Human

Our survey of the sky is uncovering the secrets of how planets are born

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The very first step in finding out is to understand how special the Earth really is – and, by extension, our entire Solar System.

Key Points: 
  • The very first step in finding out is to understand how special the Earth really is – and, by extension, our entire Solar System.
  • And that’s exactly what my colleagues and I have started to uncover with a new series of studies of star-forming regions.
  • In the past decades, astronomers have spotted more than 5,000 planets around distant stars – so called exoplanets.
  • We now know that planets are so abundant that you can look up to almost any star in the night sky and be near certain that planets are circling around it.
  • This is no mean feat of engineering, with the latest generation of instruments only being available since about a decade.

New findings

  • Our team, consisting of scientists from more than ten countries was able to observe more than 80 of these young stars in amazing detail – with our findings published in a series of papers in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  • All the images were taken in near infrared light, invisible to the human eye.
  • They show the light from the distant young stars as it is reflected from the tiny dust particles in the discs.
  • Unlike the Sun, most stars in our galaxy have companions, with two or more stars orbiting a shared centre of mass.
  • When looking at the constellation of Orion, we found that stars in groups of two or more were less likely to have large planet-forming discs than lone stars.
  • Another interesting finding was how uneven the discs in this region were, suggesting they may host massive planets that warp the discs.


Christian Ginski works for the University of Galway and frequently works with ESO facilities.

Menstrual health literacy is alarmingly low – what you don’t know can harm you

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

When I ask my menstrual health workshop participants – including clinicians – there’s usually a lot of shrugging and shaking of heads.

Key Points: 
  • When I ask my menstrual health workshop participants – including clinicians – there’s usually a lot of shrugging and shaking of heads.
  • If given multiple choice options, most think that periods either “clean the womb” or somehow “help prepare for pregnancy”.
  • Yes, the blood part can stain clothing, but there is nothing pathological, contaminating, or dangerous about periods.

So, why do we have periods?

  • Periods likely evolved as a kind of preemptive abortion, to protect women from unviable or dangerous pregnancies.
  • As a result, we have low rates of conception, high rates of miscarriage, and extremely high rates of maternal mortality in comparison to other mammals.
  • The menstrual cycle is critical for facilitation of the initial steps of this raison d’être of the female reproductive system.
  • The menstrual cycle is critical for facilitation of the initial steps of this raison d’être of the female reproductive system.

What else don’t we know?

  • Perhaps with the fact that the second phase of the cycle from ovulation to menstruation is a series of highly inflammatory processes.
  • This was only very briefly mentioned in three out of 16 textbooks.
  • We really ought to be taught from puberty how to reduce period pain and blood loss – this is not difficult science.

Why aren’t we taught this stuff?

  • My research shows that the exclusive focus on the female sex hormones in menstrual education is informed by societal influences, such as the myth of the hysterical or hormonal female.
  • This gender myth is still alive and well, although now we tend to blame the (female sex) hormones.
  • Again, there was no scientific reason for this change in focus, although it reflected existing societal beliefs about the inherently irrational behaviour of women.
  • Unfortunately, menstrual health literacy has not yet recovered from this shift in physiological models.

So what?

  • It also becomes much easier to differentiate premenstrual changes from underlying health conditions, since the latter will not be substantially alleviated by anti-inflammatory interventions alone.
  • Teaching the reductive hormonal model of the menstrual cycle unintentionally provides pseudo-scientific evidence for the damaging hormonal or hysterical female gender myth.


Sally King is the founder of Menstrual Matters- the world's first evidence-based info hub on menstrual health and rights www.menstrual-matters.com. Her doctoral research and current research fellowship were funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council).

High levels of PFAS forever chemicals found flowing into River Mersey – new study

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Huge volumes of toxic and cancer-causing forever chemicals are flowing into the River Mersey in north-west England.

Key Points: 
  • Huge volumes of toxic and cancer-causing forever chemicals are flowing into the River Mersey in north-west England.
  • The recent State of Our Rivers 2024 report from The Rivers Trust found that one of the most concerning groups of synthetic chemicals, per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), contaminates almost every river in England.
  • Known as forever chemicals because they can take thousands of years to break down, PFAS persist in the environment and accumulate in living things.
  • They threaten ecosystems and human health, not just in the Mersey, but in every industrialised river around the world.

Dilute, disperse and detect

  • Most cities, including Liverpool and Manchester, have been built close to rivers and seas, partly to dilute pollution and transport it away.
  • Today, enormous volumes of toxic waste are discharged into rivers and seas because dilution reduces chemical concentrations to extremely low or undetectable levels.
  • These forever chemicals have been detected almost everywhere we look, including in Antarctica, in whales and polar bears and in rainwater.

A state of flux

  • To prevent further PFAS entering our rivers, more needs to be known about how they move into and through river systems.
  • As part of our study, we measured this flux.
  • Instead of measuring a chemical’s concentration, flux is a measure of how much PFAS, for example in kilograms per year, flows off the land and out to sea.


Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Patrick Byrne receives funding from the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council.

What the Anthropocene’s critics overlook – and why it really should be a new geological epoch

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The entire process was controversial and the two us who are on the subcommission (chair Jan Zalasiewicz and vice-chair Martin Head) even refused to cast a vote as we did not want to legitimise it.

Key Points: 
  • The entire process was controversial and the two us who are on the subcommission (chair Jan Zalasiewicz and vice-chair Martin Head) even refused to cast a vote as we did not want to legitimise it.
  • In any case, the proposal ran into opposition from longstanding members.
  • Many geologists, used to working with millions of years, find it hard to accept an epoch just seven decades long – that’s just one human lifetime.
  • He and his colleagues were perfectly aware that humans had been doing that for millennia.


It makes no sense, Crutzen said, to use the Holocene for present time. He conceived the Anthropocene as the time when human impacts intensified, suddenly, dramatically, enough to push the Earth into a new state. The science journalist Andrew Revkin (who thought up the name “Anthrocene” even before Crutzen’s inspiration) aptly called it the “big zoom”.

Flesh on bones

  • We’re part of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) that has been gathering evidence to put geological flesh on the bones of Crutzen’s concept.
  • The AWG had a mandate: to assess the Anthropocene as a potential geological time unit during which “human modification of natural systems has become predominant”.
  • It’s a nicely laid out, easy-to-understand picture that summarises the changes caused by human activity over the last million years.
  • But what is lost here is any sense of the quantified rate and magnitude of change, other than by a little shading.
  • The Y-axis is what scientists use to show the magnitude of measurements such as temperature and mass.
  • They show that Crutzen’s Anthropocene is real, evidence based, and represents an epoch-scale change (at least).
  • The repercussions cannot fail to last for many thousands of years – and some will change the Earth for ever.

Epoch vs event

  • So the Anthropocene as an epoch is very different from the “event” of Erle Ellis and others, which encapsulates all human influence on the planet (and so is about a thousand times longer than the epoch, and differs in many other ways).
  • ), it could perfectly well complement an Anthropocene epoch.
  • That’s the Anthropocene as an epoch.


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  • Colin Waters is Chair of the Anthropocene Working Group.
  • Martin Head is part of the Anthropocene Working Group and the Quaternary Subcommission.

All of Us Strangers buys into tropes of tragic queer lives – but there is hope there, too

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

On the surface, All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh, is a dark and twisty love story.

Key Points: 
  • On the surface, All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh, is a dark and twisty love story.
  • Underneath, there is the often-present storyline seen in queer cinema: that of trauma and tragedy.
  • All of Us Strangers follows lonely middle-aged gay man Adam (Andrew Scott), struggling to come to terms with his tragic past and sexuality.

Queer representation

  • Queer representation in mainstream media has historically been marred by negative stereotypes, tokenistic representation and death.
  • In my recent interactive documentary, Queer Representation Matters, queer media scholars and queer screen storytellers share how queer characters are often relegated to roles characterised by tragedy or trauma, perpetuating harmful tropes like “bury your gays”.
  • Online queer news site, Autostraddle, have compiled a list of the 230+ dead queer female TV characters, which continues to be updated with each death.
  • Essentially, for queer people, it starts to feel like you can’t have queer representation without someone dying tragically at the end.
  • Read more:
    We studied two decades of queer representation on Australian TV, and found some interesting trends

We need diverse stories

  • Tropes will always exist in storytelling, but by having more diverse queer filmmakers telling more diverse queer stories, audiences will have a more balanced narrative about queer life (and life expectancy).
  • We need to see stories that challenge the narrative that being queer ultimately leads to pain, trauma and tragedy.
  • We need to see we can also live long and happy lives, so we can believe we can have the happy ever after.
  • Read more:
    All of Us Strangers: heartbreaking film speaks to real experiences of gay men in UK and Ireland


Natalie Krikowa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Detransition and gender fluidity: Deeper understanding can improve care and acceptance

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

If you have been following recent coverage about gender-affirming health care, detransition will not be an unfamiliar topic.

Key Points: 
  • If you have been following recent coverage about gender-affirming health care, detransition will not be an unfamiliar topic.
  • From mainstream journalists to transgender authors, many have taken an interest in people who underwent a medical gender transition and chose to return to their former identity.

Detransition is not new, but we are seeing new gender-diverse experiences

  • Providers of gender-affirming medicine have long been aware of adults who medically transitioned and later returned to live in their former “gender role” or showed signs of regret.
  • Dr. Harry Benjamin, the endocrinologist who was among the first to offer gender-affirming medical interventions in the United States, wrote about one such case in his 1966 book, The Transsexual Phenomenon.
  • Using strict measurement criteria, they estimated that detransition was rare: around one to two per cent.

Understanding detransition can help us to enrich gender care


We have long known that sexuality can be fluid for some LGBTQ+ people. New research shows that it is not uncommon for trans and gender-diverse young people to report shifts in gender identity over time — dynamically moving between binary trans girls or trans boys, to non-binary, or to cisgender. In some cases, these identity-shift patterns can influence changes in desires for gender-affirming interventions.

  • However, when a person’s gender identity or their desire for how they want to express their gender changes after already completing medical or surgical interventions, this may contribute to feelings of decisional regret.
  • But because detransition and regret are being instrumentalized in debates about trans people and gender-affirming health care, organizations and care providers serving sexual minorities and gender-diverse communities may feel that offering outward support for detransitioners is politically risky.
  • But if organizations and care systems fail to offer formal recognition and support, where can detransitioners turn to for help?

Detransitioners’ voices

  • As social scientists who study gender-affirming health care, we understand what motivates these pursuits: a desire to be understood, and to seek validation and justice.
  • Detransitioners’ voices, though, may be strategically positioned toward gender-affirming care restrictions, rather than to improve research or to develop comprehensive detransition-related care services.

Identity evolution and detransition are LGBTQ+ experiences

  • Some might only detransition temporarily due to lack of support, external pressures and transphobia, and re-affirm a trans identity in the future.
  • Regardless, detransition can bring about loss of community supports, stigma, shame and health care avoidance.
  • Gender fluidity and detransition deserve further understanding and formal care services, not controversy.
  • Kinnon R. MacKinnon receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
  • Annie Pullen Sansfaçon receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chair Program.

An apple cider vinegar drink a day? New study shows it might help weight loss

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

An experimental study, released today, looks into whether apple cider vinegar could be effective for weight loss, reduce blood glucose levels and reduce blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides).

Key Points: 
  • An experimental study, released today, looks into whether apple cider vinegar could be effective for weight loss, reduce blood glucose levels and reduce blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides).
  • The results suggest it could reduce all three – but it might not be as simple as downing an apple cider vinegar drink a day.

What did they do?

  • A control group consumed an inactive drink (a placebo) made (from lactic acid added to water) to look and taste the same.
  • The study was also double-blinded, which means neither the participants or the scientists involved with collecting the data knew who was in which group.

So, what did they find?

  • After a period of three months apple cider vinegar consumption was linked with significant falls in body weight and body mass index (BMI).
  • On average, those who drank apple cider vinegar during that period lost 6–8kg in weight and reduced their BMI by 2.7–3 points, depending on the dose.
  • The authors also report significant decreases in levels of blood glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol in the apple cider groups.

Is this good news?

  • Firstly, study participants were aged from 12 to 25, so we can’t say whether the results could apply to everyone.
  • And while the researchers kept records of the participants’ diet and exercise during the study, these were not published in the paper.
  • This could be important and influence results if people who did not lose weight quit due to lack of motivation.


Read more:
Turns out the viral 'Sleepy Girl Mocktail' is backed by science. Should you try it?

Any other concerns?


Apple cider vinegar is acidic and there are concerns it may erode tooth enamel. This can be a problem with any acidic beverages, including fizzy drinks, lemon water and orange juice. To minimise the risk of acid erosion some dentists recommend the following after drinking acidic drinks:

Read more:
Apple cider vinegar: is drinking this popular home remedy bad for your teeth? A dentist explains

Down the hatch?

  • This study provides us with some evidence of a link between apple cider vinegar and weight loss.
  • This would provide more robust evidence that apple cider vinegar could be a useful aid for weight loss.


Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

The surprising key to magpie intelligence: it’s not genetic

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Are their sharp cognitive abilities innate – something coded into their genetic makeup?

Key Points: 
  • Are their sharp cognitive abilities innate – something coded into their genetic makeup?
  • Or are magpie smarts more a product of their environment and social experiences?
  • In a new study, we shed light on the “nature versus nurture” debate – at least when it comes to avian intelligence.
  • Instead, the key factor influencing how quickly the fledglings learned to pick the correct colour was the size of their social group.

EQS-News: MIG Capital leads €5 million Series A financing of animal healthcare company HawkCell to democratise MRI imaging

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The funding round is led by MIG Capital, with participation from a French investment bank.

Key Points: 
  • The funding round is led by MIG Capital, with participation from a French investment bank.
  • HawkCell has developed an innovative system incorporating both hardware and software solutions to augment animal MRI imaging.
  • With its one-of-a-kind imaging solutions for veterinarians and pre-clinical research, HawkCell will change how we understand and care for animals.
  • We have been impressed by the highly talented and dedicated team with admirable ambitions to transform the future of animal imaging.

Sora Unleashes Market Storm, Global Mofy Metaverse (GMM.US) Rides High on AI Wave in 2024

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

This impact is reflected in the capital markets, with Sora concept stocks causing a surge in both domestic and international AI markets.

Key Points: 
  • This impact is reflected in the capital markets, with Sora concept stocks causing a surge in both domestic and international AI markets.
  • Besides text-based video generation, Sora also possesses capabilities such as image-based video, video extension, video stitching, video editing, and image generation.
  • Currently, Global Mofy Metaverse is one of the leading digital asset banks, consisting of over 30,000 high-precision 3D digital assets.
  • In recent years, Global Mofy Metaverse has been actively expanding into cross-modal domains such as Sora's image and video generation.