Culture

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An examination of racial differences in the disciplining of police officers in three of the largest U.S. cities consistently found that Black officers were more frequently disciplined for misconduct than White officers, despite an essentially equal number of allegations being leveled. This included allegations of severe misconduct.

"We found a consistent pattern of racial differences in the formal recording of disciplinary actions in three different major metropolitan cities: Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles," wrote a group of six management professors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. "Our results showed that Black officers were more likely to have recorded cases of misconduct, despite there being no difference between Black and white officers in the number of allegations made against them.

"It is impossible to know whether these differences are due to racial bias versus some other unmeasured factors. However, it is noteworthy that the pattern of results is in line with what theories of racial bias would predict and with evidence of racial disparities in punishment in other settings.

Authors of the article, "The Race Discipline Gap: A Cautionary Note on Archival Measures of Behavioral Misconduct," are Sheri Walter, Eric Gonzalez-Mulé, Cristiano Guarana, Ernest O'Boyle Jr., Chris Berry and Tim Baldwin. All are in Kelley's Department of Management and Entrepreneurship. The article is forthcoming in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Using archival data, they found that Black officers in Chicago were disciplined at a 105 percent higher rate than white officers. In Philadelphia, Black officers were 48 percent more likely than white officers to have been disciplined. Allegations of misconduct include lack of service and verbal or physical assault.

After controlling for the number of allegations of misconduct, they found that Black officers were disciplined at an even higher rate -- 132 percent more often than white officers.

"Just as organizational leaders have implemented policies and procedures to mitigate adverse impact in hiring, they may need to implement checks to ensure that there is no adverse impact in the detection and enforcing of organizational misconduct," the Kelley professors wrote. "Just as bias by police against citizens has been very slow to change, it is likely that any bias within police departments has also been slow to change."

The professors analyzed archival information from the Citizens Police Data Project, which features information collected by the Chicago Police Department from 2001 to 2008 and 2011 to 2015, as well as administrative records from the Philadelphia Police Department from 1991 to 1998.

They also used data collected by the Analysis Group for the City of Los Angeles in 2003 and 2004 to assess whether there are race differences in the number of allegations made against officers. The results of their analysis of data from Chicago and Los Angeles found no differences in allegations between Black and white officers. Results were mixed for Hispanic and Asian officers.

The purpose of the study was to examine the use of archival organizational records as measures of behavioral misconduct. Given prior studies that Black people are more likely to be arrested, receive longer prison sentences and be suspended from school, the researchers set out to study whether Black employees -- when compared to white employees -- were subject to systematic differences in the documentation of misconduct.

"Similar to the issues facing the criminal justice and education systems, where racial disparities in punishment are well-documented, organizations face a difficult challenge in detecting and enforcing misconduct," researchers wrote. "Even when organizations adopt seemingly objective policies for addressing misconduct, it is still possible for certain groups to be disproportionately accused of misconduct and/or disciplined.

The problem of waste management has become persistent. It is a challenge that is growing in bounds and depths as the world's population surges. Are we at our wits' end?

Waste management would need a radical change. According to Beatrice Obule-Abila's doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa, Finland, this change could be achieved through the application of knowledge management tools and approaches in the waste management.

Daily, each of the 7.8 billion people inhabiting Earth generates approximately one kilogram of waste, which translates into 5.8 million metric tons of waste. This is about nineteen super-tankers. The problem is not being reduced. Waste generation is bound to continue to increase as the population and urbanization increases, and so are the challenges associated with managing waste, says Obule-Abila.

The doctoral dissertation by Beatrice Obule-Abila focuses on changing the paradigm of waste management by exploring the adoption of knowledge management framework, developing and deploying more knowledge management tools, systems, and approaches in seeking solutions to the problem of waste: so that waste no longer constitutes a nuisance, but a valuable resource.

Are financial incentives or socio-psychological factors the motive for the recycling of waste?

In developing the knowledge management framework that will spur the change in paradigm, Beatrice Obule-Abila answered several germane questions in her thesis. For example, are financial incentives or socio-psychological factors key drivers in promoting recycling and sustainable waste management?

The survey results affirmed that financial incentives are important in accelerating the recycling of municipal solid waste. It was also established that intrinsic and extrinsic factors related to socio-psychology can stimulate consumers' behavior towards adopting recycling and other methods of managing waste sustainably.

It is illuminating to discover that in Finland, incentivization, particularly financial incentives, plays an indispensable role in promoting sustainable recycling of municipal solid waste. Thus, financial incentives are prerequisites for attaining the European Union recycling target for municipal solid waste in Finland, says Obule-Abila.

The study further revealed that both income-earning and non-income-earning groups of consumers show interest in monetary incentives, as a factor spurring their recycling behavior.

The major driver in the recycling of municipal solid waste is a belief in the benefits of recycling waste while the minor driver for the recycling of waste is relative to its attached financial incentive.

Over all, consumers' behavior for the recycling of municipal solid waste is more driven by socio-psychological factors in Finland.

Knowledge management approach as a prerequisite for sustainable waste management

According to Obule-Abila, the knowledge management bridges the knowledge gaps in waste management through its integration to all the aspects of waste management.

The key outcome of the research - a waste knowledge management conceptual framework - lays the foundation for understanding the linkage and applicability of knowledge management in waste management.

The researcher outlined the various paths through exploration and adoption of knowledge management process towards attaining the various goals of waste management - which includes material recovery, energy generation, and the attainment of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

This dissertation advances the insight of researchers, waste companies, government, particularly at the municipal levels, and a broad array of stakeholders to visualize the knowledge management tools, systems, and approaches used in the management of waste as the foundation of knowledge management.

The dissertation consists of six publications. Four publications apply literature review and synthesis, and two publications employ survey method.

Public Defence

The public examination of M.Sc. Beatrice Obule-Abila's doctoral dissertation "Knowledge management approach for sustainable waste management: Evolving a conceptual framework" will be held on Wednesday 14 October 2020 at noon.

New research shows that sunspots and other active regions can change the overall solar emissions. The sunspots cause some emissions to dim and others to brighten; the timing of the changes also varies between different types of emissions. This knowledge will help astronomers characterize the conditions of stars, which has important implications for finding exoplanets around those stars.

An international research team led by Shin Toriumi at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency added up the different types of emissions observed by a fleet of satellites including "Hinode" and the "Solar Dynamics Observatory" to see what the Sun would look like if observed from far away as a single dot of light like other stars.

The team investigated how features like sunspots change the overall picture. They found that when a sunspot is near the middle of the side of the Sun facing us, it causes the total amount of visible light to dim. In contrast, when the sunspots are near the edge of the Sun the total visible light brightens because at that viewing angle bright structures known as faculae surrounding the sunspots are more visible than the dark centers.

In addition, X-rays which are produced in the corona above the solar surface grow brighter when a sunspot is visible. The coronal loops extending above the sunspots are magnetically heated, so this brightening appears before the sunspot itself rotates into view and persists even after the sunspot has rotated out of view.

Because the changes in the overall solar emissions and their timings carry information about the location and structure of features on the surface of the Sun, astronomers hope to be able to deduce the surface features of other stars such as starspots and magnetic fields. This will help astronomers to better recognize dimming caused by the shadow of an exoplanet. With better knowledge about the effects of starspots, we can estimate the parameters, such as the radii and orbits, of exoplanets more accurately.

As in-depth investigations into the Sun proceed, a better understanding of the detailed mechanisms of atmospheric heating and flare eruptions will be gained. Toriumi comments, "To this end, the next-generation solar-observing satellite Solar-C(EUVST), being developed by Japan in close collaboration with US and European partners, aims to observe the Sun in emissions that probe the chromosphere, transition region, and corona as a single system."

Researchers at Kumamoto University, Japan generated mice lacking the estrogen receptor beta (ERβ) gene, both fiber-specific and muscle stem cell-specific, which resulted in abnormalities in the growth and regeneration of skeletal muscle in female mice. This was not observed in male mice that lacked the ERβ gene, suggesting that estrogen and its downstream signals may be a female-specific mechanism for muscle growth and regeneration.

In humans, skeletal muscle mass generally peaks in the 20s with a gradual decline beginning in the 30s, but it is possible to maintain muscle mass through strength training and a healthy lifestyle. Skeletal muscle can be damaged through excessive exercise or bruising, but it has the ability to regenerate. The muscle stem cells that surround muscle fibers are essential for this regeneration; they also play a part in increasing muscle size (hypertrophy). Muscle stem cell dysfunction is thought to be associated with various muscle weakness, such as age-related sarcopenia and muscular dystrophy. Although basic research on skeletal muscle has progressed rapidly in recent years, most studies were conducted on male animals and gender differences were given much consideration.

Estrogen is a female hormone that maintains the homeostasis of various tissues and organs. A decrease in estrogen levels due to amenorrhea, menopause, or other factors can lead to a disturbance in biological homeostasis. When estrogen binds to estrogen receptors (ERs) in cells, it is transferred into the nucleus and binds to genomic DNA to induce the expression of specific genes as transcription factors. There are two types of ERs, ERα and ERβ. While both ERα and ERβ have high binding capacity to estrogen, their tissue distribution is different, they do not have a common DNA-binding domain, and they may act as antagonists to each other, suggesting that they have different roles. Furthermore, estrogen's effects on cells can be both ER-mediated and non-ER-mediated.

An epidemiological study of pre and postmenopausal women in their 50s indicated an association between decreased blood estrogen levels and muscle weakness. A research group at Kumamoto University previously showed that estrogen is important for skeletal muscle development and regeneration using an ovariectomized estrogen deficiency mouse model (Kitajima and Ono, J Endocrinol 2016). They also examined the effectiveness of nutritional interventions in estrogen-deficient conditions (Kitajima et al., Nutrients 2017). However, whether estrogen acts directly on the ER of muscle fibers and muscle stem cells to regulate skeletal muscle growth and regeneration, or whether it acts indirectly through other tissues and organs was unclear. In this study, the researchers generated mice with either myofiber-specific or muscle stem cell-specific ERβ gene deletion and analyzed the function of ERβ in skeletal muscle.

To clarify the role of ERβ in the growth of skeletal muscle, researchers generated mice (mKO) in which the action of the ERβ gene could be turned off in myofibers with the administration of the drug doxycycline. ERβ deficiency was induced at 6 weeks of age, and muscle fiber area and strength of the tibialis anterior muscle was measured at 10-12 weeks. Compared to control mice, both indices were reduced in female mKO mice but not in male mice. Since there was no change in the expression of muscle atrophy-related genes, this reduced growth of female mice was not thought to be due to an increase in muscle atrophy. Ovariectomy-induced estrogen deficiency is known to be associated with muscle quality changes, such as a relative increase in the proportion of fast-type fibers (Kitajima and Ono, J Endocrinol 2016), but no such qualitative changes were observed in mKO mice. It was therefore suggested that, while it may have a direct effect on myofiber growth via ERβ (as expressed in myofibers), estrogen may also regulate the quality of myofibers in a non-ERβ-mediated manner.

To determine the function of ERβ in muscle stem cells, the researchers generated scKO mice in which the ERβ gene could be deleted in muscle stem cells with the administration of the drug tamoxifen. They then evaluated muscle regenerative capacity by locally inducing muscle damage. While muscle regeneration was efficient in control mice, the regenerated muscle tissue of female scKO mice showed thin regenerated muscle fibers, fibrosis caused by collagen deposition, and significantly reduced muscle regenerative capacity. Muscle regeneration in male scKO mice, however, was not impaired. Because impaired muscle regeneration in females was not exacerbated by ovariectomies that made them estrogen deficient, the researchers thus thought that estrogen regulates muscle regeneration via ERβ expressed by muscle stem cells.

To further investigate the cause of reduced muscle regenerative capacity, researchers isolated and cultured muscle stem cells for evaluation. ERβ in cells from scKO mice was evaluated in several experiments using siRNAs and inhibitors. ERβ was found to contribute to the promotion of muscle stem cell proliferation and the inhibition of cell death. Gene expression analysis (RNA-seq) of scKO muscle stem cells showed that the expression of "niche"-related genes, which are required for the maintenance of stem cell properties, was reduced in scKO muscle stem cells. Therefore, the researchers hypothesize that the inactivation of ERβ may have affected the proliferation and survival of muscle stem cells by inhibiting the formation of stem cell niches.

This study is thought to be the first to show that ERβ in genetic mouse models plays an important role in the growth and regeneration of skeletal muscle through its function in both muscle fibers and muscle stem cells. However, the role of ERβ in male mice has not yet been elucidated and remains to be addressed even though its expression in both male and female mice is comparable.

"Amenorrhea is induced in female athletes through rigorous training or excessive dieting and has become one of three major problems, together with low energy availability and osteoporosis, faced by female athletes worldwide," said study leader Associate Professor Yusuke Ono. "Although the animal findings of this study cannot be directly applied to humans, they do suggest that decreased estrogen during amenorrhea may suppress ERβ activity in muscle fibers and muscle stem cells. For female athletes, this may lead to poor athletic performance and delayed recovery from injuries, and puts them at risk for adverse competitive conditions. Our plan is to continue investigating the pathogenesis of age-related sarcopenia and muscular dystrophy by targeting ERβ and its downstream signals with the goal of developing treatments."

Tokyo, Japan -- The continuing progress in miniaturization of silicon microelectronic and photonic devices is causing cooling of the device structures to become increasingly challenging. Conventional heat transport in bulk materials is dominated by acoustic phonons, which are quasiparticles that represent the material's lattice vibrations, similar to the way that photons represent light waves. Unfortunately, this type of cooling is reaching its limits in these tiny structures.

However, surface effects become dominant as the materials in nanostructured devices become thinner, which means that surface waves may provide the thermal transport solution required. Surface phonon-polaritons (SPhPs) - hybrid waves composed of surface electromagnetic waves and optical phonons that propagate along the surfaces of dielectric membranes - have shown particular promise, and a team led by researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo has now demonstrated and verified the thermal conductivity enhancements provided by these waves.

"We generated SPhPs on silicon nitride membranes with various thicknesses and measured the thermal conductivities of these membranes over wide temperature ranges," says lead author of the study Yunhui Wu. "This allowed us to establish the specific contributions of the SPhPs to the improved thermal conductivity observed in the thinner membranes."

The team observed that the thermal conductivity of membranes with thicknesses of 50 nm or less actually doubled when the temperature increased from 300 K to 800 K (approximately 27°C to 527°C). In contrast, the conductivity of a 200-nm-thick membrane decreased over the same temperature range because the acoustic phonons still dominated at that thickness.

"Measurements showed that the dielectric function of silicon nitride did not change greatly over the experimental temperature range, which meant that the observed thermal enhancements could be attributed to the action of the SPhPs," explains the Institute of Industrial Science's Masahiro Nomura, senior author of the study. "The SPhP propagation length along the membrane interface increases when the membrane thickness decreases, which allows SPhPs to conduct much more thermal energy than acoustic phonons when using these very thin membranes."

The new cooling channel provided by the SPhPs can thus compensate for the reduced phonon thermal conductivity that occurs in nanostructured materials. SPhPs are thus expected to find applications in thermal management of silicon-based microelectronic and photonic devices.

Electronic data is being produced at a breath-taking rate.

The total amount of data stored in data centres around the globe is of the order of ten zettabytes (a zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes), and we estimate that amount doubles every couple of years.

With 8% of global electricity already being consumed in information and communication technology (ICT), low-energy data-storage is a key priority.

To date there is no clear winner in the race for next-generation memory that is non-volatile, has great endurance, highly energy efficient, low cost, high density, and allows fast access operation.

The joint international team comprehensively reviews 'multi-state memory' data storage, which steps 'beyond binary' to store more data than just 0s and 1s.

MULTI-STATE MEMORY: MORE THAN JUST ZEROES AND ONES

Multi-state memory is an extremely promising technology for future data storage, with the ability to store data in more than a single bit (ie, 0 or 1) allowing much higher storage density (amount of data stored per unit area.

This circumvents the plateauing of benefits historically offered by 'Moore's Law', where component size halved abut every two years. In recent years, the long-predicted plateauing of Moore's Law has been observed, with charge leakage and spiralling research and fabrication costs putting the nail in the Moore's Law coffin.

Non-volatile, multi-state memory (NMSM) offers energy efficiency, high, nonvolatility, fast access, and low cost.

Storage density is dramatically enhanced without scaling down the dimensions of the memory cell, making memory devices more efficient and less expensive.

NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTER MIMICKING THE HUMAN BRAIN

Multi-state memory also enables the proposed future technology neuromorphic computing, which would mirror the structure of the human brain. This radically-different, brain-inspired computing regime could potentially provide the economic impetus for adoption of a novel technology such as NMSM.

NMSMs allow analog calculation, which could be vital to intelligent, neuromorphic networks, as well as potentially helping us finally unravel the working mechanism of the human brain itself.

THE STUDY

The paper reviews device architectures, working mechanisms, material innovation, challenges, and recent progress for leading NMSM candidates, including:

Flash memory

magnetic random-access memory (MRAM)

resistive random-access memory (RRAM)

ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM)

phase-change memory (PCM)

While building a muscle damage model in a cultured system, a research collaboration between Kumamoto University and Nagasaki University in Japan has found that components leaking from broken muscle fibers activate "satellite" muscle stem cells. While attempting to identify the proteins that activate satellite cells, they found that metabolic enzymes, such as GAPDH, rapidly activated dormant satellite cells and accelerated muscle injury regeneration. This is a highly rational and efficient regeneration mechanism in which the damaged muscle itself activates the satellite cells that begin the regeneration process.

Skeletal muscle is made up of bundles of contracting muscle fibers and each muscle fiber is surrounded by satellite cells--muscle stem cells that can produce new muscle fibers. Thanks to the work of these satellite cells, muscle fibers can be regenerated even after being bruised or torn during intense exercise. Satellite cells also play essential roles in muscle growth during developmental stages and muscle hypertrophy during strength training. However, in refractory muscle diseases like muscular dystrophy and age-related muscular fragility (sarcopenia), the number and function of satellite cells decreases. It is therefore important to understand the regulatory mechanism of satellite cells in muscle regeneration therapy.

In mature skeletal muscle, satellite cells are usually present in a dormant state. Upon stimulation after muscle injury, satellite cells are rapidly activated and proliferate repeatedly. During the subsequent myogenesis, they differentiate and regenerate muscle fibers by fusing with existing muscle fibers or with together. Of these three steps (satellite cell activation, proliferation, and muscle differentiation), little is known about how the first step, activation, is induced.

Since satellite cells are activated when muscle fibers are damaged, researchers hypothesized that muscle damage itself could trigger activation. However, this is difficult to prove in animal models of muscle injury so they constructed a cell culture model in which single muscle fibers, isolated from mouse muscle tissue, were physically damaged and destroyed. Using this injury model, they found that components leaking from the injured muscle fibers activated satellite cells, and the activated cells entered the G1 preparatory phase of cell division. Further, the activated cells returned to a dormant state when the damaged components were removed, thereby suggesting that the damaged components act as the activation switch.

The research team named the leaking components "Damaged myofiber-derived factors" (DMDFs), after the broken muscle fibers, and identified them using mass spectrometry. Most of the identified proteins were metabolic enzymes, including glycolytic enzymes such as GAPDH, and muscle deviation enzymes that are used as biomarkers for muscle disorders and diseases. GAPDH is known as a "moonlighting protein" that has other roles in addition to its original function in glycolysis, such as cell death control and immune response mediation. The researchers therefore analyzed the effects of DMDFs, including GAPDH, on satellite cell activation and confirmed that exposure resulted in their entry into the G1 phase. Furthermore, the researchers injected GAPDH into mouse skeletal muscle and observed accelerated satellite cell proliferation after subsequent drug-induced muscle damage. These results suggest that DMDFs have the ability to activate dormant satellite cells and induce rapid muscle regeneration after injury. The mechanism by which broken muscle activates satellite cells is a highly effective and efficient tissue regeneration mechanism.

"In this study, we proposed a new muscle injury-regeneration model. However, the detailed molecular mechanism of how DMDFs activate satellite cells remains an unclear issue for future research. In addition to satellite cell activation, DMDF moonlighting functions are expected to be diverse," said Associate Professor Yusuke Ono, leader of the study. "Recent studies have shown that skeletal muscle secretes various factors that affect other organs and tissues, such as the brain and fat, into the bloodstream, so it may be possible that DMDFs are involved in the linkage between injured muscle and other organs via blood circulation. We believe that further elucidation of the functions of DMDFs could clarify the pathologies of some muscle diseases and help in the development of new drugs."

In addition to the financial statements and balance sheet, an investor should also go through the notes and understand their content, says Juha Mäki, M.Sc.(Eng.), M.Sc.(Econ. & Bus. Adm.), who is defending his doctoral dissertation in University of Vaasa.

For example, the valuation of a company's investment properties in the financial statements may bring surprises depending on whether the company has performed the valuation itself or used an external party for it.

According to Mäki's dissertation, an external appraiser provides more conservative, i.e., more careful values for investment properties than when the company prepares the valuation. In this case, the financial statements of companies that value their investment properties themselves may give a more positive impression about the financial situation.

"Indeed, it will be interesting to see measures after the current pandemic, when, as a result of possibly changed buying behaviour, the values of shopping centres and, because of increased recommendations for remote working, the values of office real estate, should be decreased", says Mäki.

In his dissertation, Mäki has reviewed the possibility to select the valuation and reporting of the value of investment properties between the traditional depreciation method or the so-called fair value method.

"When applying the fair value method, the consequences of changes in the valuation of investment properties can be significant, because a decreased value is recorded directly as "expense" in the financial statements and correspondingly, an increase as "income". In the investment property business, there are examples of companies whose result exceeds their turnover", says Mäki.

In the European Union, publicly listed companies prepare their financial statements in accordance with the IFRS standards (International Financial Reporting Standards). The guidelines regulate about the basic principles for preparing financial statements but also provide opportunities for selecting between various reporting methods.

Reporting requirements a compromise between the best and excessive information as well as the expenses incurred

According to Mäki, the easiest solution from the standpoint of stakeholders, such as investors and financers, would be a requirement to only use an external party for determining fair value in the preparation of financial statements and reporting all the relevant information in the notes.

The preparers of the IFRS standards must, however, take into account the amount of reporting costs and readers of annual reports possibly getting tired of excessive information. The key is to identify the most essential information for investors and to present it in a concise way.

The purpose of the balancing is, after all, to increase the ease of adopting IFRS and therefore increase its use globally.

Use of IFRS is the sum of a company's internal and external factors

It was also discovered in Mäki's dissertation that companies tend to select the traditional depreciation method in cases where the annual report does not have a significant impact with regard to communication with stakeholders.

In other words, a company's diversified ownership has a positive impact on selecting the fair value model in the valuation of real estate investments. The same phenomenon is to an extent visible in financial sector companies. On the other hand, companies in Scandinavia and Great Britain use fair value reporting more often compared with the rest of the European Union. The reason for this is likely to be legislation history before the adoption of the IFRS standards.

Development of the guidelines (here, IFRS 13) has, on the other hand improved the quality of financial statements, however, a simple, briefer reporting may be as effective from the standpoint of stakeholders.

"Using external parties for determining fair value seems to also have a positive impact on the amount of information asymmetry, i.e., on how equal a position investors at different levels are as regards the necessary underlying information. Therefore, the impact of external valuators as experts is similar to that of large audit firms (Big 4)", Mäki estimates.

The small Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth, encountered by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on Jan 1 2019, is so far the most distant and most primitive object ever explored by a spacecraft. The discoveries from the mission have provided detailed information on the object's shape, geology, color and composition, which help people to reshape the knowledge and understanding of planetesimal origin and planet formation.

The revealed shape of Arrokoth, which is bilobed with highly flattened lobes both aligned to its equatorial plane, is regarded to be the biggest surprise of the flyby. The contact binary is believed to be merged gently by two separate bodies that formed close together and at low velocity, orbited each other. On the other hand, how the flattened lobes formed is still under investigation.

An international research team led by Assoc. Prof. ZHAO Yuhui from the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has built and applied a mass-loss-driven shape evolution model (MONET) and suggested that the current flattened shape of Arrokoth could be of evolutionary origin due to volatile outgassing in a timescale of about 1-100 Myr, which provides a natural explanation for the flattening shape of the body.

The study was published in Nature Astronomy on Oct. 5.

A Science publication led by Dr. Will Grundy from Lowell Observatory suggested an early sublimation history of Arrokoth. During the formation of the solar system, the region where Arrrokoth locates could have been a distinct environment in the cold, dust-shaded midplane of the outer nebula. The low temperatures enabled volatile such as CO and CH4 freeze onto dust grains and compose planetesimals. When the nebular dust cleared after Arrokoth's formation, solar illumination would have raised its temperature and hence rapidly driven off the condensed CO and CH4.

Will the sublimation induced mass loss process change the shape of the body, and how?

The researchers from the PMO and Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, started to investigate this topic in 2018, not specifically for (486958) Arrokoth, but for all the small icy bodies in our Solar System. It took three years to develop the numerical tools (MONET model), analyze the observational data from space missions, such as the Rosetta mission of ESA, and investigate how solar driven mass loss shape the global structure as well as local topography of small bodies.

Their research suggested that even weak solar driven mass loss rates play an important role in shape evolution of a small icy bodies when sustained over long periods, and the evolved shape highly depends on the configuration of the body's orbit and spin states.

Starting from the merger of a spherical planetesimal and an oblate one, the flattening of Arrokoth's shape is a natural outcome due to a favourable combination of its large obliquity, small eccentricity and mass-loss rate variation with solar flux, resulting in nearly symmetric erosion between north and south hemispheres.

Due to the orientation of Arrokoth, both polar regions experience continuous solar illumination during polar days (with strong mass loss), while the equatorial regions are dominated by diurnal variations year round. Therefore, the polar regions reach higher peak temperatures than the equator and experience more sublimation than the equatorial regions, and hence lead to the flattening.

The flattening process most likely occurred early in the evolution history of the body, and could proceed rather quickly, in a timescale of about 1-100 Myr, during the presence of super volatile ices in the near subsurface layers.

In addition, the researchers self-consistently demonstrated that the induced torques would play a negligible role in the planetestimal's spin state change during the mass loss phase.

This study suggested that sublimation mass loss could be a ubiquitous process and dominant in shaping the structure of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), granted that there were no catastrophic collision reshaping the body in their later history. Furthermore, while cold classical KBOs reserve their shape sculptured by early outgassing, the structure of Centaurs and Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs) would be further modified by the same scenario once they enter their current orbit configuration from the Kuiper Belt, under sublimation of different volatile species.

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged all facets of human endeavours, and seven months later the economic effects are particularly being felt

How the world can leverage the positive and negative effects of COVID-19 to build a new, more resilient and low-carbon economy has been analysed by a group of academics led by WMG, University of Warwick

A more sustainable model based on circular economy framework could help the world recover financially from COVID-19, whilst facilitating the attainment of net zero carbon goals

The World's economy is feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with many industries under threat. A group of researchers from the UK, Malaysia, Nigeria, UAE and Japan, led by WMG, University of Warwick have concluded that adopting circular economy strategies would be the best way for the world's economy to recover, whilst enabling the transition to a low-carbon economy.Dr Taofeeq Ibn-Mohammed

The World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 pandemic on the 11th March 2020, which saw global supply chains severely disrupted and strained, and the financial market unsettled, resulting in a cross-border economic disaster. Lockdowns and border closures shattered the core sustaining pillars of modern world economies, with the economic shock due to these measures still being weighed across the globe.

In the paper, 'A critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy and ecosystems and opportunities for circular economy strategies', published in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling sees a group of researchers led by WMG, at the University of Warwick, critically analysed the negative and positive impacts of the pandemic. To make the world resilient post-COVID-19, the adoption of circular economy framework is recommended for all sectors.

The pandemic had many effects on everyone's lives, from not leaving the house, being infected and possibly hospitalised, and even losing a loved one. It has had a strain on those who were furloughed or even lost their jobs, and the mental health of the populace. Economically, the effects can be felt everywhere due to the colossal financial loss across both the macro and micro levels of the economy, including the global supply chains and international trade, tourism and aviation and many other sectors, hampering the attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, the pandemic has provoked some natural changes in behaviour and attitudes with positive influences on human health and the planet including:

Improvements of air quality, in fact in the UK it's thought more lives have been saved by the reduced air pollutants compared to the number of people who died with COVID-19 in China, for example.

Reduction in environmental noise and traffic congestions has led to an increase in the number of people exercising outside to enjoy the atmosphere.

Less tourism induced by the pandemic, resulting in less exploitation of the beaches, leading to increased cleanliness.

Decline in global primary energy use. For instance coal use was down 8%, 60% less oil, and electricity plummeted by 20% compared to the first quarter of 2019, leading to record low global CO2 emissions.

Triggering the need for diversification and circularity of supply chains, and evinced the power of public policy for tackling urgent socio-economic crises.

The researchers have examined the impacts of the pandemic and its interplay with circular economy, to evaluate how it could be embraced to rebuild the world's economy.

Dr Taofeeq Ibn-Mohammed, from WMG, University of Warwick comments:

"The pandemic has highlighted the environmental folly of 'extract, produce, use and dump' economic model of material and energy flows, however the short term resolutions to cope with pandemic will not be sustainable in the long-run, as they do not reflect improvements in economic structures of the global economy.

"We therefore propose circular economy adoptions for all industries, with different strategies for each one. For example, embracing the transformative capabilities of digital technologies for supply chain resilience by leveraging: big data analytics for streamlining supplier selection processes; cloud computing to facilitate and manage supplier relationships; and Internet of Things for enhancing logistics and shipping processes.

"The post-COVID-19 investments needed to accelerate towards more resilient, low carbon and circular economies should also be integrated into the stimulus packages for economic recovery being promised by governments, since the shortcomings in the dominant linear economic model are now recognised and the gaps to be closed are known."

The "spikelet meristem" (SM) plays a central role during the development of the grass inflorescence. Meristems are plant cells or tissues that have the capacity to produce new organs - in this case spikelets. To do this, however, cells destined to become SM must first attain the SM identity. This is achieved, among other things, by gene regulation. As a result, cells develop normally from meristem to organ. The process thus runs from the undifferentiated plant cell to the differentiated organ.

To better understand grass inflorescence architecture, mutants can be very revealing to geneticists. The COM1 barley mutant e.g. is compromised in a way that the corresponding cells cannot perceive or convert the SM identity signal. "Ultimately, the signal transmission does not function properly, so that the cells cannot attain their correct cell identity," explains Dr. Naser Poursarebani, first-author of the study and discoverer of the COM1 gene. To put it simple, the cell does not know what to do in this situation. "Thus, spikelet formation along the main axis of the barley spike, the rachis, cannot proceed normally."

Ultimately, instead of producing a spikelet, a kind of "branch" occurs that looks like a small secondary spike. "Such 'branching', however, is very untypical for all spike-forming grasses belonging to the tribe Triticeae", Prof. Dr. Thorsten Schnurbusch, head of the independent research group Plant Architecture, HEISENBERG Professor of the IPK and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and initiator of the study confirms.

In barley, COM1 normally ensures that meristem cells develop into spikelets by influencing the properties of their cell walls and thus ultimately controlling cell growth. COM1's contribution to this identity signal is also its newly discovered function, which is not found in other grasses such as rice, maize, sorghum or twigs (Brachypodium distachyon L.). Barley COM1 function is thus fundamentally different from those above-mentioned grass species, in which the gene rather promotes the formation of inflorescence branches. "From a botanical point of view, COM1 is therefore in any case an important genetic factor for spike formation and shape, about which little has been known until now", explains Prof. Dr. Schnurbusch.

Barley belongs to the grass family (Poaceae) and was domesticated from the wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) ancestor in the area of the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago. Scientists suspect that the simplified, less complex spike architecture of Triticeae species is related to the spread of those species into zones with a more temperate climate and adaptation to cooler conditions. The newly gained insights into spike development can aid to better understand grass inflorescence evolution but possibly may also help to increase barley's yield potential.

Pioneering analysis of 200 million-year-old teeth belonging to the earliest mammals suggests they functioned like their cold-blooded counterparts - reptiles, leading less active but much longer lives.

The research, led by the University of Bristol, UK and University of Helsinki, Finland, published today in Nature Communications, is the first time palaeontologists have been able to study the physiologies of early fossil mammals directly, and turns on its head what was previously believed about our earliest ancestors.

Fossils of teeth, the size of a pinhead, from two of the earliest mammals, Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium, were scanned for the first time using powerful X-rays, shedding new light on the lifespan and evolution of these small mammals, which roamed the earth alongside early dinosaurs and were believed to be warm-blooded by many scientists. This allowed the team to study growth rings in their tooth sockets, deposited every year like tree rings, which could be counted to tell us how long these animals lived. The results indicated a maximum lifespan of up to 14 years - much older than their similarly sized furry successors such as mice and shrews, which tend to only survive a year or two in the wild.

"We made some amazing and very surprising discoveries. It was thought the key characteristics of mammals, including their warm-bloodedness, evolved at around the same time," said lead author Dr Elis Newham, Research Associate at the University of Bristol, and previously PhD student at the University of Southampton during the time when this study was conducted.

"By contrast, our findings clearly show that, although they had bigger brains and more advanced behaviour, they didn't live fast and die young but led a slower-paced, longer life akin to those of small reptiles, like lizards."

Using advanced imaging technology in this way was the brainchild of Dr Newham's supervisor Dr Pam Gill, Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol and Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum London, who was determined to get to the root of its potential.

"A colleague, one of the co-authors, had a tooth removed and told me they wanted to get it X-rayed, because it can tell all sorts of things about your life history. That got me wondering whether we could do the same to learn more about ancient mammals," Dr Gill said.

By scanning the fossilised cementum, the material which locks the tooth roots into their socket in the gum and continues growing throughout life, Dr Gill hoped the preservation would be clear enough to determine the mammal's lifespan.

To test the theory, an ancient tooth specimen belonging to Morganucodon was sent to Dr Ian Corfe, from the University of Helsinki and the Geological Survey of Finland, who scanned it using high-powered Synchrotron X-ray radiation.

"To our delight, although the cementum is only a fraction of a millimetre thick, the image from the scan was so clear the rings could literally be counted," Dr Corfe said.

It marked the start of a six-year international study, which focused on these first mammals, Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium, known from Jurassic rocks in South Wales, UK, dating back nearly 200 million years.

"The little mammals fell into caves and holes in the rock, where their skeletons, including their teeth, fossilised. Thanks to the incredible preservation of these tiny fragments, we were able to examine hundreds of individuals of a species, giving greater confidence in the results than might be expected from fossils so old," Dr Corfe added.

The journey saw the researchers take some 200 teeth specimens, provided by the Natural History Museum London and University Museum of Zoology Cambridge, to be scanned at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and the Swiss Light Source, among the world's brightest X-ray light sources, in France and Switzerland, respectively.

In search of an exciting project, Dr Newham took this up for the MSc in Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol, and then a PhD at the University of Southampton.

"I was looking for something big to get my teeth into and this more than fitted the bill. The scanning alone took over a week and we ran 24-hour shifts to get it all done. It was an extraordinary experience, and when the images started coming through, we knew we were onto something," Dr Newham said.

Dr Newham was the first to analyse the cementum layers and pick up on their huge significance.

"We digitally reconstructed the tooth roots in 3-D and these showed that Morganucodon lived for up to 14 years, and Kuehneotherium for up to nine years. I was dumbfounded as these lifespans were much longer than the one to three years we anticipated for tiny mammals of the same size," Dr Newham said.

"They were otherwise quite mammal-like in their skeletons, skulls and teeth. They had specialised chewing teeth, relatively large brains and probably had hair, but their long lifespan shows they were living life at more of a reptilian pace than a mammalian one. There is good evidence that the ancestors of mammals began to become increasingly warm-blooded from the Late Permian, more than 270 million years ago, but, even 70 million years later, our ancestors were still functioning more like modern reptiles than mammals"

While their pace-of-life remained reptilian, evidence for an intermediate ability for sustained exercise was found in the bone tissue of these early mammals. As a living tissue, bone contains fat and blood vessels. The diameter of these blood vessels can reveal the maximum possible blood flow available to an animal, critical for activities such as foraging and hunting.

Dr Newham said: "We found that in the thigh bones of Morganucodon, the blood vessels had flow rates a little higher than in lizards of the same size, but much lower than in modern mammals. This suggests these early mammals were active for longer than small reptiles but could not live the energetic lifestyles of living mammals."

Using telescopes from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other organisations around the world, astronomers have spotted a rare blast of light from a star being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. The phenomenon, known as a tidal disruption event, is the closest such flare recorded to date at just over 215 million light-years from Earth, and has been studied in unprecedented detail. The research is published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"The idea of a black hole 'sucking in' a nearby star sounds like science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event," says Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK, and the lead author of the new study. But these tidal disruption events, where a star experiences what's known as spaghettification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification) as it's sucked in by a black hole, are rare and not always easy to study. The team of researchers pointed ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT - https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/) and ESO's New Technology Telescope (NTT - https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/ntt/) at a new flash of light that occurred last year close to a supermassive black hole, to investigate in detail what happens when a star is devoured by such a monster.

Astronomers know what should happen in theory. "When an unlucky star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy, the extreme gravitational pull of the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material," explains study author Thomas Wevers, an ESO Fellow in Santiago, Chile, who was at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK, when he conducted the work. As some of the thin strands of stellar material fall into the black hole during this spaghettification process, a bright flare of energy is released, which astronomers can detect.

Although powerful and bright, up to now astronomers have had trouble investigating this burst of light, which is often obscured by a curtain of dust and debris. Only now have astronomers been able to shed light on the origin of this curtain.

"We found that, when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards that obstructs our view," explains Samantha Oates, also at the University of Birmingham. This happens because the energy released as the black hole eats up stellar material propels the star's debris outwards.

The discovery was possible because the tidal disruption event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_disruption_event) the team studied, AT2019qiz, was found just a short time after the star was ripped apart. "Because we caught it early, we could actually see the curtain of dust and debris being drawn up as the black hole launched a powerful outflow of material with velocities up to 10 000 km/s," says Kate Alexander, NASA Einstein Fellow at Northwestern University in the US. "This unique 'peek behind the curtain' provided the first opportunity to pinpoint the origin of the obscuring material and follow in real time how it engulfs the black hole."

The team carried out observations of AT2019qiz, located in a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Eridanus, over a 6-month period as the flare grew in luminosity and then faded away. "Several sky surveys discovered emission from the new tidal disruption event very quickly after the star was ripped apart," says Wevers. "We immediately pointed a suite of ground-based and space telescopes in that direction to see how the light was produced."

Multiple observations of the event were taken over the following months with facilities that included X-shooter (https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/x-shooter/) and EFOSC2 (https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/ntt/efosc2/) , powerful instruments on ESO's VLT and ESO's NTT, which are situated in Chile. The prompt and extensive observations in ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and radio light revealed, for the first time, a direct connection between the material flowing out from the star and the bright flare emitted as it is devoured by the black hole. "The observations showed that the star had roughly the same mass as our own Sun, and that it lost about half of that to the monster black hole, which is over a million times more massive," says Nicholl, who is also a visiting researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

The research helps us better understand supermassive black holes and how matter behaves in the extreme gravity environments around them. The team say AT2019qiz could even act as a 'Rosetta stone' for interpreting future observations of tidal disruption events. ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), planned to start operating this decade, will enable researchers to detect increasingly fainter and faster evolving tidal disruption events, to solve further mysteries of black hole physics.

A rare blast of light, emitted by a star as it is sucked in by a supermassive black hole, has been spotted by scientists using telescopes from around the world.

The phenomenon, known as a tidal disruption event, is the closest flare of its kind yet recorded, occurring just 215 million light-years from Earth. It is caused when a star passes too close to a black hole and the extreme gravitational pull from the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material - a process called 'spaghettification'. During this process some of the material falls into the black hole, releasing a bright flare of energy which astronomers can detect.

Tidal disruption events are rare and not always easy to study because they are usually obscured by a curtain of dust and debris. An international team of scientists led by the University of Birmingham were able to study this event in unprecedented detail because it was detected just a short time after the star was ripped apart.

Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope, the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network, and the Neil Gehrel's Swift Satellite, the team was able to monitor the flare, named AT2019qiz, over a six-month period as it grew brighter and then faded away.

The study's findings are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. This was supported and funded in part by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

"The idea of a black hole 'sucking in' a nearby star sounds like science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event," says lead author Dr Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham. "We were able to investigate in detail what happens when a star is eaten by such a monster."

"When a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards that obstructs our view," explains Samantha Oates, also at the University of Birmingham. "This happens because the energy released as the black hole eats up stellar material propels the star's debris outwards."

In the case of AT2019qiz, astronomers were able to identify the phenomenon early enough to observe the whole process.

"Several sky surveys discovered emission from the new tidal disruption event very quickly after the star was ripped apart," says Thomas Wevers, an ESO Fellow in Santiago, Chile, who was at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK, when he conducted the work. "We immediately pointed a suite of ground-based and space telescopes in that direction to see how the light was produced."

The prompt and extensive observations in ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and radio light revealed, for the first time, a direct connection between the material flowing out from the star and the bright flare emitted as it is devoured by the black hole.

"The observations showed that the star had roughly the same mass as our own Sun, and that it lost about half of that to the black hole, which is over a million times more massive," said Nicholl, who is also a visiting researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

"Because we caught it early, we could actually see the curtain of dust and debris being drawn up as the black hole launched a powerful outflow of material with velocities up to 10 000 km/s," said Kate Alexander, NASA Einstein Fellow at Northwestern University in the US. "This unique 'peek behind the curtain' provided the first opportunity to pinpoint the origin of the obscuring material and follow in real time how it engulfs the black hole."

The research helps astronomers better understand supermassive black holes and how matter behaves in the extreme gravity environments around them. The team say AT2019qiz could even act as a 'Rosetta stone' for interpreting future observations of tidal disruption events. ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), planned to start operating this decade, will enable researchers to detect increasingly fainter and faster evolving tidal disruption events, to solve further mysteries of black hole physics.

It's been three years since the landmark detection of a neutron star merger from gravitational waves. And since that day, an international team of researchers led by University of Maryland astronomer Eleonora Troja has been continuously monitoring the subsequent radiation emissions to provide the most complete picture of such an event.

Their analysis provides possible explanations for X-rays that continued to radiate from the collision long after models predicted they would stop. The study also reveals that current models of neutron stars and compact body collisions are missing important information. The research was published on October 12, 2020, in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"We are entering a new phase in our understanding of neutron stars," said Troja, an associate research scientist in UMD's Department of Astronomy and lead author of the paper. "We really don't know what to expect from this point forward, because all our models were predicting no X-rays and we were surprised to see them 1,000 days after the collision event was detected. It may take years to find out the answer to what is going on, but our research opens the door to many possibilities.

The neutron star merger that Troja's team studied--GW170817--was first identified from gravitational waves detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory and its counterpart Virgo on August 17, 2017. Within hours, telescopes around the world began observing electromagnetic radiation, including gamma rays and light emitted from the explosion. It was the first and only time astronomers were able to observe the radiation associated with gravity waves, although they long knew such radiation occurs. All other gravity waves observed to date have originated from events too weak and too far away for the radiation to be detected from Earth.

Seconds after GW170817 was detected, scientists recorded the initial jet of energy, known as a gamma ray burst, then the slower kilonova, a cloud of gas which burst forth behind the initial jet. Light from the kilonova lasted about three weeks and then faded. Meanwhile, nine days after the gravity wave was first detected, the telescopes observed something they'd not seen before: X-rays. Scientific models based on known astrophysics predicted that as the initial jet from a neutron star collision moves through interstellar space, it creates its own shockwave, which emits X-rays, radio waves and light. This is known as the afterglow. But such an afterglow had never been observed before. In this case, the afterglow peaked around 160 days after the gravity waves were detected and then rapidly faded away. But the X-rays remained. They were last observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory two and a half years after GW170817 was first detected.

The new research paper suggests a few possible explanations for the long-lived X-ray emissions. One possibility is that these X-rays represent a completely new feature of a collision's afterglow, and the dynamics of a gamma ray burst are somehow different than expected.

"Having a collision so close to us that it's visible opens a window into the whole process that we rarely have access to," said Troja, who is also a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It may be there are physical processes we have not included in our models because they're not relevant in the earlier stages that we are more familiar with, when the jets form."

Another possibility is that the kilonova and the expanding gas cloud behind the initial jet of radiation may have created their own shock wave that took longer to reach Earth.

"We saw the kilonova, so we know this gas cloud is there, and the X-rays from its shock wave may just be reaching us," said Geoffrey Ryan, a postdoctoral associate in the UMD Department of Astronomy and a co-author of the study. "But we need more data to understand if that's what we're seeing. If it is, it may give us a new tool, a signature of these events that we haven't recognized before. That may help us find neutron star collisions in previous records of X-ray radiation."

A third possibility is that something may have been left behind after the collision, perhaps the remnant of an X-ray emitting neutron star.

Much more analysis is needed before researchers can confirm exactly where the lingering X-rays came from. Some answers may come in December 2020, when the telescopes will once again be aimed at the source of GW170817. (The last observation was in February, 2020.)

"This may be the last breath of an historical source or the beginning of a new story, in which the signal brightens up again in the future and may remain visible for decades or even centuries," Troja said. "Whatever happens, this event is changing what we know about neutron star mergers and rewriting our models."