- Earth and Climate

- Education and Learning

- Fossils and Ruins

- Health and Medicine

- Plants and Animals

- Space and Time

Earth and Climate

- Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected: 2024 Dec 9

- New ocean predator discovered in the Atacama Trench

Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: Stanford University

Summary: Consumers' real-world stop-and-go driving of electric vehicles benefits batteries more than the steady use simulated in almost all laboratory tests of new battery designs, a new study finds.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

The batteries of electric vehicles subject to the normal use of real world drivers -- like heavy traffic, long highway trips, short city trips, and mostly being parked -- could last about a third longer than researchers have generally forecast, according to a new study by scientists working in the SLAC-Stanford Battery. Center, a joint center between Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, This suggests that the owner of a typical EV may not need to replace the expensive battery pack or buy a new car for several additional years.

Almost always, battery scientists and engineers have tested the cycle lives of new battery designs in laboratories using a constant rate of discharge followed by recharging. They repeat this cycle rapidly many times to learn quickly if a new design is good or not for life expectancy, among other qualities.

This is not a good way to predict the life expectancy of EV batteries, especially for people who own EVs for everyday commuting, according to the study published Dec. 9 in Nature Energy. While battery prices have plummeted about 90% over the past 15 years, batteries still account for almost a third of the price of a new EV. So, current and future EV commuters may be happy to

"We've not been testing EV batteries the right way;' said Simona Onori, senior author and an associate professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. "To our surprise, real driving with frequent acceleration, braking that charges the batteries a bit, stopping to pop into a store, and letting the batteries rest for hours at a time, helps batteries last longer than we had thought based on industry standard lab tests."

A pleasant surprise

The researchers designed four types of EV discharge profiles, from the standard constant discharge to dynamic discharging based on real driving data. The research team tested 92 commercial lithium ion batteries for more than two years across the discharge profiles. In the end, the more realistically the profiles reflected actual driving behavior, the higher EV life expectancy climbed.

Several factors contribute to the unexpected longevity, the study finds. A machine learning algorithm trained on all the data the team collected helped tease out the impacts of dynamic discharge profiles on battery degradation.

For example, the study showed a correlation between sharp, short EV accelerations and slower degradation. This was contrary to long-held assumptions of battery researchers, including this study's team, that acceleration peaks are bad for EV batteries.

Pressing the pedal with your foot hard does not speed up aging. If anything, it slows it down, explained Alexis Geslin, one of three lead authors of the study and a PhD student in materials science and engineering and in computer science in Stanford's School of Engineering.

Two ways to age

The research team also looked for differences in battery aging due to many charge-discharge cycles versus battery aging that just comes with time. Your batteries at home that have been sitting unused in a drawer for years will not operate as well as when you bought them, if they work at all.

"We battery engineers have assumed that cycle aging is much more important than time-induced aging. That's mostly true for commercial EVs like buses and delivery vans that are almost always either in use or being recharged," said Geslin. "For consumers using their EVs to get to work, pick up their kids, go to the grocery store, but mostly not using them or even charging them, time becomes the predominant cause of aging over cycling."

The study identifies an average discharge rate sweet spot for balancing time aging and cycle aging, at least for the commercial battery they tested. Luckily, that window is in the range of realistic consumer EV driving. Carmakers could update their EV battery management software to take advantage of the new findings and to maximize battery longevity under real-world conditions.

Looking ahead

"Going forward, evaluating new battery chemistries and designs with realistic demand profiles will be really important," said energy science and engineering postdoctoral scholar Le Xu. "Researchers can now revisit presumed aging mechanisms at the chemistry, materials, and cell levels to deepen their understanding. This will facilitate the development of advanced control algorithms that optimize the use of existing commercial battery architectures."

The implications extend beyond batteries, the study suggests. Scientists and engineers could apply the principles to other energy storage applications, as well as to other materials and devices in physical sciences in which aging is crucial, like plastics, glasses, solar cells, and some biomaterials used in implants.

"This work highlights the power of integrating multiple areas of expertise -- from materials science, control, and modeling to machine learning- to advance innovation," Onori said.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Stanford University. Original written by Mark Golden. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Alexis Geslin, Le Xu, Devi Ganapathi, Kevin Moy, William C. Chueh, Simona Onori. Dynamic cycling enhances battery lifetime. Nature Energy, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41560-024-01675-8

Cite This Page:

Stanford University. (2024, December 9). Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209122933.htm

New ocean predator discovered in the Atacama Trench

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Summary: Characterized by darkness and intense pressure, the ocean's hadal zone seems uninhabitable, yet dozens of unique organisms call it home. Each species discovered there adds a crucial piece to the puzzle of how life has evolved and even thrives in one of Earth's most extreme environments. A new study highlights one of those species -- the newly named Dulcibella camanchaca. This crustacean is the first large, active predatory amphipod from these extreme depths.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

Characterized by darkness and intense pressure, the ocean's hadal zone seems uninhabitable, yet dozens of unique organisms call it home. Each species discovered there adds a crucial piece to the puzzle of how life has evolved and even thrives in one of Earth's most extreme environments.

A new study published in Systematics and Biodiversity highlights one of those species -- the newly named Dulcibella camanchaca. This crustacean is the first large, active predatory amphipod from these extreme depths. The species was discovered by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Instituto Milenio de Oceanografía (IMO)based at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile.

"Dulcibella camanchaca is a fast-swimming predator that we named after "darkness" in the languages of the peoples from the Andes region to signify the deep, dark ocean from where it predates," explained the study's co-lead author, Dr. Johanna Weston, a hadal ecologist at WHOI.

At nearly 4 centimeters in length, this crustacean uses specialized raptorial appendages to capture and prey upon smaller amphipod species in the Atacama (Peru-Chile) Trench's food-limited realm. The trench stretches along the eastern South Pacific Ocean, plunging to depths exceeding 8,000 meters off the coast of northern Chile, and has long fascinated scientists. Located beneath nutrient-rich and productive surface waters and geographically remote from other hadal environments, the Atacama Trench hosts a distinctive community of native species.

"Most excitingly, the DNA and morphology data pointed to this species being a new genus too, emphasizing the Atacama Trench as an endemic hotspot," continued Weston.

This remarkable finding is part of the 2023Integrated Deep-Ocean Observing System (IDOOS) Expedition aboard the R/V Abate Molina, led by scientists from IMO. Four Dulcibella camanchaca individuals were collected at a depth of 7,902 meters using a lander vehicle, which is an untethered platform used for carrying scientific equipment, including baited traps, to and from the ocean floor. Once safely back on the ship's deck, recovered amphipods were frozen and then underwent detailed morphological and genetic analysis at the Universidad de Concepción.

"This study's collaborative effort and integrative approach confirmed Dulcibella camanchaca as a new species and highlights ongoing biodiversity discoveries in the Atacama Trench. This finding underlines the importance of continued deep-ocean exploration, particularly in Chile's front yard," said Dr. Carolina González, co-lead author from the IMO responsible for sample collection and DNA analysis. "More discoveries are expected as we continue to study the Atacama Trench."

As exploration technology advances, scientists anticipate uncovering more species, each offering insights into the evolutionary pressures and adaptations unique to the deep ocean. The results of this study will contribute to broader efforts to understand deep-ocean ecosystems and protect them from emerging threats, such as pollution and climate change.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia:

- Newly discovered crustacean Dulcibella camanchaca

Journal Reference:

1. Johanna N. J. Weston, Carolina E. González, Rubén Escribano, Osvaldo Ulloa. A new large predator (Amphipoda, Eusiridae) hidden at hadal depths of the Atacama Trench. Systematics and Biodiversity, 2024; 22 (1) DOI: 10.1080/14772000.2024.2416430

Cite This Page:

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (2024, December 9). New ocean predator discovered in the Atacama Trench. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209122644.htm

Education and Learning

- Could online technology be a clue as to why boys in Norway are outperforming girls in learning English as a second language?

Could online technology be a clue as to why boys in Norway are outperforming girls in learning English as a second language?

New study uses data of more than a million children

Date: December 8, 2024

Source: Taylor & Francis Group

Summary: Bucking conventionality, boys in Norway are making early gains in reading English as a second language and even outperforming girls at age 10 and 13 -- a new a study of more than one million students suggests.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

Bucking conventionality, boys in Norway are making early gains in reading English as a second language and even outperforming girls at age 10 and 13 -- a new a study of more than one million students suggests.

Publishing their findings in the peer-reviewed journalAssessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, experts from the University of Oslo propose the perhaps unexpected results might be explained by online gaming and experiences with other digital technologies such as YouTube -- with English being the language of the internet.

"Our findings show boys were not experiencing a general improvement in language proficiency but rather an improvement specific to the English language," says lead author Professor Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør, whose team's findings demonstrate girls did better than the boys in learning their native tongue.

"The indication is that gender differences in how students interact with English in contexts outside school could explain the difference in the gender gap development."

"While first/official languages are acquired through interacting with most aspects of daily life, additional languages are much more context-specific," co-author Professor Lisbeth M. Brevik, from Oslo's Department of Teacher Education and School Research, adds.

And the context proposed is gaming online; engaging with YouTube; and watching films. Recent, existing surveys carried out in Norway into social media use among children demonstrate nearly two thirds of boys report gaming many times a week, compared with only a minority of girls. In addition, boys more often than girls reported using English for playing online games, engaging with YouTube and watching films.

"Survey evidence provides a potential explanation," says Professor Brevik.

"The explanation suggests that language use through technology and interest (in this technology) has the potential to influence language acquisition. It may also play a role in closing the gender gap we typically observe today."

Since 2000, international trends have identified large and consistent gender gaps in favour of girls for reading literacy in a first language.

However, language proficiency in English as a second language among males exceeded that of females in 2021 for the first time since 2014. This is according to standardised English test results, the EF SET which is used worldwide for English proficiency certification.

The aim of this study was to investigate development of gender gaps over time in learning English as a second language, compared with language proficiency in Norwegian learned as a native language.

The researchers analyzed test and exam results from 2007 and 2018 from 1.1 million students in Norway at different stages of education. National education registries covering the entire Norwegian student population were used.

For English proficiency, the authors focused on language as measured by national tests including for vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension. They also analyzed high-stakes overall achievement and exam grades at age 15, defined as written and oral English language proficiency results graded by teachers and external assessors.

For Norwegian, the researchers compared national test results among boys and girls for reading proficiency as well as high-stakes overall achievement and exam grades.

The national tests for English and Norwegian were for 10-year-olds born between 1997 and 2008; and for those aged 13 born between 1991 and 2002. The high-stakes tests were for 15-year-olds born from 1991 to 2002.

The development of gender gaps was also investigated using data from the same students and measured at age 10, 13 and 15.

Results showed little difference initially between genders in the national English test performance at age 10. However, the authors found a gradual shift in favour of boys, with males outperforming females in 2018 test results. Yet girls consistently outperformed boys in high stakes overall achievement and exam grades in English at age 15 throughout the time period (2007-2018).

As for Norwegian, girls outperformed boys for all types of tests with the greatest difference at age 15 for high stakes overall achievement and exam grades, indicating that boys were not experiencing a general increase in language proficiency.

Interestingly though, while boys increased their test scores compared to girls for ages 10 and 13 in English, a comparison of English to Norwegian showed that boys had a relative improvement for all tests, also those given at age 15.

"This finding indicates that boys' earlier gains in English language proficiency may also have translated into more comprehensive high-stakes achievement measures but not sufficiently to decrease the gender gap. The way both English and Norwegian is measured in lower secondary school may contribute to the continuing trend of boys falling further behind in the education system," explains Professor Brevik.

Concluding, the team recommends that in addition to improving the assessment of English, more knowledge on gender differences in second or additional languages -- particularly those related to the different domains of language proficiency -- will be "important."

Limitations of the research include that the tests for English and Norwegian are not exactly the same and do not measure across the same domains. Therefore, the authors explain, "we should be cautious when drawing true conclusions from their comparison."

Story Source:

Materials provided by Taylor & Francis Group. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Astrid M. J. Sandsør, Lisbeth M. Brevik. Gender gaps in English as a second language over time: a shift in favour of boys. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2024; 1 DOI: 10.1080/0969594X.2024.2423151

Cite This Page:

Taylor & Francis Group. (2024, December 8). Could online technology be a clue as to why boys in Norway are outperforming girls in learning English as a second language?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241208200132.htm

Fossils and Ruins

- Earliest deep-cave ritual compound in Southwest Asia discovered: 2024 Dec 9

Earliest deep-cave ritual compound in Southwest Asia discovered

Case Western Reserve University researchers helped unearth evidence for ritualistic gathering in upper Paleolithic

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: Case Western Reserve University

Summary: A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian continent.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian continent. Three Israeli researchers led the team that published its results today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And researchers from the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Dental Medicine helped unearth the cave's secrets over more than a decade of excavation.

Manot Cave was used for thousands of years as a living space for both Neanderthals and humans at different times. In 2015, researchers from Case Western Reserve helped identify a 55,000-year-old skull that provided physical evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthal and homo sapiens, with characteristics of each clearly visible in the skull fragment.

The cave's living space was near the entrance, but in the deepest, darkest part of the cave, eight stories below, the new paper describes a large cavern with evidence it was used as a gathering space, possibly for rituals that enhanced social cohesion.

The cavern's touchstone is an engraved rock, deliberately placed in a niche in the cavern, with a turtle-shell design carved into its surface. The three-dimensional turtle is contemporaneous with some of the oldest cave paintings in France.

"It may have represented a totem or spiritual figure," said Omry Barzilai, Head of Material Culture PaleoLab at the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority, who led the team. "Its special location, far from the daily activities near the cave entrance, suggests that it was an object of worship."

The cavern has natural acoustics favorable for large gatherings, and evidence of wood ash on nearby stalagmites suggests prehistoric humans carried torches to light the chamber.

Manot Cave was discovered in 2008 by workers building condominiums in a mountain resort close to Israel's border with Lebanon. Case Western Reserve's School of Dental Medicine got involved in the excavation in 2012. The dean at the time, Jerold Goldberg, committed $20,000 annually for 10 years to CWRU's Institute for the Science of Origins; the money was used to fund dental students' summer research in Israel.

"I'm an oral and maxillofacial surgeon by training," Goldberg said. "I provided the commitment and the money because I wanted people to understand the breadth and intellectual interest that dental schools have."

And although not trained in archaeology, dental students can quickly identify bone fragments from rock, which makes them invaluable at excavations like Manot Cave.

"Most people would not suspect that a dental school would be involved in an archaeological excavation," said Mark Hans, professor and chair of orthodontics at the dental school. "But one of the things that are preserved very well in ancient skeletons are teeth, because they are harder than bone. There is a whole field of dental anthropology. As an orthodontist, I am interested in human facial growth and development, which, it turns out, is exactly what is needed to identify anthropological specimens."

For 10 years, Case Western Reserve sent 10 to 20 dental students every summer to help with the Manot Cave excavation. The summer research became so popular that students from other dental and medical schools began applying to visit Israel with the CWRU team, according to Yvonne McDermott, the project coordinator.

Case Western Reserve also collaborated closely with Linda Spurlock, a physical anthropologist at Kent State University, whose expertise is putting a face on a skull using clay to build out the tissues that would have covered the bone when the person was alive.

"One of the things I liked most about working on this excavation was how much we learned from the other researchers," Hans said. "Everyone has a narrow focus, like mammals, uranium-dating, hearths; and we all came together and shared our knowledge. We learned a lot over 10 years."

The Manot Cave project is supported by the Dan David Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation, the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the Irene Levi Sala CARE Archaeological Foundation and the Leakey Foundation. The research also involved experts from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Cleveland State University, the Geological Survey of Israel, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Haifa, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University, the University of Vienna, the University of Barcelona, the University of Siena and Simon Fraser University.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Case Western Reserve University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia:

- An engraved rock with a carved symbolic turtle

Journal Reference:

1. Omry Barzilai, Ofer Marder, José-Miguel Tejero, Avner Ayalon, Miryam Bar-Matthews, Talia Abulafia, Ron Lavi, Mae Goder-Goldberger, Maayan Shemer, Lotan Edeltin, Alexander Wiegmann, Amos Frumkin, Avshalom Karasik, Gal Yasur, Reuven Yeshurun, Irit Zohar, Francesco Berna, Mark Hans, Jerold S. Goldberg, Yvonne McDermott, Linda Spurlock, Ariel Pokhojaev, Waseem Habashi, Hila May, Rachel Sarig, Israel Hershkovitz. Early human collective practices and symbolism in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Southwest Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024; 121 (51) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2404632121

Cite This Page:

Case Western Reserve University. (2024, December 9). Earliest deep-cave ritual compound in Southwest Asia discovered. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209162441.htm

Health and Medicine

- Loneliness and isolation: Back to pre-pandemic levels, but still high, for older adults

- A healthy diet helps the weighty battle with chronic pain

Loneliness and isolation: Back to pre-pandemic levels, but still high, for older adults

Six-year trends from National Poll on Healthy Aging for people age 50 to 80 show key groups that are most vulnerable, especially those with fair or poor physical or mental health

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

Summary: Loneliness and isolation among older Americans have mostly returned to pre-pandemic rates, but that still means more than one third of people age 50 to 80 feel lonely, and nearly as many feel isolated, a new national study shows.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

Loneliness and isolation among older Americans have mostly returned to pre-pandemic rates, but that still means more than one third of people age 50 to 80 feel lonely, and nearly as many feel isolated, a new national study shows.

And some older adults -- especially those dealing with major physical health or mental health issues -- still have much higher rates of loneliness and social isolation than others.

The new findings, from a review of six years of data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging (https://www.healthyagingpoll.org/), are published in JAMA by a team from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Starting in 2018, and most recently earlier this year, the poll asked older adults nationwide how often they'd felt they lacked companionship (the subjective feeling of being alone, or loneliness), and felt isolated from others (the experience of social isolation). The poll is supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center.

The latest data show that in 2024, 33% of older adults felt lonely some of the time or often in the past year, about the same as the rate in 2018 (34%). During the years in between, as many as 42% of older adults had this level of loneliness.

Similarly, 29% of older adults said they felt isolated some of the time or often in 2024, just above the rate of 27% seen in 2018. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, 56% of older adults said they had experienced this level of isolation, but the rate has declined each year since.

"At the surface, this might seem like great news, that we're back to where we were before COVID-19 struck. But that baseline was not good, and it was especially bad for some groups of older adults, who continue to have very high rates of loneliness and social isolation," said Preeti Malani, M.D., MSJ, the study's lead author and a professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School. "One of the biggest differences now is that we have greater recognition of the impact of loneliness and isolation on health especially as we age." Malani serves as senior advisor to the poll, which she directed from 2017 to 2022.

The groups of older adults with the highest rates of loneliness in 2024 were:

- Those who said their mental health is fair or poor: 75% (in 2018, it was 74%)

- Those who said their physical health is fair or poor: 53% (up from 50% in 2018)

- Those who were not working or received disability income (does not include retirees): 52% (up from 38% in 2018)

The groups with the highest rates of social isolation in 2024 were:

- Those who said their mental health is fair or poor: 77% (up slightly from 79% in 2018)

- Those who said their physical health is fair or poor: 52% (up from 43% in 2018)

- Those who were not working or received disability income (does not include retirees): 50% (up from 36% in 2018)

These rates for 2024 are double, or even more, the rates of loneliness and isolation seen among older adults who said their physical health or mental health were excellent, very good or good, or those who were working or retired.

"These trends make it clear: clinicians should see loneliness and isolation as a key factor in their patients' lives, especially those with serious physical or mental health conditions," says poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., an associate professor of internal medicine at U-M and primary care clinician at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

"We should consider screening our patients for these issues and connecting them with resources in their communities, whether that's a senior center, Veterans' groups, volunteering opportunities, or services offered by an Area Agency on Aging or other community organizations," he said.

Other key findings:

In general, adults age 50 to 64 were more likely than those age 65 to 80 to say they felt lonely or isolated across all poll years, and rates had not dropped back to pre-pandemic rates for those age 50 to 64 in 2024.

Similarly, those with household incomes below $60,000, and those who live alone, were more likely to say they sometimes or often felt lonely or isolated than those with higher incomes or those living with others, a finding that was consistent across most years. However, rates in 2024 for those who live alone were lower than for those who live with others.

More about loneliness and isolation in older adults:

The new study builds upon the evidence collected by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D., M.B.A. and his team and published in an official advisory in May 2023.

The AARP Foundation has created an initiative called Connect2Affect, offering resources to help older adults combat social isolation and loneliness for themselves and others: https://connect2affect.org/

Malani and colleagues published a Patient Page in JAMA on social isolation in May 2024; it's available for free (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2819153) and is designed for clinicians to share with patients.

About the poll:

The data in the new JAMA paper come from six fieldings of the NPHA from 2018 to 2024, most of which asked older adults to report how often they felt a lack of companionship or felt isolated from others in the past year. The poll fielded in June 2020 asked participants to reflect on the past three months. The poll is not longitudinal -- each fielding's sample was unique. poll sample ranged in size from 2,033 to 2,563 and the organization that administers the poll changed once, beginning in 2022. More details about NPHA methodology are at: https://www.healthyagingpoll.org/survey-methods

Read NPHA reports on loneliness and isolation among older adults here: https://www.healthyagingpoll.org/national-reports

In addition to Malani and Kullgren, the authors of the new JAMA research letter are poll team members Erica Solway, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H., Matthias Kirch, M.S., Dianne Singer, M.P.H., and J. Scott Roberts, Ph.D. Malani is a deputy editor at JAMA but was not involved in the review process for the article.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan. Original written by Kara Gavin. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal References:

1. Preeti N. Malani, Erica Solway, Matthias Kirch, Dianne C. Singer, J. Scott Roberts, Jeffrey T. Kullgren. Loneliness and Social Isolation Among US Older Adults. JAMA, 2024; DOI: 10.1001/jama.2024.23213

2. Lauren B. Gerlach, Erica S. Solway, Preeti N. Malani. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults. JAMA, 2024; 331 (23): 2058 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2024.3456

Cite This Page:

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan. (2024, December 9). Loneliness and isolation: Back to pre-pandemic levels, but still high, for older adults. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209122559.htm

A healthy diet helps the weighty battle with chronic pain

Date: December 8, 2024

Source: University of South Australia

Summary: New research shows that adopting a healthy diet can reduce the severity of chronic pain, presenting an easy and accessible way for sufferers to better manage their condition.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

Chronic pain is an acute and debilitating condition that affects millions of people worldwide. And while pain interventions are available, many people struggle without treatment at all.

Now new research from the University of South Australia shows that adopting a healthy diet can reduce the severity of chronic pain, presenting an easy and accessible way for sufferers to better manage their condition.

Exploring associations between body fat, diet, and pain, researchers found that a greater consumption of foods within the Australian Dietary Guidelines was directly associated with lower levels of body pain, particularly among women.

Importantly, these findings were independent of a person's weight, meaning that despite your body composition, a healthy diet can help reduce chronic pain.

Globally, about 30% of the population suffers from chronic pain. In Australia, almost one in five (or 1.6 million) people struggle with chronic pain.

Women have higher rates of chronic pain, as do people who are overweight or obese.

UniSA PhD researcher Sue Ward says the study shows how modifiable factors, such as diet, can help manage and relieve chronic pain.

"It's common knowledge that eating well is good for your health and wellbeing. But knowing that simple changes to your diet could offset chronic pain, could be lifechanging," Ward says.

"In our study, higher consumption of core foods -- which are your vegetables, fruits, grains, lean meats, dairy and alternatives -- was related to less pain, and this was regardless of body weight.

"This is important because being overweight or obese is a known risk factor for chronic pain.

"Knowing that food choices and the overall quality of a person's diet will not only make a person healthier, but also help reduce their pain levels, is extremely valuable."

Notably, the findings suggest that diet quality affects pain differently in men and women.

"Women with better diets, had lower pain levels and better physical function. But this effect was much weaker for men," Ward says.

"It's possible that the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of the healthier core food groups is what reduces pain, but we can't yet determine whether poorer diet quality leads to more pain, or if pain leads to eating a poorer quality diet.

"A healthy, nutritious diet brings multiple benefits for health, wellbeing, and pain management. And while personalised pain management strategies should be adopted, a healthy diet is an accessible, affordable, and effective way to manage and even reduce pain."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of South Australia. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Susan J. Ward, Alison M. Coates, Katherine L. Baldock, Ty E. Stanford, Alison M. Hill. Better diet quality is associated with reduced body pain in adults regardless of adiposity: Findings from the Whyalla Intergenerational Study of Health. Nutrition Research, 2024; 130: 22 DOI: 10.1016/j.nutres.2024.08.002

Cite This Page:

University of South Australia. (2024, December 8). A healthy diet helps the weighty battle with chronic pain. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241208200140.htm

Plants and Animals

- Dogs use two-word button combos to communicate: 2024 Dec 9

Dogs use two-word button combos to communicate

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: University of California - San Diego

Summary: A new study shows that dogs trained to use soundboards to 'talk' are capable of making two-word button combinations that go beyond random behavior or simple imitation of their owners.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

A new study from UC San Diego's Comparative Cognition Lab shows that dogs trained to use soundboards to "talk" are capable of making two-word button combinations that go beyond random behavior or simple imitation of their owners. Published in the journal Scientific Reports from Springer Nature, the study analyzed data from 152 dogs over 21 months, capturing more than 260,000 button presses -- 195,000 of which were made by the dogs themselves.

"This is the first scientific study to analyze how dogs actually use soundboards," said lead researcher Federico Rossano, associate professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego and director of the Comparative Cognition Lab. "The findings reveal that dogs are pressing buttons purposefully to express their desires and needs, not just imitating their owners. When dogs combine two buttons, these sequences are not random but instead seem to reflect specific requests."

The study observed that the buttons most commonly used were related to essential needs, with words such as "outside," "treat," "play," and "potty." Notably, combinations like "outside" + "potty" or "food" + "water" were used in meaningful ways, occurring more frequently than expected by chance.

For dog owners, this research offers a new way to better understand their pets' needs. "While dogs already communicate some of these needs," Rossano said, "soundboards could allow for more precise communication. Instead of barking or scratching at the door, a dog may be able to tell you exactly what it wants, even combining concepts like 'outside' and 'park' or 'beach.' This could improve companionship and strengthen the bond between dogs and their owners."

Data was collected via the FluentPet mobile app, where owners logged their dogs' button presses in real time. The research team selected 152 dogs with over 200 logged button presses each to analyze patterns of use. Advanced statistical methods, including computer simulations, were used to determine whether button combinations were random, imitative, or truly intentional. The results showed that multi-button presses occurred in patterns significantly different from random chance, supporting the idea of deliberate communication.

The researchers also compared dogs' button presses to those of their owners and found that dogs were not simply imitating human behavior. For instance, buttons like "I love you" were far less frequently pressed by dogs than by their people.

While the study provides evidence of intentional two-button combinations, the researchers aim to go further. Future investigations will explore whether dogs can use buttons to refer to the past or future -- such as a missing toy -- or combine buttons creatively to communicate concepts for which they lack specific words.

"We want to know if dogs can use these soundboards to express ideas beyond their immediate needs, like absent objects, past experiences, or future events," Rossano said. "If they can, it would drastically change how we think about animal intelligence and communication."

Rossano's co-authors on the study are Amalia P. M. Bastos, now at Johns Hopkins University; Zachary N. Houghton, now at UC Davis; and Lucas Naranjo with CleverPet, Inc. Bastos' work on the study was supported in part by Johns Hopkins' Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. While Bastos and Houghton have previously served as consultants to CleverPet, and Naranjo currently works for the company, which manufactures the FluentPet mobile app and soundboard devices, the research design and analysis were conducted independently.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California - San Diego. Original written by Inga Kiderra. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Amalia P. M. Bastos, Zachary N. Houghton, Lucas Naranjo, Federico Rossano. Soundboard-trained dogs produce non-accidental, non-random and non-imitative two-button combinations. Scientific Reports, 2024; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-79517-6

Cite This Page:

University of California - San Diego. (2024, December 9). Dogs use two-word button combos to communicate. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209162449.htm

Space and Time

- Black hole debate settled? Stellar-mass black holes found at the heart of the Milky Way's largest star cluster

- Universe expansion study confirms challenge to cosmic theory

- Astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt

Black hole debate settled? Stellar-mass black holes found at the heart of the Milky Way's largest star cluster

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: University of Surrey

Summary: Could a decades-long debate about the mysterious movements of stars in Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way, finally be resolved?

Article: View on ScienceDaily

Could a decades-long debate about the mysterious movements of stars in Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way, finally be resolved?

Omega Centauri is a massive star cluster with nearly ten million stars located in the constellation Centaurus. For a long time, researchers have noticed that the velocities of stars moving near the centre of Omega Centauri were higher than expected. But it wasn't clear whether this was caused by an "intermediate mass" black hole (IMBH), weighing a hundred thousand times the mass of the Sun, or a cluster of "stellar mass" black holes, each weighing just a few times the mass of the Sun.

A cluster of black holes is expected to form at the centre of Omega Centauri as a result of stellar evolution. But astronomers thought that most of them would be ejected by slingshot interactions with other stars. As such, an IMBH hole started to look more and more like the favoured solution. This seemed even more likely when new evidence recently emerged of fast-moving stars near the centre of Omega Centauri that may require interactions with an IMBH to reach such high velocities.

Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) are exciting to astronomers because they may be the "missing link" between stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes. Stellar-mass black holes form from the death of massive stars and have already been found via a variety of different techniques. Supermassive black holes are found at the centres of large galaxies and can weigh millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. We do not currently know how supermassive black holes form or whether they begin their lives as stellar mass black holes. Finding an IMBH could solve this cosmic puzzle.

The new research involving the University of Surrey looked afresh at the anomalous velocities of stars at the centre of Omega Centauri, but this time, it used a new piece of data. The researchers combined the anomalous velocity data with new data for the accelerations of pulsars for the first time. Pulsars, like black holes, are formed from dying stars. Weighing up to twice the mass of the Sun, they are just 20km across and can spin up to 700 times a second. As they spin, they emit radio waves along their spin axis, processing like a spinning top. The radio beam sweeps past the Earth like a lighthouse, allowing us to detect them.

Pulsars are natural clocks, almost as accurate as atomic clocks on Earth. By carefully measuring the change in the rate of their spin, astronomers can calculate how the pulsars are accelerating, directly probing the gravitational field strength at the centre of Omega Centauri. Combining these new acceleration measurements with the stellar velocities, researchers from Surrey, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Spain) and the Annecy-le-Vieux Laboratoire de Physique Théorique LAPTh in Annecy (France) were able to tell the difference between an IMBH and a cluster of black holes, favouring the latter.

Professor Justin Read, co-author of the study from the University of Surrey, said:

"The hunt for elusive intermediate-mass black holes continues. There could still be one at the centre of Omega Centauri, but our work suggests that it must be less than about six thousand times the mass of the Sun and live alongside a cluster of stellar mass black holes. There is, however, every chance of us finding one soon. More and more pulsar accelerations are coming, allowing us to peer into the centres of dense star clusters and hunt for black holes more precisely than ever before."

Andr'es Bañares-Hernández, lead author of the study from IAC, said:

"We have long known about supermassive black holes at galaxy centres and smaller stellar-mass black holes within our own galaxy. However, the idea of intermediate-mass black holes, which could bridge the gap between these extremes, remains unproven."

"By studying Omega Centauri -- a remnant of a dwarf galaxy -- we have been able to refine our methods and take a step forward in understanding whether such black holes exist and what role they might play in the evolution of star clusters and galaxies. This work helps resolve a two-decade-long debate and opens new doors for future exploration."

"The formation of pulsars is also an active field of study because a large number of them have recently been detected. Omega Centauri is an ideal environment to study models of their formation, which we have been able to do for the first time in our analysis."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Surrey. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Andr'es Bañares-Hernández, Francesca Calore, Jorge Martin Camalich, Justin I. Read. New constraints on the central mass contents of Omega Centauri from combined stellar kinematics and pulsar timing. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2024; DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202451763

Cite This Page:

University of Surrey. (2024, December 9). Black hole debate settled? Stellar-mass black holes found at the heart of the Milky Way's largest star cluster. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209122749.htm

Universe expansion study confirms challenge to cosmic theory

The findings support Hubble's expansion rate measurements

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Summary: New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe -- not a flaw in telescope measurements -- may be behind the decade-long mystery of why the universe is expanding faster today than it did in its infancy billions of years ago.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe -- not a flaw in telescope measurements -- may be behind the decadelong mystery of why the universe is expanding faster today than it did in its infancy billions of years ago.

The new data confirms Hubble Space Telescope measurements of distances between nearby stars and galaxies, offering a crucial cross-check to address the mismatch in measurements of the universe's mysterious expansion. Known as the Hubble tension, the discrepancy remains unexplained even by the best cosmology models.

"The discrepancy between the observed expansion rate of the universe and the predictions of the standard model suggests that our understanding of the universe may be incomplete. With two NASA flagship telescopes now confirming each other's findings, we must take this [Hubble tension] problem very seriously -- it's a challenge but also an incredible opportunity to learn more about our universe,'' said Nobel laureate and lead author Adam Riess, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and Thomas J. Barber Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.

Published in The Astrophysical Journal, the research builds on Riess' Nobel Prize-winning discovery that the universe's expansion is accelerating owing to a mysterious "dark energy" permeating vast stretches of space between stars and galaxies.

Riess' team used the largest sample of Webb data collected over its first two years in space to verify the Hubble telescope's measure of the expansion rate of the universe, a number known as the Hubble constant. They used three different methods to measure distances to galaxies that hosted supernovae, focusing on distances previously gauged by the Hubble telescope and known to produce the most precise "local" measurements of this number. Observations from both telescopes aligned closely, revealing that Hubble's measurements are accurate and ruling out an inaccuracy large enough to attribute the tension to an error by Hubble.

Still, the Hubble constant remains a puzzle because measurements based on telescope observations of the present universe produce higher values compared to projections made using the "standard model of cosmology," a widely accepted framework of how the universe works calibrated with data of cosmic microwave background, the faint radiation left over from the big bang.

While the standard model yields a Hubble constant of about 67-68 kilometers per second per megaparsec, measurements based on telescope observations regularly give a higher value of 70 to 76, with a mean of 73 km/s/Mpc. This mismatch has perplexed cosmologists for over a decade because a 5-6 km/s/Mpc difference is too large to be explained simply by flaws in measurement or observational technique. (Megaparsecs are huge distances. Each is 3.26 million light-years, and a light-year is the distance light travels in one year: 9.4 trillion kilometers, or 5.8 trillion miles.)

Since Webb's new data rules out significant biases in Hubble's measurements, the Hubble tension may stem from unknown factors or gaps in cosmologists' understanding of physics yet to be discovered, Riess' team reports.

"The Webb data is like looking at the universe in high definition for the first time and really improves the signal-to-noise of the measurements,'' said Siyang Li, a graduate student working at Johns Hopkins University on the study.

The new study covered roughly a third of Hubble's full galaxy sample, using the known distance to a galaxy called NGC 4258 as a reference point. Despite the smaller dataset, the team achieved impressive precision, showing differences between measurements of under 2% -- far smaller than the approximately 8-9% size of the Hubble tension discrepancy.

In addition to their analysis of pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, the gold standard for measuring cosmic distances, the team cross-checked measurements based on carbon-rich stars and the brightest red giants across the same galaxies. All galaxies observed by Webb together with their supernovae yielded a Hubble constant of 72.6 km/s/Mpc, nearly identical to the value of 72.8 km/s/Mpc found by Hubble for the very same galaxies.

The study included samples of Webb data from two groups that work independently to refine the Hubble constant, one from Riess' SH0ES team (Supernova, H_0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy) and one from the Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program, as well as from other teams. The combined measurements make for the most precise determination yet about the accuracy of the distances measured using the Hubble TelescopeCepheid stars, which are fundamental for determining the Hubble constant.

Although the Hubble constant does not have a practical effect on the solar system, Earth, or daily life, it reveals the evolution of the universe at extremely large scales, with vast areas of space itself stretching and pushing distant galaxies away from one another like raisins in rising dough. It is a key value scientists use to map the structure of the universe, deepen their understanding of its state 13-14 billion years after the big bang, and calculate other fundamental aspects of the cosmos.

Resolving the Hubble tension could reveal new insights into more discrepancies with the standard cosmological model that have come to light in recent years, said Marc Kamionkowski, a Johns Hopkins cosmologist who helped calculate the Hubble constant and has recently helped develop a possible new explanation for the tension.

The standard model explains the evolution of galaxies, cosmic microwave background from the big bang, the abundances of chemical elements in the universe, and many other key observations based on the known laws of physics. However, it does not fully explain the nature of dark matter and dark energy, mysterious components of the universe estimated to be responsible for 96% of its makeup and accelerated expansion.

"One possible explanation for the Hubble tension would be if there was something missing in our understanding of the early universe, such as a new component of matter -- early dark energy -- that gave the universe an unexpected kick after the big bang," said Kamionkowski, who was not involved in the new study. "And there are other ideas, like funny dark matter properties, exotic particles, changing electron mass, or primordial magnetic fields that may do the trick. Theorists have license to get pretty creative."

Other authors are Dan Scolnic and Tianrui Wu of Duke University; Gagandeep S. Anand, Stefano Casertano, and Rachael Beaton of the Space Telescope Science Institute; Louise Breuval, Wenlong Yuan, Yukei S. Murakami, Graeme E. Addison, and Charles Bennett of Johns Hopkins University; Lucas M. Macri of NSF NOIRLab; Caroline D. Huang of The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian; Saurabh Jha of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Dillon Brout of Boston University; Richard I. Anderson of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Alexei V. Filippenko of University of California, Berkeley; and Anthony Carr of University of Queensland, Brisbane.

This research is supported by Department of Energy grant DE-SC0010007, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, Sloan Foundation, JWST GO-1685 and GO-2875, HST GO-16744 and GO-17312, and the Christopher R. Redlich Fund.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Johns Hopkins University. Original written by Roberto Molar Candanosa. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia:

- Evolution of the universe over 13.77 billion years, multiple galaxies

Journal Reference:

1. Adam G. Riess, Dan Scolnic, Gagandeep S. Anand, Louise Breuval, Stefano Casertano, Lucas M. Macri, Siyang Li, Wenlong Yuan, Caroline D. Huang, Saurabh Jha, Yukei S. Murakami, Rachael Beaton, Dillon Brout, Tianrui Wu, Graeme E. Addison, Charles Bennett, Richard I. Anderson, Alexei V. Filippenko, and Anthony Carr. JWST Validates HST Distance Measurements: Selection of Supernova Subsample Explains Differences in JWST Estimates of Local H0. The Astrophysical Journal, 2024 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad8c21

Cite This Page:

Johns Hopkins University. (2024, December 9). Universe expansion study confirms challenge to cosmic theory. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209122620.htm

Astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt

Date: December 9, 2024

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Summary: Astronomers have found a way to spot the smallest, 'decameter,' asteroids within the main asteroid belt. They used their approach to detect more than 100 new asteroids, ranging from the size of a bus to several stadiums wide, which are the smallest asteroids within the main belt detected to date.

Article: View on ScienceDaily

The asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers across. That's about as wide as Brooklyn. Such a massive impactor is predicted to hit Earth rarely, once every 100 million to 500 million years.

In contrast, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, can strike Earth more frequently, every few years. These "decameter" asteroids, measuring just tens of meters across, are more likely to escape the main asteroid belt and migrate in to become near-Earth objects. If they make impact, these small but mighty space rocks can send shockwaves through entire regions, such as the 1908 impact in Tunguska, Siberia, and the 2013 asteroid that broke up in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Urals. Being able to observe decameter main-belt asteroids would provide a window into the origin of meteorites.

Now, MIT astronomers have found a way to spot the smallest decameter asteroids within the main asteroid belt -- a rubble field between Mars and Jupiter where millions of asteroids orbit. Until now, the smallest asteroids that scientists were able to discern there were about a kilometer in diameter. With the team's new approach, scientists can now spot asteroids in the main belt as small as 10 meters across.

In a paper appearing in the journal Nature, de Wit and his colleagues report that they have used their approach to detect more than 100 new decameter asteroids in the main asteroid belt. The space rocks range from the size of a bus to several stadiums wide, and are the smallest asteroids within the main belt that have been detected to date.

The researchers envision that the approach can be used to identify and track asteroids that are likely to approach Earth.

"We have been able to detect near-Earth objects down to 10 meters in size when they are really close to Earth," says the study's lead author, Artem Burdanov, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. "We now have a way of spotting these small asteroids when they are much farther away, so we can do more precise orbital tracking, which is key for planetary defense."

The study's co-authors include MIT professors of planetary science Julien de Wit and Richard Binzel, along with collaborators from multiple other institutions.

Image shift

De Wit and his team are primarily focused on searches and studies of exoplanets -- worlds outside the solar system that may be habitable. The researchers are part of the group that in 2016 discovered a planetary system around TRAPPIST-1, a star that is about 40 light years from Earth. Using the Transiting Planets and Planetismals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile, the team confirmed that the star hosts rocky, Earth-sized planets, several of which are in the habitable zone.

Scientists have since trained many telescopes, focused at various wavelengths, on the TRAPPIST-1 system to further characterize the planets and look for signs of life. With these searches, astronomers have had to pick through the "noise" in telescope images, such as any gas, dust, and planetary objects between Earth and the star, to more clearly decipher the TRAPPIST-1 planets. Often, the noise they discard includes passing asteroids.

"For most astronomers, asteroids are sort of seen as the vermin of the sky, in the sense that they just cross your field of view and affect your data," de Wit says.

De Wit and Burdanov wondered whether the same data used to search for exoplanets could be recycled and mined for asteroids in our own solar system. To do so, they looked to "shift and stack," an image processing technique that was first developed in the 1990s. The method involves shifting multiple images of the same field of view and stacking the images to see whether an otherwise faint object can outshine the noise.

Applying this method to search for unknown asteroids in images that are originally focused on far-off stars would require significant computational resources, as it would involve testing a huge number of scenarios for where an asteroid might be. The researchers would then have to shift thousands of images for each scenario to see whether an asteroid is indeed where it was predicted to be.

Several years ago, Burdanov, de Wit, and MIT graduate student Samantha Hassler found they could do that using state-of-the-art GPUs -- graphics processing units that can process an enormous amount of imaging data at high speeds.

They initially tried their approach on data from the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) survey -- a system of ground-based telescopes that takes many images of a star over time. This effort, along with a second application using data from a telescope in Antarctica, showed that researchers could indeed spot a vast amount of new asteroids in the main belt.

"An unexplored space"

For the new study, the researchers looked for more asteroids, down to smaller sizes, using data from the world's most powerful observatory -- NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is particularly sensitive to infrared rather than visible light. As it happens, asteroids that orbit in the main asteroid belt are much brighter at infrared wavelengths than at visible wavelengths, and thus are far easier to detect with JWST's infrared capabilities.

The team applied their approach to JWST images of TRAPPIST-1. The data comprised more than 10,000 images of the star, which were originally obtained to search for signs of atmospheres around the system's inner planets. After processing the images, the researchers were able to spot eight known asteroids in the main belt. They then looked further and discovered 138 new asteroids around the main belt, all within tens of meters in diameter -- the smallest main belt asteroids detected to date. They suspect a few asteroids are on their way to becoming near-Earth objects, while one is likely a Trojan -- an asteroid that trails Jupiter.

"We thought we would just detect a few new objects, but we detected so many more than expected, especially small ones," de Wit says. "It is a sign that we are probing a new population regime, where many more small objects are formed through cascades of collisions that are very efficient at breaking down asteroids below roughly 100 meters."

"This is a totally new, unexplored space we are entering, thanks to modern technologies," Burdanov says. "It's a good example of what we can do as a field when we look at the data differently. Sometimes there's a big payoff, and this is one of them."

This work was supported in part by the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Czech Science Foundation, and the NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Jennifer Chu. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia:

- An artist’s illustration of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealing, in the infrared, a population of small main-belt asteroids

Journal Reference:

1. Artem Y. Burdanov, Julien de Wit, Miroslav Brož, Thomas G. Müller, Tobias Hoffmann, Marin Ferrais, Marco Micheli, Emmanuel Jehin, Daniel Parrott, Samantha N. Hasler, Richard P. Binzel, Elsa Ducrot, Laura Kreidberg, Michaël Gillon, Thomas P. Greene, Will M. Grundy, Theodore Kareta, Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Nicholas Moskovitz, Audrey Thirouin, Cristina A. Thomas, Sebastian Zieba. JWST sighting of decameter main-belt asteroids and view on meteorite sources. Nature, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08480-z

Cite This Page:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2024, December 9). Astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 9, 2024 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241209122556.htm

Table of Contents

Science Daily: 2024 Dec 9

Earth and Climate

Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected: 2024 Dec 9

New ocean predator discovered in the Atacama Trench

Education and Learning

Could online technology be a clue as to why boys in Norway are outperforming girls in learning English as a second language?

Fossils and Ruins

Earliest deep-cave ritual compound in Southwest Asia discovered: 2024 Dec 9

Health and Medicine

Loneliness and isolation: Back to pre-pandemic levels, but still high, for older adults

A healthy diet helps the weighty battle with chronic pain

Plants and Animals

Dogs use two-word button combos to communicate: 2024 Dec 9

Space and Time

Black hole debate settled? Stellar-mass black holes found at the heart of the Milky Way's largest star cluster

Universe expansion study confirms challenge to cosmic theory

Astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt