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Researchers have introduced a model based on the Langevin equation that offers new insights into the formation of exotic nuclei. This development could enhance the ability to produce rare isotopes that are valuable for various applications in science and medicine.

The study is published in the journal Nuclear Science and Techniques.

A research team led by Professor Feng-Shou Zhang has developed and applied this model to study multinucleon transfer (MNT) processes in heavy-ion collisions. The model provides a more precise understanding of energy dissipation during heavy-ion collisions, which is important for predicting nuclear reaction outcomes. Simulations of nuclear reactions, such as ⁴⁰Ar + ²³²Th, ¹³⁶Xe + ²³⁸U, and ¹³⁶Xe + ²⁰⁹Bi, have shown that the model’s predictions of cross-sections and angular distributions are in good agreement with experimental results.

Modeling nuclear reactions, particularly those involved in producing exotic nuclei, is challenging due to their complexity. Conventional methods like projectile fragmentation and fusion-evaporation have limitations, particularly in synthesizing new transuranium and superheavy elements.

This model addresses these challenges by simplifying the process, reducing the number of adjustable parameters, and focusing on key physical processes. It successfully simulates energy and scattering angle distributions, offering insights into deep inelastic and quasi-fission processes.

A simulated trajectory for the ⁴⁰Ar + ²³²Th collision at E_lab = 388 MeV. The trajectory and its projections of the evolution of total kinetic energy (TKE), elongation, and mass of heavier nucleus are illustrated. For each impact parameter, 500 trajectories have been simulated. Credit: Ying Zou
Profile of the trajectory in Fig.2 at the indicated time. The Langevin equation model, as a phenomenological approach, simulates nuclear reactions by solving for the evolution of collective coordinates. The system’s shape evolution depicted in the figure illustrates the collective coordinates during the simulation. Credit: Ying Zou
Center-of-mass angular distribution of the damped cross section for events with TKE within the indicated range in the ¹³⁶Xe + ²⁰⁹Bi reaction at E_lab = 1130 MeV. Histogram is the calculation. Credit: Ying Zou

The improved accuracy of MNT reaction predictions provided by this model could facilitate the production of isotopes that are difficult to generate using other methods. These isotopes are valuable for scientific research and medical applications, such as diagnostics and treatments. According to Prof. Zhang, the goal is to keep the model comprehensive yet practical for experimental use.

This development represents a step forward in nuclear physics, contributing to the understanding of exotic nuclei production through MNT reactions. Further refinement of the model may enhance its utility in guiding future research and improving rare isotope production processes.

This research was conducted in collaboration with Beijing Normal University, Beijing Academy of Science and Technology, and the National Laboratory of Heavy Ion Accelerator of Lanzhou.

More information:
Ying Zou et al, Investigation of multinucleon transfer processes in the Langevin equation model, Nuclear Science and Techniques (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s41365-024-01557-4

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New insights into exotic nuclei creation using Langevin equation model (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-insights-exotic-nuclei-creation-langevin.html

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Study warns of $557 trillion in stranded assets by 2050 if fossil fuel investments continue

September 30, 2024

Study warns of 7 trillion in stranded assets by 2050 if fossil fuel investments continue

Vast 'stranded assets' if world continues investing in polluting industries — Graphical representation of the steps to create the capital stock portfolio. Data sources are shown in italics. (1) World Bank Wealth Accounts and Penn World Tables 10. (2) ONS, Statistics Canada, and Statistics Netherlands. (3) OECD Economic Outlook database. Where this is unavailable, average growth rates from the World Bank Wealth Accounts are used. (4) Covers 1980–2026. Extrapolated to 2030. Credit: *Environmental Research: Climate* (2024). DOI: 10.1088/2752-5295/ad7313

Continued investment in carbon-intensive industries will drastically increase the amount of “stranded assets” as the world moves to net-zero emissions, researchers warn.

The study assesses how much capital—the value of physical assets like buildings and, uniquely in this study, the value of workers—could be stranded (losing its value) if the world reaches net zero emissions in 2050.

The paper, published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate is titled “Stranded human and produced capital in a net-zero transition.“

Stranded assets could include a worker losing their job and future income as their industry declines, or a coal power station losing value as renewables take over.

The study—by Exeter and Lancaster universities—compares two scenarios to investigate how delaying the transition could affect the total capital value at risk accumulated by 2050: one where the world completely stopped investing in carbon-intensive industries in 2020, and another where this is delayed to 2030.

A complete switch-off from fossil fuel investment in 2020 would have left $117 trillion of global capital at risk—while delaying to 2030 raises this to $557 trillion (37% of total global capital today).

While these are the maximum possible figures—and they could be reduced by retraining workers and retrofitting assets—they highlight the vast economic risks from continued investment in declining industries.

“The longer we wait, the more disorderly the transition will be,” said Cormac Lynch, from the University of Exeter. “An orderly transition would place communities in a good position to take advantage of new opportunities as the economy changes—while a disorderly one could put some areas at risk of post-industrial decline.”

Asked if the findings could support calls to delay or abandon net-zero policies, Daniel Chester from Lancaster University said, “The impacts of climate change itself are likely to be far more costly. And parts of the transition are happening already. For example, renewables like solar PV are already at cost-parity with fossil fuel equivalents, and electric vehicles are not far behind.

“What our research shows is that it makes practical sense, not just ethical sense, to embrace the transition now rather than resist it. Instead of delaying the transition, policymakers should be transforming educational and financial systems—creating new opportunities, especially in regions dependent on fossil-fuel industries—to ensure communities are not left behind.”

The world must now cut carbon emissions at an unprecedented rate to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, thereby limiting the worst effects of climate change.

This will inevitably create new economic opportunities but will also threaten the value of some existing occupations and physical assets, investments in which have been called a “carbon bubble.”

The researchers collated available data to estimate the makeup of the global stock of capital assets and their economic lifespans.

They then simulated the early retirement of these capital assets (e.g. buildings decommissioned earlier than expected or workers being made unemployed) necessary to achieve the net zero targets set by governments, comparing these outcomes to scenarios where they are allowed to retire at the end of their normal working life.

More information:
Daniel Chester et al, Stranded human and produced capital in a net-zero transition, Environmental Research: Climate (2024). DOI: 10.1088/2752-5295/ad7313

Provided by
University of Exeter

Citation:
Study warns of $557 trillion in stranded assets by 2050 if fossil fuel investments continue (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
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Researchers urge governments to enlist emotion when fighting fake news

September 30, 2024

Real people with relatable stories can help public agencies counter social media disinformation campaigns and “fake news” around issues such as vaccination programs, academic researchers say.

They examined how Laura Brennan, a 25-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer, used her scientifically informed yet emotionally charged social media posts to significantly shift public perceptions of Ireland’s HPV vaccination program. Her compelling personal story countered the aggressive anti-vaccine rhetoric and led to a positive turnaround in public opinion.

She worked closely with the Irish Health Service Executive (IHSE), who supported her and provided her with facts and insights into both the vaccine and cervical cancer.

Dr. Itziar Castello, Reader in Corporate Social Responsibility at Bayes Business School, City St George’s University of London, and colleagues from ESSCA and Surrey universities, concluded that the “emotional legitimacy” provided by people with real life experience of the issue can be “transferred” to the public body involved.

Laura approached the IHSE in 2015 to discuss misleading social media posts promoting scare stories claiming young people had developed serious illnesses after receiving the HPV vaccine. The vaccine is offered to adolescents in both Ireland and the UK to protect against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer.

Deploying emotional intelligence

In the paper, which has been published in Business & Society, the academics note that the anti-vaxxers’ misinformation campaign had driven Irish HPV vaccination rates down from 85% to 50% in less than two years. A counter-campaign by the IHSE “based on logic and facts had limited success in boosting vaccination uptake.”

While governments and other public bodies have worked with external partners to combat fake news, often spread by social media, this is largely confined to fact-checking or verification of official data. Previous research, the paper suggests, has not tackled misinformation aimed at attacking an organization’s “legitimacy” and the role emotion plays in concert with science in responses to such attacks.

Dr. Castello said, “The case study analysis shows the importance of emotional intelligence—of not just relying on facts and science but using emotions to take on and expose fake news. People remember how you make them feel and often that memory is stronger than their recall of facts and figures.

“That approach could have been applied to the recent riots in the UK and should be considered as the NHS rolls out the autumn COVID and flu vaccination programs. We know that misinformation has undermined vaccination campaigns ranging from MMR to shingles, COVID and flu.”

Laura’s involvement, initially as a patient advocate and then as the public face of the IHSE’s HPV campaigns, proved a turning point in the battle against the anti-vaxxers.

With extensive support from the IHSE, Laura (pictured above) raised public awareness of the vaccination program and challenged anti-vaxxer propaganda. This involved using “emotional batteries”—a metaphor used to describe how “emotional energy” is generated through positive and negative emotions sparked by first-hand accounts, mostly through social media posts.

She posted images and videos of both emotional moments involving her treatment and life-limiting diagnosis and ‘relatable’ footage of herself in the pub with friends having a normal night out.

The paper says, “Her capacity to emotionally connect with the public through social and mass media was decisive in boosting Ireland’s HPV vaccination rates to 74%.”

Co-author Dr. Marie Joachim, who teaches at the ESSCA School of Management in France, explains, “It is crucial that public institutions acknowledge emotions in their response to fake news. They need to rely on third parties like Laura to emotionally connect with the public and, in the end, regain legitimacy.”

However, the case study emphasizes the importance of the IHSE’s close and supportive relationship with Laura—ensuring she had the knowledge and confidence to forcefully rebut social media posts.

More information:
Marie Joachim et al, Moving Beyond “Facts Are Facts”: Managing Emotions and Legitimacy After a Fake News Attack, Business & Society (2024). DOI: 10.1177/00076503241281632

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City University London

Citation:
Researchers urge governments to enlist emotion when fighting fake news (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-urge-emotion-fake-news.html

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Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services

September 30, 2024

DirecTV is buying Dish and Sling, a deal it has sought to complete for years, as the company seeks to better compete against streaming services that have become dominant.

DirecTV said Monday that it will acquire Dish TV and Sling TV from its owner EchoStar in a debt exchange transaction that includes a payment of $1, plus the assumption of approximately $9.8 billion in debt.

The prospect of a DirecTV-Dish combo has long been rumored, with headlines about reported talks popping up over the years. And the two almost merged more than two decades ago—but the Federal Communications Commission blocked their owners’ then-$18.5 billion deal, citing antitrust concerns.

The pay-for-TV market has shifted significantly since. As more and more consumers tune into online streaming giants, demand for more traditional satellite continues to shrink. And, although high-profile acquisitions have proven to be particularly tough under the Biden-Harris administration, that may make regulators more inclined to approve DirecTV and Dish’s pairing this time around.

DirecTV said Monday that the transaction will help it bring smaller content packages to consumer at lower prices and essentially provide a one-stop shopping experience for entertainment programming.

It’s hoping this will appeal to those who have left satellite video services for streaming. The company said that combined, DirecTV and Dish have collectively lost 63% of their satellite customers since 2016.

“DirecTV operates in a highly competitive video distribution industry,” DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow said in a statement. “With greater scale, we expect a combined DirecTV and Dish will be better able to work with programmers to realize our vision for the future of tv, which is to aggregate, curate, and distribute content tailored to customers’ interests, and to be better positioned to realize operating efficiencies while creating value for customers through additional investment.”

The current deal could provide a key lifeline for EchoStar. The Colorado-based telecommunications company has reportedly faced the prospect of bankruptcy as it continues to burn through cash and see losses pile up.

In a recent securities filing, EchoStar disclosed that it had just $521 million in “cash on hand.” And the company forecast negative cash flows for the remainder of the year—while also pointing to major looming debt payments, with more than $1.98 billion of debt set to mature in November.

“With an improved financial profile, we will be better positioned to continue enhancing and deploying our nationwide 5G Open RAN wireless network,” EchoStar President and CEO Hamid Akhavan said. “This will provide U.S. wireless consumers with more choices and help to drive innovation at a faster pace.”

By shedding Dish, EchoStar will be able to focus its efforts elsewhere, like its wireless carrier Boost Mobile.

“We are playing to win in the wireless business. there’s no doubt about it,” Akhavan said during a conference call, adding that the company may need to seek additional funding and financing in the future to achieve its goals.

Shares of EchoStar fell more than 14% in Monday midday trading.

The DirecTV and Dish deal is targeted to close in 2025’s fourth quarter. But it is contingent on several factors, including regulatory approvals and bondholders writing off nearly $1.6 billion in debt related to Dish.

The combined company will be based in El Segundo, California.

“We believe regulatory approval is likely to be greater than 50% given the opportunity for the combined company to improve its competitiveness to offer a range of linear video packages as well as to take a more aggressive stance on offering a live streaming video product,” Michael Rollins of Citi Investment Research wrote in a note to clients.

But the analyst added that there’s still significant uncertainty related to whether or not the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice and other possible regulators give the necessary approvals, based on previous talks with company management and industry experts over the last few years.

Shortly before DirecTV made its announcement, AT&T said it was selling its remaining stake in DirecTV to private equity firm TPG in a deal valued at about $7.6 billion.

The move ends the communication giant’s remaining ties to the entertainment industry.

AT&T said Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it will receive payments from TPG and DirecTV for its remaining 70% stake in the satellite TV company. This includes $1.7 billion in the second half of the year and $5.4 billion next year. The remaining amount will be paid in 2029.

AT&T purchased DirectTV for $48.5 billion back in 2015. But in 2021, following the loss of millions of customers, AT&T sold a 30% stake of the business to TPG for $16.25 billion.

AT&T’s deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

Citation:
Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-satellite-directv-buys-rival-dish.html

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The evolutionary history of rats has more holes than Swiss cheese, but researchers are trying to close them

September 30, 2024

Rats and humans have lived together for thousands of years. However, written historical records of rats migrating alongside people are sparse and some are entangled with myth and folklore.

Researchers at Drexel University, who are working to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary history of wild and domestic brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), recently presented a review of research on domestication events and genomic studies in the journal Science. The piece brings together findings about how rats moved from one place to another, particularly in association with humans.

Led by Jason Munshi-South, Ph.D., Betz Chair and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, researchers scoured written records, archaeological remains and genomic data to bring together what we know about the evolutionary history of rats.

“We’re trying to understand how rats travel with humans and how, along the way, they have changed because of the types of environments humans have created,” said Munshi-South.

Using recent discoveries about the evolutionary history of brown rats and advances in zooarchaeology and population genomics, the research team anticipates new inquiries in the field will help to answer questions about the evolution of human migrations, trade corridors and economies of various societies—using rats as a proxy to understand what humans were doing in various places and times throughout history.

One example of a waypoint in this evolutionary history happened in Philadelphia in 1892, when Wistar Institute became one of the first biomedical research institutions to take wild rats from the streets and begin breeding them for laboratory research. Laboratory strains of rats, still used for biomedical models across the United States, can be traced back to Wistar.

According to the Drexel researchers, thousands of high-quality whole genomes from ancient and contemporary wild rats, as well as lab strains, will be sequenced in the next decade, thanks to advances in technology and a growing research focus on rats.

These resources, coupled with analytical advances, should vastly improve the understanding of the movement of brown rats around the world, their adaptations to diverse environmental conditions—particularly cities and other human-dominated contexts—and of the novel functional variation that will likely improve the utility of rats as biomedical models.

“The mindset of people about rats, typically, is that they’re pests. But now, people are reconsidering them as something important in evolutionary history—an organism that we should care about for other reasons,” said Munshi-South.

More information:
Jason Munshi-South et al, The evolutionary history of wild and domestic brown rats ( Rattus norvegicus ), Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adp1166

Provided by
Drexel University

Citation:
The evolutionary history of rats has more holes than Swiss cheese, but researchers are trying to close them (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-evolutionary-history-rats-holes-swiss.html

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