New 3D model shows: Megalodon could eat prey the size of entire killer whales

by University of Zurich

The reconstructed megadolon (Otodus megalodon) was 16 meters long and weighed over

 61 tons. It was estimated that it could swim at around 1.4 meters per second. 

Credit: J.J.Giraldo

The reconstructed megalodon (Otodus megalodon) was 16 meters long and weighed more than 61 tons. It was estimated that it swam at around 1.4 meters per second, required over 98,000 kilo calories every day and had a stomach volume of almost 10,000 liters. These results suggest that the megalodon could travel long distances and was capable of eating whole prey up to 8 meters long. Notably, this is the size of modern killer whales, today's top ocean predator. An ability to eat large apex predators of comparable size millions of years ago places megalodon at a higher trophic level than modern top predators.

Well-preserved spine enables reconstruction

These are the findings of an international study published in Science Advances and carried out in collaboration with the University of Zurich. The research was only possible thanks to the 3D modeling of one individual megalodon that was discovered in the 1860s. Against all odds, a sizeable portion of its vertebral column was left behind in the fossil record after the creature died in the Miocene oceans of Belgium at the age of 46 about 18 million years ago.

"Shark teeth are common fossils because of their hard composition which allows them to remain well preserved," says first author Jack Cooper, Ph.D. student at Swansea University. "However, their skeletons are made of cartilage, so they rarely fossilize. The megalodon vertebral column from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences is therefore a one-of-a-kind fossil."

From single vertebra to whole body mass

The research team, which includes researchers from Switzerland, U.K., U.S., Australia and South Africa, first measured and scanned every single vertebra, before reconstructing the entire column. They then attached the column to a 3D scan of a megalodon's dentition from the United States. They completed the model by adding "flesh" around the skeleton using a 3D-scan of the body of a great white shark from South Africa.

"Weight is one of the most important traits of any animal. For extinct animals we can estimate the body mass with modern 3D digital modeling methods and then establish the relationship between mass and other biological properties such as speed and energy usage," says co-author John Hutchinson, professor at the Royal Veterinary College in the U.K.

A trans-oceanic super-apex predator

The high energetic demand would have been met by feeding on calorie-rich blubber of whales, in which megalodon bite marks have previously been found in the fossil record. An optimal foraging model of potential megalodon prey encounters found that eating a single 8-meter-long whale may have allowed the shark to swim thousands of miles across oceans without eating again for two months.

"These results suggest that this giant shark was a trans-oceanic super-apex predator," says Catalina Pimiento, Professor at the University of Zurich and senior author of the study. "The extinction of this iconic giant shark likely impacted global nutrient transport and released large cetaceans from a strong predatory pressure."

The complete model can now be used as a basis for future reconstructions and further research. The novel biological inferences drawn from this study represent a leap in our knowledge of this singular super predator and helps to better understand the ecological function that megafaunal species play in marine ecosystems, and the large-scale consequences of their extinction.New analyses of giant fossilized megalodon teeth are helping scientists unravel the mystery of their extinction

More information: Jack A. Cooper et al, The extinct shark Otodus megalodon was a transoceanic superpredator: Inferences from 3D modeling, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm9424. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9424

Journal information: Science Advances 

Provided by University of Zurich 

 

Burying short sections of power lines would drastically reduce hurricanes' future impact on coastal residents

by Patricia Waldron, Princeton University

Climate change could make heat waves a dangerous hazard of future hurricanes.

 Credit: U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class R. Jason Brunson / Released

As Earth warms due to climate change, people living near the coasts not only face a higher risk of major hurricanes, but are also more likely to experience a subsequent heat wave while grappling with widespread power outages.

Princeton researchers have investigated the risk of this compound hazard occurring in the future under a "business-as-usual" climate scenario, using Harris County, Texas, as an example. They estimated that the risk of undergoing at least one hurricane-blackout-heat wave lasting more than five days in a 20-year span would increase 23 times by the end of the century. But there is some good news: Strategically burying just 5% of power lines—specifically those near main distribution points—would almost halve the number of affected residents.

Heat waves are the deadliest type of weather event and can become even more dangerous when regions that rely on air conditioning lose power. Historically, a heat wave following a hurricane has been rare, because the risk of extreme heat usually passes before the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season in late summer. As global temperatures rise, however, heat waves are expected to occur more often and hurricanes are likely to become more common and more severe, increasing the odds of hurricane-blackout-heat wave events.

"Hurricane Laura in 2020 and Hurricane Ida in 2021 both had heat waves following them after they destroyed the power distribution network," said Ning Lin, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who led the study. "For this compound hazard, the risk has been increasing, and it is now happening."

In a new study, published July 30 in Nature Communications, Lin and her coauthors looked at the risks associated with the compound hazard and how infrastructure changes could mitigate the potentially deadly effects. They combined projections of how often and when hurricanes and heat waves would strike in the future with estimates of how quickly power could be restored in areas with outages after a major storm.

The team chose Harris—the home of Houston—as their model county because it has the highest population density of any city on the Gulf Coast. Hurricanes Harvey and Ike both walloped Houston, causing an estimated 10% of residents to lose power.

The researchers found that the percentage of Harris residents expected to experience at least one hurricane-blackout-heat wave longer than five days within two decades would grow from a present risk of 0.8% to a future risk of 18.2% by the end of the century. Different parts of the county will likely suffer more than others, however, with rural residents facing a higher risk of extended outages.

The team also considered power grid improvements that would reduce the impact of a hurricane-blackout-heat wave for residents. Burying 5% of wires near the roots of the distribution network would reduce the expected percentage of residents without power from 18.2% to 11.3%.

"Mostly, our current practice is randomly burying lines," Lin said. "By burying lines more strategically, we can be more efficient and more effective at reducing the risk."

This type of analysis can help city planners understand where residents will be most at risk of a hurricane-blackout-heat wave and to identify targeted improvements to their power distribution system that can best diminish the impact.

"This is a very important work," said Lei Zhao, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who was not involved with the research. "This paper not only provides the projections; it connects the extremes with real-world impacts."

He said that one take-home message from the work is that climate modelers, engineers and city planners need to work together to mitigate the risks faced by the almost 30% of the U.S. population that lives in coastal counties. "Nowadays, we encounter some extremes almost every year," he said. "People are realizing it's not just infrastructure design, it needs to be climate-informed infrastructure design."

The current study examines the problem of compound hazards at the county level, but Lin's group is working to scale up the analysis to entire states. They are looking for ways to reduce the computational demands of the analysis, because as they expand the geographic area, physics-based power system modeling becomes computationally taxing.

More generally, the new work highlights the need to think about the intersections of different hazards and how they may worsen under climate change.

"Climate can drive multiple hazards with compound effects that we don't understand, and that may be new to us in the future," Lin said. "Considering this kind of compounding of multiple climate hazards and infrastructure vulnerability is an important direction both for the research community and for decision-making."Extreme heat is getting worse. Is North Carolina's power grid ready?

More information: Kairui Feng et al, Tropical cyclone-blackout-heatwave compound hazard resilience in a changing climate, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32018-4

Journal information: Nature Communicatio

Provided by Princeton University 

A molecule of light and matter

Using light, atoms can be made to attract each other. A team from Vienna and Innsbruck was able to measure this binding state of light and matter for the first time

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: THE ATOMS ARE POLARIZED BY THE BEAM OF LIGHT AND START TO ATTRACT EACH OTHER. view more 

CREDIT: HARALD RITSCH / TU WIEN

Theoretically, this effect has been predicted for a long time, but now scientists at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) at TU Wien, in cooperation with the University of Innsbruck, have succeeded in measuring this exotic atomic bond for the first time. This interaction is useful for manipulating extremely cold atoms, and the effect could also play a role in the formation of molecules in space. The results have now been published in the scientific journal Physical Review X.

Positive and negative charge

In an electrically neutral atom, a positively charged atomic nucleus is surrounded by negatively charged electrons, which surround the atomic nucleus much like a cloud. "If you now switch on an external electric field, this charge distribution shifts a little," explains Prof. Philipp Haslinger, whose research at the Atominstitut at TU Wien is supported by the FWF START programme. "The positive charge is shifted slightly in one direction, the negative charge slightly in the other direction, the atom suddenly has a positive and a negative side, it is polarised."

Light is just an electromagnetic field that changes very rapidly, so it is also possible to create this polarisation effect with laser light. When several atoms are next to each other, the laser light polarises them all in exactly the same way – positive on the left and negative on the right, or vice versa. In both cases, two neighbouring atoms turn different charges towards each other, leading to an attractive force.

Experiments with the atom trap

"This is a very weak attractive force, so you have to conduct the experiment very carefully to be able to measure it," says Mira Maiwöger from TU Wien, the first author of the publication. "If atoms have a lot of energy and are moving quickly, the attractive force is gone immediately. This is why a cloud of ultracold atoms was used."

The atoms are first captured and cooled in a magnetic trap on an atom chip, a technique, which was developed at the Atominstitut in the group of Prof. Jörg Schmiedmayer. Then the trap is switched off and releases the atoms in free fall. The atom cloud is 'ultracold' at less than a millionth of a Kelvin, but it has enough energy to expand during the fall. However, if the atoms are polarized with a laser beam during this phase and thus an attractive force is created between them, this expansion of the atomic cloud is slowed down - and this is how the attractive force measured.

Quantum laboratory and space

"Polarising individual atoms with laser beams is basically nothing new," says Matthias Sonnleitner, who laid the theoretical foundation for the experiment. "The crucial thing about our experiment, however, is that we have succeeded for the first time in polarising several atoms together in a controlled way, creating a measurable attractive force between them."

This attractive force is a complementary tool for controlling cold atoms. But it could also be important in astrophysics: "In the vastness of space, small forces can play a significant role," says Philipp Haslinger. "Here, we were able to show for the first time that electromagnetic radiation can generate a force between atoms, which may help to shed new light on astrophysical scenarios that have not yet been explained."

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JOURNAL

Physical Review X

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevX.12.031018 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Observation of Light-Induced Dipole-Dipole Forces in Ultracold Atomic Gases

Pain, pain go away, help our children run and play

Pain management techniques for young children

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Like it or not, bumps and bruises are an unavoidable part of childhood. But while no parent wants their child to feel pain, teaching children about pain when they’re young can help them better understand and respond to pain when they’re older.

In a new study from the University of South Australia researchers identified five key approaches that parents and caregivers can use when talking with young children about ‘everyday’ pain, and that can help their recovery and resilience after injury.

In Australia, as many as one in four children, and one in five adults experience chronic pain, making it a vital topic for public health.

In this study, researchers investigated ‘everyday’ pains in young children (aged 2-7 years-old), asking experts from child health, psychology, development, resilience, as well as parents and educators, what they thought would promote children’s recovery and resilience after minor pains or injury.

With 80 per cent consensus across all experts, the most important messages were to:

• Teach children about the meaning of pain – pain is our body’s alarm system.
• Validate children’s pain – ensure they feel safe, heard, and protected, but don’t make a fuss.
• Reassure children after an injury - let them know that their body will heal, and the pain will pass.
• Support children’s emotions – let them express themselves but encourage them to regulate.
• Involve children in their recovery – encourage them to manage their pain (eg. get a bandaid).

Lead researcher, UniSA’s Dr Sarah Wallwork, says parents and caregivers likely play a critical role in helping children learn about pain.

“Whether it’s falling from a bike or dealing with the often-dreaded vaccinations, everyday pain experiences are opportunities for parents to promote positive pain-related beliefs and behaviours,” Dr Wallwork says.

“While it’s important to teach children that pain is our body’s alarm system and that it’s there to protect us, it’s equally important to understand that pain and injury do not always align.

“As adults, one of the greatest pain management challenges is that we hold fundamental, life-long beliefs about how pain and recovery works. Often, when we get an injury, we believe that pain must follow; and conversely, if we feel pain, then we must have an injury - but as research shows, this isn’t always the case.

“In children, pain can be influenced by their emotions – for example, fear, hunger, or tiredness can exacerbate symptoms, even though this is not pain itself.

“Teaching children that they can have some control over their pain - and that how they feel on the inside can influence this - empowers them to actively engage with their own pain management. 

“This can be age-appropriate too. So, for a very young child, empowerment might be getting a bandaid or a wet cloth, rubbing the area and distracting them, then telling them their injury is protected by the bandaid and that it is now safe to move on and play. For an older child, the process can be more involved.

“The key is to demonstrate that the child is the healer and they that are actively involved in the healing process.

“By helping children learn about pain when they are young, we’re hoping to promote lifelong ‘helpful’ pain behaviours that will actively encourage recovery and prevent future pain problems.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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JOURNAL

European Journal of Pain

DOI

10.1002/ejp.2008 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Communicating with children about ‘everyday’ pain and injury: A Delphi study

COI STATEMENT

GLM has received support from: Reality Health, ConnectHealth UK, Kaiser Permanente, AIA Australia, Workers' Compensation Boards and professional sport-ing organizations in Australia, Europe and South and North America. Professional and scientific bodies have reimbursed him for travel costs related to presentation of research on pain at scientific conferences/symposia. He has received speaker fees for lectures on pain and rehabilitation. He receives royalties for books on pain and pain education. SBW and MN have no conflicts of interest.

Robotic sensors could help transform prosthetics

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND

 

IMAGE: SENSORS COULD TRANSFORM ROBOTICS view more 

CREDIT: N/A

A pioneering project to develop advanced sensors for use in robotic systems, could transform prosthetics and robotic limbs.

The research project – led by University of the West of Scotland (UWS), Integrated Graphene Ltd, and supported by the Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe) and the National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland (NMIS) Industry Doctorate Programme in Advanced Manufacturing – aims to develop sensors which provide enhanced capabilities to robots, helping improve their dexterity and motor skills, through the use of accurate pressure sensors which provide haptic feedback and distributed touch.

Professor Des Gibson, Director of the Institute of Thin Films, Sensors and Imaging at UWS and project principal investigator, said: “Over recent years the advancements in the robotics industry have been remarkable, however, due to a lack of sensory capabilities, robotic systems often fail to execute certain tasks easily. For robots to reach their full potential, accurate pressure sensors, capable of providing greater tactile ability, are required.

“Our collaboration with Integrated Graphene Ltd, has led to the development of advanced pressure sensor technology, which could help transform robotic systems.”

Made from 3D graphene foam, which offers unique capabilities when put under mechanical stress, the sensors use a piezoresistive approach, meaning when the material is put under pressure it dynamically changes its electric resistance, easily detecting and adapting to the range of pressure required, from light to heavy.

Marco Caffio, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Integrated Graphene said: “Gii, our novel 3D graphene foam, has the capability to mimic the sensitivity and feedback of human touch, which could have a transformative impact on how robotics can be used for a whole range of real-world applications from surgery to precision manufacturing.

“We know the unique property of Gii makes it suitable for use in other applications like disease diagnostics and energy storage, so we’re always very excited to be able to demonstrate its flexibility in projects like this one.”

Dr Carlos Garcia Nunez, School of Computing Engineering and Physical Sciences at UWS added: “Within robotics and wearable electronics the use of pressure sensors is a vital element, to provide either an information input system, or to give robotic systems human-like motor skills. An advanced material like 3D graphene foam offers excellent potential for use in such applications, due to its outstanding electrical, mechanical and chemical properties.

“Our work shines a light on the significant potential for this technology to revolutionise the robotics industry with dynamic pressure sensors.”

Claire Ordoyno, Interim Director of SRPe, added: “The SRPe - NMIS Industrial Doctorate Programme brings together ground breaking academic research with industry partners to drive forward innovation in engineering. These collaborative PhD projects not only enhance the Scottish engineering research landscape, but produce innovation focussed, industry ready PhD graduates to feed the talent pipeline.”

The next stage of the project – funded by UWS, Integrated Graphene Ltd, SRPe and NMIS – will look to further increase sensitivity of the sensors, before developing for wider use in robotic systems.

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DOI

10.4028/p-oy94hj 

Earliest known brood care in insects found in Daohugou Biota

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

 

IMAGE: ECOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF K. POPOVI. view more 

CREDIT: NIGPAS

Parental care refers to the protection, care and feeding of eggs or offspring by parents. It has evolved independently multiple times in animals, e.g., mammals, birds, dinosaurs, arthropods, and especially various lineages of social insects. 

Brood care is a form of uniparental care where parents carry eggs or juveniles after oviposition and provide protection, enhancing offspring fitness and survival. However, very few fossil insects directly document such ephemeral behavior. Among Mesozoic insects, the only two direct fossil cases of brooding ethology are from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota and mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber.

Recently, a research group led by Prof. HUANG Diying from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) systematically studied the water boatman Karataviella popovi, a representative insect from the Middle-Late Jurassic Daohugou Biota of northeastern China. Of the 157 examined K. popovi fossils, 30 adult females were preserved with a cluster of eggs anchored on their left mesotibia. 

This discovery represents the earliest direct evidence of brood care among insects, indicating that relevant adaptations associated with maternal investment in insects can be traced back to at least the Middle Jurassic, pushing back by approximately 40 million years evidence of such behavior. 

The results were published online in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on July 13. 

The true water bug superfamily Corixoidea, commonly known as the water boatman, is a common aquatic Hemipteran insect and occurs in various freshwater ecosystems worldwide. Extant water boatmen commonly deposit eggs on various subaquatic substances such as leaves or stems of aquatic vegetation, stones, and even on snail shells, carapaces of terrapins, and the exoskeletons of crayfish. 

The Jurassic water boatman K. popovi from the Daohugou Biota has a relatively large body, with body length ranging from 11-15 mm. 

The specialized protarsi of K. popovi, combined with the five patches of setae on the head that form a trawl-like feeding apparatus, reflect highly specialized predatory behavior. Anostracans and the water boatman K. popovi, both found in the same layer of the Daohugou beds, represent precursors and dominators, respectively. 

After the analysis of more than 700 anostracan eggs, the researchers hypothesized that the abundant seasonally produced anostracan eggs in the Daohugou Biota probably were the food source for K. popovi. 

The egg clusters of K. popovi are compact and arranged in approximately five to six staggered rows, attached to and throughout the left mesotibia of adult females by short egg stalks. As inferred from the arrangement of the eggs, each row seems to have six to seven eggs. The diameters of eggs (without stalks) range from 1.14 to 1.20 mm. 

"Due to the potential high predation risk caused by abundant salamanders in the Daohugou Biota and seasonal food resources, K. popovi may have been exposed to fierce ecological pressure in the Daohugou Biota," said Prof. HUANG. 

The brooding behavior developed in K. popovi probably reflected adaptations to habitat or an evolutionary response to changes in the ancient lake ecosystem. The brooding behavior of K. popovi most likely provided effective protection for eggs by largely avoiding the risks of predation, desiccation and hypoxia. Such behavior had important effects on its evolution, development and reproductive success.  

To our knowledge, carrying a cluster of eggs on a leg is a unique strategy among insects. However, it is not unusual in aquatic arthropods, where such carrying behaviour can be traced back to the early Cambrian Chengjiang Biota. 

This discovery highlights the existence of diverse brooding strategies in Mesozoic insects, thus helping scientists understand the evolution and adaptive significance of brood care in insects. 

CAPTION

Morphological characterstics of K. popovi.

CREDIT

NIGPAS

CAPTION

Brooding in K. popovi

CREDIT

NIGPAS

CAPTION

Specialized filter-capture apparatus in K. popovi

CREDIT

NIGPAS

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.0447 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The earliest known brood care in insects

Modeling reveals how dwarf planet Ceres powers unexpected geologic activity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VIRGINIA TECH

 

IMAGE: THIS ILLUSTRATION MODELS THE TOPOGRAPHY (IN METERS) OF CERES FROM NASA’S DAWN PROJECT, WITH GREEN AND BLUE COLORS. SOME OF THE DWARF PLANET’S MAJOR CRATERS ARE LABELED. A RULER IS BELOW THE IMAGE OF CERES SHOWING, IN METERS, NEGATIVE 8,000 TO POSITIVE 8,000. view more 

CREDIT: VIRGINIA TECH

For a long time, our view of Ceres was fuzzy, said Scott King, a geoscientist in the Virginia Tech College of Science. A dwarf planet and the largest body found in the asteroid belt — the region between Jupiter and Mars speckled with hundreds of thousands of asteroids — Ceres had no distinguishable surface features in existing telescopic observations from Earth.

Then, in 2015, the hazy orb that was Ceres came into view. That view was stunning to scientists such as King. Data and images collected by NASA’s Dawn mission gave a clearer picture of the surface, including its composition and structures, which revealed unexpected geologic activity.

Scientists had seen the general size of Ceres in earlier observations. It was so small it was assumed to be inactive. Instead, Dawn discovered a large plateau on one side of Ceres that covered a fraction of the dwarf planet, similar to what a continent might take up on Earth. Surrounding it were fractures in rocks clustered in one location. And there were visible traces of an ocean world: deposits all over the surface where minerals had condensed as water evaporated — the mark of a freezing ocean.

A professor in the Department of Geosciences, King, who mostly studies larger bodies such as planets, wanted to know how a body as small as Ceres could generate the heat needed to power that kind of geological activity and account for the surface features picked up by Dawn.

Through modeling, he and a team of scientists from multiple universities as well as the United States Geological Survey and the Planetary Science Institute found that the decay of radioactive elements within Ceres’s interior could keep it active. Their findings were recently published in American Geophysical Union Advances.

King’s study of big planets such as Earth, Venus, and Mars had always shown him that planets start out hot. The collision between objects that form a planet creates that initial heat. Ceres, by contrast, never got big enough to become a planet and generate heat the same way, King said. To learn how it could still generate enough heat to power geologic activity, he used theories and computational tools previously applied to bigger planets to study Ceres’s interior, and he looked for evidence that could support his models in data returned by the Dawn mission.

The team’s model of the dwarf planet’s interior showed a unique sequence: Ceres started out cold and heated up because of the decay of radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium — which was alone enough to power its activity — until the interior became unstable.

“What I would see in the model is, all of a sudden, one part of the interior would start heating up and would be moving upward and then the other part would be moving downward,” King said.

That instability could explain some of the surface features that had formed on Ceres, as revealed by the Dawn mission. The large plateau had formed on only one side of Ceres with nothing on the other side, and the fractures were clustered in a single location around it. The concentration of features in one hemisphere signaled to King that instability had occurred and had left a visible impact.

“It turned out that you could show in the model that where one hemisphere had this instability that was rising up, it would cause extension at the surface, and it was consistent with these patterns of fractures,” King said.

Based on the team’s model, Ceres didn’t follow a planet’s typical pattern of hot first and cool second, with its own pattern of cool, hot, and cool again. “What we’ve shown in this paper is that radiogenic heating all on its own is enough to create interesting geology,” King said.

He sees similarities to Ceres in the moons of Uranus, which a study commissioned by NASA and the National Science Foundation recently deemed high priority for a major robotic mission. With additional improvements to the model, he looks forward to exploring their interiors as well.

“Some of these moons are not too different in size from Ceres,” King said. “I think applying the model would be really exciting.”

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JOURNAL

AGU Advances

Super-earth skimming habitable zone of red dwarf

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF NATURAL SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: THE GREEN REGION REPRESENTS THE HABITABLE ZONE WHERE LIQUID WATER CAN EXIST ON THE PLANETARY SURFACE. THE PLANETARY ORBIT IS SHOWN AS A BLUE LINE. ROSS 508 B SKIMS THE INNER EDGE OF THE HABITABLE ZONE (SOLID LINE), POSSIBLY CROSSING INTO THE HABITABLE ZONE FOR PART OF THE ORBIT (DASHED LINE). view more 

CREDIT: ASTROBIOLOGY CENTER

A super-Earth planet has been found near the habitable zone of a red dwarf star only 37 light-years from the Earth. This is the first discovery by a new instrument on the Subaru Telescope and offers a chance to investigate the possibility of life on planets around nearby stars. With such a successful first result, we can expect that the Subaru Telescope will discover more, potentially even better, candidates for habitable planets around red dwarfs.

Red dwarfs, stars smaller than the Sun, account for three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and are abundant in the neighborhood around the Sun. As such, they are important targets in the search for nearby extra-solar planets and extraterrestrial life. But red dwarfs are cool and don’t emit much visible light compared to other types of stars, making it difficult to study them.

In the infrared wavelengths red dwarfs are brighter. So the Astrobiology Center in Japan developed an infrared observational instrument mounted on the Subaru Telescope to search for signs of planets around red dwarf stars. The instrument is called IRD for Infrared Doppler, the observational method used in this search.

The first fruits of this search are signs of a super-Earth four times the mass of the Earth circling the star Ross 508, located 37 light-years away in the constellation Serpens. This planet, Ross 508 b, has a year of only 11 Earth-days, and lies at the inner edge of the habitable zone around its host star. Interestingly, there are indications that the orbit is elliptical, which would mean that for part of the orbit the planet would be in the habitable zone, the region where conditions would be right for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet. Whether or not there is actually water or life are questions of further study.

To have the very first planet discovered by this new method be so tantalizingly close to the habitable zone seems too good to be true and bodes well for future discoveries. Bun’ei Sato, a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the principal investigator in this search comments, “It has been 14 years since the start of IRD’s development. We have continued our development and research with the hope of finding a planet exactly like Ross 508 b.”

These results appeared as Harakawa et al. “A Super-Earth Orbiting Near the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone around the M4.5-dwarf Ross 508” in Publication of the Astronomical Society of Japan on June 30, 2022.

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JOURNAL

Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan

DOI

10.1093/pasj/psac044 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A super-Earth orbiting near the inner edge of the habitable zone around the M4.5 dwarf Ross 508

Job insecurity affects mental health

According to a study by the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, job insecurity, understood from a multidimensional perspective, is associated with poor mental health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY

A study conducted by the Opik group on Social Determinants of Health and Demographic Change has analysed the relationship between job insecurity, measured by dimensions and as a multidimensional index, and the mental health of wage-earning men and women in the Basque Country. “We believe that job insecurity needs to be addressed from this more multidimensional perspective; otherwise, you may leave out many things that could be job insecurity and which are not being analysed," said Erika Valero-Alzaga, one of the group’s researchers.

In order to address job insecurity from a multidimensional perspective and to understand the relative importance of each of its dimensions, the research was based on the EPRES job insecurity scale, which consists of six dimensions: impermanence, wages, disempowerment, vulnerability, rights and capacity to exercise rights. So each of the dimensions that comprise it was analysed separately, in order to identify those that potentially exert the greatest impact on health, based on a sample of the 2018 Basque Autonomous Community Health Survey.

According to the findings of this study, job insecurity is significantly associated with poor mental health in both men and women. “We saw that there were some dimensions that appear to exert a greater impact than others on mental health,” said Valero. Wage level among both sexes, or vulnerability among women appear to be significantly and independently related to a poorer mental health status. “Interestingly, one of the most striking features of the Spanish labour market is its impermanence. We can see that if we neutralise the effect of other variables, such as educational attainment or socioeconomic status, this variable per se does not seem to affect mental health,” said the UPV/EHU researcher. “This may be due to the fact that in some sectors with high temporary employment rates in our context, for example in part of the public sector, this situation is not always experienced coupled with a high degree of uncertainty about job continuity, which does not mean that efforts should not be made to stabilise workforces.”

Ensuring access to decent employment and adequate wage levels

Socio-economic and political transformations “have resulted in a significant deterioration in the quality of employment and a transfer of risks and insecurity from employers to workers. Moreover, job insecurity is not evenly distributed across the working population,” said Valero. Women tend to be in lower quality jobs, have fewer permanent contracts than men, have lower wage levels and are over-represented in part-time jobs. Similarly, job insecurity is more concentrated among young people and those with a lower socio-economic status. “Job insecurity has hugely significant negative effects on mental health, so considering the impact that work in general (paid work and domestic and care work) has on people's lives, it should be a priority at the policy level,” added Valero. “So far, the concern has been to end unemployment, as it has also been seen to exert a negative impact on health; but it is not only about ensuring access to employment, but also about ensuring access to decent employment and adequate wage levels.”

The researcher takes the view that, “the results of this study, based on a large, representative sample of the wage-earning population in the Basque Country, could help to identify the most unfavourable aspects of job insecurity for mental health and thus implement various socio-political measures to deal with them”. However, the researcher acknowledged that this is a cross-sectional study that “prevents us from establishing a causality principle between job insecurity and mental health”, and stressed the need to “promote further research to adapt and analyse the EPRES scale in self-employed workers, as well as in people who do not have an employment contract”.

Bibliographical reference

Erika Valero, Mireia Utzet, Unai Martín
¿Cómo afectan las distintas dimensiones de la precariedad laboral a la salud mental?
Gaceta Sanitaria
DOI: 10.1016/j.gaceta.2021.11.006

 

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JOURNAL

Gaceta Sanitaria

DOI

10.1016/j.gaceta.2021.11.006 

ARTICLE TITLE

¿Cómo afectan las distintas dimensiones de la precariedad laboral a la salud mental?