How does radiation travel through dense plasma?

First-of-its-kind experimental evidence defies conventional theories about how plasmas emit or absorb radiation.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

Most people are familiar with solids, liquids, and gases as three states of matter. However, a fourth state of matter, called plasmas, is the most abundant form of matter in the universe, found throughout our solar system in the sun and other planetary bodies. Because dense plasma—a hot soup of atoms with free-moving electrons and ions—typically only forms under extreme pressure and temperatures, scientists are still working to comprehend the fundamentals of this state of matter. Understanding how atoms react under extreme pressure conditions—a field known as high-energy-density physics (HEDP)—gives scientists valuable insights into the fields of planetary science, astrophysics, and fusion energy.

One important question in the field of HEDP is how plasmas emit or absorb radiation. Current models depicting radiation transport in dense plasmas are heavily based on theory rather than experimental evidence.

n a new paper published in Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) used LLE’s OMEGA laser to study how radiation travels through dense plasma. The research, led by Suxing Hu, a distinguished scientist and group leader of the High-Energy-Density Physics Theory Group at the LLE and an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Philip Nilson, a senior scientist in the LLE’s Laser-Plasma Interaction group, provides first-of-its-kind experimental data about the behavior of atoms at extreme conditions. The data will be used to improve plasma models, which allow scientists to better understand the evolution of stars and may aid in the realization of controlled nuclear fusion as an alternative energy source.

“Experiments using laser-driven implosions on OMEGA have created extreme matter at pressures several billion times the atmospheric pressure at Earth’s surface for us to probe how atoms and molecules behave at such extreme conditions,” Hu says. “These conditions correspond to the conditions inside the so-called envelope of white dwarf stars as well as inertial fusion targets.”

Using x-ray spectroscopy

The researchers used x-ray spectroscopy to measure how radiation is transported through plasmas. X-ray spectroscopy involves aiming a beam of radiation in the form of x-rays at a plasma made of atoms—in this case, copper atoms—under extreme pressure and heat. The researchers used the OMEGA laser both to create the plasma and to create the x-rays aimed at the plasma.

When the plasma is bombarded with x-rays, the electrons in the atoms “jump” from one energy level to another by either emitting or absorbing photons of light. A detector measures these changes, revealing the physical processes that are occurring inside the plasma, similar to taking an x-ray diagnostic of a broken bone.

A break from conventional theory

The researchers’ experimental measurements indicate that, when radiation travels through a dense plasma, the changes in atomic energy levels do not follow conventional quantum mechanics theories often used in plasma physics models—so-called “continuum-lowering” models. The researchers instead found that the measurements they observed in their experiments can be best explained using a self-consistent approach based on density-functional theory (DFT). DFT offers a quantum mechanical description of the bonds between atoms and molecules in complex systems. The DFT method was first described in the 1960s and was the subject of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“This work reveals fundamental steps for rewriting current textbook descriptions of how radiation generation and transport occurs in dense plasmas,” Hu says. “According to our experiments, using a self-consistent DFT approach more accurately describes the transport of radiation in a dense plasma.”
Says Nilson, “Our approach could provide a reliable way for simulating radiation generation and transport in dense plasmas encountered in stars and inertial fusion targets. The experimental scheme reported here, based on a laser-driven implosion, can be readily extended to a wide range of materials, opening the way for far-reaching investigations of extreme atomic physics at tremendous pressures.”

Researchers from Prism Computational Sciences and Sandia National Laboratories and additional researchers from the LLE, including physics graduate students David Bishel and Alex Chin, also contributed to this project.

 

 

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-34618-6 

ARTICLE TITLE

Probing atomic physics at ultrahigh pressure using laser-driven implosions

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Nov-2022

Disclaimer: AA

Patent for first-ever saliva-based concussion test awarded to Penn State and partners

Saliva-based concussion test expected to be available in 2023

Business Announcement

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: THE FIRST-EVER SALIVA-BASED CONCUSSION TEST, DEVELOPED BY SCIENTISTS AT PENN STATE, QUADRANT BIOSCIENCES AND THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, IS EXPECTED TO BE AVAILABLE IN 2023. view more 

CREDIT: QUADRANT BIOSCIENCES

Hershey, Pa. — A saliva-based test that rapidly and accurately diagnoses concussions is expected to be available to physicians in 2023 following a patent awarded to Quadrant Biosciences, Penn State and the State University of New York by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent covers an essential component of the team’s ClarifiTM mTBI Saliva Test, which was developed after several years of research.

According to Steve Hicks, associate professor of pediatrics, Penn State College of Medicine, who co-led the research, three million concussions occur in the United States each year and approximately two-thirds take place in children and adolescents.

Concussions — or mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) — occur as a result of physical injury to the head and may result in short-lived symptoms including headaches, dizziness and confusion. Physicians currently use symptom scales and neurocognitive tests to assess patients and diagnose concussions. Hicks said these methods are not always reliable because they can be subject to patient and physician bias. For example, athletes may underreport a symptom’s severity to return to the field.

“Current methods for diagnosing concussions rely on patients to accurately and honestly report their symptoms and participate in neurocognitive testing,” said Hicks. “The ClarifiTM mTBI Saliva Test — which measures tiny strands of molecules, called micro ribonucleic acids [microRNAs], in saliva following a head trauma — is a non-invasive way to test for concussion that can’t be influenced by a patient’s feelings or motives.”

To develop the test, the team conducted research to determine if the presence of microRNAs in saliva could accurately indicate a concussion. These microRNAs play an important role in cellular processes and exist in high amounts in the brain, Hicks explained.

Indeed, the researchers found that the accuracy of the saliva approach performed favorably when compared with currently available tests involving balance and reaction time. The results were published in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine.

According to Rich Uhlig, CEO and Founder of Quadrant Biosciences, the company is in the process of seeking licensing of this technology and expects the test to be available to physicians in 2023.

“As a pediatrician who provides medical care for children and teens with concussion, I am excited by the potential of this technology to improve the way clinicians manage this common injury,” said Hicks. “A saliva-based test for concussion could provide a novel addition to the physician toolbox.”

Frank Middleton, professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, was also involved with this research and patent.

PRISON NATION U$A

Research brief: Regional disparities in rates of parental incarceration among Minnesota youth

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA MEDICAL SCHOOL

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (11/17/2022) — New findings from the University of Minnesota Medical School showed 17% of Minnesota youth have had a parent go to jail or prison, according to published research in Pediatrics. Children of color, those living in impoverished households and rural youth were disproportionately impacted. 

Notably, researchers found significant regional disparities. Youth living outside of metropolitan areas were more likely to report parental incarceration. According to their findings, 22% of rural and 20% of township youth experienced parental incarceration compared to 16% of city and 14% of suburban youth.

“This work moves the discussion of parental incarceration beyond ‘just an urban problem’  — especially given that the issue is more prevalent in rural communities with potentially more detrimental consequences,” said Luke Muentner, PhD, MSW, a post-doctoral research associate at the U of M Medical School. “By understanding regional differences in parental incarceration, tailored strategies can be developed that address health inequities — particularly those within remote or under-resourced communities — while simultaneously working towards decarceration across regions.”

The study used data from the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey of more than 110,000 students in Grades 8, 9 and 11. Over half of Indigenous youth and more than one-third of Black, Latino, and multiracial youth who lived in rural communities had experienced parental incarceration. Within each region, youth who experienced parental incarceration reported significantly more individual and cumulative adverse childhood experiences.

Rates of parental incarceration have continued to grow in rural communities, despite stabilizing or decreasing trends nationally and in urban areas. According to researchers, there are a number of factors behind this rise in rural communities, including: 

• Underfunded legal services;
• High caseloads;
• Longer times in custody between arrest and sentencing;
• Lack of diversion program;
• Limited alternatives to incarceration;
• Biases in decision-making across all phases of the legal system

“Underlying these regional inequities are criminal legal policies and practices that unfairly target communities of color, leading to racial disparities in surveillance, arrest, conviction and incarceration,” Muentner said. He also noted differences in legal resources and services across urban-rural lines.

Moving forward, the research team plans to study the specific consequences of regional disparities in terms of child and adolescent health, including assessing differences in health-related outcomes and examining various protective factors. They also suggest further research to understand how youth cope with parental incarceration in order to develop locally-tailored solutions that support health and wellbeing across Minnesota.

-30-

Link to video abstract.

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About the University of Minnesota Medical School
The University of Minnesota Medical School is at the forefront of learning and discovery, transforming medical care and educating the next generation of physicians. Our graduates and faculty produce high-impact biomedical research and advance the practice of medicine. We acknowledge that the U of M Medical School, both the Twin Cities campus and Duluth campus, is located on traditional, ancestral and contemporary lands of the Dakota and the Ojibwe, and scores of other Indigenous people, and we affirm our commitment to tribal communities and their sovereignty as we seek to improve and strengthen our relations with tribal nations. For more information about the U of M Medical School, please visit med.umn.edu.

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JOURNAL

PEDIATRICS

DOI

10.1542/peds.2022-056703 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Parental Incarceration Among Youth

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2022

Made by women: Why women buy from women and men buy from women and men

News from the Journal of Consumer Psychology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOCIETY FOR CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY

Researchers from Technical University of Munich and Copenhagen Business School published a new paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology that provides fresh insights into how individual purchase decisions are influenced by the gender of the person producing the goods. The research has implications for online platforms marketing handmade products and policymakers seeking to promote socially responsible behavior.

The article, recently published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, “Made by her vs. him: Gender influences in product preferences and the role of individual action efficacy in restoring social equalities” is authored by Benedikt Schnurr and Georgios Halkias.

Nearly 100 million consumers bought handmade products on Etsy in 2021, reflecting consumers’ preference for more personal and unique purchase experiences, according to the authors.  

The researchers found that female consumers show a strong preference for goods made by women, while male consumers are neutral about the producer’s gender. Through a series of 13 studies, they also discovered that female consumers more strongly believe that their purchase decisions can contribute to restoring gender equality in business compared to their male counterparts.  The authors call this tendency “action efficacy beliefs.”

Further, their studies suggest that the more female consumers believe that women face gender discrimination in business and the more they want to act against it, the greater their preference for products made by women. In fact, buying from a female producer matters more to women consumers than buying goods from a group of combined male and female producers whose revenues support a gender equality fund.

In addition, the team found female consumers’ higher action efficacy beliefs drive their choice of women-made products more than their beliefs that those products reflect their own identity – a common motivator of purchasing behavior.

The desire to reduce social inequalities isn’t enough to change behavior. “Consumers need to believe that their seemingly trivial individual actions can contribute to the cause,” the authors write. “In this sense, consumers need to believe that their action counts.”

The article offers potentially sales-boosting insights to women producers and online platform managers marketing handmade goods. Additionally, policymakers can leverage the findings to advance gender equity in business.

Full article and author contact information available at:  https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jcpy.1327

About the Journal of Consumer Psychology

The Journal of Consumer Psychology publishes top-quality research articles that contribute both theoretically and empirically to our understanding of the psychology of consumer behavior. The Journal is intended for researchers in consumer psychology, social and cognitive psychology, judgment and decision making, and related disciplines. It is also relevant to professionals in advertising and public relations, marketing and branding, consumer and market research, and public policy. Published by the Society for Consumer Psychology since its founding in 1992, JCP has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the consumer psychology discipline. Dr. Lauren Block (Lippert Professor of Marketing at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College) serves as the current Editor-in-Chief.

About the Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP)

The Society for Consumer Psychology is the premier voice to further the advancement of the discipline of consumer psychology in a global society. Building upon the Society's excellence in mentoring young behavioral scientists, the SCP facilitates the generation and dissemination of intellectual contributions and promotes professional development and research opportunities for its members around the globe. Dr. Gita V. Johar (Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School, Columbia University) serves as the current President.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Consumer Psychology

DOI

10.1002/jcpy.1327 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Made by her vs. him: Gender influences in product preferences and the role of individual action efficacy in restoring social equalities

Cardiovascular societies give significantly fewer awards to women physicians, researchers

Journal of the American College of Cardiology evaluates gender, racial and ethnic disparities in cardiology awards

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER

A study published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) found that seven major cardiovascular societies were more likely to distribute awards to men and white individuals when compared to women and those who identify as Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and Black. 

“Women received significantly fewer awards than men in all societies, countries and award categories,” said Martha Gulati, MD, senior and corresponding author of the study, and  director of Preventive Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. “The same sentiment was true for minority groups, which suggests there are several factors at play, including implicit bias. This bias may be responsible for preventing underrepresented groups from ascending the academic ladder and receiving senior awards like lifetime achievement awards.”

BACKGROUND

Researchers reviewed honors given from 2000-2021 by seven cardiovascular societies including the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the American Society of Echocardiography, the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, the Heart Rhythm Society, the European Society of Cardiology, and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.

METHOD

In all, 173 awards recognized 3,044 awardees—of this group, 2,830 were unique. A vast majority of the awardees were white (75.2%). Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and Black awardees represented 18.9%, 4.5%, and 1.4% of the total awardees, respectively. 

For their gender analysis, researchers looked into 169 awards after excluding female-specific awards. These 169 awards were distributed to 2,995 recipients; 76.2% of awardees were men and 23.8% were women.

IMPACT

Researchers say that given the increased emphasis on redesigning cardiovascular healthcare delivery by incorporating the tenets of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), cardiovascular societies have a significant role as core influencers. 

“Equitable award distribution can be a key strategy to celebrate women and diverse members of the cardiovascular workforce and promulgate DEI,” said Gulati, also associate director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center and associate director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center. “Recognition of their contributions is pivotal to enhancing their self-perception. In addition to boosting confidence, receiving an award can also catalyze their career trajectory.” 

 

Follow Cedars-Sinai Academic Medicine on Twitter for more on the latest basic science and clinical research from Cedars-Sinai. 

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JOURNAL

Journal of the American College of Cardiology

DOI

10.1016/j.jacc.2022.09.016 

ARTICLE TITLE

Gender and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Award Distribution by Major Cardiovascular Societies From 2000 to 2021

Argonne releases small modular reactor waste analysis report

Reports and Proceedings

DOE/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

Study one of the first to address nuclear waste production of small modular reactors.

Nuclear energy is a key component of decarbonizing our economy, but large nuclear reactors are often complicated and expensive to build. To make nuclear energy more available and attractive, developers have put forward multiple designs of small modular reactors (SMRs) that have greater flexibility and offer lower up-front costs. Different types of SMRs with advanced reactor design features are currently under development in the United States and worldwide.

Researchers believe SMRs could be deployed at a variety of scales for locally distributed electricity generation. SMRs have approximately a tenth to a third of the power output of large light water reactors, which are the most common kind of nuclear reactor in commercial operation in the United States. The technologies and economics of SMRs have been widely studied; however, there is less information about their implications for nuclear waste. ​“We’ve really just begun to study the nuclear waste attributes of SMRs,” said senior nuclear engineer Taek Kyum Kim of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.

Kim and his colleagues from Argonne and DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory have recently published a report that endeavors to measure the potential nuclear waste attributes of three different SMR technologies using metrics developed through an extensive process during a comprehensive assessment of nuclear fuel cycles published in 2014. Although SMRs are not yet in commercial operation, several companies have collaborated with the DOE to explore different possibilities for SMRs, and the three designs studied in the report are all scheduled to be constructed and operational by the end of the decade.

One type of SMR, called VOYGR and in development by NuScale Power, is based on a current conventional pressurized water reactor design but scaled down and modularized. Another type, called Natrium and being developed by TerraPower, is sodium-cooled and runs on a metallic fuel. A third type, called the Xe-100 and developed by X-energy, is cooled by helium gas.

In terms of nuclear waste, each reactor offers both advantages and disadvantages over large LWRs, Kim said. ​“It’s not correct to say that because these reactors are smaller they will have more problems proportionally with nuclear waste, just because they have more surface area compared to the core volume,” he said. ​“Each reactor has pluses and minuses that depend upon the discharge burnup, the uranium enrichment, the thermal efficiency and other reactor-specific design features.”

One notable factor that influences the amount of nuclear waste produced by a reactor is called burnup, and it refers to the amount of thermal energy produced from a certain quantity of fuel. The Natrium and Xe-100 reactors have significantly higher burnup than LWRs, Kim said. A higher burnup is correlated with lower nuclear waste production because fuel is converted more efficiently to energy. These designs also have higher thermal efficiency, which refers to how efficiently the heat produced by the reactor is converted into electricity. The VOYGR pressurized water reactor design, due in part to its small size, has a slightly lower burnup and thermal efficiency compared to a larger pressurized water reactor.

The spent fuel attributes vary somewhat between the designs, with VOYGR being similar to LWRs, Natrium producing a more concentrated waste with different long-lived isotopes, and Xe-100 producing a lower density but larger volume of spent fuel.

“All told, when it comes to nuclear waste, SMRs are roughly comparable with conventional pressurized water reactors, with potential benefits and weaknesses depending on which aspects you are trying to design for,” Kim said. ​“Overall, there appear to be no additional major challenges to the management of SMR nuclear wastes compared to the commercial-scale large LWR wastes.”

The funding for the research was provided by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy through the Systems Analysis and Integration Campaign.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

Scientists solved a 500-million-year-old mystery about strange Cambrian structures found in China

By Joanna Thompson

Extremely detailed Cambrian fossils show that enigmatic skeleton tubes belonged to ancient ancestors of modern jellyfish

Artist's reconstruction of Gangtoucunia aspera as it would have appeared in life on the Cambrian seafloor, around 514 million years ago. The individual in the foreground has part of the skeleton removed to show the soft polyp inside. (Image credit: Reconstruction by Xiadong Wang )

Over 500 million years ago, sea-dwelling invertebrates pioneered a new evolutionary experiment: skeletons. But while those durable, tubelike structures stood the test of time as fossils, the animals' soft bodies decayed and vanished, erasing all evidence of what these ancient animals may have looked like. Now, a recent reexamination of those ancient skeletal tubes has finally unveiled the identity of one of these mysterious organisms.

These early calcium-reenforced "skeleton" tubes date to a period known as the Cambrian explosion (541 million to 510 million years ago) and seem to have been an effective survival strategy, as they cropped up in multiple groups across a relatively short span of geologic time (about 50 million years). During this period, everything from the segmented ancestors of earthworms to the bizarre ancient relatives of tardigrades created tubelike protective structures.

However, tracing the evolutionary history of these early exoskeletons has proved tricky. "Soft tissues tend to decay away," Xiaoya Ma, an invertebrate paleontologist at Yunnan University in China and co-author of a study describing the findings, told Live Science. For this reason, identifying fossil Cambrian tubes has been a little like trying to guess the contents of an empty, unlabeled can based on the shape of the tin alone — most could just as easily have held chicken soup as creamed corn.
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But scientists are shedding light on these enigmatic skeleton makers. In the new study, published Nov. 2 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, an international team of researchers described four incredibly well-preserved Cambrian specimens from China's Yunnan province. These 514 million-year-old fossils of the tube-dwelling creature Gangtoucunia aspera include soft tissue impressions left behind by the animals' bodies. By studying these impressions closely, the scientists determined that the tubes belonged to, of all things, an ancient skeleton-making jellyfish.

Soft-bodied invertebrates are hard to find in the fossil record, and jellyfish in particular are almost never preserved. "This fossil was a double whammy in terms of rarity," Luke Parry, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford and co-author of the study, told Live Science in an email.

Related: Ancient armored 'worm' is the Cambrian ancestor to three major animal groups

Normally, when a marine organism dies, scavengers and bacteria make quick work of its soft tissues. But very occasionally, a wave of fine sediment covers the remains quickly enough to prevent aerobic bacteria from settling in. This is how the famous North American Burgess Shale fossil deposit formed, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and it is likely how the Yunnan site formed, as well.

The newfound fossils, which were discovered by lead study author Guangxu Zhang, Ma's graduate student at Yunnan University, were preserved in such detail that the paleontologists could even make out the animals' internal organs. The creatures' mouths were surrounded by a ring of tentacles, each measuring about 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) long. And they had a saclike gut with just one opening (unlike the separate mouth and anus that vertebrates are blessed with).

Fossil specimen (left) and diagram (right) of Gangtoucunia aspera. Preserved soft tissues include the gut and tentacle. (Image credit: Luke Parry and Guangxu Zhang)

These characteristics led the team to conclude that G. aspera likely belonged to the phylum Cnidaria, which includes modern-day jellyfish, corals and sea anemones. It also laid to rest an older theory that the creature was an annelid worm, which is defined by its segmented body and gut with two openings.

G. aspera likely hung out in ancient oceans with one end of its tube anchored to other members of its species or to mobile creatures such as trilobites, retracting into its shell when predators swam by. It probably fed much like modern jellyfish polyps do, extending its stinging tentacles when prey was near.

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—'Astonishing' 500 million-year-old fossils preserved the brain of this creepy 3-eyed predator

Only the larvae of one jellyfish group, Scyphozoa, create exoskeletons today. Some other cnidarians, such as corals, retain their skeletons into adulthood. However, today's corals build their skeletons from calcium carbonate; in contrast, G. aspera crafted its tubes out of calcium phosphate, the same tough compound that makes up our tooth enamel and bones.

Why modern cnidarians switched from calcium phosphate to calcium carbonate exoskeletons remains a mystery. "One potential reason is that the environment before our current time was phosphorus rich," Ma said. But the answer could be found in cnidarian genetics as well. Ma and her team hope to answer this and other questions as their research continues. "Hopefully, we'll have more for everyone in the near future," she said.

Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition

• Aljoša Slameršak, 
• Giorgos Kallis & 
• Daniel W. O’ Neill 

Nature Communications volume 13, Article number: 6932 (2022) Cite this article

• Article
• Open Access
• Published: 14 November 2022

• 
  

• 
  details

Abstract

Achieving the Paris Agreement will require massive deployment of low-carbon energy. However, constructing, operating, and maintaining a low-carbon energy system will itself require energy, with much of it derived from fossil fuels. This raises the concern that the transition may consume much of the energy available to society, and be a source of considerable emissions. Here we calculate the energy requirements and emissions associated with the global energy system in fourteen mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5 °C of warming. We find that the initial push for a transition is likely to cause a 10–34% decline in net energy available to society. Moreover, we find that the carbon emissions associated with the transition to a low-carbon energy system are substantial, ranging from 70 to 395 GtCO2 (with a cross-scenario average of 195 GtCO2). The share of carbon emissions for the energy system will increase from 10% today to 27% in 2050, and in some cases may take up all remaining emissions available to society under 1.5 °C pathways.

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Murdoch v Trump: Rupert’s papers kick Donald, but Fox won’t play ball

Some think the media mogul has made a clean break with ‘Trumpty Dumpty’, but his TV channel may find it hard to let go

Murdoch ‘has always detested Trump’, according to the media commentator Michael Wolff. 

Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters


Jim Waterson
THE GUARDIAN

Fri 18 Nov 2022

Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers don’t do subtlety when it comes to political attacks.

Over the last week, readers of his US titles have been informed that Donald Trump is “Trumpty Dumpty”, the “biggest loser” in Republican politics, and the man who meant the “red wave” never crested in the US midterm elections.

The New York Post marked Trump’s latest bid for election with something more damning: outright mockery.

Under the headline: “Florida Man makes announcement,” the formerly pro-Trump newspaper directed readers to a story deep inside the newspaper on page 28.

“With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for president,” said the deadpan news report.

The tabloid’s print edition has a dwindling readership but the former US president is still said to be a regular reader – which means it probably hurt when they mocked his Mar-a-Lago home – raided by the FBI in August – as a “classified documents library”.

Yet while the newspaper editorials have led to suggestions that Murdoch has completed a clean break with the former US president, this misses the more positive reaction on Murdoch’s Fox News television channel.

“Murdoch has very little control over his most important outlet, which is Fox,” said Michael Wolff, the media commentator who has written three books on Trump.

“Let’s assume Murdoch was giving a message to the Post … he can’t do that at Fox. And Fox is the all-important thing.”

Although there has been criticism of Trump on Fox News in recent weeks, several presenters such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have their own loyal audiences who have been fed pro-Trump material for years. A rapid U-turn may be too much for them to take, especially if the network is accused of betrayal.

As Wolff puts it: “Each of the voices at Fox is going to be motivated by their own ratings – and if their own ratings are dependent on Trump then they’re not going to deviate. Hannity does not seem to have deviated one increment off his absolute fealty to Trump. Tucker likewise.”

In the background is Murdoch’s attempt to reunite two parts of his business empire and ultimately hand over control to his 51-year-old son, Lachlan. The family’s main media interests are separated into two businesses as a result of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, which saw the legally troubled outlets separated.

The core business is the US-focused television business Fox, while the newspaper assets – including its UK titles – are controlled by News Corp.

Combining the two makes little business sense but would tidy up family succession planning, according to the media analyst Alice Enders: “It’s not about Rupert being back in charge, it’s about Lachlan taking over and pursuing the same traditional classic conservative agenda.”

She said that it would be hard for Fox News to find a way to let go of Trump without risking some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising that flows to the network.

“Fox is the jewel in the crown. The influence that the Murdochs want to exercise is through Fox News. What’s super interesting is they want to maintain their currency as the go-to news channel for conservative voters – and they have to do that in a way that balances the Trumpistas against everyone.”

The focus on US politics also reflects a physical change in Rupert Murdoch’s location.

He has spent a substantial time in the UK in recent years alongside his now ex-wife Jerry Hall and his daughter Elisabeth.

During the Covid pandemic they were based at an Oxfordshire mansion, where he took the decision to sign up Piers Morgan for the launch of TalkTV and went to get his Covid vaccine – at the same time that his US media outlets were casting doubts on its effectiveness.

Now the recently divorced nonagenarian is increasingly based at a newly acquired ranch in rural Montana, a remote state favoured by billionaires. Official documents show that last month he paid £13,000 to fly the former prime minister Boris Johnson there for a meeting, while corporate filings suggest he is running his business empire from the ranch and has permission to hold board meetings there.

This raises the question of which Murdoch is now calling the shots: 91-year-old Rupert or Lachlan, who is managing part of the business from his family home in Australia – working late into the night on video calls due to the time difference.


Could Trump’s 2024 campaign keep his legal troubles at bay?

The Trump years weighed heavily on Murdoch, with Fox News facing a $1.6bn lawsuit over claims it amplified Trump’s false allegations about fraud at a voting machine company after his election defeat. Murdoch’s son James has left the family business and had made barely coded criticisms of Fox News, which hit hard according to Wolff.

“In terms of Rupert himself, he has always detested Trump. Trump has been the cross to bear in his life, and the Trump effect at Fox has essentially broken up his family.”

Trump, banned from Twitter and struggling to get airtime, has not taken his ostracism lightly, whining that they were favouring Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

“NewsCorp – which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal and the no longer great New York Post – is all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious,” Trump said.

But as Enders puts it: “Murdoch doesn’t back losers. Trump is a loser.”

Dark Matter as an Intergalactic Heat Source

November 18, 2022• Physics 15, 180

Spectra from quasars suggest that intergalactic gas may have been heated by a form of dark matter called dark photons.

K. G. Lee/Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and C. Stark/UC Berkeley

Cloudy forecast. Light from distant quasars travels through the Universe toward Earth and is imprinted with the absorption signatures from hydrogen gas it encounters along the way. These absorption lines suggest anomalous heating that could be explai... Show more

Dense gas clouds across the Universe absorb light from distant quasars, producing absorption lines in the quasar spectra. A new study shows that the larger-than-predicted widths of these lines from nearby gas clouds could result from a form of dark matter called dark photons [1]. These particles could heat the clouds, leading to a widening of the absorption lines. Other explanations of the broadening—based on more conventional heating sources—have been proposed, but if the dark-photon mechanism is at work, it might also cause heating in low-density clouds from earlier epochs of the Universe. Researchers are already planning to test this prediction.

When viewing the spectrum of a distant quasar, astronomers often observe absorption lines coming from the intervening clouds of gas. The most prominent absorption line is the Lyman-alpha line of hydrogen. Indeed, some quasar spectra have a “forest” of Lyman-alpha lines, with each coming from a cloud at a different distance from our Galaxy (or different epochs). By examining the widths, depths, and other details of the line shapes, researchers can extract information about the density, the temperature, and other features of the clouds. This information can be compared with the results of cosmological simulations that try to reproduce the clumping of matter into galaxies and other large-scale structures.

Comparisons between forest data and simulations have generally shown good agreement, but a discrepancy appears for relatively nearby gas clouds. Observations show that these so-called low redshift clouds produce broader absorption lines than predicted in simulations. “This may be an indication of a particular candidate of dark matter, which is called a dark photon,” says Andrea Caputo from CERN in Switzerland. “This dark photon can inject some energy and heat up the gas, [which makes] the lines a bit broader, in better agreement with the data.”

P. Gaikwad/Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge

Seeing the trees. The light from a distant quasar passes through regions of dense gas (purple) in the intergalactic medium. The gas absorbs light at specific frequencies, leading to a “forest” of absorption lines in the quasar spectra (green).

To explore how this energy injection might work, Caputo and his colleagues ran cosmic simulations with dark photons. The theory of dark photons assumes that the particles can spontaneously turn into normal photons with some small probability, but this conversion can be enhanced when dark photons enter an ionized gas satisfying a resonance condition. The condition amounts to the gas having a certain density, which is determined by the dark photon’s mass. If an intergalactic cloud has this density, then the ordinary photons generated by the resonance conversion will heat the gas.

Caputo stresses that a cloud’s density changes over time, so the resonance condition will be met for only a certain period of time. This time-dependent heating is unique to dark photons, as other proposed types of heat-producing dark matter, such as those that decay or annihilate, are expected to be “switched on” all the time. However, models of continuous heating are constrained by other cosmological observations, such as the cosmic microwave background, which don’t show signs of unexplained heating.

The simulations of Caputo and colleagues suggest that dark photons with an extremely small mass of around 10⁻¹⁴ eV/c² (roughly 10¹⁹ times smaller than the electron mass) would resonantly convert to photons in low-redshift Lyman-alpha clouds. This conversion would inject between 5 and 7 eV of energy per hydrogen atom into the gas, enough to account for the observations.

In addition, the team predicts that dark-photon heating might have occurred at higher redshift, but only in so-called under-dense clouds, which in the past had higher densities—potentially high enough to meet the resonance condition. The team is currently running simulations to see if this predicted heating would agree with observations of high-redshift clouds.

However, exotic dark matter physics models may not be required to explain the Lyman-alpha data, says astrophysicist Blakesley Burkhart from Rutgers University in New Jersey. She says dark photons are an exciting possibility, but researchers have not yet ruled out more conventional heating sources, such as supermassive black hole jets at the centers of galaxies, known as active galactic nuclei.

Sam Witte—a cosmologist from the University of Amsterdam—agrees that the dark photon explanation is more speculative than other scenarios, but he thinks the researchers have made a convincing case with testable predictions. “Should future studies exclude conventional astrophysical explanations, it is compelling to consider the possibility that we might be observing the first nongravitational imprint of dark matter,” he says.

–Michael Schirber

Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for Physics Magazine based in Lyon, France.

References

1. J. S. Bolton et al., “Comparison of low-redshift Lyman-α$𝛼$ forest observations to hydrodynamical simulations with dark photon dark matter,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 211102 (2022).