Meta Takes Down 8,000 Scam Ads to Stem “Celeb Bait” Scams with Australian Banks

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Srinivas Chakravarty

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has removed around 8,000 “celeb bait” scam ads as part of a new collaboration with Australian banks. These scams often use images of famous personalities, many of which are created by artificial intelligence, to deceive people into investing in fake schemes.

Meta acted after receiving 102 reports since April from the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, an intelligence-sharing platform led by major banks. These scams are a global issue, but Australia is putting additional pressure on Meta to address the problem, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government plans to introduce a new anti-scam law by the end of this year.

The proposed law could impose fines of up to A$50 million (around ₹280 crore) on social media, financial, and telecom companies that fail to control these scams. Public consultation for the law ends on October 4.

Scam reports in Australia have surged by nearly 20% in 2023, with total losses reaching A$2.7 billion (₹15,000 crore), according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC previously sued Meta in 2022, accusing the company of not stopping fake cryptocurrency ads featuring celebrities like Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman. It estimated that 58% of cryptocurrency ads on Facebook could be scams. Meta is currently contesting the lawsuit, which has yet to go to trial.

In addition, Meta is facing another lawsuit from Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest. Forrest alleges that Meta allowed the spread of thousands of fake cryptocurrency ads on Facebook using his image. He claims Australians have continued to lose money to these scams since he first warned Meta in 2019.

David Agranovich, Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption, said that the initiative with Australian banks is still in its early stages but is showing promise. “A small amount of high-value information is helping us identify larger scam activities,” he said during a media briefing.

When asked about Australia’s proposed anti-scam law, Agranovich said Meta is still reviewing the draft and will share more details later. Rhonda Luo, the Head of Strategy at the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, emphasized the importance of industry initiatives, saying, “It’s better to act early on scams rather than wait for regulations to take effect.”

4 Years After India, US House Passes Legislation to Ban TikTok

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Srinivas Chakravarty

While the US House of Representatives recently passed legislation that could pave the way for a ban on TikTok, utilized by over 170 million Americans, it was India that initially took action to block the Chinese short-video platform, which boasts a global user base.

On June 29, 2020, India enforced a ban on TikTok, a platform controlled by the Chinese conglomerate ByteDance, despite the country being one of its largest markets outside of China.

Citing security concerns, the Indian government blocked TikTok along with 59 other Chinese apps, including WeChat, Shareit, Helo, and Likee, among others. Subsequently, over 300 Chinese apps have faced bans in India, including those related to betting and loans, all found in violation of Section 69 of the IT Act, posing threats to India’s sovereignty and integrity.

TikTok ban

Following the ban, TikTok terminated its entire India-based workforce, comprising approximately 40 employees. In 2020, the Indian Army instructed its personnel to remove 89 mobile apps, including several Chinese ones, from their devices to prevent data leakage.

Concerns regarding TikTok’s security implications stem from its ties to the Chinese government, with lawmakers and officials suggesting Beijing’s potential access to user data through the app. In response, TikTok has maintained that data of American users is stored within the United States.

In November of the same year, Nepal joined in banning TikTok, citing its content as “detrimental to social harmony.”

Meanwhile, India has witnessed a surge in short-form video platform users, exceeding 250 million, with around 70% hailing from tier-2 cities and other semi-urban and rural areas, often representing middle and high-income demographics, according to recent reports.

India bans 18 OTT Platforms due to obscene content

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Srinivas Chakravarty

In a decisive move, the Indian government has announced the prohibition of 18 over-the-top (OTT) platforms due to their dissemination of obscene, vulgar, and in some cases, pornographic content. This action follows repeated warnings issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, as disclosed by Union Minister Anurag Thakur.

Among the targeted platforms, one app alone had accrued over 10 million downloads, with two others surpassing 5 million downloads on the Google Play Store.

Collaborating with various intermediaries, the Ministry orchestrated the blocking of these 18 OTT platforms, alongside disabling access to 19 websites, 10 apps (7 on Google Play Store, 3 on Apple App Store), and 57 associated social media accounts within the country.

The Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Youth Affairs and Sports, Shri Anurag Singh Thakur briefing the media on Cabinet decisions in New Delhi on March 13, 2024. (PIB)

The decision, executed under the purview of the Information Technology Act, 2000, was made in consultation with relevant government ministries/departments and domain experts in media, entertainment, women’s rights, and child rights.

The Minister reiterated the platforms’ obligation to refrain from promoting obscenity, vulgarity, and abuse disguised as “creative expression.”

The banned OTT platforms include:
Dreams Films,
Voovi, Yessma,
Uncut Adda,
Tri Flicks,
X Prime,
Neon X VIP,
Besharams,
Hunters,
Rabbit,
Xtramood,
Nuefliks,
MoodX,
Mojflix,
Hot Shots VIP,
Fugi,
Chikooflix, and
Prime Play.

Highlighting the objectionable nature of the content, Minister Thakur pointed out its depiction of nudity, sexual acts, and demeaning portrayals of women, often within inappropriate contexts such as teacher-student relationships and incestuous scenarios.

Furthermore, the content contained sexual innuendos and explicit scenes devoid of thematic or societal significance, leading to violations of various legal statutes including sections of the IT Act, IPC, and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986.

The Minister also noted the extensive use of social media by these platforms to disseminate trailers, specific scenes, and links to attract audiences, accumulating over 3.2 million followers across their social media accounts.

While implementing this ban, the government reiterated its commitment to nurturing the growth and advancement of the OTT industry.

PM Modi greets Amitabh Bachchan on his 80th birthday

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has greeted Amitabh Bachchan on his 80th birthday. Shri Modi has said that Amitabh Bachchan is one of India’s most remarkable film personalities who has enthralled and entertained audiences across generations.

In a tweet, the Prime Minister said;

“A very happy 80th birthday to Amitabh Bachchan Ji. He is one of India’s most remarkable film personalities who has enthralled and entertained audiences across generations. May he lead a long and healthy life.”

PM greets Amitabh Bachchan on his 80th birthday

Are we alone in the universe? JPL’s OWLS, other tools to help search for life in deep space

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

A team at the Lab has invented new technologies that could be used by future missions to analyze liquid samples from watery worlds and look for signs of alien life.

Are we alone in the universe? An answer to that age-old question has seemed tantalizingly within reach since the discovery of ice-encrusted moons in our solar system with potentially habitable subsurface oceans. But looking for evidence of life in a frigid sea hundreds of millions of miles away poses tremendous challenges. The science equipment used must be exquisitely complex yet capable of withstanding intense radiation and cryogenic temperatures. What’s more, the instruments must be able to take diverse, independent, complementary measurements that together could produce scientifically defensible proof of life.

To address some of the difficulties that future life-detection missions might encounter, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has developed OWLS, a powerful suite of science instruments unlike any other. Short for Oceans Worlds Life Surveyor, OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples. It features eight instruments – all automated – that, in a lab on Earth, would require the work of several dozen people.

JPL’s OWLS combines powerful chemical-analysis instruments that look for the building blocks of life with microscopes that search for cells. This version of OWLS would be miniaturized and customized for use on future missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One vision for OWLS is to use it to analyze frozen water from a vapor plume erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. “How do you take a sprinkling of ice a billion miles from Earth and determine – in the one chance you’ve got, while everyone on Earth is waiting with bated breath – whether there’s evidence of life?” said Peter Willis, the project’s co-principal investigator and science lead. “We wanted to create the most powerful instrument system you could design for that situation to look for both chemical and biological signs of life.”

OWLS has been funded by JPL Next, a technology accelerator program run by the Lab’s Office of Space Technology. In June, after a half-decade of work, the project team tested its equipment – currently the size of a few filing cabinets – on the salty waters of Mono Lake in California’s Eastern Sierra. OWLS found chemical and cellular evidence of life, using its built-in software to identify that evidence without human intervention.

“We have demonstrated the first generation of the OWLS suite,” Willis said. “The next step is to customize and miniaturize it for specific mission scenarios.”

https://indiainternationaltimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/e2-OWLS_microscope_video-9s-1.mp4?_=1

Challenges, Solutions

A key difficulty the OWLS team faced was how to process liquid samples in space. On Earth, scientists can rely on gravity, a reasonable lab temperature, and air pressure to keep samples in place, but those conditions don’t exist on a spacecraft hurtling through the solar system or on the surface of a frozen moon. So the team designed two instruments that can extract a liquid sample and process it in the conditions of space.

Since it’s not clear what form life might take on an ocean world, OWLS also needed to include the broadest possible array of instruments, capable of measuring a size range from single molecules to microorganisms. To that end, the project joined two subsystems: one that employs a variety of chemical analysis techniques using multiple instruments, and one with several microscopes to examine visual clues.

Water ice and vapor are seen spraying from Saturn’s frozen moon Enceladus, which hosts a hidden subsurface ocean, in this image captured by NASA’s Cassini mission during a 2010 flyby. OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples from such plumes. Credit:NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Full Image Details

OWLS’ microscope system would be the first in space capable of imaging cells. Developed in conjunction with scientists at Portland State University in Oregon, it combines a digital holographic microscope, which can identify cells and motion throughout the volume of a sample, with two fluorescent imagers, which use dyes to observe chemical content and cellular structures. Together, they provide overlapping views at a resolution of less than a single micron, or about 0.00004 inches.

Dubbed Extant Life Volumetric Imaging System (ELVIS), the microscope subsystem has no moving parts – a rarity. And it uses machine-learning algorithms to both home in on lifelike movement and detect objects lit up by fluorescent molecules, whether naturally occurring in living organisms or as added dyes bound to parts of cells.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack without having to pick up and examine every single piece of hay,” said co-principal investigator Chris Lindensmith, who leads the microscope team. “We’re basically grabbing big armfuls of hay and saying, ‘Oh, there’s needles here, here, and here.’”

To examine much tinier forms of evidence, OWLS uses its Organic Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis System (OCEANS), which essentially pressure-cooks liquid samples and feeds them to instruments that search for the chemical building blocks of life: all varieties of amino acids, as well as fatty acids and organic compounds. The system is so sensitive, it can even detect unknown forms of carbon. Willis, who led development of OCEANS, compares it to a shark that can smell just one molecule of blood in a billion molecules of water – and also tell the blood type. It would be only the second instrument system to perform liquid chemical analysis in space, after the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander.

OCEANS uses a technique called capillary electrophoresis – basically, running an electric current through a sample to separate it into its components. The sample is then routed to three types of detectors, including a mass spectrometer, the most powerful tool for identifying organic compounds.

Sending It Home

These subsystems produce massive amounts of data, just an estimated 0.0001% of which could be sent back to faraway Earth because of data transmission rates that are more limited than dial-up internet from the 1980s. So OWLS has been designed with what’s called “onboard science instrument autonomy.” Using algorithms, computers would analyze, summarize, prioritize, and select only the most interesting data to be sent home while also offering a “manifest” of information still on board.

“We’re starting to ask questions now that necessitate more sophisticated instruments,” said Lukas Mandrake, the project’s instrument autonomy system engineer. “Are some of these other planets habitable? Is there defensible scientific evidence for life rather than a hint that it might be there? That requires instruments that take a lot of data, and that’s what OWLS and its science autonomy is set up to accomplish.”

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No Picnic in the Clouds! It’s JPL aerobot

No Picnic in the Clouds! It’s JPL aerobot

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

JPL’s Venus Aerial Robotic Balloon Prototype Aces Test Flights

A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project.

The intense pressure, heat, and corrosive gases of Venus’ surface are enough to disable even the most robust spacecraft in a matter of hours. But a few dozen miles overhead, the thick atmosphere is far more hospitable to robotic exploration.

One concept envisions pairing a balloon with a Venus orbiter, the two working in tandem to study Earth’s sister planet. While the orbiter would remain far above the atmosphere, taking science measurements and serving as a communication relay, an aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, about 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter would travel into it.

To test this concept, a team of scientists and engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Near Space Corporation in Tillamook, Oregon, recently carried out two successful flights of a prototype balloon that’s about a third of that size.

The shimmering silver balloon ascended more than 4,000 feet (1 kilometer) over Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to a region of Earth’s atmosphere that approximates the temperature and density the aerobot would experience about 180,000 feet (55 kilometers) above Venus. Coordinated by Near Space, these tests represent a milestone in proving the concept’s suitability for accessing a region of Venus’ atmosphere too low for orbiters to reach, but where a balloon mission could operate for weeks or even months.

“We’re extremely happy with the performance of the prototype. It was launched, demonstrated controlled-altitude maneuvers, and was recovered in good condition after both flights,” said robotics technologist Jacob Izraelevitz, who leads the balloon development as the JPL principal investigator of the flight tests. “We’ve recorded a mountain of data from these flights and are looking forward to using it to improve our simulation models before exploring our sister planet.”

The only balloon-borne exploration of Venus’ atmosphere to date was a part of the twin Soviet Vega 1 and 2 missions that arrived at the planet in 1985. The two balloons (which were about 11.5 feet, or 3.6 meters, in diameter when filled with helium) lasted a little over 46 hours before their instruments’ batteries ran out. Their short time in the Venusian atmosphere provided a tantalizing hint of the science that could be achieved by a larger, longer-duration balloon platform floating within the planet’s atmosphere.

A prototype aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, is readied for a sunrise test flight at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in July 2022, by team members from JPL and Near Space Corporation. The aerobot successfully completed two flights, demonstrating controlled altitude flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

‘Roving’ the Skies

The ultimate goal of the aerobot would be to travel on the Venusian winds, floating from east to west, circumnavigating the planet for at least 100 days. The aerobot would serve as a platform for a range of science investigations, from monitoring the atmosphere for acoustic waves generated by venusquakes to analyzing the chemical composition of the clouds. The accompanying orbiter would receive data from the aerobot and relay it to Earth while providing a global view of the planet.

Much like a Mars rover is commanded to drive to an interesting rock or other feature, the aerobot can be directed to raise and lower its altitude – something the Vega balloons couldn’t do – to conduct science between about 171,000 and 203,000 feet (52 and 62 kilometers) within Venus’ atmosphere.

The prototype balloon was fabricated using Near Space’s techniques for performance aerospace inflatables. Designed as a “balloon within a balloon,” it has a rigid inner reservoir filled with helium under high pressure and an encapsulating outer helium balloon that can expand and contract. To increase altitude, helium vents from the inner reservoir into the outer balloon, which expands to give the aerobot additional buoyancy. When it’s time to reduce altitude, helium is pumped back into the reservoir, causing the outer balloon to shrink and decrease the aerobot’s buoyancy.

“The success of these test flights is a huge deal for us: We’ve successfully demonstrated the technology we’ll need for investigating the clouds of Venus,” said Paul Byrne, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis and aerobot science collaborator. “These tests form the foundation for how we can achieve long-term robotic exploration high above Venus’ hellish surface.”

The one-third scale prototype aerobot is designed to withstand the corrosive chemicals in Venus’ atmosphere. During the flights, the balloon’s materials were tested for the first time, giving the team confidence that a larger aerobot design could operate in Venus skies. Credit: Near Space Corporation

No Picnic in the Clouds

While this region of Venus’ atmosphere is more forgiving than its lower reaches, long-duration flights in the rocky planet’s clouds, which contain sulfuric acid and other corrosive chemicals, would be no picnic. So the multilayered material developed for the aerobot’s outer balloon includes an acid-proof coating, a metallization layer to reduce solar heating, and a structural inner layer that keeps it strong enough to carry the science instruments below. New techniques have also been developed to ensure a long-duration acid-proof seal with minimal helium leakage from the seams.

“The materials being used for Venus survivability are challenging to fabricate with, and the robustness of handling we’ve demonstrated in the Nevada launch and recovery gives us confidence for balloon’s reliability on Venus,” said co-investigator Tim Lachenmeier, chief executive officer of Near Space.

While the recent Nevada tests were a milestone for a future concept designed with Venus in mind, the researchers say the technology could also be used by high-altitude science balloons that need to control their altitude in Earth’s skies.

ANTI-NARCOTICS OPERATION

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

In a coordinated operation at sea, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and Indian Navy apprehended a suspicious vessel carrying more than 200 kgs of narcotics.

The boat with its crew, has been escorted to Kochi for further investigation. This is significant not only in terms of quantity and cost but also signifies a focus on collaborative efforts for disruption of the illegal narcotics smuggling routes, which emanate from the Makran coast and flow towards various IOR countries.

Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and Indian Navy apprehended a suspicious vessel carrying more than 200 kgs of narcotics.

Apart from the human costs from drug addiction, the spoils of narcotics trade feed syndicates involved in terrorism, radicalization and criminal activities. Successful conduct of this operation reaffirms our strong commitment and resolve of not allowing seas as global commons being used for illegal activities especially in India’s maritime neighborhood.

Directorate of Revenue Intelligence foils attempts of gold smuggling, seizes 65.46 kg of gold at Mumbai, Patna, Delhi

These Mouthwashes may suppress SARS-CoV-2

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is an airborne disease transmitted via aerosols, which are spread from the oral and nasal cavities—the mouth and the nose. In addition to the well-known division and spread of the virus in the cells of the respiratory tract, SARS-CoV-2 is also known to infect the cells of the lining of the mouth and the salivary glands.

A team of researchers led by Professor Kyoko Hida at Hokkaido University have shown that low concentrations of the chemical cetylpyridinium chloride, a component of some mouthwashes, has an antiviral effect on SARS-CoV-2. Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Commercially available mouthwashes contain a number of antibiotic and antiviral components that act against microorganisms in the mouth. One of these, cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), has been shown to reduce the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in the mouth, primarily by disrupting the lipid membrane surrounding the virus. While there are other chemicals with similar effects, CPC has the advantage of being tasteless and odorless.

Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), the chemical tested in the study (Photo: Ryo Takeda)/CREDIT:Ryo Takeda

The researchers were interested in studying the effects of CPC in Japanese mouthwashes. Mouthwashes in Japan typically contain a fraction of the CPC compared to previously tested mouthwashes. They tested the effects of CPC on cell cultures that express trans-membrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2), which is required for SARS-CoV-2 entry into the cell.

They found that, within 10 minutes of application, 30–50 µg/mL of CPC inhibited the infectivity and capability for cell entry of SARS-CoV-2. Interestingly, commercially available mouthwashes that contain CPC performed better than CPC alone. They also showed that saliva did not alter the effects of CPC. Most significantly, they tested four variants of SARS-CoV-2—the original, alpha, beta and gamma variants—and showed that the effects of CPC were similar across all strains.

Covid/commons.wikimedia.org

This study shows that low concentrations of CPC in commercial mouthwash suppress the infectivity of four variants of SARS-CoV-2. The authors have already begun assessing the effect on CPC-containing mouthwashes on viral loads in saliva of COVID-19 patients. Future work will also focus on fully understanding the mechanism of effect, as lower concentrations of CPC do not disrupt lipid membranes.

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b-type procyanidin-rich foods consumed in right amounts have multiple health benefits

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

B-type procyanidins, made of catechin oligomers, are a class of polyphenols found abundantly in foods like cocoa, apples, grape seeds, and red wine. Several studies have established the benefits of these micronutrients in reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and strokes. B-type procyanidins are also successful in controlling hypertension, dyslipidemia, and glucose intolerance. Studies attest to the physiological benefits of their intake on the central nervous system (CNS), namely an improvement in cognitive functions. These physiological changes follow a pattern of hormesis—a phenomenon in which peak benefits of a substance are achieved at mid-range doses, becoming progressively lesser at lower and higher doses.

The dose-response relationship of most bioactive compounds follows a monotonic pattern, in which a higher dose shows a greater response. However, in some exceptional cases, a U-shaped dose-response curve is seen. This U-shaped curve signifies hormesis—an adaptive response, in which a low dose of usually a harmful compound induces resistance in the body to its higher doses. This means that exposure to low levels of a harmful trigger can induce the activation of stress-resistant pathways, leading to greater repair and regeneration capabilities. In case of B-type procyanidins, several in vitro studies support their hormetic effects, but these results have not been demonstrated in vivo.

To address this knowledge gap, researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT), Japan, led by Professor Naomi Osakabe from the Department of Bioscience and Engineering, reviewed the data from intervention trials supporting hormetic responses of B-type procyanidin ingestion. The team, comprising Taiki Fushimi and Yasuyuki Fujii from the Graduate School of Engineering and Science (SIT), also conducted in vivo experiments to understand possible connections between B-type procyanidin hormetic responses and CNS neurotransmitter receptor activation. Their article was made available online on June 15, 2022 and has been published in volume 9 of Frontiers of Nutrition on September 7, 2022.

Researchers from SIT, Japan investigated the dose-response effects of B-type procyanidins on the hormetic response system./CREDIT:Reprinted with permission from, Osakabe N, Fushimi T and Fujii Y (2022) Hormetic response to B-type procyanidin ingestion involves stress-related neuromodulation via the gut-brain axis: Preclinical and clinical observations. Front. Nutr. 9:969823. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.969823. Copyright © 2022 Osakabe, Fushimi and Fujii.

The researchers noted that a single oral administration of an optimal dose of cocoa flavanol temporarily increased the blood pressure and heart rate in rats. But the hemodynamics did not change when the dose was increased or decreased. Administration of B-type procyanidin monomer and various oligomers produced similar results. According to Professor Osakabe, “These results are consistent with those of intervention studies following a single intake of food rich in B-type procyanidin, and support the U-shaped dose-response theory, or hormesis, of polyphenols.”

To observe whether the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is involved in the hemodynamic changes induced by B-type procyanidins, the team administered adrenaline blockers in test rats. This successfully decreased the temporary increase in heart rate induced by the optimal dose of cocoa flavanol. A different kind of blocker—a1 blocker—inhibited the transient rise in blood pressure. This suggested that the SNS, which controls the action of adrenaline blockers, is responsible for the hemodynamic and metabolic changes induced by a single oral dose of B-type procyanidin.

The researchers next ascertained why optimal doses, and not high doses, are responsible for the thermogenic and metabolic responses. They co-administered a high dose of cocoa flavanol and yohimbine (an α2 blocker) and noted a temporary but distinct increase in blood pressure in test animals. Similar observations were made with the use of B-type procyanidin oligomer and yohimbine. Professor Osakabe surmises, “Since α2 blockers are associated with the down-regulation of the SNS, the reduced metabolic and thermogenic outputs at a high dose of B-type procyanidins seen in our study may have induced α2 auto-receptor activation. Thus, SNS deactivation may be induced by a high dose of B-type procyanidins.”

Previous studies have proven the role of the gut-brain axis in controlling hormetic stress-related responses. The activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis by optimal stress has a strong influence on memory, cognition, and stress tolerance. This article highlights how HPA activation occurs after a single dose of B-type procyanidin, suggesting that stimulation with an oral dose of B-type procyanidin might be a stressor for mammals and cause SNS activation.

Hormesis and its triggering biochemical pathways deliver protection against various pathological and aging processes, enhancing our general health and making us resilient to future stress. Though the exact relation between B-type procyanidins and the CNS needs more research, the health benefits of B-type procyanidin-rich foods remains undisputed.

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2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Former Berkeley Lab scientist Carolyn Bertozzi wins

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and K. Barry Sharpless “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”

Bertozzi, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, is the eighth woman to be awarded the prize. From 1996 to 2015, before joining Stanford, she was a faculty scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a UC Berkeley professor. She also served as the director of the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science nanoscience user facility located at Berkeley Lab, from 2006 to 2010.

The award to Bertozzi brings the number of Nobel Prizes associated with Berkeley Lab scientists to sixteen. (Earlier this week, on Tuesday, Oct. 4, former Lab postdoc John Clauser’s 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics brought the Lab’s tally to fifteen.)

According to today’s Nobel Prize announcement, “The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 is about making difficult processes easier. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal have laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry – click chemistry – in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently. Carolyn Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms.”

Carolyn Bertozzi/CREDIT:Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab

“Carolyn Bertozzi had a profound impact at Berkeley Lab, not only through her brilliant science, but as someone who created new institutions that encouraged team science,” said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell.

By pioneering a method for mapping biomolecules on the surface of cells, Bertozzi helped create a suite of techniques comprising “bioorthogonal chemistry,” a term Bertozzi coined, which means “not interacting with biology.” The method describes chemical reactions that allow scientists to explore cells and track biological processes without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell.

Bertozzi’s lab first developed the method in the late 1990s and early 2000s. During that time, she was one of the six scientists who helped establish the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research facility that provides scientists from around the world access to cutting-edge expertise and instrumentation. She served as the Molecular Foundry’s director when the facility first opened its doors to the research community in 2006, and she founded the Foundry’s Biological Nanostructures Facility, where scientists study the synthesis, analysis and mimicry of biological nanostructures.

“Carolyn Bertozzi’s impact on nanoscience is huge,” said Jeff Neaton, associate laboratory director of Berkeley Lab’s Energy Sciences Area. “The chemistry she developed paved the way for the science and engineering of living-nonliving interfaces, a frontier of nanoscience which also became a major theme of the Foundry.”

Under Bertozzi’s leadership, the Foundry grew immensely, bringing in scientists from across the disciplines. This multidisciplinary approach inspired collaborations with visiting scientists, including longtime Foundry user K. Barry Sharpless, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Bertozzi and Morten Meldal.

“Carolyn put the Foundry on the map,” said Bruce Cohen, a staff scientist in the Foundry’s Biological Nanostructures facility since 2006. “She oversaw the opening of the facility, which is a major administrative and scientific feat.” He added that Bertozzi’s “science is so creative and original, as well as technically on point, and it’s opened up entire new areas of study. This is a well-deserved Nobel Prize. I couldn’t be happier for her.”

Cohen said that Bertozzi is also “a great mentor to all of the scientists around her, and has always been an inspirational role model for both women and LGBTQ people in science.”

Bertozzi and others have used her methods to answer fundamental questions about the role of sugars in biology, to study how cells build proteins and other molecules, to develop new cancer medicines, and to produce new materials for energy storage, among many other applications.

The Nobel committee said in a statement that “click chemistry and bio-orthogonal reactions have taken chemistry into the era of functionalism,” adding that “this is bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Among her many awards, Bertozzi is a recipient of the 2014 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the Department of Energy’s highest scientific honor. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999. She won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2022.

Bertozzi completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry at Harvard University and her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. She has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2000. She joined Stanford in 2015.

World Food Programme gets 2020 Nobel Prize for Peace

India emerges as the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar and world’s 2nd largest exporter of sugar

Posted on October 5, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

India emerges as the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar and world’s 2nd largest exporter of sugar.
Records over 5000 LMT sugarcane produced in sugar season 2021-22; 35 LMT sugar used to ethanol production and 359 LMT sugar produced by sugar mills in the season.
Records highest sugar exports of 109.8 LMT.
Sugar mills/distilleries generate ₹ 18,000 crore from sale of ethanol.
95% of all cane dues cleared by the millers by end of the season; for Sugar Season 2020-21, more than 99.9% cane dues have been cleared.

In Sugar Season (Oct-Sep) 2021-22, a record of more than 5000 Lakh Metric Tons (LMT) sugarcane was produced in the country out of which about 3574 LMT of sugarcane was crushed by sugar mills to produce about 394 LMT of sugar (Sucrose). Out of this, 35 LMT sugar was diverted to ethanol production and 359 LMT sugar was produced by sugar mills. With this, India has emerged as the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar as well as the world’s 2nd largest exporter of sugar.

The season has proven to be a watershed season for Indian Sugar Sector. All records of sugarcane production, sugar production, sugar exports, cane procured, cane dues paid and ethanol production were made during the season.

Another shining highlight of the season is the highest exports of about 109.8 LMT that too with no financial assistance which was being extended upto 2020-21. Supportive international prices and Indian Government Policy led to this feat of Indian Sugar Industry. These exports earned foreign currency of about Rs. 40,000 crores for the country.

The success story of sugar industry is the outcome of synchronous and collaborative efforts of Central and State Governments, farmers, sugar mills, ethanol distilleries with very supportive overall ecosystem for business in the country. Timely Government interventions since last 5 years have been crucial in building the sugar sector step by step from taking them out of financial distress in 2018-19 to the stage of self-sufficiency in 2021-22.

During SS 2021-22, sugar mills procured sugarcane worth more than 1.18 lakh crore and released payment of more than 1.12 lakh crore with no financial assistance (subsidy) from Government of India. Thus, cane dues at the end of sugar season are less than ₹ 6,000 crore indicating that 95% of cane dues have already been cleared. It is also noteworthy that for SS 2020-21, more than 99.9% cane dues are cleared.

Government has been encouraging sugar mills to divert sugar to ethanol and also to export surplus sugar so that sugar mills may make payment of cane dues to farmers in time and also mills may have better financial conditions to continue their operations.

Growth of ethanol as biofuel sector in last 5 years has amply supported the sugar sector as use of sugar to ethanol has led to better financial positions of sugar mills due to faster payments, reduced working capital requirements and less blockage of funds due to less surplus sugar with mills. During 2021-22, revenue of about ₹ 18,000 crore has been made by sugar mills/distilleries from sale of ethanol which has also played its role in early clearance of cane dues of farmers. Ethanol production capacity of molasses/sugar-based distilleries has increased to 605 crore litres per annum and the progress is still continuing to meet targets of 20% blending by 2025 under Ethanol Blending with Petrol (EBP) Programme. In new season, the diversion of sugar to ethanol is expected to increase from 35 LMT to 50 LMT which would generate revenue for sugar mills amounting to about ₹ 25,000 crores.

There is an optimum closing balance of 60 LMT of sugar which is essential to meet domestic requirements for 2.5 months. The diversion of sugar to ethanol and exports led to unlocking of value chain of the whole industry as well as improved financial conditions of sugar mills leading to more optional mills in ensuing season.

‘Love hormone’ revealed to have heart healing properties in Humans like EpiPCs regenerate organs in zebrafish

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

The neurohormone oxytocin is well-known for promoting social bonds including trust, empathy, positive memories, processing of bonding cues, and positive communication and generating pleasurable feelings, for example from art, exercise, or intimacy.

Now, researchers from Michigan State University show that in zebrafish and human cell cultures, oxytocin has yet another, unsuspected, function: it stimulates stem cells derived from the heart’s outer layer (epicardium) to migrate into its middle layer (myocardium) and there develop into cardiomyocytes, muscle cells that generate heart contractions. This discovery could one day be used to promote the regeneration of the human heart after a heart attack.

“Here we show that oxytocin, a neuropeptide also known as the love hormone, is capable of activating heart repair mechanisms in injured hearts in zebrafish and human cell cultures, opening the door to potential new therapies for heart regeneration in humans,” said Dr Aitor Aguirre, an assistant professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Michigan State University, and the study’s senior author.

Stem-like cells can replenish cardiomyocytes

Cardiomyocetes typically die off in great numbers after a heart attack. Because they are highly specialized cells, they can’t replenish themselves. But previous studies have shown that a subset of cells in the epicardium can undergo reprogramming to become stem-like cells, called Epicardium-derived Progenitor Cells (EpiPCs), which can regenerate not only cardiomyocytes, but also other types of heart cells.

“Think of the EpiPCs as the stonemasons that repaired cathedrals in Europe in the Middle Ages,” explained Aguirre.

Unfortunately for us, the production of EpiPCs is inefficient for heart regeneration in humans under natural conditions.

Zebrafish could teach us how to regenerate hearts more efficiently

Enter the zebrafish: famous for their extraordinary capacity for regenerating organs, including the brain, retina, internal organs, bone, and skin. They don’t suffer heart attacks, but its many predators are happy to take a bite out of any organ, including the heart – so zebrafish can regrow their heart when as much as a quarter of it has been lost. This is done partly by proliferation of cardiomyocytes, but also by EpiPCs. But how do the EpiPCs of zebrafish repair the heart so efficiently? And can we find a ‘magic bullet’ in zebrafish that could artificially boost the production of EpiPCs in humans?

Yes, and this ‘magic bullet’ appears to be oxytocin, argue the authors.

To reach this conclusion, the authors found that in zebrafish, within three days after cryoinjury – injury due to freezing – to the heart, the expression of the messenger RNA for oxytocin increases up to 20-fold in the brain. They further showed that this oxytocin then travels to the zebrafish epicardium and binds to the oxytocin receptor, triggering a molecular cascade that stimulates local cells to expand and develop into EpiPCs. These new EpiPCs then migrate to the zebrafish myocardium to develop into cardiomyocytes, blood vessels, and other important heart cells, to replace those which had been lost.

zebrafish/wikipedia

Similar effect on human tissue cultures

Crucially, the authors showed that oxytocin has a similar effect on human tissue in vitro. Oxytocin – but none of 14 other neurohormones tested here – stimulates cultures of human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hIPSCs) to become EpiPCs, at up to twice the basal rate: a much stronger effect than other molecules previously shown to stimulate EpiPC production in mice. Conversely, genetic knock-down of the oxytocin receptor prevented the the regenerative activation of human EpiPCs in culture. The authors also showed that the link between oxytocin and the stimulation of EpiPCs is the important ‘TGF-β signaling pathway’, known to regulate the growth, differentiation, and migration of cells.

Aguirre said: “These results show that it is likely that the stimulation by oxytocin of EpiPC production is evolutionary conserved in humans to a significant extent. Oxytocin is widely used in the clinic for other reasons, so repurposing for patients after heart damage is not a long stretch of the imagination. Even if heart regeneration is only partial, the benefits for patients could be enormous.”

VMC is biomarker of ageing for nematode; what is its role in Humans?

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

We all grow old and die, but we still don’t know why. Diet, exercise and stress all effect our lifespan, but the underlying processes that drive ageing remain a mystery. Often, we measure age by counting our years since birth and yet our cells know nothing of chronological time—our organs and tissues may age more rapidly or slowly regardless of what we’d expect from counting the number of orbits we tale around the sun.

For this reason, many scientists search to develop methods to measure the “biological age” of our cells -– which can be different from our chronological age. In theory, such biomarkers of ageing could provide a measure of health that could revolutionize how we practice medicine. Individuals could use a biomarker of ageing to track their biological age over time and measure the effect of diet, exercise, and drugs and predict their effects to extend lifespan or improve quality of life. Medicines could be designed and identified based on their effect on biological age. In other words, we could start to treat ageing itself.

However, no accurate and highly predictive test for biological age has been validated to date. In part, this is because we still don’t know what causes ageing and so can’t measure it. Definitive progress in the field will require validating biomarkers throughout a patient’s lifetime, an impractical feat given human life expectancy.

To understand the irreducible components of ageing, and how these can be measured and tested, researchers turn to laboratory animals. Unlike humans, the nematode C. elegans lives for an average of two weeks, making it easier to collect behavioural and lifespan data that would otherwise require centuries.

The nematode C. elegans begin adulthood vigorously exploring their environment. Over time, they slow and stop crawling, a behavioural stage known as vigorous movement cessation (VMC). VMC is a biomarker of ageing and a proxy for nematode health. Studies of genetically identical nematodes have shown it is a powerful predictor of a worm’s lifespan, but at the same time, interventions designed to alter ageing can disproportionately affect VMC in comparison to lifespan and vice versa. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona seek to understand why this happens and what this means for the ageing process in humans.

A team lead by Dr. Nicholas Stroustrup, Group Leader at the CRG’s Systems Biology research programme, has developed the ‘Lifespan Machine’, a device that can follow the life and death of tens of thousands of nematodes at once. The worms live in a petri dish under the watchful eye of a scanner that monitors their entire lives. By imaging the nematodes once per hour for months, the device gathers data at unprecedented statistical resolution and scale.

The research team found that nematodes have at least two partially independent ageing processes taking place at the same time – one that determines VMC and the other determines time of death. While both processes follow different trajectories, their rates are correlated to each other, in other words, in individuals for whom VMC occurred at an accelerated rate, so did time of death, and vice versa. In other words, the study revealed that each individual nematode has at least two distinct biological ages.

The researchers made the finding by building a genetic tool that lets them control the nematodes’ rate of ageing – effectively choosing an average lifespan for the population that can range from between two weeks and a few days. The tool works by tagging RNA polymerase II – the enzyme that makes mRNA – with a small molecule. Worms were fed different amounts of the hormone auxin, which finely controls the activity of RNA polymerase II, which in turn changes their lifespan.

Each individual C. elegans worm lives in a petri dish under the watchful eye of the Lifespan Macine’s scanner, which monitors their entire lives. By imaging the nematodes once per hour for months, the device gathers data at unprecedented statistical resolution and scale./CREDIT:Nicholas Stroustrup/CRG

Humans are larger and, in many ways, more complex than nematodes, and so are likely to have an even higher number of distinct biological ages than nematodes. Altogether, the study demonstrates how multiple, mostly independent ageing processes can work in tandem to cause different parts of the animal to age at different rates. The findings challenge the concept that animals have a single, unitary measure of biological age that can be indicative of an individual’s overall health.

The researchers also found that no matter which lifespan-altering mutations and interventions they gave the nematodes, the statistical correlation between the distinct biological ages remained constant. This suggests the existence of an invisible chain of command – or hierarchical structure – that regulates the worm’s ageing processes, the mechanisms of which are yet to be discovered. This means that, while ageing processes can be independent, it is also true that some individuals are ‘fast agers’ and others ‘slow agers’, in that many of their ageing processes move similarly faster or slower than their peers.

The study calls into question a crucial assumption of ageing biomarkers, that when interventions such as exercise or diet “rejuvenate” a biomarker, it’s a good sign that the underlying biology of ageing has similarly changed. “Our model shows that biomarkers can be trivially decoupled from outcomes because they measure an ageing process that is not directly involved in the outcome but simply correlates with it in a system of hierarchical processes,” explains Dr. Stroustrup. “In simple terms, just because two parts of an individual tend to correlate in their biological age across individuals, it doesn’t mean that one causes the other, or that they are likely to involve shared ageing mechanisms.”

The findings have implications for consumers being offered commercial products that assess their biological age. Biological age tests use panels of biomarkers that are purported as being meaningfully diverse. These can measure a thousand different parts of an individual, but those parts might all be confounded in an identical way.

According to Dr. Stroustrup, the solution lies in finding biomarkers that measure distinct, interacting ageing processes that also minimally correlate with each other. “Biomarkers used to assess biological age can be changed without actually turning a ‘fast ager’ into ‘slow ager’. Researchers should focus on measuring the effect of interventions on functional outcomes rather than assuming that changes in biomarkers will predict outcomes in a straightforward way,” he concludes.

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Scientists sequence world’s largest pangenome to help unlock genetic mysteries behind finer silk

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

BGI Genomics, in collaboration with Southwest University, the State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, and other partners, has constructed a high-resolution pangenome dataset representing almost the entire genomic content in a silkworm.

Previously, due to the scarcity of wild silkworms and technical limitations of former studies, many trait-associated sites were missing. This is the first research ever to digitize silkworm gene pool and create a “digital silkworm”, greatly facilitating functional genomic research, promoting precise breeding, and thus enabling additional silk use cases.

The team deeply re-sequence 1,078 silkworms (B. mori, including 205 local strains, 194 improved varieties, and 632 genetic stocks and 47 wild silkworms, B. mandarina) and assemble long-read genomes on 545 of these samples, generating 55.57 T of genomic data.

This pangenome dataset contains the most comprehensive information on the genomes of domestic and wild silkworm, and is the largest long-read pangenome in the world for plants and animals to date. At the same time, in-depth studies on various genetic variation, population structure, artificial selection and ecological adaptations and economic traits of silkworm have been carried out, yielding fruitful results.

Phenotypic diversity in silkworms/CREDIT:BGI Genomics

The origins of the domestic silkworm:

The domestic silkworm, B. mori, domesticated from the wild mulberry silkworm, B. mandarina. It has an history of over 5,000 years, but its domestication origin location has long been an open question, due to a lack of strong biological evidence.

The study found out that endemic species from China’s lower and middle Yellow River region are distributed at the base of the domestic silkworm branch on the evolutionary tree, thus suggesting that the domestic silkworm originated in this region. The available archaeological evidence, including a half cocoon excavated in 1926 at Xiyin Village, Xia County, Shanxi Province, and a stone-carved silkworm pupa excavated in 2019 at Shicun in the same county, provide important support to this conclusion.

Breaking the bottleneck in silkworm breeding:

The traditional breeding of silkworms has a long and unique history, but since the 1990s remained stuck in a bottleneck. Systematic analysis of the genetic basis of domestication and improvement selection is essential to solve the unresolved issues in silkworm breeding. The team has identified 468 domestication-associated genes and 198 improvement-associated genes, of which respectively 264 and 185 are newly identified. These genes will be important candidate targets for molecular improvement of silkworm.

At the same time, it was found out that the Chinese and Japanese utility species share less than 3% of the improvement loci. This not only reveals the relatively independent breeding histories of Chinese and Japanese silkworm, but also explains why this shared genetic basis provides such hybrid advantages for both species. This result sheds new insights for future breeding of the silkworm.

Economic traits of silkworm breeding:

Yield and quality of silk have long been targeted as the main economic criteria for artificial selection of silkworm. However, up to this date, little is known about how genes and loci control these quantitative traits. The pangenome is arguably the ‘nearest bridge’ between phenotypes, especially complex traits.

A case in point is the regulation of silk production by the cell cycle-related transcription factor BmE2F1, which was revealed through selection signalling and structural variation. CRISPR-cas9 mediated knockout of BmE2F1 reduces the number of silk gland cells by 7.68% and silk yield by 22%. Conversely, the transgenic overexpression of BmE2F1 increases the number of silk gland cells by 23% and silk yield by 16%.

Fine silk has unique applications and higher economic value, but the genetic basis of fiber fineness remained previously unknown. Analysis of rare variants in the genomes of slender varieties led to the identification of BmChit β-GlcNAcase, a gene controlling silk fineness that can significantly be detected in fine varieties, and CRISPR-cas9 mediated knockout, resulting in coarser silk fineness produced by domestic silkworms. This suggests this gene plays a key role in determining silk fineness.

Adaptive traits of silkworm breeding:

Diapause is a common ecological adaptive trait in insects that ensures that insects can survive despite unfavorable environmental conditions. Although the diapause hormone was first identified in the silkworm in 1957, little information is available on the embryonic dipause gene. In this study, based on the analysis of the pnd strain and genomic structural variation in the silkworm, and functional validation by gene editing, the BmTret1-like gene revealed itself to be an important determinant of post-embryonic stalling. This is the first time that a post-embryonic determinant gene has been identified in an insect.

This study reveals the complete pan-genome of the silkworm to unlock artificial selection and ecological adaptation insights. Shuaishuai Tai, co-author and BGI Genomics senior researcher commented, “With comprehensive sampling and dataset combined with a variety of experiments to identify genes for future potential study, we hope to accelerate the process of silkworm molecular design breeding.”

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‘Mystery gene’ matures the skeleton of the cell

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

“I’m a professional pin-in-a-haystack seeker,” geneticist Thijn Brummelkamp responds when asked why he excels at tracking down proteins and genes that other people did not find, despite the fact that some have managed to remain elusive for as long as forty years. His research group at the Netherlands Cancer Institute has once again managed to track down one of these “mystery genes” – the gene that ensures that the final form of the protein actin is created, a main component of our cell skeleton.

Cell biologists are very interested in actin, because actin – a protein of which we produce more than 100 kilograms in our lifetime – is a main component of the cell skeleton and one of the most abundant molecules in a cell. Large quantities can be found in every cell type and it has many purposes: it gives shape to the cell and makes it firmer, it plays an important role in cell division, it can propel cells forward, and provides strength to our muscles. People with faulty actin proteins often suffer from muscle disease. Much is known about the function of actin, but how the final form of this important protein is made and which gene is behind it? “We didn’t know,” says Brummelkamp, whose mission is to find out the function of our genes.

Multi-purpose method for genetics in human cells
Together with other researchers, Brummelkamp uses this multi-purpose method to find the genetic causes of particular conditions. He has already shown how the Ebola virus and a number of other viruses, as well as certain forms of chemotherapy, manage to enter a cell. He also investigated why cancer cells are resistant to certain types of therapy and discovered a protein found in cancer cells that acts as a brake on the immune system. This time he went looking for a gene that matures actin – and as a result, the skeleton of the cell.

Microscopy image of actine. (Actine is yellow, cell core is blue)/CREDIT:Peter Haarh, Netherlands Cancer Institute

In search of scissors
Before a protein is completely “finished” – or mature, as the researchers describe it in Science – and can fully perform its function in the cell, it usually has to be stripped of a specific amino acid first. This amino acid is then cut from a protein by a pair of molecular scissors. This is also what occurs with actin. It was known on which side of the actin the relevant amino acid is cut off. However, no one managed to find the enzyme that acts as scissors in this process.

Peter Haahr, postdoc in Brummelkamp’s group, worked on the following experiment: first he caused random mutations (mistakes) in random haploid cells. Then he selected the cells containing the immature actin by adding a fluorescently labeled antibody to his cells that fit in the exact spot where the amino acid is cut off. As a third and final step, he investigated which gene mutated after this process.

They called it ‘ACTMAP’
Then came the “eureka”-moment: Haahr had traced down the molecular scissors that cut the essential amino acid from actin. Those scissors turned out to be controlled by a gene with a previously unknown function; one no researcher had ever worked with. This means that the researchers were able to name the gene themselves, and they settled on ACTMAP (ACTin MAturation Protease).

More scissors found in the skeleton of the cell
ACTMAP is not the first mystery gene discovered by Brummelkamp that plays a role in our cell skeleton function. Using the same method, his group has been able to detect three unknown molecular scissors over recent years that cut an amino acid from tubulin, the other main component of the cell skeleton. These scissors allow tubulin to perform its dynamic functions properly inside the cell. The last scissors (MATCAP) were discovered and described in Science this year. Through this earlier work on the cell skeleton, Brummelkamp managed to arrive at actin.

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Bitcoin Mining: Researchers find it environmentally unsustainable, threat to future energy

Posted on September 30, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

Taken as a share of the market price, the climate change impacts of mining the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin is more comparable to the impacts of extracting and refining crude oil than mining gold, according to an analysis published in Scientific Reports by researchers at The University of New Mexico.

The authors suggest that rather than being considered akin to ‘digital gold’, Bitcoin should instead be compared to much more energy-intensive products such as beef, natural gas, and crude oil.

“We find no evidence that Bitcoin mining is becoming more sustainable over time,” said UNM Economics Associate Professor Benjamin A. Jones. “Rather, our results suggest the opposite: Bitcoin mining is becoming dirtier and more damaging to the climate over time. In short, Bitcoin’s environmental footprint is moving in the wrong direction.”

In December 2021, Bitcoin had an approximately 960 billion US dollars market capitalization with a roughly 41 percent global market share among cryptocurrencies. Although known to be energy intensive, the extent of Bitcoin’s climate damages is unclear.

Researchers at The University of New Mexico find digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin is more comparable to the impacts of extracting and refining crude oil than mining gold./CREDIT:
University of New Mexico

Jones and colleagues Robert Berrens and Andrew Goodkind present economic estimates of climate damages from Bitcoin mining between January 2016 and December 2021. They report that in 2020 Bitcoin mining used 75.4 terawatt hours of electricity (TWh) – higher electricity usage than Austria (69.9 TWh) or Portugal (48.4 TWh) in that year.

“Globally, the mining, or production, of Bitcoin is using tremendous amounts of electricity, mostly from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. This is causing huge amounts of air pollution and carbon emissions, which is negatively impacting our global climate and our health,” said Jones. “We find several instances between 2016-2021 where Bitcoin is more damaging to the climate than a single Bitcoin is actually worth. Put differently, Bitcoin mining, in some instances, creates climate damages in excess of a coin’s value. This is extremely troubling from a sustainability perspective.”

The authors assessed Bitcoin climate damages according to three sustainability criteria: whether the estimated climate damages are increasing over time; whether the climate damages of Bitcoin exceeds the market price; and how the climate damages as a share of market price compare to other sectors and commodities.

They find that the CO₂ equivalent emissions from electricity generation for Bitcoin mining have increased 126-fold from 0.9 tonnes per coin in 2016, to 113 tonnes per coin in 2021. Calculations suggest each Bitcoin mined in 2021 generated 11,314 US Dollars (USD) in climate damages, with total global damages exceeding 12 billion USD between 2016 and 2021. Damages peaked at 156% of the coin price in May 2020, suggesting that each 1 USD of Bitcoin market value generated led to 1.56 USD in global climate damages that month.

“Across the class of digitally scarce goods, our focus is on those cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work (POW) production techniques, which can be highly energy intensive,” said Regents Professor of Economics Robert Berrens. “Within broader efforts to mitigate climate change, the policy challenge is creating governance mechanisms for an emergent, decentralized industry, which includes energy-intensive POW cryptocurrencies. We believe that such efforts would be aided by measurable, empirical signals concerning potentially unsustainable climate damages, in monetary terms.”

Finally, the authors compared Bitcoin climate damages to damages from other industries and products such as electricity generation from renewable and non-renewable sources, crude oil processing, agricultural meat production, and precious metal mining. Climate damages for Bitcoin averaged 35% of its market value between 2016 and 2021. This share for Bitcoin was slightly less than the climate damages as a share of market value of electricity produced by natural gas (46%) and gasoline produced from crude oil (41%), but more than those of beef production (33%) and gold mining (4%).

The authors conclude that Bitcoin does not meet any of the three key sustainability criteria they assessed it against. Absent voluntary switching away from proof-of-work mining, as very recently done for the cryptocurrency Ether, then potential regulation may be required to make Bitcoin mining sustainable.

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Webb Telescope, Hubble Telescope Capture Detailed images of DART Impact

Posted on September 29, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

Two of NASA’s Great Observatories, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have captured views of a unique NASA experiment designed to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid in the world’s first-ever in-space test for planetary defense. These observations of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact mark the first time that Webb and Hubble simultaneously observed the same celestial target.

On Sept. 26, 2022, at 7:14 pm EDT, DART intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact mitigation technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid that poses no threat to Earth, and modifying the object’s orbit. DART is a test for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards.

The coordinated Hubble and Webb observations are more than just an operational milestone for each telescope – there are also key science questions relating to the makeup and history of our solar system that researchers can explore when combining the capabilities of these observatories.

“Webb and Hubble show what we’ve always known to be true at NASA: We learn more when we work together,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured imagery from the same target in the cosmos: an asteroid that was impacted by a spacecraft after a seven-million-mile journey. All of humanity eagerly awaits the discoveries to come from Webb, Hubble, and our ground-based telescopes – about the DART mission and beyond.”

Observations from Webb and Hubble together will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the nature of the surface of Dimorphos, how much material was ejected by the collision, and how fast it was ejected. Additionally, Webb and Hubble captured the impact in different wavelengths of light – Webb in infrared and Hubble in visible. Observing the impact across a wide array of wavelengths will reveal the distribution of particle sizes in the expanding dust cloud, helping to determine whether it threw off lots of big chunks or mostly fine dust. Combining this information, along with ground-based telescope observations, will help scientists to understand how effectively a kinetic impact can modify an asteroid’s orbit.

Webb Captures Impact Site Before and After Collision

Webb took one observation of the impact location before the collision took place, then several observations over the next few hours. Images from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) show a tight, compact core, with plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the center of where the impact took place.

Observing the impact with Webb presented the flight operations, planning, and science teams with unique challenges, because of the asteroid’s speed of travel across the sky. As DART approached its target, the teams performed additional work in the weeks leading up to the impact to enable and test a method of tracking asteroids moving over three times faster than the original speed limit set for Webb.

“I have nothing but tremendous admiration for the Webb Mission Operations folks that made this a reality,” said principal investigator Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. “We have been planning these observations for years, then in detail for weeks, and I’m tremendously happy this has come to fruition.”

Scientists also plan to observe the asteroid system in the coming months using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). Spectroscopic data will provide researchers with insight into the asteroid’s chemical composition.

Webb observed the impact over five hours total and captured 10 images. The data was collected as part of Webb’s Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observation Program 1245 led by Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).

Hubble Images Show Movement of Ejecta After Impact

Hubble also captured observations of the binary system ahead of the impact, then again 15 minutes after DART hit the surface of Dimorphos. Images from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 show the impact in visible light. Ejecta from the impact appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid. The bolder, fanned-out spike of ejecta to the left of the asteroid is in the general direction from which DART approached.

Some of the rays appear to be curved slightly, but astronomers need to take a closer look to determine what this could mean. In the Hubble images, astronomers estimate that the brightness of the system increased by three times after impact, and saw that brightness hold steady, even eight hours after impact.

Description of the above images: These images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, taken (left to right) 22 minutes, 5 hours, and 8.2 hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted Dimorphos, show expanding plumes of ejecta from the asteroid’s body. The Hubble images show ejecta from the impact that appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid. The bolder, fanned-out spike of ejecta to the left of the asteroid is in the general direction from which DART approached. These observations, when combined with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the nature of the surface of Dimorphos, how much material was ejected by the collision, how fast it was ejected, and the distribution of particle sizes in the expanding dust cloud.

Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Hubble plans to monitor the Didymos-Dimorphos system 10 more times over the next three weeks. These regular, relatively long-term observations as the ejecta cloud expands and fades over time will paint a more complete picture of the cloud’s expansion from the ejection to its disappearance.

“When I saw the data, I was literally speechless, stunned by the amazing detail of the ejecta that Hubble captured,” said Jian-Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who led the Hubble observations. “I feel lucky to witness this moment and be part of the team that made this happen.”

Hubble captured 45 images in the time immediately before and following DART’s impact with Dimorphos. The Hubble data was collected as part of Cycle 29 General Observers Program 16674.

“This is an unprecedented view of an unprecedented event,” summarized Andy Rivkin, DART investigation team lead of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble and Webb science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

Astronomers Detect Protective Shield Defending Pair of ‘Dwarf Galaxies’ with help of FUSE, Hubble

Posted on September 29, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

For billions of years, the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxies – the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet – to the puzzlement of astronomers – these dwarf galaxies remain intact, with ongoing vigorous star formation.

“A lot of people were struggling to explain how these streams of material could be there,” said Dhanesh Krishnarao, assistant professor at Colorado College. “If this gas was removed from these galaxies, how are they still forming stars?”

With the help of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and a retired satellite called the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), a team of astronomers led by Krishnarao has finally found the answer: the Magellanic system is surrounded by a corona, a protective shield of hot supercharged gas. This cocoons the two galaxies, preventing their gas supplies from being siphoned off by the Milky Way, and therefore allowing them to continue forming new stars.

Description of the above image:

Researchers have used spectroscopic observations of ultraviolet light from quasars to detect and map out the Magellanic Corona, a diffuse halo of hot, supercharged gas surrounding the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Shown here in purple, the corona stretches more than 100,000 light-years from the main mass of stars, gas, and dust that make up the Magellanic Clouds, intermingling with the hotter and more extensive corona that surrounds the Milky Way. The Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies roughly 160,000 light-years from Earth, are the largest of the Milky Way’s satellites and are thought to be on their first in-falling passage around the Milky Way. This journey has begun to unravel what were once barred spirals with multiple arms into more irregular-shaped galaxies with long tails of debris. The corona is thought to act as a buffer protecting the dwarf galaxies’ vital star-forming gas from the gravitational pull of the much larger Milky Way. The detection of the Magellanic Corona was made by analyzing patterns in ultraviolet light from 28 distant background quasars. As the quasar light passes through the corona, certain wavelengths (colors) of ultraviolet light are absorbed. The quasar spectra become imprinted with the distinct signatures of carbon, oxygen, and silicon ions that make up the corona gas. Because each quasar probes a different part of the corona, the research team was also able to show that the amount of gas decreases with distance from the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This study used archival observations of quasars from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE). Quasars have also been used to probe the Magellanic Stream, outflows from the Milky Way , and the halo surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy./Illustration Credits: STScI, Leah Hustak

This discovery, which was just published in Nature, addresses a novel aspect of galaxy evolution. “Galaxies envelope themselves in gaseous cocoons, which act as defensive shields against other galaxies,” said co-investigator Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Astronomers predicted the corona’s existence several years ago. “We discovered that if we included a corona in the simulations of the Magellanic Clouds falling onto the Milky Way, we could explain the mass of extracted gas for the first time,” explained Elena D’Onghia, a co-investigator at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We knew that the Large Magellanic Cloud should be massive enough to have a corona.”

But although the corona stretches more than 100,000 light-years from the Magellanic clouds and covers a huge portion of the southern sky, it is effectively invisible. Mapping it out required scouring through 30 years of archived data for suitable measurements.

Researchers think that a galaxy’s corona is a remnant of the primordial cloud of gas that collapsed to form the galaxy billions of years ago. Although coronas have been seen around more distant dwarf galaxies, astronomers had never before been able to probe one in as much detail as this.

There’re lots of predictions from computer simulations about what they should look like, how they should interact over billions of years, but observationally we can’t really test most of them because dwarf galaxies are typically just too hard to detect,” said Krishnarao. Because they are right on our doorstep, the Magellanic Clouds provide an ideal opportunity to study how dwarf galaxies interact and evolve.

In search of direct evidence of the Magellanic Corona, the team combed through the Hubble and FUSE archives for ultraviolet observations of quasars located billions of light-years behind it. Quasars are the extremely bright cores of galaxies harboring massive active black holes. The team reasoned that although the corona would be too dim to see on its own, it should be visible as a sort of fog obscuring and absorbing distinct patterns of bright light from quasars in the background. Hubble observations of quasars were used in the past to map the corona surrounding the Andromeda galaxy.

By analyzing patterns in ultraviolet light from 28 quasars, the team was able to detect and characterize the material surrounding the Large Magellanic Cloud and confirm that the corona exists. As predicted, the quasar spectra are imprinted with the distinct signatures of carbon, oxygen, and silicon that make up the halo of hot plasma that surrounds the galaxy.

The ability to detect the corona required extremely detailed ultraviolet spectra. “The resolution of Hubble and FUSE were crucial for this study,” explained Krishnarao. “The corona gas is so diffuse, it’s barely even there.” In addition, it is mixed with other gases, including the streams pulled from the Magellanic Clouds and material originating in the Milky Way.

By mapping the results, the team also discovered that the amount of gas decreases with distance from the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud. “It’s a perfect telltale signature that this corona is really there,” said Krishnarao. “It really is cocooning the galaxy and protecting it.”

How can such a thin shroud of gas protect a galaxy from destruction?

“Anything that tries to pass into the galaxy has to pass through this material first, so it can absorb some of that impact,” explained Krishnarao. “In addition, the corona is the first material that can be extracted. While giving up a little bit of the corona, you’re protecting the gas that’s inside of the galaxy itself and able to form new stars.”

Did the pandemic change our personalities? Increased neuroticism among young adults seen: Study

Posted on September 29, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

Despite a long-standing hypothesis that personality traits are relatively impervious to environmental pressures, the COVID-19 pandemic may have altered the trajectory of personality across the United States, especially in younger adults, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Angelina Sutin of Florida State University College of Medicine, and colleagues.

Previous studies have generally found no associations between collective stressful events—such as earthquakes and hurricanes—and personality change. However, the coronavirus pandemic has affected the entire globe and nearly every aspect of life.

In the new study, the researchers used longitudinal assessments of personality from 7,109 people enrolled in the online Understanding America Study. They compared five-factor model personality traits—neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness—between pre-pandemic measurements (May 2014 – February 2020) and assessments early (March – December 2020) or later (2021-2022) in the pandemic. A total of 18,623 assessments, or a mean of 2.62 per participant, were analyzed. Participants were 41.2% male and ranged in age from 18 to 109.

A crowd of people at a pedestrian crossing./CREDIT:Brian Merrill, Pixabay, CC0(https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

Consistent with other studies, there were relatively few changes between pre-pandemic and 2020 personality traits, with only a small decline in neuroticism. However, there were declines in extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness when 2021-2022 data was compared to pre-pandemic personality. The changes were about one-tenth of a standard deviation, which is equivalent to about one decade of normative personality change. The changes were moderated by age, with younger adults showing disrupted maturity in the form of increased neuroticism and decreased agreeableness and conscientiousness, and the oldest group of adults showing no statistically significant changes in traits.

The authors conclude that if these changes are enduring, it suggests that population-wide stressful events can slightly bend the trajectory of personality, especially in younger adults.

The authors add: “There was limited personality change early in the pandemic but striking changes starting in 2021. Of most note, the personality of young adults changed the most, with marked increases in neuroticism and declines in agreeableness and conscientiousness. That is, younger adults became moodier and more prone to stress, less cooperative and trusting, and less restrained and responsible.”

Celebrate ‘International Observe the Moon Night’ with NASA [Details]

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Srinivas Chakravarty

The public is invited to participate in NASA’s celebration of “International Observe the Moon Night” on Saturday, Oct. 1. This annual, worldwide public engagement event takes place when the Moon is close to first quarter – a great phase for evening observing. Last year about 500,000 people participated from 122 countries and all seven continents.

This celebration provides opportunities to learn about lunar science and exploration, observe celestial bodies, and honor personal and cultural connections to the Moon.

How to participate:

Host an event in your community; participate in an event; or observe with your family, friends, or on your own. Events can be in-person, virtual, or hybrid.
Register your participation to add yourself to the map of lunar observers worldwide.
Connect with lunar enthusiasts around the world and share your Moon viewing experience on social media, tagging #ObserveTheMoon.
On October 1, tune into a NASA TV Broadcast from 7p.m.–8p.m. EST and find views of the Moon from telescopes around the world on the program’s Live Streams page.
Find more information and resources on moon.nasa.gov/observe.

Refer to NASA’s Moon viewing guides, activity guides, and custom 2022 program Moon maps to make the most of your observations:

The Moon is a stepping stone to learning more about our solar system, galaxy, and universe. NASA is preparing to launch its Artemis I test flight to the Moon, a major step forward in a new era of human deep-space exploration.

Celebrate ‘International Observe the Moon Night’ with NASA/Credits: NASA/Vi Nguyen

Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before for the benefit of all.

International Observe the Moon Night is sponsored by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission and the Solar System Exploration Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with support from many partners. Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. LRO is managed by NASA Goddard for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

For more information about International Observe the Moon Night, visit: https://moon.nasa.gov/observe

For more information about the Oct. 1 live streams, visit: https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/participate/live-streams/

For more information about the Artemis program, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/

For more information about the Moon, visit: https://moon.nasa.gov

For more information about LRO, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/lro

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Did the pandemic change our personalities? Increased neuroticism among young adults seen: Study

Celebrate ‘International Observe the Moon Night’ with NASA [Details]