It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 05, 2023
Climate-induced loss is impeding human rights in the Pacific
Climate change is impeding the human rights of a large group of people living in the Pacific, and findings substantiate a submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal responsibility of countries to act on climate change.
CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: DR ROSS WESTOBY, GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY CLIMATE ACTION BEACON.
Climate change is impeding the human rights of a large group of people living in the Pacific, a recent report in Nature reveals.
The paper substantiates a submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal responsibility of countries to act on climate change.
Evidence gathered in Vanuatu supports a clarification on loss and damage finance which could activate powerful legal tools to hold polluters accountable.
Research Fellow at the Griffith University Climate Action Beacon, Dr Ross Westoby said the report explores how climate-induced loss and damage in the Pacific is already occurring and outlines what can be done in response.
“Our findings show loss and damage to fundamental human rights is already occurring, will worsen, and undermine the right to a life of dignity,” Dr Westoby said.
“Bringing a human rights lens to climate change is new and seeks to shift the focus and attention onto the individual experiences of those suffering its impacts.
“If we don’t share the burden of mitigation and adaptation, we must share responsibility for violating someone’s human rights.
“At the national level, human rights impact assessments can inform national and sectoral policy planning and budgeting, ensuring climate policies align with affected peoples’ needs and rights and that effective redress is established with transparency and accountability.
“The detailed findings on the nature of and the experiences of loss and damage should inform climate policy, guiding international and national activities on what should be funded and targeted for effective redress and adaptation.”
Researchers found the most severe loss and damage now undermining the rights of Ni-Vanuatu are related to the right to a healthy environment and the ability to own, use, develop and control lands.
Climate change also effects rights to property, communal assets, standard of living, and family and social cohesion.
Examples of climate-induced loss include:
Loss of traditional medicines that impact people’s identity, health, human life, and well-being
Loss of infrastructure and precious cultural heritage such as gravesites due to flooding of low-lying areas, which also causes salinisation of freshwater tables and impinges on potable water
Reef degradation, increased coral bleaching and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish are a result of increased ocean temperatures and ocean acidification, which cascades into diminishing fishing resources and marine wildlife losses
Loss of identity and loss of traditional and cultural food sources is a result of the cascading effects of climate change affecting people’s diet, and human health
“An example and symbol of the cascading effects of climate change on human rights is the destruction of the yam,” Dr Westoby said.
“The yam is a traditional root crop and staple food widely used in Vanuatu and elsewhere in the Pacific Islands region and is the primary commodity of value for exchange.
“Rituals, rites, and customs of the yam are the main social fabric that binds kinship groups, tribes, communities, and society.”
Recommended approaches for addressing climate change impacts on human rights with the active participation of those most affected include:
Investment in education to improve recovery capacity and resilience and empower people to act and understand their rights
Recording and safeguarding Indigenous knowledge for future generations
Promoting cultural continuation to ensure the transmission of meanings, values, and historical traditions through generations
Building resilience through post-disaster planning to restore infrastructure and societal systems
Preservation of socio-ecological systems which underpin culture, community, well-being, and identity
The article authors include Karen E. McNamara, Rachel Clissold, Ross Westoby, Stephanie Stephens, George Koran, Willy Missack and Christopher Y. Bartlett.
University researchers from the UK, Germany and South Africa warn of a threat to scientific knowledge and the future of research in a paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, outlining the implications of changes to social media Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Over the course of 2023, numerous social media platforms including X, TikTok, and Reddit made substantial changes to their APIs – drastically reducing access or increasing charges for access, which the researchers say will in many cases make research harder.
APIs have been routinely tapped by researchers for large-scale data on social media users to enable academic research into behavioural patterns at individual, group, and population levels. This work has included predicting where conflict may occur and allocating disaster aid; and understanding the impacts of online polarization or misinformation on voting patterns. Changes to API access mean that this kind of research will be much harder to conduct.
Political stance/ affiliation, and health, among a variety of other variables, can no longer be researched at the individual level using X data. Reddit now prohibits the use of data generated by Reddit users for machine learning. This data been crucial for training ML/AI models to test how well they predict an outcome.
Dr Brit Davidson, from the University of Bath’s School of Management, said: “The changes are adversely affecting academics who want to study the impact of social media on mental health, on misinformation, political views and so on. It also inadvertently impacts app developers that have built their service on this source of information.
“It’s critical that research on people and society can access these large-scale data sets as there can be policy implications and far-reaching consequences if we get it wrong. Over time, we have many cases of where the lack of open science (sharing data, analysis, materials) impacts our ability to verify and check for science credibility. We’ve seen science discredited, which causes concern as to whether work can be reproduced or replicated.”
Tik Tok initially allowed access only for US academics, but in July expanded its Research API to Europe. However, its terms remain too restrictive to be compatible with research, stating that researchers must ‘refresh Research API data at least every fifteen days, and delete data [that is no longer available].’
Dr Joanne Hinds, also from the University of Bath, said: “It’s worth noting that changes to API access can be well intentioned and necessary. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal in 2018 led social media platforms to implement strict measures to prevent third-party users from gaining access to personal data without consent. They then enabled users to revoke app permissions, which gave users more control over their data to protect user privacy.
“However, this wave of changes is pushing researchers to abandon projects or to consider gathering data outside official means,” she said, “and that will, unless addressed, mean that we just simply can’t study important questions about these platforms which are used by millions of people every day.”
Sourcing data outside of the official API channels puts researchers into legal grey areas that is likely to violate terms. The ramifications of this yet are unknown, as the industry enters uncharted territory.
“New regulations are coming into effect in the European Union, likely in 2024, which aim to address the issue and appear to be pointing to new routes to access data which will be more sustainable, affordable, and protect users,” said Dr Davidson.
“The EU Digital Services Act aims to provide access to ‘very large online platforms’ for vetted researchers, with similar updates to GDPR Article 40. We wait to hear more about what vetting means in practice and the conditions of using the data.”
The study is authored by Brittany I. Davidson, Darja Wischerath, Daniel Racek, Douglas A. Parry, Emily Godwin, Joanne Hinds, Dirk van der Linden, Jonathan F. Roscoe, Laura Ayravainen, & Alicia G. Cork.
People feel more positive about planting trees and protecting rainforests as a means of combating climate change than they do about employing technological solutions, according to a new research paper in Global Environmental Change.
A survey of more than a million social media posts suggests that people feel more positive about Nature's ability to solve climate change than human technology, according to new research published in the journal Global Environmental Change.
Researchers analysing 1.5 million posts on X (formerly Twitter) using the latest artificial intelligence-driven language models found expressions of “disgust” and “fear” related to the term “geoengineering”, which is often associated with radical technology such as spraying aerosols into the atmosphere or solar space sails.
But posts about nature-based efforts to protect carbon-storing ecosystems like rainforests, kelp forests under the sea and peat bogs offered more positive expressions such as “joy”, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge, the Mercator Research Institute, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Boston University.
“Social media provides an opportunity to tap into the ocean of thoughts and feelings people are sharing in public conversations about emerging technologies,” said co-author and Assistant Professor Ramit Debnath, a Cambridge Zero Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
“Governments and global organisations need to consider how the voting public will engage with proposed solutions of climate action.”
According to forecasts from the UN body for assessing science related to climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the strategy of gradually reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane, will no longer be enough to limit global heating to below 2 degrees Celsius, a tipping point for the intensification of catastrophic weather events such as extreme heat, storms, droughts and floods.
The IPCC has said that in addition to the gradual reduction of global emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and heat in industry, homes and for travel and food production, humanity will need to actively ‘geoengineer’ climate solutions to prevent further warming through removing the greenhouse gases which trap energy from the sun, or by reflecting away excessive sunlight.
Researchers analysed X-user posts from 2006-2021 on 20 emerging climate technologies, from restoring ecosystems and planting trees to more invasive approaches like artificially modifying cloud production and solar radiation management, as well as generic ‘geoengineering’ posts.
Public opinion about these technologies is difficult to gauge through traditional surveying methods, so searching through posts on X is one way of capturing unvarnished opinions, the study’s authors said.
“When you're not familiar with [these] issues, you can be strongly influenced by the way the questions are asked,” says Finn Müller-Hansen, researcher in the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), and lead author.
“That's why we chose a different approach: we were interested in how people engage with these topics without being asked,” said Müller-Hansen.
Among the almost 800,000 posts on X generally discussing “geoengineering”, negative sentiments (present in 30% of all tweets) outweighed positive sentiments (6%).
However, when the researchers dug into opinions on specific solutions, they found a more positive reception for all greenhouse gas removal strategies (24% positive, 14% negative) than for technologies involving solar manipulation (9% positive, 24% negative).
This trend increases the more the removal is perceived as “natural”, and the greatest approval was found for tree-planting solutions, also known as “afforestation”.
The authors conclude the paper with a recommendation to avoid the use of the often-misunderstood term "geoengineering", which includes all the efforts to mitigate climate change from both technological to natural solutions.
“From our study, we’ve uncovered where the public anxiety about ‘geoengineering’ solutions is being directed,” said Debnath.
“It’s up to scientists and policymakers to either clear up these concerns and try to bring people around, or listen to the public, who at this moment are more supportive of nature-based solutions.”
Reference:
Müller-Hansen, F., Repke, T., Baum, C., Brutschin, E., Callaghan, M., Debnath, R., Lamb, W., Low, S., Lück, S., Roberts, C., Sovacool, B., Minx, C. (2023). Attention, sentiments and emotions towards emerging climate technologies on Twitter, Global Environmental Change. 83, p. 102765. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102765.
AN ARTIST'S RENDITION OF THE SCANDIUM NUCLEAR CLOCK. SCIENTISTS USED THE X-RAY PULSES AT THE EUROPEAN XFEL TO EXCITE IN THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS OF SCANDIUM — THE SORT OF PROCESSES THAT CAN GENERATE A CLOCK SIGNAL AT AN UNPRECEDENTED PRECISION OF ONE SECOND IN 300 BILLION YEARS.
CREDIT: EUROPEAN XFEL/HELMHOLTZ INSTITUTE JENA, TOBIAS WÜSTEFELD/RALF RÖHLSBERGER
An international research team involving Dr. Olga Kocharovskaya , a distinguished professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, has taken a major step toward development of a new generation of atomic clocks with mind-blowing potential affecting fundamental science and various industries, from nuclear physics to satellite navigation and telecommunications.
“Atomic clocks, such as the caesium-133 clock or the strontium-87 clock, rely on oscillations of electrons in an atom, which can oscillate at highly reliable frequencies when excited by microwave or optical radiation,” explained Kocharovskaya, principal investigator of the National Science Foundation (NSF) project that initiated and supported this research.
Scandium, an element used in aerospace components and sports equipment, enables an accuracy of one second in 300 billion years, or roughly a thousand times more precision than the current standard atomic clock. The combination of scandium-45 and ultra-bright X-ray pulses brings scientists a decisive step closer to creation of the first-ever nuclear clock that could harness the oscillation of the atomic nucleus rather than its electron shell.
“For purposes that demand such precision, including the study of certain aspects of relativity, gravitational theory and other physical phenomena such as dark matter, the nuclear clock is the ultimate timepiece," said Dr. Xiwen Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Kocharovskaya's group who co-authored the paper.
With their accuracy of up to one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000, Texas A&M physicist Dr. Grigory V. Rogachev notes that nuclear clocks could usher in a new era of precision timekeeping and enable transformative applications in myriad areas, resulting in a host of applications and advances.
”Humanity has been on the lookout for the technology to make the most precise clocks since the dawn of the modern ages,” said Rogachev, head of Texas A&M Physics and Astronomy and a member of the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute. “At present, atomic clocks are the best. Dr. Kocharovskaya and her collaborators are now making the first step toward a new, breakthrough technology. Her research opens a new pathway to utilize the unique properties of the scandium-45 isotope to create the most precise clock ever — the nuclear clock. This advancement may have exciting applications in extreme metrology, ultra-high spectroscopy and potentially numerous other fields.”
Kocharavskaya’s research interests during the past decade have been focused on extending the field of traditional quantum optics — which she describes as dealing with controllable resonant interactions between optical photons and atomic transitions — into the emerging field of nuclear/x-ray quantum optics focused on control of resonant interaction between x-ray photons and nuclear transitions. In the process, she identified scandium-45 with its long-lived first-excited energy state as the superior candidate both for quantum nuclear storage and the nuclear clock. The main question, she says, was whether it was feasible to reach this state with available x-ray sources.
Together with Shvyd’ko, who had envisioned the high potential of scandium-45 for super-resolution-coherent-forward nuclear spectroscopy along with a possibility of its resonant excitation by X-rays from an emerging new generation of accelerator-based facilities 30 years ago, Kocharovskaya wrote a proposal to the NSF aimed at resonant excitation of a scandium-45 nuclear isomer using X-ray pulses.
“Initially it received mixed reviews, as it was considered a high-risk/high payoff project, but eventually, it was funded, allowing us to plan the experiment at EuXFEL,” said Kocharovskaya, a member of the Texas A&M Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering.
Kocharovskaya credits Shvyd'ko as not only the leader of the group’s research but also an inspiration for the entire team. From coordinating the efforts of all the groups entering every detail of the project to running weekly Zoom meetings discussing the multiple challenges and progress in preparation for the experiment, she says his leadership and hard work provided a tangible example of precisely what it means to see a long-term scientific dream become a reality. In addition, she notes that the project would not be successful without the major contributions of their German colleagues: Dr. Ralf Röhlsberger at DESY and the Helmholtz Institute, Jena; Dr. Jörg Evers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg; and Drs. Anders Madsen and Gianlcuca Geloni at EuXFEL, along with the groups they each lead.
“As soon as the resonance was seen within the first several hours of the data collection, we all joyfully celebrated this success,” she added. “It was rewarding for all of us, but especially for Yuri, who realized a high scientific potential of scandium-45 for super-resolution nuclear spectroscopy and the possibility to excite it with modern accelerator-based X-ray sources 33 years ago.”
Never one to rest on their laurels, the team already is focused on next steps and goals, starting with determining the resonant transition energy with even higher accuracy and measuring the exact lifetime of an isomer state. In addition, there’s also observation of the coherent forward nuclear scattering and measuring the linewidth of the nuclear transition.
“The next two steps can be achieved in a relatively simple way,” Zhang acknowledged. “While the third step is extremely challenging, it's absolutely critical in order to estimate a projected accuracy and stability of any future nuclear clock. As a group and as a broader research team, we all look forward to the challenge.”
An international research team involving Dr. Olga Kocharovskaya , a distinguished professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, has taken a major step toward development of a new generation of atomic clocks with mind-blowing potential affecting fundamental science and various industries, from nuclear physics to satellite navigation and telecommunications.
“Atomic clocks, such as the caesium-133 clock or the strontium-87 clock, rely on oscillations of electrons in an atom, which can oscillate at highly reliable frequencies when excited by microwave or optical radiation,” explained Kocharovskaya, principal investigator of the National Science Foundation (NSF) project that initiated and supported this research.
Scandium, an element used in aerospace components and sports equipment, enables an accuracy of one second in 300 billion years, or roughly a thousand times more precision than the current standard atomic clock. The combination of scandium-45 and ultra-bright X-ray pulses brings scientists a decisive step closer to creation of the first-ever nuclear clock that could harness the oscillation of the atomic nucleus rather than its electron shell.
“For purposes that demand such precision, including the study of certain aspects of relativity, gravitational theory and other physical phenomena such as dark matter, the nuclear clock is the ultimate timepiece," said Dr. Xiwen Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Kocharovskaya's group who co-authored the paper.
With their accuracy of up to one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000, Texas A&M physicist Dr. Grigory V. Rogachev notes that nuclear clocks could usher in a new era of precision timekeeping and enable transformative applications in myriad areas, resulting in a host of applications and advances.
”Humanity has been on the lookout for the technology to make the most precise clocks since the dawn of the modern ages,” said Rogachev, head of Texas A&M Physics and Astronomy and a member of the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute. “At present, atomic clocks are the best. Dr. Kocharovskaya and her collaborators are now making the first step toward a new, breakthrough technology. Her research opens a new pathway to utilize the unique properties of the scandium-45 isotope to create the most precise clock ever — the nuclear clock. This advancement may have exciting applications in extreme metrology, ultra-high spectroscopy and potentially numerous other fields.”
Kocharavskaya’s research interests during the past decade have been focused on extending the field of traditional quantum optics — which she describes as dealing with controllable resonant interactions between optical photons and atomic transitions — into the emerging field of nuclear/x-ray quantum optics focused on control of resonant interaction between x-ray photons and nuclear transitions. In the process, she identified scandium-45 with its long-lived first-excited energy state as the superior candidate both for quantum nuclear storage and the nuclear clock. The main question, she says, was whether it was feasible to reach this state with available x-ray sources.
Together with Shvyd’ko, who had envisioned the high potential of scandium-45 for super-resolution-coherent-forward nuclear spectroscopy along with a possibility of its resonant excitation by X-rays from an emerging new generation of accelerator-based facilities 30 years ago, Kocharovskaya wrote a proposal to the NSF aimed at resonant excitation of a scandium-45 nuclear isomer using X-ray pulses.
“Initially it received mixed reviews, as it was considered a high-risk/high payoff project, but eventually, it was funded, allowing us to plan the experiment at EuXFEL,” said Kocharovskaya, a member of the Texas A&M Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering.
Kocharovskaya credits Shvyd'ko as not only the leader of the group’s research but also an inspiration for the entire team. From coordinating the efforts of all the groups entering every detail of the project to running weekly Zoom meetings discussing the multiple challenges and progress in preparation for the experiment, she says his leadership and hard work provided a tangible example of precisely what it means to see a long-term scientific dream become a reality. In addition, she notes that the project would not be successful without the major contributions of their German colleagues: Dr. Ralf Röhlsberger at DESY and the Helmholtz Institute, Jena; Dr. Jörg Evers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg; and Drs. Anders Madsen and Gianlcuca Geloni at EuXFEL, along with the groups they each lead.
“As soon as the resonance was seen within the first several hours of the data collection, we all joyfully celebrated this success,” she added. “It was rewarding for all of us, but especially for Yuri, who realized a high scientific potential of scandium-45 for super-resolution nuclear spectroscopy and the possibility to excite it with modern accelerator-based X-ray sources 33 years ago.”
Never one to rest on their laurels, the team already is focused on next steps and goals, starting with determining the resonant transition energy with even higher accuracy and measuring the exact lifetime of an isomer state. In addition, there’s also observation of the coherent forward nuclear scattering and measuring the linewidth of the nuclear transition.
“The next two steps can be achieved in a relatively simple way,” Zhang acknowledged. “While the third step is extremely challenging, it's absolutely critical in order to estimate a projected accuracy and stability of any future nuclear clock. As a group and as a broader research team, we all look forward to the challenge.”
CREDIT: EMILIO NANNI/SLAC NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY
Ever since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, physicists have wanted to build new particle colliders to better understand the properties of that elusive particle and probe elementary particle physics at ever-higher energy scales.
The trick is, doing so takes energy – a lot of it. A typical collider takes hundreds of megawatts – the equivalent of tens of millions of modern lightbulbs – to operate. That's to say nothing of the energy it takes to build the devices, and it all adds up to one thing: A lot of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Now, researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have thought through how to make one proposal, the Cool Copper Collider (C3), more energy efficient.
To understand how to do so, they considered three key aspects that apply to any accelerator design: how scientists would operate the collider, how the collider itself is built in the first place and even where the collider is built – which turns out to have a significant, if indirect, impact on the project's overall carbon footprint.
"When discussing big science, it's mandatory now to think not only in terms of financial costs, but also environmental impact," said Caterina Vernieri, an assistant professor at SLAC and one of the co-authors of the new paper, which was published in PRX Energy.
Emilio Nanni, an assistant professor at SLAC and another co-author, agreed. "As scientists we all hope to inspire the public and future generations not only through our discoveries, but also through our actions," Nanni said. "This requires that we consider both the potential scientific impact and the overall impact on our community." Making facilities more sustainable, he said, will help achieve both goals.
A plethora of options
C3 is one of a number of different proposals for a next-generation accelerator capable of probing the Higgs and beyond, although they all follow one of two basic designs: linear accelerators, such as C3and the proposed International Linear Collider, and synchrotrons, or future circular accelerators, such as the Future Circular Collider or the Circular Electron Positron Collider.
Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Notably, synchrotrons can re-circulate particle beams, meaning they can collect data over many loops. However, they hit a limit, because charged particles like protons and electrons lose energy when their paths are bent into a circle, driving up power consumption. Linear accelerators don't have the energy loss problem allowing them to achieve higher energy and open up the possibility for new measurements, but they use the beam only once and to achieve higher data rates they need to work with intense beams.
C3 aims to solve the length-versus-energy limitations of most linear accelerators with a new design, including more precisely tailored electromagnetic fields fed into the accelerator at more points as well as a new cryogenic cooling system. The project also aims to use more interchangeable parts and a construction approach that could significantly lower costs, ultimately resulting in a relatively low-cost and small collider – as short as about five miles – that could nonetheless probe the extreme frontiers of particle physics.
Making big physics more sustainable
Still, the proposed C3 collider would take a lot of resources to build and operate, so its proponents addressed a growing concern by taking the carbon footprint of major physics projects into account, starting with how they would operate the accelerator itself.
Historically, physicists did not pay much attention to how they operated accelerators, at least in terms of energy efficiency. The SLAC and Stanford team found, however, that subtle changes, such as changing the structure of the particle beam and making improvements in the operation of klystrons, which create the electromagnetic fields that drive the beam, could make a difference. Taken together, these improvements could cut C3's power needs from around 150 megawatts to perhaps 77 megawatts, or nearly in half. "I would happy with 50% of that," Vernieri said.
On the other hand, the team found, construction itself is likely to be responsible for the bulk of the carbon footprint for C3– especially as the world shifts to using more renewable energy. The researchers suggest that using different materials, such as different forms of concrete, as well as attending to how materials are manufactured and transported, could help lower the global warming impact. C3 is also significantly smaller than other accelerator proposals – only eight kilometers long – which would reduce the overall use of materials and allow builders to select sites that could simplify and speed up construction.
The researchers also considered where the C3 project would be located, since that could affect the mix of fossil-fuel versus renewable energy that powered the collider, or potentially building a dedicated solar farm that would, along with an energy storage system, cover the accelerator's needs.
How colliders stack up
Finally, the SLAC-Stanford team looked at how C3 might compare with other future collider proposals, as well as how linear and circular colliders compare, when each collider performs similar measurements.
Based on their analysis and similar sustainability studies for other accelerators, the team found that construction is likely to be the main driver of a project's carbon footprint, but that circular colliders capable of similar physics goals would generally have higher emissions related to construction. Likewise, shorter accelerators such as C3 and another proposal, the Compact Linear Collider, would have less global warming potential compared to longer ones.
"It's so new as a field," Vernieri said of studying the sustainability of physics projects, but a necessary one. "There is a whole new discussion at least posing the question of the carbon footprint of particle physics."
Alaskans and visitors may be able to see an artificial airglow in the sky created by the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program during a four-day research campaign that starts Saturday.
Scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Cornell University, University of Colorado Denver, University of Florida and Georgia Institute of Technology will conduct a variety of experiments at the UAF-operated research site.
The experiments will focus on the ionosphere, the region of the atmosphere between about 30 and 350 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Scientists will investigate ionosphere mechanisms that cause optical emissions. They’ll also try to understand whether certain plasma waves — gas so hot that electrons get knocked off atoms — amplify other very low frequency waves. And they’ll investigate how satellites can use plasma waves in the ionosphere for collision detection and avoidance.
Each day, the airglow could be visible up to 300 hundred miles from the HAARP facility in Gakona. The site lies about 200 miles northeast of Anchorage and 230 miles southeast of Fairbanks, or about 300 to 350 kilometers.
HAARP creates airglow by exciting electrons in Earth’s ionosphere, similar to how solar energy creates natural aurora, with on and off pulses of high-frequency radio transmissions. HAARP’s Ionospheric Research Instrument, a phased array of 180 high-frequency antennas spread across 33 acres, can radiate 3.6 megawatts into the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.
The airglow, if visible, will appear as a faint red or possibly green patch. Because of the way the human eye operates, the airglow might be easier to see when looking just to the side.
HAARP will create an airglow at a specific point in the sky. The angle of visibility for anyone wanting to look for it will depend on a person’s distance from HAARP.
HAARP transmission frequencies will vary but will occur between 2.8 and 10 megahertz. Actual transmit days and times are highly variable based on real-time ionospheric and/or geomagnetic conditions.
Additional information about the research campaign will be available on the HAARP website.
The National Science Foundation in 2021 awarded the UAF Geophysical Institute a five-year, $9.3 million grant to establish the Subauroral Geophysical Observatory at HAARP. The observatory explores Earth’s upper atmosphere and geospace environment.
The grant has supported several HAARP research campaigns, including this one. It also helped fund the return to HAARP of the Polar Aeronomy and Radio Science Summer School, which hosted more than 50 researchers in August.
The Air Force originally developed and owned HAARP but transferred the research instruments to UAF in August 2015. UAF operates the site under an agreement with the Air Force.
Pilots flying in the Gulkana area are asked to check with the Federal Aviation Administration for temporary flight restriction details.
Study shows that smoking ‘stops’ cancer-fighting proteins, causing cancer and making it harder to treat
In-depth analysis links harmful DNA mutations to tobacco smoking and other causes of cancer
November 3, TORONTO — Scientists at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) have uncovered one way tobacco smoking causes cancer and makes it harder to treat by undermining the body’s anti-cancer safeguards.
Their new study, published today in Science Advances, links tobacco smoking to harmful changes in DNA called ‘stop-gain mutations’ that tell the body to stop making certain proteins before they are fully formed.
They found that these stop-gain mutations were especially prevalent in genes known as ‘tumour-suppressors’, which make proteins that would normally prevent abnormal cells from growing.
“Our study showed that smoking is associated with changes to DNA that disrupt the formation of tumour suppressors,” says Nina Adler, a University of Toronto PhD student who led the study during her postgraduate research in Dr. Jüri Reimand’s lab at OICR. “Without them, abnormal cells are allowed to keep growing unchecked by the cell’s defenses and cancer can develop more easily.”
Adler, Reimand and colleagues used powerful computational tools to analyze DNA from more than 12,000 tumour samples across 18 different types of cancer. Their analysis showed a strong link between stop-gain mutations in lung cancer and the telltale ‘footprint’ that smoking leaves in DNA.
The researchers then looked at whether how much someone smoked had an impact. Sure enough, their analysis showed that more smoking led to more of these harmful mutations, which can ultimately make cancer more complex and harder to treat.
“Tobacco does a lot of damage to our DNA, and that can have a major impact on the function of our cells,” says Reimand, an OICR Investigator and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. “Our study highlights how tobacco smoking actually deactivates critical proteins, which are the building blocks of our cells, and the impact that can have on our long-term health.”
The study also identified other factors and processes responsible for creating large numbers of stop-gain mutations, which are also called ‘nonsense’ mutations. Some, like a group of enzymes called APOBEC that is strongly linked to stop-gain mutations in breast cancer and other cancer types, occur naturally in the body. Other factors like unhealthy diet and alcohol consumption are also likely to have similar damaging effects on DNA, but Reimand says more information is needed to fully understand how that works.
As for smoking, Adler says the findings from this study are an important piece of the puzzle behind a leading cause cancer in the world.
“Everyone knows that smoking can cause cancer, but being able to explain one of the ways this works at a molecular level is an important step in understanding how our lifestyle affects our risk of cancer,” Adler says.
OICR President and Scientific Director Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi says these new insights should reinforce that tobacco smoking is one of the biggest threats to our health.
“This is further proof of the immense damage smoking has on our bodies, and further evidence that stopping smoking is always the right choice,” Radvanyi says.
OICR is a collaborative, not-for-profit research institute funded by the Government of Ontario. We conduct and enable high-impact translational cancer research to accelerate the development of discoveries for patients around the world while maximizing the economic benefit of this research for the people of Ontario. For more information visit http://www.oicr.on.ca.
The views expressed are those of OICR and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Province of Ontario.
