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Posts Tagged ‘research’

How Original Art Benefits Health

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Exhibit at Concord Art, November 30, 2021. Researchers have found that visiting galleries and museums to look at original art is good for your nervous system.

The other day, I was talking with a staff member here about her plans for the weekend, and she told me she wanted to go into Boston Sunday and visit an art museum or gallery. I am always impressed when anyone drives to Boston: the one-way streets are confusing and the parking is awful. She surprised me by saying, “Parking’s the easy part. There’s a lot of free street parking on Sundays.”

After reviewing today’s articles, I can hardly wait to tell her that what she was doing for fun is also good for her health.

Rhea Nayyar wrote recently at Hyperallergic about new research suggesting that museums and galleries are “non-clinical spaces for preventive health promotion. … Supporting existing research on the benefits of viewing original artwork versus reproductions, a new study found that seeing authentic art can help drop cortisol levels, among other positive effects on the nervous system. …

“ ‘The Physiological Impact of Viewing Original Artworks vs. Reprints: a Comparative Study‘ was conducted by researchers from the Department of Psychological Medicine at King’s College in London working in collaboration with the Courtauld Institute of Art.

“Fifty adults between the ages of 18 and 40 participated in the experimental study — one half was made to view five authentic paintings with their wall labels in a gallery setting for a 20-minute period, while the other half was shown high-quality reproductions of those paintings in a similarly curated setting. All participants had their heart rate and skin temperature monitored, and they provided saliva samples before and after the viewing sessions.

“The selected works (and subsequent reproductions) were all late 19th-century figurative paintings by European artists from the Courtauld’s collection: ‘Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge‘ (c. 1892) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère‘ (1882) by Éduoard Manet; ‘Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil‘ (1874) by Éduoard Manet; ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear‘ (1889) by Vincent van Gogh; and ‘Te Rerioa (The Dream)‘ (1897) by Paul Gaugin.

“The recorded data showed that those who viewed original artwork had higher heart rate variability patterns compared to the reproductions group, indicating that authentic viewing experiences contribute to a more receptive and adaptable nervous system. The post-viewing saliva samples also yielded a 22% cortisol decrease among the original art group, as well as a measurable drop in two of four recorded inflammatory proteins. …

“[The researchers likened] the stimulated but calming response elicited to that provoked by exercise or meditation.”

That supports University of Pennsylvania research described by Hyperallergic‘s Elaine Velie in 2022.

“ ‘Art museums have great potential to positively impact people, including reducing their stress, enhancing positive emotional experiences, and helping people to feel less lonely and more connected,’ researcher Katherine Cotter told Hyperallergic.

“The study, titled ‘Art Museums As Institutions for Human Flourishing,’ was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology by Cotter and James O. Pawelski of the University of Pennsylvania. Their work is encompassed in the burgeoning field of positive psychology, which studies ‘the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.’ Drawing on research from different academic disciplines, the study is part of an initiative that examines how the arts and humanities affect ‘human flourishing’ — a comprehensive framework that takes into account both ‘ill-being’ (living with disease, disorders, or in negative states) and ‘well-being’ (practicing positive health habits). …

“Cotter and Pawelski compiled and reviewed over 100 research articles and government and foundation reports. They discovered that visiting a museum reduced stress levels, frequent visits decreased anxiety, and viewing figurative art lowered blood pressure. They also found that museum visits lowered the intensity of chronic pain, increased a person’s life span, and lessened the likelihood of being diagnosed with dementia.”

More at Hyperallergic, here, and here.

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What Makes Animals Feel Joyful?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 8, 2026| 7 Comments »

Photo: Dan Cook via Unsplash.
Is the horse really laughing or is something else going on?

I was visiting Suzanne’s family recently and at breakfast one morning, my younger granddaughter started reading The Week Junior stories out loud. She got me interested in an article about scientists researching animal joy. The information was originally reported in Science News.

It turns out that although we often ascribe our own emotions to animals, we may not be on the right track.

Amber Dance writes at Science News, “For decades, scientists have struggled to identify or measure true joy — or ‘positive affect,’ in sci-speak — in nonhuman animals, even though they’ve long assumed it exists. In the late 19th century, Charles Darwin wrote, ‘The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.’

“But in the 20th century, psychologists focused on strict behaviorism, which limited scientific study to actions that could be objectively tallied. Think Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and the dogs he conditioned to expect food when he rang a bell, giving him a measurable drooling response. Or American psychologist B.F. Skinner, who put rats and pigeons in Skinner boxes where they were trained to push levers and peck keys for rewards. That history left scientists wary of anthropomorphism and subjective topics like feelings.

“That’s true for positive feelings, at least — there has been loads of scientific attention on misery. In part, that’s because researchers aimed to understand and relieve suffering, not just in animals but in people experiencing pain, depression or other clinical problems. It’s also straightforward to measure a negative response, such as freezing in fear, compared to subtler signs of contentment.

“All this history made the study of animal feelings largely taboo, a trend bucked on occasion by researchers like the late Jaak Panksepp, an Estonian neuroscientist and early leader in the study of emotions in the brain. In the early 2000s, when Panksepp reported that rats make a laughter-like sound when tickled, scientists were doubtful; the ultrasonic calls are inaudible to human ears.

” ‘He had problems publishing it at all because people thought it was crazy,’ says Michael Brecht, a neurobiologist at Humboldt University of Berlin. Skeptical but curious, Brecht did research that found rats not just laughing, but also jumping for joy and playing hide-and-seek.

“If scientists had better tools to measure positive emotions they’d be equipped to more deeply investigate the causes of happiness and how animals communicate it, with major implications for mental health among captive animals.

“This need has inspired an audacious group effort to try to develop a ‘joy-o-meter’ — or more likely, a set of happiness metrics — that could be used to better understand many critters, whether they are wild or captive, whether they walk, fly or swim. …

” ‘Studying emotions is actually really hard,’ says Colin Allen, a project lead and philosopher at the University of California, Santa Barbara who collaborates with Cartmill.

“To keep it simple, Allen and his colleagues have focused on a strict definition of joy as an intense, brief, positive emotion triggered by some event, such as encountering a favorite food or a reunion with a friend. That kind of ‘woohoo!’ moment seemed easier to assess than, say, ongoing mild contentment. Even with a strict definition, the researchers are contending with variations in joy triggers and responses from one animal to the next, including within the same species or group.

“ ‘You want to make sure that what you’re putting out there is based on reality, as opposed to just guessing what is happening in the animal’s mind,’ says Heidi Lyn, a comparative psychologist at the University of South Alabama in Mobile who is a co-leader of the project and is in charge of the dolphin studies as well as some of the ape work.

“These efforts by Lyn and colleagues are important, says Gordon M. Burghardt, a biopsychologist and emeritus professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is not involved in the joy project, but has studied animal play for more than 40 years. In that work, Burghardt says, coming up with a definition with five criteria in 2004 made it possible to identify play in diverse creatures including mammals, birds, lizards, turtles, fish, octopuses and bumblebees. …

“The team began the work in apes because its funder, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, thought the odds of success were best in humankind’s closest relatives. Bonobos are known for playful behavior, including frequent sex acts they use to create social bonds and resolve conflicts. Chimpanzees are considered more violent, though scientists have observed what are likely happy times in chimp troops. Cartmill’s and Lyn’s groups led the way, starting in 2022 with wild chimps at the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project in Senegal; zoo bonobos at ZOO Planckendael in Mechelen, Belgium; research bonobos at the Ape Initiative in Des Moines; and bonobos at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in Florida.

“Wild chimps don’t have easy lives, says team primatologist Gal Badihi, who spent three months following a troop around Fongoli. They contend with dominance hierarchies, competitions and the ongoing search for food. Nonetheless, Badihi recorded potentially joyful moments. For example, chimps played with infants. A juvenile called Youssa proved to be quite the goofball, hanging upside down all the time. Other young chimps liked to drink from each other’s mouths or roll around giggling. When reuniting with their fellows, chimps would embrace and kiss. ‘The joyous moments kind of stick out because they are quite rare,’ says Badihi.

“She’s currently focusing her analysis on a panting sound like unvoiced laughter that chimps often made during those apparently positive or social behaviors, as well as during situations where they wanted to communicate positive intent or de-escalate conflict. ‘It’s really similar to how we use laughter and smiles across social context as people,’ Badhi says.”

Lots more at Science News, here.

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The Argument for Dancing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2026| 3 Comments »

Photo: USA Dance.
A dance competition for seniors.

One of the exercise classes I like at my retirement community is called Movement for Body and Brain. It is led by a dancer who is trained in a variety of related disciplines, including exercise for Parkinson’s patients. I started attending because she has the best music of any of the classes. I stayed because it’s great exercise.

An article at the Washington Post by columnist Trisha Pasricha, MD, explains why movement like dancing is good for your health.

“This fun hobby,” the Post claims, “may reduce your risk of dementia by 76 percent.”

Dr. Pasricha writes, “Dancing combines some of the best elements known to be associated with longevity: exercise, creativity, balance and social connection. … One study found that people who danced frequently (more than once a week) had a 76 percent lower risk of dementia than those who did so rarely.

“In the early 1980s, a group of researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine set out to better understand the aging brain by recruiting almost 500 men and women ages 75 to 85 living in the Bronx. Each person underwent neuropsychological tests and responded to questionnaires about their health and lifestyle. Then, over the next couple of decades, the researchers tracked the people’s cognition.

“Perhaps not surprisingly, the scientists found that, for every cognitively challenging activity performed one day a week, there was an associated 7 percent reduction in dementia risk. The more often people tested their brains — such as with board games or crossword puzzles — the less likely they were to develop Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia.

“But when it came to physical activity, one hobby stood out above the others after controlling for other lifestyle and health factors: dancing.

“The researchers, who published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, concluded that physical activities such as swimming and walking also trended in the right direction but that their results were not as profound as those associated with dancing. …

“Physical activity, especially aerobic exercise, in general is wonderful for our brain health. And this isn’t intended to knock walking. … But combining physical activity with creativity and cognitive challenges may help protect the brain further. Dancing asks your brain to do several things at once: match a rhythm, remember steps (or quickly improvise some new ones), navigate space and perhaps even respond to a partner. …

“Dancing is simply music-based movement — ideally of a kind that makes you feel good and involves the company of others. And it can truly be for almost everyone. In my own clinic, we recommend dancing as therapy for patients with movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease. …

“Besides brain health, there are other great reasons to consider shaking a hip. A 2020 meta-analysis of 29 randomized trials among healthy older adults found that social dance-based activities were associated with a 37 percent reduced risk of falling — as well as improvements in balance and lower body strength. …

“While many community centers offer dance classes specifically for older adults (often free), I know that dance classes suited to your interests and needs are not always easily available nearby. … There are also several classes on YouTube tailored to possible physical limitations and needs. …

“Even if you’re not up for dancing, there’s still power in playing your favorite tunes: A large population study published recently found that just listening to music most days was linked to a decrease in dementia risk.

“Music can evoke memory and emotions, but certain kinds of it can also offer a distinctly enjoyable challenge to the brain. As you listen to music, your brain is constantly evaluating its predictions regarding what comes next: Will the next note and beat be the one you’re anticipating?

“A  potent driver of the urge to groove is syncopation. When music is syncopated — meaning, you expect to hear a loud beat in line with the rhythm, but instead it’s weak, or there’s a quick pulse of silence — it challenges our brain’s expectations. Think ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones or ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars.

“Syncopation creates an exciting sense of ‘push and pull in the music. Humans perceive songs with a healthy dose of syncopations as more pleasurable. Studies have found that those syncopations strongly compel us to bust a move, completing that gap our brain is craving to fill.

“There’s no magic bullet to prevent dementia. Cognitive changes are the result of several factors converging in our brains — our genetics, lifestyle, stress, diets and environmental exposures. Walking and other forms of physical activity can help boost your brain health, but doing so shouldn’t feel like a chore. Cognitive strength can also grow out of many activities that give us great joy — moving to music you truly love, sharing space with someone else’s company, and trying something new without worrying how you look doing it.”

More at the Post.

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One Brilliant Teen Astronomer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Matteo Paz with Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum after winning the Regeneron Science Talent Search award. 

Today I’m thinking about competitions, particularly academic competitions and what they can do for young people. Did you ever enter one? Perhaps encouraged by a teacher?

I’ve known people who not only won money but launched a career that way, but if a teacher ever asked me to try, I shied away. Scared? Lazy? It takes a certain kind of optimism, perhaps. Optimism and the stamina to bounce back if hopes repeatedly fall apart. Do share your own experience with competition. How much does the money matter? How much did a mentor matter?

Meanwhile, here’s a great story about a young science and computer whiz from California.

Margherita Bassi writes at the Smithsonian, “In a leap forward for astronomy, a researcher has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm and discovered more than one million objects in space by parsing through understudied data from a NASA telescope.

“The breakthrough is detailed in a study published in November in The Astronomical Journal. What the study doesn’t detail, however, is that the paper’s sole author is 18 years old.

“Matteo Paz from Pasadena, California, recently won the first place prize of $250,000 in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search for combining machine learning with astronomy. Self-described as the nation’s ‘oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors,’ the contest recognized Paz for developing his A.I. algorithm. The young scientist’s tool processed 200 billion data entries from NASA’s now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope. His model revealed 1.5 million previously unknown potential celestial bodies.

“ ‘I was just happy to have had the privilege. Not only placing in the top ten, but winning first place, came as a visceral surprise,’ the teenager tells Forbes’ Kevin Anderton. ‘It still hasn’t fully sunk in.’

“Paz’s interest in astronomy turned into real research when he participated in the Planet Finder Academy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in summer 2022. There, he studied astronomy and computer science under the guidance of his mentor, Davy Kirkpatrick, an astronomer and senior scientist at the university’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).

“Kirkpatrick had been working with data from the NEOWISE infrared telescope, which NASA launched in 2009 with the aim of searching for near-Earth asteroids and comets. The telescope’s survey, however, also collected data on the shifting heat of variable objects: rare phenomena that emit flashing, changing or otherwise dynamic light, such as exploding stars. It was Kirkpatrick’s idea to look for these elusive objects in NEOWISE’s understudied data. …

“Paz, however, had no intention of doing it by hand. Instead, he worked on an A.I. model that sorted through the raw data in search of tiny changes in infrared radiation, which could indicate the presence of variable objects. Paz and Kirkpatrick continued working together after the summer to perfect the model, which ultimately flagged 1.5 million potential new objects, including supernovas and black holes.

“ ‘Prior to Matteo’s work, no one had tried to use the entire (200-billion-row) table to identify and classify all of the significant variability that was there,’ Kirkpatrick tells Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen in an email. He adds that Caltech researchers are already making use of Paz’s catalog of potential variable objects, called VarWISE, to study binary star systems.

“The variable candidates that he’s uncovered will be widely studied,’ says Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE’s principal investigator for NASA, to Business Insider.

“As for the A.I. model, Paz explains that it might be applicable to ‘anything else that comes in a temporal format,’ such as stock market chart analysis and atmospheric effects like pollution, according to the statement. It’s no surprise the teenager is interested in the climate—as fires burned in L.A. earlier this year, the Eaton Fire forced him and his family to evacuate their home, Forbes reports.

“Other teenage scientists recognized by the contest studied mosquito control, drug-resistant fungus, the human genome and mathematics.”

More at the Smithsonian, here.

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MIT Aims To Prevent Next Pandemic

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2026| 3 Comments »

Photo: Craig F. Walker/Globe staff.
Using nasal swabs, scientists are collecting viral samples from the willing on Boston streets.

It’s both surprising and reassuring how groups that in normal times can expect some federal assistance (for instance, food pantries, artists, scientists) often manage to keep going in a time of government hostility. It makes me think of what ants do after you knock over their anthill. Recently, I heard a US scientist say that he always has a plan B and C for funding sources. Even funders from foreign countries.

Today’s story of persistence is about MIT scientists who think it might be a good idea to anticipate and prevent the next pandemic.

Hiawatha Bray writes at the Boston Globe, “On a bright, brisk December day, two people stood in front of Boston’s Old South Church, asking passersby to shove cotton swabs up their noses, for science — and for two bucks.

“And despite the aching cold, quite a few said ‘yes.’ Dozens by early afternoon, hundreds on a typical day. and with each swabbed-out nostril, Simon Grimm gets a little closer to his goal — a reliable method for early detection of the next major pandemic.

“ ‘We want to understand what pathogens are circulating in the population,’ said Grimm. ‘To do that, you need samples from many different people, and one straightforward way to collect them at scale is recruiting volunteers on the street.’

“Grimm, a physician born and educated in Switzerland, is a technical program manager at SecureBio, which was spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Now an independent nonprofit, SecureBio has launched the Nucleic Acid Observatory, a team of scientists working on new ways to monitor the spread of diseases.

“They’re best known for searching through sewage. In cooperation with the University of Missouri, the observatory regularly tests for viruses in the sewer water of 20 US cities ranging from Boston, New York, and Chicago, to Milan, Mo. and Ottumwa, Iowa. They’ve also tried sampling toilet waste from international airplane flights landing at Logan Airport to see if anything unpleasant is coming in from abroad.

“But COVID, like many other pathogens, is an airborne virus, so testing sewer water only gets the scientists so far. That’s why the observatory last year launched Zephyr, a program that uses nasal swabs to monitor the viruses people are carrying. Even if a person isn’t infected, the viruses tend to stick around inside their nostrils. Test enough people, Grimm believes, and you’ll get a good idea of the ebb and flow of viruses in the local population. All Grimm had to do was find a few thousand people willing to poke around in their own noses for a few seconds.

“Turns out, this isn’t so hard, if you give people a financial incentive.

“Grimm figured that every nasal passage has its price, but how much? When the program started a year ago, he experimented. A dollar was too little, while five dollars would quickly drain his funds. They hit the sweet spot about six months ago, when they hit upon the idea of a two-dollar payment, in the form of a brand-new $2 bill. Since then, SecureBio has paid out about $20,000 in swab money and collected 10,000 swabs.

“Genevieve Speedy and Liam Nokes oversee the nose swabbing and dole out the cash. Speedy is a student at Boston University, majoring in genetics. She took the swab job hoping it’ll impress future employers. … Nokes signed on after speaking with members of a swab team working the T station in Harvard Square.

“ ‘I’m really interested in microbial ecology,’ said Nokes, who recently graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in mathematics, and who’s planning to pursue either a medical degree or a PhD. …

The swab donors had a variety of motives.

“Brittany Bernie was doing her bit to protect public health. ‘I did this to stop the germs and the whole spread of everything and make sure we’re all safe,’ she said. The money played no part in her decision.

“The same went for another woman, Alex Million. “‘I think it’s important to detect the next pandemic,’ she said. ‘To protect people and get the vaccine.’

“But for Eric Saarinen, the price was right. ‘I was walking by and they asked … you need a $2 bill?’ Saarinen said.

“It’s not much money, but it’s hard to resist a brand-new $2 bill. It’s a denomination you don’t often see in the real world, making the gift something of a collector’s item.

“The experiment poses no threat to privacy, the researchers say. All donations are anonymous. Volunteers swab out their own nostrils, then dunk the swab into a communal test tube partly filled with liquid. … Grimm’s team isn’t interested in individuals. They’re trying to track viruses spreading through the population at large.

“The samples are taken to a laboratory where human DNA is filtered out and discarded. Technicians home in on RNA, the genetic material found in many infectious viruses, including influenza, polio, West Nile fever, and of course COVID. They use gene-sequencing machines to identify these RNA samples, then match them with known viruses.

“Over time, this method can measure how many people have come in contact with these viruses. In addition, the tests can spot viruses that aren’t identical to known pathogens, but are genetically close enough to merit a closer look. If these new viruses begin to show up frequently in the swab tests, it’s a clear signal that they’re spreading through the population.

“For now, the swabs are being collected only in the Boston area. But if the method proves its worth, it could become part of a nationwide early warning system for the pandemics of the future.”

And, perhaps it will be states that fund it. More at the Globe, here.

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20 New Species in the Deep Sea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: California Academy of Sciences.
A potentially new species discovered.

Looking ahead at some of the activities scheduled in my retirement community, I see that in February we can attend a lecture by Prof. Peter Girguis, co-director of the Harvard Microbial Sciences Initiative.

The announcement in our app says, “In this presentation, I will take you on a trip through the deep sea, learning about the extraordinary animals and microbes that thrive therein and about their adaptations to this environment. We will also touch on humankind’s relationship with the ocean, the birth of deep-sea biology, and the technological innovations that first took humans into the deep and how we still have time to turn the tide.”

Sounds pretty good, huh? And I think today’s article will have been the perfect preparation for the talk.

Chandelis Duster reported recently at National Public Radio [NPR] that “scientists believe they have discovered at least 20 new species in a deep part of the Pacific Ocean.

“The discoveries were found after researchers from the California Academy of Sciences retrieved 13 reef monitoring devices that had been placed in deep coral reefs in Guam, which had been collecting data since 2018. The devices, known as autonomous reef monitoring structures or ARMS, were placed up to 330 feet below the surface, an area of the ocean that receives little light.

“Over two weeks in November, scientists retrieved 2,000 specimens, finding 100 species in the region for the first time. Luiz Rocha, California Academy of Sciences Ichthyology curator, told NPR after more analysis is completed, scientists expect to discover more than 20 new species. Rocha was also part of the diving exhibition that placed and retrieved the devices.

” ‘It’s probably going to be higher than that because one of the things we do is we confirm everything with genetics. So we sequence the DNA of the species before we even really make absolutely sure that they’re new,’ Rocha said. ‘And during that process sometimes what happens is what we thought was not a new species ends up being a new species because the genetics is different.’

“He estimates that some of the potential new species could include crabs, sponges, ascidians or sea squirts, as well as new gorgonians, a type of coral.

Deep coral reefs live in an area of an ocean, nicknamed the ‘twilight zone,’ which receives little sunlight.

“Known as the mesopelagic zone, it is a difficult area for some scientists to reach because of pressure and requires specialized diving equipment. Rocha’s team studied the ‘upper twilight zone,’ which sits at 180-330 feet below the surface.

“Finding new species in that part of the ocean was not a surprise for Rocha, who said he and his team were expecting to make new discoveries. But Rocha said he was surprised to see a hermit crab, which usually make their homes in abandoned snail shells, attached to a clam.

“ ‘When they first showed me the picture of it, I’m like, “What, wait, what is that?” I couldn’t even tell what animal it was. And then I realized, oh, it’s a hermit crab, but it’s using a clamshell,’ he said. ‘The species has a lot of adaptations that allows it to do that, and it was really cool and interesting.’

“Rocha and his team have also started a two-year expedition to retrieve 76 more deep reef monitoring devices across the Pacific Ocean, including in Palau and French Polynesia.

“Although studying deep coral reefs may be difficult and challenging, Rocha said it’s crucial to learn more about the reefs and their habitat.”

More at NPR, here.

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Constant Phone Checking and Dementia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 19, 2026| 7 Comments »

Photo: Samuel Cruz/Unsplash.
New research shows that constantly breaking your focus is bad for brain health.

In one of my routine harangues, I like to say that “notifications” are part of a tech conspiracy to ensure that we are never allowed to finish a thought. I can’t tell you how much I hate notifications. I try to block them on every feature of my phone.

To back me up, there is lots of research indicating that constant phone checking undermines cognitive health. It is even associated with dementia. When you yourself are instigating the constant checking, not just a push notification, you really better do something.

The Washington Post invented a composite figure from the new data — “Amy” — to illustrate just what is going on with your brain.

Amaya Verde and Luis Melgar report, “For many of us, checking our phones has probably become an unconscious reflex, similar to breathing or blinking. And like Amy, a composite character who illustrates usual patterns of phone usage, we are interacting with our phones a high number of times.

“Glancing at your phone can begin to compromise your cognitive skills once it passes a certain threshold. Studies from Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Keimyung University in South Korea found that checking your phone about 110 times a day may signal high risk or problematic use.

“Over eight years of research involving teenagers and millennials, Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, observed that participants checked or unlocked their smartphones between 50 and more than 100 times per day, on average every 10 to 20 minutes while awake. …

” ‘The phones and digital media are reinforcing for our brains, activating the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. The phones create a compulsive habit loop where we check without thinking and experience withdrawal when we don’t check or don’t have access to our phone,’ said Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“According to a survey conducted by YouGov in May on phone use, when Americans were asked where they place their devices before going to sleep, 8 out of 10 said they keep them in their bedrooms, most often next to their beds. …

People underestimate how often they check their phones.

“When asked in the same survey how many times they pick up their devices each day, most respondents believed they did so about 10 times. A study by the Singapore Management University found that frequent interruptions to check our devices lead to more attention and memory lapses. Unlike total screen time, the frequency of smartphone checks is a much stronger predictor of daily cognitive failures. …

“The habit is widespread. YouGov found that more than half of Americans check their phones multiple times during social activities such as eating with others or meeting friends.

“At work, during a 30-minute meeting, 1 in 4 people admitted to checking their phone at least once. After each workplace interruption, it can take more than 25 minutes to regain focus, said Gloria Mark, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine.

“Most people receive push notifications throughout the day, such as messages, emails and alerts, many of which originate from social media platforms. ‘Our constant need for connection increases the brain’s biochemistry, particularly anxiety-producing chemicals such as cortisol, which nags at us to “check in” upward of 100 times a day,’ Rosen explained. … ‘Whatever generational differences that were studied when the smartphone and social media arrived are now basically minimal.’ …

“German researchers from Heidelberg University found that after just 72 hours without smartphone use, brain activity began to mirror patterns typically seen in substance withdrawal. The investigation suggests that short breaks from smartphone use can help reduce problematic habits by reorganizing our reward circuits, making them more flexible.

“Experts offered simple ways to break unhelpful device habits. ‘Make the phone less reinforcing by turning off notifications, deleting all but the most necessary apps, going grayscale and powering the phone off between use. I also recommend leaving the phone behind on occasion, just to remind ourselves we can still navigate the world without our phones,’ Lembke said.”

More at the Post, here.

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New in the Adirondacks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2026| 3 Comments »

Art: Michael Francis Reagan.
Adirondack Park covers one-fifth of New York State — larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and many other national parks combined. It differs from those national parks, says the Nature Conservancy, in that it combines existing towns, businesses, recreation, and wilderness.  

When I was very young, I used to visit a great aunt who had a “camp” in New York State’s beautiful Adirondacks. It’s all coming back to me as I read Ginger Strand’s article in the Nature Conservancy magazine.

She begins by describing a meeting she had with scientists at Follensby Pond.

“This place served as timberland for over a hundred years and was privately owned by different families, but it still has a primeval feel … a unique, interlinked landscape of forest, streams, wetlands and rare silver maple floodplains. In 2008, The Nature Conservancy bought this vast parcel of land from the estate of the former owner. In addition to Follensby Pond, the 14,600-acre property includes 10 miles along the Raquette River, a prime paddling waterway that makes up part of the longest inland water trail in the United States. …

“It was widely expected that TNC would sell the land to the state of New York. Instead, to the surprise of everyone, including itself, TNC concluded that the property needed a special level of management and protection, and kept it. In 2024 the Nature Conservancy sold two conservation easements to the state. The easements opened part of the parcel to recreational access and designated the rest of it as a freshwater research preserve with managed public access. …

“The 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, covering one-fifth of New York state, is the largest park in the lower 48 states. But it differs from national parks, like Yellowstone or Yosemite, and state parks, which are typically set aside for recreation or wildlife. Managed by two state agencies, the park has no gates or entry fees, and it’s peppered with small towns, farms, timberlands, businesses, and hunting camps, all nestled among forests, mountains, rivers, and lakes. All told it is one of the largest tracts of protected wilderness east of the Mississippi, and if it had a heart, it would be right about at Follensby Pond.

“Follensby Pond is not really a pond, but rather a 102-foot-deep lake slightly larger than Central Park. For the local Haudenosaunee and Abenaki, it was a hunting area, accessed via canoe routes that traversed the Raquette River, the historic ‘highway of the Adirondacks.’ … Tourists sought it out until the 1890s, when a timber company bought the land. In private hands, it became a family retreat as well as timberland. …

“In 2008, the Nature Conservancy closed on the Follensby property. Just about everyone expected the organization to sell it to New York state to become part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. But with the economy entering a recession, the state had no funds to buy another big parcel. Under no time pressure to transfer the land, TNC began studying it. …

“To start, TNC hosted a ‘bioblitz,’ bringing 50 scientists — geologists, soil scientists, ecologists, fish experts — onto the land to survey its flora and fauna. What the science showed was that this property wasn’t just historically vaunted; it was ecologically significant. The lake in particular held a ‘functioning ecosystem that is almost as intact as they come,’ says Michelle Brown [Michelle Brown, a senior conservation scientist for TNC in New York]. …

“This lake harbors a population of freshwater lake trout. And not just any lake trout — ‘old-growth’ lake trout, according to past research led by McGill University. Because of the minimal fishing at Follensby, the trout have been able to grow older than similar trout might in other lakes. …

“The trout’s length here can reach 2 to 3 feet; the record one here weighed 31 pounds. That’s a prized quarry for someone who has been obsessed with fishing since he was four. Yet [Dirk Bryant, who directs land conservation for TNC in New York] loves the idea of keeping the pond and these fish protected.

” ‘The hardest thing for me as an angler was to learn to think differently. … But we’re thinking about our fisheries in climate change. The lake trout is our timber wolf, our apex predator.’ Now, he says, many of the lakes that used to have the trout don’t have them anymore.

“In fact, a 2024 study found that soon only 5% of the lakes in the Adirondacks will be capable of supporting native populations of trout. … Follensby Pond is one of a rare few cool enough and healthy enough to support lake trout. …

“ ‘If you have some intact waters that can support native populations, those are the places that will support adaptation to climate change, as well as providing brood stock for restocking other waters,’ Bryant says. ‘You don’t hunt wolves in Yellowstone.’ …

“Still, when the ‘brain trust’ floated the idea of protecting the pond as a freshwater preserve, it was a surprise to many. … Paddling guidebooks in particular had been anticipating that the Follensby parcel would soon be accessible. The Adirondacks team looked for ways to balance protecting the lake with not turning the area into a conservation fortress.

“ ‘There were all these different needs: public access, Indigenous access, hunting clubs with leases, the fishery, the town,’ [Peg Olsen, TNC’s Adirondacks director] says. ‘We wanted to honor and respect all the stakeholders.’

“They landed on a compromise. The conservation easements sold to New York state create two distinct areas on the Follensby property. On nearly 6,000 acres along 10 miles of the Raquette River, one easement creates new public access for hiking, paddling, camping, hunting and fishing. The other easement protects a nearly 9,000-acre section around Follensby Pond as a freshwater research preserve, guided by a public-private consortium, to collaborate on research and preserve the lake’s unique ecosystem. While making Follensby a living laboratory, it also provides for Indigenous access and managed public access aimed at education.

“Like the wider Adirondack Park, with its combination of private lands, active towns and protected wilderness areas, it, too, will be an ongoing experiment in balancing environmental preservation with human communities.”

Read more at the Nature Conservancy magazine, here.

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Seafaring and the Human Brain

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Chewy C. Lin.
Ken Daniel, a Marshallese sailor, wears brain-recording equipment aboard a research vessel in the South Pacific.

A cool thing about scientific research today is the increased outreach to indigenous people for help with mysteries that others know little about.

Alexa Robles-Gil writes at the New York Times, about one such effort.

“When leaving an atoll of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, Alson Kelen prefers to sail after sunset. It’s like navigating with his eyes closed — allowing him to feel the up, down and sideways movement of every swell. ‘That’s how the Marshallese navigate,’ he said. ‘They navigate with their stomach.’

“For thousands of years, Marshallese navigators used traditional wave-piloting techniques to travel vast expanses of ocean. Wave piloting is the art of feeling and reading the swells and waves that hit and emanate from the region’s atolls. After a lifetime of studying these and other patterns, navigators pass a test devised by their chiefs to become a ri meto, or person of the sea.

“In the mid-1940s through the 1950s, nuclear testing by the American military displaced some Indigenous populations of the Marshalls. The ancient and sacred art of wave piloting was kept alive by a small group of people, among them Capt. Korent Joel, one of the last known experts in traditional navigation, who trained his younger cousin, Mr. Kelen. Captain Joel died in 2017.

“In early August, a team of international researchers, along with Marshallese sailors, set sail on a two-day voyage to study the cognitive process of way-finding at sea — and, more broadly, to help preserve the ancient art of navigation, which is having a cultural revival in the Pacific islands. Maria Ahmad, a Ph.D. student in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, devised the project after living on the Marshalls for many years. …

“Humans find their way across cities and forests by relying on visual landmarks. But the ocean, an ever-changing environment with no fixed visual markers, presents a more complex — and higher-stakes — challenge for the brain.

“A decade ago, researchers on a similar voyage documented Mr. Kelen’s understanding of the ocean as he sailed from one atoll, Majuro, to another, Aur, on a traditional Marshallese sailing canoe. The goal was to begin to understand how wave pilots successfully make their way from one destination to another despite the complexities of fluid dynamics. On board were an anthropologist, a physicist and an oceanographer, but no neuroscientists.

“This time around, the researchers hoped to answer more cognitive questions: How do people know where they are at sea? And how can that skill set be preserved? The crew comprised neuroscientists, a philosopher, a Marshallese anthropologist and two Marshallese sailors. Every 30 minutes, the people aboard the vessel had to draw their location, or at least where they thought they were, on a map — including the direction that the waves seemed to be coming from. …

“ ‘What is it that they are getting right over the rest of us?’ said Hugo Spiers, a neuroscientist at University College London who has studied navigation for more than two decades and was among the passengers. …

“Also on board were hundreds of pounds of technology: accelerometers to measure the boat’s speed; a watch on everyone’s wrist to measure heart rate; eye-tracking technology, to document where people were gazing; equipment to record brain activity relative to swell movement; a mounted 360-degree camera that captured changes in the sails and clouds; and more.

“In earlier research, Pablo Fernandez Velasco, a philosopher at the University of Stirling in Scotland, spent months in Siberia studying the Evenki people. … Dr. Fernandez Velasco has also collaborated with Dr. Spiers to study the brains of London taxi drivers, revealing just how efficiently they can plan routes. …

“The findings from the Marshall Islands voyage could also have implications for the study and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the researchers said. With Alzheimer’s, the hippocampus becomes smaller over time, and disorientation is an early symptom.

“That research could benefit residents of the Pacific islands, where there is a high incidence of Alzheimer’s but little public awareness. … Explaining the disease requires complex translation, added Jerolynn Neikeke Myazoe, an anthropologist and translator on the voyage: ‘We don’t really have a specific word for it.’

“Although the project is still in the early stages of processing data, Mr. Kelen, who leads a canoe and sailing school in the Marshalls, finds the project promising for the Marshallese. ‘The most relevant thing to do is look back on how our ancestors survived on these rocks,’ he said. ‘This is the only weapon we have — our tradition, our culture. He added: ‘A navigator is a culture-keeper of the ocean.’ ”

More at the Times, here. Great pictures. (A tip of the hat to Hannah for the link!)

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A Brand New Island

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Arctic Images/Alamy.
Surtsey Island, off Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. It is rare for such longlasting islands to be created from eruptions – the last one was Anak Krakatau in 1927. 

How amazing to witness the birth of an island. People who live in Iceland have a better chance of that than most of us as Iceland is still bubbling with volcanic activity.

At the Guardian, Patrick Greenfield reports on what can be learned from an island that emerged in the 1960s. He starts with the fishermen who first noticed something unusual was going on.

“The crew of the Ísleifur II had just finished casting their nets off the coast of southern Iceland when they realized something was wrong. In the early morning gloom in November 1963, a dark mass filled the sky over the Atlantic Ocean. They rushed to the radio, thinking that another fishing vessel was burning at sea, but no boats in the area were in distress.

“Then, their trawler began to drift unexpectedly, unnerving the crew further. The cook scrambled to wake the captain, thinking they were being pulled into a whirlpool. Finally, through binoculars, they spotted columns of ash bursting from the water and realized … a volcano was erupting in the ocean below.

“By the time the sun had risen, dark ash filled the sky and a ridge was forming just below the surface of the water. By the next morning, it was 10 meters high [about 33 feet]. … An island was being born.

“Two months later, the rock was more than a kilometer long [0.6 mile]and 174 metres high [571 feet] at its peak. It was named Surtsey after the fire giant Surtr from Norse mythology. … It would be two years before it stopped erupting completely.

” ‘It is very rare to have an eruption where an island forms and is long lasting. It happens once every 3,000 to 5,000 years in this area,’ says Olga Kolbrún Vilmundardóttir, a geographer with the Natural Science Institute of Iceland. Those that do form are often quickly washed away by the ocean, she says.

“The emergence of Surtsey presented researchers with a precious scientific opportunity. They could observe how life colonizes and spreads on an island away from the human interference that has overtaken much of the Earth. …

If space is given, nature will always find ways to return, often faster and more creatively than we expect.

“The first scientists that stepped on Surtsey in 1964 could see that seeds and plant residues had been washed ashore. … Scientists had expected algae and mosses to be the first colonizers, building up a base of soil that would eventually support vascular plants. But that step was skipped completely. More plants were washed ashore in the following years, and some clung to the island’s bare volcanic rock. But after a decade, the changes seemed to stall.

“Pawel Wasowicz, director of botany at the Natural Science Institute, says: ‘People thought, what now? Around 10 species had colonized Surtsey at that point. The plant cover was really scarce. But then the birds arrived.’

“In the early 1980s, black-backed gulls started to nest on sections of the island, sheltering in one of the stormiest parts of the Atlantic Ocean. Their arrival kicked off an explosion of life. Guano carried seeds that quickly spread grasses along the island, fed in turn by the nutrients from the birds. For the first time, whole areas of bare rock became green.

“Wasowicz says … ‘Biologists thought that it was just plant species with fleshy fruits that could travel with birds. But the species on Surtsey do not have fleshy fruits. Almost all of the seeds on Surtsey were brought in the feces of the gulls.’

“One lesson from this living laboratory is that recovery after disturbance does not follow a single, predictable path, he says. Instead, it is shaped by multiple, sometimes surprising forces.

“Today, grey seals are the latest arrivals to drive changes in the island’s biodiversity. The volcanic rock has become a crucial ‘haul-out’ site where seals come ashore to rest and molt, as well as a breeding ground where they can raise their young safe from the orcas lurking nearby. …

“But the researchers warn that the colonization of Surtsey will one day go into reverse. The grey seal haul-out site is one of the areas slowly being eroded by the ocean. By the end of the century, scientists project that little will be left from that section of the island.

“Its biodiversity will probably peak, then fall over time … but the researchers say that lessons will remain.

“Surtsey demonstrates that, even in the harshest environments, resilience and renewal are possible, says Wasowicz. It offers hope and practical lessons for rehabilitating ecosystems damaged by war, pollution or exploitation. …

“Vilmundardóttir says: ‘I feel that Iceland is really contributing something important to humankind by preserving this area. On the mainland, the impact of humans is everywhere. When I am on Surtsey, I am really in nature. All you can hear are the birds.’ You see orcas along the coastline and the seals popping out and watching.’ “

More at the Guardian, here.

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Check Out the Ig Nobel Prizes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 30, 2025| 3 Comments »

Photo: AP Photo/Charles Krupa.
A detail of the 2025 Ig Nobel award, one of many that get awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for silly sounding scientific discoveries that often have surprisingly practical applications.

If your serious research gets an award for sounding silly, it’s a good idea to put your sense of humor on display and accept the free publicity. That’s what winners of the Ig Nobel have learned to do. Some researchers even hope they’ll be chosen.

Michael Casey writes at the Associated Press, “A team of researchers from Japan wondered if painting cows with zebralike stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza lizards preferred to eat.

“Those researchers were honored [in September] in Boston with an Ig Nobel, the prize — a hand made model of a human stomach — for comical scientific achievement. In lieu of a big paycheck, each winner was also given a single hand wipe.

“ ‘When I did this experiment, I hoped that I would win the Ig Nobel. It’s my dream. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable,’ said Tomoki Kojima, whose team put tape on Japanese beef cows and then spray painted them with white stripes. Kojima appeared on stage in stripes and was surrounded by his fellow researchers who harassed him with cardboard flies.

“As a result of the paint job, fewer flies were attracted to the cows and they seemed less bothered by the flies. Despite the findings, Kojima admitted it might be a challenge to apply this approach on a large-scale.

“The year’s winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a group from Europe that found drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades.

“ ‘Every great discovery ever, at first glance seemed screwy and laughable,’ Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an email interview ahead of the awards ceremony. …

“The 35th annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony is organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think. It’s usually held weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced.

“The ceremony to celebrate winners [began] with a longtime tradition: the audience pelting the stage with paper airplanes. Several of those who couldn’t attend had their speeches read by actual Nobel laureates including Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Prize for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

“There was also a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year’s theme which is digestion. …

“There was also a section called the 24-second lecture where top researchers explain their work in 24 seconds. Among them was … Trisha Pasricha, who explained her work studying smartphone use on the toilet and the potential risk for hemorrhoids.

“When any winner appeared to be rambling on too long, a man wearing a dress over his suit would appear at their side and repeatedly yell, ‘Please stop. I’m bored.’

“Other winners this year included … a team of international scientists that looked at whether giving alcohol to bats impaired their ability to fly.

“ ‘It’s a great honor for us,” said Francisco Sanchez, one of the researchers from Colombia who studied the drunken bats. ‘It’s really good. You can see that scientists are not really square and super serious and can have some fun while showing interesting science.’

“Sanchez said their research found that the bats weren’t fans of rotten fruit, which often has higher concentrations of alcohol. Maybe for good reason. When they were forced to eat it, their flying and echolocation suffered, he said. …

“Among the most animated of the winners was a team of researchers from several European countries who studied the physics of pasta sauce. One of the researchers wore a cook’s outfit with a fake mustache to accept the award while another dressed as a big ball of mozzarella cheese got pummeled by several people holding wooden cookware. They ended by handing out bowls of pasta to the Nobel laureates.”

More at AP, here. Fun pictures.

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Dog Identifies What’s Killing Bees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 7, 2025| 10 Comments »

Photo: Mike Householder/AP.
Sue Stejskal lets Maple, an English springer spaniel, sniff a bee-themed dog toy at Michigan State University’s Pollinator Performance Center. Maple is part of an effort to screen and diagnose diseases that sicken honeybees.

It seems that over the past few years, I’m hearing more and more about bees — their importance to the food chain, their worrisome diseases. On Instagram I’ve been following the intrepid Erika Thompson @texasbeeworks, and after Sandra told me about an inspiring bee tour, I added @bodhis.bees in Rhode Island. Then, there’s my friend AJ, who shares honey from his hives when the black bear leaves them alone.

Keeping bees and other pollinators healthy is an important job that’s getting increasingly difficult as unaware humans damage their environment. In today’s story, a specially trained dog is helping protect bees.

Ramon Antonio Vargas reports at the Associated Press via the Guardian, “Maple, a springer spaniel aged nine, is earning news headlines by helping Michigan State University (MSU) researchers identify bacteria that is harmful for bee colonies. …

“Maple landed the role after spending seven years detecting human remains for a sheriff’s office. She had to retire from the sheriff’s office after suffering an injury on the job – leaving her handler, Sue Stejskal, in search of something to keep Maple busy.

“ ‘She’s a very over-the-top, enthusiastic, sometimes hard-to-live with dog because of her energy level,’ Stejskal, who has been training dogs for law enforcement and other uses for more than 25 years, said to the AP.

“Fortunately for Stejskal, MSU professor Meghan Milbrath was seeking out tools to screen and diagnose diseases that sicken honeybees, which her lab studies. A veterinarian who had taken part in a training about honeybees later put Stejksal and Milbrath in touch.

“And soon, the pair hatched a plan by which Stejskal taught Maple to apply her police canine detection methods in beehives to uncover American foulbrood – a bacterial disease that poses a deadly threat to honeybee larvae.

“The work Maple has since done for MSU’s Pollinator Performance Center has been crucial, with bees and other pollinators in a years-long decline stemming from diseases, insecticides, a lack of a diverse food supply and climate change driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

“ ‘American foulbrood [harms] young developing bees, and when a hive gets infected, it actually basically leads to death,’ Milbrath, an assistant professor in MSU’s entomology department. …

” ‘Beekeepers have had to burn tens of thousands of dollars of equipment due to this disease,’ Milbrath said to WILX.

“Maple carries out her duties in a distinctive, yellow protective suit. Her gear includes a veil for her head and four bootees worn on her paws to shield Maple in case she steps on a bee. …

“About 465 bee species are native to Michigan alone. Among the goals of training Maple to spot American foulbrood for the Pollinator Performance Center was to create a guidebook with which other dogs could be similarly taught, WILX noted.

“Stejskal told the AP, ‘I was over-the-moon excited because my dog would have joy in her life and would still be able to work,’ Stejskal said.” More at the Guardian, here.

You probably know there are things we can all do to help bees.

Many homeowners, for example, are giving up pesticides and herbicides. They are leaving the leaves on their lawns in fall to provide pollinator habitat in spring, and they’re committing to No Mow May. After all, as Bee City tells us, “The start of the growing season is a critical time for hungry, newly emerged native bees. Flowers may be hard to find. By allowing it to grow longer, and letting flowers bloom, your lawn can provide nectar and pollen to help your bee neighbors thrive.”

Please add bee tips if you know of some not covered here.

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Mysterious Starfish Dieoff

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 27, 2025| 5 Comments »

Photo: Bennett Whitnell / Hakai Institute.
Sunflower stars and vase tunicates grow on the sea floor of Rivers Inlet, British Columbia, in 2023.

There have always been voters who care more about knocking a few cents off the gas they put in their SUVs than researching what’s going on with some small creature in the natural world.

But many of us do care about the natural world and believe that a dieoff in any one area can have repercussions for humanity. Everything is connected.

John Ryan reports at OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) about how scientists worked to “crack the case” of melting sea stars.

He writes, “Researchers in Washington and British Columbia say they have solved a deadly mystery that has stumped scientists for more than a decade. They have identified the pathogen behind one of the world’s biggest disease outbreaks: a wasting disease that has turned billions of sea stars into goo – from Alaska to California.

“A mass dieoff of ocean-shaking proportions began among sea stars along North America’s West Coast in 2013. Of 20 species affected, the pizza-sized sunflower star was hardest hit. More than 5 billion sunflower stars, or 90% of their global population, wasted away.

“With key predators of sea urchins largely wiped out, the spiny little grazers proliferated and chewed their way through kelp forests, leading to widespread losses of that productive ocean habitat.

“For 12 years, the cause of the wasting disease was either unknown or, mistakenly, thought to be a virus. Instead, the new study says, it is a strain of bacteria known as Vibrio pectenicida. Other Vibrio bacteria sicken corals and shellfish. One species, Vibrio cholera, causes cholera in humans.

“ ‘It is not surprising that it is a Vibrio,’ said biologist Alyssa-Lois Gehman of British Columbia’s Hakai Institute. ‘It was surprising because it took us so long to find out that it was a Vibrio.’

“Gehman and her coauthors are not the first scientists to claim to have found the culprit behind the worst underwater wildlife pandemic on record. …

“Gehman said the new study, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, avoids a key oversight of the earlier work by focusing on the sea stars’ blood-like internal fluid and not just its external tissues, where many other microbes live. …

“Gehman’s research team not only found much more Vibrio pectenicida in sick stars than in healthy ones. They were able to isolate the Vibrio, grow it in the lab, and give the wasting disease to healthy sunflower stars by injecting them with the Vibrio, steps the earlier researchers had not achieved. …

“The current study grew out of four summers of experiments at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Marrowstone Marine Field Station, a beachfront facility on Marrowstone Island, near Port Townsend, Washington. Avoiding microbial contamination was a top priority.

“ ‘There’s a lot of ethanol and bleach and betadine,’ Gehman said. …

“Researchers stepped in foot baths when entering and leaving the facility. Each sunflower star, after enduring a two-week quarantine, lived in its own tank with its own supply of sand-filtered, ultraviolet-treated seawater. Researchers avoided touching the stars, even with gloves on.

“In January 2024, after analyzing the previous summer’s data, the researchers found large amounts of Vibrio pectenicida in sick sunflower stars and hardly any in healthy stars. …

“Sunflower stars have become so rare that taking any from the wild is both difficult and potentially harmful to the species.

“ ‘We ran at sort of the bare minimum necessary to get robust and strong evidence,’ Gehman said.”

Continued research is under threat. The administration in DC proposes to cut the key U.S. Geological Survey budget 38% in 2026 and eliminate its biological research arm, which environmental advocates call “the backbone of environmental and ecological monitoring.”

More at OPB, here.

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AI Fills in Missing Latin Letters

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 13, 2025| 5 Comments »

Photo:The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Google’s Aeneas AI program proposes words to fill the gaps in worn and damaged artifacts. 

Whenever I start to worry that Google has too much power, it does something useful. Today’s story is about its artificial intelligence program Aeneas, which can make a guess about half-obliterated letters in ancient inscriptions.

Ian Sample, science editor at the Guardian, writes, “In addition to sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health, the Romans also produced a lot of inscriptions.

“Making sense of the ancient texts can be a slog for scholars, but a new artificial intelligence tool from Google DeepMind aims to ease the process. Named Aeneas after the mythical Trojan hero, the program predicts where and when inscriptions were made and makes suggestions where words are missing.

“Historians who put the program through its paces said it transformed their work by helping them identify similar inscriptions to those they were studying, a crucial step for setting the texts in context, and proposing words to fill the inevitable gaps in worn and damaged artifacts.

” ‘Aeneas helps historians interpret, attribute and restore fragmentary Latin texts,’ said Dr Thea Sommerschield, a historian at the University of Nottingham who developed Aeneas with the tech firm. …

“Inscriptions are among the most important records of life in the ancient world. The most elaborate can cover monument walls, but many more take the form of decrees from emperors, political graffiti, love poems, business records, epitaphs on tombs and writings on everyday life. Scholars estimate that about 1,500 new inscriptions are found every year. …

“But there is a problem. The texts are often broken into pieces or so ravaged by time that parts are illegible. And many inscribed objects have been scattered over the years, making their origins uncertain.

“The Google team led by Yannis Assael worked with historians to create an AI tool that would aid the research process. The program is trained on an enormous database of nearly 200,000 known inscriptions, amounting to 16m characters.

“Aeneas takes text, and in some cases images, from the inscription being studied and draws on its training to build a list of related inscriptions from 7th century BC to 8th century AD. Rather than merely searching for similar words, the AI identifies and links inscriptions through deeper historical connections. …

“The AI can assign study texts to one of 62 Roman provinces and estimate when it was written to within 13 years. It also provides potential words to fill in any gaps, though this has only been tested on known inscriptions where text is blocked out.

“In a test … Aeneas analyzed inscriptions on a votive altar from Mogontiacum, now Mainz in Germany, and revealed through subtle linguistic similarities how it had been influenced by an older votive altar in the region. ‘Those were jaw-dropping moments for us,’ said Sommerschield. Details are published in Nature. …

“In a collaboration, 23 historians used Aeneas to analyze Latin inscriptions. The context provided by the tool was helpful in 90% of cases. “’t promises to be transformative,’ said Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge.

“Jonathan Prag, a co-author and professor of ancient history at the University of Oxford, said Aeneas could be run on the existing corpus of inscriptions to see if the interpretations could be improved. He added that Aeneas would enable a wider range of people to work on the texts.

“ ‘The only way you can do it without a tool like this is by building up an enormous personal knowledge or having access to an enormous library,’ he said. ‘But you do need to be able to use it critically.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. Please remember that this free news outlet needs donations.

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The Deep Mystery of Hail

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 31, 2025| 3 Comments »

Photo: Sean Waugh.
NOAA’s National Severe Storm Lab has been looking into the hail problem.

Here’s my periodic reminder that cutting out funding for scientific research can affect your life. The important work of the National Severe Storm Lab of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Oklahoma is just one example of what may be lost.

Nick Gilmore at public radio WVTF in Virginia reported recently on NOAA’s research into hail.

“Just picture this – it’s a warm afternoon and a thunderstorm starts to roll overhead. You head indoors and hear rain begin to fall. As the cracks of thunder get louder, you peek out the window to see large chunks of ice on the ground. … Rain makes sense to fall from a storm – but large pieces of ice?

“ ‘Hail is one of those things that we don’t really know how it forms,’ says Sean Waugh, a research scientist at NOAA’s Severe Storms Laboratory.

“We do know some of the basics. Strong thunderstorms have strong updrafts – think like a vacuum cleaner that’s able to lift moisture high up into the atmosphere. It’s cold up there, so that water freezes into a small stone. It collects more water, refreezes as it cycles through the storm – more water, refreezes. … Eventually, the hailstone gets too heavy and tumbles to the earth below. Waugh says wind speed, direction and moisture in the air also play a part in hailstorm development.

We also know hail can be expensive.

“ ‘In any given year, it’s 60-80% of the damage that comes from severe thunderstorms,’ says Ian Giammanco – a meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. He says we’re just getting more hailstorms these days.

“ ‘Rewind the clock all the way back to 2008 – every year since then, we’ve had over $10 billion in damage from hail. This has crept up now to a $20-30 billion problem.’

“Giammanco says that’s why research like what Sean Waugh is doing is so important – finding out what hail looks like before it hits the ground. …

“Waugh says, ‘We don’t know what broke when it landed, how much of that mass, or size or shape have we lost between when it fell and when we find it, right? I’ve seen six-inch diameter stones melt before I can get out of the car to pick them up.’ …

“There are other questions, too: how fast does hail fall? Does it fall in a specific orientation? Does the stone melt while it’s falling to the earth below?

” ‘These are all really, really important questions if you’re trying to ascertain what hail looks like to a radar. And that’s a really critical piece of knowledge if you’re trying to warn for hail in real time, which is obviously the goal! Most people want to know if there’s going to be golf balls falling at their house or softballs.’ …

“Waugh and his team have built a complex rig that observes hail in free fall and in real time. They head out from Oklahoma – typically to the Southern Plains – to get the system in front of a storm producing large hail.

“The rig has high speed and high-quality cameras, and Waugh says there’s another key component.

” ‘But we need a lot of light to do that. Otherwise, the image would just be dark,’ he explains. ‘So, the LED array I have on the back of the truck produces about 30% more light than the sun!’ …

“ ‘We can use that knowledge to improve our forecasts of what storms are likely going to produce hail days in advance. By understanding the type of hail that different storms produce, that increases our ability to model it properly and then forecast that in the future,’ Waugh says. ‘And that way people can take appropriate action to protect life and property.’ ”

More at public radio WVTF, here. Cool video of hail in flight.

I don’t get the funding cuts. The jobs that will be lost at the weather center are in Oklahoma, so it’s not just coastal communities that will be hurt. And anyway, don’t hurricanes damage golf courses in Florida sometimes? Weather is something no human can be the boss of, so it’s just common sense to try to understand it.

Please share your hail stories.

From the University of Oklahoma news site, OU Daily.

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