Sunday, August 01, 2021

 

Scientists capture most-detailed radio image of Andromeda galaxy to date


Disk of galaxy identified as region where new stars are born

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Andromeda galaxy captured at 6.6 GHz 

IMAGE: RADIO IMAGE OF ANDROMEDA GALAXY AT 6.6 GHZ (INSET), CAPTURED USING THE SARDINIA RADIO TELESCOPE IN ITALY. view more 

CREDIT: S. FATIGONI ET AL (2021)

Scientists have published a new, detailed radio image of the Andromeda galaxy – the Milky Way’s sister galaxy – which will allow them to identify and study the regions of Andromeda where new stars are born.

The study – which is the first to create a radio image of Andromeda at the microwave frequency of 6.6 GHz – was led by University of British Columbia physicist Sofia Fatigoni, with colleagues at Sapienza University of Rome and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. It was published online in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“This image will allow us to study the structure of Andromeda and its content in more detail than has ever been possible,” said Fatigoni, a PhD student in the department of physics and astronomy at UBC. “Understanding the nature of physical processes that take place inside Andromeda allows us to understand what happens in our own galaxy more clearly – as if we were looking at ourselves from the outside.”

Prior to this study, no maps capturing such a large region of the sky around the Andromeda Galaxy had ever been made in the microwave band frequencies between one GHz to 22 GHz. In this range, the galaxy’s emission is very faint, making it hard to see its structure. However, it is only in this frequency range that particular features are visible, so having a map at this particular frequency is crucial to understanding which physical processes are happening inside Andromeda.

In order to observe Andromeda at this frequency, the researchers required a single-dish radio telescope with a large effective area. For the study, the scientists turned to the Sardinia Radio Telescope, a 64-metre fully steerable telescope capable of operating at high radio frequencies.

It took 66 hours of observation with the Sardinia Radio Telescope and consistent data analysis for the researchers to map the galaxy with high sensitivity. They were then able to estimate the rate of star formation within Andromeda, and produce a detailed map that highlighted the disk of the galaxy as the region where new stars are born.

“By combining this new image with those previously acquired, we have made significant steps forward in clarifying the nature of Andromeda’s microwave emissions and allowing us to distinguish physical processes that occur in different regions of the galaxy,” said Dr. Elia Battistelli, a professor in the department of physics at Sapienza and coordinator of the study.

“In particular, we were able to determine the fraction of emissions due to thermal processes related to the early stations of new star formation, and the fraction of radio signals attributable to non-thermal mechanisms due to cosmic rays that spiral in the magnetic field present in the interstellar medium,” Fatigoni said.

For the study, the team developed and implemented software that allowed – among other things – to test new algorithms to identify never-before-examined lower emission sources in the field of view around Andromeda at a frequency of 6.6 GHz. From the resulting map, researchers were able to identify a catalog of about 100 point sources, including stars, galaxies and other objects in the background of Andromeda.

CAPTION

The Sardinia Radio Telescope located in Sardinia, Italy.

CREDIT

S. Fatigoni et al (2021)

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Water as a metal

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM BERLIN FÜR MATERIALIEN UND ENERGIE

Golden Drops 

IMAGE: IN THE SAMPLE CHAMBER, THE NAK ALLOY DRIPS FROM A NOZZLE. AS THE DROPLET GROWS, WATER VAPOUR FLOWS INTO THE SAMPLE CHAMBER AND FORMS A THIN SKIN ON THE DROP'S SURFACE. view more 

CREDIT: HZB

Every child knows that water conducts electricity - but this refers to "normal" everyday water that contains salts. Pure, distilled water, on the other hand, is an almost perfect insulator. It consists of H2O molecules that are loosely linked to one another via hydrogen bonds. The valence electrons remain bound and are not mobile. To create a conduction band with freely moving electrons, water would have to be pressurised to such an extent that the orbitals of the outer electrons overlap. However, a calculation shows that this pressure is only present in the core of large planets such as Jupiter.

Providing electrons

An international collaboration of 15 scientists from eleven research institutions has now used a completely different approach to produce a aqueous solution with metallic properties for the first time and documented this phase transition at BESSY II. To do this, they experimented with alkali metals, which release their outer electron very easily.

Avoiding explosion

However, the chemistry between alkali metals and water is known to be explosive. Sodium or other alkali metals immediately start to burn in water. But the team found a way to keep this violent chemistry in check: They did not throw a piece of alkali metal into water, but they did it the other way round: they put a tiny bit of water on a drop of alkali metal, a sodium-potassium (Na-K) alloy, which is liquid at room temperature.

Experiment at BESSY II

At BESSY II, they set up the experiment in the SOL³PES high vacuum sample chamber at the U49/2 beamline. The sample chamber contains a fine nozzle from which the liquid Na-K alloy drips. The silver droplet grows for about 10 seconds until it detaches from the nozzle. As the droplet grows, some water vapour flows into the sample chamber and forms an extremely thin skin on the surface of the droplet, only a few layers of water molecules. This almost immediately causes the electrons as well as the metal cations to dissolve from the alkali alloy into the water. The released electrons in the water behave like free electrons in a conduction band.

Golden water skin

"You can see the phase transition to metallic water with the naked eye! The silvery sodium-potassium droplet covers itself with a golden glow, which is very impressive," reports Dr. Robert Seidel, who supervised the experiments at BESSY II. The thin layer of gold-coloured metallic water remains visible for a few seconds. This enabled the team led by Prof. Pavel Jungwirth, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, to prove with spectroscopic analyses at BESSY II and at the IOCB in Prague that it is indeed water in a metallic state.

Fingerprints of the metallic phase

The two decisive fingerprints of a metallic phase are the plasmon frequency and the conduction band. The groups were able to determine these two quantities using optical reflection spectroscopy and synchrotron X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy: While the plasmon frequency of the gold-coloured, metallic "water skin" is about 2.7 eV (i.e. in the blue range of visible light), the conduction band has a width of about 1.1 eV with a sharp Fermi edge. "Our study not only shows that metallic water can indeed be produced on Earth, but also characterises the spectroscopic properties associated with its beautiful golden metallic luster," says Seidel.

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More WHITE American parents of teens are purchasing firearms during the pandemic, study finds


One in seven of the households that purchased a gun also had a teen with depression.


Peer-Reviewed Publication

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, more parents of teenagers in the United States started buying firearms, according to a recent study.

In a national survey of primary caretakers of teenagers conducted by the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens, or FACTS, Consortium, 10% of all households with high school-age teens reported buying a firearm in the early months of the pandemic between March and July of 2020, and 3% of U.S. households with teens became first-time gun owners. 

While firearm manufacturing and sales have grown steadily since the 1990s, researchers estimate that in the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic 2.1 million additional firearm purchases were made nationwide – a 64.3% increase over expected volume.

For households that already owned a firearm, these new firearms were more likely to be acquired by those who already reported storing at least one gun unlocked and loaded, noted the study, published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

“This finding is concerning because we know that the single biggest risk factor for adolescent firearm injuries is access to an unsecured firearm,” said Patrick Carter, M.D., a co-author of the paper and co-director of the new Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan. “This study demonstrates that we have more work to do to help families that already have firearms, or may purchase new firearms, to reduce the potential risks to their children by promoting safer storage practices that help to reduce the risk of teen firearm injury and death.”

Each year, nearly 50 out of every 100,000 high school-age teens are injured by firearms and 10 out of every 100,000 are killed. As a result, teens in that age group are more likely to die from a firearm injury than any other leading cause of death.

While the mental health statuses of parents and teens weren’t associated with the likelihood of purchasing a firearm, researchers found that one in seven households, 14%, that purchased a gun during the beginning of the COVID pandemic also had a teen who was experiencing depression symptoms.

These findings, taken together, have significant implications for public health practitioners faced with both the COVID-19 pandemic and the firearm injury epidemic, said Marc Zimmerman, Ph.D., a co-author on the publication and co-director of the new U-M Firearm Injury Prevention Institute alongside Carter.

“If we know that families are storing firearms unsafely and that a certain amount of them have teens who are experiencing depression, that can inform how we would tailor messaging around safe storage to families at increased risk,” Zimmerman said.

The Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention The Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention launched in June crises of firearm injury, from which 100 people die each day in the United States. The institute is supported by a $10 million university commitment, with U-M researchers already having secured more federal funding to study the issue than any other academic institute in the nation.

In this study, the research team concluded that strategies geared towards safe storage for parents, as well as stronger child access prevention policy initiatives, could reduce the risk of firearm injury among teens.

“It’s unclear exactly what specific circumstances precipitated this change in firearm purchasing, but we know that future research needs to focus on ways to increase safe storage practices among families with teens,” Zimmerman said. “The implications of this line of research may extend beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic and could help us move forward our goal of reducing and preventing future firearm injuries.”

Paper cited: “Firearm purchasing during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in households with teens: a national study,” Journal of Behavioral MedicineDOI: 10.1007/s10865-021-00242-w

 

Scientists synthesize a material which can completely replace natural gypsum in the construction industry

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MISIS

Natural gypsum stone 

IMAGE: NATURAL GYPSUM STONE view more 

CREDIT: AUTHOR: MAKSIM SAFANIUK

An international team of scientists has proposed a method of production of high-quality gypsum binders based on synthetic calcium sulfate dihydrate produced from industrial waste. Tests of the obtained material have shown that it not only meets all the requirements for materials of this class, but also surpasses binders based on natural gypsum in several parameters. The work has been published in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
Gypsum binders are widely used in construction. They have valuable properties such as low weight, low heat and sound conductivity, fire resistance, and they are easy to shape. In addition, gypsum-based binders are hypoallergenic and do not cause silicosis, an occupational disease for builders and repairmen caused by inhalation of dust containing free silicon dioxide. At the same time, the cost of gypsum materials is low, as are the costs of heat energy for their production.
A group of scientists from NUST MISIS, Belarusian State Technological University, University of Limerick and the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus has proposed an innovative method of producing high-strength binders based on synthetic gypsum obtained from industrial waste by neutralizing spent sulfuric acid and carbonate components. Researchers mixed sulfuric acid from waste heat-resistant fibers with water and limestone. The content of calcium sulfate dihydrate in the obtained synthetic gypsum was at least 95% of the mass of the final product.
In the course of the study, scientists obtained three types of synthetic gypsum samples: building gypsum, high-strength gypsum and anhydrite. The building gypsum was made using traditional technology in a gypsum boiler. Anhydrite was also produced according to the traditional technology for this type of gypsum material by firing followed by cooling. An autoclave was used to synthesize high-strength gypsum.
The researchers point out that one of the advantages of producing building gypsum materials from synthetic calcium sulfate dihydrate is that the synthetic gypsum is obtained immediately in the form of a powder product. In the traditional production of gypsum powder, gypsum has to be crushed to the desired state, which requires a significant amount of electricity. Thus, the method proposed by scientists for the production of binders based on synthetic gypsum will significantly reduce production costs by simplifying the production technology. At the same time, the building gypsum obtained in the course of the study fully meets the requirements for gypsum binders of the G5 - G7 grades, for high-strength gypsum - the requirements for gypsum grades G10 - G22.
Synthetic gypsum, obtained from waste sulfuric acid and limestone waste, can completely replace natural gypsum for the production of gypsum binders in countries that do not have gypsum stone deposits.
 

 

Bugs find bats to bite thanks to bacteria


Blood-sucking flies may be following chemicals produced by skin bacteria to locate bats to feed on

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FIELD MUSEUM

Bat fly on bat 

IMAGE: A NATAL LONG-FINGERED BAT (MINIOPTERUS NATALENSIS) PARASITIZED BY A MALE BAT FLY (PENICILLIDIA FULVIDA) ON THE WALL OF A DIATOMITE MINE IN NAKURU, KENYA. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF HOLLY LUTZ

We humans aren’t the only animals that have to worry about bug bites. There are thousands of insect species that have evolved to specialize in feeding on different mammals and birds, but scientists are still learning how these bugs differentiate between species to track down their preferred prey. It turns out, the attraction might not even be skin-deep: a new study in Molecular Ecology found evidence that blood-sucking flies that specialize on bats may be locating their preferred hosts by following the scent of chemicals produced by bacteria on the bats’ skin.

Holly Lutz, the paper’s lead author, got the idea for the project from previous research showing that mosquitoes seem to prefer some people over others. “You know when you go to a barbeque and your friend is getting bombarded by mosquitos, but you’re fine? There is some research to support the idea that the difference in mosquito attraction is linked to your skin microbiome - the unique community of bacteria living on your skin,” says Lutz, a research associate at Chicago’s Field Museum and a project scientist with the labs of Jack Gilbert (who co-authored this study) and Rob Knight at the University of California, San Diego. “Keeping in mind that some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others, I wondered what makes insects attracted to some bats but not others.”

Lutz encountered plenty of bats during her PhD work and postdoctoral residency at the Field Museum, on fieldwork trips to bat caves in Kenya and Uganda studying malaria. “In these caves, I’d see all these different bat species or even taxonomic families roosting side by side. Some of them were loaded with bat flies, while others had none or only a few. And these flies are typically very specific to different kinds of bats-- you won’t find a fly that normally feeds on horseshoe bats crawling around on a fruit bat.” says Lutz. “I started wondering why the flies are so particular-- clearly, they can crawl over from one kind of bat to another, but they don’t really seem to be doing that.”

The flies in question are cousins of mosquitoes, and while they’re technically flies, most can’t actually fly. “They have incredibly reduced wings in many cases and can’t actually fly,” says Lutz. “And they have reduced eyesight, so they probably aren’t really operating by vision. So some other sensory mechanisms must be at play, maybe a sense of smell or an ability to detect chemical cues.”

​​”How the flies actually locate and find their bats has previously been something of a mystery,” says Carl Dick, a research associate at the Field Museum, professor of biology at Western Kentucky University, and one of the study’s co-authors. “But because most bat flies live and feed on only one bat species, it is clear that they somehow find the right host.”

Furthermore, bat flies transmit malaria between bats, and the malaria parasites are host-specific as well. It’s an intricate, complex system with important parallels to other vector-borne pathways for disease transmission, such as malarial and viral transmission among humans by anopheline mosquitoes. Previous research has shown that different bacterial species associated with skin or even the disease status of individual humans can influence feeding preferences of blood-seeking mosquitoes.

Lutz suspected that, similarly to what’s been observed in humans, the bats’ skin microbiomes may be playing a role in attracting the flies seeking them out. Skin-- whether it belongs to a human or a bat-- is covered with tiny microorganisms that help protect the body from invading pathogens, bolster the immune system, and break down natural products like sweat. Host species evolve alongside their skin microbiomes, leading to different species being home to different sets of bacteria.

All these different kinds of bacteria produce a unique bouquet of airborne chemicals as they metabolize nutrients. And, according to Lutz’s hypothesis, different kinds of insects are attracted to different chemical signals, which could help explain why some bats are more attractive to blood-sucking flies than others-- just like your friend at the barbeque.

To test this hypothesis, Lutz examined dozens of bats from a variety of species. “We went into a ton of different caves where they roost and used long bat nets, which are basically like super sturdy butterfly nets, to catch them,” says Lutz. She and her colleagues took skin and fur samples from the bats’ bodies and wings in order to examine both the bats’ DNA and the microbes living on their skin. The researchers also examined the bats for flies. “You brush the bats’ fur with your forceps, and it’s like you’re chasing the fastest little spider,” says Lutz. “The flies can disappear in a split second. They are fascinatingly creepy.”

“The flies are exquisitely evolved to stay on their bat,” says Dick. “They have special combs, spines, and claws that hold them in place in the fur, and they can run quickly in any direction to evade the biting and scratching of the bats, or the efforts by researchers to capture them.”

The researchers then analyzed the specimens back at the Field Museum’s Pritzker DNA Laboratory. “Once we were back at the lab, we extracted all the DNA from the bacteria and sequenced it. We basically created libraries of all the bacteria associated with each individual skin sample. Then we used bioinformatics methods to characterize the bacteria there and identify which ones are present across different bat groups, comparing bats that were parasitized by flies to those that were not,” says Lutz.

The team found that the different bat families had their own unique combinations of skin bacteria, even when the bats were collected from different locations. “The goal of this study was to ask, ‘Are there differences in the skin microbiome of these different bats, and are there bacteria that are common among bats that have parasites versus those that don’t?’” says Lutz. “Getting these results was really exciting-- this paper is the culmination of years of thinking and wondering and sampling.”

There are still some big questions to answer, however. “We weren’t able to collect the actual chemicals producing cue- - secondary metabolites or volatile organic compounds-- during this initial work. Without that information, we can’t definitively say that the bacteria are leading the flies to their hosts. So, next steps will be to sample bats in a way that we can actually tie these compounds to the bacteria” says Lutz, “In science, there is always a next step.”

In addition to explaining how blind, flightless flies are able to be so picky with which bats they feed on, the study gets at bigger-picture questions of how different organisms coexist. “We live in these complex communities where different types of life are always bumping into each other and interacting and sometimes depending on each other or eating each other,” says Lutz. “In a healthy natural state, these organisms partition themselves so they can coexist. But as habitats are destroyed, organisms are forced to share resources or start utilizing new ones.” Animals that used to be able to give each other a wide berth might no longer be able to, and that can lead to new diseases spreading from one organism to another.

“Humans are affecting these ecosystems, and these ecosystems can in turn affect us,” says Lutz. “That’s why it’s important to study them.”

CAPTION

One of the bat species studied in this project, Hipposideros caffer.

CREDIT

Courtesy of Holly Lutz

  

CAPTION

Eye-shine reflects from thousands of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) sampled by Lutz and her team at Kitum Cave in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda.

CREDIT

Courtesy of Holly Lutz

CAPTION

Closeup of a bat fly (Penicillidia fulvida)

CREDIT

Courtesy of Holly Lutz

CAPTION

Natal and African long-fingered bats (Miniopterus natalensis, M. africanus), Mauritian tomb bats (Taphozous mauritianus), and Noack's roundleaf bats (Hipposideros ruber) roosting together in a fossilized coral cave in Arabuko Sokoke Forest, Kenya.

CREDIT

Courtesy of Holly Lutz

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