Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in ancient 14,300-year-old tree rings

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

 

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ARTIST ILLUSTRATION OF EVENTS ON THE SUN CHANGING THE CONDITIONS IN NEAR-EARTH SPACE

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CREDIT: NASA

An international team of scientists have discovered a huge spike in radiocarbon levels 14,300 years ago by analysing ancient tree-rings found in the French Alps.   

The radiocarbon spike was caused by a massive solar storm, the biggest ever identified.  

A similar solar storm today would be catastrophic for modern technological society – potentially wiping out telecommunications and satellite systems, causing massive electricity grid blackouts, and costing us billions of pounds.  

The academics are warning of the importance of understanding such storms to protect our global communications and energy infrastructure for the future.          

The collaborative research, which was carried out by an international team of scientists, is published today (Oct 9) in The Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences and reveals new insights into the Sun’s extreme behaviour and the risks it poses to Earth.   

A team of researchers from the Collège de France, CEREGE, IMBE, Aix-Marseille University and the University of Leeds measured radiocarbon levels in ancient trees preserved within the eroded banks of the Drouzet River, near Gap, in the Southern French Alps.    

The tree trunks, which are subfossils – remains whose fossilization process is not complete – were sliced into tiny single tree-rings. Analysis of these individual rings identified an unprecedented spike in radiocarbon levels occurring precisely 14,300 years ago. By comparing this radiocarbon spike with measurements of beryllium, a chemical element found in Greenland ice cores, the team proposes that the spike was caused by a massive solar storm that would have ejected huge volumes of energetic particles into Earth’s atmosphere.  

Edouard Bard, Professor of Climate and Ocean Evolution at the Collège de France and CEREGE, and lead author of the study, said: “Radiocarbon is constantly being produced in the upper atmosphere through a chain of reactions initiated by cosmic rays. Recently, scientists have found that extreme solar events including solar flares and coronal mass ejections can also create short-term bursts of energetic particles which are preserved as huge spikes in radiocarbon production occurring over the course of just a single year.”  

The researchers say that the occurrence of similar massive solar storms today could be catastrophic for modern technological society, potentially wiping out telecommunications, satellite systems and electricity grids - and costing us billions of pounds. They warn that it is critical to understand the future risks of events like this, to enable us to prepare, build resilience into our communications and energy systems and shield them from potential damage.  

Tim Heaton, Professor of Applied Statistics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds, said: “Extreme solar storms could have huge impacts on Earth. Such super storms could permanently damage the transformers in our electricity grids, resulting in huge and widespread blackouts lasting months. They could also result in permanent damage to the satellites that we all rely on for navigation and telecommunication, leaving them unusable. They would also create severe radiation risks to astronauts.”     

Nine such extreme solar storms – known as Miyake Events – have now been identified as having occurred over the last 15,000 years. The most recent confirmed Miyake Events occurred in 993 AD and 774 AD. This newly-identified 14,300-year-old storm is, however, the largest that has ever been found – roughly twice the size of these two.  

The exact nature of these Miyake Events remains very poorly understood as they have never been directly observed instrumentally. They highlight that we still have much to learn about the behaviour of the Sun and the dangers it poses to society on Earth. We do not know what causes such extreme solar storms to occur, how frequently they might occur, or if we can somehow predict them.   

Professor Bard said: “Direct instrumental measurements of solar activity only began in the 17th century with the counting of sunspots. Nowadays, we also obtain detailed records using ground-based observatories, space probes, and satellites. However, all these short-term instrumental records are insufficient for a complete understanding of the Sun. Radiocarbon measured in tree-rings, used alongside beryllium in polar ice cores, provide the best way to understand the Sun’s behaviour further back into the past.”  

The largest, directly-observed, solar storm occurred in 1859 and is known as the Carrington Event. It caused massive disruption on Earth – destroying telegraph machines and creating a night-time aurora so bright that birds began to sing, believing the Sun had begun to rise. However, the Miyake Events (including the newly discovered 14,300-yr-old storm) would have been a staggering entire order-of-magnitude greater in size.  

Professor Heaton said: “Radiocarbon provides a phenomenal way of studying Earth’s history and reconstructing critical events that it has experienced. A precise understanding of our past is essential if we want to accurately predict our future and mitigate potential risks. We still have much to learn. Each new discovery not only helps answer existing key questions but can also generate new ones.”  

Cécile Miramont, Associate Professor of Paleoenvironments and Paleoclimates at IMBE, Aix-en-Provence University, said: “Finding such a collection of preserved trees was truly exceptional. By comparing the widths of the individual tree rings in the multiple tree trunks, we then carefully pieced together the separate trees to create a longer timeline using a method called dendrochronology. This allowed us to discover invaluable information on past environmental changes and measure radiocarbon over an uncharted period of solar activity.”  

Subfossil trees in the Drouzet river

Tree rings of a buried subfossil tree in the Drouzet river

Subfossil trees in the banks of the Drouzet river

CREDIT

Cécile Miramont

For more information please contact the University of Leeds press office at pressoffice.adm@leeds.ac.uk  

Further Information  

A radiocarbon spike at 14,300 cal yr BP in subfossil trees provides the impulse response function of the global carbon cycle during the Late Glacial by Bard E, Miramont C, Capano M, Guibal F, Marschal C, Rostek F, Tuna T, Fagault Y, Heaton TJ, is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, on October 9. 381: 20220206 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2022.0206 (link will go live after publication) 

Funding for this research was provided by the Collège de France, the EQUIPEX ASTER-CEREGE and the ANR projects CARBOTRYDH and MARCARA (PI E.B.); the Natural Environment Research Council; and The Leverhulme Trust. 

Pictures available via: https://we.tl/t-RzHSir3gM9  

Captions and credits:  

“NASA Solar Flare graphic” caption: Artist illustration of events on the sun changing the conditions in Near-Earth space. Photo Credit: NASA 

Subfossil trees in the Drouzet river. Photo Credit: Cécile Miramont 

Subfossil trees in the banks of the Drouzet river. Photo Credit: Cécile Miramont 

Tree rings of a buried subfossil tree in the Drouzet river. Photo Credit: Cécile Miramont 

University of Leeds   

The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 39,000 students from 170 different countries. We are renowned globally for the quality of our teaching and research.   

We are a values-driven university, and we harness our expertise in research and education to help shape a better future for humanity, working through collaboration to tackle inequalities, achieve societal impact and drive change.    

The University is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, and is a major partner in the Alan Turing, Rosalind Franklin and Royce Institutes www.leeds.ac.uk    

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JOURNAL

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rsta.2022.0206 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A radiocarbon spike at 14,300 cal yr BP in subfossil trees provides the impulse response function of the global carbon cycle during the Late Glacial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Oct-2023

 

Tropical ecosystems more reliant on emerging aquatic insects, study finds, potentially putting them at greater risk

Peer-Reviewed Publication

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

 

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THE TEAM COLLECTING SAMPLES

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CREDIT: LIAM NASH

A team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that tropical forest ecosystems are more reliant on aquatic insects than temperate forest ecosystems and are therefore more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and water. 

The study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, is the first to directly compare the interconnections between land and water in tropical and temperate environments via the emergence of aquatic insects. The researchers used a technique called stable isotope analysis to trace the aquatic-prey signal in the tissues of arthropod predators such as spiders, going away from water into land, around streams in English, Welsh, and Scottish forests and in Brazil’s Amazonian and Atlantic rainforests. 

They found that the spiders were consuming more aquatic insect prey in the tropics than in the UK, resulting in higher overall dietary diversity in the tropical food-webs, on-land. Their results indicated that tropical terrestrial animals are more reliant on and impacted by emerging aquatic insects. This suggests tropical environments are more vulnerable to future disruption to the interconnections between land and water. 

“Our findings show that we cannot simply apply knowledge from research in temperate zones to protect tropical ecosystems,” said Dr. Pavel Kratina, senior author of the study and Senior Lecturer in Ecology at Queen Mary University of London. “That tropical ecosystems are more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and water is worrying considering the increasing human pressures on tropical freshwater ecosystems, which are among the most threatened in the world.” 

Emerging aquatic insects can become a pathway for negative human impacts to move from one environment to another. For example, polluting a stream may reduce insect numbers, which may in-turn reduce availability of nutritious food for land-based predators. Tropical aquatic insects are under threat of catastrophic declines because of human activity and climate change – the researchers’ results suggest this would have cascading consequences across tropical environments. 

“Riparian buffers” are protected strips of land around waterways which contribute to protecting the links between land and water. However, the size of these buffer-strips (commonly between 5 – 100m) are considered inadequate for the protection of a lot of terrestrial biodiversity around water. In Brazil, the regulations surrounding buffers have even been relaxed over the last decade. The researchers’ study stresses the need for greater protection of riparian buffers and broader consideration of the links between ecosystems, rather than considering different habitats in isolation, particularly in the tropics. 

“Our research took us to remote parts of the world from the Amazon jungle and Iguaçu River basin in Brazil to Snowdonia national park in Wales and The Trossachs in Scotland,” said Dr. Liam Nash, lead author of the study and recent PhD graduate from Dr. Kratina’s lab at Queen Mary. “We braved ticks, wasps, midges, and snakes to collect our samples, and saw animals such as harpy eagles and tapirs along the way. We ran into challenges with the pandemic, which saw me having to fly out of Brazil on one of the last available flights in March 2020 as travel rules were changing hourly! This work could not have happened without the help of experienced local field guides and close collaboration with scientists and students from Brazil.” 

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JOURNAL

Ecology Letters

DOI

10.1111/ele.14322 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Tropical and temperate differences in the trophic structure and aquatic prey use of riparian predators

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Oct-2023

 

Plate tectonic surprise: Utrecht geologist unexpectedly finds remnants of a lost mega-plate

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT FACULTEIT GEOWETENSCHAPPEN

 

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THE PONTUS OCEANIC PLATE THAT WAS RECONSTRUCTED BY SUZANNA VAN DE LAGEMAAT: ITS LOCATION IN THE PALEO-PACIFIC OCEAN 120 MILLION YEARS AGO, AND ITS PRESENT RELICTS. AN EARLIER STUDY  SHOWED THAT A LARGE SUBDUCTION ZONE MUST HAVE RUN THROUGH THE WESTERN PALEO-PACIFIC OCEAN, WHICH SEPARATED THE KNOWN PACIFIC PLATES IN THE EAST FROM A HYPOTHETICAL PONTUS PLATE IN THE WEST. THIS HYPOTHESIS HAS NOW BEEN INDEPENDENTLY DEMONSTRATED BY VAN DE LAGEMAAT’S RESEARCH.

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CREDIT: SUZANNA VAN DE LAGEMAAT, UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

Utrecht University geologist Suzanna van de Lagemaat has reconstructed a massive and previously unknown tectonic plate that was once one-quarter the size of the Pacific Ocean. Her colleagues in Utrecht had predicted its existence over 10 years ago based on fragments of old tectonic plates found deep in the Earth’s mantle. Van de Lagemaat reconstructed lost plates through field research and detailed investigations of the mountain belts of Japan, Borneo, the Philippines, New Guinea, and New Zealand. To her surprise, she found that oceanic remnants on northern Borneo must have belonged to the long-suspected plate, which scientists have named Pontus. She has now reconstructed the entire plate in its full glory. Suzanna van de Lagemaat will defend her dissertation on this plate tectonics puzzle at Utrecht University on Friday, October 13.

Understanding the movements of the tectonic plates that make up the earth’s rigid outer shell is essential to understand the planet’s geological history. The movements of these plates strongly influenced how the planet’s paleogeography and climate have changed over time, and even where to find rare metals. But large oceanic plates from the geological past have since disappeared into the earth’s mantle by means of subduction. They have left behind only fragments of rock hidden in mountain belts. Van de Lagemaat studied the planet’s most complicated plate tectonic region: the area around the Philippines. “The Philippines is located at a complex junction of different plate systems. The region almost entirely consists of oceanic crust, but some pieces are raised above sea level, and show rocks of very different ages.”

Reconstruction

Using geological data, Van de Lagemaat first reconstructed the movements of the current plates in the region between Japan and New Zealand. That revealed how large the area was of plates that must have disappeared in the current western Pacific region. “We also conducted field work on northern Borneo, where we found the most important piece of the puzzle. We thought we were dealing with relicts of a lost plate that we already knew about. But our magnetic lab research on those rocks indicated that our finds were originally from much farther north, and had to be remnants of a different, previously unknown plate.” But the important realisation was yet to come. “11 years ago, we thought that the remnants of Pontus might lie in northern Japan, but we’d since refuted that theory”, explains Douwe van Hinsbergen, Van de Lagemaat’s PhD supervisor. “It was only after Suzanna had systematically reconstructed half of the ‘Ring of Fire’ mountain belts from Japan, through New Guinea, to New Zealand that the proposed Pontus plate revealed itself, and it included the rocks we studied on Borneo.”

Relics

The relics of Pontus are not only located on northern Borneo, but also on Palawan, an island in the Western Philippines, and in the South China Sea. Van de Lagemaat’s research also showed that a single coherent plate tectonic system stretched from southern Japan to New Zealand, and it must have existed for at least 150 million years. That is also a new discovery in the field.

Waves

The previous predictions of the existence of Pontus were made possible because a subducted plate leaves behind traces when it ‘sinks’ into the earth’s mantle: zones in the mantle with anomalous temperatures or compositions. These anomalies can be observed when seismographs pick up signals from earthquakes. Earthquakes send waves through Earth’s interior, and when they travel through an anomaly, such as a fragment from an old plate, the anomaly produces a disruption of the signal. Geologists can trace these disruptions to the existence of phenomena in the mantle, such as fragments of tectonic plates. That allows them to look 300 million years into the past; older plate fragments have ‘dissolved’ at the boundary between the mantle and the core. The study from 11 years ago showed that a large subduction zone must have run through the western paleo-Pacific Ocean, which separated the known Pacific plates in the east from the hypothetical Pontus plate in the west. This hypothesis has now been independently demonstrated by Van de Lagemaat’s research.

Article

Van de Lagemaat, S.H.A., & van Hinsbergen, D.J.J., 2023, ‘Plate tectonic cross-roads: Reconstructing the Panthalassa-Neotethys Junction Region from Philippine Sea Plate and Australasian oceans and orogens’, Gondwana Research, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X23002617

The study from 11 years ago: Van der Meer, D.G., Torsvik, T.H., Spakman, W., van Hinsbergen, D.J.J., & Amaru, M.L., 2012, ‘Intra-Panthalassa Ocean subduction zones revealed by fossil arcs and mantle structure’, Nature Geoscience 5, 215-219: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo140

Step-by-step reconstruction of Pontus up to 120 million years ago, and its subsequent disappearance (VIDEO)

Utrecht University geologist Suzanna van de Lagemaat has reconstructed a massive and previously unknown tectonic plate that was once one-quarter the size of the Pacific Ocean. Her colleagues in Utrecht had already predicted the existence of the plate years ago, based on fragments of old tectonic plates found deep in the earth’s mantle. Van de Lagemaat reconstructed lost plates through field research and detailed investigations of the mountains of Japan, Borneo, the Philippines, New Guinea and New Zealand. To her astonishment, she found that oceanic remnants on northern Borneo must have belonged to the long-suspected plate, which scientists have named Pontus. She has now reconstructed the entire plate in its full glory.

CREDIT

Suzanna van de Lagemaat/Utrecht University

JOURNAL

Gondwana Research

DOI

10.1016/j.gr.2023.09.013 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Plate tectonic cross-roads: Reconstructing the Panthalassa-Neotethys Junction Region from Philippine Sea Plate and Australasian oceans and orogens

 

Newly-discovered “margarita snails” from the Florida Keys are bright lemon-yellow

The marine snails’ bright citrus coloring might help ward off predators

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FIELD MUSEUM

 

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AN UNDERWATER CLOSEUP OF THE KEYS MARGARITA SNAIL, CAYO MARGARITA (NEW SPECIES) IN THE CORAL REEF OF THE FLORIDA KEYS. NOTE THE TWO LONG TENTACLES, USED BY THE SNAIL TO SPREAD THE MUCUS NET FOR FEEDING. PHOTO BY R. BIELER.

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CREDIT: PHOTO BY R. BIELER.

The “Margaritaville” in Jimmy Buffett’s famous song isn’t a real place, but it’s long been associated with the Florida Keys. This string of tropical islands is home to the only living coral barrier reef in the continental US, along with many animals found nowhere else in the world. One of them is a newly-discovered, bright yellow snail, named in honor of Margaritaville. The lemon- (or, key-lime-) colored snail, along with its lime-green cousin from Belize, is the subject of a study published in the journal PeerJ.

These marine snails are distant relatives of the land-dwelling gastropods you might find leaving slimy trails in your garden. Nicknamed “worm snails,” they spend most of their lives in one place. “I find them particularly cool because they are related to regular free-living snails, but when the juveniles find a suitable spot to live, they hunker down, cement their shell to the substrate, and never move again,” says Rüdiger Bieler, curator of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago and the study’s lead author. “Their shell continues to grow as an irregular tube around the snail’s body, and the animal hunts by laying out a mucus web to trap plankton and bits of detritus.”

Bieler has spent the past four decades studying invertebrate animals living in the Western Atlantic, but these particular snails “are so small and so well-hidden that we’ve not encountered them before during our scuba diving surveys. We had to look very closely,” he says. The new species belong to the same family of marine snails as the invasive “Spider-Man” snail that the same team described from the Vandenberg shipwreck off the Florida Keys in 2017.  

He and his colleagues, including fellow Field Museum curator Petra Sierwald, came across the lemon-yellow snails in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and they found a similar, lime-colored snail in Belize. “Many snails are polychromatic-- within the same species, you get different colors,” says Bieler. “In a single population, even a single little cluster, one might be orange, one might be gray. I think they do it to confuse fish and not give them a clear target, and some have warning coloration.”

“Initially, when I saw the lime-green one and the lemon-yellow one, I figured they were the same species,” says Bieler. “But when we sequenced their DNA, they were very different.”

Based on these molecular data, Bieler, Sierwald, and their co-authors Timothy Collins, Rosemary Golding, Camila Granados-Cifuentes, John Healy and Timothy Rawlings, placed the snails in a new genus, Cayo, after the Spanish word for a small, low island. The yellow snail was named Cayo margarita after the citrusy drinks in Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville.” The lime snail’s name, Cayo galbinus, means “greenish-yellow.” 

The Cayo snails have a key trait in common with another worm snail genus, Thylacodes, for which the team described a new species from Bermuda and named Thylacodes bermudensis. While only distantly related, these snails all have brightly colored heads poking out of their tubular shells. “Our thought is this is a warning color,” says Bieler. “They have some nasty metabolites in their mucus. That also might help explain why they're able to have exposed heads-- on the reef, everybody is out to eat you, and if you don't have any defensive mechanism, you will be overgrown by the corals and sea anemones and all the stuff around you. It seems like the mucus might help deter the neighbors from getting too close.”

Bieler says that the study is important because it helps illuminate the biodiversity of coral reefs, which are under severe threat due to climate change. “There have been increases in global water temperatures, and some species can handle them much better than others,” says Bieler. The Cayo snails have a tendency to live on pieces of dead coral, and as more coral is killed off, the snails might spread. 

Moreover, says Bieler, “it's another indication that right under our noses, we have undescribed species. This is in snorkeling depth in a heavily touristed area, and we’re still finding new things  all around us.”

This study was contributed to by scientists at the Field Museum (NZ), Florida International University (USA), Queensland Museum (AUS), and Cape Breton University (CDN). 

An underwater closeup of the lime-colored Margarita Snail of the Belizean reef, Cayo galbinus (new species). The two black dots are the eyes.   Photo by R. Bieler.

CREDIT

Photo by R. Bieler

Look closely:  a Margarita Snail in the middle of a dead section of a large brain coral. Underwater photo by R. Bieler.  

CREDIT

Underwater photo by R. Bieler.

JOURNAL

PeerJ

ARTICLE TITLE

Replacing mechanical protection with colorful faces – twice: parallel evolution of the non-operculate marine worm-snail genera Thylacodes Guettard, 1770 and Cayo n. gen. (Gastropoda: Vermetidae)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Oct-2023

 

‘Reading Mate Robot’ takes 1st place in the IEEE RO-MAN 2023 Design Competition!

Grant and Award Announcement

ULSAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY(UNIST)

 

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THE 'BOOK TOKI: READING MATE ROBOT’ BY PROFESSOR HUI SUNG LEE AND HIS TEAM IN THE DEPARTMENT OF DESIGN AT UNIST TOOK 1ST PLACE IN THE IEEE RO-MAN 2023 DESIGN COMPETITION.

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CREDIT: UNIST

A recent design project, conducted by Professor Hui Sung Lee and his team in the Department of Design at UNIST has been awarded the Robot Design Competition Award (Best Robot Design Artifact) at the 2023 Robot Design Competition. This esteemed competition took place as a side event of the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2023).

The winning creation, named the Book Toki, is an interactive reading mate robot, designed to spark children’s interest in reading, specifically targeting 5 to 8-year-olds who are beginning their reading journey.

The team focused not only on the functionality of the robot but also on developing innovative human-robot interaction methods to actively engage children in the reading process. The design of the Book Toki incorporates a familiar animal appearance, animal-like movements, and interesting reactions to trigger curiosity. It takes the form of an adorable rabbit with highly responsive ear movements. As a child reads, the robot’s rabbit ears progressively change shape to symbolize that it is listening to the child, creating an immersive reading experience.

The Book Toki was skillfully designed and developed by Dabin Lee and Wooin Jang from the Department of Design within the laboratory of Professor Lee. Reflecting on their creation, the students expressed, “We paid careful attention to minimize any noise generated by the moving ears, ensuring it does not disrupt the reading experience. Our hope is that children develop healthy reading habits and cultivate a genuine interest in books.”

To achieve the unique ear movements, the robot’s silicone ears are designed to bend and unfold using hydraulic pressure, while its head moves up and down with the help of a linear stepping motor. This innovative interaction method, incorporating metaphorical elements, holds great potential for the enhancement of children’s engagement with reading content.

The success of the ‘Book Toki’ at the IEEE RO-MAN 2023 competition emphasizes the importance of innovative approaches in encouraging children’s reading habits. Professor Lee and his dedicated team have made a remarkable contribution to the field of human-robot interaction and early childhood education.

Meanwhile, the IEEE RO-MAN 2023 conference, organized by the International Society of Electrical and Electronics Robotics Robot Automation Committee (IEEE RAS), the Japanese Society of Robotics (RSJ), and the Korean Society of Robotics (KROS), took place from August 28 to 31 in Busan, Korea.

Dabin Lee from the Department of Design at UNIST is receiving an award at the IEEE RO-MAN 2023 conference during the award presentation ceremony.

CREDIT

UNIST

 

Soccer goalies process the world differently, muti-sensory integration tests show

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

In the game of soccer (association football), goalkeepers have a unique role. To do the job well, they must be ready to make split-second decisions based on incomplete information to stop their opponents from scoring a goal. Now researchers reporting in Current Biology on October 9 have some of the first solid scientific evidence that goalkeepers show fundamental differences in the way they perceive the world and process multi-sensory information.

“Unlike other football players, goalkeepers are required to make thousands of very fast decisions based on limited or incomplete sensory information,” says Michael Quinn, the study’s first author at Dublin City University who is also a retired professional goalkeeper and son of former Irish international Niall Quinn. “This led us to predict that goalkeepers would possess an enhanced capacity to combine information from the different senses, and this hypothesis was confirmed by our results.”

“While many football players and fans worldwide will be familiar with the idea that goalkeepers are just ‘different’ from the rest of us, this study may actually be the first time that we have proven scientific evidence to back up this claim,” says David McGovern (@DP_McGovern), the study’s lead investigator also from Dublin City University.

Based on his own history as a professional goalkeeper, Quinn already had a feeling that goalkeepers experience the world in a distinctive way. In his final year working on a psychology degree, he wanted to put this notion to the test.

To do it, the researchers enlisted 60 volunteers, including professional goalkeepers, professional outfield players, and age-matched controls who don’t play soccer. They decided to look for differences among the three groups in what’s known as temporal binding windows—that is the time window within which signals from the different senses are likely to be perceptually fused or integrated.

In each trial, participants were presented with one or two images (visual stimuli) on a screen. Those images could be presented along with one, two, or no beeps (auditory stimuli). Those stimuli were presented with different amounts of time in between.

In these tests, trials with one flash and two beeps generally led to the mistaken perception of two flashes, providing evidence that the auditory and visual stimuli have been integrated. This mistaken perception declines as the amount of time between stimuli increases, allowing researchers to measure the width of a person’s temporal binding window, with a narrower temporal binding window indicating more efficient multisensory processing.

Overall, their tests showed that goalkeepers had marked differences in their multisensory processing ability. More specifically, goalkeepers had a narrower temporal binding window relative to outfielders and non-soccer players, indicating a more precise and speedy estimation of the timing of audiovisual cues.

The test results revealed another difference too. Goalkeepers didn’t show as much interaction between the visual and auditory information. The finding suggests that the goalies had a greater tendency to separate sensory signals. In other words, they integrated the flashes and beeps to a lesser degree.

“We propose that these differences stem from the idiosyncratic nature of the goalkeeping position that puts a premium on the ability of goalkeepers to make quick decisions, often based on partial or incomplete sensory information,” the researchers write.

They speculate that the tendency to segregate sensory information stems from goalies need to make quick decisions based on visual and auditory information coming in at different times. For example, goalkeepers watch how a ball is moving in the air and also make use of the sound of the ball being kicked. But the relationship between those cues in time will depend on where the outfielder making the shot is on the field. After repeated exposure to those scenarios, goalkeepers may start to process sensory cues separately rather than combining them.

The researchers say they hope to explore other questions in future studies, including whether players with other highly specialized positions, such as strikers and center-backs, may also show perceptual differences. They’re also curious to know which comes first. “Could the narrower temporal binding window observed in goalkeepers stem from the rigorous training regimens that goalkeepers engage in from an early age?” McGovern asks. “Or could it be that these differences in multisensory processing reflect an inherent, natural ability that draws young players to the goalkeeping position? Further research that tracks the developmental trajectory of aspiring goalkeepers will be required to tease between these possibilities.”

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Current Biology, Quinn et al. “Distinct profiles of multisensory processing between professional goalkeepers and outfield football players” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01130-2

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.050 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Distinct profiles of multisensory processing between professional goalkeepers and outfield football players

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Oct-2023

 

Depressive symptoms and mortality among adults

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: This study of 23,000 individuals found a higher risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and ischemic heart disease mortality among adults with moderate to severe depressive symptoms compared to those without depressive symptoms. Public health efforts to improve awareness and treatment of depression and associated risk factors could support a comprehensive, nationwide strategy to reduce the burden of depression. 

Authors: Zefeng Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is the corresponding author. 

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.37011)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

New study finds that the Gulf Stream is warming and shifting closer to shore

WHOI scientists document changes in the Gulf Stream using two decades of measurements from Argo floats and Spray underwater gliders

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

 

IMAGE: 

WARMING IN AND NEAR THE GULF STREAM AT PRESENT COMPARED TO THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY IS DRIVEN BY HEAT FROM THE ATMOSPHERE AS WELL AS A GRADUAL SHIFT OF THE GULF STREAM TOWARD THE COAST.

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CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY NATALIE RENIER/©WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01835-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Warming and lateral shift of the Gulf Stream from in situ observations since 2001

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Oct-2023

WHOI oceanographers launch Spray gliders, which provide measurements below the surface of the Gulf Stream, and complement satellites that routinely measure water temperature at the ocean surface.

CREDIT

Photo by Robert Todd/© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Spray glider launch [VIDEO] |