New jet stream discovered in Jupiter's upper atmosphere

The University of the Basque Country's Planetary Sciences Group is leading the discovery made by an international team and based on the analysis of observations obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY

 

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2022.

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CREDIT: NASA/ESA/CSA AND JUPITER EARLY RELEASE SCIENCE TEAM. PROCESSED: JUDY SCHMIDT (PLANETARY SOCIETY) AND RICARDO HUESO (UPV/EHU).

High-speed jet streams are a common feature in the atmospheres of many planets. On the Earth, jet streams form at various latitudes and meander around the planet, changing latitude and reaching speeds approaching 400 km/h at an altitude of over 10 km above the surface. On the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, jet streams are one of the main features of the atmosphere; they are perfectly aligned with the parallels, and are known as zonal jets. On Jupiter these jets alternate in direction at different latitudes reaching maximum speeds close to 500 km/h.High-speed jet streams are a common feature in the atmospheres of many planets. On the Earth, jet streams form at various latitudes and meander around the planet, changing latitude and reaching speeds approaching 400 km/h at an altitude of over 10 km above the surface. On the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, jet streams are one of the main features of the atmosphere; they are perfectly aligned with the parallels, and are known as zonal jets. On Jupiter these jets alternate in direction at different latitudes reaching maximum speeds close to 500 km/h.

On 27 July 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observed the atmosphere of Jupiter as part of an international "Early Science" programme in which researchers from the Planetary Sciences Group of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) are participating.

Because Jupiter is a very bright target for the JWST (whose light-collecting area is 6.3 times bigger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope), the images were acquired at wavelengths in which most of the light is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere. So the observations focused on the wavelengths in which Jupiter is darkest. This also meant that at many of these wavelengths Jupiter had never been observed with the quality needed to resolve the details of the weather systems in its atmosphere. Thanks to the JWST's features, a three-dimensional view of Jupiter's weather systems could be obtained: higher clouds appear bright in these images, and deeper clouds appear as dark regions. The JWST observations were also designed to obtain a measurement of the movements of the atmosphere by taking two sets of images separated by a full rotation of the planet, thus enabling a detailed study to be made of the cloud movements.

A new jet stream on the planet's equator

The JWST images showed that the movements that occur in the clouds covering the equator are very different from those observed in the lower clouds. These clouds are so faint that no details can be seen in them in observations obtained from the Earth or even by different space missions. However, the detailed JWST images show that at the level of these clouds, winds reach speeds of 500 km/h, while in the lower clouds, located 30 km below, they only reach 250 km/hr.   

 

A universal phenomenon in Gas Giants

The study published in Nature Astronomy compares this new Jupiter jet with the structure of the equatorial jet stream of the gas giant Saturn, where in 2009 the UPV/EHU’s Planetary Sciences Group found a wind structure very similar to the one now revealed on Jupiter, and discovered on Saturn thanks to observations made by NASA's Cassini space probe [2-3]. On both planets, there is a fast, narrow equatorial jet at an altitude of about 200 mbar tracked by the rapid movement of equatorial clouds. On both Jupiter and Saturn, the elevated equatorial jets may be related to global temperature variations occurring in the atmospheres of these planets on a cyclical basis every few years, but which were thought to be limited in altitude at stratospheric levels to altitudes of 30-150 km above the level of the new equatorial jet stream. If the new Jupiter jet is related to these temperature oscillations in the upper atmosphere, then the equatorial jet stream should have a variable intensity on both Jupiter and Saturn, and also at much deeper levels than can be explained by existing atmospheric models. These intriguing phenomena occur near the tropopause of Jupiter and Saturn, precisely where the atmospheric dynamics change due to the fading effect of the Coriolis forces, and where the thermal properties of the atmosphere change dramatically. Future JWST observations of both Jupiter and Saturn may shed new light on these phenomena.

 

Bibliographical reference

[1] Hueso et al. An intense narrow equatorial jet in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere observed by JWST, Nature Astronomy (2023)

DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-02099-2

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02099-2
 

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JOURNAL

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-023-02099-2 

ARTICLE TITLE

An intense narrow equatorial jet in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere observed by JWST

The Crab Nebula seen in new light by NASA's Webb

Exquisite, never-before-seen details help unravel the supernova remnant’s puzzling history.

Reports and Proceedings

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

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THIS IMAGE BY NASA’S JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE’S NIRCAM (NEAR-INFRARED CAMERA) AND MIRI (MID-INFRARED INSTRUMENT) REVEALS NEW DETAILS IN INFRARED LIGHT. THE SUPERNOVA REMNANT IS COMPRISED OF SEVERAL DIFFERENT COMPONENTS, INCLUDING DOUBLY IONIZED SULFUR (REPRESENTED IN RED-ORANGE), IONIZED IRON (BLUE), DUST (YELLOW-WHITE AND GREEN), AND SYNCHROTRON EMISSION (WHITE). IN THIS IMAGE, COLORS WERE ASSIGNED TO DIFFERENT FILTERS FROM WEBB’S NIRCAM AND MIRI: BLUE (F162M), LIGHT BLUE (F480M), CYAN (F560W), GREEN (F1130W), ORANGE (F1800W), AND RED (F2100W).

 

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CREDIT: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, T. TEMIM (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY).

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example.

Using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a team led by Tea Temim at Princeton University is searching for answers about the Crab Nebula’s origins.

“Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula,” explained Temim.

At first glance, the general shape of the supernova remnant is similar to the optical wavelength image released in 2005 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: In Webb’s infrared observation, a crisp, cage-like structure of fluffy gaseous filaments are shown in red-orange. However, in the central regions, emission from dust grains (yellow-white and green) is mapped out by Webb for the first time.

Additional aspects of the inner workings of the Crab Nebula become more prominent and are seen in greater detail in the infrared light captured by Webb. In particular, Webb highlights what is known as synchrotron radiation: emission produced from charged particles, like electrons, moving around magnetic field lines at relativistic speeds. The radiation appears here as milky smoke-like material throughout the majority of the Crab Nebula’s interior.

This feature is a product of the nebula’s pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. The pulsar’s strong magnetic field accelerates particles to extremely high speeds and causes them to emit radiation as they wind around magnetic field lines. Though emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, the synchrotron radiation is seen in unprecedented detail with Webb’s NIRCam instrument.

To locate the Crab Nebula’s pulsar heart, trace the wisps that follow a circular ripple-like pattern in the middle to the bright white dot in the center. Farther out from the core, follow the thin white ribbons of the radiation. The curvy wisps are closely grouped together, outlining the structure of the pulsar’s magnetic field, which sculpts and shapes the nebula.

At center left and right, the white material curves sharply inward from the filamentary dust cage’s edges and goes toward the neutron star’s location, as if the waist of the nebula is pinched. This abrupt slimming may be caused by the confinement of the supernova wind’s expansion by a belt of dense gas.

The wind produced by the pulsar heart continues to push the shell of gas and dust outward at a rapid pace. Among the remnant’s interior, yellow-white and green mottled filaments form large-scale loop-like structures, which represent areas where dust grains reside.

The search for answers about the Crab Nebula’s past continues as astronomers further analyze the Webb data and consult previous observations of the remnant taken by other telescopes. Scientists will have newer Hubble data to review within the next year or so from the telescope’s reimaging of the supernova remnant. This will mark Hubble’s first look at emission lines from the Crab Nebula in over 20 years, and will enable astronomers to more accurately compare Webb and Hubble’s findings.

Learn More: Crab Nebula

Want to learn more? Through NASA’s Universe of Learning, part of NASA’s Science Activation program, explore images of the Crab Nebula from other telescopes, a 3D visualization, data sonification, and hands-on activities. These resources and more information about supernova remnants and star lifecycles can be found at NASA’s Universe of Learning.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

NASA’s Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

 

To advance space colonization, WVU research explores 3D printing in microgravity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

 

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IN THE LAB OF THE WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY MICROGRAVITY RESEARCH TEAM, UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENT RENEE GARNEAU WORKS ON A 3D PRINTER THAT’S CUSTOM-DESIGNED FOR OPERATION IN LITTLE TO NO GRAVITY. BY ENABLING LOW-WASTE MANUFACTURE OF EQUIPMENT THAT CAN PURIFY WATER AND PROVIDE UV SHIELDING, GARNEAU’S WORK COULD ENABLE EXTENDED MISSIONS INTO DEEP SPACE. 

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CREDIT: (WVU PHOTO/BRIAN PERSINGER)

Research from West Virginia University students and faculty into how 3D printing works in a weightless environment aims to support long-term exploration and habitation on spaceships, the moon or Mars.

Extended missions in outer space require the manufacture of crucial materials and equipment onsite, rather than transporting those items from Earth. Members of the Microgravity Research Team said they believe 3D printing is the way to make that happen.

The team’s recent experiments focused on how a weightless microgravity environment affects 3D printing using titania foam, a material with potential applications ranging from UV blocking to water purification. ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces published their findings.

“A spacecraft can’t carry infinite resources, so you have to maintain and recycle what you have and 3D printing enables that,” said lead author Jacob Cordonier, a doctoral student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. “You can print only what you need, reducing waste. Our study looked at whether a 3D-printed titanium dioxide foam could protect against ultraviolet radiation in outer space and purify water. 

“The research also allows us to see gravity’s role in how the foam comes out of the 3D printer nozzle and spreads onto a substrate. We’ve seen differences in the filament shape when printed in microgravity compared to Earth gravity. And by changing additional variables in the printing process, such as writing speed and extrusion pressure, we’re able to paint a clearer image of how all these parameters interact to tune the shape of the filament.”

Cordonier’s co-authors include current and former undergraduate students Kyleigh Anderson, Ronan Butts, Ross O’Hara, Renee Garneau and Nathanael Wimer. Also contributing to the paper were John Kuhlman, professor emeritus, and Konstantinos Sierros, associate professor and associate chair for research in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. 

Sierros has overseen the Microgravity Research Team’s titania foam studies since 2016. The work now happens in his WVU labs but originally required taking a ride on a Boeing 727. There, students printed lines of foam onto glass slides during 20-second periods of weightlessness when the jet was at the top of its parabolic flight path.

“Transporting even a kilogram of material in space is expensive and storage is limited, so we’re looking into what is called ‘in-situ resource utilization,’” Sierros said. “We know the moon contains deposits of minerals very similar to the titanium dioxide used to make our foam, so the idea is you don’t have to transport equipment from here to space because we can mine those resources on the moon and print the equipment that’s necessary for a mission.”

Necessary equipment includes shields against ultraviolet light, which poses a threat to astronauts, electronics and other space assets.

“On Earth, our atmosphere blocks a significant part of UV light — though not all of it, which is why we get sunburned,” Cordonier said. “In space or on the moon, there’s nothing to mitigate it besides your spacesuit or whatever coating is on your spacecraft or habitat.”

To measure titania foam’s effectiveness at blocking UV waves, “we would shine light ranging from the ultraviolet wavelengths up to the visible light spectrum,” he explained. “We measured how much light was getting through the titania foam film we had printed, how much got reflected back and how much was absorbed by the sample. We showed the film blocks almost all the UV light hitting the sample and very little visible light gets through. Even at only 200 microns thick, our material is effective at blocking UV radiation.”

Cordonier said the foam also demonstrated photocatalytic properties, meaning that it can use light to promote chemical reactions that can do things like purify air or water.

Team member Butts, an undergraduate from Wheeling, led experiments in contact angle testing to analyze how changes in temperature affected the foam’s surface energy. Butts called the research “a different type of challenge that students don't always get to experience,” and said he especially valued the engagement component. 

“Our team gets to do a lot of outreach with young students like the Scouts through the Merit Badge University at WVU. We get to show them what we do here as a way to say, ‘Hey, this is something you could do, too,’” Butts said.

According to Sierros, “We’re trying to integrate research into student careers at an early point. We have a student subgroup that’s purely hardware and they make the 3D printers. We have students leading materials development, automation, data analysis. The undergraduates who have been doing this work with the support of two very competitive NASA grants are participating in the whole research process. They have published peer-reviewed scientific articles and presented at conferences.”

Garneau, a student researcher from Winchester, Virginia, said her dream is for their 3D printer — custom designed to be compact and automated — to take a six-month trip to the International Space Station. That would enable more extensive monitoring of the printing process than was possible during the 20-second freefalls.

“This was an amazing experience,” Garneau said. “It was the first time I participated in a research project that didn't have predetermined results like what I have experienced in research-based classes. It was really rewarding to analyze the data and come to conclusions that weren't based on fixed expectations.

“Our approach can help extend space exploration, allowing astronauts to use resources they already have available to them without necessitating a resupply mission.”

WVU engineering students and Microgravity Research Team members Renee Garneau, Trenton Morris and Ronan Butts test a 3D printer the MRT lab has designed to operate in weightless environments like a spaceship, the moon or Mars. 

The Microgravity Research Team at WVU has developed a custom 3D printer for microgravity experiments. Foam sprays out of the nozzle on the right onto substrates housed in the sample holder on the left.

CREDIT

(WVU Photo/Brian Persinger)

JOURNAL

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

DOI

10.1021/acsami.3c09658 

ARTICLE TITLE

Direct Writing of a Titania Foam in Microgravity for Photocatalytic Applications

 

Study of 1,000 selfies helps explain how we use them to communicate

Scientists compile thousands of reactions to selfies to understand how we get information from them

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

People have used self-portraits to communicate information about themselves for centuries — and digital cameras make it easier to share a self-portrait than ever before. But even though selfies are now almost ubiquitous, we don’t understand how people use them to communicate. So scientists from the University of Bamberg set out to investigate the semantics of selfies.

“Although the term ‘selfies’ is now celebrating its 21st birthday, and although selfies are known in art history for nearly 200 years in photography and more than 500 years in paintings, we still lack a clear classification of the different types of selfies,” said Tobias Schneider, lead author of the study in Frontiers in Communication and PhD student at the Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences. 

Snapshots of selfhood

Previous studies have established that people taking a selfie have three main aims: self-expression, documentation, and performance. Some scientists have used accompanying hashtags and other metadata to decipher the meanings people try to convey with selfies, but this doesn’t consider the picture itself.   

To understand what kinds of meaning people ascribe to different selfies, the researchers asked people to describe their first impressions of a sample of selfies. These associations could then be compiled to work out how different types of selfie are understood by viewers.

“Most research addresses direct visual factors, neglecting associative factors that viewers have in mind when browsing through our selfie-oriented world,” said Professor Claus-Christian Carbon, senior author. “Here we used personal reports and associations to describe and categorize selfies in a systematic way.”

Picturing personalities

The scientists created their test dataset from a database of selfies called Selfiecity. They used only self-portraits without any text, taken by a mobile camera, using an individual’s own hands or a selfie stick. The 1,001 selfies remaining were presented at a standard size, on a plain grey background.

The scientists recruited 132 participants online. To avoid tiring participants, they used an algorithm to select 15 random selfies for each participant to review, ensuring that every selfie was evaluated by roughly the same number of people and that each person saw a variety of selfies. The scientists provided five text boxes per selfie for participants to write down their spontaneous reactions. 

Schneider and Carbon processed this data to collapse the respondents’ first impressions into 26 categories: for example, ‘mood’ covered comments the respondents made about the selfie-taker’s mood. The scientists then analyzed how frequently these categories appeared in responses, and if they appeared together.

Say it with a selfie

Cluster analysis identified five different clusters of categories, which the authors called ‘semantic profiles’. The largest was named ‘aesthetics’: pictures that showed off style or aesthetic experience. This was very closely followed by ‘imagination’, pictures that led the respondents to imagine where the selfie-taker was or what they were doing, and ‘trait’, images that elicited personality-related terms. Less popular, but still substantial, were the clusters ‘state’, pictures that looked at mood or atmosphere, and ‘theory of mind’, images that caused the respondents to make assumptions about a selfie-taker’s motives or identity. 

Each cluster showed a close association of different categories from respondents’ first impressions, suggesting the respondents were picking up on visual language which we use to communicate different aspects of ourselves — whether that’s our terrible mood or our great outfit.

 “We were quite impressed how often the category ‘theory of mind’ was expressed, because this is a very sophisticated way of communicating inner feelings and thoughts,” said Schneider. “It shows how effective selfies can be in terms of communication.”

The scientists pointed out that these semantic profiles may not be expressed or understood in the same way worldwide, so more research is needed. 

“Research never ends,” said Schneider. “We need more free reports on selfies, more descriptions of how people feel about the depicted persons and scenes, in order to better understand how selfies are used as a compact way of communicating to others.”

“We definitely need larger, more diverse, and cross-cultural samples in the future to understand how different groups and cultures use selfies to express themselves,” added Carbon.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Communication

DOI

10.3389/fcomm.2023.1233100 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

On the Semantics of Selfies (SoS)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Child Development Perspectives Journal Q&A: analyzing the stereotypes of adolescence

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

In Western cultures, adolescence is often viewed as a time of rebellion and irresponsibility. A new article published in the journal Child Development Perspectives synthesized recent research on stereotypes of adolescence using an interdisciplinary approach which integrates developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and neuroscience. 

The findings highlight the importance of avoiding the “one-size fits-all” assumptions about teen stereotypes across different cultures. In particular, the research suggests that how children navigate the adolescent years is driven in part by social constructions of this phase of development and calls for more attention to change negative stereotypes of adolescence at the policy and societal levels. 

The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) had the opportunity to chat about this important research and its implications with author Dr. Yang Qu from the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University in the United States. 

SRCD: What contributed to your interest in this area?

Dr. Qu: I developed a keen interest in teen stereotypes when I started to study cross-cultural differences in adolescent behavior and experiences. While there are many similarities in how children navigate the teen years across cultures, decades of research in psychology and anthropology have also revealed substantial cultural and individual variation during this critical period. This is very intriguing and leads me to explore the underlying reasons behind such differences. It became increasingly clear to me that in order to understand what contributes to cultural differences in adolescent development, it is important to study teen stereotypes. These widely held, oversimplified beliefs about teenagers are shaped by the cultural context in which youth live in. As shown in recent work in this area, youth’s internalized teen stereotypes act as self-fulfilling prophecies and guide their affect, cognition, and behavior. Therefore, teen stereotypes, together with many other sociocultural factors, provide important insights into what contributes to differences in adolescent trajectories.

SRCD: Please describe your process for synthesizing the recent research on adolescence stereotypes.

Dr. Qu: In this article, I tried to provide readers with a clear picture of the research on adolescent stereotypes, by synthesizing the seminal works of the past with the cutting-edge research of today. For example, decades ago, the pioneering research led by Dr. Christy Buchanan and her colleagues in the 1990s revealed that American parents and teachers often view the teen years in a negative light. Yet the story doesn't end there. Recent research on adolescent stereotypes build upon early work and expand in multiple ways, such as assessing teen stereotypes across cultures, examining how youth’s internalized teen stereotypes contributes to their behavioral, psychological, and neural development over time, as well as developing experimental interventions to change youth’s teen stereotypes. By including both historical landmarks and the latest frontiers of research, my intent is to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of this fascinating field.

SRCD: Please describe the different factors which impact adolescence stereotypes.

Dr. Qu: There are various factors that influence teen stereotypes. For example, cultural norms and values may shape such stereotypes. As I summarize in this article, recent cross-cultural studies not only identify differences in teen stereotypes in Western and non-Western regions, but also highlight important heterogeneity in non-Western regions in a globalized world. The cultural transmission of teen stereotypes may occur in youth’s everyday life, as parent, teachers, and peers convey their teen stereotypes to youth via expectations and interactions. As recently noted by scholars (e.g., Kendall-Taylor & Fuligni, 2022, Newsweek), it is also important to pay attention to how the media portrays adolescents. When the society and media begin to view teens in a more positive light, there will be more positive messages about them that may further promote youth’s flourishing.

SRCD: Can you explain the experimental interventions you recommend to help change teen stereotypes and promote positive youth development?

Dr. Qu: We are interested in developing culturally informed interventions that foster positive views of teens among youth, parents, and teachers. We have developed a brief counter-stereotyping intervention to change youth’s teen stereotypes and promote their positive development (Qu, Pomerantz, & Wu, 2020). In our intervention, the stereotype of teens as irresponsible was first described to youth as a commonly held belief among adults and in the media. This stereotype was then countered with the fact that teens frequently exhibit responsible behavior. Youth were subsequently guided to generate their own examples of responsible behavior among teens that they had observed, which helped them to deeply process the idea of teen responsibility through personally meaningful and relevant instances. 

Across two studies of over 400 Chinese youth, this counter-stereotyping intervention successfully changed youth’s stereotypes of adolescence, such that they saw teens in a more positive light. More importantly, as reflected in their reports of both intentions and daily behavior, children in the counter-stereotyping intervention showed increased school engagement and decreased risky behavior, compared to those in the control condition who listed typical attributes of teens. Findings from this research not only establish the causal link between youth’s teen stereotypes and their adjustment, but also provide a foundation for future large-scale school- and family-based interventions. 

SRCD: Do you have recommendations on future work in this area? 

Dr. Qu: In this article, I suggest four directions for future work in this area. First, to achieve a comprehensive understanding of cultural variation in teen stereotypes, it is critical to compare across a broader range of countries and across various ethnicities and socioeconomic statuses. The value of these cross-cultural studies goes beyond documenting how teen stereotypes vary across cultures; they also unveil how such differences in teen stereotypes contribute to cultural differences in adolescent development, which provide important insights into cultural construction of this developmental phase. 

Second, despite some initial evidence discussed in this article, how stereotypes of adolescence in social contexts (e.g., teen stereotypes conveyed by parents, peers, teachers, and social media) influence adolescent development remains largely unexplored. Hence, it is crucial to employ various methods (e.g., surveys, interviews, and experiments) to explore the process by which teen stereotypes within the social environment influence adolescent adjustment.

Third, more effort is needed to investigate how youth’s teen stereotypes evolve over the course of adolescence and whether the influence of such teen stereotypes on adolescent development vary across time. It is critical to take a holistic and dynamic perspective to explore how youth’s teen stereotypes influence their behavioral adjustment and brain development over a long period of time. For example, future work is needed to explore the complex processes among youth’s teen stereotypes, behavioral adjustment, and brain development, unveiling developmental processes across belief, behavioral, and brain levels.

Finally, a key endeavor is to develop culturally informed interventions that foster positive views of teens among youth, parents, and teachers. The progress in this area will provide evidence-based insights that inform educational practices and scalable interventions in diverse cultures.

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This work was funded by the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Society for Research in Child Development Small Grants Program for Early Career Scholars and the Center for Culture, Brain, Biology, and Learning at Northwestern University.

Summarized from Child Development Perspectives, “Stereotypes of Adolescence: Cultural Differences, Consequences, and Intervention,” Qu, Y. (Northwestern University). Copyright 2023 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved.

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JOURNAL

Child Development Perspectives

DOI

10.1111/cdep.12489 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Stereotypes of adolescence: Cultural differences, consequences, and intervention

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

The genetic heritage of the Denisovans may have left its mark on our mental health

The study reveals that the genetic variant observed, which affects zinc regulation, could have signified an evolutionary advantage in our ancestors’ adaptation to the cold

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA - BARCELONA

 

IMAGE: 

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE SUBSTITUTION IDENTIFIED IN THE SLC30A9 GENE IN CURRENT HUMAN POPULATIONS AND POSSIBLE SCENARIOS OF DENISOVAN INTROGRESSION. SLC30A9 ANCESTRAL CORRESPONDS TO THE VERSION OF THE GENE PRIOR TO THE CROSSING BETWEEN DENISOVANS AND SAPIENS. SLC30A9 VARIANT REFERS TO THE VERSION SHARED WITH DENISOVANS. CREDIT: JORGE GARCIA AND ELENA BOSCH. LICENSED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS 4.0. CREATED IN MAPCHART.

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CREDIT: JORGE GARCIA AND ELENA BOSCH. LICENSED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS 4.0. CREATED IN MAPCHART.

Modern humans left Africa some 60,000 years ago in the event known as “Out-of-Africa”. In Asia, they coincided with the Denisovans, and that encounter may have led to confrontations and collaborations, but also various crossbreeding. In fact, even today modern humans retain genetic variants of Denisovan origin in our genome, which are testimony to those initial interactions.

Now, a team led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), and by the UPF Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS), has identified one of the most widespread traces of the genetic heritage of the extinct Denisovans in modern humans. The teams of Elena Bosch, IBE principal investigator, and of Rubén Vicente, MELIS-UPF principal investigator, have discovered that this genetic adaptation helped ancestral populations of sapiens to adapt to the cold.

The variant observed, involved in zinc regulation and with a role in cellular metabolism, could also have predisposed modern humans to psychiatric disorders such as depression or schizophrenia.

 

Genetic variation in zinc regulation may have meant an evolutionary advantage

How adaptation has shaped current genetic diversity in human populations is a matter of great interest in evolutionary genetics.

Arising from this question, Elena Bosch’s team identified an adaptive variant among current human populations in a region of our genome that bears great similarity to the genome of an extinct ancestral population: the Denisovans.

“Through genomic analysis, we noted that the genetic variant observed came from our interbreeding with archaic humans in the past, possibly the Denisovans”, says Ana Roca-Umbert, co-first author of the study. The team has ruled out Neanderthal heritage, since these populations do not have this mutation.

“Apparently, the change was beneficial and proved a selective advantage for humans. As a consequence, this variation in the SLC30A9 gene was selected and has reached current populations”, adds Jorge Garcia-Calleja, co-first author of the study.

The Evolutionary Population Genetics Laboratory, directed by Bosch, wished to find out what changes are brought about by this genetic variation of Denisovan origin at the cellular level. “We discovered that this mutation surely had implications for the transport of zinc within the cell, and so we contacted Vicente's team”, recalls Elena Bosch, IBE principal investigator and co-leader of the study.

 

Zinc regulation: key to adapting to the cold

“Elena contacted me because her team had observed a change in an amino acid in a zinc transporter, which was very different between the populations of Africa and Asia today. From there, we started asking ourselves questions and looking for answers”, Rubén Vicente comments. His team, in the Biophysics of the Immune System group at the Laboratory of Molecular Physiology, undertook the technical challenge of studying the movement of intracellular zinc. 

Zinc, an essential trace element for human health, is an important messenger that transfers both information from the outside to the inside of cells and between different cellular compartments. A lack of zinc causes growth, neurological and immune disorders, although “its regulation is still poorly studied due to the lack of molecular tools to follow the flow of zinc”.

Vicente’s laboratory identified that the observed variant causes a new zinc balance within the cell, promoting a change in metabolism. By altering the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria of the cells, this variation causes a possible metabolic advantage to cope with a hostile climate. “The observed phenotype leads us to think of a possible adaptation to the cold”, Vicente asserts.

 

The Denisovan genetic heritage could affect the mental health of European and Asian populations

Zinc transport is also involved in nervous system excitability, and plays a role in people’s mental equilibrium and health.

The team points out that the variant found in this zinc transporter, which is expressed in all tissues of the body, is associated with a greater predisposition to suffering from some psychiatric diseases. These include anorexia nervosa, hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia.

 

“In the future, expanding this study to animal models could shed light on this predisposition to suffering from mental illnesses”, Vicente notes.

 

The genetic variant has left a global mark, except in Africa

Although the variant was established in Asia as a result of interbreeding between Denisovans and sapiens, it also spread to European and native American populations. In fact, it is found in populations all over the planet, although, in the case of African populations, it is much less frequent. 

The team points out that it is probably the Denisovan genetic adaptation to have the greatest geographical scope discovered to date. “For example, a variant in the EPAS1 gene inherited from the Denisovans allows adapting to life at altitude, but is found only in Tibetans. However, in our case, the impact extends to all populations outside Africa”, Bosch concludes.

Demonstration that part of the transporter is located in mitochondria by superresolution STED microscopy imaging with HEZ293 cells transfected with the zinc transporter ZnT9 (in green). In magenta the mitochondrial protein TOM 20 and in white the localization to mitochondria. Credit: Rubén Vicente.

CREDIT

Ruben Vicente

JOURNAL

PLoS Genetics

DOI

10.1371/journal.pgen.1010950 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

Human genetic adaptation related to cellular zinc homeostasis