Latest news with #ScienceAlert
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Your Breathing Pattern Is as Unique as a Fingerprint, Study Finds
Every single human on this planet is as distinct as a snowflake; a combination of traits and genes and microbes that, as far as we can tell, is not replicated exactly in any other single human. One traits that is unique to each individual is the breath that sustains us. Each person has an idiosyncratic pattern to the constant inhale-exhale that counts out our hours, days, and years on this planet. That's what a team of scientists discovered after fitting people with a wearable device that monitored their nasal breathing. An analysis of the data revealed patterns that were detailed enough for the researchers to identify individuals with an accuracy of 96.8 percent. This 'respiratory fingerprint', says a team led by brain scientist Timna Soroka of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, could promote new ways to understand and treat physical and mental ailments. "You would think that breathing has been measured and analyzed in every way," says neuroscientist Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science. "Yet we stumbled upon a completely new way to look at respiration. We consider this as a brain readout." We can take breathing somewhat for granted, but it's governed by a complex and extensive brain network that largely automates the process, permitting for conscious control by the individual when circumstances require – such as holding one's breath when jumping into water, for instance. Soroka, Sobel, and their colleagues at the Weizmann Olfaction Research Group have been investigating the way the brain processes scent during inhalation. During this research, they made the very small leap towards studying the concept of a breath-print. "The idea of using an individual's breathing pattern as a unique signature has been discussed for decades within the respiratory science community. You can easily see each person's uniqueness when you measure different people," Soroka told ScienceAlert. "However, there was no convenient way to measure it until now. The development of a tiny wearable device capable of recording over extended periods allowed us to measure 100 participants over 24 hours. This, in turn, enabled us to present the concept in a much more compelling way." The researchers developed a device that precisely monitors and logs the airflow through each nostril of the wearer. Then, they tasked 97 study participants with wearing the device for up to 24 hours. From just one hour of recording, the researchers achieved an accurate identification rate of 43 percent, Soroka said. This accuracy skyrocketed at 24 hours. The resulting breath log was then analyzed using a protocol known as BreathMetrics, which examines 24 parameters of the individual's nasal respiration. Since respiration is usually only measured for short periods of time – around 20 minutes or so – the resulting dataset was far more comprehensive than usually seen, giving a much more comprehensive view of each individual's respiration, from rest to exertion. "We expected to be able to identify individuals," Soroka said, "but not that it would be so strong." The researchers did not just find that an individual can be confidently identified based on their breathing pattern; the results also revealed what those breathing patterns can indicate about a person. There's the usual gamut of activities. A person at rest will have a distinct breathing pattern as opposed to someone out on a constitutional jog, for instance. The researchers also found that a person's breathing correlates with their BMI. The study participants were tasked with filling out questionnaires about their mental health. Those participants with self-reported anxiety issues generally had shorter inhales and more variability in the pauses between their breaths while sleeping. While not the purpose of the study, this indicates an avenue for further investigation. People undergoing significant stress or panic are given breathing exercises to help mitigate their symptoms. Perhaps working on conscious breathing could be more helpful than we thought. The next step, however, will be how this research might be applied to diagnostics, Soroka said. "We can learn how specific breathing patterns may predict various diseases," she explained. "But of course, in the future we will examine whether we can also treat disease by modifying respiratory patterns." The research has been published in Current Biology. Ozempic Without Nausea: Brain Cell Discovery Could Change Weight-Loss Drugs Popular 'What I Eat in a Day' Videos Could Have 5 Dangerous Downsides A Forgotten Cancer Is Surging in Young People, And Experts Are Puzzled
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
New Tyrannosaur Species Could Be a Missing Link to The Giants
Long before Tyrannosaurus rex stalked the planet, a Dragon Prince reigned supreme. Paleontologists have discovered a new 'missing link' species that cleared the way for the iconic giant carnivores. The new mid-size tyrannosaur, which lived about 86 million years ago, has been named Khankhuuluu mongoliensis – a name that translates to "Dragon Prince of Mongolia" in honor of where it was found. "We wanted to capture that Khankhuuluu was an early and smaller species, so a prince, rather than a king like its much larger tyrannosaur descendants," Darla Zelenitsky, paleontologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, tells ScienceAlert. Together with fellow UCalgary paleontologist Jared Voris, Zelenitsky co-led a study describing the new species based on two partial skeletons that had been gathering dust in a museum collection since the early 1970s. As far as famous 'tyrant lizard' predators go, Khankhuuluu was a middleweight. It stood about 2 meters (6.6 feet) tall at the hips, was twice that long nose-to-tail, and tipped the scales at around 750 kilograms (1,650 pounds). By comparison, T. rex was estimated to grow up to 13 meters long and weigh up to 8.8 tonnes. Of course, evolving to such a massive size didn't happen overnight. It was long presumed that these colossal apex predators evolved from tiny ancestors, like Suskityrannus and Moros intrepidus, which both stood around 1 meter tall. Logically, the road between those two extremes should be paved with middle-sized species. The fossil record has been patchy in that regard, unfortunately. Khankhuuluu, which lived some 20 million years earlier than Tyrannosaurus, helps plug that gap. "Khankhuuluu represents a transitional form from some even smaller 'tyrannosauroid' ancestors to those giant apex predator tyrannosaurs," Voris tells ScienceAlert. "It had long, slender legs, likely making a very agile predator, and its skull was lightly built, not capable of delivering such powerful bone crushing bite forces as its tyrannosaur descendants." Its discovery also implies a complicated history for tyrannosaurs. Khankhuuluu hailed from what is now Asia, far from where its more giant relatives would appear in North America. Over a span of a few million years the family gave rise to a range of massive species like Gorgosaurus and Thanatotheristes before returning across the Bering land bridge. Back in Asia, tyrannosaurs diversified again, this time into two distinct clades: Tyrannosaurini, which were massive apex predators with deep snouts like Tarbosaurus; and Alioramini, which were smaller and had long, narrow snouts like Qianzhousaurus. Eventually, some of the Tyrannosaurini wandered back to North America to try to make it big in Hollywood, leading to household names like Tyrannosaurus rex. Evolution probably would have continued playing this ancient game of Catan if it wasn't for that asteroid flipping the table and losing most of the pieces about 66 million years ago. Signs of this back-and-forth journey are in agreement with other recent studies on tyrannosaur family history. It also helps explain why the closest-known relative of T. rex isn't, say, Daspletosaurus — which stalked the same turf just 10 million years earlier – but is instead Tarbosaurus, a cousin that lived a whole continent away. The study also finds some interesting quirks in how tyrannosaurs in North America and Asia filled different ecological niches. "Both the North America and Asian ecosystems had mid-sized predators that were tyrannosaurs, but this was achieved in different ways," Zelenitsky tells ScienceAlert. "In Asia, there were two very different forms of tyrannosaur species in the same ecosystem. Forms like Tarbosaurus would have filled the giant apex predator role, whereas the alioramins were the smaller, fleet-footed, mid-sized predators." But it turns out that T. rex was such a spotlight-hog that it claimed both niches for itself. "In the last 2 million years of the Cretaceous Period, just before the mass extinction event, Tyrannosaurus was the only tyrannosaur in North America that we know of," says Zelenitsky. "The juveniles were smaller, fleet-footed animals with shallow snouts that would have taken down smaller prey than their adult counterparts. They would have essentially filled the mid-sized predator niche, rather than the apex predator niche of the adults." Of course, none of this would have been possible without the overlooked middle children like Khankhuuluu. We welcome the new prince to the dinosaur royal family, alongside the king (and, if you believe some controversial studies, the queen and the emperor). The research was published in the journal Nature. The World's Largest Organism Is Slowly Being Eaten First Evidence of a Sauropod's Last Meal Shows How They Ate Their Food Videos Show Chimpanzees Using The Forest as Their Drumkit
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Stunning Direct Images of Alien Worlds Are Detailed Enough to Reveal Clouds
New images from the JWST are about as close as we've ever come to seeing the sky of an alien world outside the Solar System. Direct images of a gas giant exoplanet orbiting a star called YSES-1 have revealed clouds of fine sand drifting high up in its atmosphere. What's more, similar observations of a neighboring world suggest it is surrounded by a large, swirling disk rich with olivine, a mineral that can form the gemstone peridot here on Earth. "Everything is exciting about these two results," astrophysicist and lead author Kielan Hoch of the Space Telescope Science Institute told ScienceAlert. "The observations were novel as we could observe 'two for the price of one' with JWST NIRSpec, and discovering two major planetary features on each object." Planets outside our Solar System are elusive beasts. They are extremely difficult to see directly; they are very far away, and small and dim, obscured by the blazing light of the stars they orbit. Of the nearly 6,000 confirmed to date, the vast, vast majority have only been detected and measured indirectly – that is, based on changes their presence evokes in the light of their host stars. Only around 80 exoplanets have been seen directly. There's a lot you can tell about a planet from the way it tugs on its surrounds or eclipses its star. But direct observations of the light it emits can reveal far more. Even so, it takes a powerful instrument to extract a signal from the faint light of even the closest exoplanets. The YSES-1 system is only 306 light-years away and contains two known planets; YSES-1b, which is closer to the star at a distance of 160 astronomical units, and YSES-1c, at 320 astronomical units. YSES-1c is around six times the mass of Jupiter, while YSES-1b is the larger of the two at around 14 times Jupiter's mass, putting it right on the mass boundary between planets and brown dwarfs. Prior direct observations of this system suggested that the world may have interesting atmospheric properties, but the instruments involved lacked the power to detect them. Cue JWST. "With the NIRSpec instrument on JWST we are able to get images of the planets at thousands of wavelengths at once. The images can be reduced to produce spectra, which is thermal light coming from the planet itself," Hoch explained. "As the light passes through the atmosphere of the exoplanet, some of the light will get absorbed by molecules and cause dips in brightness of the planet. This is how we are able to tell what the atmospheres are made of!" The results? The most detailed spectral dataset of a multi-planet system compiled to date. Both exoplanets, the researchers found, showed evidence of water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane in their atmospheres – all of which are relatively common atmospheric components. It's where they diverge that things start to get interesting. "For YSES-1c, we see lots of molecular features from water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and methane. At longer wavelengths, we see absorption caused by silicate particles, which has a different spectral shape," Hoch said. "We use laboratory data of different particles and structures to model which silicates fit the data best and determine other properties of those particles. Our models show that there could be small silicate particles high up in the atmosphere that can contain small amounts of iron that rains out of the clouds. However, our models also show that a mixture of only silicates can also fit the data." No such spectra feature was observed for YSES-1b, but something else emerged: the signature of small grains of olivine in a disk around the exoplanet. Olivine is a mineral that forms in volcanic conditions here on Earth; particularly fine gemstone-quality examples form peridot. Olivine is also found in meteorites, so it seems the mineral can form easily in molten rock situations. However, it shouldn't be seen in dust form around YSES-1b. Dust settling is an efficient process expected to take a maximum of about 5 million years, Hoch explained. The YSES-1 system is estimated to be around 16.7 million years old. It's possible that the olivine-rich dust is debris from a collision between objects orbiting near YSES-1b – which means the observations came at a very lucky point in cosmic time. Both sets of results are spectacular. "We hoped to detect clouds in YSES-1c's atmosphere as its spectral type is theorized to have a cloudy atmosphere. But, when we saw the feature, it was wildly different from other silicate features seen in brown dwarfs," Hoch said. "We did NOT expect to see evidence for a disk around the inner planet YSES-1b. That was certainly a surprise." All the best astrophysical observations raise at least as many questions as they answer. YSES-1 is no exception. The disk around YSES-1b is one big one. We also don't know enough about exoplanetary atmospheres, or how long these objects take to form. Ongoing work to directly study the atmospheres of other exoplanets will help fill in some of these gaps in our knowledge. "I also am excited about the result as this research was led by early career scientists. I was a graduate student when I proposed to use JWST to image this planetary system, and JWST had not launched yet and was not designed for looking at exoplanets," Hoch said. "The first five authors of the manuscript range from first year graduate student to postdoctoral fellow. I believe this highlights the need to support early career scientists, and that is a result most exciting for me." The research has been published in Nature. Stunning 'Solar Curtains' Phenomenon Revealed on The Sun in New Images The Sun's Fury Is Making SpaceX Satellites Plummet From The Sky Astronomers Just Discovered The Biggest Explosions Since The Big Bang
Time of India
09-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
More Starlink satellites are falling, and it's because of the sun: Here's how
Double trouble! and his billion-dollar space company have both been facing a difficult time recently. While the former is a victim of his own actions, his company is being attacked by the king of the solar system – the sun. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now According to a recent study by a NASA research center, cited by media reports, the Sun's intensifying activity is affecting Earth's satellites, particularly those in SpaceX's Starlink constellation. As the Sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle, there is a surge in geomagnetic storms which is causing more and more Starlink satellites to deorbit and fall from the sky. On Monday, an expert warned that while the Starlink satellites typically burn-up during atmospheric re-entry, their de-orbiting phase presents significant risks, as their unpredictable trajectories can create collision hazards for other spacecraft present in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). After their launch in 2019, SpaceX satellites began their atmospheric re-entry in 2020 when two satellites fell from the sky. However, in the progressive years, more and more such satellites have fallen. In 2021, 78 satellites fell, in 2022, 99 satellites fell; and in 2023, 88 fell. The figure surged even higher in 2024 when 316 Starlink satellites fell out of the sky, as per a report by a team led by space physicist Denny Oliviera of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, reported Science Alert. It was when the researchers analysed the 523 Starlink satellites that entered the Earth's atmosphere again between 2020 and 2024, that they figured out the clear correlation with solar behaviour. This was the period when the Sun escalated towards the peak of its activity cycle. "We clearly show that the intense solar activity of the current solar cycle has already had significant impacts on Starlink reentries," wrote the researchers. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "This is a very exciting time in satellite orbital drag research, as the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit and the level of solar activity are at historic highs." What is the 11 year cycle? Image credits: Getty Images The solar cycle is an 11-year cycle of fluctuations in the Sun's activity, and currently it is at the peak of this cycle. This means a rise in solar activity and thus solar ejections, which has left the upper atmosphere heating up significantly. The added heat energy causes the atmosphere to expand, increasing the drag on spacecraft in low Earth orbit and making it difficult for them to maintain their trajectories. "This phenomenon is normal and is caused by atmospheric anomalies due to heightened solar activity. When solar activity intensifies, the upper boundary rises, increasing collisions between low-orbit satellites and atmospheric molecules, which accelerates orbital decay. The satellites gradually lose speed and eventually deorbit," Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Monday. Typically, high-value satellites have autonomous orbit adjustment capabilities that allow them to handle the impact of the solar activities. However, the Starlink satellites that have been designed as low-cost, high-density, mass-produced satellites have a weaker orbit control. According to Wang, Starlink satellites burn up quickly and thus are unlikely to become long-term space debris or hit Earth's surface. They just pose an ability to affect other low-orbit space launches.
NDTV
08-06-2025
- Science
- NDTV
Solar Storms Are Causing Elon Musk's Starlink Satellites To Fall From The Sky
The Sun's growing activity is affecting Earth's satellites, particularly those in the Starlink constellation launched by SpaceX. As the Sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle, increased geomagnetic storms are causing more satellites to fall out of orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. Denny Oliveira, a space physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, led a study on 523 Starlink satellites that fell back to Earth between 2020 and 2024. The study revealed that geomagnetic storms caused by the Sun's eruptions increased atmospheric drag, causing satellites to re-enter faster than expected. "We clearly show that the intense solar activity of the current solar cycle has already had significant impacts on Starlink reentries. This is a very exciting time in satellite orbital drag research, since the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit and solar activity are the highest ever observed in human history," the NASA team wrote in the paper. As per Science Alert, the solar cycle, an 11-year period of fluctuating solar activity, involves a magnetic reversal of the Sun's poles, marked by sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections. Activity peaks at solar maximum, when the poles flip, and declines to a minimum before rising again. We're currently at the peak of the 25th cycle, which has been stronger than predicted, though not the strongest recorded. This heightened activity impacts Earth significantly. Solar particles, carried by coronal mass ejections and solar wind, create vibrant auroras by interacting with the atmosphere. Less visibly, increased solar activity heats the upper atmosphere, causing it to expand. This expansion increases drag on spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, requiring trajectory adjustments to maintain their orbits. All low-orbit satellites are affected, but SpaceX's Starlink constellation, with 8,873 satellites launched and 7,669 still operational, provides a unique case study for analysing solar maximum on satellite operations. As a result, satellites need to make adjustments to maintain their trajectory, and the increased drag can even cause some to fall out of orbit. "Here, we use … Starlink orbital data to perform a superposed epoch analysis of orbital altitudes and velocities to identify impacts caused by storms with different intensities. The Starlink reentries coincide with the rising phase of solar cycle 25, a period with increasing solar activity," the researchers wrote. Starlink satellites Notably, SpaceX's Starlink satellites aim to provide global high-speed internet access, especially to remote areas with limited or no connectivity. Each Starlink satellite has a limited lifespan, which is typically less than five years. After this period, the satellites re-enter the atmosphere and burn up before reaching the ground. However, the growing number of satellites in Earth's orbit poses challenges beyond their benefits. One major concern is the obstruction they cause to astronomical observations, as these satellites can reflect sunlight and interfere with stargazing and scientific research. Further, the increased launches of human-made satellites are contributing to the accumulation of space junk in Earth's orbit.
