Eddies: Circular currents and their influence on the world's hottest ocean

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE LEAD AUTHOR OF THIS PAPER, MOCHAMAD RIZA ISKANDAR, DEEPENED HIS RESEARCH WHILE AT TOHOKU UNIVERSITY BY DISCUSSING HIS FINDINGS WITH A NUMBER OF EXPERTS AT AN INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP. view more 

CREDIT: TOHOKU UNIVERSITY'S INTERNATIONAL JOINT GRADUATE PROGRAM IN EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Water from the Pacific Ocean flows into the Indian Ocean via the Indonesia Archipelago Seas thanks to a vast network of currents dubbed the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF). The ITF acts as a heat and moisture conveyer belt, transporting warm and nutrient waters. Yet the ITF is neither a steady nor a straight path, but experiences fluctuations and turbulence as it passes through the various sea regions, straits, and passages.

Currents can sometimes formulate into circular motions, forming a whirlpool-like phenomena. These are known as eddies, and they are prominent in areas where there are strong gradients in temperature, salinity, or velocity. Their rotating motion can cause nutrients from the colder, deeper waters to rise to the surface.

To investigate the role eddies play in determining the path of the ITF, an international research group has harnessed a high-resolution ocean general circulation model that reproduces eddies. The group featured researchers from Tohoku University, JAMSTEC, Kyushu University, the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, and the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia.

Details of their research were reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans on May 14, 2023.

The group's model enabled them to calculate the transport of simulated particles in a daily-averaged flow field with eddies and a monthly-averaged flow field with smoothed eddy currents, respectively, and estimate the flow rate transported by the simulated particles.

In the Sulawesi Sea, which is situated along the northeastern coast of Borneo and also borders the southern Filipino island of Mindanao, the Sulu archipelago, and Sulawesi Island's western coast, the group found that large flow fluctuations occur, and seawater circulates over a wider area for an extended period. Seawater also rises from the middle to near the surface, which may cause significant changes in the water when flowing through due to turbulent mixing.

On the eastern side of Sulawesi Island sits the Banda Sea, which surrounds the Maluku Islands and borders the islands of New Guinea and Timor. Here, the current fluctuation is slight, and the model predicted negligible influence from the eddies on the Indonesian Current.

"Our results indicate that the path and residence time of the ITF, along with the mixing process of seawater, must be appropriately reproduced by an ocean general circulation model to gain further insights into and better predict sea surface temperature fluctuations in each region of the Indonesian Archipelago," points out Toshio Suga, professor of physical oceanography at Tohoku University's Graduate School of Science and co-author of the paper.

Global warming's progression is expected to change the ITF. Such changes could have profound repercussions for water temperatures in the Indonesia Archipelago and the Indian Ocean, El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, and the frequency and scale of marine heatwaves that affect marine ecosystems and local weather. Therefore, it is vital to predict accurately such phenomena.

Looking ahead, the group hopes to improve the accuracy of future predictions by clarifying the degree to which eddies impact the path and residence time of the ITF, something quantitatively linked to the determination of water temperature in these areas.

The figure shows the distribution of the difference between the daily and monthly average kinetic energies. This is an indicator of the magnitude of eddy variability. The eddy variability is large in the Sulawesi Sea and small in the Banda Sea.

Tracks of a number of particles originating in the Pacific Ocean that reach the Makassar Strait.

CREDIT

Iskander et al.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans

DOI

10.1029/2022JC019610 

Importance of Wolbachia-mediated biocontrol to reduce dengue in Bangladesh and other dengue-endemic developing countries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COMPUSCRIPT LTD

Mosquito-borne diseases, particularly dengue and chikungunya have become global threats, infecting millions of people worldwide, including developing countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America. Bangladesh, like many other developing countries, is experiencing frequent dengue outbreaks. This article, therefore, critically discusses the current status of dengue disease, vector control approaches, and the need for Wolbachia-mediated intervention in Bangladesh and other dengue-endemic developing countries.

Relevant literature was searched from major databases and search engines such as PubMed, BanglaJol, World Health Organization (WHO)/European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Google Scholar. Considering the selection criteria, search strategies finally involved 55 related literature for further investigation. Findings showed that current vector control strategies could not render protection for an extended period, and the disease burden of arboviruses is increasing. The impoverished outbreak preparedness, urbanization, climate change, and less efficacy of existing control methods have made people susceptible to vector-borne diseases. Hence, Wolbachia, a naturally occurring endosymbiont of many mosquito species that can potentially limit virus transmission through several host genetic alterations, would be a potential alternative for dengue prevention.

The authors also critically discuss the challenges and prospects of Wolbachia-based dengue control in developing countries. The evidence supporting the efficacy and safety of this intervention and its mechanism have also been elucidated. Empirical evidence suggests that this introgression method could be an eco-friendly and long-lasting dengue control method. This review helps policymakers and health experts devise a scheme of Wolbachia-based dengue control that can control mosquito-borne diseases, particularly dengue in Bangladesh and other developing countries.

 

Highlights

• Approximately 3.9 billion people are prone to the dengue virus.
• Current vector control strategies have been found less effective and cannot render protection for a long period.
• Wolbachia-mediated biocontrol could be a promising alternative for dengue prevention.
• Wolbachia grow naturally in 40%–60% of all insect species.
• This dengue-control intervention is eco-friendly and confers long-term control.

 

Keywords: Wolbachia-based biocontrol, Mosquitoes-borne diseases, Dengue, Biological control, Developing countries

 

# # # # # #

 

Biosafety and Health is sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association, managed by National Institute for Viral

Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC).

For more information, please visit https://www.journals.elsevier.com/biosafety-and-health

Editorial Board: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biosafety-and-health/about/editorial-board

Biosafety and Health is available on ScienceDirect (https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biosafety-and-health).

Submissions to Biosafety and Health may be made using Editorial Manager®

(https://www.editorialmanager.com/bsheal/default.aspx).

CiteScore: 4.8

ISSN 2590-0536

 

# # # # # #

 

Abdullah Al Noman, Debashish Das, Zinnatun Nesa, Md. Tariquzzaman, Fariha Sharzana, Md. Rakibul Hasan, Baizid Khoorshid Riaz, Golam Sharower, Mohammad Meshbahur Rahman, Importance of Wolbachia-mediated biocontrol to reduce dengue in Bangladesh and other dengue-endemic developing countries, Biosafety and Health, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2023, Pages 69-77, ISSN 2590-0536, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bsheal.2023.03.003

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JOURNAL

Biosafety and Health

DOI

10.1016/j.bsheal.2023.03.003 

New high-tech helmets may protect American football players from debilitating concussions

A helmet containing liquid shock absorbers has the potential to reduce the danger of brain injury in contact sports

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

Millions of people in the US are concussed every year playing sports. Players of games like American football are at particularly high risk for injuries that can have devastating long-term consequences. Stanford University scientists working with the company Savior Brain have now designed one potential way of protecting players: a helmet containing liquid shock absorbers that could reduce the impact of blows to the head by a third.

“Most of the members of our team have a personal connection to traumatic brain injury and we care deeply about ensuring long-term athlete brain health,” said Nicholas Cecchi, a PhD candidate at Stanford University and lead author of the study in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. “Concussion and repeated head impacts are still a major problem in contact sports, and we believe that improved helmet technology can play an important role in reducing the risk of brain injury.”

HARM reduction

Previous research by the Camarillo Lab at Stanford University had suggested that liquid shock absorbers could provide improved protection in sports helmets. To investigate this, the team built a finite element model, used by engineers to simulate performance before manufacturing, of an American football helmet incorporating 21 liquid shock absorbers. This helmet was tested against simulations of the helmet performance evaluation protocol used by the National Football League (NFL), its performance compared to that of four existing helmets. Due to the mounting evidence that the cumulative effect of impacts which don’t cause diagnosed concussions can also have serious health consequences, the team added lower velocity impacts to the evaluation protocol. They measured the head kinematics for each impact to produce a Head Accelerate Response Metric (HARM) score, which is used to evaluate helmet performance under impact. The kinematics were also fed into a model of the head and brain to gauge the resulting strain on the brain.

Reducing impact by 33%

The results showed that the helmet with liquid shock absorbers could dramatically reduce impact severity and strain on the brain caused by head impacts, potentially significantly cutting injuries. The helmet with liquid shock absorbers performed better than the existing helmet models, producing the lowest HARM value in 33 out of 36 different impact conditions tested, with an average reduction in score of a third. The liquid helmet also had the best ‘Helmet Performance Score’, a measure used in the NFL’s annual helmet safety rankings, which includes a weighting for how well a helmet protects against blows in different areas of the head. The highest-weighted location is the ‘side upper’ portion of the helmet because impacts here are most likely to cause concussions: the helmet with liquid shock absorbers reduced the HARM score in this area by 39-50% across all impact velocities without compromising protection in other areas of the helmet.

“The liquid technology offered an average improvement of over 30% for both low and high velocities,” said Dr Yuzhe Liu, corresponding author, who completed the work as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. “It can dramatically reduce the loading on the brain that is experienced during all kinds of American football impacts.”

The team intends to develop the model significantly to protect players better – for instance by incorporating improvements to the facemask and chinstrap. They also plan to develop the model into a physical helmet that could be tested in real-life conditions, and in the future to produce similar helmets for other sports. However, different levels of play or different sports may need assessment by different metrics and design redevelopment.

“The next step for our team is to translate the computer model to a physical prototype,” said Cecchi. “After successfully completing that, we would also be interested in conducting human studies that could demonstrate either a reduction in concussion incidence or an attenuation of impact severity for sub-concussive impacts. We have plans to expand our implementation of liquid shock absorbers to more areas of the helmet, and more helmeted applications, to further improve brain safety for a wide variety of populations.”

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

DOI

10.3389/fbioe.2023.1160387 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Finite element evaluation of an American football helmet featuring liquid shock absorbers for protecting against concussive and subconcussive head impacts

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Jun-2023

COI STATEMENT

David Camarillo has a financial interest in Savior Brain, Inc., a company which has filed a provisional patent application that claims the design of the helmet architecture described in this work. David Camarillo, Nicholas Cecchi, and Hossein Vahid Alizadeh are listed as inventors on this patent application.

 

Genomic resources to help boost climate resilience of fisheries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EARLHAM INSTITUTE

Candidate genes that could help fish to tolerate warmer and saltier water have been identified in new research from the Earlham Institute, potentially providing a vital resource to guide breeding programmes in freshwater aquaculture.

As water quality and availability is reduced by higher global temperatures, these insights can be used to breed more resilient fish and safeguard a key source of food for millions of people.

The Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, is widely farmed in freshwater aquaculture, providing essential nutrients and protein. Their use in aquaculture has risen dramatically, largely due to their adaptability to different water conditions and production systems. 

Soaring global temperatures, however, have depleted freshwater resources. Fish farms - and the people who rely on them for food - urgently need strains that can still thrive despite the higher salinity and increased water temperature. 

To address this issue, researchers at the Earlham Institute, University of East Anglia, and University of Stirling have explored the tilapia genome to locate advantageous changes in the genome responsible for an increased tolerance to changing water conditions. 

They examined tissue taken from the gills - an important osmoregulatory organ in fish - and generated DNA and RNA sequence data to study the activity, regulation, and function of different genes. They then identified genetic differences at gene regulatory regions in the Nile tilapia and 27 other tilapia species. 

Their assumption was that differences between the Nile tilapia, a freshwater species, and species adapted to saline waters are likely to have arisen to control genes involved with adapting to different water environments. 

The team optimised a genome sequencing approach that reveals the activity of potential transcription factor binding sites and genetic switches for turning expression on and off.

Their approach identified regions of the genome they believe are responsible for controlling the activity of certain osmoregulatory genes, which in turn influence the function of the gills and how the fish responds to changing water conditions. 

They identified a number of genes relevant to traits that help tilapia to tolerate saltier water and also acclimatise to freshwater. These included genes involved in metabolism and general housekeeping processes responsible for reacting to environmental changes in order to maintain balance.

Dr Tarang Mehta, study author and postdoctoral research scientist at the Earlham Institute, said: “Breeders are in desperate need of genomic resources to inform their breeding programmes so traits offering greater resilience can be quickly and accurately selected for.

“By characterising the genes responsible for these desirable traits, we can now share these new resources with freshwater fish farms to help guide selective breeding programmes.”

Dr Wilfried Haerty, study author and Group Leader at the Earlham Institute, said: “We identified regions of the Nile tilapia genome we can target to help breed fish with higher tolerance to salt - something that has sadly become increasingly important as our freshwater resources are degraded.

“The next steps are to use similar genomic approaches to find genes and their regulators associated with other traits of interest for aquaculture, like growth and disease resistance” 

The input of the Genomics Pipelines Group at the Earlham Institute was critical in the data generation, including preparation of RNA-Seq libraries, pooling, and sequencing.

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. 

END

Notes to editors

'Chromatin accessibility in gill tissue identifies candidate genes and loci associated with aquaculture relevant traits in tilapia' is published in the journal Genomics.

About the Earlham Institute

The Earlham Institute is a hub of life science research, training, and innovation focused on understanding the natural world through the lens of genomics.

Embracing the full breadth of life on Earth, our scientists specialise in developing and testing the latest tools and approaches needed to decode living systems and make predictions about biology.

The Earlham Institute is based within the Norwich Research Park and is one of eight institutes that receive strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UKRI, as well as support from other research funders.

earlham.ac.uk

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JOURNAL

Genomics

DOI

10.1016/j.ygeno.2023.110633 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Chromatin accessibility in gill tissue identifies candidate genes and loci associated with aquaculture relevant traits in tilapia

Telemedicine visits cut health system employee care costs by nearly 25%

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Visits with a 24/7, co-payment-free telemedicine program established by Penn Medicine for its employees were 23 percent less expensive than in-person visits for the same conditions, according to a new analysis published in the American Journal of Managed Care. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that the per-visit costs for the telemedicine program, called Penn Medicine OnDemand, averaged $380 while in-person encounters in primary care offices, emergency departments, or urgent care clinics during the same timeframe cost $493 to conduct, a $113 difference per patient.

“The conditions most often handled by OnDemand are low acuity — non-urgent or semi-urgent issues like respiratory infections, sinus infections, and allergies — but incredibly common, so any kind of cost reduction can make a huge difference for controlling employee benefit costs,” said the study’s lead researcher, Krisda Chaiyachati, MD, an adjunct assistant professor of Medicine at Penn Medicine, who previously served as medical director of Penn Medicine OnDemand and now is the physician lead for Value-based Care and Innovation at Verily. “This research shows the clear financial benefits when hospitals and health systems offer telemedicine services directly to their own employees.”

The study analyzed de-identified data from almost 11,000 total visits by Penn Medicine employees who used the company-sponsored insurance plan. The researchers compared 5,413 visits to Penn’s OnDemand telemedicine service with 5,413 that were conducted in-person during the same period. The timeframe studied started with OnDemand’s initial launch in July 2017 until the end of 2019, a phase chosen to avoid confusion with changes enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The program made care easier, and it lowered the costs of delivering each episode of care,” said David Asch, MD, MBA, a professor of Medicine, and the study’s senior author. “But making care easier makes for more care: People who might otherwise have let that sore throat go without a check-up may seek one when it’s just a phone call away.”

While the researchers saw a 10 percent increase in demand for telemedicine services over the study period, the 23 percent decrease in “unit cost” – which factors in things like providers’ salaries and the equipment needed for calls – made it possible for the service to simultaneously be easier for employees to use and less expensive for the employer overall. The net effect was hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for the health system.

Even though employers increasingly offer telemedicine options to their workforce, many health systems have been slow to adopt this approach. The study authors argued that, while past research showed that employer-offered telemedicine via third party companies did not lower the costs of care, health systems are uniquely positioned for their telemedicine offerings to drive savings: They can leverage their own providers, make in-system/in-network referrals, and better organize follow-up care.

Penn Medicine OnDemand began by serving Penn Medicine employees only and opened to insured patients just a few months before the pandemic began. Since then, telemedicine has gained steam, driven by COVID-era precautions and reimbursement changes to cover these services.  

Chaiyachati believes there are likely still significant savings in operating costs, for broader populations outside of health systems’ direct workforce. Comfort with telemedicine services increased with the pandemic, leading to marked increases in visits that resulted in health systems delivering telemedicine more efficiently and patients having a better understanding of what can and cannot be accomplished over telemedicine.

“The data we analyzed pre-date the pandemic. It was a time when people were just putting a toe in the water and wondering, ‘Let me see if telemedicine could treat my needs,’” Chaiyachati said. “These days, people seem willing to jump in for an appropriate set of conditions. The good news is that we made care easier while saving money, and we think the savings could be higher in the future.”

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JOURNAL

The American Journal of Managed Care

DOI

10.37765/ajmc.2023.89369 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Economics of a Health System’s Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine for Its Employees

Price vs. health: Food shoppers choose price

New study finds when healthy buying incentives are removed, food consumers choose price over health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

Key Takeaways:

• When food consumers are properly incentivized, they will choose healthier options.
• When financial incentives are removed, consumers are more likely to choose less healthy options by comparison.

 

BALTIMORE, MD, June 9, 2023 – A new study of food consumer shopping behaviors has found that when faced with a choice – lower prices or healthier foods – they will likely choose lower prices.

The study found that when you give food consumers temporary incentives to buy healthier foods, they will likely to choose those healthier foods. But when you take away the discounts, consumers are more likely to return to old behaviors of buying the less healthy/less expensive options.

The study, “The Persistence of Healthy Behaviors in Food Purchasing,” was conducted by Marit Hinnosaar of the University of Nottingham and Centre for Economic Policy Research in London.

Hinnosaar conducted in-depth research into the U.S. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). WIC gives vouchers for specific foods to mothers and their children age 5 and younger. In 2009, WIC policy reform changed the composition of food vouchers, introducing vouchers to encourage purchase of healthier products. To conduct her research, Hinnosaar used NielsenIQ household-level scanner data of grocery purchases.

“I conducted what you might call ‘difference-in-differences’ analysis to assess the immediate and long-term impacts of the healthier choice incentive program,” says Hinnosaar. “The product categories most targeted by the program were bread and milk.”

Hinnosaar says that the evidence points to a decrease in purchases of healthier options after participants left the program.

“During the incentive program, vouchers were restricted to whole wheat bread and low-fat milk,” she says. “Since some of these options tend to be more expensive, once the vouchers were no longer available for these products, consumers tended to choose items based on price.”

Still, there was no measurable difference in the total quantities of products in the WIC vouchers during or after the program. These products included bread, milk, fruits and vegetables, juice, eggs and cereal.

“Based on these findings, it is possible to conclude that a modest post-program subsidy once program participants leave the program – to incentivize healthier food choices – may be a more sustainable way to lengthen the program’s impact and lead to long-term healthier food purchases.”

 

Link to Study

 

About INFORMS and Marketing Science

Marketing Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly marketing journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of the interface between consumers and firms. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs.

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JOURNAL

Marketing Science

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

“The Persistence of Healthy Behaviors in Food Purchasing”

 WHO recommends Politecnico di Milano guidelines for the design of future hospitals

Reports and Proceedings

POLITECNICO DI MILANO

 

IMAGE: WHO RECOMMENDS POLITECNICO DI MILANO GUIDELINES FOR THE DESIGN OF FUTURE HOSPITALS view more 

CREDIT: POLITECNICO DI MILANO

Milan, 9 June 2023 - The World Health Organisation presented in Baku (Azerbaijan) the new design recommendations for new hospitals to be built in the European Region, the result of a research partnership with the Politecnico di Milano.  The document was prepared by the Design & Health Lab in the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and the Built Environment at the Politecnico under the coordination of Professor Stefano Capolongo.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of preparedness for natural and man-made disasters, emergencies and other social crises. The ability to provide continuous health services is crucial in these situations, and designing an architecture for health is the key route towards tackling the multiple factors that are transforming society, the economy and the environment.

Hospitals are particularly important because they best interpret these transformations, promote urban regeneration and have a widespread positive impact in a given area. For a hospital to remain functional during emergencies and disasters, it must be designed with a solid and flexible infrastructure, high resistance to hazards and with particular focus on safety and comfort.

The COVID-19 pandemic also underlined the importance of the hospital environment in the transmission of pathogens and highlighted the need to ensure sustainable compliance with hygiene standards.

“What will the hospital of the future look like? We are already in the future: technology, design and organisational solutions have reached very advanced levels,” says Professor Stefano Capolongo, director of the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and the Built Environment at the Politecnico di Milano, “The challenge today is to systemise all principles aimed at sustainable, inclusive development from a One Health perspective. The technical brief prepared for the World Health Organisation brings together the main strategies for the implementation of flexible, resilient and evidence-based innovative hospitals throughout the European region.”

The guidelines are designed for health institutions, health organisations and their governance bodies: the general managers, but also architects and technicians who work on health infrastructure.

The recommendations address future challenges from different points of analysis. Firstly, the choice of hospital location, with different functions depending on whether it is located in the city centre or in the suburbs (the latter capable of serving larger areas). The focus then shifts to the importance of green areas for the benefit of patients and medical staff and the well-being of workers.

The spaces need to be designed so as to be accessible to all segments of the population, including in terms of aesthetics, both inside and outside the hospital.

At managerial level, digitisation makes a significant contribution, greatly facilitating the management of goods and services in the hospitals and the organisation of work and services in the local area.

The hospital of the future must not be closed and unchangeable: synergies with the local health network can improve services and the resilience of the health system and facilitate patient access to local medical services.

In planning, we must be aware of the risks of infection within hospitals, and therefore pay due attention to air quality control in design and construction, which must include hygiene management.

The hospital of the future is socially, economically and ecologically sustainable, with a strategy that is integral to the entire life cycle of the facility, including energy and resource management, and its possible adaptations and extensions.

Prevention and safety are essential, from the point of view of both general safety and the risk of fire and seismic events; an issue that must be addressed comprehensively: design and construction, maintenance, training and emergency preparedness.

USTC reveals reconfiguration process of solar eruptions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA

Recently, a research team led by Prof. GOU Yanyu from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) found that the solar outburst structure undergoes a complex reconfiguration evolution during the early outbursts, thus making important advances in the study of solar outburst activity. This study was published in Nature Astronomy. 

In classical images, the core structure of a solar eruption is a magnetic rope consisted of spirally wound magnetic lines. When the eruption begins, the magnetic ropes around the core are transformed by magnetic reconnection into spirally wound magnetic lines, which wrap around the original core, leading to its rapid growth in a 'snowball' fashion. However, only a small fraction (only about a third) of the solar ejecta detected by various near-Earth and interplanetary spacecraft 'in situ' possessed the expected magnetic structure, while the rest deviated significantly from classical images.

By studying a coronal mass ejection event, the researchers revealed that the pre-emergence magnetic rope structure underwent a complex series of stripping, disintegration and reconstruction during the outburst. Observational evidence suggested that the pre-burst S-shaped magnetic rope structure developed from small-scale 'seeds'.

At the start of the outburst, the footpoints of the magnetic ropes are clearly outlined by a trapezoidal bright band in the lower atmosphere. During the subsequent violent outburst, the footpoints of the outburst structure are manifested as darkened regions in the corona due to the absence of material. With the highly dynamic changes in the solar chromospheric flare band and the consequent drift of the coronal darkening region, the footpoints of the eruptive structure shift dramatically, barely intersecting with the footpoints of the pre-eruptive magnetic rope. This is clearly in contrast with classical images, which predicted that the coronal darkening region characterizing the footpoints of the eruptive structure should have covered the footpoints of the original magnetic rope.

The end of the flare zone shows a highly irregular pattern and a back-and-forth sawing motion, revealing a complex three-dimensional magnetic reconnection within the magnetic rope and between the magnetic rope and the surrounding field. These phenomena suggested that the three-dimensional magnetic field reconnection during the eruption replaces the magnetic flux of the original magnetic rope almost completely.

This study reveals the details of the process of complex three-dimensional magnetic reconnection and its important role in the formation of coronal mass ejections. It provides a new physical explanation for the generation of complex ejection structures in interplanetary space, and sheds light on space weather forecasting.

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JOURNAL

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-023-01966-2 

ARTICLE TITLE

Complete replacement of magnetic flux in a flux rope during a coronal mass ejection

Interdisciplinary team receives continued support to visualize the past

Grant and Award Announcement

VIRGINIA TECH

 

IMAGE: PAMPLIN HISTORICAL PARK IN PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY TODD OGLE FOR VIRGINIA TECH.

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $98,500 grant to an interdisciplinary team led by Virginia Tech to create an augmented reality program prototype that brings Civil War history to park visitors’ fingertips. Experts from Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, Pamplin Historical Park, and its National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Virginia, are involved in the project. 

From multimedia-guided interpretations of documents to videos of historians sharing diverse perspectives, Pamplin Historical Park visitors will interact with historical lessons and stories of the site to inspire deeper empathy, curiosity, and understanding. Through augmented reality (AR), they’ll engage with stories of the people — both soldiers and noncombatants, such as the enslaved people of the area - their roles, their environment, the fight, the grit, and their beloved families. 

“I’m passionate about visualizing the past, being able to see what is no longer to be seen, and gaining a perspective on how people once saw and experienced places that we see differently today,” said Todd Ogle, executive director of Applied Research in Immersive Experiences and Simulations. “I believe that using AR for this purpose is among its greatest potential uses.”

Previously, the team received a $30,000 grant to begin mapping out the project and analyzing what could be done. The new 2023-25 $98,500 grant is to continue the development and create an actual prototype of the augmented reality application. Next, the team plans to apply for another grant to move the project into full production. 

The team is led by Paul Quigley, an associate professor in the Virginia Tech Department of History and director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. Virginia Tech collaborators include Todd Ogle, executive director of Applied Research in Immersive Experiences and Simulations at the University Libraries; Doug Bowman, the Frank J. Maher Professor of Computer Science; Zach Duer, assistant professor in the School of Visual Arts; Corinne Guimont, digital scholarship coordinator in University Libraries; David Hicks, professor in the School of Education; Kurt Luther, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of History; and Thomas Tucker, associate professor in the School of Visual Arts.

Other collaborators include Kathryn Shively, an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University, and staff of the Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier.

The team will use digital recreations of historical landscapes, interactive 3D artifacts, short expert videos sharing compelling stories and key concepts, and digitally annotated historical documents and photographs. 

“These techniques will convey historical lessons in bite-sized segments, grounded in compelling human stories, artifacts, or environmental features, using technologies that will draw different kinds of users in,” said Quigley. 

The project marries new technologies with the latest historical scholarship on themes such as the environmental history of the Civil War, African American experiences of slavery and freedom, and how the crisis of the Civil War transformed gender relations and definitions of the household. 

“We hope that augmented reality will unlock the stories of these lived experiences while connecting them to the landscape within which they occurred,” said Ogle. 

This project allows Virginia Tech to demonstrate its commitment to its land-grant mission by supporting lifelong learning, helping the state’s economy through heritage tourism, and providing communities with new ways to understand their histories and their relevance today. “It is a truly transdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together the disciplinary tools of many different areas to create something that is more than the sum of its parts,” said Quigley.  

One interesting challenge the team has faced is the difficulty of keeping up with changing technologies, with which different users have different levels of comfort. “If we do go all the way through to the production phase grant, we’ll probably finish the project around 2028,” said Quigley. “Along the way, we have to try to design an experience that will work with the devices that are in use in 2028 and beyond. Will that be smartphones, tablets, AR glasses, or something else? And we also have to make sure that everyone from school field trips to a history buff of retirement age will be able to get the most out of the experience.” 

“Finding the right mix of accessibility, historical accuracy, and production value while working with the constantly changing technology landscape is an ongoing challenge,” said Ogle. “The opportunity is great enough to make the effort worthwhile.” 

Quigley said there are immense benefits to understanding Civil War era history in all its dimensions, such as learning about how African Americans secured freedom and the impact the war had on individual lives, American politics and culture, and the natural environment. “It’s wonderful to be able to use engaging techniques to teach these subjects to audiences of different ages, different levels of interests, and different cultural backgrounds. There's something magical about developing a cool AR experience — a real ‘wow’ factor.”