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CUriosity: Do animals have emotions?

Yvaine Ye — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0000

CUriosity: Do animals have emotions? Yvaine Ye Wed, 12/18/2024 - 08:00

Yvaine Ye

In CUriosity, experts across the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, answers: “Do animals have emotions?”

Pet owners tend to see their animals’ feelings clearly. Dogs wagging their tails when the owners get home? Happiness. Crouching down after being caught raiding the trash? Embarrassment. Barking, and jumping up and down when they see their friends? Excitement.

But what about less cuddly creatures? Do crustaceans and birds have emotions, too?

Previously in CUriosity

Previously in CUriosity

What does an all-nighter do to your body?

“Of course they do,” Bekoff said “There's solid science showing very clearly that a wide diversity of animals have emotions, from mammals to all the vertebrates and invertebrates.”

Bekoff has spent decades observing animals from coyotes in the Rocky Mountains to Adélie penguins in Antarctica. He has written multiple books about animal sentience including “The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter.”

He said emotions play an important role in helping animals make decisions about how to respond to social situations, such as whether to run from a potential danger or to approach a mate. For group-living animals like coyotes and wolves, having emotions is fundamental to forming packs.

Evidence has shown that mammals—including humans—emit similar brain chemicals during emotional situations. For example, birds secrete dopamine, a chemical that makes humans feel good, when they sing songs to attract a potential mate.

But even invertebrates like insects and crustaceans could experience emotions, according to a growing body of research. While scientists can't definitively say lobsters experience happiness the same way as humans do, they certainly avoid painful situations.

Marc Bekoff looking for dingoes in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. (Credit: Brad Purcell)

“There is a biodiversity of emotions,” Bekoff said. He explained that the feeling of joy varies even between different people, but that doesn’t mean animals like lobsters or ants don’t experience happiness. “It may simply look different than in humans.”

Recognizing all animals have emotions can help people develop more empathy toward wildlife and support wildlife conservation efforts, he added.

In a paper published earlier this year, Bekoff and his collaborators proposed that treating individual animals as creatures with emotions and personalities, in addition to understanding the species as a whole, could help preserve biodiversity.

For example, people might be more willing to use loud sounds or strong scents to scare away predators they encounter rather than resort to killing.

Bekoff said Colorado could apply these approaches to help manage its wildlife, including grey wolves, which were reintroduced in the state in December following a voter-approved initiative. For social animals like wolves, if the leader dies, it can lead to the dissolution of the entire pack, he said.

“Wolves have very tight bonds with their pack members,” Bekoff said. “Pups have very tight bonds with their mom. Killing any of these individuals will not support a sustainable population.”

In the end, Bekoff says humans shouldn’t be so quick to brush off other animals.

“It's really easy to write off an ant or a lobster or a crayfish, but there's no reason to. My take as a scientist is to keep the door open until we are sure that it is not true.”

Professor Emeritus Marc Bekoff shares his decades of research on the emotional lives of animals and how it could influence wildlife management.

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Mars’ infamous dust storms can engulf the entire planet. A new study examines how

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:25:40 +0000

Mars’ infamous dust storms can engulf the entire planet. A new study examines how Daniel William… Mon, 12/09/2024 - 10:25

Daniel Strain

Today’s weather report on Mars: Windy with a chance of catastrophic dust storms blotting out the sky.

In a new study, planetary scientists at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ have begun to unravel the factors that kick off major dust storms on Mars—weather events that sometimes engulf the entire planet in swirling grit. The team discovered that relatively warm and sunny days may help to trigger them.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ at AGU 2024

Check out more earth and space research news from the 2024 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

Heshani Pieris, lead author of the study, said the findings are a first step toward forecasting extreme weather on Mars, just like scientists do on Earth.

“Dust storms have a significant effect on rovers and landers on Mars, not to mention what will happen during future crewed missions to Mars,” said Pieris, a graduate student at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. “This dust is very light and sticks to everything.”

She will present the results Tuesday, Dec. 10 at the 2024 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

To put dust storms under the magnifying glass, the researchers drew on real observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite.

So far, they have identified weather patterns that may underly roughly two-thirds of the major dust storms on Mars. You won’t see Mars weather reporters standing in front of a green screen just yet, but it’s a step in the right direction, said study co-author Paul Hayne.

“We need to understand what causes some of the smaller or regional storms to grow into global-scale storms,” said Hayne, a researcher at LASP and associate professor at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “We don’t even fully understand the basic physics of how dust storms start at the surface.”

Artist's depiction of a dust storm on Mars. (Credit: NASA)

Astronauts contend with a fierce dust storm in the 2015 film The Martian. (Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Mars seen before, left, and during, right, a global dust storm in 2001. (Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS)

Dusty demise

Dust storms on Mars are something to behold.

Many begin as smaller storms that swirl around the ice caps at the planet’s north and south poles, usually during the second half of the Martian year. (A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days). Those storms can grow at a furious pace, pressing toward the equator until they cover millions of square miles and last for days.

The 2015 film The Martian starring Matt Damon featured one such apocalyptic storm that knocked over a satellite dish and tossed around astronauts. The reality is less cinematic. Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, so dust storms on the Red Planet can’t generate much force. But they can still be trouble.

In 2018, for example, a global dust storm buried the solar panels on NASA’s Opportunity rover under a layer of dust. The rover died not long after.

“Even though the wind pressure may not be enough to knock over equipment, these dust grains can build up a lot of speed and pelt astronauts and their equipment,” Hayne said.

Hot spells

In the current study, Pieris and Hayne set their sights on two weather patterns that tend to occur every year on Mars known as “A” and “C” storms.

The team pored over observations of Mars from the Mars Climate Sounder instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter over eight Mars years (15 years on Earth). In particular, Pieris and Hayne looked for periods of unusual warmth—or weeks when more sunlight filtered through Mars’ thin atmosphere and baked the planet’s surface.

They discovered that roughly 68% of major storms on the planet were preceded by a sharp rise in temperatures at the surface. In other words, the planet heated up, then a few weeks later, conditions got dusty.

“It’s almost like Mars has to wait for the air to get clear enough to form a major dust storm,” Hayne said.

The team can’t prove that those balmy conditions actually cause the dust storms. But, Pieris said, similar phenomena trigger storms on Earth. During hot summers in Boulder, Colorado, for example, warm air near the ground can rise through the atmosphere, often forming those towering, gray clouds that signal rain.

“When you heat up the surface, the layer of atmosphere right above it becomes buoyant, and it can rise, taking dust with it,” Pieris said.

She and Hayne are now gathering observations from more recent years on Mars to continue to explore these explosive weather patterns. Eventually, they’d like to get to the point where they can look at live data coming from the Red Planet and predict what could happen in the weeks ahead.

“This study is not the end all be all of predicting storms on Mars,” Pieris said. “But we hope it’s a step in the right direction.”

Dust storms on Mars could one day pose dangers to human astronauts, damaging equipment and burying solar panels. New research gets closer to predicting when extreme weather might erupt on the Red Planet.

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A dust storm spreads over the surface of Mars in 2018. (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)

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A dust storm spreads over the surface of Mars in 2018. (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)

CUriosity: What does an all-nighter do to your body?

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 22:01:00 +0000

CUriosity: What does an all-nighter do to your body? Daniel William… Wed, 12/04/2024 - 15:01

Lisa Marshall

In CUriosity, experts across the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Integrative Physiology Professor Ken Wright, answers: “What does an all-nighter do to your body?”

Credit: Adobe Stock

Previously in CUriosity

Should you trust 5-star reviews?

Whether we’re cramming for finals, catching a red-eye flight, binge-watching rom-coms, or indulging in a bit too much cheer, the holiday season can wreak havoc on sleep.

Surveys suggest that more than half of U.S. adults stay up all night at least once during the year, and one in five college students report pulling an all-nighter monthly. But can just one night of missed sleep really hurt us?

“Absolutely,” said Integrative Physiology Professor Ken Wright, director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. “Pulling an all-nighter is a significant stressor, both physiologically and cognitively, to the body.”

Over the past two decades, Wright has invited countless paid volunteers into his lab for days-long, tightly controlled experiments. In one six-day study of healthy males in their 20s, he found that staying up all night and sleeping all day just once disrupted the levels and timing of 129 key proteins circulating in the blood, including those that regulate appetite and energy, keep blood sugar in check and fend off illness.

Exposure to light when the body is accustomed to darkness can also throw off the timing of hormones, including melatonin (which, among other things, signals our body that it’s time to rest) and cortisol (the “stress hormone”). These shifts can disrupt our body clock, or circadian rhythm, making it harder to sleep when we want to.

Eating at a time when our body is not ready to process food can promote weight gain and boost Type-II diabetes risk—as studies show we store more calories as fat and are less efficient at turning sugar into energy at night.

Ken Wright

“A calorie is not just a calorie. If you eat junk food in the middle of the night, it can be even worse for you than eating that same junk food during the day,” said Wright.

The immune system also stands down, even when we are awake, during our “biological night” (a time when our body is conditioned to rest and recover and is not typically exposed to pathogens.) This makes us more vulnerable to injury and illness if they hit us in the wee hours of morning.

For instance, one study by another research team found that humans heal 60% faster when they sustain wounds during the day than at night. Another study found that when scientists exposed mice to viruses when they were supposed to be resting, those pathogens replicated 10 times faster than in mice infected during waking hours.

“Timing matters,” said Wright. “If you are awake in the middle of the night and you’re exposed to someone who is sick, you have an increased risk of getting sick.”

Lack of sleep can also do a number on our thinking the next day, with research showing that skipping a night’s sleep is about the same as having a 0.08 blood alcohol level.

“If you drive after staying up all night, it is the equivalent of driving drunk,” Wright warned.

The sleep scientist has some advice for students cramming for finals: Don’t wait until the night before your test and stay up studying until dawn. Instead, study days prior to a test and review your notes right before bed because sleep can help consolidate your memories. If you do have to stay up late, make sure your midnight snack is as healthy as possible and avoid driving the next day.

Your body will thank you, and your grades might, too.

Being awake when your body thinks you should be sleeping can make you more susceptible to viruses, make your wounds heal more slowly and promote weight gain. And don't even think about driving the day after an all-nighter.

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Countdown to an ice-free Arctic: New research warns of accelerated timelines

Yvaine Ye — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Countdown to an ice-free Arctic: New research warns of accelerated timelines Yvaine Ye Tue, 12/03/2024 - 21:00

Yvaine Ye

The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s sea ice, an ominous milestone for the planet, could occur as early as 2027.

For the first time, an international research team, including ��ƷSM��ӰƬ climatologist Alexandra Jahn and Céline Heuzé from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, used computer models to predict when the first ice-free day could occur in the northernmost ocean. An ice-free Arctic could significantly impact the ecosystem and Earth’s climate by changing weather patterns.

“The first ice-free day in the Arctic won’t change things dramatically,” said Jahn, associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and fellow at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “But it will show that we've fundamentally altered one of the defining characteristics of the natural environment in the Arctic Ocean, which is that it is covered by sea ice and snow year-round, through greenhouse gas emissions.”

Alexandra Jahn

The findings were published Dec. 3 in the journal Nature Communications. Jahn will also present the results Dec. 9 at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in Washington D.C.

A Blue Arctic

As the climate warms from increasing greenhouse gas emissions, sea ice in the Arctic has disappeared at an unprecedented speed of more than 12% each decade.

In September, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that this year’s Arctic sea ice minimum—the day with the least amount of frozen seawater in the Arctic—was one of the lowest on record since 1978.

At 1.65 million square miles, or 4.28 million square kilometers, this year’s minimum was above the all-time low observed in September 2012. But it still represents a stark decline compared to the average coverage of 6.85 million square kilometers between 1979 and 1992.

When the Arctic Ocean has less than 1 million square kilometers of ice, scientists say the Arctic is ice free.

Previous projections of Arctic sea ice change have focused on predicting when the ocean will become ice free for a full month. Jahn’s prior research suggested that the first ice-free month would occur almost inevitably and might happen by the 2030s.

As the tipping point approaches, Jahn wondered when the first summer day that melts virtually all of the Arctic sea ice will occur.

“Because the first ice-free day is likely to happen earlier than the first ice-free month, we want to be prepared. It’s also important to know what events could lead to the melting of all sea ice in the Arctic Ocean,” Heuzé said.

Non-zero possibility

Arctic sea ice is melting as a result of climate change. (Credit: Céline Heuzé/University of Gothenburg)

Jahn and Heuzé projected/estimated the first ice-free Arctic day using output from over 300 computer simulations. They found that most models predicted that the first ice-free day could happen within nine to 20 years after 2023 regardless of how humans alter their greenhouse gas emissions. The earliest ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean could occur within three years.

It’s an extreme scenario but a possibility based on the models. In total, nine simulations suggested that an ice-free day could occur in three to six years.

The researchers found that a series of extreme weather events could melt two million square kilometers or more of sea ice in a short period of time: A unusually warm fall first weakens the sea ice, followed by a warm Arctic winter and spring that prevents sea ice from forming. When the Arctic experiences such extreme warming for three or more years in a row, the first ice-free day could happen in late summer.

Those kinds of warm years have already happened. For example, in March 2022, areas of the Arctic were 50°F warmer than average, and areas around the North Pole were nearly melting. With climate change, the frequency and intensity of these weather events will only increase, according to Heuzé.

Sea ice protects the Arctic from warming by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. With less reflective ice, darker ocean waters will absorb more heat from the Sun, further increasing temperatures in the Arctic and globally. In addition, warming in the Arctic could change wind and ocean current patterns, leading to more extreme weather events around the world.

But there’s also good news: A drastic cut in emissions could delay the timeline for an ice-free Arctic and reduce the time the ocean stays ice-free, according to the study.

“Any reductions in emissions would help preserve sea ice,” Jahn said.

Scientists demonstrate how a series of extreme weather events could lead to the Arctic’s first ice-free day within just a few years.

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The amount of sea ice in the Arctic region is declining at unprecedented rates. (Credit: Céline Heuzé/University of Gothenburg)

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The amount of sea ice in the Arctic region is declining at unprecedented rates. (Credit: Céline Heuzé/University of Gothenburg)

Google Maps for space? One grad student is making it happen

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:08:11 +0000

Google Maps for space? One grad student is making it happen Daniel William… Tue, 12/03/2024 - 13:08

Daniel Strain , Nicholas Goda

Dezell Turner slips on a set of sleek augmented reality goggles in the lobby of the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. Behind him stretches a floor-to-ceiling mural of space—a deep blue sky dotted with constellations and the cloudy shape of the Milky Way.

In his Microsoft HoloLens headset, however, Turner is experiencing a different kind of outer space.

Turner, a graduate student in aerospace engineering sciences and Smead Scholar at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, waives his hands in front of him and pinches his fingers. Inside the headset, which only he can see, curving red and yellow lines appear. They join two dots, one representing Earth and the other the moon. With a few swipes, the lines shift, transforming from a relatively simple arc to more complicated curls and loop-de-loops.

It looks like a more dizzying version of directions you might follow on your phone during a road trip.

“This is like a holographic Google Maps for planning space missions,” he said.

The new tool, which Turner developed working under advisor Jay McMahon, projects various paths a spacecraft could take to get to the moon through what scientists call “cislunar” space. He named the software ASTROMECH, a nod to a class of droids in the Star Wars franchise.

Turner’s work arrives as the moon is having a moment. NASA’s Artemis Program plans to land humans on the lunar surface sometime this decade. Other entities, including a growing number of private companies, have their eyes set on space. Turner hopes that his AR tool will help some of those groups plan out their missions—picking routes and weighing factors like speed versus fuel cost.

For the budding aerospace engineer, the project is a chance to make the technology from some of his favorite movies a reality. Picture the scene in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens in which a droid projects a holographic map that will lead the characters to the location of a missing hero.

“When R2D2 projects the map to Luke Skywalker, we’re creating a real-world version of that that’s hopefully just as intuitive to use,” Turner said.

Dezell Turner in the lobby of the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building. (Credit: Dezell Turner)

According to ASTROMECH, this route from Earth to the moon would take a little over 15 days. The display also includes an estimate for delta-V, essentially how much fuel the spacecraft will need to burn. (Credit: Dezell Turner)

Miniature planetarium

Turner, who’s 24, has loved space for as long as he can remember. When he was 4 years old, his parents bought him a projector that displayed a star map on the ceiling of his bedroom. He spent so long staring at the projection that he memorized many of the constellations.

But space is a lot more complicated than movies or his bedroom planetarium might make it seem. In Star Wars, if Han Solo needs to get somewhere, he just points the Millennium Falcon in the right direction and goes. In reality, spacecraft leaving Earth’s orbit are caught in the push and pull between the planet and its moon.

“Your trajectories aren’t always going to be traditional shapes like ellipses and circles,” Turner said. “Spacecraft may take all sorts of weird paths, and that can become very mathematically complicated.”

In 1969, for example, Apollo 11 took a relatively direct route to the moon, arriving in an orbit close to the lunar surface in about three days. More recently, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, which launched in 2022 with no humans aboard, made a more circuitous pass. The mission’s Orion space capsule first circled the moon, using its gravity to slingshot roughly 40,000 miles out into space. That trip took five days.

Turner explained that some small aerospace companies may not have employees versed in those kinds of gravitational intricacies. ASTROMECH does the math for them.

“The ways in which Dezell is leveraging AR in designing ASTROMECH has the potential to make cislunar trajectory design much more understandable for most people in the industry,” said McMahon, associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “This could be hugely beneficial for training new employees and increasing small companies' ability to operate spacecraft in cislunar space.”

Alternate routes available

Back in the aerospace lobby, Turner demonstrates how he can pinch and swipe to compare those different routes.

Currently, the tool only tabulates fairly simple trajectories, similar to the direct path Apollo 11 took to the moon. But Turner would like to eventually add in more complicated routes. They include ones that take advantage of “Lagrange points,” or special spots in space where gravitational forces allow spacecraft to, essentially, park. The tool also includes an estimate for what aerospace engineers call delta-V, a calculation that roughly captures how much fuel a spacecraft will need to burn making maneuvers. Do you want to get to the moon fast and spend a bit more money or take your time and save on fuel?

Turner has a lot more work to do before aerospace companies can begin using ASTROMECH. One day, he envisions laying out trajectories for undertaking journeys even deeper into the solar system.

For now, he’s happy to have space at his fingerprints—just like Rey gazing at R2D2’s map.

“Getting to wear the headset really makes my day, especially when I’ve been fighting bugs in my code,” Turner said. “Getting to play with holograms makes me feel like a little kid.”

��ƷSM��ӰƬ graduate student Dezell Turner has borrowed inspiration from his favorite sci-fi films to design an augmented reality tool that could one day help aerospace companies plan their routes from Earth to the moon.

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Photo taken from the Orion spacecraft, which traveled to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis 1 mission in 2022. (Credit: NASA)

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Photo taken from the Orion spacecraft, which traveled to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis 1 mission. (Credit: NASA)

Will the US withdraw from the Paris Agreement? An expert’s take on climate policy under Trump

Yvaine Ye — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 22:08:51 +0000

Will the US withdraw from the Paris Agreement? An expert’s take on climate policy under Trump Yvaine Ye Fri, 11/22/2024 - 15:08

Yvaine Ye

As this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 29, comes to an end, world leaders are uncertain about the future of climate change progress given the result of the latest U.S. presidential election.

Many expect the president-elect, Donald Trump, to again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, a pact that governments agreed to during COP 21. The 2015 agreement aimed to reduce emissions and prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2°C, or 3.6°F, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels. Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2017 during his first term as president.

Max Boykoff

Walking away from the agreement again would mean that the U.S., the biggest historical emitter of carbon dioxide, could further stall international efforts to slash emissions at a time when the world is already falling far short of the 2°C goal.

“This is a time when we need to be leaning into climate policy action, but the Trump administration's withdrawal would lose some of that momentum,” said Max Boykoff, professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

It also means that the world’s largest economy might no longer provide financial support to developing countries to help them transition to low-carbon economies and cope with the impact of climate change, a key topic in recent United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) conferences.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ Today sat down with Boykoff to discuss what a second Trump presidency could mean for U.S. and international climate policies.

If the Trump administration backs out of the Paris agreement again, do you expect a worse impact than the previous withdrawal?

The Trump Administration, if they were to withdraw, would join only a small handful of countries, including Libya, Iran and Yemen, as the only defectors from this international agreement. Currently contributing 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. would leave behind nearly 200 countries that are working together to significantly address climate change at a global level.

As the United States is potentially flip flopping in terms of its commitment on climate change in the international arena, there is a loss of trust and a loss of opportunity for the U.S. to be in a position of leadership in a clean energy economy, and more generally on other global issues as well.

The withdrawal may also cause other leaders, who have also expressed resistance to addressing climate policy as a priority in their own countries, to leave the agreement.

What impact could a Trump Administration have on renewable energy and electric vehicles that are already becoming more mainstream?

The renewable energy sector has grown to a point where it actually makes great financial sense to continue to benefit from these market trends. With the way the economy has been moving, the Trump administration's withdrawal from supporting renewable energy projects may carry more symbolic significance than actual functional significance.

Even during Trump’s first term, there were still trends toward decarbonization. Despite Trump’s advocacy for fossil fuel use, emissions remained pretty steady before they dropped off precipitously during the pandemic. The amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels actually went down slightly. The amount of renewable energy that supplied industry and other aspects of society actually increased nearly 50% during the first Trump administration.

Do you think the US will stay on track to meet its own climate pledge of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050?

With this incoming second Trump administration, it is likely that there will be a lack of leadership and commitment to address climate change through policy actions at the scale, level, and urgency required.

But some elements of the incoming Trump administration, including their stance on deregulation, can actually help with the ongoing decarbonization process. For example, many of the permitting requirements have been inhibiting the proliferation of new infrastructure like transmission lines that can carry electricity from renewables across the country. So some of the Trump administration promises, while symbolically aligning with a stance that isn't favorable for climate policy action, may inadvertently help.

Are you worried that the Trump administration will roll back federal investment in renewable projects around the country?

Yes, but much of the funding from many of the decarbonization policies put forward during the Biden administration, including the Inflation Reduction Act, has flowed to many Republican-led states. While there have been many early indications that the Trump Administration will curtail renewable energy investments, we may see enough resistance and pushback from members of his own party in these states.

Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint for the next Republican president, calls for withdrawing not only from the Paris agreement, but also its parent treaty, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). How concerning would it be if the U.S. withdraws from UNFCCC?

The 900+ page report devotes about 40 pages to dismantling climate and environmental policies in the U.S. Withdrawing from the 1992 UNFCCC can have many consequences in terms of U.S. leadership and involvement in ongoing COP negotiations.

The UNFCCC will continue to go forward with or without the United States. So withdrawing is, frankly, unwise. When you're still in the treaty, you can influence the conversations and decision-making that take place, but withdrawing from it places the Trump administration and their emissaries on the outside of ongoing negotiations.

What are you most concerned about regarding how the second Trump administration will impact climate policies?

What worries me most is the loss of support for everyday working-class people here in the United States who are experiencing the impacts of climate change and other connected issues because of potential decisions that the Trump administration may make along with support—or lack of resistance—from Congress.

Those who are at the forefront of climate impacts, those who are vulnerable within this country are often those with the least influential voices, often those with the least amount of power to call for the kind of actions that are needed to improve their lives and livelihoods. It remains to be seen where the funding cuts will be proposed, but on climate terms—irrespective of left-right politics—the second Trump administration’s early signaling of their plans is worrisome.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ Today regularly publishes Q&As with our faculty members weighing in on news topics through the lens of their scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

The reelection of Donald Trump could set back global efforts to address climate change, but ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Max Boykoff suggests it may not completely derail clean energy progress.

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Introducing ‘UFO’ galaxies—the Milky Way’s dustier cousins

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:10:13 +0000

Introducing ‘UFO’ galaxies—the Milky Way’s dustier cousins Daniel William… Tue, 11/19/2024 - 11:10

Daniel Strain

Image of a bright-red UFO galaxy, upper-right corner, as taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Credit: Erica Nelson)

In a new study, a team of astrophysicists led by ��ƷSM��ӰƬ has set out to unravel the mysteries of UFOs—not the alien spacecraft, but a class of unusually large and red galaxies that researchers have nicknamed Ultra-red Flattened Objects, or UFOs for short.

The research shines a spotlight on some strange galaxies, said Justus Gibson, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. ��ƷSM��ӰƬ researchers first discovered UFO galaxies in images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Now, Gibson and his colleagues think they know more about the galaxies’ inner workings.

The researchers explained that UFOs are odd cosmic ducks for various reasons. For starters, they reside near the limit of how far earlier space instruments, like the Hubble Space Telescope, could peer into the universe. But Hubble had completely missed them because these galaxies emit very little visible light.

The new study relies on observations from the Webb telescope, a pioneering spacecraft that launched in December 2021. Drawing on those images and computer simulations, the team reports that UFO galaxies seem to be similar in size and shape to the Milky Way. But these new galaxies are much dustier.

The team published its findings this October in The Astrophysical Journal.

“JWST allows us to see this type of galaxy that we never would have been able to see before,” Gibson said. “It tells us that maybe we didn't understand the universe as well as we thought.”

Images of the same region of space as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This bright-red UFO galaxy, circled, was almost entirely invisible in the Hubble observations. (Credit: Erica Nelson)

The universe is turning out to be more interesting than some scientists assumed, said study co-author Erica Nelson, who first discovered the UFO galaxies.

“They’re so visually striking,” said Nelson, assistant professor of astrophysics at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. “They’re enormous red discs that pop up in these images, and they were totally unexpected. They make you say: ‘What? How?’”

Hidden galaxies

Gibson noted that UFO galaxies look red because they emit very little visible light—most of the light that escapes these galaxies is infrared radiation, and what little visible light they emit is at the limit of what human eyes can see (red, in other words). As a result, the UFO galaxies were all but invisible to Hubble, which only records visible light. The Webb telescope, in contrast, collects infrared light, which means it’s well-suited to spotting these kinds of objects.

“Prior to the launch of James Webb, we thought we would find really, really far away galaxies,” Gibson said. “But we thought that closer to us, we already had a pretty good understanding of all the types of galaxies there are.”

In the new study, Gibson and his colleagues drew on observations from a collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). In all, the team identified 56 UFO galaxies in images from JADES.

They found a lot of dust.

Biting the dust

The researchers noted that all galaxies, and even Earth’s solar system, contain interplanetary dust, the remnants of dying stars that exploded a long time ago, shooting tiny particles of metal far into space. But the UFO galaxies contain a lot more dust than the Milky Way—enough dust to block about 50 times more light from beaming into space. It’s a bit like a sandstorm on Earth obscuring the sun.

The researchers also used computer simulations, or models, to understand how the galaxies are shaped. Gibson noted that galaxies can come in many shapes and sizes, from Frisbee-like discs to football shapes and spheres.

The team’s calculations suggest that UFO galaxies may be shaped like run-of-the-mill discs (think Milky Way).

“You have these big bad disks—like our home, the Milky Way—flying around space, completely invisible to us,” Nelson said.

How these galaxies got so dusty isn’t clear. Nelson said she hopes that by studying them, astrophysicists can learn how galaxies grow and form new stars over time. For now, the UFOs raise a lot more questions than answers.

“Why on Earth do these galaxies have so much more dust than all the other galaxies?” she said. “Got me.”

Other co-authors on the new study include researchers from the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh, University of Massachusetts, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, European Space Agency, University of Melbourne, Sorbonne University, University of Hertfordshire, University of Arizona, The Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Santa Cruz and NRC Herzberg.

Deep in the universe lurk a population of mysterious, red galaxies that, until recently, were all but invisible to scientists. Now, astrophysicists at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ have drawn on new observations to learn more about these objects.

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CUriosity: Should you trust 5-star reviews?

Daniel William Strain — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 22:49:50 +0000

CUriosity: Should you trust 5-star reviews? Daniel William… Fri, 11/15/2024 - 15:49

Katy Marquardt Hill

In CUriosity, experts across the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

As the holiday shopping season ramps up, Nicholas Reinholtz, assistant professor of marketing in the Leeds School of Business, delves into the question: “Should you trust 5-star reviews?”

Credit: Adobe Stock

There’s no understating the influence of online reviews on consumers’ purchase decisions. Nine out of 10 say they consider reviews before making a purchase, and 45% simply won’t purchase a product if it has no reviews available, according to recent research from consumer research firm PowerReviews.

But there are limitations to relying solely on user ratings and online reviews to evaluate product quality, according to Nicholas Reinholtz, who researches consumer behavior including financial decision-making, product and price search.

Reinholtz sat down with ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Today to discuss how consumer expectations and other factors affect ratings and how biases in rating systems can lead to inaccurate assessments—and potentially bad purchases.

Previously in CUriosity

Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars?

Should consumers be cautious and avoid getting too swept up in reviews?

My co-author Matt Meister, a former Leeds PhD student and current assistant professor of marketing at the University of San Francisco, and I have looked at Airbnb ratings, and we have a second paper that looks at ratings from REI. One thing both papers have in common is this idea that expectations can influence ratings.

So if you go on to Amazon and buy a $500 pair of headphones, and if there are any problems at all, you give it one star. You say, ‘I can't believe I paid $500 for a pair of headphones and there is a crackle.’ Unacceptable, right? Whereas if you paid $5 for the headphones, you give it five stars because they work.

That expectation should influence ratings does make sense. You can't have a five-point scale that encompasses the entire spectrum of human experience, right? Ratings are relative to the expectations you have going into the product purchase. There are multiple issues with that, and one of them is that when people are looking at products, they don't account for the fact that ratings reflect expectations.

With our research on Airbnb ratings, the point that we're trying to make is that it's totally fine and reasonable that people would give ratings that reflect their expectations. But it's problematic if future consumers don't recognize the role of those expectations and adjust for them accordingly.

Airbnb has this status symbol where they label certain hosts ‘superhosts.’ We look at Airbnbs that are superhosts in some time periods and not superhosts in other time periods, and we find that they get better ratings during the periods where they're not labeled a superhost. So presumably people are going into the experience saying, ‘Oh, I'm staying at a superhost, and so the same experience is rated slightly worse against those expectations.’

Are star ratings meaningless?

We should have a mantra: When you're on Amazon, more stars doesn't mean better. I don't think star ratings are useless because they can, particularly coupled with text reviews, identify truly problematic things, like if something gets a terrible rating.

I think if you're using ratings to compare, say, a product that looks better, but it's only 4.7 stars, whereas another similar product maybe looks a little bit worse, but it's 4.9 stars. Those are the types of situations where I think we really need to exert caution for a variety of reasons instead of just blindly following the ratings.

Nicholas Reinholtz

If we rate experiences, it's really hard to disentangle contextual influences from intrinsic ones.

For example, we looked at ratings for winter jackets on REI and merged those ratings with weather data. It turns out that people rate winter jackets better on warmer days and worse on colder days. The reason we think that happens is that you go outside on a super cold day and you're cold, and when you rate the jacket you're wearing, you're like, ‘Well, I'm cold, so this jacket must not be that great.’ Whereas you go out on a warm day, and the jacket feels great, right? It's perfect. You're totally warm.

What’s something surprising you’ve found in your consumer ratings research?

The thing that surprised me the most is how uncritically people accept reviews as a measure of quality. We had a thought experiment related to headphones. We asked study participants to imagine they are looking at two pairs of headphones online. One is a $500 pair of headphones that has a 4.6 rating. The other is a $5 pair of headphones with a 4.8 rating. We asked: Which of these two pairs of headphones do you think are higher quality? We were convinced that everyone would point to the $500 pair. It turns out only about 50% of people did. The other half endorsed the idea that the $5 headphones were higher quality.

As a researcher and expert on the topic, how do you personally use reviews?

We always like to think of ourselves as more savvy. There's a powerful draw of reviews, and I still catch myself looking at them and being like, ‘I think I'll like it, but, you know, it's a 4.7. Maybe there's something wrong with it.’ I was buying carabiners the other day, and I found myself looking for higher-rated carabiners—4.7 versus 4.9. And then I had to be like, ‘Come on, don’t do this.’

It’s a tough world out there for a consumer. And you don't have many people whose incentives are aligned with yours. These days I find myself gravitating more and more to brands, which is something I didn't do as a younger person, because I feel like you can build trust in brand quality, unlike picking a product on Amazon whose name you’ve never heard of and sounds like alphabet soup.

Consumers should proceed with caution when it comes to online ratings and reviews, according to researcher Nicholas Reinholtz.

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CUriosity: Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars?

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:47:49 +0000

CUriosity: Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars? Daniel William… Wed, 11/13/2024 - 13:47

Daniel Strain

In CUriosity, experts across the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, Katya Arquilla, assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, looks into the question: “Can humans handle the stress of traveling to Mars?”

Previously in CUriosity

What causes the runner’s high?

In June, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded the International Space Station (ISS), expecting a week-long stay in orbit. Now, they won’t return to Earth until February after a series of technical issues plagued the Boeing Starliner space capsule they rode into space on.

If spending eight months on the ISS, which measures just 5,000 square feet, sounds like a recipe for frayed nerves, it may very well be. That’s according to Arquilla, an engineer who has studied how long space journeys can affect the mental health of humans.

“On long-duration space missions, there are many stressors that create the potential for negative mental health effects,” she said. “From data taken in research facilities in extreme environments on Earth, like Antarctica, we have seen symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress.”

A future mission to Mars, however, could be a lot more than eight months, potentially as much as three years. Which raises the question: Can humans handle that much time in space?

Arquilla thinks so, but there are caveats.

“It will be a big challenge,” she said. “There’s a lot we don’t know because we haven’t sent people to Mars before. They won’t be able to look down and see the Earth the way they can on the International Space Station.”

In previous research, Arquilla and her colleagues explored the mental health consequences of that kind of isolation through an unlikely event here on Earth—the COVID-19 pandemic.

Katya Arquilla

In 2020, millions of Americans were suddenly cooped up in their homes with the threat of a major disease hanging over their heads. The researchers conducted a survey and observed that people with military training or other experience in stressful environments tended to be more productive during the pandemic than others. But those experienced individuals didn’t appear to maintain their mental health better than less experienced people.

Arquilla noted that simply being aware of your own body, and knowing when stress sets in, can help. She has partnered with Laura Devendorf, a researcher at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s ATLAS Institute, to assist people in doing that kind of monitoring. The team integrated sensors into comfortable textiles that track electrocardiogram (ECG) signals coming from wearers’ hearts.

“Maybe I'm an astronaut on a mission and I'm tracking my own signals, and I see that my heartrate starts to go up,” Arquilla said. “I could decide based on that that I should take a break for a couple of hours.”

This research won’t just help astronauts. Arquilla is also exploring how similar technologies could give people on the ground tools to detect and manage symptoms of mental health changes in high-stress environments. That might include wilderness expeditions, remote research facilities and military deployments.

She’s glad to see people talking more about mental health, both on Earth and in space.

“We all, after the pandemic, understand the importance of mental health a lot more than we did maybe 10 years ago,” she said. “Being able to recognize that it's okay to not feel at 100% all the time, and being able to give people the tools they need to articulate what is wrong, is really important.”

As humans spend longer and longer in space, the mental health of astronauts will become increasingly important, says aerospace engineer Katya Arquilla. Her research could help people in orbit and on the ground.

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Engineers transform smartphones into instruments for studying space

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:49:46 +0000

Engineers transform smartphones into instruments for studying space Daniel William… Wed, 11/13/2024 - 11:49

Daniel Strain

That ordinary smartphone in your pocket could be a powerful tool for investigating outer space.

In a new study, researchers at Google and ��ƷSM��ӰƬ have transformed millions of Android phones across the globe into a fleet of nimble scientific instruments—generating one of the most detailed maps to date of the uppermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

The group’s findings, published Nov. 13 in the journal Nature, might help to improve the accuracy of GPS technology worldwide several-fold. The research was led by Brian Williams of Google Research and included Jade Morton, professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

“These phones can literally fit in your palm,” Morton said. “But through crowdsourcing, we can use them to change the way we understand the space environment.”

She and her colleagues used the GPS sensors that come standard in every smartphone to collect data on how Earth’s atmosphere warped signals coming from satellites. In the process, they were able to view phenomena in the atmosphere, such as blobs high above the planet known as “plasma bubbles,” in never-before-seen detail.

The group released its data publicly so that anyone can watch how the atmosphere swirled and shifted over about eight months.

“Collaboration is central to scientific progress and to our scientific research at Google,” said Lizzie Dorfman, product lead for Science AI in Google Research. “Dr. Morton’s expertise was essential to this research, and it has been an absolute pleasure working with her as a visiting researcher and collaborator.”

Eye on the ionosphere

The study puts new focus on the ionosphere, a wispy layer of the atmosphere that stretches more than 350 miles above Earth’s surface.

It’s a volatile arena: Here, rays from the sun constantly beat down on the atmosphere, splitting its molecules and atoms into a soupy mix of charged particles—what scientists call a plasma. It also never stays still.

Jade Morton, holding a smartphone, poses on the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus next to a station for monitoring Earth's upper atmosphere. (Credit: Jade Morton)

Map generated from 10 minutes of cellphone data showing the concentration of charged particles overlying different parts of the world. (Credit: Google)

“At 2 o'clock in afternoon, there are a lot more charged particles in the ionosphere because the sun is at its strongest,” Morton said. “But at night, the sun is on the other side of the planet, so we have very few charged particles.”

That fluctuation can play havoc with GPS technology.

Morton explained that the technology works through a sort of stopwatch in space: Satellites thousands of miles from Earth first beam radio waves to the planet. Your phone then pinpoints your location by measuring how long it takes those signals to reach the ground.

Scientists try to account for how the ionosphere might shift that timing by mapping this region of space using radar dishes on the ground. Currently, however, they can only observe about 14% of the ionosphere at any one time. As a result, GPS devices may miss your exact location by anywhere from a few to several dozen feet.

“There are a lot of applications that require a lot of accuracy—for example, landing aircraft,” Morton said.

Bubbling up

In the current study, the researchers landed on an unusual idea: Rather than rely on expensive radar dishes, they could map the ionosphere using a suite of sensors that already existed in every country on Earth: Android phones.

The ionosphere maps are created using aggregated measurements of the radio signals between satellites and the receivers in some Android devices. Privacy protections ensure these measurements do not identify any contributing individual devices.

In particular, the group used the phones to track in real time how the ionosphere stretches out radio waves coming from satellites.

The team reported that, on its own, this worldwide fleet could observe roughly 21% of the ionosphere—potentially doubling the accuracy of GPS devices worldwide.

“Millions of phones together can do a much better job of monitoring the atmosphere than our ground network,” Morton said.

The group’s maps also capture the ionosphere in brilliant detail.

In May 2024, for example, a powerful solar storm struck Earth just as the group’s cell phones were looking up. In the hours that followed, huge regions of atmosphere, or “plasma bubbles,” containing low concentrations of charged particles formed above parts of South America. Those bubbles then rose through the ionosphere like wax in a lava lamp.

Morton, for her part, says the study shows the untapped potential of the everyday technologies that many people take for granted.

“I have spent my lifetime building dedicated instruments to do scientific research,” Morton said. “But as technology advances in our society, we see all these sensors at our disposal that have a lot more power than we ever imagined.”

Millions of Android phones across the globe have helped to capture the swirls and bubbles in Earth's atmosphere high above the surface in incredible detail.

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Credit: NASA

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