K-pop fans helped COVID-19 public health messaging go viral

Tweets that mentioned the Korean group BTS, spurred record levels of global engagement

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

 

IMAGE: 

U.S. MAP ILLUSTRATING PERCENTAGE OF INCREASED VIRAL BOOSTS OF COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH TWEETS MENTIONING BTS, BY STATE. 

view more 

CREDIT: MAP BY HO-CHUN HERBERT CHANG.

Three years ago, as part of the public health messaging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization launched the "Wear A Mask" campaign on social media.

However, despite their benefits to public health, mask-wearing quickly became a highly politicized and divisive issue across the globe.

But the campaign gained impressive traction after World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued the following tweet on X, the social media platform known at the time as Twitter, on August 21, 2020, thanking BTS, a South Korean K-pop group, for supporting the mask-wearing public health practice as part of the release of their new single, "Dynamite":

     "Thank you, #BTS for the uplifting #BTS_Dynamite and for reminding the #BTSARMY and the rest of us to #WearAMask and take care        of our health and well-being during this #COVID19 pandemic."

K-pop fans with different ideologies and from throughout the globe retweeted Tedros' message making it the most shared mask-wearing tweet.

When health officials and agencies such as Tedros leveraged entertainment groups like "#BTS" into their public health messages on COVID-19, this generated 111 times more virality or retweets, according to a new Dartmouth-led study.

The results are published in Online Social Networks and Media.

"With the COVID-19 pandemic, government health agencies often became targets of partisan politics that challenged public health messages," says lead author Ho-Chun Herbert Chang, an assistant professor of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth. "If government officials and opinion leaders can leverage entertainers who are perceived as neutral third-parties, this creates a powerful driving force for getting a public message out."

"Through our study, we wanted to determine if social media still has the power to serve as a democratizing force as it did in 2010," says Chang.

Social media was perceived as such during the Arab uprisings in 2010 and 2011 when pro-democracy protestors took to social media to speak out against the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

"But after Brexit in 2016, when the United Kingdom officially voted to leave the European Union and the Cambridge Analytica data breach in 2018, people became quite pessimistic towards social media and its lightning speed spread of misinformation as studies reported on how social media can undermine democracy," says Chang.

The researchers focused on one simple question: Who was the biggest voice on social media driving public health practices, particularly, mask-wearing?

Using the largest and most comprehensive public COVID-19 dataset on Twitter, the researchers analyzed 7 million tweets on mask-wearing. The team applied natural language processing to extract the tweets from a dataset of 3.5 billion tweets and then conducted a social network analysis to figure out how the tweets travel through the social network. They also looked at the use of K-pop specific hashtags: #BTS and #BTSArmy, as well as BlackPink and Twice, the two other most popular K-pop groups on Twitter.

The findings show that leveraging the popularity of BTS was part of the WHO's communications strategy on COVID-19 public health messaging.

The 16 unique tweets by health officials containing BTS, most of which were tweets by Tedros, generated nearly 234,600 retweets. In comparison, Dr. Tedros' 2,140 other tweets that did not mention BTS yielded 282,650 retweets. The 16 tweets mentioning BTS packed nearly the same punch (84% of the retweet value) as that of the 2,140 tweets without K-pop. So, tweets mentioning BTS garnered 111 times more virality or retweets.

The team also investigated the rates of mask-wearing tweets with and without BTS in all countries that use Twitter, which included assessing the rate of tweets in a country relative to its population.

Tweets with K-pop saw a huge uptake in Western countries with the U.S. at the top. However, the increase of virality between retweets with K-pop over those without K-pop was largest in the global south, including in Southeast Asia and South America, which as the researchers explain, are regions that are typically underserved by Western-based global organizations, while the West had a modest increase. The retweet data showed Vietnam had a 3,840% increase (38.4 times more virality), South Korea had a 3,190% increase, Philippines had a 1,290% increase, Peru had a 1,080% increase, and Argentina had an 845% increase. In contrast, the U.S. had just a 56% increase and the United Kingdom had a 28% increase. 

For BTS-related tweets in the U.S., the biggest viral boosts by percentage were observed in South Dakota (52%), North Dakota (41%), Mississippi (39%), Missouri (39%), Utah (37%), Louisiana (37%), Wisconsin (36%), and Nebraska (33%), most of which are heartland states. 

As part of the analysis, the researchers examined users' political diets (left, center, and right) and the timelines of users, which enabled them to plot a retweet network of users before and after the Aug. 21, 2020, tweet by Tedros over a four-month span.

While left-leaning users dominated the network, the results showed that use of the #WearAMask hashtag by right-leaning users increased significantly after BTS' appearance at the United Nations General Assembly. 

Apart from K-pop, tweets mentioning Eric Ding, chief of the COVID Response Task Force at the New England Institute and Grey's Anatomy, the American medical drama, were the two other most popular drivers of mask-wearing messaging.

"There is a lot of criticism over hashtag activism; however, to support South Korea's COVID-19 relief efforts, BTS fans donated money and ticket refunds from BTS concerts cancelled due to the pandemic, showing that the organizing potential of fandoms should not be underestimated," says Chang.

"Fandoms can act as powerful catalysts for online and offline collective action," says Chang. "They can generate interventions at a global scale."

Chang is available for comment at: herbert.chang@dartmouth.edu. Becky Pham and Emilio Ferrara at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, also contributed to the study.

COVID-19 public health tweets mentioning BTS had a significant virality increase in Southeast Asia and South America, and a moderate increase in the West.

Network of users retweeting #WearAMask before (on left) and after (on right) the tweet referencing BTS by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on August 21, 2020, within a four-month span. Nodes represent users and are labeled by their political diet, left-leaning (blue), central (pink), and right-leaning (red).

CREDIT

Figure by Ho-Chun Herbert Chang.

---

JOURNAL

Online Social Networks and Media

DOI

10.1016/j.osnem.2023.100267 

ARTICLE TITLE

Parasocial diffusion: K-pop fandoms help drive COVID-19 public health messaging on social media

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Oct-2023

 

Conscience launches to tackle drug discovery and development for diseases sidelined by pharmaceutical science

Canada invests $49 million in Conscience, led by CEO Ryan Merkley; Will harness “open science” and artificial intelligence (AI) for innovation where the market has failed

Business Announcement

CONSCIENCE

TORONTO (5 October 2023) – Conscience, a game-changing non-profit venture focused on enabling drug discoveries for diseases that have received limited attention from the pharmaceutical industry, launched today with pioneering support from the Canadian government.

With CA$105.7 million in funding, including $49 million from the Canadian government and the engagement of industry, academia, government and patient advocacy groups, Conscience seeks to lead global drug discovery and development for emerging, rare or complex diseases and ensure these drugs are affordable and equitably available to all.

“Drug discovery has focused on diseases with large patient pools and big profit potential. We have a different approach to medical breakthroughs,” said Ryan Merkley, the new Chief Executive Officer of Conscience. “We’re turning the discovery of new medicines into a team sport. The market’s failures don’t have to be our failures. Together, we can develop artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and use open collaboration strategies to solve for diseases few others are paying attention to.”

“Today’s investment will accelerate medicines research and development efforts by leveraging Canadian strengths in artificial intelligence and employing open science principles to drive efficiencies toward building Canadian innovation capacity, while delivering the medicines that Canadians need,” said the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how important it is to maintain and grow a vibrant and innovative life and science ecosystem. This is why our government is proud to support the Conscience-led Network as part of our continued commitment to building a strong and resilient sector that will protect Canadians’ health and safety for generations to come.”

“I’m proud to announce this critical project that will connect a vast community of experts to accelerate the identification of promising drug candidates, support pandemic preparedness and boost Canada’s biomedical sector by building on its talented resources and creating rewarding jobs,” said Ryan Turnbull, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and member of Parliament for Whitby.

Conscience was established by the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), a leading open science organization with a 20-year track record of bringing together industry, academia and leading innovators from around the world to solve challenges through collaborative approaches. Conscience is led by a board and staff with a proven track record in drug development, scientific research and innovation, and open science.

Leveraging open science and artificial intelligence (AI)

“Medical breakthroughs aren’t random,” said Anke Mueller-Fahrnow, Chair of the Board of Conscience and former head of Lead Discovery Berlin within Bayer AG. “They take enormous amounts of time, effort and money. Ironically, they are also hugely inefficient. We can drive down the cost of drug discovery and development and ultimately the cost of drugs through harnessing collaboration and the power of AI.”

Open science first gained global attention with the mapping of the human genome. It is based on close collaboration and data sharing among researchers, academics and industry, increasing efficiency and reducing excessive costs and wasteful duplication, especially those associated with exclusive patents.

In addition to open science, artificial intelligence has enormous potential for drug discovery. But this potential remains limited by a paucity of high-quality data that can be used to train AI for drug discovery and the lack of a mechanism to compare emerging methods. Moreover, all predictions must then be tested in labs to provide feedback to the AI algorithms.

“It took one trillion lines of text scraped off the internet to create ChatGPT, and it still is riddled with errors,” said Merkley. “The only way to use AI effectively for drug discovery is for all companies and researchers to pull together to create high quality data and make those data available to all. That’s why we call drug discovery a ‘team sport’.”

A unique Conscience program is already building the foundations to analyze this shared data set. The CACHE Challenge hosts open AI competitions to identify potential drugs for a particular disease. They are tested at the University of Toronto to identify the best candidates and then both the raw data and the successful predictions are publicly released. 

Initially operated by the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of Toronto, but now operated by Conscience, the first challenge is well underway and is focused on an under-researched area of Parkinson’s disease.

“The beauty of this competition is that in the end, we all win. In addition to new discoveries, all of the data generated are shared, and can be used to further AI drug discovery,” said Leah Cowen, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives, at the University of Toronto. “We look forward to collaborating with Conscience to catalyze a new era of drug discovery through CACHE Challenges.”

Three upcoming challenges are planned: two for COVID therapeutics and one for a rare form of childhood cancer.

Ryan Merkley to Lead Conscience

As CEO of Conscience, Ryan Merkley returns to steward a Canada-based organization, applying 20 years of leadership in technology and the public good, open science and collaboration. Merkley spent the last decade working in public interest technology and on public policy issues, including those related to AI and intellectual property. 

While serving as Managing Director of Aspen Digital at the Aspen Institute, Merkley navigated complex technology issues on AI, intellectual property and open source, and information integrity.  As Chief of Staff at the Wikimedia Foundation and CEO of Creative Commons, he was an international leader building open and collaborative community networks.

Previously, Merkley served as Director of Corporate Communications for the City of Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games and was a Senior Advisor to Mayor David Miller in Toronto, where he initiated Toronto’s Open Data project.

Merkley says that the call to participate in Conscience is open to partners, funders and innovators from all sectors — both medical researchers and AI developers.

“By embracing open science, AI and collaboration, Conscience is shaping a future where critical medical breakthroughs leave no person behind,” he said.

###

To learn more, visit https://www.conscience.ca

 

Plot thickens in hunt for ninth planet

Outer reaches of solar system could harbor another planet—or evidence modifying laws of gravity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

AN ARTIST’S IMPRESSION OF A KUIPER BELT OBJECT (KBO), LOCATED ON THE OUTER RIM OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM AT A STAGGERING DISTANCE OF 4 BILLION MILES FROM THE SUN. 

view more 

CREDIT: NASA

CLEVELAND—A pair of theoretical physicists are reporting that the same observations inspiring the hunt for a ninth planet might instead be evidence within the solar system of a modified law of gravity originally developed to understand the rotation of galaxies.

Researchers Harsh Mathur,  a professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University, and Katherine Brown, an associate professor of physics at Hamilton College, made the assertion after studying the effect the Milky Way galaxy would have on objects in the outer solar system—if the laws of gravity were governed by a theory known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (or MOND).

MOND proposes Isaac Newton’s famous law of gravity is valid up to a point. That is, when the gravitational acceleration predicted by Newton’s law becomes small enough, MOND allows for a different gravitational behavior to take over. 

The observational success of MOND on galactic scales is why some scientists consider it an alternative to “dark matter,” the term physicists use to describe a hypothesized form of matter that would have gravitational effects but not emit any light.

“MOND is really good at explaining galactic-scale observations,” Mathur said, “but I hadn’t expected that it would have noticeable effects on the outer solar system.”

Their work was recently published in The Astronomical Journal.

A ‘striking’ alignment

Mathur and Brown had studied MOND’s effect on galactic dynamics before. But they became interested in MOND’s more local effects after astronomers announced in 2016 that a handful of objects in the outer solar system showed orbital anomalies that could be explained by a ninth planet.

Orbital peculiarities have led to historic discoveries before: Neptune was discovered through its gravitational tug on the orbits of nearby object, the minute precession of Mercury provided early evidence in support of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and astronomers have recently used orbital dynamics to infer the presence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy.

Brown realized MOND’s predictions might be at odds with the observations that had motivated the search for a ninth planet. “We wanted to see if the data that support the Planet Nine hypothesis would effectively rule out MOND,” she said.

Instead, Mathur and Brown found MOND predicts precisely clustering that astronomers have observed. Over millions of years, they argue, the orbits of some objects in the outer solar system would be dragged into alignment with the galaxy’s own gravitational field.

When they plotted the orbits of the objects from the Planet Nine dataset against the galaxy’s own gravitational field, “the alignment was striking,” Mathur said.

The authors caution that the current dataset is small and that that any number of other possibilities might prove to be correct; other astronomers have argued the orbital peculiarities are the result of observational bias, for example.

“Regardless of the outcome,” Brown said, “this work highlights the potential for the outer solar system to serve as a laboratory for testing gravity and studying fundamental problems of physics.”

###

Case Western Reserve University is one of the country's leading private research institutions. Located in Cleveland, we offer a unique combination of forward-thinking educational opportunities in an inspiring cultural setting. Our leading-edge faculty engage in teaching and research in a collaborative, hands-on environment. Our nationally recognized programs include arts and sciences, dental medicine, engineering, law, management, medicine, nursing and social work. About 6,000 undergraduate and 6,300 graduate students comprise our student body. Visit case.edu to see how Case Western Reserve thinks beyond the possible.

 

 

 

 

 

---

JOURNAL

The Astronomical Journal

DOI

10.3847/1538-3881/acef1e 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Modified Newtonian Dynamics as an Alternative to the Planet Nine Hypothesis

  

Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar

H.E.S.S. observatory records 20 tera-electronvolts photons from the Vela pulsar

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DEUTSCHES ELEKTRONEN-SYNCHROTRON DESY

 

IMAGE: 

THE RESEARCHERS THINK THAT INFRARED LIGHT PARTICLES (PHOTONS) FROM THE POLES OF THE PULSAR ARE BOOSTED TO GAMMA-RAY ENERGIES (BLUE) BY FAST ELECTRONS.

view more 

CREDIT: SCIENCE COMMUNICATION LAB FOR DESY

Scientists using the H.E.S.S. observatory in Namibia have detected the highest energy gamma rays ever from a dead star called a pulsar. The energy of these gamma rays clocked in at 20 tera-electronvolts, or about ten trillion times the energy of visible light. This observation is hard to reconcile with the theory of the production of such pulsed gamma rays, as the international team reports in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Pulsars are the left-over corpses of stars that spectacularly exploded in a supernova. The explosions leave behind a tiny, dead star with a diameter of just some 20 kilometres, rotating extremely fast and endowed with an enormous magnetic field. “These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tonnes, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” explains H.E.S.S. scientist Emma de Oña Wilhelmi, a co-author of the publication working at DESY.



Pulsars emit rotating beams of electromagnetic radiation, somewhat like cosmic lighthouses. If their beam sweeps across our solar system, we see flashes of radiation at regular time intervals. These flashes, also called pulses of radiation, can be searched for in different energy bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Scientists think that the source of this radiation are fast electrons produced and accelerated in the pulsar’s magnetosphere, while traveling towards its periphery. The magnetosphere is made up of plasma and electromagnetic fields that surround and co-rotate with the star. “On their outward journey, the electrons acquire energy and release it in the form of the observed radiation beams,” says Bronek Rudak from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (CAMK PAN) in Poland, also a co-author.


The Vela pulsar, located in the Southern sky in the constellation Vela (sail of the ship), is the brightest pulsar in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum and the brightest persistent source of cosmic gamma rays in the giga-electronvolts (GeV) range. It rotates about eleven times per second. However, above a few GeV, its radiation ends abruptly, presumably because the electrons reach the end of the pulsar's magnetosphere and escape from it.

 



But this is not the end of the story: using deep observations with H.E.S.S., a new radiation component at even higher energies has now been discovered, with energies of up to tens of tera-electronvolts (TeV). “That is about 200 times more energetic than all radiation ever detected before from this object,” says co-author Christo Venter from the North-West University in South Africa. This very high-energy component appears at the same phase intervals as the one observed in the GeV range. However, to attain these energies, the electrons might have to travel even farther than the magnetosphere, yet the rotational emission pattern needs to remain intact.


“This result challenges our previous knowledge of pulsars and requires a rethinking of how these natural accelerators work,” says Arache Djannati-Atai from the Astroparticle & Cosmology (APC) laboratory in France, who led the research. “The traditional scheme according to which particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines within or slightly outside the magnetosphere cannot sufficiently explain our observations. Perhaps we are witnessing the acceleration of particles through the so-called magnetic reconnection process beyond the light cylinder, which still somehow preserves the rotational pattern? But even this scenario faces difficulties to explain how such extreme radiation is produced.”    

Whatever the explanation, next to its other superlatives, the Vela pulsar now officially holds the record as the pulsar with the highest-energy gamma rays discovered to date. “This  discovery opens a new observation window for detection of other pulsars in the tens of teraelectronvolt range with current and upcoming more sensitive gamma-ray telescopes, hence paving the way for a better understanding of the extreme acceleration processes in highly magnetised astrophysical objects,” says Djannati-Atai. 

---

JOURNAL

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-023-02052-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Discovery of a Radiation Component from the Vela Pulsar Reaching 20 Teraelectronvolts

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Oct-2023

Pulsars may make dark matter glow

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

The central question in the ongoing hunt for dark matter is: what is it made of? One possible answer is that dark matter consists of particles known as axions. A team of astrophysicists, led by researchers from the universities of Amsterdam and Princeton, has now shown that if dark matter consists of axions, it may reveal itself in the form of a subtle additional glow coming from pulsating stars.

Dark matter may be the most sought-for constituent of our universe. Surprisingly, this mysterious form of matter, that physicist and astronomers so far have not been able to detect, is assumed to make up an enormous part of what is out there. No less than 85% of matter in the universe is suspected to be ‘dark’, presently only noticeable through the gravitational pull it exerts on other astronomical objects. Understandably, scientists want more. They want to really see dark matter – or at the very least, detect its presence directly, not just infer it from gravitational effects. And, of course: they want to know what it is.

Cleaning up two problems
One thing is clear: dark matter cannot be the same type of matter that you and I are made of. If that were to be the case, dark matter would simply behave like ordinary matter – it would form objects like stars, light up, and no longer be ‘dark’. Scientists are therefore looking for something new – a type of particle that nobody has detected yet, and that probably only interacts very weakly with the types of particles that we know, explaining why this constituent of our world so far has remained elusive.

There are plenty of clues for where to look. One popular assumption is that dark matter could be made of axions. This hypothetical type of particle was first introduced in the 1970s to resolve a problem that had nothing to do with dark matter. The separation of positive and negative charges inside the neutron, one of the building blocks of ordinary atoms, turned out to be unexpectedly small. Scientists of course wanted to know why. It turned out that the presence of a hitherto undetected type of particle, interacting very weakly with the neutron’s constituents, could cause exactly such an effect. The later Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek came up with a name for the new particle: axion – not just similar to other particle names like proton, neutron, electron and photon, but also inspired by a laundry detergent of the same name. The axion was there to clean up a problem.

In fact, despite never being detected, it might clean up two. Several theories for elementary particles, including string theory, one of the leading candidate theories to unify all forces in nature, appeared to predict that axion-like particles could exist. If axions were indeed out there, could they also constitute part or even all of the missing dark matter? Perhaps, but an additional question that haunted all dark matter research was just as valid for axions: if so, then how can we see them? How does one make something ‘dark’ visible?

Shining a light on dark matter
Fortunately, it seems that for axions there may be a way out of this conundrum. If the theories that predict axions are correct, they are not only expected to be mass-produced in the universe, but some axions could also be converted into light in the presence of strong electromagnetic fields. Once there is light, we can see. Could this be the key to detect axions – and therefore to detect dark matter?

To answer that question, scientists first had to ask themselves where in the universe the strongest known electric and magnetic fields occur. The answer is: in regions surrounding rotating neutron stars also known as pulsars. These pulsars – short for ‘pulsating stars’ – are dense objects, with a mass roughly the same as that of our Sun, but a radius that is around 100,000 times smaller, only about 10 km. Being so small, pulsars spin with enormous frequencies, emitting bright narrow beams of radio emission along their axis of rotation. Similar to a lighthouse, the pulsar’s beams can sweep across the Earth, making the pulsating star easily observable.

However, the pulsar’s enormous spin does more. It turns the neutron star into an extremely strong electromagnet. That, in turn, could mean that pulsars are very efficient axion factories. Every single second an average pulsar would be capable of producing a 50-digit number of axions. Because of the strong electromagnetic field around the pulsar, a fraction of these axions could convert into observable light. That is: if axions exist at all – but the mechanism can now be used to answer just that question. Just look at pulsars, see if they emit extra light, and if they do, determine whether this extra light could be coming from axions.

Simulating a subtle glow
As always in science, actually performing such an observation is of course not that simple. The light emitted by axions – detectable in the form of radio waves – would only be a small fraction of the total light that these bright cosmic lighthouses send our way. One needs to know very precisely what a pulsar without axions would look like, and what a pulsar with axions would look like, to be able to see the difference – let alone to quantify that difference and turn it into a measurement of an amount of dark matter.

This is exactly what a team of physicists and astronomers have now done. In a collaborative effort between the Netherlands, Portugal and the USA, the team has constructed a comprehensive theoretical framework which allows for the detailed understanding of how axions are produced, how axions escape the gravitational pull of the neutron star, and how, during their escape, they convert into low energy radio radiation.

The theoretical results were then put on a computer to model the production of axions around pulsars, using state-of-the-art numerical plasma simulations that were originally developed to understand the physics behind how pulsars emit radio waves. Once virtually produced, the propagation of the axions through the electromagnetic fields of the neutron star was simulated. This allowed the researchers to quantitatively understand the subsequent production of radio waves and model how this process would provide an additional radio signal on top of the intrinsic emission generated from the pulsar itself.

Putting axion models to a test
The results from theory and simulation were then put to a first observational test. Using observations from 27 nearby pulsars, the researchers compared the observed radio waves to the models, to see if any measured excess could provide evidence for the existence of axions. Unfortunately, the answer was ‘no’ – or perhaps more optimistically: ‘not yet’. Axions do not immediately jump out to us, but perhaps that was not to be expected. If dark matter were to give up its secrets that easily, it would already have been observed a long time ago.

The hope for a smoking-gun detection of axions, therefore, is now on future observations. Meanwhile, the current non-observation of radio signals from axions is an interesting result in itself. The first comparison between simulations and actual pulsars has placed the strongest limits to date on the interaction that axions can have with light.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to do more than just set limits – it is to either show that axions are out there, or to make sure that it is extremely unlikely that axions are a constituent of dark matter at all. The new results are just a first step in that direction; they are only the beginning of what could become an entirely new and highly cross-disciplinary field that has the potential to dramatically advance the search for axions.

---

JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Novel Constraints on Axions Produced in Pulsar Polar-Cap Cascades

 

Astronomers discover first step toward planet formation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF NATURAL SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: 

AN IMAGE OF THE RADIO WAVE EMISSION STRENGTH FROM THE DISK AROUND DG TAURUS, OBSERVED WITH ALMA. RINGS HAVE NOT YET FORMED IN THE DISK, SUGGESTING THAT IT IS JUST BEFORE PLANET FORMATION.

view more 

CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. OHASHI ET AL.

Astronomers have gotten very good at spotting the signs of planet formation around stars. But for a complete understanding of planet formation, we also need to study examples where planet formation has not yet started. Looking for something and not finding it can be even more difficult than finding it sometimes, but new detailed observations of the young star DG Taurus show that it has a smooth protoplanetary disk without signs of planet formation. This successful non-detection of planet formation may indicate that DG Taurus is on the eve of planet formation.

Planets form in disks of gas and dust, known as protoplanetary disks, around protostars, young stars still in the process of forming. Planet growth is so slow that it’s not possible to watch the evolution as it happens, so astronomers observe many protostars at slightly different stages of planet formation to build up a theoretical understanding.

This time an international research team led by Satoshi Ohashi at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to conduct high-resolution observations of a protoplanetary disk around a relatively young protostar, DG Taurus located 410 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Taurus. The team found that DG Taurus has a smooth protoplanetary disk, without any rings which would indicate that planets are forming. This led the team to believe that DG Taurus system will start forming planets in the future.

The team found that in this pre-planet-formation stage, the dust grains within 40 AU (about twice the size of the orbit of Uranus in the Solar System) of the central protostar are still small, while beyond this radius the dust grains have started to grow in size, the first step in planet formation. This is contrary to theoretical expectations that planet formation starts in the inner part of the disk.

These results provide surprising new information about the dust distribution and other conditions at the start of planet formation. Future studies of more examples will further improve our understanding of planet formation.

---

JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal

DOI

10.3847/1538-4357/ace9b9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Dust Enrichment and Grain Growth in a Smooth Disk around the DG Tau Protostar Revealed by ALMA Triple Bands Frequency Observations

 

Self-injurious thoughts & behaviors in youth

A free webinar from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation

Meeting Announcement

BRAIN & BEHAVIOR RESEARCH FOUNDATION

 

IMAGE: 

MINDY WESTLUND SCHREINER, PH.D.

view more 

CREDIT: BBRF

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) is hosting a free webinar, “Self-Injurious Thoughts & Behaviors in Youth” on Tuesday, October 10, 2023, at 2:00 pm ET. The presenter will be Mindy Westlund Schreiner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the University of Utah. Dr. Schreiner is also the recipient of a 2021 Young Investigator Grant. The webinar will be hosted by Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and host of the public television series Healthy Minds.

Register today at BBRFoundation.org

Self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) refer to thoughts and behaviors involving suicidal intent (suicidal ideation, plans, and behaviors) as well as deliberate self-injury in the absence of any intent to die. SITBs commonly begin during adolescence and are of growing concern. Mental health services for youth who experience SITBs are often limited, with crisis lines being among the most easily accessible support. However, more services are needed that explicitly target factors that contribute to SITBs. This presentation reviews recent results on the characteristics of youth who use a particular crisis service, the role of neurobiology in SITBs, and an ongoing study incorporating both neuroimaging and intervention in an effort to further our understanding of how to best help youth with SITBs.

About Brain & Behavior Research Foundation 
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation awards research grants to develop improved treatments, cures, and methods of prevention for mental illness. These illnesses include addiction, ADHD, anxiety, autism, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, and schizophrenia, as well as research on suicide prevention. Since 1987, the Foundation has awarded more than $450 million to fund more than 5,400 leading scientists around the world. 100% of every dollar donated for research is invested in research. BBRF operating expenses are covered by separate foundation grants. BBRF is the producer of the Emmy® nominated public television series Healthy Minds with Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, which aims to remove the stigma of mental illness and demonstrate that with help, there is hope.