# data[].attributes.headline
Reconstructing global climate through Earth's history

# data[].attributes.subject
Reconstructing global climate through Earth's history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A key component when forecasting what the Earth's climate might look like in the future is the ability to draw on accurate temperature records of the past. By reconstructing past latitudinal temperature gradients (the difference in average temperature between the equator and the poles) researchers can predict where, for example, the jet stream, which controls storms and temperatures in the mid-latitudes (temperate zones between the tropics and the polar circles), will be positioned. The trouble is, many of the existing data are biased toward particular regions or types of environments, not painting a full picture of Earth's ancient temperatures.

Researchers from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, including Emily Judd '20 Ph.D., Thonis Family Assistant Professor Tripti Bhattacharya and Professor Linda Ivany, have published a study titled, "A dynamical framework for interpreting ancient sea surface temperatures," in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters," to help account for the offset between location-biased paleoclimate data and the 'true' average temperature at a given latitude through Earth's history. Their work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

According to Judd, accurate temperature estimates of ancient oceans are vital because they are the best tool for reconstructing global climate conditions in the past, including metrics like mean global temperature and the latitudinal temperature gradient. While climate models provide scenarios of what the world could look like in the future, paleoclimate studies (study of past climates) provide insight into what the world did look like in the past. Seeing how well the models we use to predict the future can simulate the past tells us how confident we can be in their results. It is therefore of utmost importance to have thorough, well-sampled data from the ancient past.

"By understanding how latitudinal temperature gradients have changed over the course of Earth's history and under a variety of different climate regimes, we can start to better anticipate what will happen in the future," says Judd.

To determine ancient temperatures, geologists study proxies, which are chemical or biological traces that record temperatures from sedimentary deposits preserved on the sea floor or continents. Due to the recycling of ancient seafloor into the Earth's mantle, there is an 'expiration date' on the availability of seafloor data. Most ancient temperature proxies therefore come from sediments that accumulated on continental margins or in shallow inland seas where records can persist for much longer.

Judd, Bhattacharya and Ivany use temperature data from modern oceans to reveal consistent, predictable patterns where the ocean surface is warmer or cooler, or more or less seasonal, than otherwise expected at that latitude.

"The biggest offsets happen to be in the two settings that are most represented in the geologic past," says Ivany. "Knowing how those regions are biased in comparison to the global mean allows researchers to better interpret the proxy data coming from the ancient Earth."

Data from shallow, semi-restricted seas (e.g., the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas) show that sea surface temperatures are warmer than in the open ocean. As a result, a key finding of their paper theorizes that estimates of global mean temperature from the Paleozoic Era (~540-250 million years ago), a time when the majority of data come from shallow seas, are unrealistically hot.

Even in the more recent geologic past, the overwhelming majority of sea surface temperature estimates come from coastal settings, which they demonstrate are also systematically biased in comparison to open ocean temperatures.

In order to have a more accurate record of average ocean temperature at a given latitude, Bhattacharya says researchers must account for the incomplete nature of paleotemperature data. "Our work highlights the need for the scientific community to focus sampling efforts on under-sampled environments," says Bhattacharya. "New sampling efforts are essential to make sure we are equally sampling unique environmental settings for different intervals of Earth's history."

According to Judd, the paleoclimate community has made major advances toward understanding ancient climates in the past few decades. New, faster, and cheaper analytical techniques, as well as a surge in expeditions that recover ocean sediment cores, have led to massive compilations of ancient sea surface temperature estimates. Despite these advancements, there are still significant disagreements between temperature estimates from different locations within the same time interval and/or between temperature estimates and climate model results.

"Our study provides a framework within which to reconcile these discrepancies," says Judd. "We highlight where, when and why temperature estimates from the same latitudes may differ from one another and compare different climate models' abilities to reconstruct these patterns. Our work therefore lays the groundwork to more holistically and robustly reconstruct global climate through Earth's history."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
climate; global warming; environmental issues; environmental awareness; early climate; fossils; ancient civilizations; anthropology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reconstructing global climate through Earth's history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Accurate temperature estimates of ancient oceans are vital because they are the best tool for reconstructing global climate conditions in the past. While climate models provide scenarios of what the world could look like in the future, paleoclimate studies (study of past climates) provide insight into what the world did look like in the past.

# data[].attributes.headline
Study Reveals Lost Continent Demolished by Europe

# data[].attributes.subject
Study Reveals Lost Continent Demolished by Europe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Painstaking research recreates the history of Greater Adria, which slipped under the Eurasian plate 120 million years ago

smithsonianmag.com

Researchers uncovered traces of a lost continent that disappeared under what is today Europe about 120 million years ago.

Geologists have seen hints of the continent, dubbed Greater Adria, for years. But the Mediterranean area is incredibly complicated, so piecing together its history took a decade of academic detective work. "The Mediterranean region is quite simply a geological mess," geologist Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht University, first author of the study in Gondwana Research says. "Everything is curved, broken, and stacked."

The story that the rocks tell begins on the supercontinent Gondwana, which would eventually split into Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica and India. Greater Adria broke away from the mother continent about 240 million years ago, beginning a slow drift northward. Roughly 140 million years ago, it was about the size of Greenland, mostly submerged in a tropical sea, collecting sediment that hardened into rock. Then, roughly 100 to 120 million years ago, it hit the southern edge of future Europe, spinning counterclockwise and moving at about 3 to 4 centimeters per year.

As Robin George Andrews at National Geographic reports, the destruction of Greater Adria was complex. It hit several subduction zones, or areas where tectonic plates meet. In this case, the Greater Adria plate was trumped by the European plate, and most of it dove down into Earth's mantle. The overlying plate scraped the top layers of Great Adria off. That debris eventually formed mountain ranges in Italy, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and in the Alps. A few bits of Greater Adria escaped the plunge into the mantle and still exist in Italy and Croatia.

Figuring out the story of Greater Adria was difficult, not only because of the geology but also due to human factors. Information about the continent is spread across many countries, from Spain to Iran. "Every country has their own geological survey and their own maps and their own stories and their own continents," Hinsbergen tells Yasemin Saplakolu at LiveScience. "[With this study] we brought that all together in one big picture."

They also spent time constructing the continent's history by examining the orientation of tiny magnetic minerals created by bacteria trapped in the Adria rocks. From that data they were able to understand how much the rock layers rotated over time. They also pieced together structures like strings of volcanoes and coral reefs. New, more powerful software developed over the last 15 years or so also aided in reconstructing the lost land mass.

Sid Perkins at reports that the new study isn't the only evidence for Greater Adria. In 2016, another team identified slabs of the continent in Earth's mantle using seismic waves. Nor is it the only "lost continent" out there. A large land mass called Zealandia is submerged under two-thirds of a mile of water in the South Pacific and is considered the "eighth contienent" by some researchers. In 2017, other scientists announced that they found a sunken "mini-continent" under the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

Like this article?
SIGN UP for our newsletter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study Reveals Lost Continent Demolished by Europe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
smithsonianmag.com Researchers uncovered traces of a lost continent that disappeared under what is today Europe about 120 million years ago. Geologists have seen hints of the continent, dubbed Greater Adria, for years. But the Mediterranean area is incredibly complicated, so piecing together its history took a decade of academic detective work.

# data[].attributes.headline
What Happened the Day a Giant, Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Hit the Earth

# data[].attributes.subject
What Happened the Day a Giant, Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Hit the Earth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Using rock cores from Chicxulub crater, geologists piece together a new timeline of the destruction that followed impact

smithsonianmag.com

One of the greatest scars on our planet is hidden beneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. The buried crater, over 90 miles in diameter, was created when a massive asteroid struck the planet 66 million years ago and brought a calamitous end to the reign of dinosaurs. Now, thanks to a new analysis of core samples taken from the crater's inner ring of mountains, called a peak ring, geologists can create a detailed timeline of what happened on the day after impact.

The immense Chicxulub crater is a remnant of one of the most consequential days in the history of life on Earth. The asteroid strike triggered the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, mass extinction. The catastrophe not only decimated the dinosaurs, leaving only birds to carry their legacy, but also annihilated various forms of life from flying reptiles called pterosaurs to coil-shelled nautilus relatives called ammonites. Lizards, snakes, mammals and more suffered their own setbacks. The best clues to what happened now lie buried in rock layers stacked 12 miles deep.

Using a core sample collected in 2016, University of Texas at Austin geologist Sean Gulick and a team of dozens of other researchers have further pieced together the story of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. "We interpret this section to represent the first day post impact, which by the definition of the geologic time scale, makes it the first day of the Cenozoic since the Cretaceous ended the moment the asteroid struck," Gulick says. The team's study, "The first day of the Cenozoic," was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The drill site was selected to investigate the series of events that followed the impact. When an asteroid the size of the Chicxulub impactor, estimated to be more than six miles wide, strikes a planet, material is ripped up from below the surface and tossed into the air, collapsing in circular mountain range within the crater. Such devastating upheaval triggers a cascading sequence of natural disasters, sending tsunamis rolling across the oceans and ejecting an immense amount of debris into the atmosphere.

The core sample is a geologic document stretching hundreds of feet long. Under a thin ring of overlying material is over 400 feet of melt rock that was laid down during the day following the impact.

"This isn't the first drill core from Chicxulub," says University of New Mexico geologist James Witts, "but because of its position on the peak ring, which is essentially a range of mountains created in the moments after the impact event, it provides a really unique picture of the sort of dynamic geological processes that operated over short timescales." An event of this scale has never occurred in human history, he adds, so the rock record is essential to parsing out the details.

Within minutes of the asteroid strike, Gulick and colleagues found, the underlying rock at the site collapsed and formed a crater with a peak ring. The ring was soon covered by over 70 feet of additional rock that had melted in the heat of the blast.

The sea battered against the new hole in the planet, and in the minutes and hours that followed, surges of water rushing back into the crater carried laid down more than 260 additional feet of melted stone atop the already accumulated rock. Then a tsunami hit. The wave, reflected back toward the crater after the initial impact, added another distinct layer of rock-sediments of gravel, sand and charcoal-all within the first 24 hours of the strike.

The planetary collision triggered wildfires inland, burning forests that were later doused by devastating waves. Debris from the charred woods washed out to sea, and some accumulated in the crater.

"What we have from drilling at ground zero is a fairly complete picture of how the crater formed and what the processes were within the crater on the first day of the Cenozoic," Gulick says.

The impact affected life far from the site. The heat pulse would have raised temperatures over 900 miles away, Gulick says, and "at farther distances the ejecta could also have caused fires by frictional heating as it rained down in the atmosphere."

The rocks that the asteroid struck were rich in sulfur, which was ejected and vaporized, mixing with water vapor and creating what Gulick calls a sulfate aerosol haze. Geologists had detected and studied this effect before, but the new research reinforces the role this atmospheric disruption played in the extinction that followed.

"Our results support this scenario where first you burned parts of the continents, and then you had global dimming of the sun and plummeting temperatures for years to follow," Gulick says. These events account for the loss of 75 percent of known species at the end of the Cretaceous. Had the impact occurred elsewhere, or in a place of deeper ocean water, the extinction may have happened differently, or not at all.

Cores from Chicxulub crater reveal the planet-wide devastation that the large impactor caused, but the timing of these events will likely spur debate and discussion, Witts says. "The complication with relating individual deposits in the core to specific types of events is that clearly the crater wasn't a static environment after formation," Witts says, meaning that earthquakes, waves and other events have altered the rock record over the course of 66 million years. Still cores like the one taken from the peak ring show that we can get a close-up look at short-term events in the rock record, down to minutes, hours and days.

Scientists knew the first day of the Cenozoic started with a bang, and now they have a better sense of the fallout.

About Riley Black

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Happened the Day a Giant, Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Hit the Earth

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
smithsonianmag.com One of the greatest scars on our planet is hidden beneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. The buried crater, over 90 miles in diameter, was created when a massive asteroid struck the planet 66 million years ago and brought a calamitous end to the reign of dinosaurs.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why do whales migrate? They return to the tropics to shed their skin

# data[].attributes.subject
Why do whales migrate? They return to the tropics to shed their skin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Whales undertake some of the longest migrations on earth, often swimming many thousands of miles, over many months, to breed in the tropics. The question is why -- is it to find food, or to give birth?

In a research paper in Marine Mammal Science, scientists propose that whales that forage in polar waters migrate to low latitudes to maintain healthy skin.

"I think people have not given skin molt due consideration when it comes to whales, but it is an important physiological need that could be met by migrating to warmer waters," said Robert Pitman, lead author of the new paper and marine ecologist with Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute. He was formerly with NOAA Fisheries' Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California.

More than a century ago, whalers recognized that most whales that forage in high latitudes migrate to the tropics for calving. Scientists have never agreed on why. Because of their size, large whales should be able to successfully give birth in frigid polar waters. Due to reduced feeding opportunities in the tropics, most whales fast during their months-long migrations.

So why go to the trouble?
Warm Water Speeds Molting
All birds and mammals regularly shed their skin, fur, or feathers in a process known as molting. Pitman and his coauthors propose that whales foraging in the freezing waters of Antarctica conserve body heat by diverting blood flow away from their skin. That would reduce regeneration of skin cells and halt the normal sloughing of skin.

Migrating to warmer water would allow whales to revive their skin metabolism and molt in an environment that does not sap their body heat. The authors suggest that this drives their migrations.

The two lead authors on the study first proposed in 2011 that skin molt could drive the migration for certain Antarctic killer whales. With new data, they now propose the same for all Antarctic killer whales and possibly all whales that migrate to the tropics.

Coauthors on the paper include scientists from NOAA Fisheries; SeaLife Response, Rehabilitation, and Research; and the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research.

Over eight years, scientists deployed 62 satellite tags on killer whales. They found that all four types that feed in frigid Antarctic waters migrated as far as 11,000 kilometers (almost 7,000 miles) round trip. Most migrations were fast, non-stop, and largely straight north and back. One whale completed two such migrations in 5.5 months. Researchers also photographed newborn killer whale calves in Antarctica, indicating the whales don't need to migrate to warmer waters to give birth.

They suggest that larger whales that migrate to the tropics to molt may have begun giving birth in those same warmer waters. "Instead of whales migrating to the tropics or subtropics for calving, whales could be traveling to warm waters for skin maintenance and perhaps find it adaptive to bear their calves while they are there," the scientists wrote. The warm water could speed the growth of calves in an environment with far fewer killer whales, their main predator.

Much like humans, whales and dolphins normally shed outer skin cells continuously. Scientists observed that whales in frigid Antarctic waters are often discolored by a thick yellow film of microscopic diatoms. This indicated that they were not experiencing their normal, "self-cleaning" skin molt.

Early whalers referred to blue whales with a heavy coating of diatoms on their white bellies as "sulfur-bottoms." They also assumed that whales without a diatom coating were likely recent arrivals from the tropics. When whales shed their skin, they also shed the diatoms.
Molting Jettisons Harmful Bacteria
Recent studies have found that high concentrations of diatoms on the skin of Antarctic killer whales may also accumulate potentially harmful bacteria.

"Basically, the feeding is so good in productive Antarctic waters that the relatively small, warm-blooded killer whale has evolved a remarkable migration behavior. This enables it to exploit these resources and still maintain healthy skin function," said John Durban, coauthor of the research, formerly with the science center and now a senior scientist at SEA Inc.

In another example, beluga whales in the Arctic are known for gathering in summer in river estuaries. The water there is warmer, fresher, and shallower than their typical habitat. At first, scientists assumed that they gathered there to give birth and that the warmer temperatures boosted calf survival.

It turned out that belugas do not calve or feed in the estuaries but go there to molt. In an earlier study, an Inuit hunter pointed out that "Belugas go to the rivers for warmth. And like seals they moult their skins. They moult in the warm water."

The annual (versus continuous) molt cycle of the beluga was long thought to be unique among cetaceans. But, if whales are migrating to the tropics to molt, annual molt "may prove to be the rule among all high-latitude cetaceans," the authors wrote.

In terms of biomass, whales complete the largest annual migrations on earth. They transport millions of tons of animals thousands of miles, with significant impact on local ecosystems, the scientists say. They also call for further testing of their hypothesis by assessing skin growth of migratory and non-migratory whales, at high and low latitudes, throughout the year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
dolphins and whales; sea life; marine biology; animals; ozone holes; water; snow and avalanches; environmental issues

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why do whales migrate? They return to the tropics to shed their skin: First suggested for killer whales, skin molt may drive long-distance migration for all whales that forage in cold waters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Whales undertake some of the longest migrations on earth, often swimming many thousands of miles, over many months, to breed in the tropics. The question is why? Scientists propose that whales that forage in polar waters migrate to low latitudes to maintain healthy skin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dinosaurs were big, but these are the largest animals in the history of the planet—and we’re just beginning to understand the reasons for their size

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We need new guidelines to shield whales from human-made noise to ensure them some peace and quiet. It is no good keeping whale-watching boats out of whales' sight if the noise from the boats' engines disturb the whales most. And whales can hear the boats' engines from far away, according to a Danish-Australian research team.

Whale-watching has become a multi-billion-dollar business, and companies want to give passengers the best possible experience by positioning their boats close to the whales.

Public authorities around the globe have set restrictions on whale-watching boats in order to protect whales. For example, some countries require boats to keep a distance of at least 100 metres from the whales, or require them to stay behind or next to the whales at slow speed. However, scientific studies have shown that even when boats keep to these restrictions, the whales are still disturbed and change behaviour:

They dive, change course, swim faster, breathe more often, disperse and may make different sounds compared to usual.

Now, a team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark believe they have found an explanation: The engines in some of the boats are too loud. And authorities can now place noise emission standards on this noise.

"Unlike humans, the dominant sense in whales is not sight -- it is hearing. As such, a whale may not be able to see a whale-watch boat at 100 meter distance, but they are likely to hear it, so it makes sense to consider this when stipulating whale-watching guidelines," says Australian Kate R. Sprogis, biologist and Marie Skłowdowska-Curie Fellow at Aarhus University.

Kate R. Sprogis is the lead of a team of researchers who, using underwater speakers and drone cameras, have experimented to find out how much noise from boats it takes for humpback whales to change their behaviour. The results have been published in the scientific journal eLife.

The experiments were carried out in Exmouth Gulf on the west coast of Australia, which has the largest population of humpback whales in the world. Exmouth Gulf is a resting area where the whales rely on their fat deposits during winter as they are not feeding, and where their calves suckle to become strong enough for the migration to the feeding ground in colder waters during summer.

Using a drone, the researchers would search for a mother and her calf, and drive their boat to a 100 metres distance from them in a whale-watching scenario whilst emitting boat-engine noises at different noise levels. They completed a total of 42 controlled exposure experiments of this type and recorded all behavioural movements of the whales from the aerial perspective with the drone's camera.

At the highest boat-noise level of 172 decibels (a loud boat), at a 100 metres distance to the whales, they found that the resting time of whale mothers dropped by 30%, their breathing rate doubled and their swimming speed rose by 37%.

However, they often returned to a state of resting when the boat noise moved further away. Despite this, other research shows that repeated disturbance from humans can have long-term consequences for the whales: When whale mothers spend a great deal of energy negatively responding to underwater noise, they have less energy to feed their offspring, avert predators and unwanted males, and to migrate to their polar feeding ground to fatten up.

"For the calves, multiple disturbances can also mean that they don't get enough milk: In a short time, they have to grow big and strong enough to be able to cope with the migration to colder regions and to minimise the risk of being predated upon by sharks and killer whales," explains Kate R. Sprogis.

The researchers concluded that the noise level from a boat's engine should stay below 150 decibels (or, more specifically, 150 dB re 1 μPa RMS) to avoid impacting the humpback whales' behaviour.

Now, the researchers recommend introducing this noise emission standard, to ensure that loud boats are not disturbing whales unnecessarily.

They note that a number of whale-watching boats are already quiet and therefore comply with the recommendation.

You can see a humpback mother and calf responding to different levels of noise in the video below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
dolphins and whales; sea life; marine biology; animals; environmental issues; pollution; global warming; environmental policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Researchers recommend new guidelines for noise levels from whale-watching boats after having carried out experiments with humpback whales. They exposed the whales to different levels of boat-engine noises while observing the current guidelines for whale-watching -- keeping 100 meters distance, for instance -- while monitoring the whales' behavior closely with a drone camera.

# data[].attributes.headline
The placebo effect and psychedelic drugs: Tripping on nothing?

# data[].attributes.subject
The placebo effect and psychedelic drugs: Tripping on nothing?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A new study suggests that, in the right context, some people may experience psychedelic-like effects from placebos alone. The researchers reported some of the strongest placebo effects on consciousness in the literature relating to psychedelic drugs. Indeed, 61% of the participants in the experiment reported some effect after consuming the placebo.

There has been a lot of recent interest in the use of psychedelic drugs to treat depression. A new study from McGill suggests that, in the right context, some people may experience psychedelic-like effects from placebos alone. The researchers reported some of the strongest placebo effects (these are effects from "fake" medication) on consciousness in the literature relating to psychedelic drugs. Indeed, 61% of the participants in the experiment reported some effect after consuming the placebo.

"The study reinforces the power of context in psychedelic settings. With the recent re-emergence of psychedelic therapy for disorders such as depression and anxiety, clinicians may be able to leverage these contextual factors to obtain similar therapeutic experiences from lower doses, which would further improve the safety of the drugs," said Jay Olson, a Ph.D. candidate in McGill's Department of Psychiatry and the lead author on the research paper that was recently published in Psychopharmacology.
Setting the mood
Participants, who were expecting to take part in a study of the effects of drugs on creativity, spent four hours together in a room that had been set up to resemble a psychedelic party, with paintings, coloured lights and a DJ. To make the context seem credible and hide the deception, the study also involved ten research assistants in white lab coats, psychiatrists, and a security guard.

The 33 participants had been told they were being given a drug which resembled the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms and that they would experience changes in consciousness over the 4-hour period. In reality, everyone consumed a placebo. Among the participants were several actors who had been trained to slowly act out the effects of the ostensible drug. The researchers thought that this would help convince the participants that everyone had consumed a psychedelic drug and might lead them to experience placebo effects.
Strong effects for a placebo
When asked near the end of the study, the majority (61%) of the participants reported some effect of the drug, ranging from mild changes to effects resembling taking a moderate or high dose of an actual drug, though there was considerable individual variation. For example, several participants stated that they saw the paintings on the walls "move" or "reshape" themselves. Others described themselves as feeling "heavy... as if gravity [had] a stronger hold," and one had a "come down" before another "wave" hit her. Several participants reported being certain that they had taken a psychedelic drug.

"These results may help explain 'contact highs' in which people experience the effects of a drug simply by being around others who have consumed it," says Samuel Veissière, a cognitive anthropologist who teaches in McGill's Department of Psychiatry and supervised the study. "More generally, our study helps shed light on the 'placebo boosting' component inherent in all medical and therapeutic intervention, and the social influences that modulate these enhancing effects. Placebo effects may have been under-estimated in psychedelic studies. The current trend towards 'micro-dosing' (consuming tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to improve creativity), for example, may have a strong placebo component due to widespread cultural expectations that frame the response"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
illegal drugs; psychedelic drugs; spirituality; marijuana; addiction; psychiatry; cocaine; alzheimer's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The placebo effect and psychedelic drugs: Tripping on nothing? The placebo effect in psychedelic drug studies may be stronger than previously believed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new study suggests that, in the right context, some people may experience psychedelic-like effects from placebos alone. The researchers reported some of the strongest placebo effects on consciousness in the literature relating to psychedelic drugs. Indeed, 61% of the participants in the experiment reported some effect after consuming the placebo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Depression | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
264 million people worldwide live with depression.* Our World Data In 2017, around 17.3 million adults age 18 or older in the U.S. had experienced at least one major depressive episode in the last year (6.7% of adults in the U.S.).* ( National Institute of Mental Health) Losing a loved one, getting fired from a job, going through a divorce, and other difficult situations can lead a person to feel sad, lonely and scared.

# data[].attributes.headline
Time on screens has little impact on kids' social skills, study suggests

# data[].attributes.subject
Time on screens has little impact on kids' social skills, study suggests

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200413103532.htm

# data[].attributes.headline
Soft coral garden discovered in Greenland's deep sea

# data[].attributes.subject
Soft coral garden discovered in Greenland's deep sea

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A deep-sea soft coral garden habitat has been discovered in Greenlandic waters by scientists from UCL, ZSL and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, using an innovative and low-cost deep-sea video camera built and deployed by the team.

The soft coral garden, presented in a new Frontiers in Marine Science paper, is the first habitat of this kind to have been identified and assessed in west Greenland waters.

The study has direct implications for the management of economically important deep-sea trawl fisheries, which are immediately adjacent to the habitat. The researchers hope that a 486 km2 area will be recognised as a 'Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem' under UN guidelines, to ensure that it is protected.

PhD researcher Stephen Long (UCL Geography and ZSL (Zoological Society London)), first author on the study, said: "The deep sea is often over-looked in terms of exploration. In fact we have better maps of the surface of Mars, than we do of the deep sea.

"The development of a low-cost tool that can withstand deep-sea environments opens up new possibilities for our understanding and management of marine ecosystems. We'll be working with the Greenland government and fishing industry to ensure this fragile, complex and beautiful habitat is protected."

The soft coral garden discovered by the team exists in near total darkness, 500m below the surface at a pressure 50 times greater than at sea-level. This delicate and diverse habitat features abundant cauliflower corals as well as feather stars, sponges, anemones, brittle stars, hydrozoans bryozoans and other organisms.

Dr Chris Yesson (ZSL), last author on the study, said "Coral gardens are characterised by collections of one or more species (typically of non-reef forming coral), that sit on a wide range of hard and soft bottom habitats, from rock to sand, and support a diversity of fauna. There is considerable diversity among coral garden communities, which have previously been observed in areas such as northwest and southeast Iceland."

The discovery is particularly significant given that the deep sea is the most poorly known habitat on earth, despite being the biggest and covering 65% of the planet. Until very recently, very little was known about Greenland's deep-sea habitats, their nature, distribution and how they are impacted by human activities.

Surveying the deep sea has typically proved difficult and expensive. One major factor is that ocean pressure increases by one atmosphere (which is the average atmospheric pressure at sea level) every 10 metres of descent. Deep-sea surveys therefore have often only been possible using expensive remote operating vehicles and manned submersibles, like those seen in Blue Planet, which can withstand deep-sea pressure.

The UK-Greenland research team overcame this challenge by developing a low-cost towed video sled, which uses a GoPro video camera, lights and lasers in special pressure housings, mounted on a steel frame.

The lasers, which were used to add a sense of scale to the imagery, were made by combining high-powered laser pointers with DIY housings made at UCL's Institute of Making, with help from UCL Mechanical Engineering.

The team placed the video sledge -- which is about the size of a Mini Cooper -- on the seafloor for roughly 15 minutes at a time and across 18 different stations. Stills were taken from the video footage, with 1,239 images extracted for further analysis.

A total of 44,035 annotations of the selected fauna were made. The most abundant were anemones (15,531) and cauliflower corals (11,633), with cauliflower corals observed at a maximum density of 9.36 corals per square metre.

Long said: "A towed video sled is not unique. However, our research is certainly the first example of a low-cost DIY video sled led being used to explore deep-sea habitats in Greenland's 2.2million km² of sea. So far, the team has managed to reach an impressive depth of 1,500m. It has worked remarkably well and led to interest from researchers in other parts of the world."

Dr Yesson added: "Given that the ocean is the biggest habitat on earth and the one about which we know the least, we think it is critically important to develop cheap, accessible research tools. These tools can then be used to explore, describe and crucially inform management of these deep-sea resources."

Dr Martin Blicher (Greenland Institute of Natural Resources) said: "Greenland's seafloor is virtually unexplored, although we know is it inhabited by more than 2000 different species together contributing to complex and diverse habitats, and to the functioning of the marine ecosystem. Despite knowing so little about these seafloor habitats, the Greenlandic economy depends on a small number of fisheries which trawl the seabed. We hope that studies like this will increase our understanding of ecological relationships, and contribute to sustainable fisheries management."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
marine biology; fish; sea life; extreme survival; geography; oceanography; ecology; environmental awareness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Soft coral garden discovered in Greenland's deep sea

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A deep-sea soft coral garden habitat has been discovered in Greenlandic waters by scientists from UCL, ZSL and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, using an innovative and low-cost deep-sea video camera built and deployed by the team.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ecosystem degradation could raise risk of pandemics

# data[].attributes.subject
Ecosystem degradation could raise risk of pandemics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Environmental destruction may make pandemics more likely and less manageable, new research suggests.

The study, by the University of the West of England and the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, presents the hypothesis that disease risks are "ultimately interlinked" with biodiversity and natural processes such as the water cycle.

Using a framework designed to analyse and communicate complex relationships between society and the environment, the study concludes that maintaining intact and fully functioning ecosystems and their associated environmental and health benefits is key to preventing the emergence of new pandemics.

The loss of these benefits through ecosystem degradation -- including deforestation, land use change and agricultural intensification -- further compounds the problem by undermining water and other resources essential for reducing disease transmission and mitigating the impact of emerging infectious diseases.

Lead author Dr Mark Everard, of the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), said: "Ecosystems naturally restrain the transfer of diseases from animals to humans, but this service declines as ecosystems become degraded.

"At the same time, ecosystem degradation undermines water security, limiting availability of adequate water for good hand hygiene, sanitation and disease treatment.

"Disease risk cannot be dissociated from ecosystem conservation and natural resource security."

Dr David Santillo, of the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at Exeter, added: "The speed and scale with which radical actions have been taken in so many countries to limit the health and financial risks from COVID-19 demonstrate that radical systemic change would also be possible in order to deal with other global existential threats, such as the climate emergency and collapse of biodiversity, provided the political will is there to do so."

The researchers say the lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is that societies globally need to "build back better," including protecting and restoring damaged ecosystems (in line with the goals of the 2021-2030 UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration) keeping the many values of nature and human rights at the very forefront of environmental and economic policy-making.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
diseases and conditions; alzheimer's research; public health education; ecology; ecosystems; sustainability; environmental policies; resource shortage; public health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ecosystem degradation could raise risk of pandemics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Environmental destruction may make pandemics more likely and less manageable, new research suggests. The study, by the University of the West of England and the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, presents the hypothesis that disease risks are "ultimately interlinked" with biodiversity and natural processes such as the water cycle.

# data[].attributes.headline
A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment

# data[].attributes.subject
A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abstract

The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK's National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a 'labour contract' on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a 'service contract' on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC's 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an 'elite', whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of 'new affluent' workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a 'precariat' characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.

Over the past decade, there has been a striking renewal of interest in the analysis of social class inequality, driven by accumulating evidence of escalating social inequalities, notably with respect to wealth and income, but also around numerous social and cultural indicators, such as mortality rates, educational attainment, housing conditions and forms of leisure participation (e.g. Bennett et al., 2008; Dorling, 2011; Hills, 2010; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2008). Theoretically, this interest has been influenced by the deployment of Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual armoury to elaborate a model of class linked not exclusively to employment inequalities, but to the interplay between economic, social and cultural capital (see Bennett et al., 2008; Crompton, 2008; Savage, 2010; Savage et al., 2005). This current of work, sometimes called 'cultural class analysis' ( Atkinson, 2010) has cross-fertilised with feminist currents (e.g. Adkins and Skeggs, 2005; Skeggs, 1997) to champion multi-dimensional approaches to the analysis of stratification ( Yuval-Davis, 2011).

This article contributes to this current by elaborating a new model of social class which shows how measures of economic, cultural and social capital can be combined to provide a powerful way of mapping contemporary class divisions in the UK. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC's Great British Class Survey (GBCS), a web survey with the unusually high number of 161,400 respondents, complemented by a parallel national representative survey. Using these two surveys in tandem allows us to provide unusual detail on the link between class and specific occupational, educational and geographical profiles which offer unparalleled insights into the organisation of class inequality in 2011-12. We will show that although a large 'rump' of the established middle (or 'service') class, and the traditional working class exists, there are five other classes which fit less easily into this conventional sociological framing, and which reveal the extent of social polarisation and class fragmentation in contemporary Britain.

Our analysis proceeds in five steps. Firstly, we discuss how our analysis represents a new phase in class analysis. Secondly, we introduce the two surveys. Thirdly, we explain our measures of economic, cultural and social capital. Fourthly, and most importantly, we explain how we combined our measures of the three capitals, using latent class analysis, to generate our new model of social class. Finally, we describe and explicate each of our seven classes, showing how they intersect with age and gender divisions, drawing out their specific occupational and educational profiles. In our conclusion we draw out our findings for the analysis of social class.

What Is Social Class?

We are now entering a third phase in the analysis of class and stratification. The first phase, which lasted to the 1980s, saw the dominance of 'moralising' official measures of class, enshrined in Britain in the Registrar General's Class schema, in which 'standing within the community' (replaced, at least nominally, by 'skill' in 1980) was used to draw a six-fold class schema, with professionals at the top, and unskilled manual workers at the bottom (see Szreter, 1984). In this period, sociological endeavour focused on critiquing these models in favour of more rigorous sociologically informed class schemas, variously deploying theoretical frameworks from Marx and Weber.

The second phase, from the 1970s, saw the triumph of this sociological critique, especially in the elaboration of the influential model of social class developed by John Goldthorpe and his associates at Nuffield College, Oxford University ( Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992; Goldthorpe and Marshall, 1992; Goldthorpe et al., 1980; Marshall et al., 1988). Seeing off the rival Marxist framework of Erik Olin Wright (1985), the Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP) model proved highly influential. This defined seven classes according to an individual's employment position.1 It fundamentally differentiated between employees and employers and, amongst the former, between those on a labour contract (routine, semi-routine, technical employees),2 and those in a more diffuse 'service relationship' with their employers (professionals and managers).

This class schema proved hugely influential in the overhaul of the official UK class schema, through the elaboration of the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) ( Rose and O'Reilly, 1998; Rose and Pevalin, 2003). It has also been very important in the development of cross-national schemes for comparative analysis (e.g. Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992; Rose and Harrison, 2007, 2010). The Goldthorpe class schema has rightly been of enormous significance, especially in the comparative analysis of social mobility. However, although it is clear that for certain purposes it continues to represent a 'gold standard' in the measurement of class, five main lines of criticism can be developed to point to ways in which its purview is limited.

Firstly, as a deductive class schema, the validation of the Goldthorpe class schema predominantly focuses on criterion validity, that is to say, the extent to which it measures those features of the employment relations which are held to define class relationships ( Evans and Mills, 2000).3 Whilst it does this reasonably well (e.g. McGovern et al., 2007), the schema has been shown to be of less use in explicating the wider cultural and social activities and identities (see generally Devine, 1998; Savage, 2000), which do not appear to be closely linked to people's class position, as defined by the Goldthorpe class schema, and alternative schemas have been proposed to explain patterns of cultural consumption ( Le Roux et al., 2008). Indeed, this point is recognised by Goldthorpe himself in his recent work with Chan which emphasises that the link between class and cultural consumption is limited ( Chan and Goldthorpe, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c).

Secondly, it is increasingly apparent that a major appeal of the schema lay as a pragmatic means of placing individuals into social classes using standard nationally representative surveys with a moderate sample size. This is especially important since preferred forms of categorical data analysis such as log-linear modelling required reasonable cell sizes.4 It is for these pragmatic reasons, for instance, that an 'elite' was not distinguished (see Penn, 1981) within the Goldthorpe class schema (see the discussion in Savage and Williams, 2008). Recently, however, Grusky and his colleagues have used surveys with larger samples to show quite distinctive differences between 'micro-classes' ( Butler and Savage, 1995; Devine, 2010; Grusky and Weeden, 2001, 2008; Savage et al., 1992; Weeden and Grusky, 2005; 2012). It might thus be argued that Goldthorpe's class schema is dependent on the hegemony of a particular model of the nationally representative sample survey (see Savage, 2010).

Thirdly, Goldthorpe adopted the standard sociological approach of abstracting class from measures of income and wealth in order to derive class from measures of employment. However, this analytical step has increasingly been criticised by economists who examine moves between income groups, rather than occupational classes, to measure changing patterns of social mobility ( Blanden and Machin, 2008; Blanden et al., 2004; Jenkins, 2011). Although Erikson and Goldthorpe (2010) have mounted a powerful defence of the value of occupational class measures, nonetheless it is possible that that income variation within occupations is growing and that if economic measures of inequality are to be kept within the purview of class analysis we need to go beyond measures of occupational class alone.

Fourthly, as feminist critics such as Crompton (2008), Skeggs (1997, 2004), and Bradley (1995) have insisted, a focus on occupations as the sole measure of class occludes the more complex ways that class operates symbolically and culturally, through forms of stigmatisation and marking of personhood and value. Such an appreciation requires a more culturally sensitive mode of analysis.

Fifth, although widely used in comparative studies of social mobility, the validity of the EGP scheme has been challenged. Recently, based on a comparative study of Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland, Daniel Oesch (2006) questions several of the assumptions in the EGP scheme for lacking the ability to take highly important horizontal cleavages into account, for giving a too homogenous description of the salaried middle class and for overdoing the manual/non-manual divide when separating between male production workers and routine sales and service occupations. Comparative studies of industrial organisations (e.g. Maurice et al., 1986[1982]) also show that there are real cross-national differences with respect to qualification levels, job autonomy, career prospects (i.e. social mobility), organisation of production, etc. Two formally identical categories, e.g. 'skilled worker' or 'supervisor', may thus refer to clearly different occupational realities in the countries that are compared. Whereas this problem is acknowledged by Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992: 52), its fundamental implications are even so disregarded in the construction of the EGP scheme.

All these factors explain the appeal of developing a new, multi-dimensional way of registering social class differentiation. A highly influential scheme is that developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984), which argues that there are three different kinds of capital, each of which conveys certain advantages. He differentiates between (1) economic capital (wealth and income), (2) cultural capital (the ability to appreciate and engage with cultural goods, and credentials institutionalised through educational success), and (3) social capital (contacts and connections which allow people to draw on their social networks). Bourdieu's point is that although these three capitals may overlap, they are also subtly different, and that it is possible to draw fine-grained distinctions between people with different stocks of each of the three capitals, to provide a much more complex model of social class than is currently used. This recognition that social class is a multi-dimensional construct indicates that classes are not merely economic phenomena but are also profoundly concerned with forms of social reproduction and cultural distinction ( Devine, 2004; Savage et al., 2005),5 a perspective indeed used by some researchers working with the Goldthorpe class schema (e.g. Breen and Yaish, 2006; Sullivan, 2007). This allows us to reassert an interest in the classical Weberian problematic of 'class formation', through an examination of how stocks of the three capitals might combine to generate distinctive class boundaries.

Bourdieu's interventions have led to influential sociological studies across different nations ( Bennett et al., 2001, on Australia; Bennett et al., 2008, on the UK; Lamont, 1992, on the US and France). Hitherto, its application has been limited because comprehensive questions on cultural and social capital are rarely asked on national surveys. In addition, a large sample size is needed to unravel the interactions between these three capitals. It is therefore a major step forward that the BBC's Lab UK, in collaboration with its Current Affairs Department, decided in 2009 to commission a major web survey on social class. The BBC has been running interactive web surveys since 2001 and launched Lab UK in 2009 to host them. Most of the surveys to date have been oriented towards psychology, and the fact that they chose this as their first major sociological topic is itself a comment on the public renewal of interest in class. Our interest in collaborating with the BBC was linked to our view that sociologists need to be open to the possibility that innovations in digital data might provide valuable resources for sociological analysis ( Savage and Burrows, 2007).

The Great British Class Survey (GBCS)

The GBCS was designed to include questions to develop detailed measures of economic, cultural and social capitals. Its questions on cultural capital asked about people's leisure interests, musical tastes, use of the media, and food preferences. Many of the questions were similar to those used on the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion survey ( Bennett et al., 2008), the most sophisticated study of cultural capital ever conducted in Britain, which has influenced numerous other studies across Europe (e.g. Prieur and Savage, 2011). The questions on social capital mainly take the form of 'position generator' developed by the American sociologist Nan Lin (2001) to measure the range of people's social ties. We asked respondents whether they knew anyone in 37 different occupations, which is the most complex and granular question of its type ever used in social research in any part of the world. The questions on economic capital asked not only about household income, but also savings and the value of owner-occupied housing, so allowing unusually detailed measures of economic capital. We also obtained extensive information about household composition, education, social mobility and political attitudes, to contextualise our measures of cultural, economic and social capital.

The web survey was launched on 26 January 2011, with extensive publicity across BBC television and radio, and newspaper coverage. Responses were enthusiastic and, by July 2011, 161,400 complete surveys had been submitted. However, examination of the data revealed that the GBCS web survey suffered from a strong selection bias, with respondents being predominantly drawn from the well-educated social groups. As one BBC journalist told us when we reported this problem, 'yes, you seem to have got a typical BBC news audience there'. To address this problem, the BBC therefore agreed to conduct a separate, nationally representative face-to-face survey using identical questions. This survey, with 1026 respondents, was conducted using quota sampling methods by the well-known survey firm GfK in April 2011. Tests from its field division and by ourselves indicate that its demographics are nationally representative. In this article we refer to the nationally representative survey as GfK and the web survey as GBCS.

Table 1 indicates the difference in the proportions of social class between these two surveys.6 Traditional professions are massively over-represented in the GBCS compared to the national figures from GfK, and senior managers and modern professionals are significantly over-represented. All manual workers are massively under-represented. Furthermore, comparisons with the Culture, Class, Distinction ( Bennett et al., 2008) study showed that it was not possible to simply weight the GBCS to deal with these skews because the GBCS respondents from routine classes turn out to be highly unrepresentative of their peers in these classes. They possess relatively more cultural and social capital than their peers, and indeed the very act of participating in the GBCS was a 'performative' way of claiming cultural stakes (as discussed by Bourdieu, 1984; Skeggs, 2004). Let us be clear, therefore, that GBCS alone cannot be used to derive a representative model of class. However, as we explain in section 4, by linking it to the GfK survey, we can overcome this problem in a way that allows us to combine nationally representative classes with the detailed educational, occupational and geographical profiles from the GBCS.

Measuring Social, Cultural and Economic Capital

A key first stage of our analysis was to use the GfK to examine the different questions probing economic, social and cultural capital in order to develop the most robust summary measures for each which we could then use to develop our new model of class.

Social Capital

The 37 occupations which respondents might report contacts with were coded to the widely validated Cambridge Social Interaction and Stratification (CAMSIS) scale, so that for every individual respondent we were able to assess how many of the 37 occupations they reported, the mean status scores of the occupations of their contacts (where the scores range from 85.3, the highest, to 4.5, the lowest), and their range (the extent of the difference between the highest and lowest status scores). This is the most elaborate data ever collected in the UK on this issue. Table 2 reports these figures, omitting contacts who are students, who have never worked, and who are aristocrats (the categories have no CAMSIS scores).

Summary statistics for social capital in the GBCS and GfK surveys.

Table 2 shows that the average respondent knows socially someone in 13.3 out of the 34 'valid' occupations that are asked about. The mean status score of their contacts is 40.9 and the mean range (the difference between the highest and the lowest of the scores of their contacts) is 62.4.

In our measures for social capital we used only two of these. We omitted 'range' because it is strongly correlated with number of contacts identified (if one knows more people, then this is likely to entail that the range will be greater). To summarise, our measures of social capital are as follows:

1. We used the mean status score of the occupations that respondents know (the higher the score, the higher the average status of the social contacts).

2. The mean number of social contacts reported (the higher the score, the more of the 34 occupations which are known).

Cultural Capital

The analysis of cultural capital is complex, and we do not have the scope in this article to enter the now extensive debate on its definition and measurement (though see Bennett et al., 2008; Prieur and Savage, 2011). Bourdieu (1984) differentiates between 'high' culture, associated with the arts, and 'popular' culture, but the clarity of this distinction has been questioned in much recent research (e.g. Bennett et al., 2008; Prieur and Savage, 2011; Warde and Gayo-Cal, 2009). In particular, it has been argued that elite culture has become more liberal and tolerant as the middle and upper classes have become more 'omnivorous', keen to partake of both highbrow and popular cultural forms.

We therefore needed to carry out an inductive analysis of cultural taste to reveal the patterning of activity without assuming a priori that certain kinds of activities were more 'highbrow' than others. Here, in line with other comparable studies ( Bennett et al., 2008), we conducted a specific multiple correspondence analysis (MCA)7 on 27 cultural variables on the nationally representative GfK to assess the structuring of cultural divisions.

In Figure 1, modalities represent leisure, musical, eating and holiday preferences. Those modalities with a + sign afterwards indicate that this activity is liked, or engaged in, and those with a minus (−) after it indicate that it is disliked or not engaged in. For the eating variables, L indicates liking, D indicates disliking. Finally, the size of the point is related to the frequencies of that variable amongst the sample (hence, liking shopping 'shop+' is much more common that going regularly to the theatre, 'theatre+').

Figure 1 shows that the first (x) axis differentiates the culturally disengaged from the engaged (on the left). Thus, we see most of the variables on the left with a + sign, and with those on the right having a negative sign. On the second 'y' axis of Figure 1, we can also distinguish, at the top, those interested in 'highbrow' cultural forms and, at the bottom, those attracted to popular forms of culture associated with sport, using information technology, and popular and contemporary music. This second axis indicates that there are now two main types of cultural capital: that associated with highbrow taste, and what we term 'emerging' cultural capital. Both of these are differentiated from those who are less culturally engaged on the measures that we use in the survey.8 Figure 2 superimposes three socio-demographic variables onto this cultural space: age, class of respondent and of main earner when the respondent was a child. It shows that the first axis is clearly aligned with social class, with the routine classes located on the disengaged right hand side of the y axis, whilst age distinguishes the middle-aged and elderly 'highbrows' from the more youthful middle classes attracted to 'emerging' cultural capital. This finding is consistent with other research on cultural engagement (e.g. Bennett et al., 2008) and points to the need to distinguish two different modes of cultural capital that do not necessarily overlap.9

In our following analysis, we use the two measures of cultural capital in accordance with our MCA ( Table 3). We have a measure of 'highbrow' cultural capital, which scores the extent of respondents' engagement with classical music, attending stately homes, museums, art galleries, jazz, theatre and French restaurants. The maximum score which a respondent could obtain (if they 'often' engaged in all these activities) is 30. A second score is for 'emerging' cultural capital, which is based on the extent of a respondent's engagement with video games, social network sites, the internet, playing sport, watching sport, spending time with friends, going to the gym, going to gigs and preferences for rap and rock. The maximum score here is 32.

Summary statistics for cultural capital.

Economic Capital

Finally, we have measures of economic capital. Here, we use three of our questions assessing household income, household savings and house price; we standardise household savings and house prices and combine these standardised variables to generate an 'assets' variable. The distribution of these variables is shown in Table 4. We should emphasise here that these measures are for the household, and that it is possible that some individuals who are not in well-paid jobs actually achieve high scores because of the earnings of other household members. We think that a household measure is preferable because it is more likely to tap the economic resources available to individuals; nonetheless, there are likely to be issues of gender inequality (in particular) which will be opaque to such measures.

Summary statistics for economic capital.

A Latent Class Analysis of Social Class

As we explained in section 2, we are not developing a deductive class schema, but are instead seeking to most parsimoniously differentiate between our measures of economic, social and cultural capital to assess where the main class boundaries are placed. We therefore elaborate a bottom-up, inductive, approach: if our variables are those which are most important for distinguishing between social classes, following Bourdieu, what are the classes that emerge? Our method, latent class analysis, finds the most parsimonious way to group people to classes. Latent class analysis is based on the idea that some parameters of a statistical model differ across unobserved subgroups, which form the categories of a categorical latent variable. It can be distinguished from factor analysis, which identifies continuous latent variables. While latent class analysis is primarily used for the analysis of categorical data, it can also be used for clustering with continuous variables - such a clustering procedure tends to outperform other non-hierarchical cluster analysis such as k-means clustering ( Vermunt and Magidson, 2003), and it is this method which we adopt here.10

We standardised the six variables specified in the previous section (mean status scores of contacts, total number of contacts, highbrow cultural capital, emerging cultural capital, income and assets), and we carried out a latent class analysis on this basis. In order to overcome the problem of sample skew, we combined cases from the GfK, for which we use the original weighting values, and the cases in the GBCS, which we weight with a value of 1/161400 for each case, so that combined they contribute the weight of a single case to the overall analysis. This means that the latent class analysis is derived from the nationally representative GfK survey, and that the results are not distorted by the unrepresentative web survey. However, the cases from the web survey can be classified within the same clusters as the cases from the nationally representative survey and hence we are able to allocate classes to all the respondents from the web-based GBCS derived from nationally representative data. The Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) is minimised at seven clusters (BIC = 12991.8): we therefore take this as our solution.

Our more sophisticated way of approaching class, looking at cultural, social and economic capitals (using different measures of economic capital) produces a complex map of seven classes. Table 5 briefly identifies these seven main classes, and lists the proportion of respondents from the GfK and GBCS who fit into these. Table 6 reports the detailed scores for each of the measures of capital associated with the latent classes. This is the bedrock of our analysis, and the rest of our article explicates and elaborates these seven classes.

Our interpretations of these seven classes are aided by Table 7 which indicates the socio-demographic correlates of these latent classes (also based also on the nationally representative GfK survey). In addition, we also draw on the granular detail provided by the GBCS survey which allows us much more detailed information on the specific jobs and geographical locations of the seven classes.11 Table 8 indicates the eight occupations that are most over-represented for each of our seven classes, as well as the percentage of GBCS respondents in such occupations that fall into these classes. Table 8 thus allows the occupational profiles of our seven classes to be examined.

These resources together allow us an unusually fine-grained and detailed way of interpreting the key characteristics of these classes. This is especially important in allowing us to move beyond a simple profiling of the differences between the classes to explicate the sociological processes that they reveal. To put the issue bluntly, we need to pull out sociologically meaningful class groups in order to demonstrate that our latent class analysis is producing relevant findings.

Before introducing our seven classes we need to reiterate that our method of defining class boundaries, drawing on measures of cultural, social and economic capital, is very different from that used in constructing the NS-SEC, and hence the two schemes do not compete directly with each other. However, to draw out the distinctive features of our model of class, we reflect on the different kinds of measures of class which they both articulate, and we therefore do comment on how 'our' class boundaries appear somewhat different to those which are evident from the NS-SEC.

Class 1: Elite

These are, on all dimensions, the most advantaged and privileged group in the UK. They are characterised by having the highest levels of every form of capital. Their mean household income is £89k, almost double that of the next highest class, and the average house price is £325k, considerably higher than any other class. Their average savings are also exceptionally high, well over double that of any other class. Fundamentally, this is a wealthy class, set apart from the other six classes on the basis of their economic advantages.

The elite have close to the highest number of social contacts, though partly for this reason their mean status score is not the highest of all the classes, but the second highest (since if one knows a large number of people, this makes it more likely for them to know both high and low status people). They also score the highest on 'highbrow' cultural capital, though by a less marked margin than for their economic capital, and they have moderately high scores on emerging cultural capital - so it would be unwise to just see them as highbrow.

Table 7 also reveals how membership of the elite is associated with other social advantages. They have the lowest proportion of ethnic minorities, the highest proportion of graduates, and over half come from families where the main earner was in senior management or the professions. They are clearly a relatively exclusive grouping, with restricted upward mobility into its ranks.

Table 8 underscores the occupational narrowness of this group. There are major over-representations of (especially) chief executive officers, IT directors, marketing and sales directors, financial managers and management consultants, along with elite professions of dentists and barristers. Graduates of elite universities are over-represented amongst their ranks, especially from Oxford, City, Kings College London, LSE, Cambridge, Bristol, London South Bank, Imperial College and Trinity College Dublin.13 Strikingly, six of these universities are located in London, only Trinity is from outside the south of England. Geographically (see Figure 3), their residences are all over-represented in the south east of England, and especially in areas close to London in the affluent Home counties.

Our findings thus clearly demonstrate the power of a relatively small, socially and spatially exclusive group at the apex of British society, whose economic wealth sets them apart from the great majority of the population. This finding allows us the prospect of re-integrating class analysis with the study of elites in a way which has not been possible over recent decades where no elite class was distinguished within the EGP, although its existence was recognised ( Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992: 40).

Class 2: Established middle class

This second most advantaged class has a household income of £47k a year, owns a relatively expensive house worth £177k, and has moderately good savings of £26k. These are all good scores for economic capital and it competes with the technical middle class in being the second best well-off class. This is a much larger class than the elite, with a quarter of the population in its ranks, and might be seen as the comfortably off bulwark of British society, even though they do not share the extreme wealth of the elite. It might be seen as comprising the bulk of what Goldthorpe (1982; Goldthorpe et al., 1980) identifies as the professional and managerial 'service class'; it has a higher proportion of members working in management and the professions than any other class except the elite.

They have more social contacts (17) than any other social class and these tend to be high status (the third highest of any class). This therefore appears to be the most gregarious class, especially with other generally high status people (see Erikson, 1996). They are also highly culturally engaged, both for highbrow culture (the second highest scores), and also emerging cultural capital (also second). This is therefore a culturally omnivorous and well-off group, with strong social connections. Its members are highly secure across all three forms of capital, though they lack the marked wealth of the elite.

Table 7 shows that they also have a high proportion of graduates amongst their ranks, and a majority of their members work in the professions or management. They also tend to come from professional and managerial families. However, in some areas they are more open than the elite, especially with a higher representation amongst ethnic minorities.

Occupationally, this class does not see such marked over-representations of specific occupations as does the elite, though there are modestly high profiles for professionals working in public service, with some managerial jobs also scoring highly (see Table 8). However, in no case are these occupations more than 50 per cent more likely to be in this class than the GBCS as a whole, confirming that this class is recruited from a fairly broad occupational range. Educationally, a relatively large number of members are graduates. Geographically, the residences of this group tend to be located outside the south east of England, and mainly away from large towns or urban environments (see Figure 4). This is a 'provincial' formation, and is a sizeable bulwark of 'middle England': comfortably off, secure, and established.

Class 3: Technical middle class

This class is sociologically much more distinctive and original to our analysis. It is quite small, with only 6 per cent of the national population, but is relatively prosperous, with good mean household incomes (£38k), excellent household savings (£66k) and houses worth considerable amounts of money (£163k). It competes with the established middle class to be the second most prosperous class in terms of economic capital. This is clearly a prosperous group with a secure economic position in British society.

Socially and culturally, however, it is much more restricted than the established middle class. It reports the lowest number of social contacts of any of the classes (an astonishingly low average of four out of 34 possible contacts, compared to 17 for the established middle class), though these do tend to be high status. Its social circle is much more restricted than other social classes, and it presumably socialises nearly exclusively with other professional experts. This is an interesting riposte to those who think it is the poor or disadvantaged whose social networks are the most restricted. In fact, it is this comfortably off technical middle class who are by far the most limited here. Culturally, it also scores relatively low for both highbrow and emerging cultural capital and therefore appears to be relatively culturally disengaged. This class is distinguished by its relative social isolation as well as its cultural apathy.

Table 7 shows that it has a lower proportion of graduates and of employees in the professions and management, though the levels of over-representation are also relatively modest, and much less marked than for the elite. Aircraft pilots, for instance, are 78 per cent more likely to be in this class than in the GBCS as a whole. This seems therefore to be a group who has achieved good economic rewards often without distinctive credentials, or through working in established middle-class jobs. Perhaps surprisingly, it has an above-average proportion of women (59%).

We can obtain more detail by using the GBCS to focus our understanding of its profile. There is an over-representation of those doing research, scientific and technical forms of work (see Table 8). Amongst those graduates who are located within it, there are over-representations from established and prestigious universities with strong reputations for science, including Warwick, Cambridge, UCL, Southampton and Imperial. There is also a slight over-representation of graduates in science and technology. Members of this class are geographically located in the South East where scientific and technical jobs are likely to be found ( Figure 5), but shun the centre of London and tend to be located in suburban locations (perhaps consistent with their social isolation?).

We might see this class therefore as a group of scientifically and technically oriented people who have used their skills to gain reasonably secure and well-rewarded work, but who might not be seen as part of a more established middle class. Even though they are as likely as the established middle class to come from middle-class families, their degree of social and cultural disengagement is marked. We could see this group as indication of Savage's (2010) argument that in the second half of the 20th century we have witnessed the emergence of a distinctive technical group somewhat at odds with the larger section of the middle classes who are more oriented towards the arts and humanities.

Class 4: New affluent workers

This class scores highly on 'emerging' cultural capital, but scores low on highbrow cultural capital. It therefore seems to shun established forms of cultural capital though it is not culturally disengaged. Its household income is moderate, and its house value (£129k) is relatively high, and it has a small amount of savings. It is therefore economically secure without being very well off. Its members score the second highest on their number of social contacts, though the status scores tend to be moderate. Overall, this class scores moderately well on all three capitals, with a particular penchant for emerging cultural capital. They are a socially and culturally active class, whose economic capital is higher than for any class apart from the elite or two middle-class groupings.

Table 7 reveals some intriguing aspects of this group. They tend to come from non-middle-class families, and few have been to university. They are the most male of any of our seven classes, with 57 per cent being men. Amongst its relatively few members who are graduates, there are over-representations of graduates from some new universities (such as Liverpool Hope, Bolton, or the University of West England). As we might expect, it has a high proportion of young people. There is a considerable over-representation of various white collar and blue collar jobs, though largely in the private sector and in customer facing occupations: however, since only 5.4 per cent of the GBCS are in this class, only a modest proportion of these occupations (such as electricians and postal workers) are located in this class. They tend to be over-represented in old manufacturing centres of the UK, located outside the south east of England (see Figure 6).

This is a group whose members have not benefitted from conventional routes through education to middle-class positions, but have nonetheless achieved relatively secure economic positions and are also relatively socially and culturally engaged. They seem to have achieved their relative security without major inherited resources of economic or cultural capital. They actually form a significant part of the population, at 15 per cent, but cannot easily be identified as either middle or working class. We have used the term 'new affluent workers', with a nod to Goldthorpe and Lockwood's famous studies from the 1960s, to capture this complex and ambivalent role and sensitise us to the need to understand this as an unusually fluid grouping.

Class 5: Traditional working class

With class 5, we now move onto clearly less advantaged classes. Class 5 is a moderately poor class, with a mean household income of only £13k. However, its members predominantly own their homes, with an average house price of £127k, but it reports only modest savings. The range of social contacts is quite restricted at only 10, and the average status scores are moderate. Scores on highbrow cultural capital are moderate, and scores on emerging cultural capital are particularly low. This class therefore scores low on nearly every measure of capital, though is not completely deprived.

This class has few graduates, and traditional working-class occupations are over-represented amongst its number (e.g. lorry drivers, cleaners, electricians), as are some menial white collar occupations (e.g. legal and medical secretaries). This over-representation is considerable but since less than 2 per cent of the GBCS falls into this class, the absolute proportions are low and the occupations in Table 7 are indicative only. This class is predominantly female, more than any other class. Insofar as particular universities are over-represented, these are ones which tend to recruit mature or part-time students (such as Birkbeck and the Open University). It is strongly over-represented amongst old industrial areas outside the south east of England, especially in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (see Figure 7).

It is for these reasons that we might see this class as a residue of earlier historical periods, and embodying characteristics of the 'traditional working class'. We might see it as a 'throwback' to an earlier phase in Britain's social history, as part of an older generational formation.

Class 6: Emergent service workers

This has a modest household income of £21k, but is likely to rent and only has limited savings. This class does have a significant number of social contacts, who tend to be moderate in their status scores. The emerging cultural capital is higher for this class than for any other class, indicating a high degree of cultural engagement in youthful musical, sporting and internet activities, but highbrow cultural capital is low. This is therefore a marginal class in terms of its economic capital, but its social and cultural capital is high.

This class is relatively young, with a mean age of 34. There is an unusually high proportion of ethnic minorities within it. Its members tend not to be graduates or to come from middle-class families, yet they are very different from the traditional working class in being more culturally engaged with emerging cultural capital. They work in a variety of occupations, usually in the service sector, such as bar work, chefs, customer service occupations and call centre workers. This appears therefore to be a class of people who are 'making their way' in a range of relatively insecure occupations.

Educationally, those graduates who fall into their ranks include over-representations from well-known universities specialising in arts and humanities such as Goldsmiths, York,12 Birkbeck and SOAS, and indeed arts and humanities graduates are generally over-represented. This is very much an 'urban' grouping, with its members tending to live in cheaper locations within large cities, especially in the centre of London, and also in university towns (such as Aberystwyth or York) (see Figure 8).

In labelling this class, we decided to use the term 'emergent service workers', to recognise the extent to which they are a youthful grouping with high amounts of emergent cultural capital.

Class 7: Precariat

This is economically the poorest class, with a household income of only £8k, negligible savings, and they are likely to rent. Their social range is small with an average of seven contacts whose mean status is the lowest of any of the classes. The scores for both highbrow and emerging cultural capital are the lowest and second lowest, respectively, of any of the classes. This is clearly the most deprived of the classes that we have identified, on all measures, yet they form a relatively large social class, with 15 per cent of the population.

They are located in old industrial areas, but often away from the large urban areas. Stoke on Trent stands out as having a high over-representation, but London and the South East tends to score low (see Figure 9). Its members are unlikely to have attended university. Occupationally they are over-represented amongst the unemployed, van drivers, cleaners, carpenters, care workers, cashiers and postal workers, and they also include shopkeepers.

We use the term precariat in line with recent commentaries ( Standing, 2011) and as a reflection on the existence of a significant group characterised by high amounts of insecurity on all of our measures of capital.

Conclusion

In this article we have developed a new model of class in contemporary Britain. We should emphasise that this is a different kind of model to that developed by Goldthorpe and embedded in the NS-SEC, since it is an inductive, rather than deductive class schema. The two models are thus not in direct competition with each other, as we are not seeking to develop a better occupational- or employment-based measure of class. Rather, our model is designed to shed more light on how cultural and social boundaries operate in Britain and how this might suggest new lines of class division - an issue which the NS-SEC is less suitable for. Although our analysis here is necessarily quantitative, given our data, we would hope that it might cross fertilise with qualitative research to produce a more developed multi-dimensional approach.

We need to reiterate that our analysis is dependent on the measures used to construct the indicators of capitals. This is an obvious point which nonetheless needs to be underscored. Our measures of economic capital are relatively straightforward and should not cause undue concern, though we need to note that our use of measures of household income will obscure divisions within households and therefore that the relationships between gender and class will not be fully registered here. Our measures of social capital, using the widely validated Cambridge scores, are uncontroversial ( Stewart et al., 1973). On the other hand, our use of measures both of 'highbrow' and 'emergent' cultural capital provides a more nuanced understanding of cultural boundaries in the UK than might be evident from a more orthodox Bourdieusian focus on high culture alone. The extent to which such 'emerging' forms of activity represent a robust form of 'capital', which might compete with more established and legitimate forms, is an interesting finding which warrants further investigation.

Let us conclude by comparing our findings with more familiar measures of social class, to draw out the wider implications of our model. Firstly, although, as we have discussed, there are clear occupational profiles which map onto our seven classes, the fit is by no means clear. Given the way we have constructed our model, this is not necessarily surprising. Nonetheless, it suggests the need for caution towards those exercises, such as those of Grusky and Weeden (2001, 2008), which focus on micro-classes whereby specific occupations are clearly differentiated from each other. Leaving aside the particular case of chief executive officers who are predominantly located in our 'elite', we have found no clear affiliation between specific occupations and our latent classes. Perhaps, rather than seeking to locate class fundamentally in occupational 'blocks', the time is now ripe for a different, multi-dimensional perspective, in which occupational membership is spread (though unevenly) between different classes.

Secondly, it is striking that we have been able to discern a distinctive elite, whose sheer economic advantage sets it apart from other classes. Although this is not necessarily surprising, our analysis is the first time that this group has been elaborated within a wider analysis of the class structure, in which they are normally placed alongside a larger group of professionals and managers. Our finding here is an important critical intervention against the deployment of the 'service class' concept, which has failed to recognise the distinctiveness of elite groups within its number (see Savage and Williams, 2008), even though it does recognise the difference between an upper and lower service class. The fact that this elite group is shown to have the most privileged backgrounds also is an important demonstration of the accentuation of social advantage at the top of British society.

Thirdly, at the opposite extreme, we have discerned the existence of a sizeable group - 15 per cent of the population - which is marked by the lack of any significant amount of economic, cultural, or social capital. We have identified these as the 'precariat'. The recognition of the existence of this group, along with the elite, is a powerful reminder that our conventional approaches to class have hindered our recognition of these two extremes, which occupy a very distinctive place in British society.

Fourthly, only two of our seven classes conform to older sociological models of 'middle' and 'working' class. We might see this as some evidence of a blurring and fragmentation of conventional 'middle' and 'working' class boundaries. Of course, the nature of the class boundaries between middle and working class has been much discussed in previous studies of occupational classes, as with the debate about the 'labour aristocracy', and 'white collar workers'. Our way of interpreting these boundaries is to suggest that the 'established middle class' epitomises the characteristics of 'service class' as elaborated by John Goldthorpe (1982). As Goldthorpe anticipates, this is a large class, indeed the largest single class in our analysis, with a quarter of the population belonging to it. To this degree, the stable middle class are indeed a large group in British society. It does come over as secure and established across all our measures of capital.

The traditional working class might also appear to be its counterpart: the surviving rump of the working class, but they now only comprise 14 per cent of the population, and are relatively old, with an average age of 65. To this extent, the traditional working class is fading from contemporary importance, and clearly is less prominent than the established middle class.

However, only 39 per cent of the national population fall into these two classes, which conform most closely to these middle and working-class sociological stereotypes. Instead, the majority fall into classes which have not been registered by more conventional approaches to class, and require a more fluid understanding of the redrawing of social and cultural boundaries in recent years. Several of the classes thus have over-representations from white collar and blue collar jobs. The 'collar' line is of little value in unravelling these patterns.

Fifthly, some of these new classes do not embody conventional cultural or social capital, yet appear to have obtained moderate levels of economic capital. Here, a conventional Bourdieusian analysis which focuses unduly on the reproduction of educational advantage misses the way that both the new affluent workers and the emergent service workers have acquired certain levels of economic and social capital without access to conventional highbrow culture.

The technical middle class are also a powerful reminder that not all those with economic capital have extensive social networks, and the new affluent workers are revealing too as an interstitial class. We are thus able to challenge the perception that the problem of social and cultural engagement is more marked at the lower levels of the class structure.

The 'new affluent workers' and the 'emergent service workers' are an interesting focus. They seem, in many respects, to be the children of the 'traditional working class', and they might thus be said to exemplify the stark break in working-class culture which has been evident as a result of de-industrialisation, mass unemployment, immigration and the restructuring of urban space. They show high levels of engagement with 'emerging cultural capital' and have extensive social networks, so indicating that they are far from being disengaged in any conventional sense. To this extent, new social formations appear to be emerging out of the tendrils of the traditional working class.

Finally, in conclusion, our new model of class offers a powerful way of comprehending the persistence, yet also the remaking of social class divisions in contemporary Britain. Our multi-dimensional analysis reveals the polarisation of social inequality (in the form of an elite and a precariat), and the fragmentation of traditional sociological middle and working-class divisions into more segmented forms. We have been able to mine down into unusual detail about the educational and occupational profiles of these classes (and our future publications will do this further). We hope that our new model of class will prove a valuable resource for future social researchers in exploring the complex and multi-dimensional nature of social class inequality in the UK in a way which permits us to recognise the ongoing salience of social class divisions in the stratification of British society.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank BBC's Lab UK for making this Great British Class Survey data available, and especially Richard Cable, Mike Orwell and Kathy Neal. We would also like to thank numerous colleagues who have assisted with the work, notably at the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester, and the York European Centre for Cultural Exploration. Roger Burrows and Laurie Hanquinet assisted at different times with aspects of the analysis. Several colleagues have given valuable advice, notably Juoni Kuha (LSE).

Funding
We would like to acknowledge the funding provided by the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester which assisted in the analysis of the data. The BBC provided no financial resources to support the research.

Notes

References

Blanden, J, Machin, S (2008) Up and down the generational income ladder in Britain: Past changes and future prospects. National Institute Economic Review 205(1): 101-16. |
Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Blanden, J, Goodman, A, Gregg, P, Machin, S (2004) Changes in intergenerational income mobility in Britain. In: Corak, M (ed.) Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 122-46. |
Google Scholar Crossref

Breen, R, Yaish, M (2006) Testing the Breen-Goldthorpe Model of educational decision-making. In: Morgan, SL, Grusky, DB, Fields, GS (eds) Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research from Sociology and Economics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 232-58.
Google Scholar

Devine, F (1998) Class analysis and the stability of class relations. Sociology 32(1): 23-42. |
Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Penn, R (1981) The Nuffield Class Categorisation. Sociology 15(2): 265-71. |
Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Sullivan, A (2007) Cultural capital, cultural knowledge and ability. Sociological Research Online 12(6)1. Available at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/6/1.html
Google Scholar

Yuval-Davis, N (2011) The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: Sage.
Google Scholar

Author biographies

Mike Savage is Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, having previously worked at the universities of Lancaster, Sussex, Surrey, Keele, North Carolina, Manchester and York. His research interests are in class and stratification, especially their cultural and historical dimensions. His recent books include Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method (Oxford University Press, 2010), and Culture, Class, Distinction (with Tony Bennett, Elizabeth Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal and David Wright, Routledge, 2008).

Fiona Devine is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research interests are in social stratification and mobility in comparative perspective. She is the author of numerous publications including Class Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Doing Social Science, edited with Sue Heath (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Niall Cunningham is Research Associate in Quantitative Analysis at the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. He has a particular interest in the spatial analysis of ethnic/social participation, segregation and conflict. He is a co-author of Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Conflict in Ireland since the Famine (Indiana University Press, 2013).

Mark Taylor is Teaching Fellow at the University of York, and is in the last stages of completing his doctorate at Nuffield College, Oxford. He is an expert in quantitative analysis, especially of panel data, with specific interests in cultural sociology, and reading patterns.

Yaojun Li is Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester, UK. His research interests are in social mobility, social capital, and the socio-economic integration of minority ethnic groups, with particular emphasis on comparative analysis. He has published widely in these areas. He has also conducted many projects funded by academic and government bodies in Britain, the USA, China and Australia.

Johs. Hjellbrekke is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen, Norway. His research interests are in social stratification, social mobility and in statistical analysis of categorical data. He has published widely on social elites, classes, mobility and geometric data analysis.

Brigitte Le Roux is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Université de Paris Descartes and was recently awarded the Honoris Causa Doctor of Uppsala University. She is a leading international authority on multiple correspondence analysis.

Sam Friedman is Lecturer in Sociology at City University London. He has published widely on comedy, class and social mobility, and is the author of Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a 'Good' Sense of Humour (Routledge, 2014). He is also a comedy critic and the publisher of Fest, the largest magazine covering the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Andrew Miles is Reader in Sociology at the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. He has previously taught at the universities of Warwick, Cardiff and Keele. Having written widely on the history of stratification and mobility, including Social Mobility in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), he is currently working on the social dynamics of cultural participation and policy since 1945 and leads a major interdisciplinary study of everyday participation and cultural value funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment - Mike Savage, Fiona Devine, Niall Cunningham, Mark Taylor, Yaojun Li, Johs Hjellbrekke, Brigitte Le Roux, Sam Friedman, Andrew Miles, 2013

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Abstract The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK's National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report shows that the online shift was already in place - with Covid-19, it now has a new impetus

# data[].attributes.headline
The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods

# data[].attributes.subject
The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's natural to believe in the supernatural. Consider how many people worldwide belong to a religion: nearly 6 billion, or 84 percent of the global population, and these figures are expected to rise in the coming decades. In the U.S., surveys show 90 percent of adults believe in some higher power, spiritual force or God with a capital G. Even self-proclaimed atheists have supernatural leanings. The same study found all atheists reject God, but one-in-five accept higher powers or spiritual forces.

In short, humans are a believing bunch. And evolutionary anthropologists say that's no miracle. The origins and ubiquity of religious beliefs can be explained by evolutionary theory.

So how does evolution explain religion?

Leading scholars propose a two-phase hypothesis ( here, here): First, our ancestors evolved certain mental abilities, useful for survival and reproduction, which predisposed them to religious beliefs. Then, from the multitude of beliefs that emerged, particular religions spread and persisted because their deities and rituals promoted cooperation among practitioners.

In my next post, I'll discuss phase two. Here, let's review evidence for phase one, the idea that religion is an accidental by-product of cognitive capacities, evolved for other reasons.

Psychological Prerequisites for Religion

Many mental ingredients are necessary for religion as-we-know-it. But scholars emphasize three tendencies in particular, which are pronounced in humans, but minimally expressed in other species: We seek patterns, infer intentions and learn by imitation.

These are cognitive adaptations that helped our ancestors survive. For example, it's obviously useful to notice paw prints (a pattern) laid by a lion planning to eat you (an intention), and to deter the predator with tactics others have successfully used (imitation, at least before you could read how-to online). However, people overextend these tendencies. We also find patterns in randomness - like reading tea leaves - ascribe intentions to nonexistent beings - like blaming disasters on angry deities - and copy others even when it's costly - like fasting and sacrifice. In this way adaptive mental abilities could have led to religious beliefs.

The first prerequisite, pattern seeking, has obvious benefits for finding food, avoiding predators, predicting weather, etc. We constantly observe the world, trying to derive cause-and-effect relationships. And we demonstrably overdo it: wearing lucky socks to every football game, telling fortunes from palm lines, and seeing the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese.

The next prereq, inferring intentions, is known to psychologists as Theory of Mind (ToM), the understanding that others have beliefs, desires and goals, influencing their actions. ToM allows us to have sophisticated social relationships and to predict how others will behave. You couldn't "put yourself in someone else's shoes" without it.

Our closest primate relative, chimpanzees show some degree of ToM. Researchers have tested this by concealing food in plain view of some chimps, but out of sight of others. Then, the scientists observed if informed apes took advantage of their peer's ignorance to nab more snacks. Based on these experiments, chimps likely understand that others can be informed or uninformed about facts, like the location of food. But, it's debated if apes grasp that others can be misinformed, or hold false beliefs.

Humans, on the other hand, show extreme ToM, ascribing minds to inanimate or imagined things. A classic psychology experiment showed people even do this for geometric shapes. In the study, college students interpreted a circle and two triangles moving about a screen as goal-driven, emotion-ridden characters (for a more recent version, see here).

In real life, people apply ToM to forces of nature, ancestor spirits and invisible gods. And they seem to think about these supernatural actors the same way they conceive of fellow humans: fMRI studies have found ToM-related regions of the brain activate when people hear statements about God's emotions and involvement in worldly affairs.

Finally, our natural tendency to over-imitate predisposes us to adopt religious practices. Rather than relying on experience and trial-and-error, humans learn most behaviors and skills from other people. Our success depends on so much cultural knowledge, accumulated over many generations, that figuring things out alone is impossible. Moreover, some of this knowledge contradicts what you would assume from personal observations or intuition.

For instance, many cultures have developed methods to make toxic plants edible (like Aboriginal Australians processing poisonous seeds of cycad plants). They've passed on these ritualized techniques, without necessarily understanding why the complicated, time-consuming steps are needed. But skipping seemingly unnecessary steps would lead to gradual poisoning. Thus, copying others, even when the reasons are unapparent, can benefit survival. This mentality gets extended to religious practices; if prestigious members of your community sacrificed deer every solstice, you probably would too.

Our propensity to over-imitate is well demonstrated by experiments comparing the problem-solving strategies of human kids and chimps. Researchers performed a series of unnecessary steps to release a prize from a box with a trap door. Kids diligently repeated every step, whereas chimps skipped to the final one, the only action required to get the reward.

When watching the experiments, I assume the chimps were thinking, "Why are these stupid Homo sapiens wasting their time?" And by assuming that, here I am, exemplifying extreme ToM, how prone we are to infer the thoughts of others.

Evolved features of our brains, such as Theory of Mind and over-imitation, likely caused the emergence of religions in human societies. It doesn't take supernatural beings to explain why so many people believe in them - just natural evolutionary processes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's natural to believe in the supernatural. Consider how many people worldwide belong to a religion: nearly 6 billion, or 84 percent of the global population, and these figures are expected to rise in the coming decades. In the U.S., surveys show 90 percent of adults believe in some higher power, spiritual force or God with a capital G.

# data[].attributes.headline
The emerging long-term complications of Covid-19, explained

# data[].attributes.subject
The emerging long-term complications of Covid-19, explained

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At first, Lauren Nichols tried to explain away her symptoms. In early March, the healthy 32-year-old felt an intense burning sensation, like acid reflux, when she breathed. Embarrassed, she didn't initially seek medical care. When her shortness of breath kept getting worse, her doctor tested her for Covid-19.

Her results came back positive. But for Nichols, that was just the beginning. Over the next eight weeks, she developed wide and varied symptoms, including extreme and chronic fatigue, diarrhea, nausea, tremors, headaches, difficulty concentrating, and short-term memory loss.

"The guidelines that were provided by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] were not appropriately capturing the symptoms that I was experiencing, which in turn meant that the medical community was unable to 'validate' my symptoms," she says. "This became a vicious cycle of doubt, confusion, and loneliness."

An estimated 40 to 45 percent of people with Covid-19 may be asymptomatic, and others will have a mild illness with no lasting symptoms. But Nichols is one of many Covid-19 patients who are finding their recovery takes far longer than the two weeks the World Health Organization says people with mild cases can expect. (The WHO says those with severe or critical cases can expect three to six weeks of recovery.)

Because Covid-19 is a new disease, there are no studies about its long-term trajectory for those with more severe symptoms; even the earliest patients to recover in China were only infected a few months ago. But doctors say the novel coronavirus can attach to human cells in many parts of the body and penetrate many major organs, including the heart, kidneys, brain, and even blood vessels.

"The difficulty is sorting out long-term consequences," says Joseph Brennan, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine. While some patients may fully recover, he and other experts worry others will suffer long-term damage, including lung scarring, heart damage, and neurological and mental health effects.

The UK National Health Service assumes that of Covid-19 patients who have required hospitalization, 45 percent will need ongoing medical care, 4 percent will require inpatient rehabilitation, and 1 percent will permanently require acute care. Other preliminary evidence, as well as historical research on other coronaviruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), suggests that for some people, a full recovery might still be years off. For others, there may be no returning to normal.

There's a lot we still don't know, but here are a few of the most notable potential long-term impacts that are already showing up in some Covid-19 patients.

Lung scarring

Melanie Montano, 32, who tested positive for Covid-19 in March, says that more than seven weeks after she first got sick, she still experiences symptoms on and off, including burning in her lungs and a dry cough.

Brennan says symptoms like that occur because "this virus creates an incredibly aggressive immune response, so spaces [in the lungs] are filled with debris and pus, making your lungs less pliable."

On CT scans, while normal lungs appear black, Covid-19 patients' lungs frequently have lighter gray patches, called "ground-glass opacities" - which may not heal.

One study from China found that this ground-glass appearance showed up in scans of 77 percent of Covid-19 patients. In another study out of China, published in Radiology, 66 of 70 hospitalized patients had some amount of lung damage in CT scans, and more than half had the kind of lesions that are likely to develop into scars. (A third study from China suggests this is not just for critically ill patients; its authors found that of 58 asymptomatic patients, 95 percent also had evidence of these ground-glass opacities in their lungs. More than a quarter of these individuals went on to develop symptoms within a few days.)

"These kinds of tissue changes can cause permanent damage," says Ali Gholamrezanezhad, a radiologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Although it's still too early to know if patients with ongoing lung symptoms like Montano will have permanent lung damage, doctors can learn more about what to expect from looking back to people who have recovered from SARS and MERS, other coronaviruses that resulted in similar lung tissue changes.

One small longitudinal study published in Nature followed 71 SARS patients from 2003 until 2018 and found that more than a third had reduced lung capacity. MERS is a little harder to extrapolate from, since fewer than 2,500 people were infected, and somewhere between 30 and 40 percent died. But one study found that about a third of 36 MERS survivors also had long-term lung damage.

Gholamrezanezhad has recently done a literature review of SARS and MERS and says that for this subset of people, "The pulmonary function never comes back; their ability to do normal activities never goes back to baseline."

Additionally, Covid-19 scarring rates may end up being higher than SARS and MERS patients because those illnesses often attacked only one lung. But Covid-19 appears to often affect both lungs, which Gholamrezanezhad says escalates the risks of lung scarring.

He has already seen residual scarring in Covid-19 patients and is now designing a study to identify what factors might make some people at higher risk of permanent damage. He suspects having any type of underlying lung disease, like asthma, or other health conditions, like hypertension, might increase the risk of having longer-term lung issues. Additionally, "the older you are, probably the higher your chance of scarring," he says.

For people with this kind of lung scarring, normal activities may become more challenging. "Routine things, like running up a flight of stairs, would leave these individuals gasping for air," Brennan says.

Stroke, embolisms, and blood clotting

Many patients hospitalized for Covid-19 are experiencing unexpectedly high rates of blood clots, likely due to inflammatory responses to the infection. These can cause lung blockages, strokes, heart attacks, and other complications with serious, lasting effects.

Blood clots that form in or reach the brain can cause a stroke. Although strokes are more typically seen in older people, strokes are now being reported even in young Covid-19 patients. In Wuhan, China, about 5 percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients had strokes, and a similar pattern was reported with SARS.

In younger people who have strokes, mortality rates are relatively low compared to those who are older, and many people recover. But studies show only between 42 and 53 percent are able to return to work.

Blood clots can also cut off circulation to part of the lungs, a condition known as a pulmonary embolism, which can be deadly. In France, two studies suggest that between 23 and 30 percent of people with severe Covid-19 are also having pulmonary embolisms.

One analysis found that after a pulmonary embolism, "symptoms and functional limitations are frequently reported by survivors." These include fatigue, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, marked limitation of physical activity, and inability to do physical activity without discomfort.

Blood clots in other major organs can also cause serious problems. Renal failure has been a common challenge in many severe Covid-19 patients, and patients' clotted blood has been clogging dialysis machines. Some of these acute kidney injuries may be permanent, requiring ongoing dialysis.

Clots outside organs can be serious, too. Deep vein thrombosis, for example, occurs when a blood clot forms in a vein, often the legs. Nick Cordero, a Tony-nominated Broadway and television actor, recently had to have his right leg amputated after Covid-related blood clots.

Abnormal blood clotting even seems to be happening in people after they've appeared to recover. One 32-year-old woman in Chicago, for example, had been discharged from the hospital for a week when she died suddenly with a severely swollen leg, a sign of deep vein thrombosis, according to local broadcaster WGN9. Or take Troy Randle, a 49-year-old cardiologist in New Jersey, who was declared safe to go back to work after recovering from Covid-19 when he developed a vicious headache. A CT scan confirmed he'd had a stroke.

Although there's still a shortage of data, one study found that as many as 31 percent of ICU patients with Covid-19 infections had these kinds of clotting problems. In the meantime, the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis has issued guidelines that recovered Covid-19 patients should continue taking anticoagulants even after being discharged from the hospital.

Heart damage

Being critically ill, especially with low oxygen levels, puts additional stress on the heart. But doctors now think that in Covid-19 patients, viral particles might also be specifically inflaming the heart muscle. (The heart has many ACE2 receptors, which scientists have identified as an entry point for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.)

"In China, doctors noted some people coming [in] with chest pain," says Mitchell Elkind, president-elect of the American Heart Association and professor of neurology and epidemiology at Columbia University. "They had a heart attack, and then developed Covid symptoms or tested positive after."

One study from Wuhan in January found 12 percent of Covid-19 patients had signs of cardiovascular damage. These patients had higher levels of troponin, a protein released in the blood by an injured heart muscle. Since then, other reports suggest the virus may directly cause acute myocarditis and heart failure. (Heart failure was also seen with MERS and is known to be correlated with even the seasonal flu.)

In March, another study looked at 416 hospitalized Covid-19 patients and found 19 percent showed signs of heart damage. University of Texas Health Science Center researchers warn that in survivors, Covid-19 may cause lingering cardiac damage, as well as making existing cardiovascular problems worse, further increasing the risk for heart attack and stroke.

A pulmonary critical care doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, for example, recovered from Covid-19, only to learn she had developed cardiomyopathy, a condition in which your heart has trouble delivering blood around your body. Although previously healthy, when she returned to work, she told NBC, "I couldn't run around like I always do."

The specific consequences may vary depending on how the heart is affected. For example, Covid-19 has been linked to myocarditis, a condition where inflammation weakens the heart, creates scar tissue, and makes it work harder to circulate the body's oxygen. The Myocarditis Foundation recommends these patients avoid cigarettes and alcohol, and stay away from rigorous exercise until approved by their doctor.

Neurocognitive and mental health impacts

Covid-19 also seems to affect the central nervous system, with potentially long-lasting consequences. In one study from China, more than a third of 214 people hospitalized with confirmed Covid-19 had neurological symptoms, including dizziness, headaches, impaired consciousness, vision, taste/smell impairment, and nerve pain while they were ill. These symptoms were more common in patients with severe cases, where the incidence increased to 46.5 percent. Another study in France found neurologic features in 58 of 64 critically ill Covid-19 patients.

As the pandemic goes on, Elkind says, "We need to be on the lookout for long-term neurocognitive problems."

Looking back to SARS and MERS suggests that Covid-19 patients may have slightly delayed onset of neurological impacts. Andrew Josephson, a doctor at the University of California San Francisco, wrote in JAMA, "Although the SARS epidemic was limited to about 8,000 patients worldwide, there were some limited reports of neurologic complications of SARS that appeared in patients 2 to 3 weeks into the course of the illness." These included muscular weakness, burning or prickling, and numbness, and the breakdown of muscle tissue into the blood. Neurological injuries, including impaired balance and coordination, confusion, and coma, were also found with MERS.

Long-term complications of Covid-19 - whether caused by the virus itself or the inflammation it triggers - could include decreased attention, concentration, and memory, as well as dysfunction in peripheral nerves, "the ones that go to your arms, legs, fingers, and toes," Elkind says.

There are other cognitive implications for people who receive intensive treatment in hospitals. For example, delirium - an acutely disturbed state of mind that can result in confusion and seeing or hearing things that aren't there - affects a third or more of ICU patients, and research suggests the presence of delirium during severe illness predicts future long-term cognitive decline.

Previous research on acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) more generally may also provide clues to what neurological issues critically ill Covid-19 patients might see after leaving the hospital.

Research shows one in five ARDS survivors experiences long-term cognitive impairment, even five years after being discharged. Continuing impairments can include short-term memory problems and difficulty with learning and executive function. These can lead to challenges like difficulty working, impaired money management, or struggling to perform daily tasks.

ARDS survivors frequently have increased rates of depression and anxiety, and many experience post-traumatic stress. Although it's still too early to have much data on Covid-19, during the SARS outbreak, former patients struggled with psychological distress and stress for at least a year after the outbreak.

"I felt imprisoned within my body, imprisoned within my home, and tremendously ignored and misunderstood by the general public, and even those closest to me," Nichols says about her battle with Covid-19. "I feel incredibly alone."

Jane, who prefers to use a pseudonym because she fears retribution at the hospital where she works, tested positive for Covid-19 more than a month ago. She's still struggling with fevers, heart issues, and neurological issues, but the most difficult part, she says, is how tired she is of "being treated like I am a bomb that no one knows how to disarm." Jane, a nurse who cared for AIDS patients during the '90s, says, "This is exactly what those people went through. There is a terrible stigma." In addition to the stigma, uncertainty has added to her mental health burden.

"People need to know this disease can linger and wreck your life and health," she says. "And no one knows what to do for us."

Childhood inflammation, male infertility, and other possible lasting effects

The novel coronavirus continues to frustrate scientists and patients alike with its mysteries. One of these is a small but growing number of children who recently began showing up at doctors' offices in Britain, Italy, and Spain with strange symptoms, including a rash, a high fever, and heart inflammation.

On May 4, the New York City Health Department noted that at least 15 children with these symptoms had been hospitalized there, too. These cases present like a severe immune response called Kawasaki disease, where blood vessels can begin to leak, and fluid builds up in the lungs and other major organs. Although only some of these children have tested positive for Covid-19, Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, told the New York Times, "the working hypothesis is that it's Covid-related."

Children who survive Kawasaki-like conditions can suffer myocardial and vascular complications in adulthood. But it's too early to know how Covid-related cases will develop. Many of the small number of reported cases appear to be responding well to treatment.

Other researchers are suggesting that Covid-19 may pose particular problems for men beyond their disproportionate mortality from the illness. The testicles contain a high number of ACE2 receptors, explained researcher Ali Raba, in a recent letter to the World Journal of Urology. "There is a theoretical possibility of testicular damage and subsequent infertility following COVID-19 infection," he wrote.

Another study, looking at 38 patients in China who had been severely ill with Covid-19, found that during their illness, 15 had virus RNA in their semen samples, as did two of 23 recovering patients. (The presence of viral RNA doesn't necessarily indicate infectious capacity.)

Another recent study also showed that in 81 men with Covid-19, male hormone ratios were off, which could signal trouble for fertility down the line. The authors called for more attention to be paid, particularly on "reproductive-aged men." An April 20 paper published in Naturewent so far as to suggest, "After recovery from COVID-19, young men who are interested in having children should receive a consultation regarding their fertility."

And we are just at the beginning of figuring out what this complex infection means for other organ systems and their recovery. For example, a recent preprint from Chinese doctors looked at 34 Covid-19 survivors' blood. While they saw a difference between severe and mild cases, the researchers found that regardless of the severity of the disease, after recovered patients were discharged from the hospital, many biological measures "failed to return to normal." The most concerning measures suggested ongoing impaired liver function.

What all of this means for survivors and researchers

As all this preliminary research shows, we are still in the early days of understanding what this virus might mean for the growing number of Covid-19 survivors - what symptoms they might expect to have, how long it might take them to get back to feeling normal (if they ever will), and what other precautions they might need to be taking.

Many people aren't even receiving adequate information about when it might be safe for them to stop self-isolating. Nichols and other survivors report feeling better one day and terrible the next.

But in the chaos Covid-19 has caused in the medical systems, survivors say it's hard to get attention for their ongoing struggles. "The support and awareness is simply lacking," Nichols says. "It is a true roller coaster of symptoms and severities, with each new day offering many unknowns: I may feel healthier one day but may feel utterly debilitated and in pain the next."
Lois Parshley is a freelance investigative journalist and the 2019-2020 Snedden Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Follow her Covid-19 reporting on Twitter @loisparshley Support Vox's explanatory journalism .
Correction, June 23: This story previously misstated the amount of lung scarring in SARS patients.

Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox's work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources - particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The emerging long-term complications of Covid-19, explained

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At first, Lauren Nichols tried to explain away her symptoms. In early March, the healthy 32-year-old felt an intense burning sensation, like acid reflux, when she breathed. Embarrassed, she didn't initially seek medical care. When her shortness of breath kept getting worse, her doctor tested her for Covid-19.

# data[].attributes.headline
Does 'mommy brain' last? Study shows motherhood does not diminish attention

# data[].attributes.subject
Does 'mommy brain' last? Study shows motherhood does not diminish attention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Mommy brain" is a long-held perception that mothers are more forgetful and less attentive.

"In most studies, however, attention and memory tests are given to mothers very early postpartum," said Valerie Tucker Miller, a Ph.D. student in Purdue University's Department of Anthropology department. Miller is studying the effects of motherhood on attention, memory and other psychological processes.

"There are few issues with that," she added. "When you first have a child, you have a cascade of hormones and sleep deprivation that might be affecting attention and memory processes in the brain."

In a new study testing the prevalence of "mommy brain," Miller used a revised version of the Attention Network Test (ANT), called the ANT-R, to compare reaction times among 60 mothers, all of whom were at least one year postpartum, and 70 non-mothers. The results, published online in the journal Current Psychology, show that mothers performed equally as well or better compared with women who had never been pregnant or had children.

"For this particular study, we recruited moms who were past that first year postpartum because we wanted to see the long-term effects of maternity," she said. "Overall, moms did not have significantly different attention than non-mothers, so we did not find evidence to support 'mommy brain' as our culture understands it. It's possible, if anything, that maternity is related to improved, rather than diminished, attentiveness."

Co-author Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue, said the mixed-method study may be the first to investigate the long-term effects of biological motherhood on real-life attention network functioning. Lisa A. VanWormer, a Purdue University alumna and visiting associate professor of psychology at St. Norbert College, also is a co-author.

Researchers used a seven-point scale to measure participants' responses to survey questions such as, "How sleepy do you feel?" and "How do you think your attentiveness is?" Women's perceived attention functioning was strongly associated with their tested attention scores, regardless of motherhood status, Veile said.

"This means that women have accurate awareness of their cognitive state, and that their concerns regarding their perceived attentional functioning should be taken seriously," she said. "We also believe that 'mommy-brain' may be a culture-bound phenomenon, and that mothers will feel the most distracted and forgetful when they feel stressed, overextended and unsupported. Unfortunately, many U.S. moms feel this way, especially now in the midst of economic and political instability and pandemic."

During the computer test, a cue box flashes for 100 milliseconds in one of two possible locations where a target image will appear on the screen. Next, an image of five arrows, each pointing left or right in consistent or conflicting directions, flashes on the screen for 500 milliseconds. Participants are then asked to press a button that corresponds to the direction of only the middle arrow.

Miller said the test measures response times and provides scores for the three main networks of attention: The alerting network helps the brain prepare for incoming stimuli; the orienting network directs the brain's attention to something new; and the executive control network helps resolve conflicting information.

Mothers in the study were, on average, 10 years older than non-mothers. Even after controlling for age, however, the researchers found that mothers had similar alerting and orienting attention, and better executive control attention, compared to non-mothers.

"Moms were not as distracted by those outside, incongruent items," Miller said. "It makes perfect sense that moms who have brought children into this world have more stimuli that needs to be processed to keep themselves and other humans alive, and then to continue with all the other tasks that were required before the children."

Heightened attention isn't always a good thing. It could become amplified with feelings of stress and isolation, which many U.S. moms experience, causing them to develop anxiety, Veile said.

"We plan to do cross-cultural investigations to further examine how narratives of motherhood and social support are associated with maternal tested attention and well-being around the world," she said.

The research was supported by the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
attention deficit disorder; children's health; teen health; pregnancy and childbirth; add and adhd; learning disorders; intelligence; memory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Does 'mommy brain' last? Study shows motherhood does not diminish attention

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Mommy brain" is a long-held perception that mothers are more forgetful and less attentive. "In most studies, however, attention and memory tests are given to mothers very early postpartum," said Valerie Tucker Miller, a Ph.D. student in Purdue University's Department of Anthropology department. Miller is studying the effects of motherhood on attention, memory and other psychological processes.

# data[].attributes.headline
Centenarian study suggests living environment may be key to longevity

# data[].attributes.subject
Centenarian study suggests living environment may be key to longevity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When it comes to living to the ripe old age of 100, good genes help but don't tell the full story. Where you live has a significant impact on the likelihood that you will reach centenarian age, suggests a new study conducted by scientists at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.

Published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and based on Washington State mortality data, the research team's findings suggest that Washingtonians who live in highly walkable, mixed-age communities may be more likely to live to their 100th birthday. They also found socioeconomic status to be correlated, and an additional analysis showed that geographic clusters where the probability of reaching centenarian age is high are located in urban areas and smaller towns with higher socioeconomic status, including the Seattle area and the region around Pullman, Wash.

"Our study adds to the growing body of evidence that social and environmental factors contribute significantly to longevity, said study author Rajan Bhardwaj, a second-year WSU medical student who took an interest in the topic after serving as a home care aide to his aging grandfather. Earlier research, he said, has estimated that heritable factors only explain about 20 to 35% of an individual's chances of reaching centenarian age.

"We know from previous research that you can modify, through behavior, your susceptibility to different diseases based on your genetics," explained Ofer Amram, the study's senior author and an assistant professor who runs WSU's Community Health and Spatial Epidemiology (CHaSE) lab.

In other words, when you live in an environment that supports healthy aging, this likely impacts your ability to successfully beat your genetic odds through lifestyle changes. However, there was a gap in knowledge as to the exact environmental and social factors that make for an environment that best supports living to centenarian age, which this study helped to address.

In collaboration with co-authors Solmaz Amiri and Dedra Buchwald, Bhardwaj and Amram looked at state-provided data about the deaths of nearly 145,000 Washingtonians who died at age 75 or older between 2011 and 2015. The data included information on each person's age and place of residence at the time of death, as well as their sex, race, education level and marital status.

Based on where the person lived, the researchers used data from the American Community Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, and other sources to assign a value or score to different environmental variables for their neighborhood. The variables they looked at included poverty level, access to transit and primary care, walkability, percentage of working age population, rural-urban status, air pollution, and green space exposure. Subsequently, they conducted a survival analysis to determine which neighborhood and demographic factors were tied to a lower probability of dying before centenarian age.

They found that neighborhood walkability, higher socioeconomic status, and a high percentage of working age population (a measure of age diversity) were positively correlated with reaching centenarian status.

"These findings indicate that mixed-age communities are very beneficial for everyone involved," said Bhardwaj. "They also support the big push in growing urban centers toward making streets more walkable, which makes exercise more accessible to older adults and makes it easier for them to access medical care and grocery stores." Amram added that neighborhoods that offer more age diversity tend to be in urban areas, where older adults are likely to experience less isolation and more community support.

Meanwhile, Bhardwaj said their findings also highlight the importance of continuing efforts to address health disparities experienced by racial minorities, such as African Americans and Native Americans. Consistent with previous research findings, for example, the data shows being white is correlated with living to 100. Looking at gender, the researchers also found that women were more likely to reach centenarian age.

Finally, the researchers wanted to see in which areas of the state people had a higher probability of reaching centenarian age. For each neighborhood, they calculated the years of potential life lost, or the average number of years deceased individuals would have had to continue living to reach age 100. Neighborhoods with lower values for years of potential life lost were considered to have a higher likelihood of reaching centenarian age, and vice versa.

When they mapped the years of potential life lost for all neighborhoods across the state, they saw clusters with high likelihood of living to centenarian age in higher socioeconomic areas in urban centers and small towns across the state, including the greater Seattle area and the Pullman region.

While more research is needed to expand upon their findings, the researchers said the study findings could eventually be used to create healthier communities that promote longevity in older adults.

An interactive map of Washington State's so-called "blue zones" -- areas of high centenarian prevalence, calculated as centenarian deaths as a percentage of all deaths of those aged 75 and over -- is available on the WSU Community Health and Spatial Epidemiology lab website ( https://chaselab.net/Centenarian/Index.htm), which also provides a brief summary of the study.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
healthy aging; teen health; personalized medicine; children's health; stem education; public health; urbanization; land management

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Centenarian study suggests living environment may be key to longevity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Where you live has a significant impact on the likelihood that you will reach centenarian age, suggests a new study. New research suggests that people who live in highly walkable, mixed-age communities may be more likely to live to their 100th birthday.

# data[].attributes.headline
Schizophrenia study finds evidence of reduced links between brain cells

# data[].attributes.subject
Schizophrenia study finds evidence of reduced links between brain cells

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A groundbreaking brain-scanning technique has uncovered evidence that suggests schizophrenia is linked to a loss of connections between brain cells.

Scientists had previously suspected a breakdown in the connections between neurons played a role in the condition, based on postmortem studies. The latest research, the first to find evidence for this in the brains of living people, could pave the way for new and better treatment.

Prof Oliver Howes from the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London and King's College London, who led the study, said: "Our current treatments for schizophrenia target only one aspect of the disease: the psychotic symptoms.

"But the debilitating cognitive symptoms, such as loss of abilities to plan and remember, often cause much more long-term disability and there's no treatment for them at the moment."

Howes believes the loss of connections, known as synapses, between brain cells, could be responsible for this broader array of symptoms.

The study, published in Nature Communications, focused on measuring a protein found in synapses called SV2A, which has been shown to be a good marker of the overall density of connections in the brain.

They used a tracer that binds to the protein and which emits a signal that can be picked up by a PET brain scan, which provided an indirect measure of the density of connections. The team scanned 18 adults with schizophrenia and compared them with 18 people without the condition.

They found that levels of SV2A were significantly lower in the front of the brain - the region involved in planning - in people with schizophrenia.

"The real advance is we have something that we can see in living patients and begin to track it and see whether it's happening early in the illness," Howes said.

The researchers have also found preliminary evidence that the level of the protein is linked to cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia.

Howes and colleagues are also running a clinical trial, which is expected to be completed next year, that aims to prevent the loss of brain connections in patients.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Schizophrenia study finds evidence of reduced links between brain cells

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A groundbreaking brain-scanning technique has uncovered evidence that suggests schizophrenia is linked to a loss of connections between brain cells. Scientists had previously suspected a breakdown in the connections between neurons played a role in the condition, based on postmortem studies.

# data[].attributes.headline
‘Dogs have a magic effect’: how pets can improve our mental health

# data[].attributes.subject
‘Dogs have a magic effect’: how pets can improve our mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
hat is it about animals? As the bad news about the coronavirus continues, "send me dogs and cats" has become a regular cry on social media, an easy-to-grasp shorthand for "I feel terrible, cheer me up". The response is always the same: a torrent of pictures of animals doing daft things - but somehow it has a magical, calming effect.

The therapeutic value of our relationship with our pets, particularly dogs, is increasingly recognised by researchers. Cats can be wonderful too - but dogs have been domesticated by humans for much longer, and, as even the most devoted cat lover will admit, dogs are far easier to train for companionship. Most cats, as we know, are admirable for entirely different reasons. Marion Janner, a mental health campaigner and all-round animal lover, says that dogs teach us a whole range of lessons. "Dogs love us unconditionally. They're the ultimate in equal opportunities - entirely indifferent to race, gender, star sign, CV, clothes size or ability to throw cool moves on the dance floor. The simplicity and depth of this love is a continuous joy, along with the health benefits of daily walks and the social delights of chats with other dog walkers. They teach kids to be responsible, altruistic and compassionate and, valuably but sadly, how to cope when someone you love dies."

Robert Doward* felt this odd effect when his health suddenly took a downward turn. "I'd been working incredibly hard, long hours, too many days. One day I started crying and just couldn't stop. I couldn't put sentences together properly. I'd been pushing everything so hard for so long, and I just couldn't do it any more."

It took a long time to put himself back together: plus some therapy, another job and changes to his family life. But the key factor, he says only half-jokingly, was a small Greek rescue dog called Maria. "Taking her out for walks, getting out into fresh air, just putting one foot in front of the other, that lifts your spirits. And then there's nothing like having a dog curled up beside you, even when you feel absolutely miserable. She'll check my face anxiously, as if she knows something is wrong. And that makes me smile - and that somehow makes you feel better. There is just something magic about dogs. Honestly, she got me through."

Patient Rayssa plays with Troia, a therapeutically trained dog, during a therapy session in Hospital Infantil Sabará in Sāo Paulo, Brazil.
Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters

But why? What is responsible for these therapeutic effects? One key aspect appears to be social recognition - the process of identifying another being as someone important and significant to you. The bond that forms between owner and pet is, it seems, similar to the bond that a mother forms with her baby.

The importance of social recognition is increasingly acknowledged for the role it plays in helping us form networks. We now understand that healthy social bonds can play a key role in mental health; without them, we become lonely, depressed and physically unwell. And pets, it seems, can fulfil that role. Academic and psychologist June McNicholas points out that pets can be a lifeline for socially isolated people.

"Pet care and self-care are linked. When you take a dog out for a walk, people talk to you and that may be the only social contact an isolated person has the whole day. If you have a cat, you can have a conversation standing in the cat food aisle in the supermarket, deciding which brand to buy. When pet owners leave the house to buy pet food, they're more likely to buy food for themselves and when they feed their pet, they'll sit down to eat too. People with disabilities often find that able-bodied people are socially awkward with them; if they have a dog it breaks down barriers and allows a more comfortable and natural interaction."

A woman caresses a therapy dog in Markhot Ferenc hospital, Hungary. Photograph: Péter Komka/EPA-EFE

Social recognition is something humans share with a few (though not all) mammals, including sheep and prairie voles. We are primed to look after those we have made social bonds with; we don't breastfeed just any old baby and we don't take random dogs home from the park. Author and researcher Meg Daley Olmert explains "When we call our dog, 'our baby' it is because we recognise it on a neural level as such. And this recognition triggers the same maternal bonding brain networks that allow a mother to look at her red, slimy newborn and say, 'mine!'"

A small study of functional MRI brain scans in 18 women showed similar responses in regions involved in reward, emotion and affiliation when the women looked at images of their child and pet dog.There were important differences though; dogs caused activity in the fusiform gyrus (involved in facial recognition) and babies in the tegmentum (centres of reward and affiliation). We love our pets, but in a fire we're primed to save the baby.

A child pets a utility dog at a facility for children affected by Down's syndrome in Bucharest, Romania. Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP

Although scientists have some understanding of social recognition and where it takes place in the brain, we still don't entirely understand how it happens. The missing link could be oxytocin, the so-called "hug", "love" or "cuddle" hormone. Oxytocin has a key role in both childbirth, lactation and sperm movement, but it also has an increasingly recognised role in our social behaviour, acting as a chemical messenger in pathways that control sexual arousal, recognition, trust, mother-infant and human-pet bonding.

Oxytocin works in tandem with another brain hormone, vasopressin, to help to modulate our response to stress and deal with social situations. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of interest in a possible role for oxytocin in addiction, brain injury, anorexia, depression, autism and severe anxiety.

And there are other reasons that pets and therapy animals are increasingly recognised as being good for our mental health. In addition to helping to alleviate stress, anxiety, depression and loneliness, there are all the benefits that come from having to exercise a dog. Daily walks outdoors boost physical and emotional wellbeing. Chucking sticks, picking up balls - even scooping up dog poo - can provide an all-round workout.

Increasingly that knowledge is being turned to practical use, with some lovely effects. When the Centre for Mental Health ran an evaluation on therapy dogs in prisons, for example, the feedback was off the scale. "I don't know what it is, but even when I am running around with [the dog] I just feel better inside, calmer, more peaceful," said one prisoner. Another told the interviewer: "Dogs have a magic effect on you, you can feel their love and that just makes you feel better inside you."

The good feelings persist even after the dogs have left, the reviewers found, with one subject saying: "I just walk around for the rest of the day on cloud nine."

Retirement home residents in Aliso Viejo, California, play with therapy dogs brought by female volunteers.
Photograph: Marmaduke St John/Alamy

Some of the UK's most dangerous and violent mental health patients are cared for in one of four high-security psychiatric hospitals. Most are diagnosed with schizophrenia and stay an average of seven years. The State hospital in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, is one of these facilities and runs an animal therapy centre which gives patients the chance to pet and care for a range of animals including chipmunks, rabbits, hens, geese, pygmy goats and pigs.

Staff say that animal therapy helps to develop problem-solving skills, empathy, attention to the needs of others, a sense of responsibility and a way of channelling aggressive thoughts among individuals who have proved hard to reach with conventional psychiatric drugs and talking therapies.

But what if you don't have a pet? Is there any shortcut to reproducing the beneficial effects? One candidate is sildenafil (Viagra). Having sex causes an oxytocin surge in the brain and taking Viagra may reproduce that surge without the faff of mating. A more practical idea might be an oxytocin spray or tablet.

But biologist Sue Carter says that translating naturally occurring oxytocin into a commercially available product is challenging. Oxytocin has unique chemical properties and can shift form, making it hard to work with and measure. Importantly, "the effects of oxytocin are context dependent, sexually dimorphic (different in men and women), and altered by experience."

Honestly? Gazing into your dog's eyes may produce a more reliable sense of wellbeing than any commercially available synthetic product.
* Some names and details have been changed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Dogs have a magic effect': how pets can improve our mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
hat is it about animals? As the bad news about the coronavirus continues, "send me dogs and cats" has become a regular cry on social media, an easy-to-grasp shorthand for "I feel terrible, cheer me up". The response is always the same: a torrent of pictures of animals doing daft things - but somehow it has a magical, calming effect.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It was a cold February Sunday on a busy maternity ward when Caroline White found out her baby had Down's syndrome. Seb, Caroline's first child, had been born the day before, swollen and blue. He wouldn't latch on. He slept and slept, and although no one had mentioned anything, Caroline had a nagging feeling something wasn't right.

That Sunday, while she and her husband, Simon, were sitting quietly with Seb, reading messages of congratulation, a midwife came to her bed, saying, "I've got a few concerns." Caroline and Simon then waited two hours for a junior paediatrician. "He said, 'There are a few things which could mean Seb has a chromosomal abnormality,'" Caroline recalls. "I had no idea what that meant." Later that evening, while Seb slept beside her, she read what the doctor had written in Seb's notes and typed the phrases into Google: "mild hypotonia" and "flat features". Up came page after page about Down's syndrome.

At her antenatal screening, Caroline had been given a one in 700 chance of her baby having Down's. She had no previous experience of disability. "I was guilty of assuming everyone with Down's was the same," she says now. That night in hospital, she felt "petrified; this was my worst nightmare. I felt sick, my face was hot." She cried quietly so the other three mothers in the bay wouldn't hear. "I didn't want to be different."

For a few days, Caroline clung to a hope that the doctors were wrong. When the consultant delivered the formal diagnosis, she remembers, "Seb was looking beautiful, asleep in his car seat, wrapped up in a white polar bear suit that I'd excitedly bought a few weeks before. I couldn't believe it. The paediatrician ended the meeting by handing over some leaflets that made my stomach turn." When they got home, the house was bursting with presents and cards and balloons. "I hated it," Caroline says, "because it was so perfect, just how I'd pictured having my first baby. Except for one thing."

As she talks, her three children - Seb, now seven, Dominic, five, and Polly, two - are playing on the floor of her living room. Seb and Polly are often in cahoots, Caroline says, while Dominic is quieter. Dominic and Polly don't know there's anything different about their brother (although Dominic did mention recently that Seb "speaks funny").

The weeks after the diagnosis, she says, involved many "bad days". One friend sent a card saying, "I'm really sorry". Pity was, of course, the last thing she wanted, even though secretly she was feeling something "like grief".

Now, she says, she would give anything to have those precious early weeks back to enjoy. "When Seb was born, I assumed a lifetime of exclusion, feeling sad and second rate; I dreaded the future." Then, one day in the garden when Seb was four months old, he started to smile and Caroline saw his character for the first time. "That was the first good day. After a while I realised he's not a list of characteristics in a textbook; he's my child. He's everything I wanted my son to be."

Caroline writes a popular blog called Force Of Nature, about life with Seb, including his modelling for companies such as Marks & Spencer and JoJo Maman Bébé, and the various campaigns they have been involved with to raise awareness of issues around Down's. She is concerned about the way the condition is stigmatised. "Had I been told when I was pregnant, I would have trusted the people in the white coats and terminated," she says. "That's what people do. Now I can't believe I'd have thought that. "I'm pro-choice, but it needs to be informed choice. People need to be aware of what it means to have Down's in the 21st century."

***

Down's was first identified by the Cornish physician Dr John Langdon Down in the 1860s, although it wasn't until the 1970s that the condition became known as Down's syndrome. Today's parents can remember a time when the word "mongol" was used and people with Down's were institutionalised. "People didn't think [those with Down's] could develop and learn," says the writer Renate Lindeman, who has three children, two with Down's syndrome, and is founder of the blog Down Pride. In 1959, a scientist called Jérôme Lejeune discovered that Down's was caused by an extra chromosome. Antenatal screening for Down's began in the 1970s, and in the 1980s blood tests were developed to predict expectant mothers' chances of having a baby with Down's. In 1983, life expectancy for a person with Down's syndrome was 25 years; now, people can live into their 60s.

Karen Gaffney speaking at a TEDx talk. Photograph: Sean Danaher/TedxPortland

"The doctor predicted that I would be lucky to be able to tie my own shoes or write my own name," says Karen Gaffney, from Oregon, a woman in her 40s who has Down's syndrome. She also has a science degree, an honorary doctorate, and is a champion swimmer who has crossed the Channel in a team relay event. In May, Gaffney gave a TEDx talk called All Lives Matter, in which she explained why she was wary of the race to "find newer, faster ways to test for Down's syndrome before birth". Gaffney, who is part of a growing Down's pride movement, described how families and grassroots campaigners have, over the past 40 years, "opened the doors" for a new generation of people with Down's to have an education and become valued employees, accomplished artists and sportspeople: "Dr Lejeune devoted his life to finding ways to improve the lives of those of us born with the extra chromosome. It was never his intention to have his discoveries lead to the tests that would prevent our lives."

Currently, in England and Wales, 90% of babies diagnosed antenatally with Down's are aborted. Under NHS guidelines, pregnant women are offered a screening test at 12 weeks, including a nuchal translucency measurement (calculating the amount of fluid under the skin at the back of a baby's neck) and a blood test. The results of these are combined with the mother's age to work out a ratio - the chance of the baby having a genetic condition, including Down's syndrome. If the ratio is found to be high (more than one in 150), a mother can opt to have an invasive test, CVS or amniocentesis, both of which carry a small risk of miscarriage.

But since July the NHS has been in consultation on a new, simple blood test - noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) - which measures foetal DNA in the mother's blood as early as 10 weeks and has a 98%-plus accuracy rate for detecting Trisomy 21, or Down's syndrome. It is currently available privately, at a cost of between £400 and £900. If offered on the NHS, it could reduce the risk of miscarriage that comes with invasive testing. Amniocentesis would still be necessary to confirm a diagnosis, but because of the test's accuracy, fewer women would be offered invasive testing. Some would choose not to follow with an invasive test if they intended to continue with the pregnancy anyway.

For one group, the question is simple: just because we can now screen for Down's so easily, should we?

The National Screening Committee has been analysing a trial study of 2,500 women offered NIPT to screen for Down's at Great Ormond Street hospital (Gosh), and a final decision is expected next month. Meanwhile, many campaigners are concerned that introducing the new test might increase the number of Trisomy 21 abortions. Professor Lyn Chitty, who led the Gosh study, accepts that this could be the case, since more cases of Down's syndrome would be detected. "This new testing offers all sorts of possibilities in the future, and we need to be very careful about what we do," Chitty says. "The main issues we face now are the ethical and moral ones."

For Renate Lindeman's Down Pride group, which is actively campaigning against NIPT, the question is simple: just because we can now screen for Down's so easily, should we?

***

I'll never forget my own 12-week scan. My first child's nuchal translucency measurement was 3.01mm, a sign, I was told, that he could have Down's syndrome. For a few days, I lost myself on Google and found a world of pregnant women panicking about their numbers. Most of those with high ratios were having invasive tests and, after anxious posts, would return to broadcast their relief: "Everything's normal, thank God." Seeing how frightened other pregnant women were of Down's, it was hard not to be frightened, too.

In the end, my son turned out to have a different condition and, through support groups, we've met many families whose children have Down's. I have been plunged into another world - a world where parents are deeply offended by the way society screens for these conditions, by the official language of "risk", by the very naming of NIPT tests (Tranquility, Harmony).

Christie Hoos, from Canada, vividly remembers the day she got an email informing her that a photograph of her 10-year-old daughter Becca, who has Down's, had been taken from her blog and used by Swiss biomedical company Genoma to promote its NIPT Down's test, Tranquility. Becca was diagnosed with leukaemia last year, and Christie was with her at a paediatric oncology clinic when she picked up the email on her phone, from a fellow parent, telling her that Becca's picture had been used in an ad campaign in Spain, as well as on Genoma's website. Christie later blogged: "My daughter has been made the poster child for a prenatal testing kit called Tranquility. As if she were a cautionary tale: don't let this happen to you... While my girl courageously fights for her life, this company questions whether she has a life worth living. How dare they?"

Becca Hoos' photograph was taken from her mother's blog and used in advertising for a prenatal test for Down's syndrome

She says now, "Prenatal testing will always be a hot-button topic for parents like us. Let's be honest, with a 90-95% termination rate, parental preparedness is not the primary goal of these tests. I find it morally reprehensible."

Christie's blogpost went viral, and the images of Becca were withdrawn. Genoma said they had downloaded the picture from a stock image website and made an "honest mistake". They published a response insisting that the goal of Tranquility is "to reduce the number of invasive interventions which pose a risk to the foetus. Any other considerations are beyond our scope."

Could the current NHS consultation be a tipping point, a chance for pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession to rethink how Down's is presented to expectant parents? Tom Bachofner, a graphic designer from Cheshire and father of three, describes the moment when his youngest child, Rosie, now four, was diagnosed antenatally as a "very negative experience". He and his wife, Karen, were given a one in 12 chance of Down's at screening, and got the diagnosis after an amniocentesis. "We were in shock," he says, but "we discussed it for about a minute and luckily we both felt the same: we were prepared for a daunting road and we weren't frightened." Having made their decision, they were hoping someone would hold their hands and tell them where to go from there, but it wasn't like that. "We were met with blank looks from the midwife and consultant, as if they weren't expecting that decision. The midwife went off a bit red-faced and came back 10 minutes later. I was expecting a pack of information, but it was a ripped piece of notepaper with a website address scribbled on it."

This reaction continued throughout the pregnancy. "At the end of what felt like every consultation, there was always that, 'Anyway, if you do change your mind at any time, the option of the abortion is still there.' Even as late as 30-odd weeks, we were being given that option. I didn't like it. This was our child."

Tom blogs at thefuturesrosie.com because he wants other parents to know "there's nothing to be frightened of. Rosie's given so much love to our family. She is different, but we're all different. I get nervous about her future, but about my sons' futures, too." He adds: "We don't judge people who have an abortion, but I'd very much like people to know that there are an awful lot of positives to be had."

Tina Carr and Dean Burgess, a full-time mother and engineer in their early 30s who live in Cheltenham, have just had their fourth child. When it was confirmed, following a 12-week scan and then an amniocentesis at 16 weeks, that their baby had Down's syndrome, Tina describes it as a "relief - an end to all this uncertainty". But the midwife didn't see it that way. "She said, 'It's not good news' and, 'I'm so sorry.' I said to her, 'It's absolutely fine, don't worry.' She said, 'It's not fine, though, is it?'" The midwife told her that, in the previous year, only two people she had seen had carried on with their pregnancies after the diagnosis. "People clearly don't feel supported from the outset. There must be so many people who are unsure and not given any information. All we were given was a phone number."

Tina and Dean are the first pregnant couple to feature in the Lose The Label campaign on Facebook, run by Michelle Clark from Cambridgeshire, whose daughter Mara is three and has Down's syndrome. Lose The Label publishes photographs of children with Down's and, starting with Tina and Dean, expectant parents, too. The campaign, which began in 2013, went global with its third image, and Clark is now sent as many as 50 photos a day (she currently has 2,000 queueing to be published).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Tina Carr and Dean Burgess with their children Kailey, 12, Bradley, 10, and Madison, three. Tests showed their new baby has Down's syndrome. Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

Clark, who is now a full-time mother, got the idea after fielding endless comments from strangers everywhere from the supermarket to the doctor's waiting room. "They'd say, 'Oh, you have one of them', 'Oh, yeah, we know a Downsie', 'She's a Down's child.' It's probably my generation and older that are the worst."

Her next target is the updating of information on Down's across the internet, because as things stand, she says, "Why would people not fear it?" Similarly, the Down's Syndrome Association's Tell It Right, Start It Right campaign aims to educate health professionals about how best to advise families.

Lindeman says the ultimate goal of her parents' group is an end to all screening for Down's. She argues that the focus on Down's over all other conditions is illogical and "out of proportion. Why Down's syndrome?" If there was an equivalent test for learning disabilities - antenatal screening for autism, say - would we be comfortable offering it routinely? "Maybe in 100 years we won't see any children with conditions like this," adds Hayley Goleniowska, writer of the blog Downs Side Up. "It's sugar-coated eugenics. What are we trying to get rid of?"

Goleniowska, from Cornwall, used to be a teacher, but Downs Side Up, which gets 35,000 hits a month, has become a full-time job. Mother of Mia, 11, and Natty, eight, who has Down's, she has advised the NHS and government, and is now a point of contact for parents all over the world. "You think you're writing into a void, but along will come an email from someone on a maternity ward, saying, 'My baby's next to me, I've just had a diagnosis and I've found your blog - thank you, thank you, thank you.' Or someone says, 'I've decided to keep my baby after seeing Natty.' And then I think, I've got to keep going."

Goleniowska and her husband, Bob, who works in the music industry, had "shrugged off" a one in 297 chance of their baby having Down's, and the diagnosis was made shortly after Natty's birth. There was talk of some leaflets, a poem comparing having a child with a disability to holidaying in Holland instead of Italy, and the comment that "some of them even go to a mainstream school". Goleniowska says she "wanted to scream".

Now a passionate campaigner, Goleniowska helps match learning-disability nurses with midwives to get the best information to parents at the point of diagnosis. She would like Down's to be reclassified as a mild-to-moderate learning disability, not, as it is now, a "severe handicap".

The Antenatal Results and Choices charity (Arc) sees things differently. "This may be controversial, but Down's syndrome isn't an insignificant condition," says its director, Jane Fisher. Arc offers nondirective information to parents before, during and after antenatal screening, she says. Fisher supports women's right to terminate babies with Down's even after 24 weeks, and strongly disagrees that women are influenced to terminate. "There's sometimes a tendency from those who have children with Down's syndrome to believe that women are making ill-informed decisions when they choose to end the pregnancy, that they're pushed into it based on out-of-date information, or that they're making a selfish decision because they want the perfect baby - that they're not prepared to put the extra work in - and we would categorically counter that. It's an informed decision. It's difficult enough to make that decision without having it vilified."

Emma, a 44-year-old exercise teacher, and her partner, James, 43, ended a pregnancy last year after a private NIPT Harmony test, done at 11 weeks, showed their child had Down's syndrome and two heart problems that would mean surgery immediately after birth. It was the couple's first baby, after a previous early miscarriage.

The reality is, parents are criticised whichever path they choose

"We're both older, my family are all older and have their own children to look after, and James works away a lot," Emma says. "I didn't feel there was anyone for me to lean on, and if something happened to me or James, it would be the worst quality of life for our child and ourselves."

Emma remembers an NHS testing midwife who spoke to her soon after taking the Harmony test about what Down's syndrome might involve. "She made it clear there was a spectrum, from a child who can grow up, function and live alone to a child who is possibly violent, incontinent and unable to communicate. That was quite a shock, and I just wasn't willing to do that. I was so scared and, knowing there were heart troubles as well, it made it easier to come to that decision [to terminate]."

The couple had a CVS as a formality, to confirm the diagnosis, then Emma "gave birth" to the baby, a girl, at 15 weeks and four days. "I knew I would be sad, but... I was sobbing. It was horrendous. I thought I knew what grief was like, but I didn't. It takes over your life." Emma doesn't feel as if she was led into her decision. "The midwife was trying to allow us to have the facts and it was eye-opening."

I didn't get the prenatal tests for Down's syndrome. Here's why | Rachel Nolan

She says she still feels raw with grief, and James "will not utter a word about what happened". Emma says, "If someone asks me, I'll tell them what happened and why I did it - I did what's right for me. It's unbelievably sensitive and no one should push their opinions on other people. I feel I'm up for extreme scrutiny and judgment, yet those people haven't been in my shoes." The couple are trying for another baby, and Emma says she still thinks about her daughter all the time.

The reality is, parents are criticised whichever path they choose. Jane Fisher of Arc says that for women who speak up about terminating a Down's pregnancy, "the vitriol and hate mail are mind-boggling". Meanwhile, in the comments following one article about Hayley Goleniowska's daughter's modelling, someone suggested she would be better off dead. You don't get hardened to such comments, Goleniowska says. "I have to go offline and cry."

Yet she believes there is progress, noting that Down's terminations have fallen slightly from 92% between 1989 and 2010 to 90% since 2011, and that now, "in many cases, there's good practice medically". She tells a story she recently heard of how one consultant handed over a newborn baby with Down's and said to the mother, "He's perfect." "It gave me goosebumps to hear that."
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Living with Down's syndrome: 'He's not a list of characteristics. He's my son'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It was a cold February Sunday on a busy maternity ward when Caroline White found out her baby had Down's syndrome. Seb, Caroline's first child, had been born the day before, swollen and blue. He wouldn't latch on. He slept and slept, and although no one had mentioned anything, Caroline had a nagging feeling something wasn't right.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A Duke University research team has found a small area of the brain in mice that can profoundly control the animals' sense of pain.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this brain center turns pain off, not on. It's also located in an area where few people would have thought to look for an anti-pain center, the amygdala, which is often considered the home of negative emotions and responses, like the fight or flight response and general anxiety.

"People do believe there is a central place to relieve pain, that's why placebos work," said senior author Fan Wang, the Morris N. Broad Distinguished Professor of neurobiology in the School of Medicine. "The question is where in the brain is the center that can turn off pain."

"Most of the previous studies have focused on which regions are turned ON by pain," Wang said. "But there are so many regions processing pain, you'd have to turn them all off to stop pain. Whereas this one center can turn off the pain by itself."

The work is a follow-up to earlier research in Wang's lab looking at neurons that are activated, rather than suppressed, by general anesthetics. In a 2019 study, they found that general anesthesia promotes slow-wave sleep by activating the supraoptic nucleus of the brain. But sleep and pain are separate, an important clue that led to the new finding, which appears online May 18 in Nature Neuroscience.

The researchers found that general anesthesia also activates a specific subset of inhibitory neurons in the central amygdala, which they have called the CeAga neurons (CeA stands for central amygdala; ga indicates activation by general anesthesia). Mice have a relatively larger central amygdala than humans, but Wang said she had no reason to think we have a different system for controlling pain.

Using technologies that Wang's lab has pioneered to track the paths of activated neurons in mice, the team found the CeAga was connected to many different areas of the brain, "which was a surprise," Wang said.

By giving mice a mild pain stimulus, the researchers could map all of the pain-activated brain regions. They discovered that at least 16 brain centers known to process the sensory or emotional aspects of pain were receiving inhibitory input from the CeAga.

"Pain is a complicated brain response," Wang said. "It involves sensory discrimination, emotion, and autonomic (involuntary nervous system) responses. Treating pain by dampening all of these brain processes in many areas is very difficult to achieve. But activating a key node that naturally sends inhibitory signals to these pain-processing regions would be more robust."

Using a technology called optogenetics, which uses light to activate a small population of cells in the brain, the researchers found they could turn off the self-caring behaviors a mouse exhibits when it feels uncomfortable by activating the CeAga neurons. Paw-licking or face-wiping behaviors were "completely abolished" the moment the light was switched on to activate the anti-pain center.

"It's so drastic," Wang said. "They just instantaneously stop licking and rubbing."

When the scientists dampened the activity of these CeAga neurons, the mice responded as if a temporary insult had become intense or painful again. They also found that low-dose ketamine, an anesthetic drug that allows sensation but blocks pain, activated the CeAga center and wouldn't work without it.

Now the researchers are going to look for drugs that can activate only these cells to suppress pain as potential future pain killers, Wang said.

"The other thing we're trying to do is to (transcriptome) sequence the hell out of these cells," she said. The researchers are hoping to find the gene for a rare or unique cell surface receptor among these specialized cells that would enable a very specific drug to activate these neurons and relieve pain.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (DP1MH103908, R01 DE029342, R01 NS109947, R01 DE027454), the Holland-Trice Scholar Award, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and a predoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
pain control; fibromyalgia; neuropathy; nervous system; brain injury; neuroscience; disorders and syndromes; brain-computer interfaces

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scientists find brain center that 'profoundly' shuts down pain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A research team has found a small area of the brain in mice that can profoundly control the animals' sense of pain. Somewhat unexpectedly, this brain center turns pain off, not on.

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo sobre los recuerdos y la memoria 

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo sobre los recuerdos y la memoria 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Why is it that you can remember the name of your childhood best friend that you haven't seen in years yet easily forget the name of a person you just met a moment ago? In other words, why are some memories stable over decades, while others fade within minutes?

Using mouse models, Caltech researchers have now determined that strong, stable memories are encoded by "teams" of neurons all firing in synchrony, providing redundancy that enables these memories to persist over time. The research has implications for understanding how memory might be affected after brain damage, such as by strokes or Alzheimer's disease.

The work was done in the laboratory of Carlos Lois, research professor of biology, and is described in a paper that appears in the August 23 of the journal Science. Lois is also an affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.

Led by postdoctoral scholar Walter Gonzalez, the team developed a test to examine mice's neural activity as they learn about and remember a new place. In the test, a mouse was placed in a straight enclosure, about 5 feet long with white walls. Unique symbols marked different locations along the walls -- for example, a bold plus sign near the right-most end and an angled slash near the center. Sugar water (a treat for mice) was placed at either end of the track. While the mouse explored, the researchers measured the activity of specific neurons in the mouse hippocampus (the region of the brain where new memories are formed) that are known to encode for places.

When an animal was initially placed in the track, it was unsure of what to do and wandered left and right until it came across the sugar water. In these cases, single neurons were activated when the mouse took notice of a symbol on the wall. But over multiple experiences with the track, the mouse became familiar with it and remembered the locations of the sugar. As the mouse became more familiar, more and more neurons were activated in synchrony by seeing each symbol on the wall. Essentially, the mouse was recognizing where it was with respect to each unique symbol.

To study how memories fade over time, the researchers then withheld the mice from the track for up to 20 days. Upon returning to the track after this break, mice that had formed strong memories encoded by higher numbers of neurons remembered the task quickly. Even though some neurons showed different activity, the mouse's memory of the track was clearly identifiable when analyzing the activity of large groups of neurons. In other words, using groups of neurons enables the brain to have redundancy and still recall memories even if some of the original neurons fall silent or are damaged.

Gonzalez explains: "Imagine you have a long and complicated story to tell. In order to preserve the story, you could tell it to five of your friends and then occasionally get together with all of them to re-tell the story and help each other fill in any gaps that an individual had forgotten. Additionally, each time you re-tell the story, you could bring new friends to learn and therefore help preserve it and strengthen the memory. In an analogous way, your own neurons help each other out to encode memories that will persist over time."

Memory is so fundamental to human behavior that any impairment to memory can severely impact our daily life. Memory loss that occurs as part of normal aging can be a significant handicap for senior citizens. Moreover, memory loss caused by several diseases, most notably Alzheimer's, has devastating consequences that can interfere with the most basic routines including recognizing relatives or remembering the way back home. This work suggests that memories might fade more rapidly as we age because a memory is encoded by fewer neurons, and if any of these neurons fail, the memory is lost. The study suggests that one day, designing treatments that could boost the recruitment of a higher number of neurons to encode a memory could help prevent memory loss.

"For years, people have known that the more you practice an action, the better chance that you will remember it later," says Lois. "We now think that this is likely, because the more you practice an action, the higher the number of neurons that are encoding the action. The conventional theories about memory storage postulate that making a memory more stable requires the strengthening of the connections to an individual neuron. Our results suggest that increasing the number of neurons that encode the same memory enables the memory to persist for longer."

The paper is titled "Persistence of neuronal representations through time and damage in the hippocampus." In addition to Gonzalez and Lois, co-authors are undergraduate Hanwen Zhang and former lab technician Anna Harutyunyan. Funding was provided by the American Heart Association, the Della Martin Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and a BRAIN Initiative grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
memory; brain injury; intelligence; neuroscience; dementia; disorders and syndromes; alzheimer's; psychology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How memories form and fade: Strong memories are encoded by teams of neurons working together in synchrony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Why is it that you can remember the name of your childhood best friend that you haven't seen in years yet easily forget the name of a person you just met a moment ago? In other words, why are some memories stable over decades, while others fade within minutes?

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo de divulgación científica sobre la depresión.

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo de divulgación científica sobre la depresión.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is depression?

Depressed people don't all shuffle around with a long face, or cry at any provocation. MentalHealth.gov, a US government website, defines it as "losing interest in important parts of life". Symptoms include eating or sleeping too much or too little; pulling away from people and usual activities; having low or no energy; feeling numb or like nothing matters; feeling unusually confused, forgetful, on edge, angry, upset, worried or scared; and thinking of harming yourself or others.

A visceral description is quoted by the UK campaign group Mind: "It starts as sadness, then I feel myself shutting down, becoming less capable of coping. Eventually, I just feel numb and empty."

Depression is also often mixed with other health problems: long-term illness, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder or schizophrenia, for example.

The term dysthymia is also used for mild, long-term depression - usually lasting two years or more.

How many people have depression?

Clinical depression has surged to epidemic proportions in recent decades, from little-mentioned misery at the margins of society to a phenomenon that is rarely far from the news. It is widespread in classrooms and boardrooms, refugee camps and inner cities, farms and suburbs.

interactive

At any one time it is estimated that more than 300 million people have depression - about 4% of the world's population when the figures were published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015. Women are more likely to be depressed than men.

Depression is the leading global disability, and unipolar (as opposed to bipolar) depression is the 10th leading cause of early death, it calculates. The link between suicide, the second leading cause of death for young people aged 15-29, and depression is clear, and around the world two people kill themselves every minute.

While rates for depression and other common mental health conditions vary considerably, the US is the "most depressed" country in the world, followed closely by Colombia, Ukraine, the Netherlands and France. At the other end of the scale are Japan, Nigeria and China.

Why are there such wide variations?

The stark contrasts between countries have led some to dub depression as a "first world problem" or a "luxury". The logic is that if you are staring down the barrel of a gun or you don't know where the next meal is coming from, you have no time for such introspection.

Recent research points to myriad reasons, many overlapping: in particular less developed countries often lack the infrastructure to collect data on depression, and are less likely to recognise it as an illness. Also, people in these countries are more likely to feel a social stigma against talking about how they feel, and are reluctant to ask for professional help.

Statistics are also less simplistic than rich = depressed and poor = not depressed.

A paper in the journal Plos Medicine argues that, extremes aside, the majority of countries have similar rates of depression. It also found that the most depressed regions are eastern Europe, and north Africa and the Middle East; and that, by country, the highest rate of years lost to disability for depression is in Afghanistan, and the lowest in Japan.

What causes depression?

Things have improved since people with mental illness were believed to be possessed by the devil and cast out of their communities, or hanged as witches. But there remains a widespread misunderstanding of the illness, particularly the persistent trope that people with depression should just "buck up", or "get out more".

A contrasting opinion is provided by the psychiatrist Dr Tim Cantopher's book Depressive Illness: The Curse of the Strong.

He argues there is a part of the brain called the limbic system that acts like a thermostat, controlling various functions of the body - including mood - and restoring equilibrium after the normal ups and downs of life. The limbic system is a circuit of nerves, transmitting signals to each other via two chemicals, serotonin and noradrenalin, of which people with depression have a deficit. According to this description, depressive illness is predominantly a physical, not mental, illness.

Cantopher says that, when under stress, weak or lazy people give in quickly; strong people keep going, redouble their efforts, fight any pressure to give up and so push the limbic system to breaking point. However, there is no scientific evidence to support this theory, as it is impossible to experiment on live brains.

Other commonly agreed causes or triggers are past trauma or abuse; a genetic predisposition to depression, which may or may not be the same as a family history; life stresses, including financial problems or bereavement; chronic pain or illness; and taking drugs, including cannabis, ecstasy and heroin.

The subject of much debate, there is a school of thought that severe stress or certain illnesses can trigger an excessive response from the immune system, causing inflammation in the brain, which in turn causes depression.

Treatments

The WHO estimates that fewer than half of people with depression are receiving treatment. Many more will be getting inadequate help, often focused on medication, with too little investment in talking therapies, which are regarded as a crucial ally.

Among pharmacological treatments for depression, the most commonly prescribed antidepressants are selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) which reduce the absorption of serotonin, increasing overall levels. Another popular class of drugs is serotonin norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitor (SNRIs), which work on both serotonin and noradrenaline.

The most common talking therapy is cognitive behavioural therapy, which breaks down overwhelming problems into situations, thoughts, emotions, physical feelings and actions to try to break a cycle of negative thoughts.

Other types are interpersonal therapy, behavioural activation, psychodynamic psychotherapy and couples therapy. All talking therapies can be used on their own, or with medication.

Away from the medical approach, doctors can prescribe physical activity or arts therapy, while some patients opt for alternative or complementary therapies, most popularly St John's Wort herbal pills, mindfulness and yoga.

interactive

Trends

While there are more and more treatments for depression, the problem is rising, not falling.

From 2005-15, cases of depressive illness increased by nearly a fifth. People born after 1945 are 10 times more likely to have depression. This reflects both population growth and a proportional increase in the rate of depression among the most at-risk ages, the WHO said.

Suicide rates, however, have declined globally, by about a quarter. In 1990, the rate was 14.55 per 100,000 people, in 2016 the rate was 11.16 per 100,000.

A key reason for the continuing rise in depressive illness is that drugs do not necessarily "cure" the patient, and other therapies that can make the crucial difference are usually not in sufficient supply.

Other reasons given for the continuing rise in depressive illness include an ageing population (60- to 74-year-olds are more likely to suffer than other age groups), and rising stress and isolation.

What next?

No new antidepressant drugs have been developed in the last 25 years, forcing psychiatrists to look elsewhere for help.

There have been positive experiments with both ketamine and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. Further hopes for a new generation of treatments have been raised by recent discoveries of 44 gene variants that scientists believe raise the risk of depression. Another controversial area of research is treatment for low immunity and mooted links between depression and inflammation.

Countries are increasingly recognising the need to train more psychologists to replace or complement drug treatments.

And perhaps most importantly, there is a cultural movement to make it easier for people to ask for help and speak out about their illness.

Some of the most visible leaders of this shift are the UK's princes William and Harry, who set up the charity Heads Together and have talked publicly about their own problems. Others are celebrities; most recently the wrestler and actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has spoken about his depression, and the singer Mariah Carey has talked about having bipolar disorder.

Further reading

Personal stories of depression from mental health charity Mind

World Health Organisation report

MentalHealth.gov, for wider information on mental health

Country and regional statistics from Plos Medicine Journal

All Kinds of Minds TED Talks

Tim Cantopher: Depressive Illness, the Curse Of the Strong
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is depression and why is it rising?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Depressed people don't all shuffle around with a long face, or cry at any provocation. MentalHealth.gov, a US government website, defines it as "losing interest in important parts of life".

# data[].attributes.headline
Check Out These New Images of Jupiter’s Stormy Surface

# data[].attributes.subject
Check Out These New Images of Jupiter’s Stormy Surface

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The images allowed scientists to map lightning strikes and revealed holes in the Great Red Spot

smithsonianmag.com

Astronomers have combined the powers of telescopes on Earth and in space to produce a unique set of images of Jupiter that deliver astounding views and new insights about the giant planet's intense storms, according to a statement from NASA.

Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets in our solar system combined, however its bulk is anything but solid. The planet's surface is a roiling mix of gases and liquids, whipped into swirls and stripes by hurricane-force winds and forming massive storms. A single storm, known as the Great Red Spot, is twice as wide as Earth and has been raging for more than 300 years.

Astronomers looking to better understand the gas giant's intense atmospheric conditions used the Hubble Space Telescope orbiting Earth, the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter to image the planet's surface in unprecedented detail.

Combining these three sources allowed scientists to map Jupiter's powerful lightning and revealed that dark patches seen within the Great Red Spot are gaps in its cloud cover and not different types of cloud, the researchers report in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

The Juno spacecraft entered Jupiter's orbit in 2016, and every 53 days it passes just 3,100 miles from the planet's cloud tops. At this close range, Juno's instruments can detect radio waves emitted by lightning bolts, allowing it to see through the storm clouds.

Whenever Juno is skimming Jupiter's turbulent surface to detect lightning, Hubble and Gemini capture high-resolution images of the planet to help astronomers put Juno's observations in context.

"Juno's microwave radiometer probes deep into the planet's atmosphere by detecting high-frequency radio waves that can penetrate through the thick cloud layers. The data from Hubble and Gemini can tell us how thick the clouds are and how deep we are seeing into the clouds," says Amy Simon, planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.

Hubble's images cover the visible light spectrum while Gemini's use thermal infrared to see how heat is distributed across Jupiter's surface. The research team used these observations to map lightning strikes and the Jovian cloud conditions that are associated with lightning.

"Scientists track lightning because it is a marker of convection, the turbulent mixing process that transports Jupiter's internal heat up to the visible cloud tops," says Michael Wong, planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a release. "Ongoing studies of lightning sources will help us understand how convection on Jupiter is different from or similar to convection in the Earth's atmosphere."

The researchers found lightning storms clustered around areas where deep, moisture-laden clouds coincided with 40-mile-high columns of moist, upwelling air-similar to thunderheads on Earth-and gaps in cloud cover-perhaps caused by downwelling.

Showing that Jovian lightning is associated with moisture will help researchers improve estimates of how much water is in Jupiter's atmosphere, which may allow them to understand how the gas giant-and the rest of the solar system-formed.

The thermal infrared images captured by the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea offer some of the highest resolution of any ever obtained from the ground. The thermal infrared images display heat as fiery orange glowing through the cracks in Jupiter's thick cloud cover.

"It's kind of like a jack-o-lantern," Wong says in a statement. "You see bright infrared light coming from cloud-free areas, but where there are clouds, it's really dark in the infrared."

The high-resolution images of these cloud-free areas also allowed Wong and his colleagues to properly interpret prior observations of the Great Red Spot. Past images in the visible light spectrum from telescopes such as Hubble showed shadowy areas in the counter-clockwise spinning storm. The new observations revealed these dark patches are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not just differences in color.

The 300-mile resolution thermal images were made possible by a technique called "lucky imaging," that selects the sharpest images from a large number of very short exposure shots. The sharpest images come when the distortions normally introduced by Earth's atmosphere momentarily stabilize.

"These images rival the view from space," Wong says in a statement.

The ability to regularly obtain such high-resolution images is allowing scientists to begin to look for patterns on Jupiter's stormy surface. "This is our equivalent of a weather satellite," says Simon in a statement. "We can finally start looking at weather cycles."

About Alex Fox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Check Out These New Images of Jupiter's Stormy Surface

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
smithsonianmag.com Astronomers have combined the powers of telescopes on Earth and in space to produce a unique set of images of Jupiter that deliver astounding views and new insights about the giant planet's intense storms, according to a statement from NASA.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Generative Grammar of the Immune System

# data[].attributes.subject
The Generative Grammar of the Immune System

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo sobre los cigarrillos electrónicos

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo sobre los cigarrillos electrónicos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Can vaping damage your lungs? What we do (and don’t) know - Harvard Health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Vaping can cause significant health risks, including lung disease. Learn the dangers of vaping and nicotine.…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a world where your life is judged by how great you look in your Facebook posts and Instagram pics, there is a constant expectation to look your best all the time. Wanting to be always selfie-ready, however, comes at a price. The makeup industry has been telling women for years how a little foundation and dash of mascara can liven up your face instantly. While that may be true, applying makeup every day can have several harmful side effects on your skin and body.
1. Headaches
Chemicals like Diazolidinyl urea and DMDM Hydantoin, both of which are tend to release formaldehyde, are a common ingredient in many cosmetic products and are used as an antimicrobial preservative. These chemicals have been known to cause headaches, irritation of the mucous membranes, and cause damage to the eyes. If you have been suffering from headaches and can't figure out why, try going easy on the makeup for a few days to see if the headache goes away.
2. Hair Problems
With changing trends in fashion, there is also a wave of hair trends that comes along. Hair products like hair gels, hair serums, shampoos, conditioners, and hair sprays contain several harmful chemicals which set your hair the way you want but end up damaging your hair in the long run. Extensive use of chemical based hair products could lead to dandruff, scalp redness, thinning of hair, and even loss of hair. Long term use of hair color could also lead to hair discoloration.
3. Acne
This is common side effect of makeup that most women would have expereinced. Your skin is as much a part of your body as any other organ. It also needs to breathe and grow. When you cover your skin with makeup, you also end up clogging it. Some types of makeup which are in the form of liquids and creams clog the pores in your skin. This leads to the formation of blackheads, which when not cleaned regularly can form acne. So make sure you clean your makeup thoroughly with a natural cleanser before going to bed.
4. Skin Allergies
Chemicals known as Parabens which include ethyl-paraben, butyl-paraben, and isopropyl-paraben are used as preservatives to prevent bacterial growth in cosmetics. Parabens can cause various allergic reactions like skin irritation, blotches, and blemishes on the skin. Another common allergen in cosmetics is Salicylate which can cause an outbreak of painful rashes or hives if you have sensitive skin. In many cases, the allergic reaction is not apparent until the symptoms becomes severe. Read the label for parabens before you buy.
5. Eye Infections
Eye makeup is used extensively even by women who don't use heavy makeup. But it's important to remember that your eyes and the skin around them is the most sensitive area of your face. Layers of eye makeup can be damaging to your eyes as it also slips into your eyes through the corners causing irritation. Too much mascara and eyeliner inhibits the growth of eyelashes and also becomes a breeding ground for bacteria which could lead to irritations and infections.
6. Infertility
Skincare products and deodorants are directly absorbed by your skin, so it's very likely that the chemicals used in these products also seep into your body. A study conducted on rats found that butyl paraben adversely affects the secretion of testosterone and the function of the male reproductive system.1

Though the consumers of cosmetics are majorly women, it's still important to note the adverse effects parabens can have on the reproductive system. Parabens are widely used in the skincare industry and even products labelled natural could have parabens.
7. Premature Ageing
When you use skin products for a longer period of time, the chemicals present tend to permanently damage your skin. With time, you could begin to see skin ageing signs likes wrinkles or patchiness on your face and body. While makeup does help you hide or cover flaws in your skin, the long term effects could be counterproductive. Also, considering how big the anti-ageing products market is, cosmetic companies have no incentive to reduce the ageing effects of makeup.
8. Hormonal Imbalance
Prolonged use of cosmetics can have an impact on your endocrine system and interfere with the functioning of the thyroid gland. Triclosan is a commonly used chemical compound and can be found in products like acne-removal scrubs and deodorants to keep them free of germs. With regular use, triclosan gets absorbed and accumulated in your body and affects the thyroid gland causing an imbalance in the hormonal secretions. This could lead to thyroid related conditions like headaches, weight gain, and depression.
9. Cancer
Many of the chemical based cosmetics available in the stores today contain toxic ingredients that could cause cancer. With regulations in place, there is testing being done on the ingredients before the products can be sold. However, cosmetics companies need only prove that there will be no immediate harmful results. So there is no conclusive research done on the long-term effects of all the ingredients. Try and avoid products with the following ingredients.

Formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives (quaternium-15, diazolidinyl urea, imidazolidinyl urea, DMDM hydantoin, and 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3 diol)

Phenacetin

Coal tar

Benzene

Untreated or mildly treated mineral oils

Ethylene oxide

Chromium

Cadmium and its compounds

Arsenic

Crystalline silica (or quartz)

10. Skin Discoloration
Skin products like sunscreens, moisturizers, toners, and creams contain agents that bleach or darken the skin. Cosmetic products that use poor quality ingredients which have not been regulated can lead to skin discoloration. The effect could be patches, pigmentation, uneven skin tone, redness, and freckles. Though your skin is meant to protect you, it is also very sensitive and needs to treated with care. So avoid using chemical products for your daily skincare routine.

Using chemical based cosmetics regularly can have adverse effects on your skin and could even lead to permanent damage. The best way to avoid these side effects of makeup is by reducing the use of cosmetics and switching to natural or herbal products. And always remember to read the label for harmful chemicals before you buy.

Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: CureJoy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Harmful Side Effects Of Makeup - CureJoy | DailyHunt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a world where your life is judged by how great you look in your Facebook posts and Instagram pics, there is a constant expectation to look your best all the time. Wanting to be always selfie-ready, however, comes at a price.

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo sobre la relación entre el sobrepeso y las horas de sueño. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo sobre la relación entre el sobrepeso y las horas de sueño. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Can staying up late make you fat? A growing body of research has suggested that poor sleep quality is linked to an increased risk of obesity by deregulating appetite, which in turn leads to more calorie consumption.

But a new study published this week in PLOS Biology found that the direction of this reaction might actually be flipped: It's not the sleep loss that leads to obesity, but rather that excess weight can cause poor sleep, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and the University of Nevada, Reno, who discovered their findings in the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans ( C. elegans).

"We think that sleep is a function of the body trying to conserve energy in a setting where energetic levels are going down. Our findings suggest that if you were to fast for a day, we would predict you might get sleepy because your energetic stores would be depleted," said study co-author David Raizen, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Neurology and member of the Chronobiology and Sleep Institute at Penn.

Raizen emphasized that while these findings in worms may not translate directly to humans, C. elegans offer a surprisingly good model for studying mammalian slumber. Like all other animals that have nervous systems, they need sleep. But unlike humans, who have complex neural circuitry and are difficult to study, a C. elegans has only 302 neurons -- one of which scientists know for certain is a sleep regulator.

In humans, acute sleep disruption can result in increased appetite and insulin resistance, and people who chronically get fewer than six hours of sleep per night are more likely be obese and diabetic. Moreover, starvation in humans, rats, fruit flies, and worms has been shown to affect sleep, indicating that it is regulated, at least in part, by nutrient availability. However, the ways in which sleeping and eating work in tandem has remained unclear.

"We wanted to know, what is sleep actually doing? Short sleep and other chronic conditions, like diabetes, are linked, but it's just an association. It's not clear if short sleep is causing the propensity for obesity, or that the obesity, perhaps, causes the propensity for short sleep," said study co-author Alexander van der Linden, PhD, an associate professor of Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno.

To study the association between metabolism and sleep, the researchers genetically modified C. elegans to "turn off" a neuron that controls sleep. These worms could still eat, breathe, and reproduce, but they lost their ability to sleep. With this neuron turned off, the researchers saw a severe drop in adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels, which is the body's energy currency.

"That suggests that sleep is an attempt to conserve energy; it's not actually causing the loss of energy," Raizen explained.

In previous research, the van der Linden lab studied a gene in C. elegans called KIN-29. This gene is homologous to the Salt-Inducible Kinase (SIK-3) gene in humans, which was already known to signal sleep pressure. Surprisingly, when the researchers knocked out the KIN-29 gene to create sleepless worms, the mutant C. elegans accumulated excess fat -- resembling the human obesity condition -- even though their ATP levels lowered.

The researchers hypothesized that the release of fat stores is a mechanism for which sleep is promoted, and that the reason KIN-29 mutants did not sleep is because they were unable to liberate their fat. To test this hypothesis, the researchers again manipulated the KIN-29 mutant worms, this time expressing an enzyme that "freed" their fat. With that manipulation, the worms were again able to sleep.

Raizen said this could explain one reason why people with obesity may experience sleep problems. "There could be a signaling problem between the fat stores and the brain cells that control sleep," he said.

While there is still much to unravel about sleep, Raizen said that this paper takes the research community one step closer to understanding one of its core functions -- and how to treat common sleep disorders.

"There is a common, over-arching sentiment in the sleep field that sleep is all about the brain, or the nerve cells, and our work suggests that this isn't necessarily true," he said. "There is some complex interaction between the brain and the rest of the body that connects to sleep regulation."

Additional authors on this paper include Jeremy Grubbs and Lindsey Lopes, who completed this research while students at the University of Nevada, Reno and the Perelman School of Medicine, respectively.

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health grants R01NS107969 and R01NS088432, COBRE P20GM103650, and the National Science Foundation grant IOS1353014.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
sleep disorder research; insomnia research; obesity; sleep disorders; insomnia; obstructive sleep apnea; biotechnology and bioengineering; biology; mice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Link between obesity and sleep loss: Energy conservation may be a major function of sleep, according to new study in worms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Can staying up late make you fat? A growing body of research has suggested that poor sleep quality is linked to an increased risk of obesity by deregulating appetite, which in turn leads to more calorie consumption.

# data[].attributes.body
Este es el documento en blanco para que escriban sus aportes sobre la lectura de García García. Háganle clic, pídanle que lo abra en una ventana aparte, y ahí se les abre como Google Doc colaborativo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
García García, “La comprensión de textos

# data[].attributes.body
Este lo teníamos como opción para el parcial, pero como es muy corto no lo pudimos hacer. Me gustaría poder hacerlo en algún momento :).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cheetah struggling to reproduce due to climate change, scientists warn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world’s fastest animal has developed abnormal coils in its sperm as a result of warmer temperatures

# data[].attributes.body
No sé si todo el artículo sea adecuado para el nivel en el que estamos, pero me pareció súper interesante.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At the end of a dim hallway in Casablanca's Université Hassan II, I've walked into a dusty room containing a remarkable set of fossils-bones that raise foundational questions about Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, one of the weirdest dinosaurs ever discovered.

Longer than an adult Tyrannosaurus rex, the 50-foot-long, seven-ton predator had a large sail on its back and an elongated snout that resembled the maw of a crocodile, bristling with conical teeth. For decades, reconstructions of its bulky body have ended in a long, narrowing tail like the ones on its many theropod cousins.

The red-brown remains laid before me are altering that picture. These bones assemble into a mostly complete tail, the first yet found for Spinosaurus. It's so large, five tables are required to support its full length, and to my shock, the appendage resembles a giant bony paddle.

Described today in the journal Nature, this tail is the most extreme aquatic adaptation ever seen in a large dinosaur. Its discovery in Morocco stretches our understanding of how one of Earth's most dominant groups of land animals lived and thrived.

Delicate struts nearly two feet long jut from many of the vertebrae that make up the tail, giving it the profile of an oar. By the end of the tail, the bony bumps that help adjacent vertebrae interlock practically disappear, letting the tail's tip undulate back and forth in a way that would propel the animal through water. The adaptation probably helped it move through the vast river ecosystem it called home-or even dart after the huge fish it likely preyed upon.

"This was basically a dinosaur trying to build a fish tail," says National Geographic Emerging Explorer Nizar Ibrahim, the lead researcher examining the fossil.

Now, with evidence from the newly analyzed tail, there's a strong case that Spinosaurus didn't merely flirt with the shore but was capable of full-fledged aquatic movement. Collectively, the findings published today suggest the giant Spinosaurus spent plenty of time underwater, perhaps hunting prey like a massive crocodile. "This tail is unambiguous," says team member Samir Zouhri, a paleontologist at the Université Hassan II. "This dinosaur was swimming."

Other scientists who have evaluated the new study agree that the tail puts some lingering doubts to rest and strengthens the case of a semiaquatic Spinosaurus.

"This is certainly a bit of a surprise," says University of Maryland paleontologist Tom Holtz, who wasn't involved with the study. " Spinosaurus is even weirder than we thought it was."

Bones and bombs

The story of Spinosaurus is nearly as unusual as the newfound tail, an adventure that winds from bombed-out German museums to the Martian-like sandstone of the Moroccan Sahara.

During World War II, Allied bombing prompted Stromer-a critic of the Nazi regime-to beg the museum director to move the fossils to safety. The Nazi director refused, and bombing destroyed the fossils in 1944. Drawings, photos, and descriptions in journal articles were all that remained to prove Stromer's Spinosaurus fossils ever existed.

In the decades that followed, Spinosaurus took on a certain mythos, as generations of paleontologists found more of its close relatives across the world, from Brazil to Thailand, and tried to make sense of how they lived. Unearthed across four continents, these additional "spinosaurids" almost certainly ate fish based on their skull anatomy, tooth structures and, in one case, fish scales that were found preserved in a spinosaurid ribcage.

In the early 20 th century, paleontologists were toying with notions of aquatic dinosaurs, including one idea that large plant-eating dinosaurs lived in lagoons to help support their immense weight. But decades of anatomical research now show that dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, even the titans among them, thrived on terra firma. The anatomy of other spinosaurids' hind limbs strongly suggested that they, too, walked on land.

Without a new Spinosaurus skeleton to examine, the species seemed destined to remain ambiguous.

Lost and found

Clarity would come decades later from southeastern Morocco, where thousands of artisanal miners have scoured the region's rocks and found fossils that span hundreds of millions of years of Earth's history. Hoping to find dinosaur remains in particular, some diggers have focused their energies on the Kem Kem beds, a sandstone formation between 95 and 100 million years old that starts 200 miles east of Marrakesh and extends 150 miles to the southwest. The rocks preserve traces of what was once a vast river system where fish the size of cars once swam. If you spot an exposed patch of the Kem Kem beds' red sandstone on the side of a butte, you're liable to find the mouth of a tunnel too short to stand up in, carved by local miners with a sharpened piece of rebar.

When miners come across fossils, they usually sell the bones to a web of wholesalers and exporters. This fossil mining industry provides vital income to thousands in this region, though it operates in a legal and ethical gray area. Locals dig year-round, making them almost certain to find more scientifically valuable specimens than academic paleontologists, who dig only a few weeks a year.

That's why paleontologists get to know local diggers and frequently check their hauls. An assistant professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, Ibrahim, who is of German and Moroccan descent, travels from village to village whenever he visits Morocco, discussing locals' latest finds in Darija, the local Arabic dialect, over steaming glasses of fresh mint tea.

Ibrahim's research partners at the Natural History Museum of Milan alerted him to even more bones from the same local miner in Italy and helped secure their return to Morocco. A second trip by Ibrahim, Zouhri, and University of Portsmouth paleontologist David Martill in 2013 at last led the team to the Kem Kem outcrop where the fossils originated, and they started finding more bone fragments.

Ibrahim used these fresh fossils, previously found bones, and Stromer's articles to attempt a fresh reconstruction of Spinosaurus. Their work, published in Science in 2014, declared the Moroccan fossils as a replacement for the original Egyptian ones lost in World War II bombings. Their reconstruction revealed the creature was 50 feet long when fully grown, longer than an adult T. rex.

The study also argued that Spinosaurus had a slender torso, stubby hind limbs, a skull shaped like a fish-eating crocodile's, and thick-walled bones similar to those in penguins and manatees-features that pointed to some kind of semiaquatic lifestyle.

The study polarized paleontologists. Some reacted positively, convinced by the new data on Spinosaurus's thick-walled bones. "That really sealed the deal for me," says Lindsay Zanno, a North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences paleontologist who wasn't part of Ibrahim's research team. "Bone has memory," she adds, noting that the microstructure of bone looks different in terrestrial animals, flying animals, or animals that spend most of their time in water.

Still others expressed doubt that the Moroccan bones belonged to a Spinosaurus. While the newfound Moroccan bones were clearly spinosaurid, the number of spinosaurid species in North Africa was, and is, a matter of scientific debate. Did the fossil's anatomy exactly match Stromer's lost Egyptian creature? Or did they instead belong to a close, but distinct, relative? "No one was particularly sure quite how many species or genera we've got [in North Africa], and quite where any one of them is in time and space," says Dave Hone, a paleontologist at Queen Mary University of London and a spinosaurid specialist.

Seeking to put the controversy to rest, Ibrahim and his colleagues returned to the Moroccan site, with the support of the National Geographic Society, to check for more bones in September 2018. Time was of the essence: He had heard from local contacts that commercial fossil diggers were tunneling into nearby hills for bones. Ibrahim could not risk letting the rest of what he believed to be the world's only known Spinosaurus skeleton vanish into collectors' curio cabinets.

Fossil bonanza

The 2018 dig started brutally. To clear tons of sandstone, the crew bought the region's only working jackhammer. It broke within minutes. Days were so grueling that several team members were hospitalized once they returned home. But the promise of discovery kept them going, along with Nutella breaks that temporarily took their minds off the punishing work. Finally, they started finding one caudal vertebra after another from the animal's tail, sometimes just minutes and inches apart. The team was so giddy over the bonanza, they drummed out musical beats with their rock hammers and broke into song, belting out, "It's another caudal!" to the tune of Europe's "The Final Countdown."

I got a taste for the site's challenges, and the rush of discovery, when I joined the team in July 2019 for a return expedition. The 117-degree heat and arid winds wicked liters of water from my body as we chipped our way through an outcrop marbled like bacon. Fanned along the outcrop below, Ibrahim's Detroit Mercy students lugged rocks in buckets made from recycled tires and scoured the debris for even the tiniest flecks of bone.

By the end of the next day, we'd found several Spinosaurus fossils, including foot bones and two dainty caudal vertebrae that would have formed the tip of the dinosaur's tail. When the fruits of all this labor were at last laid out on tables back in the Casablanca lab, Ibrahim and his colleagues knew they had something truly remarkable.

By the end of 2018 alone, the dig team had uncovered more than 30 Spinosaurus tail vertebrae. Crucially, some of the tail bones neatly match up with illustrations of more fragmentary spinosaurid tail vertebrae that Stromer published in 1934, bolstering the case that a spinosaurid species living in Cretaceous North Africa ranged from Morocco to Egypt. In addition, Ibrahim and his team haven't found any duplicate bones at the Moroccan site-a clear sign that the fossils belong to just one individual, an extremely unusual occurrence in the Kem Kem beds' rough-and-tumble riverbeds.

Made for water

With the creature's nearly complete tail now in hand, Ibrahim and his colleagues are more confident than ever that Spinosaurus was a swimmer-an assertion they've started putting to the test in the lab.

In February 2019, Ibrahim contacted Stephanie Pierce, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, with a question: Could she help him test how much thrust a dinosaur's tail would generate in water? Though digitally modeling animal motion is one of her specialties, Pierce knew that answering the question required dynamic, real-world experiments. She and her colleague George Lauder, a fish biologist, agreed to join the team.

Nearly six months after the Harvard duo joined Ibrahim's team, I walked into Lauder's lab, a room whirring with ventilation and the fans of overworked computers. Lauder, sitting at a workbench, reached for an orange plastic sheet-the laser-cut outline of a Spinosaurus tail-and attached it to a metal rod. He then walked across the lab to what looked like an elaborately built fish tank and mounted the tail inside a tangle of metal beams hanging from the ceiling.

The device is a robot called the "Flapper," which dangles beneath a water flume whose flow speed Lauder can control with exquisite precision. Studded with lights, cameras, and sensors, the ensemble can precisely track the aquatic movements of a swimming animal or a swimming robot-and the forces they impart as they move.

Pierce and Lauder's results, which are included in the Nature paper, show that the tail of Spinosaurus delivers more than eight times the forward thrust in water than the tails of the non-spinosaurid theropods Coelophysis and Allosaurus-and does so twice as efficiently. The finding suggests the giant Spinosaurus spent plenty of time submerged, possibly navigating rivers like a modern crocodile but on a massive scale.

That conclusion sets Spinosaurus apart from other water-loving dinosaurs described since 2014, including species that may have lived like geese or turtles. The more Lauder talks about a paddle on the rear of a predator up to 50 feet long, the more his eyes widen at the unprecedented nature of the discovery. "It's unbelievable!" he says.

In future experiments, Pierce and Lauder say that a modified version of the Flapper trials could test a 3D model of the tail, or even a full-body model of the updated Spinosaurus, which would help clarify how the dinosaur's six-foot-tall dorsal sail affected its swimming. To achieve that dream, though, Ibrahim wants to incorporate every last scrap of bone he can, which is why his team returned to the desert in the height of summer 2019 for more digging.

Crucially for Ibrahim, any fossils the team finds remain in Morocco, growing the collection that Zouhri, the Université Hassan II paleontologist, oversees in his Casablanca lab. The hope is that someday, these bones and the scientists studying them will seed Morocco's first national museum of natural history-and inspire people across North Africa to dream of the lost worlds beneath their feet.

"What I want to do is build a home for Spinosaurus," Ibrahim says. "This is going to become a symbol-an icon-of African paleontology."

Paolo Verzone is a member of Agence VU and has been awarded with three World Press Photo honors. His story onthe hunt for ancient biblical manuscripts was in the December 2018 issue ofNational Geographic magazine. See more of his work on hiswebsite andInstagram.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bizarre Spinosaurus makes history as first known swimming dinosaur

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the end of a dim hallway in Casablanca's Université Hassan II, I've walked into a dusty room containing a remarkable set of fossils-bones that raise foundational questions about Spinosaurus aegyptiacus , one of the weirdest dinosaurs ever discovered.

# data[].attributes.body
Sí, otro más. Hubo otro descubrimiento y estoy obsesionada conlos dinusaurios.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sharp-toothed didn't just stand in the shallows to snag fish for dinner; this dinosaur may have been an excellent swimmer. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, a new fossil discovery reveals, had a paddle-shaped tail that may have helped the predator slice through the water with the grace of a crocodile.

The fossilized tail, unearthed from 95-million-year-old rocks in Morocco, is the most complete Spinosaurus tail ever recovered. Its unusual shape suggests that this dinosaur may have been aquatic - contrary to prevailing wisdom that dinosaurs were solely land dwellers, researchers report in a study published online April 29 in Nature.

"It was basically a river monster," says Nazir Ibrahim, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Detroit Mercy who led the study.

"When I first saw the illustrations of the tail, I literally giggled with surprise and delight - and I'm not someone who usually giggles," says Matthew Lamanna, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who reviewed the paper for Nature. "The tail was just so awesomely weird-looking for a predatory dinosaur. I'd never seen anything like it."

Gabriele Bindellini

Spinosaurus was known to have lived near the water and to have dined on seafood: The animal's cone-shaped teeth would have been adept at snagging slippery fish. "But for most people, the model they were more comfortable with was a wading dinosaur that waited for the fish to swim by," the way a grizzly bear may splash into the water to catch a fish, Ibrahim says.

Ibrahim has previously proposed that Spinosaurus was more than an occasional wader. In a 2014 paper in Science, he and colleagues reported that the creature had denser bones than most other theropods, the branch of predatory dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and Allosaurus ( SN: 9/11/14). Denser bones could be an evolutionary adaptation to a more aquatic life, allowing for greater buoyancy control.

The 2014 study was based on a fossil discovered in Morocco's Kem Kem beds in 2008, first partially recovered by an amateur fossil hunter. Ibrahim's team returned to the site and recovered more of the skeleton. After the 2014 paper was published, he went back again and targeted a large chunk of rock next to the original excavation site.

"We struck gold," he says. Bone after bone emerged, revealing a tail that was nearly 80 percent complete. That tail contained very long neural spines, bony projections on the vertebrae, that together formed a tall fin shape, making the tail look like a paddle, he says.

On the underside of the tail are a row of v-shaped bones called chevrons, a feature that many dinosaurs have. In most dinosaurs, chevrons "are fairly long at the base of the tail, and then get shorter and shorter" toward the tip, Ibrahim says. But in Spinosaurus, the chevrons remain long until near the tail's end.

Furthermore, the tail was surprisingly flexible. Many theropods had stiff, inflexible tails, which helped the dinosaurs balance their weight on land. But Spinosaurus' tail had a wide range of movement that allowed it to swing sideways.

Diego Mattarelli

Whether that movement translated to the animal propelling itself through water is another question. Ibrahim and colleagues tested the possible power of Spinosaurus ' tail shape against that of other animals, including two terrestrial theropods and two modern, semiaquatic animals, a crocodile and a newt.

Plastic versions of the different tail shapes were swung back and forth by robotic controllers in a water tank, while sensors measured the tails' propulsive power and thrust. The Spinosaurus tail performed nearly as well as the tails of the semiaquatic animals and far better than the other dinosaurs' tails, Ibrahim says.

That finding suggests that Spinosaurus was able to actively pursue prey in the water, he adds. "At this point I think it's the nail in the coffin of the idea that dinosaurs never invaded the aquatic world."

It's also possible, however, that the extended tail vertebrae were meant for display rather than swimming, notes Thomas Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved in the new study. "But to be fair, those aren't mutually exclusive things," he adds. And when the tail shape is considered along with other unusual attributes, such as the dinosaur's dense bones, "there is a consistent pattern which is certainly suggestive of it being an aquatic animal."

If true, that would mark a paradigm shift in our understanding of dinosaurs, previously thought to exclusively have been land animals, Holtz says. But there are similar types of exceptions. "We think of mammals as a terrestrial group, but we have whales and bats," he says.

And Spinosaurus' ancestors had stiffer tails more like those of other theropods, which suggests that the tail shape evolved over time, Holtz says. "It would be interesting to see if there turns out to be a member of Spinosaurus' branch [that lived later] and was even more aquatic. It's the sort of thing we want to keep our eyes out for."

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

Carolyn Gramling is the earth & climate writer. She has bachelor's degrees in geology and European history and a Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Spinosaurus fossil tail suggests dinosaurs were swimmers after all

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sharp-toothed didn't just stand in the shallows to snag fish for dinner; this dinosaur may have been an excellent swimmer. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, a new fossil discovery reveals, had a paddle-shaped tail that may have helped the predator slice through the water with the grace of a crocodile.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
According to the old saying, the eyes are windows into the soul, revealing deep emotions that we might otherwise want to hide. Although modern science precludes the existence of the soul, it does suggest that there is a kernel of truth in this saying: it turns out the eyes not only reflect what is happening in the brain but may also influence how we remember things and make decisions.

Our eyes are constantly moving, and while some of those movements are under conscious control, many of them occur subconsciously. When we read, for instance, we make a series of very quick eye movements called saccades that fixate rapidly on one word after another. When we enter a room, we make larger sweeping saccades as we gaze around. Then there are the small, involuntary eye movements we make as we walk, to compensate for the movement of our head and stabilise our view of the world. And, of course, our eyes dart around during the 'rapid eye movement' (REM) phase of sleep.

What is now becoming clear is that some of our eye movements may actually reveal our thought process.

Research published last year shows that pupil dilation is linked to the degree of uncertainty during decision-making: if somebody is less sure about their decision, they feel heightened arousal, which causes the pupils to dilate. This change in the eye may also reveal what a decision-maker is about to say: one group of researchers, for example, found that watching for dilation made it possible to predict when a cautious person used to saying 'no' was about to make the tricky decision to say 'yes'.

Watching the eyes can even help predict what number a person has in mind. Tobias Loetscher and his colleagues at the University of Zurich recruited 12 volunteers and tracked their eye movements while they reeled off a list of 40 numbers.

They found that the direction and size of the participants' eye movements accurately predicted whether the number they were about to say was bigger or smaller than the previous one - and by how much. Each volunteer's gaze shifted up and to the right just before they said a bigger number, and down and to the left before a smaller one. The bigger the shift from one side to the other, the bigger the difference between the numbers.

This suggests that we somehow link abstract number representations in the brain with movement in space. But the study does not tell us which comes first: whether thinking of a particular number causes changes in eye position, or whether the eye position influences our mental activity. In 2013, researchers in Sweden published evidence that it's the latter that may be at work: eye movements may actually facilitate memory retrieval.

They recruited 24 students and asked each one to carefully examine a series of objects displayed to them in one corner of a computer screen. The participants were then told to listen to a series of statements about some of the objects they had seen, such as "The car was facing to the left" and asked to indicate as quickly as possible if each was true or false. Some participants were allowed to let their eyes roam about freely; others were asked to fix their gaze on a cross at the centre of the screen, or the corner where the object had appeared, for example.

The researchers found that those who were allowed to move their eyes spontaneously during recall performed significantly better than those who fixed on the cross. Interestingly, though, participants who were told to fix their gaze in the corner of the screen in which objects had appeared earlier performed better than those told to fix their gaze in another corner. This suggests that the more closely the participants' eye movements during information encoding corresponded with those that occurred during retrieval of the information, the better they were at remembering the objects. Perhaps that's because eye movements help us to recall the spatial relationships between objects in the environment at the time of encoding.

Eyes not only reflect what is happening in the brain but may also influence how we remember things and make decisions

These eye movements can occur unconsciously. "When people are looking at scenes they have encountered before, their eyes are frequently drawn to information they have already seen, even when they have no conscious memory of it," says Roger Johansson, a psychologist at Lund University who led the study.

Watching eye movements can also be used to nudge people's decisions. One recent study showed - maybe worryingly - that eye-tracking can be exploited to influence the moral decisions we take.

Researchers asked participants complex moral questions such as "Can murder ever be justified?" and then displayed, on a computer screen, alternative answers ("sometimes justifiable" or "never justifiable"). By tracking the participants' eye movements, and removing the two answer options immediately after a participant had spent a certain amount of time gazing at one of the two options, the researchers found that they could nudge the participants to provide that particular option as their answer.

"We didn't give them any more information," says neuroscientist Daniel Richardson of University College London, senior author of study. "We simply waited for their own decision-making processes to unfold and interrupted them at exactly the right point. We made them change their minds just by controlling when they made the decision."

Richardson adds that successful salespeople may have some insight into this, and use it to be more persuasive with clients. "We think of persuasive people as good talkers, but maybe they're also observing the decision-making process," he says. "Maybe good salespeople can spot the exact moment you're wavering towards a certain choice, and then offer you a discount or change their pitch."

The ubiquity of eye-tracking apps for smartphones and other hand-held devices raises the possibility of altering people's decision-making process remotely. "If you're shopping online, they might bias your decision by offering free shipping at the moment you shift your gaze to a particular product."

Crowdsourcing the retina's motion detection mechanism | Mo Costandi

Thus, eye movements can both reflect and influence higher mental functions such as memory and decision-making, and betray our thoughts, beliefs, and desires. This knowledge may give us ways of improving our mental functions - but it also leaves us vulnerable to subtle manipulation by other people.

"The eyes are like a window into our thought processes, and we just don't appreciate how much information might be leaking out of them," says Richardson. "They could potentially reveal things that a person might want to suppress, such as implicit racial bias."

"I can see eye-tracking apps being used for, say, supportive technologies that figure out what phone function you need and then help out," he adds, "but if they're left on all the time they could be used to track all sorts of other things. This would provide much richer information, and raises the possibility of unwittingly sharing our thoughts with others."
This is an edited version of a feature I wrote for BBC.com/Future, a website covering science, health and technology. Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to the old saying, the eyes are windows into the soul, revealing deep emotions that we might otherwise want to hide. Although modern science precludes the existence of the soul, it does suggest that there is a kernel of truth in this saying: it turns out the eyes not only reflect what is happening in the brain but may also influence how we remember things and make decisions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Scientists appear to have broken a decades-long deadlock in the battle against Alzheimer's disease after announcing trial results for the first drug that appears to slow the pace of mental decline.

The drug, called solanezumab, was shown to stave off memory loss in patients with mild Alzheimer's over the course of several years. The effects would have been barely discernible to patients or their families, scientists said, and it is no cure. But the wider implications of the results have been hailed as "hugely significant" because it is the first time any medicine has slowed the rate at which the disease damages the brain.

"This is the first evidence of something genuinely modifying the disease process," said Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer's Research UK. "It's a breakthrough in my mind. The history of medicine suggests that once you get through that door you can explore further therapeutic opportunities much more aggressively. It makes us less helpless."

Existing drugs help with the symptoms but ultimately do nothing to slow the disease's progression.

The drug, developed by the American company Eli Lilly, had previously been tested in a larger group of patients with both mild and moderate dementia and this trial had appeared to end in failure in 2012.

However, when scientists analysed the data more closely, they found that in the 1,300 patients with mild dementia, those who had been placed on the drug showed a roughly 30% slower decline in memory and cognitive tests than those who had taken a placebo during the 18-month trial.

This was a fairly small difference from the perspective of the patients who had not yet suffered the devastating memory loss or profound changes to personality that come later on. But the result hinted that the drug could work as long as it was given early enough.

Dementia data

Questions remained about whether the drug was simply treating the symptoms - improving a patient's mood or concentration - rather than actually delaying the loss of neurons in the brain, which drives memory loss.

To test this, Eli Lilly switched the half of the 1,300 patients who had been on the placebo on to the drug as well and the entire group was given solanezumab for a further two years.

If the drug was just treating the symptoms, the placebo group would be expected to "catch up" over time. However, the results, unveiled on Wednesday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Washington DC, in the US, showed that the differences between the two groups were still there - a sign that the drug had made a genuine impact on the progression of the disease.

"It deflected the course of the disease in an irrevocable manner," said Karran, who previously worked for Eli Lilly.

The company is now looking to see whether the drug is more effective when given at an earlier stage - something that might be expected given that it apparently had no effect for patients with more serious dementia. "It's entirely possible you'll show an even bigger benefit if people are given solanezumab earlier on," said Karran.

Scientists said the results also support the idea that sticky plaques in the brain - the most visible hallmark of the disease - are what causes mental decline. The drug is an antibody that works by disassembling the building blocks that make up the plaques, slowly causing them to disintegrate.

Until now, drugs that targeted the plaques have not appeared to have any effect leading some to question whether some other biological process in Alzheimer's was the real root of the disease.

Dr Doug Brown, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Today's findings strongly suggest that targeting people in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease with these antibody treatments is the best way to slow or stop Alzheimer's disease. These drugs are able to reduce the sticky plaques of amyloid that build up in the brain, and now we have seen the first hints that doing this early enough may slow disease progression."

The positive trial results follow years of failed clinical research. Between 2002 and 2012, 99.6% of drugs studies aimed at preventing, curing or improving Alzheimer's symptoms were either halted or discontinued at huge financial cost to drugs companies, many of whom shut down dementia programmes as a result.

Richard Morris, professor of neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, said the result was likely to be significant - although he added that he was reserving final judgment until he saw the data in more detail. "I am cautiously optimistic, from the perspective of the audience, they should be too," he said. "This is not a mouse study, it's a people study. And that matters."

Even if further trial results are positive, it is likely to be several years before the drug would become available on the NHS. Another phase-three trial is due to report in 2016 and then the drug would need to go through regulatory approval and would need to be shown to be sufficiently beneficial to patients.

About 225,000 people will develop dementia in the UK this year - a rate of one every three minutes.

Alzheimer's Society research shows that 850,000 people in the UK have a form of dementia, and that in less than 10 years, 1 million people will be living with dementia. This is expected to rise to 2 million by 2051 unless preventative treatments are developed.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scientists find first drug that appears to slow Alzheimer's disease

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scientists appear to have broken a decades-long deadlock in the battle against Alzheimer's disease after announcing trial results for the first drug that appears to slow the pace of mental decline. The drug, called solanezumab, was shown to stave off memory loss in patients with mild Alzheimer's over the course of several years.

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo sobre el crecimiento de las plantas y la música

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo sobre el crecimiento de las plantas y la música

# data[].attributes.body
Me enteré sobre este "experimento" hace muchos años y me fascinó. Creo que no corresponde del todo a la tipología textual la que estamos trabajando, pero me parece que lo podemos usar igual.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Garden guru Chris Beardshaw is recommending a new technique for bigger blooms - blast your plants with heavy metal.

The broadcaster and gardening expert reveals on Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time on Friday that a constant diet of Black Sabbath worked wonders on a greenhouse full of plants, but exposure to Sir Cliff Richard killed every plant in a horticultural experiment.

Black Sabbath, led by singer Ozzy Osbourne, are seen as pioneers of heavy metal with tracks such as Iron Man and Paranoid. Beardshaw says using rock music as a nutrient appears to create larger flowers and they are more disease-resistant.

The test came about because one of his horticultural students wanted to write a dissertation based on the effects of music on plants.

"We set up four glasshouses with different sorts of music in to see what happened to the plants.

"We had one that was silent - that was a control house - and we had one that was played classical music, we had one that was played Cliff Richard and we had one that was played Black Sabbath.

"It was alstroemerias we were growing and we bombarded these glasshouses with sound for the life of the plant."

He tells listeners, in the show to be broadcast at 3pm: "We were measuring incidence of pest and disease, we were measuring inter-nodal distance, we were measuring the floriferous nature of them and that sort of thing and so the one that was grown as a control house grew really well as you'd expect.

"The one that was grown with classical music - a soft, almost a caressing of the plant when it is hit with that sort of soundwave - those grew slightly shorter because of the soundwaves bombarding them and were slightly more floriferous and there was slightly less pest and disease.

"And the ones with Black Sabbath - great big, thumping noise, rowdy music - they were the shortest, but they had the best flowers and the best resistance to pest and disease.

"The alstroemerias in the Cliff Richard house all died. Sabotage was suspected but we couldn't prove it."
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A blast of Black Sabbath makes plants bloom, says radio gardener

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Garden guru Chris Beardshaw is recommending a new technique for bigger blooms - blast your plants with heavy metal. The broadcaster and gardening expert reveals on Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time on Friday that a constant diet of Black Sabbath worked wonders on a greenhouse full of plants, but exposure to Sir Cliff Richard killed every plant in a horticultural experiment.

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo sobre la realidad virtaul en la fisioterapia

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo sobre la realidad virtaul en la fisioterapia

# data[].attributes.body
Este había quedado que no lo hicieramos en Excel pero no sé si era porque era muy complejo o muy sencillo, pero me pareció bastante interesante

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Virtual reality could help physiotherapy patients complete their exercises at home successfully thanks to researchers at WMG, University of Warwick, who managed to combine VR technology with 3D motion capture.

Currently prescribed physiotherapy often requires patients to complete regular exercises at home. Outside of the clinic, patients rarely receive any guidance other than a leaflet of sketches or static photographs to instruct them how to complete their exercises. This leads to poor adherence, with patients becoming anxious about not getting the exercise right, or simply getting bored by the repetitiveness of the movements.

The advent of consumer virtual reality technology combined with 3D motion capture allows real movements to be accurately translated onto an avatar that can be viewed in a virtual environment. Researchers at the Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick are investigating whether this technology can be used to provide guidance to physiotherapy patients, by providing a virtual physiotherapist in the home to demonstrate the prescribed exercises.

Their paper, 'Timing and correction of stepping movements with a virtual reality avatar' published today the 28th of February, in the Journal PLOS ONE, has focused on whether people are able to accurately follow the movements of a virtual avatar.

Researchers had to investigate whether people were able to accurately coordinate and follow the movements of an avatar in a virtual environment. They asked participants to step in time with an avatar viewed through a VR headset.

Unknown to the participants, the researchers subtly slowed down or speeded up one of the avatar's steps, such that the participants would have to correct their own stepping movement to stay in time. The effect this correction had on their step timing and synchronisation with the avatar was measured.

Lead author, Omar Khan from WMG, University of Warwick commented:

"If participants were observed to correct their own stepping to stay in time with the avatar, we knew they were able to accurately follow the movements they were observing.

"We found that participants struggled to keep in time if only visual information was present. However, when we added realistic footstep sounds in addition to the visual information, the more realistic multisensory information allowed participants to accurately follow the avatar."

Dr Mark Elliott, Principal investigator on the project at WMG, University of Warwick added:

"There is huge potential for consumer VR technologies to be used for both providing guidance to physiotherapy exercises, but also to make the exercises more interesting. This study has focused on the crucial question of how well people can follow a virtual guide."

Prof. Theo Arvanitis, co-author and Director of the Institute of Digital Healthcare, said:

"Our work and digitally-enabled technological solution can underpin transformative health innovations to impact the field of physiotherapy, and have a direct benefit to patients' rehabilitation. "We now plan to investigate other types of movements working closely in partnership with physiotherapists, to establish the areas of physiotherapy that will benefit most from this technology."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
today's healthcare; alternative medicine; patient education and counseling; virtual environment; engineering; medical technology; virtual reality; video games; computer modeling

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Physiotherapy could be done at home using virtual reality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Virtual reality could help physiotherapy patients complete their exercises at home successfully thanks to researchers at WMG, University of Warwick, who managed to combine VR technology with 3D motion capture. Currently prescribed physiotherapy often requires patients to complete regular exercises at home.

# data[].attributes.headline
Artículo sobre el derretimiento de los glaciares

# data[].attributes.subject
Artículo sobre el derretimiento de los glaciares

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An international team of scientists has reached the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and is preparing to drill through more than half a kilometre of ice into the dark waters beneath.

The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of the ice shelf to better understand why it is melting so fast.

Thwaites glacier, which is part of the west Antarctic ice sheet, has lost an estimated 540bn tonnes of ice since the 1980s. But recent measurements show that the melting of the glacier is speeding up, sending even more ice into the Amundsen Sea.

"There are several glaciers in Antarctica that are doing similar things, but this is the one we are most worried about," said David Vaughan, the director of science at the British Antarctic Survey, who has travelled south with the UK-US drilling team.

Thwaites glacier is one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. It has taken the researchers weeks to get themselves and their equipment to the drilling site, a spot on the ice shelf about 1,500km (932 miles) from both the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera research station and the American McMurdo station.

Thwaites glacier locator

In brutal conditions, where the temperature can fall below -20C, the researchers will have only a few days to drill through the ice shelf, deploy the "icefin" submarine and retrieve it, and set a suite of monitoring instruments into the ice before the hole freezes over. "The aim is to do it as rapidly as possible. All of this will happen in three to four days. They really can't afford to muck about," said Vaughan.

The expedition to the Florida-sized glacier became more pressing this year when Nasa scientists used ground-penetrating radar to reveal a massive cavity in its base. The cavern, two-thirds the size of Manhattan and 300 metres tall, was formed as 13bn tonnes of ice melted away over the past three years. The enormous cavity allows water to get under the glacier and melt it from beneath.

Earlier this week, scientists on the team hauled radar-equipped sledges over the ice to map the thickness of the shelf near the "grounding line" where the glacier leaves land and extends over the sea. The map will help them pinpoint where to drill the borehole. During the site assessment, they came across a crevasse that plunged deep into the ice shelf.

Once they get the green light, the scientists will use a hot water drill to bore a 30cm-wide hole through the ice shelf. The equipment can melt a hole at about 1.5 metres per minute, meaning it will take more than six hours of nonstop drilling to get all the way through. Small teams who sleep overnight in tents on the ice will work in rotation around the clock to drill the hole, deploy the submarine, and set other instruments into the borehole for long-term monitoring.

"Nobody has ever been able to drill through the ice close to where it starts to float and that is the critical point," Vaughan told the Guardian. "If everything goes to plan, they will drill the hole and then ream it out until it's about 50cm across, and then lower in the autonomous underwater vehicle. That will actually go into the cavity and send back images in real time so they can navigate it right up to the point where the ice starts to float."

The 3.5 metre-long icefin carries high definition cameras, sonar, and instruments for monitoring water flow, salinity, oxygen and temperature. These can determine how much fresh water is flowing out from under the ice shelf. The robotic sub will also sample the gritty sediment shed into the water as the glacier grinds over the slab of rock it sits on. The data will feed into computer models to refine predictions about the fate of the glacier and the magnitude of sea level rise its melting will produce.

Thwaites glacier is already responsible for about 4% of the global sea level rise, as the ice slips off the land and into the sea. But because the ice shelf is melting and thinning, the glacier is speeding up. Thwaites itself contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than 2 feet (61cm), but it holds back other inland glaciers that contain far more ice, enough to raise global sea levels by more than 2 metres.

"If Thwaites glacier melts, on its own, we will see a rise in sea level around our own coast," said Vaughan. "We are not saying that it's going to happen in the next 100 years or so, but it could certainly begin in that time period."

"We'll look at the flow of the ice and see how it's affected, for instance, by tidal changes. All of those things tell us about the sensitivity of the system to small perturbations, which in future might be large perturbations as the ice shelf melts," he added. "This is all about sea level rise. That is why we are here."

The fieldwork, part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, will run until March 2020.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Submarine to explore why Antarctic glacier is melting so quickly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An international team of scientists has reached the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and is preparing to drill through more than half a kilometre of ice into the dark waters beneath. The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of the ice shelf to better understand why it is melting so fast.

# data[].attributes.headline
Doctors edge closer to creating babies with DNA from three people

# data[].attributes.subject
Doctors edge closer to creating babies with DNA from three people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Doctors are a step closer to creating babies with DNA from three people after research on healthy embryos found the procedure was likely to produce normal pregnancies.

Studies on embryos made with extra DNA showed that the majority were indistinguishable from standard IVF embryos, although further tests hinted that the procedure still carried risks.

The work will be reviewed by the UK government's fertility regulator, which is expected to make a recommendation on whether or not to approve the treatment under licence before the end of the year.

The experimental technique, known as mitochondrial donation, has been developed by researchers in Newcastle to prevent women from passing on devastating and often fatal genetic diseases to their children.

The illnesses, many of which affect the brain and muscles and worsen as children grow, are produced by genetic mutations in tiny structures called mitochondria that sit inside cells and provide them with energy. They are passed on exclusively from mother to child, but mothers can be carriers without having symptoms.

Using mitochondrial donation, doctors hope to block the transmission of faulty mitochondrial DNA by making IVF embryos that have the normal set of chromosomes from the parents, but healthy mitochondria from a donor.

'Three-parent' babies explained: what are the concerns and are they justified?
In March last year, MPs voted to allow mitochondrial donation and handed responsibility for its use to the fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). An expert scientific panel convened by the HFEA asked for more evidence of safety before it would consider issuing a licence for doctors to perform the procedure.

In research published in Nature on Wednesday, the Newcastle team led by Doug Turnbull and Mary Herbert describe a broad range of experiments on the safety of one particular form of mitochondrial donation, called pronuclear transfer (PNT). In PNT, the mother's egg is fertilised with the father's sperm using standard IVF procedures. Before the egg has a chance to divide into two cells, the parents' chromosomes are plucked out and dropped into a fertilised egg from a healthy donor, which has had its own chromosomes removed.

The Newcastle team showed that by performing PNT about eight hours after insemination, they could create early-stage embryos with less than 5% mutated mitochondrial DNA. Most, some 80%, carried less than 2% mutated DNA. The small amount of faulty DNA is carried over from the mother's egg when the parents' chromosomes are removed.

The scientists next subjected embryos to a battery of tests and found no differences between them and normal IVF embryos. While that was a boost for the scientists, follow-up studies urged a note of caution. When cells were taken from PNT embryos and grown in the lab, some showed rising levels of mutated mitochondrial DNA. Though small amounts had been carried over, the faulty DNA came back.

The revival of mutant DNA in cells grown from the embryos is hard to interpret, but scientists suggest they could screen PNT embryos for high levels of mutated mitochondria before deciding which to implant. "It sounds a note of caution for us," said Herbert.

A similar problem was reported by Dieter Egli at Columbia University in work reported from the New York Stem Cell Foundation Lab reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell earlier this month.

Egli said: "The question now is how do we make sure that such instability does not occur. Clearly it did occur after PNT, and one or two in five cell lines is not uncommon. Once we can show that mtDNA genotype instability can reliably be avoided, I don't see any reasons not to use it clinically."

"It is up to regulators to make the decisions on whether it a technique is ready to be used clinically, and many factors will play into that," Egli continued. But he added that scientists do not yet know how such shifts in mitochondrial DNA will affect embryos, and ultimately babies. "I believe this is something regulators will certainly consider in their decisions," he added. Herbert said her group was already working on ways to reduce the carryover of mutated DNA.

Turnbull said the procedure could potentially help 150 women who carry mitochondrial diseases in the UK each year, but added that many would probably choose alternatives to avoid passing the mutated DNA on, such as adoption or IVF with donor eggs.

"We are discussing this now with patients as a potential reproductive option. People are very positive about the technique. There are certainly patients who would move forward with this," he said.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Doctors edge closer to creating babies with DNA from three people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Doctors are a step closer to creating babies with DNA from three people after research on healthy embryos found the procedure was likely to produce normal pregnancies. Studies on embryos made with extra DNA showed that the majority were indistinguishable from standard IVF embryos, although further tests hinted that the procedure still carried risks.

# data[].attributes.headline
Magic numbers: can maths equations be beautiful?

# data[].attributes.subject
Magic numbers: can maths equations be beautiful?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Paul Dirac had an eye for beauty. In one essay, from May 1963, the British Nobel laureate referred to beauty nine times. It makes four appearances in four consecutive sentences. In the article he painted a picture of how physicists saw nature. But the word beauty never defined a sunset, nor a flower, or nature in any traditional sense. Dirac was talking quantum theory and gravity. The beauty lay in the mathematics.

What does it mean for maths to be beautiful? It is not about the appearance of the symbols on the page. That, at best, is secondary. Maths becomes beautiful through the power and elegance of its arguments and formulae; through the bridges it builds between previously unconnected worlds. When it surprises. For those who learn the language, maths has the same capacity for beauty as art, music, a full blanket of stars on the darkest night.

"The slow movement of the Mozart clarinet concerto is a really beautiful piece of music, but I don't print off a page of the score and put that on my wall. It's not about that. It's about the music and the ideas and the emotional response," says Vicky Neale, a mathematician at Oxford University. "It's the same with a piece of mathematics. It's not how it looks, it's about the underlying thought processes."

Brain scans of mathematicians show that gazing at formulae considered beautiful by the beholder elicits activity in the same emotional region as great art and music. The more beautiful the formula, the greater the activity in the medial orbito-frontal cortex. "So far as the brain is concerned, maths has beauty just like art. There is common neurophysiological ground," says Sir Michael Atiyah, an honorary professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University.

Ask mathematicians about the most beautiful equation and one crops up time and again. Written in the 18th century by the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler, the relation is short and simple: e iπ+1 = 0. It is neat and compact even to the naive eye. But the beauty comes from a deeper understanding: here the five most important mathematical constants are brought together. Euler's formula marries the world of circles, imaginary numbers and exponentials.

The beauty of other formulae may be more obvious. With E=mc ², Albert Einstein built a bridge between energy and mass, two concepts that had previously seemed worlds apart. Maggie Aderin-Pocock, the space scientist, declared it the most beautiful equation and she is in good company. "Why is it so beautiful? Because it comes to life. Now energy will have mass and mass can be put into energy. These four symbols capture a complete world. It's difficult to imagine a shorter formula with more power," says Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where Einstein was one of the first faculty members.

"One of the reasons there's almost an objective beauty in mathematics is that we use the word beautiful also to indicate the raw power in an idea. The equations or results in mathematics that are seen to be beautiful are almost like poems.The power per variable is something that is part of the experience. Just seeing a huge part of mathematics or nature being described with just a few symbols gives a great sense of elegance or beauty," Dijkgraaf adds. "A second element is you feel its beauty is reflecting reality. It's reflecting a sense of order that's out there as part of the laws of nature."

The power of an equation to connect what seem like completely unrelated realms of mathematics comes up often. Marcus du Sautoy, a maths professor at Oxford, has more than a soft spot for Riemann's formula. Published by Bernhard Riemann in 1859 (the same year Charles Darwin stunned the world with On the Origin of Species), the formula reveals how many primes exist below a given number, where primes are whole numbers divisible only by themselves and one, such as 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11. While one side of the equation describes the primes, the other is controlled by zeros.

"This formula turns these these indivisible prime numbers, into something completely different," says du Sautoy. "On the one side, you've got these indivisible prime numbers and then Riemann takes you on this journey to somewhere completely unexpected, to these things which we now call the Riemann zeros. Each of these zeros gives rise to a note - and it's the combination of these notes together which tell us how the primes on the other side are distributed across all numbers."

More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greek mathematician, Euclid, solved a numerical puzzle so beautifully that it still makes Neale smile every time it comes to mind. "When I think about beauty in mathematics, my first thoughts are not about equations. For me it's much more about an argument, a line of thinking, or a particular proof," she says.

Euclid proved there are infinitely many prime numbers. How did he do it? He began by imagining a universe where the number of primes was not infinite. Given a big enough blackboard, one could chalk them all up.

He then asked what happened if all these primes were multiplied together: 2 x 3 x 5 and so on, all the way to the end of the list, and the result added to the number 1. This huge new number provides the answer. Either it is a prime number itself, and so the original list was incomplete, or it is divisible by a smaller prime. But divide Euclid's number by any prime on the list and always there is a 1 left over. The number is not divisible by any prime on the list. "It turns out you reach an absurdity, a contradiction," says Neale. The original assumption that the number of primes is finite must be wrong.

"The proof for me is really beautiful. It takes some thinking to get your head around it, but it doesn't involve learning lots of difficult concepts. It's surprising that you can prove something so difficult in such an elegant way," Neale adds.

Behind beautiful processes lie beautiful mathematics. Well, some of the time. Hannah Fry, a lecturer in the mathematics of cities at UCL spent years staring at the Navier-Stokes equations. "They're a single mathematical sentence that is capable of describing the miraculously beautiful and diverse behaviour of almost all of Earth's fluids," she says. With a grasp of the formulae, we can understand blood flow in the body, make boats glide through the water, and build awesome chocolate enrobers.

In his 1963 essay, Dirac elevated beauty from an aesthetic response to something far more profound: a route to the truth. "It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment," he wrote, continuing: "It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress." Shocking at first pass, Dirac captured what is now a common sentiment: when a beautiful equation seems at odds with nature, the fault may lie not with the maths, but in applying it to the wrong aspect of nature.

"Truth and beauty are closely related but not the same," says Atiyah. "You are never sure that you have the truth. All you are doing is striving towards better and better truths and the light that guides you is beauty. Beauty is the torch you hold up and follow in the belief that it will lead you to truth in the end."

Something approaching faith in mathematical beauty has led physicists to draw up two of the most compelling descriptions of reality: supersymmetry and string theory. In a supersymmetric universe, every known type of particle has a heavier, invisible twin. In string theory, reality has 10 dimensions, but six are curled up so tight they are hidden from us. The mathematics behind both theories are often described as beautiful, but it is not at all clear if either is true.

There is a danger here for mathematicians. Beauty is a fallible guide. "You can literally be seduced by something that is not correct. This is a risk," says Dijkgraaf, whose institute motto, "Truth and Beauty" features one naked and one dressed woman. "Sometimes I feel that physicists, like Odysseus, must tie themselves to the mast of the ship so they are not seduced by the sirens of mathematics."

It may be that mathematicians and scientists are the only groups that still use the word "beautiful" without hesitation. It is rarely employed by critics of literature, art or music, who perhaps fear it sounds superficial or kitschy.

"I'm very proud that in mathematics and science the concept of beauty is still there. I think it's an incredibly important concept in our lives," says Dijkgraaf. "The sense of beauty we experience in maths and science is a multidimensional sense of beauty. We don't feel it's in any conflict with being deep, or interesting, or powerful, or meaningful. For the mathematician it's all captured by that one word."
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Magic numbers: can maths equations be beautiful?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The concept of beauty underpins how mathematicians solve quantum theory or describe gravity. From E=mc² to string theory, mathematical beauty has led physicists to draw up some of the most compelling descriptions of reality