Monday, January 27, 2025

SPACE/COSMOS

New measurements of solar radiative opacity thanks to helioseismology

Researchers have developed an innovative method using helioseismology to measure solar radiative opacity under extreme conditions

University of Liège

SOHO image of the sun — image:
SOHO's EIT (Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope) images the solar atmosphere at several wavelengths and, therefore, shows solar material at different temperatures. In the images taken at 304 Angstroms, the bright material is at 60 000 to 80 000K. In those taken at 171, at 1 million Kelvin. 195 Angstrom images correspond to about 1.5 million Kelvin. The hotter the temperature, the higher you look in the solar atmosphere
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Credit: SOHO instrument consortium

Researchers have pioneered an innovative method using helioseismology to measure the solar radiative opacity under extreme conditions. This groundbreaking work, published in Nature Communications, not only reveals gaps in our understanding of atomic physics but also confirms recent experimental results, thereby opening new perspectives in astrophysics and nuclear physics.

Helioseismology is a discipline dedicated to studying the Sun's acoustic oscillations, enabling us to probe the interior of our star with remarkable precision. By analysing these waves, it is possible to reconstruct fundamental parameters such as the density, temperature, and chemical composition of the Sun's plasma—essential elements for understanding how our star works and evolves. This method transforms the Sun into a true astrophysical laboratory, providing crucial data for refining stellar models and better understanding the evolution of stars in the Universe.

A new international study, led by Gaël Buldgen, a researcher at the University of Liège, has used helioseismic techniques to provide an independent measurement of the absorption of high-energy radiation by the solar plasma in the deep layers of its structure. This collaborative work sheds new light on solar radiative opacity, a crucial physical quantity for understanding the interaction between matter and radiation in the extreme conditions of the Sun's interior. The results confirm observations made in renowned American laboratories such as the Sandia National Laboratories and ongoing efforts at the Livermore National Laboratory, while revealing persistent gaps in our understanding of atomic physics and differences between the predictions of research groups at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Ohio State University and the research centre of the CEA Paris-Saclay in France.

Unprecedented precision in stellar modelling

The scientific team used advanced numerical tools developed at ULiège, drawing on the university's expertise in helioseismology and stellar modelling. "By detecting the Sun's acoustic waves with unparalleled precision, we can reconstruct our star's internal properties, in much the same way as we would deduce the characteristics of a musical instrument from the sounds it produces", explains Gaël Buldgen.

The precision of helioseismic measurements is exceptional: they allow us to estimate the mass of a cubic centimetre of matter inside the Sun with an accuracy surpassing that of a high-precision kitchen scale without ever seeing or touching the matter. Helioseismology, developed at the end of the twentieth century, has played a major role in advancing fundamental physics. In particular, it has contributed to major discoveries, such as neutrino oscillations, which the 2015 Nobel Prize recognised. These advances demonstrated that solar models were not to blame for the origin of this phenomenon. Still, adjustments were needed with the revision of the solar chemical composition in 2009, confirmed in 2021. This revision caused a crisis in solar models, which no longer agreed with the helioseismic observations.

To meet this challenge, advanced tools have been developed at the University of Liège, initially as part of doctoral work (1), and then enriched through international collaborations in Birmingham and Geneva. These tools have made it possible to revisit the internal thermodynamic conditions of the Sun and to reopen an issue that the scientific community had somewhat neglected. At the same time, the work carried out in 2015 by James Bailey at Sandia National Laboratory highlighted the crucial role of radiative opacity. The first experimental measurements were first met with some skepticism, as they revealed significant differences with theoretical predictions.

Today's helioseismic measure provides valuable confirmation and makes it possible to specify the temperature, density and energy regimes in which these experiments should be concentrated in order to better reproduce solar conditions. In addition, the Z Machine experiments, although extremely valuable, have prohibitive energy and financial costs. Helioseismic measurements, on the other hand, offer an economical and complementary alternative while guiding experimentalists towards optimal windows for their laboratory measurements.

The implications of this research extend far beyond stellar modelling. It improves the accuracy of the theoretical models used to estimate the age and mass of stars and exoplanets, thereby contributing to our understanding of galactic evolution and stellar populations. "The Sun is our great calibrator of stellar evolution, our preferred laboratory for finding out whether we are on the right track, or not. These results are even more important as we prepare to launch the PLATO satellite in 2026, one of the objectives of which is to accurately characterize solar-type stars to find habitable terrestrial planets. What's more, these results have resonances in nuclear fusion, as the Sun remains the only stable nuclear fusion reactor in our solar system. Improving our understanding of the Sun's internal conditions directly impacts fusion energy research, a key issue in the development of clean energy solutions," adds Gaël Buldgen.

A call for refined theoretical models

The results highlight the need to improve existing atomic models to resolve the discrepancies between experimental observations and theoretical calculations. These advances should redefine our understanding of stellar evolution and the physical processes that govern the structure and evolution of stars. This research confirms the University of Liège's position at the cutting edge of astrophysical science, demonstrating the key role of helioseismology in unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos.

ESA’s mission Plato, PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, will use its 26 cameras to study terrestrial exoplanets in orbits up to the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The mission will discover the sizes of exoplanets and discover exomoons and rings around them. Plato will also characterise their host stars by studying tiny light variations in the starlight it receives.

Credit

ESA

The Z machine, the largest X-ray generator in the world, is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As part of the Pulsed Power Program, which started at Sandia National Laboratories in the 1960s, the Z machine concentrates electrical energy and turns it into short pulses of enormous power, which can then be used to generate X-rays and gamma rays.

Credit

Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories

Scientific reference

1) Gaël Buldgen, Patrick Eggenberger, Vladimir A.Baturin, Thierry Corbard, Joergen Christensen-Dalsgaard, Sébastien Salmon, Arlette Noels, Anna, V., Oreshina, Richard Scuflaire Seismic solar models from Ledoux discriminant inversions, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2020, Volume 642, id.A36, pp.

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/S41467-024-54793-Y

Article Title

Helioseismic inference of the solar radiative opacity

Article Publication Date

27-Jan-2025

SwRI-designed experiments corroborate theory about how Titan maintains its atmosphere

Laboratory experiments produced gases similar to those on Saturn’s moon

Southwest Research Institute

Tube of Organica — image:
To understand the persistent thick atmosphere on Saturn’s largest moon, SwRI worked with the Carnegie Institution for Science Laboratory to create conditions mimicking those at Titan’s rocky core. These laboratory experiments heated and pressurized tubes of organics, producing nitrogen and methane, gases necessary to maintain Titan’s atmosphere.
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Credit: Southwest Research Institute

SAN ANTONIO — January 27, 2025 – Southwest Research Institute partnered with the Carnegie Institution for Science to perform laboratory experiments to better understand how Saturn’s moon Titan can maintain its unique nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system and the only one that has a significant atmosphere.

“While just 40% the diameter of the Earth, Titan has an atmosphere 1.5 times as dense as the Earth’s, even with a lower gravity,” said SwRI’s Dr. Kelly Miller, lead author of a paper about these findings published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. “Walking on the surface of Titan would feel a bit like scuba diving.”

The origin, age, and evolution of this atmosphere, which is roughly 95% nitrogen and 5% methane, has puzzled scientists since it was discovered in 1944.

“The presence of methane is critical to the existence of Titan’s atmosphere,” Miller says. “The methane is removed by reactions caused by sunlight and would disappear in about 30 million years after which the atmosphere would freeze onto the surface. Scientists think an internal source must replenish the methane, or else the atmosphere has a geologically short lifetime.”

Miller was also the lead author of a 2019 paper published in the Astrophysical Journal that proposed a theoretical model of how the atmosphere may have developed and is replenished over the years. The paper theorizes that large amounts of highly complex organic materials are heated up in Titan’s rocky interior, releasing nitrogen as well as carbon gases like methane. The gas then seeps out at the surface, where it forms a thick atmosphere around the moon. This theory is corroborated by the recent experiments that heated organic materials to temperatures of 250 to 500 Celsius at pressures up to 10 kilobars to simulate the interior conditions of Titan. The experiments produced carbon gases like carbon dioxide and methane in sufficient quantities to help supply Titan’s atmospheric reservoir.

The paper is largely based on data from NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft mission, which launched in 1997 and explored the Saturn system from 2004 to 2017. NASA plans to launch its next mission to the Saturnian system in 2028 with a spacecraft dubbed Dragonfly. It will include a quadcopter designed to explore Titan up close and investigate whether environments at Titan could have ever been conducive for life. Miller is working next with a global team of researchers to study the habitability of the subsurface liquid ocean.

To access the Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta paper “Experimental heating of complex organic matter at Titan’s interior conditions supports contributions to atmospheric N2 and CH4” see http://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2024.12.026 (link is external).

For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.

Journal

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta

DOI

10.1016/j.gca.2024.12.026

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Experimental heating of complex organic matter at Titan’s interior conditions supports contributions to atmospheric N2 and CH4

Article Publication Date

1-Feb-2025

Understanding the science of meaty flavors could be key to sustainable diets, says academic

Taylor & Francis Group

Understanding the science behind meaty tastes and textures could be the key for more people switch to a planet-friendly plant diet, researchers suggest.

Ole G. Mouritsen, a professor of gastrophysics, addresses the urgent need to make changes to culinary cultures where animal-based proteins play a central role.

Replicating a little-known meaty flavour and a sensation of richness could encourage more plant-based eating, he explains.

“To ensure that there is enough food for a growing world population, to lessen the burden on the environment, and to promote healthier, sustainable eating patterns, it is crucial to transition to a diet that focuses primarily on plants as the key ingredients,” he explains. “Yet, many people dislike the taste of plants because of their texture and lack of sweetness and umami.”

‘Umami’ is the fifth, and often-overlooked, sister taste to the much more familiar sweet, salty, sour and bitter flavours. And ‘koku’ is what Japanese researchers have crowned the experience of food as ‘mouthful’, ‘rich’ and ‘continuous’. When combined, these two could be game-changers for many people wanting to eat more plant-based foods but struggling with the tastes, Mouritsen suggests.

A new book offers key scientific descriptions of the physical characteristics of plants, mushrooms, algae, and fungi and their nutritional components, along with information about creation of texture and flavour to make plant-forward eating more palatable. Plant-Forward Cuisine is written by Mouritsen, Klavs Styrbaek, who is a chef and author, and Mariela Johansen, a translator.

In the book, the authors reveal the science behind umami and koku.

They say that the key to umami is free glutamate and nucleotides which are found in animal products by rarely in plants but in some fruits like sun-ripened tomatoes as well as in mushrooms and certain seaweeds.

Explaining that the reason we crave umami, and often struggle to find vegetables enticing, relates to fundamental plant biology and human evolution.

The authors say: “The combination of the sweet tastes from ripe fruits and of savoury tastes from cooked meat became deeply embedded early on and these have, to a large extent, driven our food preferences for many millennia.”

The science underlying koku relates to small pieces of proteins, called dipeptides and tripeptides which elicit the koku sensation. Dipeptides are known to work within umami-tasting foods and are particularly active in Gouda, Parmesan, fermented soy beans and yeast extracts. And koku sensations can be created when tripeptides stimulate the calcium channels on the surface of the tongue. Prominent within these tripeptides are types of glutathione which – even in very small amounts – can create the sense of koku. They can be found in garlic, beef, chicken, fish sauce, shrimp paste, soy sauce, scallops and beer.

On koku, the authors say: “Koku is a hard-to-define Japanese expression for a special concept, associated with a taste attribute that combines elements of continuity, mouthfulness and complexity. It can enhance the sensation of umami, sweet and salty and at the same time suppress bitterness.”

The authors do stress however that it is not necessary to embrace a fully vegetarian or vegan diet. Rather, they suggest that taking a flexitarian approach, which incorporates small quantities of animal products to elicit umami, may be a more viable and lasting solution for people at large, suggesting: “small quantities of meat, fish, shellfish, molluscs, and roe, can be used to great effect in a supporting role to make a dish more appealing.”

DOI

10.4324/9781003478959

Purdue researcher studies innovative strategies to effectively promote plant-based food choices through online shopping nudges

Results offer strategies for encouraging choices that benefit health and the environment

Purdue University

Purdue agricultural economist — image:
Purdue researcher Bhagyashree Katare studies innovative strategies to effectively promote plant-based food choices through online shopping nudges.
Credit: Purdue Agricultural Communications/Joshua Clark
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Credit: Purdue Agricultural Communications/Joshua Clark

Purdue researcher studies innovative strategies to effectively promote plant-based food choices through online shopping nudges

Results offer strategies for encouraging choices that benefit health and the environment

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Nudging with carbon footprint labeling and product categorization motivates online shoppers to select plant-based foods, according to new research published by agricultural economists at Purdue University and the University of Kentucky.

“A lot of research has been done on point-of-purchase nudges, but that has been done in a physical setting. In this study, we look at that in the growing domain of online grocery shopping,” said Bhagyashree Katare, associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. “It provides actionable evidence that small interventions can increase the selection of plant-based products or healthy products.”

Katare and co-author Shuoli Zhao, assistant professor of agricultural economics at the University of Kentucky, generated their results using the Open Science Online Grocery platform. The platform simulates a typical online grocery shopping experience by listing more than 11,000 food products across all product categories, from produce to beverages.

Katare and Zhao published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper appears in the PNAS collection of special features on the sustainability of animal-sourced foods and plant-based alternatives. Their study was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.

Restaurants and cafeterias have effectively used nudges to promote sustainable consumption. Such nudges have been less effective, however, in educating consumers with information about the environmental impact of their choices.

“Empirical evidence shows that carbon footprint labeling can steer consumers toward more sustainable food choices at supermarkets,” Katare and Zhao noted. “However, most studies involving purchase decisions were primarily composed of hypothetical surveys and laboratory experiments that may not always reflect actual consumer behavior in real-world situations.”

Previously, researchers have relied on online surveys in which they ask consumers whether or not they would buy certain products. The PNAS paper cited 2021 data reporting that more than 45% of consumers regularly shop for groceries online. This led the duo to study the effectiveness of carbon footprint labeling in an online shopping environment that more realistically represented a common consumer shopping experience.

More than 2,350 U.S. residents took part in the study. Participants selected from an array of products in the meat, milk, yogurt and cheese categories. Of the 8,320 grocery items the group checked out in their virtual carts, 5,200 were plant-based products.

“The average price showed a marginal premium for plant-based products at $3.65 compared to $3.13 for their animal-sourced counterparts,” Katare and Zhao wrote. “Almost 16% of the participants did not select any plant-based products.”

Previous studies have found that providing information alone works less effectively than combining it with some form of nudging.

“We saw that labeling had the most effect,” Katare said. The finding differed from the results of other studies. Providing information alone has proven less effective, as found in studies both by Katare and others.

“Labeling probably is the more effective strategy when it comes to choices for food consumption,” she said. “Information plus categorization, which was our other nudge, had a higher effect that just categorization.”

In 2018, Katare and a co-author published a study on “Low-cost approaches to increasing gym attendance” in the Journal of Health Economics. In that study, Katare sent two types of nudges to college students that encouraged them to visit the campus recreation center.

The first nudge, a financial incentive, offered to enter the students into a lottery to win a gift card for making regular visits to the rec center. The second nudge told students how their physical exercise activity compared to that of their peers. Katare found that the lottery nudge had a modest positive effect on rec center visits. The peer-comparison nudge, however, had little impact.

Katare and her collaborators have plans to add new functions to the online shopping app to encourage further research of this type. They also plan to see if their methods may help reduce food access issues that plague many rural areas. It may be possible to use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Education and online shopping to show rural residents in Indiana and elsewhere how they can best access a nutritious diet.

“Rural areas have food access issues, and online shopping is one way that we can reduce the food access issues that we have,” she said.

About Purdue Agriculture

Purdue University’s College of Agriculture is one of the world’s leading colleges of agricultural, food, life and natural resource sciences. The college is committed to preparing students to make a difference in whatever careers they pursue; stretching the frontiers of science to discover solutions to some of our most pressing global, regional and local challenges; and, through Purdue Extension and other engagement programs, educating the people of Indiana, the nation and the world to improve their lives and livelihoods. To learn more about Purdue Agriculture, visit this site.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Writer: Steve Koppes

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.23190181

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Behavioral interventions to motivate plant-based food selection in an online shopping environment

New study reveals how a ‘non-industrialized’ style diet can reduce risk of chronic disease

University College Cork

Jens Walter and Jaoa Filipe Mota — image:
Jens Walter, a University College Cork Professor and a PI at APC Microbiome Ireland, with co-author Joao Filipe Mota, who are part of an international team of scientists that have published a new study published in Cell showing how a ‘Non-Industrialized’ Style Diet Can Improve Gut Microbiome Function and Reduce Risk of Chronic Disease.
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Credit: UCC

Researchers have found that a newly developed diet inspired by the eating habits of non-industrialised societies can significantly reduce the risk of a number of chronic diseases – and are to share recipes with the public.

Industrialised diets—high in processed foods and low in fiber— have contributed to a substantial rise in chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, in affluent countries such as Ireland.

A paper published today in the prestigious scientific journal Cell shows that a newly developed diet that mimics eating habits in non-industrialissed communities led to significant metabolic and immunological improvements in a human intervention study. In just three weeks the diet:

- Promoted weight loss
- decreased bad cholesterol by 17%
- reduced blood sugar by 6%
- reduced C-reactive Protein (a marker of inflammation and heart disease) by 14%

These improvements were linked to beneficial changes in the participants’ gut microbiome, the home to trillions of bacteria that play a vital role in our health, influencing digestion, immunity, and metabolism. The research was conducted by an international teams of scientists led by Professor Jens Walter, a leading scientist at University College Cork where he holds a Research Ireland Professorship.. The human trial was performed at the University of Alberta in Canada, Prof. Walter’s previous institution.

“Industrialisation has drastically impacted our gut microbiome, likely increasing the risk of chronic diseases.” explained Prof. Walter, who is also a Principal Investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland, a world-renowned Research Ireland centre

“To counter this, we developed a diet that mimics traditional, non-industrialised dietary habits and is compatible with our understanding on diet-microbiome interactions. In a strictly controlled human trial, participants followed this diet and consumed L. reuteri, a beneficial bacterium prevalent in the gut of Papua New Guineans but rarely found in the industrialised microbiomes.”

The study demonstrated that the new diet entitled NiMeTM (Non-industrialized Microbiome Restore) diet enhanced short-term persistence of L. reuteri in the gut.

However it also improved microbiome features damaged by industrialization, such as reducing pro-inflammatory bacteria and bacterial genes that degrade the mucus layer in the gut. These changes were linked to improvements in cardiometabolic markers of chronic disease risk.

Although participants did not consume fewer calories on the NiMe diet, they lost weight, and the diet alone led to considerable cardiometabolic benefits.

In previous research, the Prof. Walter’s team, studying the gut microbiome in rural Papua New Guinea, found that individuals there have a much more diverse microbiome, enriched in bacteria that thrive from dietary fibre, and with lower levels of pro-inflammatory bacteria linked to western diet. This information was used to design the NiMeTM diet.

The NiMeTM diet shares key characteristics of non-industrialized diets:

Plant-based focus, but not vegetarian: Primarily made up of vegetables, legumes, and other whole-plant foods. One small serving of animal protein per day (salmon, chicken, or pork).
No dairy, beef, or wheat: Excluded simply because they are not part of the traditional foods consumed by rural Papua New Guineans.
Very low in processed foods that are high in sugar and saturated fat.
Fibre-rich: Fiber content was 22 grams per 1,000 calories—exceeding current dietary recommendations.

“Everybody knows that diet influences health, but many underestimate the magnitude”, said Prof. Walter.

Commenting on this study, Prof. Paul Ross, Director of APC Microbiome Ireland, said: “This study shows that we can target the gut microbiome through specific diets to improve health and reduce disease risk. These findings could shape future dietary guidelines and inspire the development of new food products and ingredients, as well as therapeutics, which target the microbiome”.

“The recipes from the NiMe Diet will be posted to our Instagram ( @nimediet ) and Facebook pages, and they will also be included in an online cookbook soon. It is important to us to make these recipes freely available so that everyone can enjoy them and improve their health by feeding their gut microbiome,” said Dr. Anissa Armet from the University of Alberta, a registered dietitian that designed the NiMe diet and one of the lead authors of the publication.

Journal

Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2024.12.034

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Cardiometabolic benefits of a non-industrialized-type diet are linked to gut microbiome modulation

Article Publication Date

23-Jan-2025

Digital meditation to target employee stress

JAMA Network Open

About The Study:

The findings of this study suggest that a brief, digital mindfulness-based program is an easily accessible and scalable method for reducing perceptions of stress. Future work should seek to clarify mechanisms by which such interventions contribute to improvements in work-specific well-being.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Aric A. Prather, PhD, email aric.prather@ucsf.edu.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.54435)

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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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time

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About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

Journal

JAMA Network Open

Vacations are good for employee well-being, and the effects are long lasting

Take longer holidays, incorporate physical activity to

maximize health benefits

University of Georgia

If you’re like many Americans, you probably didn’t take all your vacation time this past year. Even if you did, it’s highly likely you didn’t fully unplug while off the clock.

But you might want to change that if you want to improve your health and well-being, according to a new review article from the University of Georgia.

The meta-analysis of 32 studies from nine countries suggests that not only are vacations more beneficial for boosting employee well-being than previously thought, but the positive effects of annual leave last much longer than the ride home from the airport.

"We think working more is better, but we actually perform better by taking care of ourselves.” —Ryan Grant, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

“The theme of the paper is that vacations create longer-lasting benefits than previously thought,” said Ryan Grant, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “Job demands and job stress are on the rise. But people think that they can’t take time off because they don’t want to look bad or lose out on an opportunity for promotion.

“We think working more is better, but we actually perform better by taking care of ourselves. We need to break up these intense periods of work with intense periods of rest and recuperation.”

Disengage from work on vacation for maximum well-being benefits

How you vacation makes a difference in how restorative your time off is, though.

The researchers found that employees who psychologically disengaged from work on their vacations saw the most improvement in their well-being.

“If you’re not at work but you’re thinking about work on vacation, you might as well be at the office,” Grant said. “Vacations are one of the few opportunities we get to fully just disconnect from work.”

Ideally, that means not answering emails, taking work calls or even thinking about the office.

Work up a sweat on your trip

The analysis also found that people who engaged in physical activities while on vacation experienced higher levels of well-being and restoration.

But that doesn’t have to mean going for a marathon hike or sweat session on holiday.

“Basically anything that gets your heart rate up is a good option,” Grant said.

“Plus, a lot of physical activities you’re doing on vacation, like snorkeling for example, are physical. So they’re giving you the physiological and mental health benefits. But they’re also unique opportunities for these really positive experiences that you probably don’t get in your everyday life.”

Plan time before and after vacation to decompress

The review also suggests that longer vacations offer larger benefits for employees once they head back to work.

Although longer vacation stretches appear to be more beneficial, those getting back from extended trips can also experience a steeper decline in their well-being once they’re back to reality.

That’s why the periods right before and immediately after vacation are key.

Giving yourself time to pack and plan your trip ahead of time reduces stress and can help maximize well-being benefits. And incorporating a day or two off to reacclimate when you get home can ease the transition back into work mode, the researchers said.

Published in Journal of Applied Psychology, the meta-analysis was co-authored by Beth Buchanan, a late Ph.D. student in UGA’s Department of Psychology, and Kristen Shockley, an adjunct associate professor in UGA’s Department of Psychology and an associate professor at Auburn University.

Journal

Journal of Applied Psychology

DOI

10.1037/apl0001262

Article Title

I need a vacation: A meta-analysis of vacation and employee well-being.