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)
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Astronomers image for the first time a black hole’s shadow together with a powerful jet
VIDEO: ANIMATION SHOWING HOW THE EHT IMAGE OF M87* COMBINES WITH THE IMAGE FROM THE GMVA, WHERE THE CENTRAL BLACK HOLE CAN BE SEEN TOGETHER WITH THE BIRTH OF THE RELATIVISTIC OUTFLOW.view more
CREDIT: IVAN MARTI-VIDAL
"Previously we had seen both the black hole and the jet in separate images, but now we have taken a panoramic picture of the black hole together with its jet at a new wavelength”, says Ru-Sen Lu, from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and leader of a Max Planck Research Group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The surrounding material is thought to fall into the black hole in a process known as accretion. But no one has ever imaged it directly. "The ring that we have seen before is becoming larger and thicker at 3.5 mm observing wavelength. This shows that the material falling into the black hole produces additional emission that is now observed in the new image. This gives us a more complete view of the physical processes acting near the black hole”, he added.
The participation of ALMA and GLT in the GMVA observations and the resulting increase in resolution and sensitivity of this intercontinental network of telescopes has made it possible to image the ring-like structure in M87 for the first time at the wavelength of 3.5 mm. The diameter of the ring measured by the GMVA is 64 microarcseconds, which corresponds to the size of a small (5-inch/13-cm) selfie ring light as seen by an astronaut on the Moon looking back at Earth. This diameter is 50 percent larger than what was seen in observations by the Event Horizon Telescope at 1.3 mm, in accordance with the expectations for the emission from relativistic plasma in this region.
"With the greatly improved imaging capabilities by adding ALMA and GLT into GMVA observations, we have gained a new perspective. We do indeed see the triple-ridged jet that we knew about from earlier VLBI observations,” says Thomas Krichbaum from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn. "But now we can see how the jet emerges from the emission ring around the central supermassive black hole and we can measure the ring diameter also at another (longer) wavelength.”
The light from M87 is produced by the interplay between highly energetic electrons and magnetic fields, a phenomenon called synchrotron radiation. The new observations, at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, reveal more details about the location and energy of these electrons. They also tell us something about the nature of the black hole itself: it is not very hungry. It consumes matter at a low rate, converting only a small fraction of it into radiation. Keiichi Asada of Academia Sinica, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics explains: "To understand the physical origin of the bigger and thicker ring, we had to use computer simulations to test different scenarios. As a result, we concluded that the larger extent of the ring is associated with the accretion flow.”
Kazuhiro Hada from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan adds: "We also find something surprising in our data: the radiation from the inner region close to the black hole is broader than we expected. This could mean that there is more than just gas falling in. There could also be a wind blowing out, causing turbulence and chaos around the black hole.”
The quest to learn more about Messier 87 is not over, as further observations and a fleet of powerful telescopes continue to unlock its secrets. “Future observations at millimetre wavelengths will study the time evolution of the M87 black hole and provide a poly-chromatic view of the black hole with multiple colour images in radio light," says Jongho Park of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.
This research has made use of data obtained with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), which consists of telescopes operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), Metsähovi Radio Observatory (MRO), Yebes, the Korean VLBI Network (KVN), the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).
ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
The Greenland Telescope (GLT) retrofit, rebuild, and operation are led by the Academia Sinica, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO).
The Green Bank Observatory (GBT) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (VLBA) are major facilities of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
The data were correlated at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), which also operates the Global Millimeter-VLBI Array (GMVA).
The research team comprises Ru-Sen Lu, Keiichi Asada, Thomas P. Krichbaum, Jongho Park, Fumie Tazaki, Hung-Yi Pu, Masanori Nakamura, Andrei P. Lobanov, Kazuhiro Hada, Kazunori Akiyama, Jae-Young Kim, Iván Martí-Vidal, José L. Gómez, Tomohisa Kawashima, Feng Yuan, Eduardo Ros, Walter Alef, Silke Britzen, Michael Bremer, Avery Broderick, Akihiro Doi, Gabriele Giovannini, Marcello Giroletti, Paul Ho, Mareki Honma, David Hughes, Makoto Inoue, Wu Jiang, Motoki Kino, Shoko Koyama, Michael Lindqvist, Jun Liu, Alan Marscher, Satoki Matsushita, Hiroshi Nagai, Helge Rottmann, Tuomas Savolainen, Karl-Friedrich Schuster, Zhi-Qiang Shen, Pablo de Vicente, R. Craig Walker, Hai Yang, J. Anton Zensus, Juan Carlos Algaba, Alexander Allardi, Uwe Bach, Ryan Berthold, Dan Bintley, Do-Young Byun, Carolina Casadio, Shu-Hao Chang, Chih-Cheng Chang, Song-Chu Chang, Chung-Chen Chen, Ming-Tang Chen, Ryan Chilson, Tim Chuter, John Conway, Geoffrey Crew, Jessica Dempsey, Sven Dornbusch, Aaron Faber, Per Friberg, Javier González-García, Miguel Gómez-Garrido, Chih-Chiang Han, Kuo-Chang Han, Yutaka Hasegawa, Ruben Herrero-Illana, Yau-De Huang, Chih-Wei Huang, Violette C.M. Impellizzeri, Homin Jiang, Hao Jinchi, Taehyun Jung, Juha Kallunki, Petri Kirves, Kimihiro Kimura, Jun Yi Koay, Patrick Koch, Carsten Kramer, Alexander Kraus, Derek Kubo, Cheng-Yu Kuo, Chao-Te Li, Chun-Che Lin, Ching-Tang Liu, Kuan-Yu Liu, Wen-Ping Lo, Li-Ming Lu, Nicholas R. MacDonald, Pierre Martin-Cocher, Hugo Messias, Zheng Meyer-Zhao, Anthony Minter, Dhanya Nair, Hiroaki Nishioka, Timothy Norton, George Nystrom, Hideo Ogawa, Peter Oshiro, Nimesh Patel, Ue-Li Pen, Yurii Pidopryhora, Nicolas Pradel, Philippe Raffin, Ramprasad Rao, Ignacio Ruiz, Salvador Sánchez, Paul Shaw, William Snow, T. K. Sridharan, Ranjani Srinivasan, Belén Tercero, Pablo Torne, Efthalia Traianou, Jan Wagner, Craig Walther, Ta-Shun Wei, Jun Yang, and Chen-Yu Yu.
IMAGE: ARTIST’S CONCEPTION SHOWS A CLOSE-UP VIEW OF THE ACCRETION FLOW AND THE JET EMERGING FROM THE BLACK HOLE REGION IN MESSIER 87view more
CREDIT: SOPHIA DAGNELLO, NRAO/AUI/NSF
An international team of scientists led by Dr. LU Rusen from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used new millimeter-wavelength observations to produce an image that shows, for the first time, both the ring-like accretion structure around a black hole, where matter falls into the black hole, and the black hole's associated powerful relativistic jet. The source of the images was the central black hole of the prominent radio galaxy Messier 87.
The image underlines for the first time the connection between the accretion flow near the central supermassive black hole and the origin of the jet. The new observations were obtained with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), complemented by the phased Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). The addition of these two observatories has greatly enhanced the imaging capabilities of the GMVA.
"Previously, we had seen both the black hole and the jet in separate images, but now we have taken a panoramic picture of the black hole together with its jet at a new wavelength," said Dr. LU.
The surrounding material is thought to fall into the black hole in a process known as accretion. But no one had ever imaged it directly.
According to LU, the ring that was seen before was becoming larger and thicker at the 3.5 mm observing wavelength. "This shows that the material falling into the black hole produces additional emission that is now observed in the new image. This gives us a more complete view of the physical processes acting near the black hole," said LU.
The participation of ALMA and GLT in the GMVA observations and the resulting increase in resolution and sensitivity of this intercontinental network of telescopes has made it possible to image the ring-like structure in M87 for the first time at the 3.5 mm wavelength. The diameter of the ring measured by the GMVA is 64 microarcseconds, which corresponds to the size of a small (5-inch/13-cm) selfie ring light on Earth as seen by an astronaut on the Moon. This diameter is 50 percent larger than what was seen in observations by the Event Horizon Telescope at 1.3 mm, in accordance with expectations for the emission from relativistic plasma in this region.
"With the greatly improved imaging capabilities by adding ALMA and GLT into GMVA observations, we have gained a new perspective. We do indeed see the triple-ridged jet that we knew about from earlier VLBI observations," said Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn. "But now we can see how the jet emerges from the emission ring around the central supermassive black hole and we can measure the ring diameter also at another (longer) wavelength."
The light from M87 is produced by the interplay between highly energetic electrons and magnetic fields, a phenomenon called synchrotron radiation. The new observations, at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, reveal more details about the location and energy of these electrons. They also tell us something about the nature of the black hole itself: It is not very hungry. It consumes matter at a low rate, converting only a small fraction of it into radiation.
According to Keiichi Asada from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of Academia Sinica, "To understand the physical origin of the bigger and thicker ring, we had to use computer simulations to test different scenarios. As a result, we concluded that the larger extent of the ring is associated with the accretion flow."
Kazuhiro Hada from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan noted that the team also found something "surprising" in their data. "The radiation from the inner region close to the black hole is broader than we expected. This could mean that there is more than just gas falling in. There could also be a wind blowing out, causing turbulence and chaos around the black hole," said Hada.
The quest to learn more about Messier 87 is not over, as further observations and a fleet of powerful telescopes continue to unlock its secrets. "Future observations at millimeter wavelengths will study the time evolution of the M87 black hole and provide a polychromatic view of the black hole with multiple color images in radio light," said Jongho Park of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.
Millimeter-VLBI image of the jet and the black hole in Messier 87, obtained with the GMVA array plus ALMA and the Greenland Telescope
CREDIT
LU Rusen, SHAO; E. Ros, MPIfR; and S. Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Map of the radio telescopes used to image Messier 87 at 3.5 millimeters in the 2018 Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA) campaign
CREDIT
Helge Rottmann, MPIfR
How the Messier 87 black hole and jet image was captured
VIDEO: METSÄHOVI RADIO TELESCOPE, LOCATED IN THE FORESTS OUTSIDE GREATER HELSINKI IN FINLAND, IS ONE OF THE TELESCOPES USED TO TAKE THE FIRST IMAGE OF THE M87 BLACK HOLE TOGETHER WITH ITS POWERFUL JET. THE IMAGE IS FORMED FROM MEASUREMENTS GATHERED AT 3.5MM RADIO WAVELENGTH BY A NETWORK OF RADIO TELESCOPES AROUND THE WORLD. THE RESULTS WERE PUBLISHED IN NATURE ON 26 APRIL 2023.view more
In 2017, astronomers captured the first image of a black hole by coordinating radio dishes around the world to act as a single, planet-sized telescope. The synchronized network, known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), focused in on M87*, the black hole at the center of the nearby Messier 87 galaxy. The telescope’s laser-focused resolution revealed a very thin glowing ring around a dark center, representing the first visual of a black hole’s shadow.
Astronomers have now refocused their view to capture a new layer of M87*. The team, including scientists at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has harnessed another global web of observatories — the Global millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA) — to capture a more zoomed-out view of the black hole.
The new images, taken one year after the EHT’s initial observations, reveal a thicker, fluffier ring that is 50 percent larger than the ring that was first reported. This larger ring is a reflection of the telescope array’s resolution, which was tuned to pick up more of the super-hot, glowing plasma surrounding the black hole.
For the first time, scientists could see that part of the black hole’s ring consists of plasma from a surrounding accretion disk — a swirling pancake of white-hot electrons that the team estimates is being heated to hundreds of billions of Kelvin as the plasma streams into the black hole at close to the speed of light.
The images also reveal plasma trailing out from the central ring, which scientists believe to be part of a relativistic jet blasting out from the black hole. The scientists tracked these emissions back toward the black hole and observed for the first time that the base of the jet appears to connect to the central ring.
“This is the first image where we are able to pin down where the ring is, relative to the powerful jet escaping out of the central black hole,” says Kazunori Akiyama, a research scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, who developed the imaging software used to visualize the black hole. “Now we can start to address questions such as how particles are accelerated and heated, and many other mysteries around the black hole, more deeply.”
Akiyama is part of an international team of astronomers who present the new images, along with their analysis, in a paper that will appear in Nature.
An expanded eye
To capture images of M87*, astronomers used a technique in radio astronomy known as very-long-baseline interferometry, or VLBI. When a radio signal passes by Earth, such as from a black hole’s plasma emissions, radio dishes around the world can pick up the signal. Scientists can then determine the time at which each dish registers the signal, and the distance between dishes, and combine this information in a way that the same signal is seen by every dish simultaneously as one very large, planet-scale telescope.
When each radio telescope is dialed to a specific frequency, the array as a whole can focus in on a particular feature of the radio signal. The EHT’s network was tuned to 1.3 millimeters — a resolution equivalent to seeing a grain of rice in California, from Massachusetts. At this resolution, astronomers could see past most of the plasma surrounding M87* and image the thinnest ring, thereby accentuating the black hole’s shadow.
In contrast, the GMVA network works at a slightly lower resolution of 3 millimeters. With this focus, the array could resolve a pumpkin seed, rather than a grain of rice. The network itself consists of about a dozen radio telescopes scattered around the United States and Europe, mostly located along the east-west axis of the Earth. To make a truly planet-sized telescope able to capture a far-off radio signal from M87*, astronomers had to expand the array’s “eye” to the north and south.
To do so, the team involved two additional radio observatories: the Greenland Telescope to the north, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to the south. ALMA is an array of 66 radio dishes located in Chile’s Atacama Desert. MIT Haystack scientists, led by research scientist Lynn Matthews, worked to phase, or synchronize, ALMA’s dishes to work as one powerful and essential part of the GMVA network.
“Having these two telescopes [as part of] the global array resulted in a boost in angular resolution by a factor of four in the north-south direction,” Matthews says. “This greatly improves the level of detail we can see. And in this case, a consequence was a dramatic leap in our understanding of the physics operating near the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy.”
Tuning in
On April 14 and 15 of 2018, astronomers coordinated the telescopes of the GMVA, along with the Greenland and ALMA observatories, to record radio emissions at a wavelength of 3 millimeters, arriving from the direction of the M87 galaxy. Scientists then used several imaging-processing algorithms, including the Sparse Modeling Imaging Library for Interferometry (SMILI) — an imaging software package developed by Akiyama — to process the GMVA’s observations into visual images.
The resulting pictures reveal more plasma surrounding the black hole, in the form of a larger, fluffier ring. The astronomers could also spot plasma trailing up and out from the central glowing ring.
“The exciting thing is, we still see a shadow feature of the black hole, but we also start to see a more extended jet,” Akiyama says. “For plasma to emit light at this wavelength, it has to be very heated, such that each particle in the plasma travels almost at the speed of light. So particles are accelerated to relativistic speeds. And we see that in the case of M87, this jet is extending and traveling across a really large scale.”
The astronomers hope to pin down more properties of the black hole’s plasma, such as its temperature profile and composition. For this, they plan to tune the EHT and GMVA to new resolutions. By observing M87* at multiple wavelengths, they can then construct a layered picture, and a more detailed understanding of black holes and the jets they generate.
“If something major happens in the world, you might tune in to both AM and FM to assemble a ‘complete picture’ of the event,” says Geoffrey Crews, a Haystack research scientist who works to support ALMA and the EHT. “This is no different. You might think of the EHT M87* image being made in FM, and this result coming from AM. Both tell a story, and together it is a better story.”
###
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
JOURNAL
Nature
ARTICLE TITLE
“A ring-like accretion structure in M87 connecting its black hole and jet”
First direct image of a black hole expelling a powerful jet
IMAGE: THIS IMAGE SHOWS THE JET AND SHADOW OF THE BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTRE OF THE M87 GALAXY TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE OBSERVATIONS WERE OBTAINED WITH TELESCOPES FROM THE GLOBAL MILLIMETRE VLBI ARRAY (GMVA), THE ATACAMA LARGE MILLIMETER/SUBMILLIMETER ARRAY (ALMA), OF WHICH ESO IS A PARTNER, AND THE GREENLAND TELESCOPE. THIS IMAGE GIVES SCIENTISTS THE CONTEXT NEEDED TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE POWERFUL JET IS FORMED. THE NEW OBSERVATIONS ALSO REVEALED THAT THE BLACK HOLE’S RING, SHOWN HERE IN THE INSET, IS 50% LARGER THAN THE RING OBSERVED AT SHORTER RADIO WAVELENGTHS BY THE EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE (EHT). THIS SUGGESTS THAT IN THE NEW IMAGE WE SEE MORE OF THE MATERIAL THAT IS FALLING TOWARDS THE BLACK HOLE THAN WHAT WE COULD SEE WITH THE EHT.view more
CREDIT: R.-S. LU (SHAO), E. ROS (MPIFR), S. DAGNELLO (NRAO/AUI/NSF)
For the first time, astronomers have observed, in the same image, the shadow of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87) and the powerful jet expelled from it. The observations were done in 2018 with telescopes from the Global Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA), the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which ESO is a partner, and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). Thanks to this new image, astronomers can better understand how black holes can launch such energetic jets.
Most galaxies harbour a supermassive black hole at their centre. While black holes are known for engulfing matter in their immediate vicinity, they can also launch powerful jets of matter that extend beyond the galaxies that they live in. Understanding how black holes create such enormous jets has been a long standing problem in astronomy. “We know that jets are ejected from the region surrounding black holes,” says Ru-Sen Lu from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China, “but we still do not fully understand how this actually happens. To study this directly we need to observe the origin of the jet as close as possible to the black hole.”
The new image published today shows precisely this for the first time: how the base of a jet connects with the matter swirling around a supermassive black hole. The target is the galaxy M87, located 55 million light-years away in our cosmic neighbourhood, and home to a black hole 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. Previous observations had managed to separately image the region close to the black hole and the jet, but this is the first time both features have been observed together. “This new image completes the picture by showing the region around the black hole and the jet at the same time,” adds Jae-Young Kim from the Kyungpook National University in South Korea and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.
The image was obtained with the GMVA, ALMA and the GLT, forming a network of radio-telescopes around the globe working together as a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Such a large network can discern very small details in the region around M87’s black hole.
The new image shows the jet emerging near the black hole, as well as what scientists call the shadow of the black hole. As matter orbits the black hole, it heats up and emits light. The black hole bends and captures some of this light, creating a ring-like structure around the black hole as seen from Earth. The darkness at the centre of the ring is the black hole shadow, which was first imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2017. Both this new image and the EHT one combine data taken with several radio-telescopes worldwide, but the image released today shows radio light emitted at a longer wavelength than the EHT one: 3.5 mm instead of 1.3 mm. “At this wavelength, we can see how the jet emerges from the ring of emission around the central supermassive black hole,” says Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
The size of the ring observed by the GMVA network is roughly 50% larger in comparison to the Event Horizon Telescope image. "To understand the physical origin of the bigger and thicker ring, we had to use computer simulations to test different scenarios,” explains Keiichi Asada from the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The results suggest the new image reveals more of the material that is falling towards the black hole than what could be observed with the EHT.
These new observations of M87’s black hole were conducted in 2018 with the GMVA, which consists of 14 radio-telescopes in Europe and North America [1]. In addition, two other facilities were linked to the GMVA: the Greenland Telescope and ALMA, of which ESO is a partner. ALMA consists of 66 antennas in the Chilean Atacama desert, and it played a key role in these observations. The data collected by all these telescopes worldwide are combined using a technique called interferometry, which synchronises the signals taken by each individual facility. But to properly capture the actual shape of an astronomical object it’s important that the telescopes are spread all over the Earth. The GMVA telescopes are mostly aligned East-to-West, so the addition of ALMA in the Southern hemisphere proved essential to capture this image of the jet and shadow of M87’s black hole. “Thanks to ALMA’s location and sensitivity, we could reveal the black hole shadow and see deeper into the emission of the jet at the same time,” explains Lu.
Future observations with this network of telescopes will continue to unravel how supermassive black holes can launch powerful jets. “We plan to observe the region around the black hole at the centre of M87 at different radio wavelengths to further study the emission of the jet,” says Eduardo Ros from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Such simultaneous observations would allow the team to disentangle the complicated processes that happen near the supermassive black hole. “The coming years will be exciting, as we will be able to learn more about what happens near one of the most mysterious regions in the Universe,” concludes Ros.
Notes
[1] The Korean VLBI Network is now also part of the GMVA, but did not participate in the observations reported here.
More information
This research was presented in the paper "A ring-like accretion structure in M87 connecting its black hole and jet" to appear in Nature (doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-05843-w)
The team is composed of Ru-Sen Lu (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, People’s Republic of China [Shanghai]; Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy, People’s Republic of China [KLoRA]; Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Germany [MPIfR]), Keiichi Asada (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, ROC [IoAaA]), Thomas P. Krichbaum (MPIfR), Jongho Park (IoAaA; Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Republic of Korea [KAaSSI]), Fumie Tazaki (Simulation Technology Development Department, Tokyo Electron Technology Solutions Ltd., Japan; Mizusawa VLBI Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan [Mizusawa]), Hung-Yi Pu (Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, ROC; IoAaA; Center of Astronomy and Gravitation, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, ROC), Masanori Nakamura (National Institute of Technology, Hachinohe College, Japan; IoAaA), Andrei Lobanov (MPIfR), Kazuhiro Hada (Mizusawa; Department of Astronomical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan), Kazunori Akiyama (Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, USA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory, USA [Haystack]; National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan [NAOoJ]), Jae-Young Kim (Department of Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyungpook National University, Republic of Korea; KAaSSI; MPIfR), Ivan Marti-Vidal (Departament d’Astronomia i Astrofísica, Universitat de València, Spain; Observatori Astronòmic, Universitat de València, Spain), Jose L. Gomez (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC, Spain [IAA]), Tomohisa Kawashima (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, The University of Tokyo, Japan), Feng Yuan (Shanghai; Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, People’s Republic of China; School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, People’s Republic of China [SoAaSS]), Eduardo Ros (MPIfR), Walter Alef (MPIfR), Silke Britzen (MPIfR), Michael Bremer (Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, France [IRAMF]), Avery E. Broderick (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Canada [Waterloo]; Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, University of Waterloo, Canada; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada), Akihiro Doi (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan; Department of Space and Astronautical Science, SOKENDAI, Japan [SOKENDAI]), Gabriele Giovannini (Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Bologna, Italy; Istituto di Radio Astronomia, INAF, Bologna, Italy [INAF]), Marcello Giroletti (INAF), Paul T. P. Ho (IoAaA), Mareki Honma (Mizusawa; Hachinohe; Department of Astronomy, The University of Tokyo, Japan), David H. Hughes (Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Mexico), Makoto Inoue (IoAaA), Wu Jiang (Shanghai), Motoki Kino (NAOoJ; Kogakuin University of Technology and Engineering, Japan), Shoko Koyama (Niigata University, Japan; IoAaA), Michael Lindqvist (Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden [Chalmers]), Jun Liu (MPIfR), Alan P. Marscher (Institute for Astrophysical Research, Boston University, USA), Satoki Matsushita (IoAaA), Hiroshi Nagai (NAOoJ; SOKENDAI), Helge Rottmann (MPIfR), Tuomas Savolainen (Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, Aalto University, Finland; Metsähovi Radio Observatory, Finland [Metsähovi]; MPIfR), Karl-Friedrich Schuster (IRAMF), Zhi-Qiang Shen (Shanghai; KLoRA), Pablo de Vicente (Observatorio de Yebes, Spain [Yebes]), R. Craig Walker (National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, USA), Hai Yang (Shanghai; SoAaSS), J. Anton Zensus (MPIfR), Juan Carlos Algaba (Department of Physics, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia), Alexander Allardi (University of Vermont, USA), Uwe Bach (MPIfR), Ryan Berthold (East Asian Observatory, USA [EAO]), Dan Bintley (EAO), Do-Young Byun (KAaSSI; University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea), Carolina Casadio (Institute of Astrophysics, Heraklion, Greece; Department of Physics, University of Crete, Greece), Shu-Hao Chang (IoAaA), Chih-Cheng Chang (National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC [Chung-Shan]), Song-Chu Chang (Chung-Shan), Chung-Chen Chen (IoAaA), Ming-Tang Chen (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, USA [IAAAS]), Ryan Chilson (IAAAS), Tim C. Chuter (EAO), John Conway (Chalmers), Geoffrey B. Crew (Haystack), Jessica T. Dempsey (EAO; Astron, The Netherlands [Astron]), Sven Dornbusch (MPIfR), Aaron Faber (Western University, Canada), Per Friberg (EAO), Javier González García (Yebes), Miguel Gómez Garrido (Yebes), Chih-Chiang Han (IoAaA), Kuo-Chang Han (System Development Center, National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC), Yutaka Hasegawa (Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan [Osaka]), Ruben Herrero-Illana (European Southern Observatory, Chile), Yau-De Huang (IoAaA), Chih-Wei L. Huang (IoAaA), Violette Impellizzeri (Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands; National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, USA [NRAOC]), Homin Jiang (IoAaA), Hao Jinchi (Electronic Systems Research Division, National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC), Taehyun Jung (KAaSSI), Juha Kallunki (Metsähovi), Petri Kirves (Metsähovi), Kimihiro Kimura (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan), Jun Yi Koay (IoAaA), Patrick M. Koch (IoAaA), Carsten Kramer (IRAMF), Alex Kraus (MPIfR), Derek Kubo (IAAAS), Cheng-Yu Kuo (National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan, ROC), Chao-Te Li (IoAaA), Lupin Chun-Che Lin (Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, ROC ), Ching-Tang Liu (IoAaA), Kuan-Yu Liu (IoAaA), Wen-Ping Lo (Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, ROC; IoAaA), Li-Ming Lu (Chung-Shan), Nicholas MacDonald (MPIfR), Pierre Martin-Cocher (IoAaA), Hugo Messias (Joint ALMA Observatory, Chile; Osaka), Zheng Meyer-Zhao (Astron; IoAaA), Anthony Minter (Green Bank Observatory, USA), Dhanya G. Nair (Astronomy Department, Universidad de Concepción, Chile), Hiroaki Nishioka (IoAaA), Timothy J. Norton (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, USA [CfA]), George Nystrom (IAAAS), Hideo Ogawa (Osaka), Peter Oshiro (IAAAS), Nimesh A. Patel (CfA), Ue-Li Pen (IoAaA), Yurii Pidopryhora (MPIfR; Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Germany), Nicolas Pradel (IoAaA), Philippe A. Raffin (IAAAS), Ramprasad Rao (CfA), Ignacio Ruiz (Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, Granada, Spain [IRAMS]), Salvador Sanchez (IRAMS), Paul Shaw (IoAaA), William Snow (IAAAS), T. K. Sridharan (NRAOC; CfA), Ranjani Srinivasan (CfA; IoAaA), Belén Tercero (Yebes), Pablo Torne (IRAMS), Thalia Traianou (IAA; MPIfR), Jan Wagner (MPIfR), Craig Walther (EAO), Ta-Shun Wei (IoAaA), Jun Yang (Chalmers), Chen-Yu Yu (IoAaA).
This research has made use of data obtained with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), which consists of telescopes operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), Metsähovi Radio Observatory (MRO), Yebes, the Korean VLBI Network (KVN), the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
The Greenland Telescope (GLT) retrofit, rebuild, and operation are led by the Academia Sinica, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration in astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
IMAGE: AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE SPATIALLY-RESOLVED ODMR (OPTICALLY DETECTED MAGNETIC RESONANCE) SYSTEM FOR MAGNETIC FIELD IMAGING.view more
CREDIT: EXCITON SCIENCE
Smartphones could one day become portable quantum sensors thanks to a new chip-scale approach that uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) to image magnetic fields.
Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science at UNSW Sydney have demonstrated that OLEDs, a type of semiconductor material commonly found in flat-screen televisions, smartphone screens and other digital displays, can be used to map magnetic fields using magnetic resonance.
Sensing of magnetic fields has important applications in scientific research, industry and medicine.
Published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, this technique is able to function at microchip scale and - unlike other common approaches – does not require input from a laser.
The majority of existing quantum sensing and magnetic field imaging equipment is relatively large and expensive, requiring either optical pumping (from a high-powered laser) or very low cryogenic temperatures. This limits the device integration potential and commercial scalability of such approaches.
By contrast, the OLED sensing device prototyped in this work would ultimately be small, flexible and mass-producible.
The techniques involved in achieving this are electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) and optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR). This is achieved using a camera and microwave electronics to optically detect magnetic resonance, the same physics which enables Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
Using OLEDs for EDMR and ODMR depends on correctly harnessing the spin behaviour of electrons when they are in proximity to magnetic fields.
OLEDs, which are highly sensitive to magnetic fields, are already found in mass-produced electronics like televisions and smartphones, making them an attractive prospect for commercial development in new technologies.
Professor Dane McCamey of UNSW, who is also an Exciton Science Chief Investigator, said: “Our device is designed to be compatible with commercially available OLED technologies, providing the unique ability to map magnetic field over a large area or even a curved surface.
“You could imagine using this technology being added to smartphones to help with remote medical diagnostics, or identifying defects in materials.”
First author Dr Rugang Geng of UNSW and Exciton Science added: “While our study demonstrates a clear technology pathway, more work will be required to increase the sensitivity and readout times.”
Professor McCamey said that a patent has been filed (Australian Patent Application 2022901738) with a view toward potential commercialisation of the technology.
Sub-micron spin-based magnetic field imaging with an organic light emitting diode
COI STATEMENT
The authors, through the University of New South Wales, have applied for a patent related to this work (Australian Patent Application 2022901738). All authors are inventors, and no other inventors are named.
Paradoxical quantum phenomenon measured for the first time
How do quantum particles share information? A peculiar conjecture about quantum information has been experimentally confirmed at the TU Wien.
IMAGE: VACUUM CHAMBER CONTAINING THE ATOM CHIPview more
CREDIT: THOMAS SCHWEIGLER, TU WIEN
Some things are related, others are not. Suppose you randomly select a person from a crowd who is significantly taller than the average. In that case, there is a good chance that they will also weigh more than the average. Statistically, one quantity also contains some information about the other.
Quantum physics allows for even stronger links between different quantities: different particles or parts of an extensive quantum system can "share" a certain amount of information. There are curious theoretical predictions about this: surprisingly, the measure of this "mutual information" does not depend on the size of the system but only on its surface. This surprising result has been confirmed experimentally at the TU Wien and published in Nature Physics. Theoretical input to the experiment and its interpretation came from the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik in Garching, FU Berlin, ETH Zürich and New York University.
Quantum information: More strongly connected than classical physics allows
"Let's imagine a gas container in which small particles fly around and behave in a very classical way like small spheres," says Mohammadamin Tajik of the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) - Atominstitut of TU Wien, first author of the current publication. "If the system is in equilibrium, then particles in different areas of the container know nothing about each other. One can consider them completely independent of each other. Therefore, one can say that the mutual information these two particles share is zero."
In the quantum world, however, things are different: If particles behave quantumly, then it may happen that you can no longer consider them independently of each other. They are mathematically connected - you can't meaningfully describe one particle without saying something about the other.
"For such cases, there has long been a prediction about the mutual information shared between different subsystems of a many-body quantum system," explains Mohammadamin Tajik. "In such a quantum gas, the shared mutual information is larger than zero, and it does not depend on the size of the subsystems - but only on the outer bounding surface of the subsystem."
This prediction seems intuitively strange: In the classical world, it is different. For example, the information contained in a book depends on its volume - not merely on the area of the book's cover. In the quantum world, however, information is often closely linked to surface area.
Measurements with ultracold atoms
An international research team led by Prof. Jörg Schmiedmayer has now confirmed for the first time that the mutual information in a many body quantum system scales with the surface area rather than with the volume. For this purpose, they studied a cloud of ultracold atoms. The particles were cooled to just above absolute zero temperature and held in place by an atom chip. At extremely low temperatures, the quantum properties of the particles become increasingly important. The information spreads out more and more in the system, and the connection between the individual parts of the overall system becomes more and more significant. In this case, the system can be described with a quantum field theory.
"The experiment is very challenging," says Jörg Schmiedmayer. "We need complete information about our quantum system, as best as quantum physics allows. For this, we have developed a special tomography technique. We get the information we need by perturbing the atoms just a bit and then observing the resulting dynamics. It's like throwing a rock into a pond and then getting information about the state of the liquid and the pond from the consequent waves."
As long as the system's temperature does not reach absolute zero (which is impossible), this "shared information" has a limited range. In quantum physics, this is related to the "coherence length" - it indicates the distance to which particles quantumly behave similar, and thereby know from each other. "This also explains why shared information doesn't matter in a classical gas," says Mohammadamin Tajik. "In a classical many-body system, coherence disappears; you can say the particles no longer know anything about their neighboring particles." The effect of temperature and coherence length on mutual information was also confirmed in the experiment.
Quantum information plays an essential role in many technical applications of quantum physics today. Thus, the experiment results are relevant to various research areas - from solid-state physics to the quantum physical study of gravity.
From access cards and key fobs to Bluetooth speakers, the security of communication between wireless devices is critical to maintaining privacy and preventing theft. Unfortunately, these tools are not foolproof and information on how to hack, clone and bypass these systems is becoming easier to find.
That’s why computer engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago have been investigating ways to create more secure devices. In a new paper, UIC scientists report a method inspired by quantum physics to improve wireless device identification and protect device-to-device communication. It uses a truly random and unique digital fingerprint to create a hardware encryption system that is virtually unbreakable.
The scientists, led by Pai-Yen Chen, used a theory from quantum physics in math-based experiments to identify a “divergent exceptional point.”
Quantum physics describes systems for which precise measurement is difficult or impossible; a quantum state describes a parameter space or range of possible measurements. Within these states, there exist exceptional points where the uncertainty of the system is at its maximum. These points are promising for cryptography — the more uncertain the system, the more secure.
Chen and colleagues figured out a mathematical approach to identify these exceptional points in a radio frequency identification system — the technology used by key cards, fobs and other devices that unlock or communicate with nearby sensors. In traditional RFID systems, encrypted keys are stored inside memory chips, which are limited in size and vulnerable to attack.
Chen’s group created new RFID lock-and-tag devices that utilize the exceptional point algorithm to create a secure signal. Since every piece of hardware is slightly different due to small variations during the fabrication process, each RFID device produces its own unique digital fingerprint in light of the maximized uncertainty at the exceptional point.
Like each individual’s voice — which is heard via analog sound waves — their key cryptography structure makes the signal from each device unique, Chen said.
After thousands of simulations, they could not find two identical digital fingerprints, passing National Institute of Standards and Technology randomness tests and machine learning-based attacks.
“Many scientists have thought that the exceptional point theory would be impossible to apply reliably in the real world, but we were able to leverage such a property to implement a novel system,” said Chen, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UIC College of Engineering. “In this paper, we proposed a new circuit with a divergent exceptional point to significantly improve the uniqueness, randomness and robustness of an electromagnetic physically unclonable function.”
“This lightweight and robust analog PUF structure may lead to a variety of unforeseen securities and anti-counterfeiting applications in radio-frequency fingerprinting and wireless communications,” the authors write.
Chen said that the technology is also low cost and highly versatile, which is why it could be particularly helpful for products, such as key cards and near-field communication devices, that are mass-produced and more vulnerable to hacks.
“We simply used the standard printed circuit board fabrication process, suitable for low-cost and mass production. The improved security lies in carefully designing the radio frequency circuit to operate around the exceptional point, which we demonstrated with a wireless identification system,” Chen said.
“Spectral sensitivity near exceptional points as a resource for hardware encryption” is published in Nature Communications. Co-authors of the study include Minye Yang and Liang Zhu of UIC, and Qi Zhong and R. El-Ganainy of Michigan Technological University. The research has been supported, in part, by grants from the National Science Foundation (ECCS1914420) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA95502110202).
Spectral sensitivity near exceptional points as a resource for hardware encryption
Recent study on how to get people to share a corporate post
Communication on social media must strike a delicate balance between attracting attention and consistency with brand positioning, according to a study by Sara Valentini, Bocconi University, Milan, Elisa Montaguti and Federica Vecchioni
IMAGE: COMMUNICATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA MUST STRIKE A DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN ATTRACTING ATTENTION AND CONSISTENCY WITH BRAND POSITIONING, ACCORDING TO A STUDY BY SARA VALENTINI, BOCCONI UNVERSITY, MILANview more
CREDIT: WEIWEI CHEN, BOCCONI UNIVERSITY, MILAN
A brand's communication through social media posts is all the more effective the more it is in line with the image and values the public associates with the brand. This is the subject of a recent article in the Journal of Interactive Marketing by Sara Valentini of the Bocconi University, Milan, co-written with Elisa Montaguti of the University of Bologna and Federica Vecchioni, data scientist at Reply. The study investigates what can drive followers to share promotional content posted by brands on social media and sheds light on what can influence the effectiveness of communication and the likelihood that a post will go "viral".
A brand's presence on social networks is primarily intended to create "engagement," that is, interaction via posts. In particular, one aspect of engagement that brands find attractive is the spontaneous sharing of content by users themselves, in marketing parlance "rebroadcasting." When a follower shares commercial content with his or her network of acquaintances and friends, its impact, quite predictably, is much stronger because it is conveyed by the user and not directly by the brand, which can in turn take advantage of what is known in jargon as "earned media".
Those who communicate through social channels are therefore constantly under pressure to try to achieve this result, and may resort to eye-catching content that has little or nothing to do with brand values. Companies, for example, often try to tie their content to popular online themes, such as puppies, aphorisms, facts or trendy celebrities. However, these themes often do not match the brand's story and positioning. Thus, if using these easy elements failed to generate engagement, the end result would be doubly negative, having contributed to diluting the brand's online positioning.
The authors conducted three different empirical studies aimed at testing to what extent the congruence of posts with brand values and the presence of promotions within the posts are important for rebroadcasting.
In the first study, they monitored and analyzed one year of social media posts by four major brands. The second study is a field test conducted in cooperation with Samsung Italy. In this case, the company allowed the authors to tweak the content of experimental posts on their own pages, precisely for the purpose of collecting relevant data for this research.
Both studies showed that consistency between online content and the values that followers associate with the brand has a positive effect on rebroadcasting frequency. Consequently, companies should be careful about using social media strategies that include elements unrelated to their image, as this may pose a risk of losing the attention of their fans.
Most interestingly, consistency with brand identity can generate a high number of shares even for posts containing price promotions. Indeed, it is not always easy for companies to persuade their fan base to share online content containing commercial cues such as discounts. However, they are about 109% more likely to get their followers to share a high-consistency post with a promotion than a generic post. In contrast, promotions associated with content out of tune with the brand turn out to be those with the lowest probability of spontaneous spread.
The reasons for this phenomenon need to be explained. A third experiment, conducted using a panel of respondents provided by a market research firm, showed that the strongest driver for sharing a post with consistent promotional content is altruism. If people assume that a certain piece of content will be useful to their acquaintances, they will pass it around. Conversely, if a user feels manipulated, he or she will tend to do the opposite of what is desired, with an attitude known in cognitive psychology as "reactance".
“Our results suggest that posts consistent with brand values are less likely to trigger reactance. Therefore, companies that post online content on their pages must maintain a delicate balance to attract the interest of their audience while avoiding elements that are not in line with the brand image,” Sara Valentini explains. “At the same time, posts must spur the fan base to share communication with others. Including promotional incentives, for example, can elicit altruistic motivations in the fan base. However, it can also activate reactance; for this reason, it is important to match the incentive with cues that are consistent with the brand or in line with brand values.”
CLEVELAND – A new study from University Hospitals (UH) Connor Whole Health found patients with moderate-to-severe pain, stress, or anxiety treated at UH community hospitals reported clinically significant reductions in pain, stress, and anxiety in response to a single session of music therapy. Furthermore, the clinically significant effect on pain was not influenced by patients’ demographic or clinical characteristics, suggesting that music therapy can be effective for acute pain management across various inpatient adult populations. The findings from this study were recently published in the journal, Pain Reports, a leading journal focusing on advancing pain research.
In this retrospective study conducted between January 2017 and July 2020, researchers from UH Connor Whole Health examined the first music therapy interventions provided to 1,056 adults receiving inpatient medical care who reported pre-session pain, anxiety, and/or stress scores greater than or equal to 4 on the 0 to 10 numeric rating scale. Unlike prior studies of music therapy, which have primarily been conducted at academic medical centers, this is the first and largest investigation of the real-world effectiveness of music therapy within community medical centers. This study builds upon a history of seminal music therapy studies funded by the Kulas Foundation, the country’s leading foundation for funding scientific research in music therapy, that have investigated the efficacy of music therapy in palliative care, surgery, and sickle cell disease as well as the clinical effectiveness of music therapy within an academic cancer center.
“The music therapists at UH Connor Whole Health offer non-pharmacological frontline treatment throughout our medical system while addressing issues of stress, pain, and anxiety. Greater Cleveland residents may receive these services during hospitalizations at UH as a clinical service line offering direct evidence-based community benefit,” said Seneca Block, The Lauren Rich Fine Endowed Director of Expressive Therapies at UH Connor Whole Health. UH Connor Whole Health manages the largest health system-based music therapy program in the US with 11 board-certified music therapists who collaborate with providers across the system to help patients and their families manage the physical and emotional toll of an illness or hospitalization. Additionally, UH Connor Whole Health provides a diverse offering of integrative health and medicine modalities, including acupuncture, chiropractic, and integrative medicine consults, that are centered on patients’ entire well-being.
In “Effectiveness of Music Therapy within Community Hospitals: An EMMPIRE Retrospective Study,” researchers examined the real-world effectiveness of music therapy at eight UH community medical centers and explored variables associated with pain reduction of greater than or equal to 2 units on a 0 to 10 unit numeric rating scale.
Music therapists provided interventions including live music listening, music-assisted relaxation and imagery, and active music making to address patients’ needs including pain management, coping, stress reduction, and anxiety reduction. As part of clinical care, the music therapists assessed patients’ self-reported pain, stress, and anxiety on a 0 to 10 scale at the beginning and end of each session and documented their sessions in the electronic health record.
“What makes this research novel is our ability to streamline data collection from music therapy clinical practice to the electronic health record. We can then use these data to understand the real-world impact of music therapy throughout multiple medical centers and how best to tailor music therapy interventions to meet patients’ needs,” said Sam Rodgers-Melnick, a music therapist, first author of the study, and a co-investigator on the EMMPIRE project (Effectiveness of Medical Music Therapy Practice: Integrative Research using the Electronic Health Record). The present EMMPIRE study was funded by a 3-year grant from the Kulas Foundation to UH Hospitals.org/ConnorWholeHealth with Jeffery A. Dusek PhD, Director of Research, UH Connor Whole Health, Block and Rodgers-Melnick as prime investigators. Said Dusek, “Routine collection of patient-reported outcomes from clinical practice (also called practice-based research) is becoming increasingly common as a patient-centered quality of care measure.”
Prior research has demonstrated that reductions of at least 1.3 units on the numeric rating scale for pain are clinically significant for patients with non-cancer pain, meaning that the symptom reduction represents a meaningful difference for patients with moderate-to-severe symptoms. Reductions of at least 2 units in stress and anxiety are also considered clinically significant. In this study, patients reported clinically significant mean reductions in pain (2.04 units), anxiety (2.80 units), and stress (3.48 units) in response to music therapy, with all changes exceeding clinically significant thresholds. Additionally, of the patients reporting a pain score greater than or equal to 4, 14% fell asleep during music therapy sessions, an important observation given the sleep challenges patients with moderate-to-severe pain face during hospitalization.
Additionally, after adjusting for demographic, clinical, and operational characteristics, patients receiving a music therapy session in which pain management was a goal were 4.32 times more likely to report pain reduction greater than or equal to 2 units than patients receiving a music therapy session in which pain management was not a session goal. Said Rodgers-Melnick, “this finding raises important questions regarding how music therapists tailor their interventions to address pain when that is the goal of the session, and we will be examining these specific features of music therapy interventions in future research.
“Music therapy provides an alternative but very effective mechanism for managing a patient’s discomfort,” explained Donald DeCarlo, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer of UH East Market.
UH Connor Whole Health is part of University Hospitals (UH), a comprehensive health system with annual revenues in excess of $5.0 billion, 23 hospitals (including 5 joint ventures), more than 50 health centers and outpatient facilities, and over 200 physician offices located throughout 16 counties. UH’s goal is to be the most trusted health care partner in Northeast Ohio and UH Connor Whole Health furthers this objective by working to strengthen relationships between patients and providers to improve outcomes. The Whole Health approach prioritizes compassionate care centered on the patient’s entire well-being. The health care provider’s goal is to equip and empower each patient to take charge of their physical, mental, and spiritual health in order to live a full and meaningful life. Linking the patient’s larger purpose and life goals to their lifestyle allows clinical services, integrative medicine, and well-being programs to be delivered in a way that increases collaboration, motivation, and adherence to self-care and clinical needs. UH Connor Whole Health services include acupuncture, art therapy, chiropractic, expressive therapy (art, dance, and music), guided imagery, integrative medicine/lifestyle medicine consultations (adult and pediatric), massage therapy, meditation, mindfulness, osteopathic sports rehabilitation, stress management and resilience training workshops and yoga. For more information, visit UH Hospitals.org/ConnorWholeHealth. Follow UH Connor Whole Health on LinkedIn.
About University Hospitals / Cleveland, Ohio Founded in 1866, University Hospitals serves the needs of patients through an integrated network of 23 hospitals (including 5 joint ventures), more than 50 health centers and outpatient facilities, and over 200 physician offices in 16 counties throughout northern Ohio. The system’s flagship quaternary care, academic medical center, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, is affiliated with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Oxford University and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. The main campus also includes the UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, ranked among the top children’s hospitals in the nation; UH MacDonald Women's Hospital, Ohio's only hospital for women; and UH Seidman Cancer Center, part of the NCI-designated Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. UH is home to some of the most prestigious clinical and research programs in the nation, with more than 3,000 active clinical trials and research studies underway. UH Cleveland Medical Center is perennially among the highest performers in national ranking surveys, including “America’s Best Hospitals” from U.S. News & World Report. UH is also home to 19 Clinical Care Delivery and Research Institutes. UH is one of the largest employers in Northeast Ohio with more than 30,000 employees. Follow UH on LinkedIn, Facebookand Twitter. For more information, visit UHhospitals.org.
JOURNAL
PAIN Reports
ARTICLE TITLE
Effectiveness of Music Therapy within Community Hospitals: An EMMPIRE Retrospective Study
A healthy but depleted herd: Predators decrease prey disease levels but also population size
Nature documentaries will tell you that lions, cheetahs, wolves and other top predators target the weakest or slowest animals and that this culling benefits prey herds, whether it's antelope in Africa or elk in Wyoming.
This idea has been widely accepted by biologists for many years and was formalized in 2003 as the healthy herds hypothesis. It proposes that predators can help prey populations by picking off the sick and injured and leaving healthy, strong animals to reproduce.
The healthy herds hypothesis has even been used to suggest that manipulating predator numbers to protect prey might be a useful conservation strategy. Even so, hard evidence supporting the hypothesis is scarce, and in recent years many of its assumptions and predictions have been questioned.
In a study published online April 26 in the journal Ecology, a University of Michigan-led research team used a pint-sized predator-prey-parasite system inside 20-gallon water tanks to test the healthy herds hypothesis.
Their study system consisted of predatory fly larvae that feed on the water flea Daphnia dentifera, which hosts a virulent fungal parasite.
The researchers found that while high predation levels reduced parasitism in Daphnia—providing partial support for the healthy herds hypothesis—populations of those poppy seed-sized crustaceans were often dramatically reduced, as well. In some cases, Daphnia populations were nearly wiped out by predation.
The findings may have implications for conservation efforts involving much larger animals, according to the study authors. Specifically, the results suggest that caution is warranted when wildlife managers manipulate predator numbers in the hopes of promoting healthy herds of prey.
"The appeal of the healthy herds hypothesis lies in the alignment of multiple conservation goals—simultaneous conservation of predators, reduction of parasitism, and protection of vulnerable populations—as well as the potential to reduce spillover risk to other populations, including humans," said U-M aquatic and disease ecologist Meghan Duffy.
"But even when predators reduce disease in their prey populations, that does not necessarily lead to increased prey population size, as our study shows," said Duffy, senior author of the new study and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
One well-known example of "healthy herds" gone wrong involves the culling of badgers in the United Kingdom in an effort to reduce bovine tuberculosis in livestock. In that case, the culling can be viewed as a particularly efficient form of predation by humans.
The assumption behind those campaigns was that higher predation of badgers, which are a wildlife reservoir of bovine tuberculosis, would drive healthy livestock herds. Instead, the campaigns increased bovine tuberculosis in cattle. In another example, the culling of bats to reduce the spread of rabies has not been effective at reducing rabies in domestic dogs or wildlife.
Findings of the new study, and others like it, could help explain why some attempts to control disease by manipulating predators fail, according to the authors.
"Unless we develop a more comprehensive understanding of when and how predators influence disease, management strategies that propose to reintroduce or augment predator populations could backfire," said study lead author Laura Lopez, a former postdoctoral researcher in Duffy's lab who now works for the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance in Australia.
Duffy has used Daphnia as a model organism to investigate the causes and consequences of infectious disease outbreaks for nearly 20 years—work that has included several studies of the healthy herds hypothesis.
For the latest study, the researchers experimentally manipulated the density of a predator in their three-organism study system, then monitored Daphnia population sizes and infection levels.
The predators were larvae of the phantom midge, which commonly prey on Daphnia in North American temperate lakes. The parasite was the virulent fungus Metschnikowia bicuspidata.
The predator-prey-parasite interactions occurred inside 48 experimental water tanks called mesocosms, which also contained nutrients and green algae.
At the highest levels, predation completely eliminated the fungal pathogen. However, the highest predation levels often dramatically reduced Daphnia population sizes, as well—an outcome that does not support the healthy herds hypothesis.
"If your primary concern is the overall population size of a vulnerable animal species, then adding high levels of predation that eliminate disease could be detrimental," Duffy said.
"Interestingly, intermediate predation levels reduced parasitism in our study without incurring a cost in terms of overall prey density. Any management decisions would need to weigh the potential costs and benefits associated with increasing predation."
The authors of the Ecology study warned that achieving and maintaining a predation level that reduces parasitism without harming prey population size "might be equivalent to threading the proverbial needle."
In addition to Duffy and Lopez, the study authors are Michael Cortez of Florida State University, Turner DeBlieux and Spencer Hall of Indiana University, Ilona Menel and Carla Cáceres of the University of Illinois, and Bruce O'Brien of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
A study led by University of Liverpool scientists has revealed a new way to improve crop growth, meeting a significant challenge to increase crop productivity in a changing climate with a growing population.
With global levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) rising and the population set to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, Professor Luning Liu’s team of researchers used synthetic biology and plant engineering techniques to improve photosynthesis, creating a template that can be used on a mass scale.
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use atmospheric CO2 to create nutrients, which are crucial for growth and the global ecosystem. The newly published paper details how the team of scientists have improved Rubisco, a key enzyme present in photosynthesis that converts CO2 into energy. Usually Rubisco is inefficient and limits photosynthesis in major crops. However, many microorganisms including bacteria have evolved efficient systems, named ‘CO2-concentrating mechanisms’, to improve Rubisco.
Inspired by nature, the team has successfully engineered a catalytically faster Rubisco taken from bacteria, into tobacco plant cells that undertake photosynthesis to support plant growth. The new method improves the Rubisco’s stability and ability to convert CO2 into energy, allowing plants to further thrive. The changes to the enzyme also potentially increase the plants ability to absorb CO2, helping to support the global effort to address climate change.
Professor Luning Liu, Department of Biochemistry and Systems Biology, University of Liverpool said: “We are extremely excited with this breakthrough. Overall, our findings provide proof-of-concept for a route to improving crop development and production that can withstand changing climates and meet the growing food requirements of the world’s expanding population.”
This latest study follows the team’s recent attempt to engineer the faster Rubisco from bacteria to support plant growth. This research paper can be read here.
The study was funded by the UK Leverhulme Trust Research Grant (RPG-2021-286) and Royal Society University Research Fellowship, in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, University of Essex, and Huazhong Agricultural University. The paper, ‘Engineering α-carboxysomes into plant chloroplasts to support autotrophic photosynthesis’, is published in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37490-0).
