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Forget regret! How to have a happy life – according to the world’s leading expert
February 9, 2023
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The secrets inside your saliva
February 8, 2023
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At first glance, saliva seems like pretty boring stuff, merely a convenient way to moisten our food. But the reality is quite different, as scientists are beginning to understand. The fluid interacts with everything that enters the mouth, and even though it is 99% water, it has a profound influence on the flavors – and our enjoyment – of what we eat and drink.
“It is a liquid, but it’s not just a liquid,” says oral biologist Guy Carpenter of King’s College London.
Scientists have long understood some of saliva’s functions: it protects the teeth, makes speech easier, and establishes a welcoming environment for foods to enter the mouth. But researchers are now finding that saliva is also a mediator and a translator, influencing how food moves through the mouth and how it sparks our senses. Emerging evidence suggests that interactions between saliva and food may even help to shape which foods we like to eat.
The substance is not very salty, which allows people to taste the saltiness of a potato chip. It’s not very acidic, which is why a spritz of lemon can be so stimulating. The fluid’s water and salivary proteins lubricate each mouthful of food, and its enzymes such as amylase and lipase kickstart the process of digestion.
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(Image credit: Boy_Anupong/Getty Images)
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How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe
February 8, 2023
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Natalie Batalha was itching for data from the James Webb Space Telescope. It was a few months after the telescope had reached its final orbit, and her group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had been granted time to observe a handful of exoplanets—planets that orbit around stars other than our sun.
Among the targets was WASP-39b, a scorching world that orbits a star some 700 light-years from Earth. The planet was discovered years ago. But in mid-July, when Batalha and her team got their hands on the first JWST observations of the distant world, they saw a clear signature of a gas that is common on Earth but had never been spotted before in the atmosphere of an exoplanet: carbon dioxide. On Earth, carbon dioxide is a key indicator of plant and animal life. WASP-39b, which takes just four Earth days to orbit its star, is too hot to be considered habitable. But the discovery could well herald more exciting detections—from more temperate worlds—in the future. And it came just a few days into the lifetime of JWST. “That was a very exciting moment,” says Batalha, whose group had gathered to glimpse the data for the first time. “The minute we looked, the carbon dioxide feature was just beautifully drawn out.”
This was no accident. JWST, a NASA-led collaboration between the US, Canada, and Europe, is the most powerful space telescope in history and can view objects 100 times fainter than what the Hubble Space Telescope can see. Almost immediately after it started full operations in July of 2022, incredible vistas from across the universe poured down, from images of remote galaxies at the dawn of time to amazing landscapes of nebulae, the dust-filled birthplaces of stars. “It’s just as powerful as we had hoped, if not more so,” says Gabriel Brammer, an astronomer at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
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A clutch of massive stars takes center stage in this mosaic image of the Tarantula Nebula, captured with JWST’s Near Infrared Camera. They are surrounded by and will help sculpt, clouds of gas and dust—the raw material for yet more stars.NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, Webb Ero Production Team
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A Bold Plan to Beam Solar Energy Down From Space
February 7, 2023
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Whether you’re covering deserts, ugly parking lots, canals, or even sunny lakes with solar panels, clouds will occasionally get in the way—and every day the sun must set. No problem, says the European Space Agency: Just put the solar arrays in space.
The agency recently announced a new exploratory program called Solaris, which aims to figure out if it is technologically and economically feasible to launch solar structures into orbit, use them to harness the sun’s power, and transmit energy to the ground.
If this concept comes to fruition, by sometime in the 2030s Solaris could begin providing always-on space-based solar power. Eventually, it could make up 10 to 15 percent of Europe’s energy use, playing a role in the European Union’s goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. “We’re thinking about the climate crisis and the need to find solutions. What more could space do to help mitigate climate change—not just monitor it from above, as we’ve been doing for the past few decades?” asks Sanjay Vijendran, who heads the initiative and plays a leading role in the agency’s Mars program as well.
The primary driver for Solaris, Vijendran says, is the need for continuous clean energy sources. Unlike fossil fuel and nuclear power, solar and wind are intermittent—even the sunniest solar farms sit idle the majority of the time. It won’t be possible to store massive amounts of energy from renewables until battery technologies improve. Yet according to Vijendran, space solar arrays could be generating power more than 99 percent of the time. (The remaining 1 or so percent of the time, the Earth would be directly between the sun and the array, blocking the light.)
The program—unrelated to Stanisław Lem’s sci-fi novel with the same name—is considered a “preparatory” one, meaning the ESA has already completed a pilot study, but it’s not yet ready for full-scale development. It calls for designing an in-orbit demonstration of the technology, launching it in 2030, developing a small version of a space solar power plant in the mid-2030s, and then scaling it up dramatically. For now, ESA researchers will begin by investigating what it would take to robotically assemble the modules of a large solar array, for example, while in geostationary orbit at an altitude of about 22,000 miles. This way, the structure would remain continuously above a particular point on the ground, regardless of the Earth’s rotation.
For the project to go forward, Vijendran and his team must determine by 2025 that it’s indeed possible to achieve space-based solar in a cost-efficient way. NASA and the Department of Energy explored the concept in the 1970s and ’80s but sidelined it because of the expense and technological challenges. Still, much has changed since then. Launch costs have dropped, mainly thanks to reusable rockets. Satellites have become cheaper to mass-produce. And the cost of photovoltaics, which convert sunlight into electricity, has fallen, making solar power in orbit more competitive with terrestrial energy sources.
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Photograph: NASA/JAXA/Hinode
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How To Turn Your Brain Off At Night, According To A Sleep Psychologist
February 7, 2023
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If you’re like most people, you’ve been affected by stress-related sleep problems at some point or another, lying awake at night filled with anxiety about your career and the future. You may feel exhausted during the day but wired at night, desperate to shut off your racing mind so you can finally rest.
It may be hard to believe, but your brain wants (and knows how) to sleep well. You simply need to reset your relationship with sleep, so that instead of it feeling like a battle or a chore, it becomes the easy and enjoyable experience it should be.
That’s where Dr. Jade Wu comes in. As a board-certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist, she’s on a mission to help the 25 million Americans who struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep find rest at last. In her new book, Hello Sleep: The Science and Art of Overcoming Insomnia Without Medications, she offers insights based in the latest sleep science, providing a step-by-step roadmap to better sleep whether you’ve had insomnia for three months or three decades.
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Young woman sleeping peacefully on her bed at home Getty
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Viewing platforms at Aiguille du Midi, France
February 6, 2023
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Aiguille du Midi can be called the most popular observation deck of France. It is situated on the peak of the same name in the picturesque Mont Blanc region. This multilevel viewing platform features infrastructure, so the journey to it promises to be an unforgettable adventure. To reach the site you need to overcome an impressive way on the lift and then pass the remaining part of the way by Chamonix Aiguille du Midi cable car. The latter has being operating since 1955 and is still the highest in Europe.
A pleasant surprise will wait for visitors at the top; there you will see a multi-level observation deck with comfortable seating areas and cozy cafes. The open wooden platform acts as a viewing point; it features interconnected tunnels and passages carved directly into the rock. The uppermost area is at an altitude of 3842 meters; it is about 70 meters above the floor.
You can not only walk through the tunnels between levels but also use a special lift that is much more convenient and faster. There is a special plate with the exact height of the platform and its number at each level. It’s also worth to have a long and incredibly interesting tour to Aiguille du Midi that many tourists tend to visit in the summer. The fact is that it’s always very cold and very windy at the top, so it would be more comfortable to climb it in the summer when it’s not so chilly. Wikipedia
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An image of a Viewing platforms at Aiguille du Midi, France
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In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It
February 6, 2023
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Shea German-Tanner tries to put a portion of her paycheck, even if it is only $50, into her savings account. But most of the time, she has to reroute the cash back to her checking to afford her expenses. Ms. German-Tanner, 22, has about $600 in her savings account right now and has not started saving for retirement.
“Everyone’s telling you to save money and do this and invest, and I feel like I can’t do that because I’m living paycheck to paycheck,” said Ms. German-Tanner, a social worker in Fort Wayne, Ind., who makes about $40,000 a year. She said she felt that inflation had impeded her ability to save money.
Young people who are just starting to get their footing as they enter adulthood are grappling with how to balance their incomes and spending priorities so they have money left over to save for emergencies and retirement. Worrying about saving has always been hard for 20-somethings who begin their careers at the bottom of their earning potential. But saving is especially difficult right now because on top of student debt, housing and food costs remain high even as inflation has started to cool.
Ms. German-Tanner said 20-somethings were often encouraged to take financial steps like build emergency funds, save for retirement and pay off debt. They’re advised to invest when the market is down and to start thinking about their futures as early as possible. The FIRE movement (an acronym for “financial independence, retire early”) has been glorified in recent articles, and videos about budgeting and saving in Roth individual retirement accounts have taken over TikTok.
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Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
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Researchers look a dinosaur in its remarkably preserved face
February 6, 2023
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Borealopelta markmitchelli found its way back into the sunlight in 2017, millions of years after it had died. This armored dinosaur is so magnificently preserved that we can see what it looked like in life. Almost the entire animal—the skin, the armor that coats its skin, the spikes along its side, most of its body and feet, even its face—survived fossilization. It is, according to Dr. Donald Henderson, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, a one-in-a-billion find.
Beyond its remarkable preservation, this dinosaur is an important key to understanding aspects of Early Cretaceous ecology, and it shows how this species may have lived within its environment. Since its remains were discovered, scientists have studied its anatomy, its armor, and even what it ate in its last days, uncovering new and unexpected insight into an animal that went extinct approximately 100 million years ago.
Down by the sea
Borealopelta is a nodosaur, a type of four-legged ankylosaur with a straight tail rather than a tail club. Its finding in 2011 in an ancient marine environment was a surprise, as the animal was terrestrial.
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Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
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Here’s How Much Emergency Cash You Should Keep at Home
February 5, 2023
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In many places, cash is no longer king. While you still can manage to live a cash-only lifestyle if you want to, few of us do. Some of us don’t even carry cash at all, relying on our phones and credit cards, tapping and swiping at stores, and using apps like Venmo or Cash App for personal transactions that would once have involved passing a wad of crumpled bills to someone.
Even when we talk about the necessity of an emergency fund, we’re talking about money in a bank account, not cash stuffed under a mattress. Money in a bank will earn interest, be insured against robbery, and will be accessible in some way no matter where you are.
But cash can still be useful. And in an emergency, cash can even be necessary. That’s why you should definitely keep a modest amount of cash at home. But how much?
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Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)
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Stop Spending Money to Avoid Uncomfortable Emotions
February 5, 2023
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While money can’t buy lasting happiness, it can buy you a whole lot of pleasure. The problem is, pleasurable feelings only last till the newness wears off—when the final episode plays, or the bottle of wine runs dry, the happiness you might have briefly felt also disappears.
Material items and bought experiences can make us feel good. But by only focusing on what makes us feel good, we bypass real, sustainable happiness and settle for fleeting pleasure that needs constant replenishing. That puts us into a vicious cycle of always trying to feed an insatiable need. And that is nowhere near happiness.
Happiness is often misunderstood and misrepresented by what shows up in our feeds or what we see in the media. We tend to think it can only exist in the absence of “bad stuff,” so we spend money to avoid the unfavorable and uncomfortable. But in reality, happiness can be found when we confront (and in some cases even embrace) the discomfort, so we experience the depths of our lows and heights of our highs with a lens of self-awareness of what it means to truly be alive. This is the most important form of work in our lives: the work we do on ourselves, and it has little to do with the pursuit of pleasure.
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Happiness
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James' World 2 