Category: Science

Dogs can smell our human stress

An article from Live Science tells all.

Before I share the article with you, I felt I should mention that I haven’t found a link to share the Live Science item and it may need to be moved. We will see what happens.

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Dogs can smell their humans’ stress, and it makes them sad.

By Sara Novak,  published July 27, 2024.

Dogs can smell when people are stressed, and it seems to make them feel downhearted.

A new study shows that dogs pick up on our emotions through their sense of smell. (Image credit: Catherine Falls Commercial via Getty Images)

Humans and dogs have been close companions for perhaps 30,000 years, according to anthropological and DNA evidence. So it would make sense that dogs would be uniquely qualified to interpret human emotion. They have evolved to read verbal and visual cues from their owners, and previous research has shown that with their acute sense of smell, they can even detect the odor of stress in human sweat. Now researchers have found that not only can dogs smell stress—in this case represented by higher levels of the hormone cortisol—they also react to it emotionally.

For the new study, published Monday in Scientific Reports, scientists at the University of Bristol in England recruited 18 dogs of varying breeds, along with their owners. Eleven volunteers who were unfamiliar to the dogs were put through a stress test involving public speaking and arithmetic while samples of their underarm sweat were gathered on pieces of cloth. Next, the human participants underwent a relaxation exercise that included watching a nature video on a beanbag chair under dim lighting, after which new sweat samples were taken. Sweat samples from three of these volunteers were used in the study.

Participating canines were put into three groups and smelled sweat samples from one of the three volunteers. Prior to doing so, the dogs were trained to know that a food bowl at one location contained a treat and that a bowl at another location did not. During testing, bowls that did not contain a treat were sometimes placed in one of three “ambiguous” locations. In one testing session, when the dogs smelled the sample from a stressed volunteer, compared with the scent of a cloth without a sample, they were less likely to approach the bowl in one of the ambiguous locations, suggesting that they thought this bowl did not contain a treat. Previous research has shown that an expectation of a negative outcome reflects a down mood in dogs.

The results imply that when dogs are around stressed individuals, they’re more pessimistic about uncertain situations, whereas proximity to people with the relaxed odor does not have this effect, says Zoe Parr-Cortes, lead study author and a Ph.D. student at Bristol Veterinary School at the University of Bristol. “For thousands of years, dogs have learned to live with us, and a lot of their evolution has been alongside us. Both humans and dogs are social animals, and there’s an emotional contagion between us,” she says. “Being able to sense stress from another member of the pack was likely beneficial because it alerted them of a threat that another member of the group had already detected.”

The fact that the odor came from an individual who was unfamiliar to the dogs speaks to the importance of smell for the animals and to the way it affects emotions in such practical situations, says Katherine A. Houpt, a professor emeritus of behavioral medicine at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Houpt, who was not involved in the new study, suggests that the smell of stress may have reduced the dogs’ hunger because it’s known to impact appetite. “It might not be that it’s changing their decision-making but more that it’s changing their motivation for food,” she says. “It makes sense because when you’re super stressed, you’re not quite as interested in that candy bar.”

This research, Houpt adds, shows that dogs have empathy based on smell in addition to visual and verbal cues. And when you’re stressed, that could translate into behaviors that your dog doesn’t normally display, she says. What’s more, it leaves us to wonder how stress impacts the animals under the more intense weight of an anxious owner. “If the dogs are responding to more mild stress like this, I’d be interested to see how they responded to something more serious like an impending tornado, losing your job or failing a test,” Houpt says. “One would expect the dog to be even more attuned to an actual threat.”

Sara Novak, Science Writer

Sara Novak is a science writer based on Sullivan’s Island, S.C. Her work has appeared in Discover, Sierra Magazine, Popular Science, New Scientist, and more. Follow Novak on X (formerly Twitter) @sarafnovak

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Dogs are such perfect animals and Sara brings this out so well. As was pointed out in the article dogs have learned to live with us humans over thousands of years.

Well done, Sara!

Our amazing trees.

Beyond our imagination.

Until quite recently I had imagined that a tree was just a tree. Then Jean and I got to watch a YouTube video on trees and it blew our minds. Here is what we watched:

That led us on to watching Judi Dench’s video of trees:

Which is a longish introduction to a piece on The Conversation about trees.

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Trees don’t like to breathe wildfire smoke, either – and they’ll hold their breath to avoid it

Trees and other plants can’t escape wildfire smoke. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Delphine Farmer, Colorado State University and Mj Riches, Colorado State University

When wildfire smoke is in the air, doctors urge people to stay indoors to avoid breathing in harmful particles and gases. But what happens to trees and other plants that can’t escape from the smoke?

They respond a bit like us, it turns out: Some trees essentially shut their windows and doors and hold their breath.

As atmospheric and chemical scientists, we study the air quality and ecological effects of wildfire smoke and other pollutants. In a study that started quite by accident when smoke overwhelmed our research site in Colorado, we were able to watch in real time how the leaves of living pine trees responded.

How plants breathe

Plants have pores on the surface of their leaves called stomata. These pores are much like our mouths, except that while we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.

A highly magnified view of stomata in a maize leaf. Umberto Salvagnin/Flickr, CC BY

Both humans and plants inhale other chemicals in the air around them and exhale chemicals produced inside them – coffee breath for some people, pine scents for some trees.

Unlike humans, however, leaves breathe in and out at the same time, constantly taking in and releasing atmospheric gases.

Clues from over a century of research

In the early 1900s, scientists studying trees in heavily polluted areas discovered that those chronically exposed to pollution from coal-burning had black granules clogging the leaf pores through which plants breathe. They suspected that the substance in these granules was partly created by the trees, but due to the lack of available instruments at the time, the chemistry of those granules was never explored, nor were the effects on the plants’ photosynthesis.

Most modern research into wildfire smoke’s effects has focused on crops, and the results have been conflicting.

For example, a study of multiple crop and wetland sites in California showed that smoke scatters light in a way that made plants more efficient at photosynthesis and growth. However, a lab study in which plants were exposed to artificial smoke found that plant productivity dropped during and after smoke exposure – though those plants did recover after a few hours.

There are other clues that wildfire smoke can impact plants in negative ways. You may have even tasted one: When grapes are exposed to smoke, their wine can be tainted.

What makes smoke toxic, even far from the fire

When wildfire smoke travels long distances, the smoke cooks in sunlight and chemically changes.

Mixing volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and sunlight will make ground-level ozone, which can cause breathing problems in humans. It can also damage plants by degrading the leaf surface, oxidizing plant tissue and slowing photosynthesis.

Illustration of a burning tree with particles showing their size.
Smoke has particles much smaller than the width of a hair and gases that evolve in sunlight. Jen Burgess/IsolineStudios for BC Centre for Disease Control

While scientists usually think about urban regions as being large sources of ozone that effect crops downwind, wildfire smoke is an emerging concern. Other compounds, including nitrogen oxides, can also harm plants and reduce photosynthesis.

Taken together, studies suggest that wildfire smoke interacts with plants, but in poorly understood ways. This lack of research is driven by the fact that studying smoke effects on the leaves of living plants in the wild is hard: Wildfires are hard to predict, and it can be unsafe to be in smoky conditions.

Accidental research – in the middle of a wildfire

We didn’t set out to study plant responses to wildfire smoke. Instead, we were trying to understand how plants emit volatile organic compounds – the chemicals that make forests smell like a forest, but also impact air quality and can even change clouds.

Fall 2020 was a bad season for wildfires in the western U.S., and thick smoke came through a field site where we were working in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

On the first morning of heavy smoke, we did our usual test to measure leaf-level photosynthesis of Ponderosa pines. We were surprised to discover that the tree’s pores were completely closed and photosynthesis was nearly zero.

We also measured the leaves’ emissions of their usual volatile organic compounds and found very low readings. This meant that the leaves weren’t “breathing” – they weren’t inhaling the carbon dioxide they need to grow and weren’t exhaling the chemicals they usually release.

Side-by-side photos show the air was smoky, similar to a foggy or smoggy day, but no so think that you can't see the forest ahead.
A clear day at the Colorado test site, on the left, compared to the smoky day when trees responded to the poor air quality, on the right. Mj Riches, CC BY-SA

With these unexpected results, we decided to try to force photosynthesis and see if we could “defibrillate” the leaf into its normal rhythm. By changing the leaf’s temperature and humidity, we cleared the leaf’s “airways” and saw a sudden improvement in photosynthesis and a burst of volatile organic compounds.

What our months of data told us is that some plants respond to heavy bouts of wildfire smoke by shutting down their exchange with outside air. They are effectively holding their breath, but not before they have been exposed to the smoke.

We hypothesize a few processes that could have caused leaves to close their pores: Smoke particles could coat the leaves, creating a layer that prevents the pores from opening. Smoke could also enter the leaves and clog their pores, keeping them sticky. Or the leaves could physically respond to the first signs of smoke and close their pores before they get the worst of it.

It’s likely a combination of these and other responses.

The long-term impact is still unknown

The jury is still out on exactly how long the effects of wildfire smoke last and how repeated smoke events will affect plants – including trees and crops – over the long term.

With wildfires increasing in severity and frequency due to climate change, forest management policies and human behavior, it’s important to gain a better understanding of the impact.

Delphine Farmer, Professor of Chemistry, Colorado State University and Mj Riches, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental and Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The biggest tree in the world is reputed to be the General Sherman tree in California. Here is the introduction from WikiPedia:

General Sherman is a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) tree located at an elevation of 2,109 m (6,919 ft) above sea level in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, in the U.S. state of California. By volume, it is the largest known living single-stem tree on Earth.

Amazing!

Parkinson’s Disease (PD)

More information on this terrible condition.

As you know, Jean suffers from PD and was diagnosed in 2015.

Very recently there was this article on PD and I reproduce parts of it (I have not applied for permission to republish) but I have provided the link to a pdf.

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Protein discovery linked to Parkinson’s disease opens future research areas

by WEHI

Mitochondria (blue) being targeted by mitophagy (green and red). Credit: WEHI

Parkinson’s disease is the world’s fastest growing neurological condition. Currently there are no drugs or therapies that slow or stop the progression of the disease.

In Australia, someone is diagnosed with Parkinson’s approximately every 30 minutes. Current estimates show there are more than 219,000 people living with Parkinson’s in Australia, a number forecast to double in the next 15 years.

WEHI’s Parkinson’s Disease Research Center has some of the world’s leading researchers tackling the problem using a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach.

New proteins linked to Parkinson’s pathway

Mitochondria are the energy generating machines in our cells and are kept healthy by mitophagy, which is the molecular process of removing or recycling damaged or dysfunctional mitochondria.

PINK1 and Parkin are two key genes involved in mitophagy, and mutations in these genes are linked to early-onset Parkinson’s disease.

Until the discovery of two proteins, NAP1 and SINTBAD, exactly how PINK1/Parkin mitophagy activation was regulated was unknown.

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We wish the scientists all the best as they delve into PD.

That link to the PDF file is https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-024-01338-y

Dogs and wolves, sleeping difference

Just a short video!

Here are details of the author.

Vivien is from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences. She is Hungarian.

Wildfire prevention

This is a precarious time of the year!

We live just outside Merlin in Southern Oregon. We have 13 acres of which roughly half is wooded. With the year-on-year warming wildfires are never far from our minds during our Summer. Here’s a part of a message from OPB.

What’s happening

High temperatures are in the forecast along the Interstate 5 corridor, the Willamette Valley and in Central and Eastern Oregon. More than a quarter million acres across multiple counties in Eastern Oregon are ablaze with wildfires, and that could mean smoke and haze, especially in Central and northeastern Oregon.

A view of the southern portion of the Lone Rock Fire in north-central Oregon on Wednesday, July 17, 2024.
A view of the southern portion of the Lone Rock Fire in north-central Oregon on Wednesday, July 17, 2024.Courtesy InciWeb 

Hot weather persists

The National Weather Service is anticipating a hot weekend across much of Oregon and Southwest Washington. The agency on Friday issued a heat advisory along the Interstate 5 corridor from Battle Ground, Washington to Cottage Grove, Oregon from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday. Temperatures could reach the mid-90s.

From central Oregon east towards Burns a heat advisory is in place from 11 a.m. Saturday to 11 p.m. Monday. Harney County could see temperatures over 100 degrees over the weekend.

Which neatly serves as an introduction to an article from The Conversation about protecting one’s home.

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How to protect your home from wildfires – here’s what fire prevention experts say is most important

Bryce Young, University of Montana and Chris Moran, University of Montana

Extreme heat has already made 2024 a busy wildfire year. More acres had burned by mid-July than in all of 2023, and several communities had lost homes to wildfires.

As fire season intensifies across the West, there are steps homeowners can take to make their homes less vulnerable to burning and increase the likelihood that firefighters can protect their property in the event of a wildfire.

We research wildfire risk to homes and communities. Here’s what decades of research suggest homeowners in high-fire-risk areas can do to protect their properties.

Two photos show the house with the fire behind it and after the fire, with burned land around it but the house untouched.
This house near Cle Elum, Wash., survived a 2012 wildfire because of the defensible space around the structure, including a lack of trees and brush close to the house, according to state officials. AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

Small improvements make big differences

A structure’s flammability depends on both the materials that were used to build it and the design of the building. In general, the vulnerability of a house is determined by its weakest point.

The roof, windows, siding and vents are all vulnerable points to pay attention to.

Roof: The roof provides a landing pad where airborne embers can accumulate like snowflakes. Roofs with lots of valleys can collect pine needles and leaves, which can be ignited by flying embers. This is why it’s important for the roof itself to be made of Class A non-flammable material like clay tiles or asphalt shingles, and why roof maintenance, including cleaning gutters, is important. Embers can easily find their way under peeling shingles, through gaps of clay tiles, or into gutters where pine needles and leaves can accumulate.

Windows: If windows are exposed to heat, they can shatter and allow fire inside the home, where curtains can easily ignite. Even double-paned windows can be shattered by the heat of a burning shed 30 feet away, unless the window glass is tempered, making it stronger. Fire-resistant shutters made of metal, if closed before a fire arrives, can offer additional protection. https://www.youtube.com/embed/HjA9yLP1icg?wmode=transparent&start=0 A life-size test with blowing embers at IBHS’s fire lab shows ways homes are at risk form a nearby fire.

Siding: Materials like stucco are non-flammable, while cedar shake siding will burn. Your exterior siding should be non-flammable, but the siding is only as strong as its weakest point. If there are holes in the siding, plug them with caulk to prevent embers from reaching the wooden frame in your walls. Ideally, there will be a 6- to 12-inch concrete foundation between the ground and the bottom of your siding material.

Vents: Reducing risk from vents is easy and affordable and can drastically reduce the flammability of your home. Make sure that one-eighth inch or finer metal mesh is installed over all vents to keep embers out of your attic and your home’s interior.

Controlling your home ignition zone

A home’s vulnerability also depends on the area around it, referred to as the home ignition zone.

The risk in your home ignition zone depends on things such as the slope of your land and the ecosystem surrounding your home. Here are a few guidelines the National Fire Protection Association recommends, both to reduce the chance of flames reaching your home and make it easier for firefighters to defend it.

Zone 1 – Within 5 feet

From the home’s exterior to 5 feet away, you want to prevent flames from coming in contact with windows, siding, vents and eaves. The gold standard is to have only non-flammable material in Zone 1.

The most common risks are having flammable mulch, plants, firewood, lawn furniture, decks and fences. These items have been a primary reason homes burned in many wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of Paradise, California, and the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, Colorado.

An illustration of a house with rings at different distances around it and advice for each ring.
Fire protection guidelines take into consideration the surrounding ecosystem. Here some examples based on the National Fire Protection Association’s guidelines. Bryce Young, CC BY

Replacing mulch with gravel or pavers and having only short, sparse plants that don’t touch the house can help reduce the risk.

Wooden decks and fences can burn even if they are well-maintained. Replacing them with non-flammable materials or installing a thin sheet of metal on the house where the siding touches a wooden deck or fence can help protect the home. Mesh screens can prevent the accumulation of debris and embers under the deck.

Zone 2 – 5 to 30 feet away

In the next ring, between 5 and 30 feet from the home, the lawn should be green and short. This is Zone 2.

Be sure to rake up pine needles and leaves and take care to prune the lowest tree branches at least 6 feet high.

There should be about 18 feet of space between trees on a flat slope, and the spacing should increase with slope because steeper terrain drives faster, more intense fires. Walks, pathways, patios, decks and firewood can be kept in this zone.

Zone 3 – 30 to 100 feet away

Beyond Zone 2 and out to about 100 feet from the home is Zone 3. In this area, be sure to give sheds and propane tanks their own defensible space, just like around the house, and prune all low branches to 6 feet.

You can contact your local emergency management office or community wildfire nonprofit to learn more about grant funding that can offset the costs of pruning and removing trees on a forested property.

Beyond 100 feet may extend past your property boundary, but the adjacent house can still be fuel for a wildfire. That’s why it’s smart to plan with your neighbors as you’re reinforcing your own home. Once one house catches fire, house-to-house fire spread is facilitated by closer distances between buildings.

Be prepared

While most U.S. government spending aims to mitigate wildfire hazard on national forests, it is up to residents and communities themselves to reduce their vulnerability to a wildfire disaster.

Following the guidelines required by your community or state and those outlined above can help. Communities can also take steps to reduce fire risk and make fires easier to control by developing a community wildfire protection plan, exploring their wildfire risk, and adopting wildfire-specific building codes.

As the nation rolls into fire season, make sure your property is prepared. And when the call to evacuate comes, know where to go and get the heck out.

Bryce Young, Graduate Student Researcher, Fire Center, University of Montana and Chris Moran, Post-doctoral Researcher, Fire Center, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Where we live is beautiful and earlier this year we had a great deal of rain. But the summers are dry; that is a function of the climate in this part of the world. So for July so far we have had no rain and that is normal. Also no rain in July in 2023.

The three zones, as described earlier in this post, are very helpful.

Do we understand our cosmos?

A recent article from The Conversation suggests not.

As much as I am interested in the cosmos my brain cannot tackle the subject with any form of intelligence.

Thus I really want to share this with you all, in the hope that some of you will appreciate the article.

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Scientists can’t agree on how fast the universe is expanding – why this matters so much for our understanding of the cosmos

James Webb Space Telescope, NASA

Gemma Ware, The Conversation

It’s one of the biggest puzzles in cosmology. Why two different methods used to calculate the rate at which the universe is expanding don’t produce the same result. Known as the Hubble tension, the enigma suggests that there could be something wrong with the standard model of cosmology used to explain the forces in the universe.

Now, recent observations using the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are shaking up the debate on how close the mystery is to being resolved.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, two professors of astronomy explain why the Hubble tension matters so much for our understanding of the universe.

(The Conversation included two files that one could listen to but they could not be played directly. But I have left them in the post just in case.)

https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/6669a6f9efa053001194ed11

https://shows.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/6669a6f9efa053001194ed11

In February, the Nobel prize-winning physicist Adam Reiss, published a new paper. It said that new observations of far-away stars using the JWST matched those obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope.

These stars, called Cepheids, are commonly used in one method of calculating the rate at which the universe is expanding. Known as the local distance ladder, or cosmic distance ladder, this method has been around since observations first made by Edwin Hubble himself in 1929. And it generally produces a rate of expansion of around 73km per second per mega parsec.

But a second method, using predictions of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over by the Big Bang, has constantly arrived at a different number for the rate of expansion of the universe: 67km per second per mega parsec.

Reiss said that when the new data confirmed the earlier observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the gap between the numbers remains unresolved. “What remains is the real and exciting possibility that we have misunderstood the universe,” he said.

A few months later, however, more data from the JWST, presented by Wendy Freedman, a physicist at the University of Chicago, using observations from a different set of stars, arrived at 69km per second per mega parsec, a number closer to the cosmic microwave background figure of 67. Freedman is excited that the numbers seem to be converging.

Vicent Martínez and Bernard Jones are fascinated by the Hubble tension. Jones is an emeritus professor of astronomy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Martínez, his former student, is now a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of València in Spain.

“The fundamental basis of science, what distinguishes science from science fiction, is our ability to verify the information we are getting,” explains Jones.

That’s why Martinez says the mystery of the Hubble tension is still driving people to:

Research and imagine experiments and organise huge projects with the complicated observation of the cosmos in order to understand what’s going on. At the end, this will affect your idea of the whole universe and probably you will need to change some fundamental ingredient of your cosmological model.

Martinez and Jones have just written a book, along with their co-author Virginia Trimble, about moments in history when scientists realised they’d got something very wrong, and had to readjust their way of thinking. Martínez thinks this could happen again with the Hubble tension:

It could happen that, for example, a new theory of gravity could solve the problem of dark energy or dark matter. We have to be open to those ideas.

Listen to Bernard Jones and Vicent Martínez talk more about the Hubble tension, and how it fits in the wider history of science, on The Conversation Weekly podcast. The episode also features an introduction from Lorena Sánchez, science editor at The Conversation in Spain.

Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Fascinating, albeit much of this article a little beyond me. But still fascinating.

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Thirty-Seven

Just a single image today!

That of 50 years ago.

In other words when Apollo 8 was in Lunar Orbit and William Anders, who died on June 7th, aged 90, captured Earth-rise.

This iconic picture shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon.

Image credit: NASA

What a photograph!

A post on Heat

Not the first and I’m sure it won’t be the last on this topic!

We are experiencing the first week of Summer’s heat.

Where it is going, temperature-wise, who knows but the consensus is that it is becoming warmer year on year.

So this seemed like a great post to republish. It was on The Conversation.

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Heat index warnings can save lives on dangerously hot days − if people understand what they mean

The sticky combination of heat and high humidity can be more than uncomfortable – it can be deadly. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Micki Olson, University at Albany, State University of New York

You’ve probably heard people say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” There’s a lot of truth to that phrase, and it’s important to understand it as summer temperatures rise.

Humidity doesn’t just make you feel sticky and uncomfortable – it also creates extra dangerous conditions on hot days. Together, too much heat and humidity can make you sick. And in severe cases, it can cause your body to shut down.

Meteorologists talk about the risk of heat and humidity using the heat index, but it can be confusing.

I’m a risk communication researcher. Here’s what you need to know about the heat index and some better ways meteorologists can talk about the risks of extreme heat.

A construction worker in reflective gear holds a jacket over his head against the sun.
Outdoor workers can be at high risk of heat illnesses. Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

What is the heat index, and how is it measured?

Heat index is the combination of the actual air temperature and relative humidity:

  • Air temperature is how hot or cold the air is, which depends on factors such as the time of day, season of the year and local weather conditions. It is what your thermometer reads in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.
  • Relative humidity compares how much water vapor is in the air with how much water vapor the air could hold at that temperature. It’s expressed as a percentage.

The heat index tells you what it “feels like” outside when you factor in the humidity. For example, if it’s 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.7 Celsius) with 55% relative humidity, it might feel more like a scorching 117 F (47.2 C).

A chart with a grid showing heat and humidity risks.
NOAA’s heat index chart shows how heat and humidity combine for dangerous temperatures. NOAA

But there’s a catch: Heat index is measured in shady conditions to prevent the sun’s angle from affecting its calculation. This means if you’re in direct sunlight, it will feel even hotter.

Apparent temperature, alerts and wet bulb

“Apparent temperature” is another term you might hear this summer.

Apparent temperature is the “feels like” temperature. It considers not only temperature and humidity but also wind speed. This means it can tell us both the heat index and wind chill – or the combination of the temperature and wind speed. When conditions are humid, it feels hotter, and when it’s windy, it feels colder.

We found that apparent temperature is even less well understood than the heat index, possibly due to the word apparent having various interpretations.

There are a few other ways you may hear meteorologists talk about heat.

Wet bulb globe temperature considers temperature, humidity, wind and sunlight. It’s especially useful for those who spend time outdoors, such as workers and athletes, because it reflects conditions in direct sunlight.

HeatRisk is a new tool developed by the National Weather Service that uses colors and numbers to indicate heat risks for various groups. More research is needed, however, to know whether this type of information helps people make decisions.

In many places, the National Weather Service also issues alerts such as excessive heat watches, warnings and advisories.

The risk is getting lost in translation

Knowing about heat and humidity is important, but my colleagues and I have found that the term heat index is not well understood.

We recently conducted 16 focus groups across the United States, including areas with dry heat, like Phoenix, and more humid areas, like Houston. Many of the people involved didn’t know what the heat index was. Some confused it with the actual air temperature. Most also didn’t understand what the alerts meant, how serious they were or when they should protect themselves.

In our discussions with these groups, we found that meteorologists could get across the risk more clearly if, instead of using terms like heat index, they focus on explaining what it feels like outside and why those conditions are dangerous.

Watches, warnings and advisories could be improved by telling people what temperatures to expect, when and steps they can take to stay safe.

A woman holds a baby at an open window with a fan blowing in.
Clear warnings can help residents understand their risk and protect themselves, which is especially important for small children and older adults, who are at greater risk of heat illness. Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Climate change is exacerbating heat risks by making extreme heat more common, intense and long-lasting. This means clear communication is necessary to help people understand their risk and how they can protect themselves.

What you can do to protect yourself

With both hot and humid conditions, extra precautions are necessary to protect your health. When you get hot, you sweat. When sweat evaporates, this helps the body cool down. But humidity prevents the sweat from evaporating. If sweat cannot evaporate, the body has trouble lowering or regulating its temperature.

Although everyone is at risk of health issues in high heat, people over 65, pregnant women, infants and young children can have trouble cooling their bodies down or may run a higher risk of becoming dehydrated. Certain health conditions or medications can also increase a person’s risk of heat-related illness, so it’s important to talk to your doctor about your risk.

Heat illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke, are preventable if you take the right steps. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focuses on staying cool, hydrated and informed.

  • Stay cool: Use air conditioning in your home, or spend time in air-conditioned spaces, such as a shopping mall or public library. Limit or reschedule your exercise and other outdoor plans that occur in the middle of the day when it is hottest.
  • Stay hydrated: Drink more water than you might otherwise, even if you don’t feel thirsty, so your body can regulate its temperature by sweating. But avoid sugary drinks, caffeine or drinks with alcohol, because these can cause you to become dehydrated.
  • Stay informed: Know the signs of heat illness and symptoms that can occur, such as dizziness, weakness, thirst, heavy sweating and nausea. Know what to do and when to get help, because heat illnesses can be deadly.
Heat exaustion includes dizziness, thirst, heavy sweating, nausea and weakness. Move to cooler area, loosen clothing, sip cool water and get medical help if no improvement. If heat stroke, including confusion, dizziness and unconsciousness, also call 911.
The difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke and the CDC’s advice on how to respond. NOAA, CDC

Micki Olson, Senior Researcher in Emergency and Risk Communication, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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That last diagram on staying cool, staying hydrated, and staying informed is one element in me choosing this article for publication. Further, if one looks up the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then immediately one comes across:

Stay cool indoors.Stay in an air-conditioned place as much as possible. If your home does not have air conditioning, go to the shopping mall or public library—even a few hours spent in air conditioning can help your body stay cooler when you go back into the heat.

Please take care!

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Thirty-Four

A change from our dear dogs.

I really hope you enjoy these as much as we have!

There is quite a long introduction but it helps enormously in explaining the background to the photographs.

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This image is released as part of the Early Release Observations from ESA’s Euclid space mission. All data from these initial observations are made public on 23 May 2024 – including a handful of unprecedented new views of the nearby Universe.

The Dorado Group of galaxies is one of the richest galaxy groups in the southern hemisphere. Here, Euclid captures signs of galaxies evolving and merging ‘in action’, with beautiful tidal tails and shells visible as a result of ongoing interactions. As Dorado is a lot younger than other clusters (like Fornax), several of its constituent galaxies are still forming stars and remain in the stage of interacting with one another, while others show signs of having merged relatively recently. In size, it sits between larger galaxy clusters and smaller galaxy groups, making it a useful and fascinating object to study with Euclid.

This dataset is enabling scientists to study how galaxies evolve and collide over time in order to improve our models of cosmic history and understand how galaxies form within halos of dark matter, with this new image being a true testament to Euclid’s immense versatility. A wide array of galaxies is visible here, from very bright to very faint. Thanks to Euclid’s unique combination of large field-of-view and high spatial resolution, for the first time we can use the same instrument and observations to deeply study tiny (small objects the size of star clusters), wider (the central parts of a galaxy) and extended (tidal merger tails) features over a large part of the sky.

Scientists are also using Euclid observations of the Dorado Group to answer questions that previously could only be explored using painstakingly small snippets of data. This includes compiling a full list of the individual clusters of stars (globular clusters) around the galaxies seen here. Once we know where these clusters are, we can use them to trace how the galaxies formed and study their history and contents. Scientists will also use these data to hunt for new dwarf galaxies around the Group, as it did previously with the Perseus cluster.

The Dorado Group lies 62 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado.

All images are: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi

Composite image of five astronomical views, three at the top, two at the bottom. All are dotted with stars and galaxies against a black background. Striking features are three bright glowing structures in the first image. The second image has an orange veil-like structure spanning across. In the third we see a stunning spiral galaxy with many arms. The fourth image features light from galaxies lying behind a bright cluster distorted into arcs. And the fifth image shows a variety of galaxies in all shapes and sizes

An elongated bright cloudy ellipse, tilted at a 45-degree angle in front a black background dotted with small white stars and galaxies. Above the ellipse floats a smaller, cloudy ellipsoid.

A dark orange filamentary structure seems to enclose stars. Centrally, three bright star-forming regions shine brightly through the orange veil in a traffic-light like formation.

The image shows hundreds of stars, some brighter than others. The stars seem to light up their cloud-like surroundings in purple. A darker structure spans the image in an arch from upper left to bottom right. The bottom of this arch runs into dense clouds forming the darkest part of the image.

This breathtaking image features Messier 78 (the central and brightest region), a vibrant nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust. This image is unprecedented – it is the first shot of this young star-forming region at this width and depth.

Today, (May 23rd, 2024) ESA’s Euclid space mission releases five unprecedented new views of the Universe. The never-before-seen images demonstrate Euclid’s ability to unravel the secrets of the cosmos and enable scientists to hunt for rogue planets, use lensed galaxies to study mysterious matter, and explore the evolution of the Universe.

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Fabulous. It is an example of just how clever the science is getting!

I can only look at these images in awe. For example, Messier 78 is part of the Orion constellation, has a radius of five light-years, and is only 1,600 light-years from Planet Earth. (Using the figure from below of the distance of a single light-year, that puts Messier 78 as 1,600 times 6 trillion miles from our planet or 9,600 trillion miles.)

And in case you forgot it, one light year is:

The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. To obtain an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length of the line by 7.5 (the corresponding distance is one light-second), then place 31.6 million similar lines end to end. The resulting distance is almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles!

The Quantum Field Theory

This is on the edge of my understanding!

Patrice Ayme recently posted an essay called Relativistic Length Contraction Busts Helium3! As I said in my comment to that post:

“This is far ahead of my knowledge of science. I applaud you for writing this despite me not understanding it”

So it may seem a little strange that I now publish the following. It was published originally on Skeptic. It is quite a long video but, please, settle down and watch it.

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Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way.

Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields. You will finally understand why matter is solid, why there is antimatter, where the sizes of atoms come from, and why the predictions of quantum field theory are so spectacularly successful. Fundamental ideas like spin, symmetry, Feynman diagrams, and the Higgs mechanism are explained for real, not just through amusing stories. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, and all the intuitive notions that have guided homo sapiens for millennia, this book is a journey to a once unimaginable truth about what our universe is.

Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of From Eternity to Here, The Particle at the End of the Universe, The Big Picture, and Something Deeply Hidden. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of London, and many others. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette. His new book series, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, includes one volume on Space, Time, and Motion, and this new volume on Quanta and Fields.

Shermer and Carroll discuss:

  • the measurement problem in physics
  • wave functions
  • entanglement
  • fields
  • interactions
  • scale
  • symmetry
  • gauge theory
  • phases
  • matter
  • atoms
  • What is time?
  • Is math all there is? Is math universal?
  • double-slit experiment
  • superposition
  • metaphors in science
  • limitations of models and theories of reality
  • What banged the Big Bang?
  • Why is there something rather than nothing?
  • Second Laws of Thermodynamics and directionality in nature
  • Is there a place for God in scientific epistemology?
  • many interpretations of quantum mechanics
  • multiple dimensions and the multiverse
  • string theory and the multiverse
  • known unknowables: Are there things we can never know, even in principle?
    • God
    • hard problem of consciousness
    • free will/determinism.

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I’m assuming you have watched the video because in a world that is pre-occupied with the trivial this is just the opposite. Sean shares his physics in a profoundly different and powerful way!