the study was not associated with the progression of their Parkinson’s later on. Instead, they found it was more important to maintain physical activity over time.
People who got at least at least four hours per week of moderate to vigorous exercise like walking or dancing had slower decline in balancing and walking five years later, compared to those who did not get that much exercise.
Researchers used a common test to rate each person’s Parkinson’s symptoms on a scale of zero to four, with higher scores indicating more severe impairment. People who got below average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise, or less than one to two hours, once or twice a week, increased from an average score of 1.4 to 3.7 over six years. That’s compared to those who got above average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise, who on average increased from a score of 1.4 to 3.0 during that time.
One cognitive test researchers used was a common paper-and-pencil test used to measure mental processing speed. The test gives the participant 90 seconds to match numbers with geometric figures and has a maximum possible score of 110.
People who did less than 15.5 hours of work per week, on average, dropped from a 44 to a 40 on the test six years later. That’s compared to an average drop from a score of 44 to 43 for those who did more than 15.5 hours of work over the same period.
“Although medications can provide people with Parkinson’s some symptom relief, they haven’t been shown to slow the progression of the disease,” Tsukita said. “We found that regular physical activity, including household tasks and moderate exercise, may actually improve the course of the disease over the long run. Best of all, exercise is low cost and has few side effects.”
The study does not prove that maintaining an exercise program will delay the effects of Parkinson’s disease. It only shows an association.
A limitation of the study, published in Neurology, 2022, is that activity levels were self-reported and may not be accurate.
A gas giant exoplanet that orbits a G-type star, which is similar to TOI-2180 b. (NASA) public domain
A gas giant exoplanet that orbits a G-type star, which is similar to TOI-2180 b. / NASA
An astronomer and a group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view by typical stargazing tools.
The planet, TOI-2180 b, has the same diameter as Jupiter, but is nearly three times more massive. Researchers at UC Riverside also believe it contains 105 times the mass of Earth in elements heavier than helium and hydrogen. Nothing quite like it exists in our solar system.
“TOI-2180 b is such an exciting planet to have found,” said UCR astronomer Paul Dalba, who helped confirm the planet’s existence. “It hits the trifecta of 1) having a several-hundred-day orbit, 2) being relatively close to Earth (379 lightyears is considered close for an exoplanet), and 3) us being able to see it transit in front of its star. It is very rare for astronomers to discover a planet that checks all three of these boxes.”
Dalba also explained that the planet is special because it takes 261 days to complete a journey around its star, a relatively long time compared to many known gas giants outside our solar system. Its relative proximity to Earth and the brightness of the star it orbits also make it likely astronomers will be able to learn more about it.
In order to locate exoplanets, which orbit stars other than our sun, NASA’s TESS satellite looks at one part of the sky for a month, then moves on. It is searching for dips in brightness that occur when a planet crosses in front of a star.
“The rule of thumb is that we need to see three ‘dips’ or transits before we believe we’ve found a planet,” Dalba said. A single transit event could be caused by a telescope with a jitter, or a star masquerading as a planet. For these reasons, TESS isn’t focused on these single transit events. However, a small group of citizen scientists is.
Looking over TESS data, Tom Jacobs, a group member and former U.S. naval officer, saw light dim from the TOI-2180 star, just once. His group alerted Dalba, who specializes in studying planets that take a long time to orbit their stars.
Using the Lick Observatory’s Automated Planet Finder Telescope, Dalba and his colleagues observed the planet’s gravitational tug on the star, which allowed them to calculate the mass of TOI-2180 b and estimate a range of possibilities for its orbit.
Hoping to observe a second transit event, Dalba organized a campaign using 14 different telescopes across three continents in the northern hemisphere. Over the course of 11 days in August 2021, the effort resulted in 20,000 images of the TOI-2180 star, though none of them detected the planet with confidence.
However, the campaign did lead the group to estimate that TESS will see the planet transit its star again in February, when they’re planning a follow up study. Funding for Dalba’s research is provided by the National Science Foundation’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
The citizen planet hunters’ group takes publicly available data from NASA satellites like TESS and looks for single transit events. While professional astronomers use algorithms to scan a lot of data automatically, the Visual Survey Group uses a program they created to inspect telescope data by eye.
“The effort they put in is really important and impressive, because it’s hard to write code that can identify single transit events reliably,” Dalba said. “This is one area where humans are still beating code.”
Quote of the Day: “Those who are wise see their life like stepping stones across a great river. Everyone misses a stone from time to time. No one can cross the river without getting wet.” – Colleen Houck
Photo: by Sam Barber (cropped)
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In a story of neighborly jest that grew into epic proportions, a green garbage bin got to wheel about the whole town with a handsome man on her arm.
Carl Stanojevic & MackaySeen
When 54-year-old Carl Stanojevic got a text from his neighbor Nick with a request to “take my bins out,” he responded “yeah sure no problem any particular place?”
He took the lucky wheelie bin he was ‘caring’ for to the local beach in Mackay, Queensland—then to the surf club, then to do some chores including a stop at a hardware store for socializing. After stopping at several restaurants, they took some R&R.
“We went for a massage and then to the tattoo parlour to get a couple of extra 6s on the bin. A bit of a tattoo, then stopped at the pub for a coldie,” Stanojevic told the Guardian on Friday.
Noticing the presence of the bin, some garbage men and women stopped to take a picture, and later the green bin, now sporting her tattoo, stopped to make a phone call “to talk trash,” as Stanojevic recounted.
After five hours spent around the Australian town, Stanojevic returned home with news he had completed the favor—sending a photo album of the day’s events, which reportedly blew Nick away.
Local news reported “Bin day not half rubbish for Mackay man doing his neighbour a favour,” adding that the image of bin #6 gazing pensively across the water was “anything but rubbish.”
Stanojevic told the Guardian that putting a smile on people’s faces, especially his neighbor’s, was totally worth it, especially since Mackay is a town that relies on tourism and so was hit hard during the lockdowns.
He said of his neighbor, “We catch up for a beer when we can and have a chat and a few laughs. He’s a beautiful person. You’d do anything for him. He said take my bin out. If he had said put my bin out it would have been just a normal day in Mackay.”
