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World

Are ‘Heat Pumps’ the Answer to Heat Waves? Some Cities Think So.

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Many climate experts say the long-term solution is to replace most of those fossil-fuel appliances with electric versions powered by a greener grid. But in practice, that’s difficult. While cities like Berkeley have rewritten building codes to ban new buildings from using gas, more than a dozen mostly red states have passed laws explicitly forbidding cities from doing so. And that still leaves the question of what to do about millions of existing homes.

Stephen Pantano, the chief research officer at CLASP, said that encouraging people to install heat pumps when they’re going to buy central air-conditioners anyway could be a less intrusive way to start electrifying heating. “We found that a relatively small investment of around $3 billion to $12 billion nationwide could have a big impact on energy use,” he said of the group’s new proposal. “It’s hard to find many ideas with that much bang for the buck.”

An even more drastic strategy, he added, would be to figure out how to replace more gas furnaces with heat pumps, so that the heat pump handles virtually all the heating and cooling. But that could require larger heat pumps for many homes or additional electrical upgrades and other retrofits. His group’s proposal for simply swapping out air-conditioners is a more modest first step.

Berkeley, which pioneered the idea of banning gas in new buildings, is now considering this approach. Only 10 percent of the city’s homes currently have air-conditioning, but officials estimate that fraction could triple in the hotter decades ahead. “Berkeley should work with A/C installers and heat pump manufacturers to ensure these homes install heat pump systems instead,” officials wrote in a recent draft strategy for electrifying existing homes.

“It’s a great idea,” said Jigar Shah, who directs the Department of Energy’s loan programs office. His office is exploring ways to help low-income Americans adopt technologies like heat pumps. “Heat pumps aren’t some untested technology,” he said. “We’re really in a place where it’s time to scale this up.”

Others were more cautious. “There are places where electrification may be beneficial, and places where it might not, and there are a lot of details that need to be worked out,” said Francis Dietz, a spokesman for the Air-Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration Institute, an industry trade group. If more homes relied on heat pumps instead of gas furnaces, for instance, that could put a strain on electric grids in the winter, especially in colder parts of the country, he said.

There are other obstacles, too: Many Americans still aren’t familiar with heat pumps, and some have had bad experiences with older models that didn’t work as well in cold weather. While heat pump technology has improved significantly in the past decade, many contractors remain wary of them. And, of course, the name “heat pump” doesn’t sound like a device you want to install when it’s sweltering out.

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Sports

The Giants questions Kenny Golladay must answer in NFL free agency

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Kenny Golladay enjoying a fulfilling visit and coming to the realization he wants to continue his NFL career by signing with the Giants are not the only checkpoints that must be crossed to get a deal done. The Giants need to be convinced the tall and talented wide receiver is right for them, and that is no sure thing.

It is not Golladay, the player, that gives the Giants pause here. They know he would instantly become the physical presence lacking in their passing game, understanding Golladay running down the field and hauling in passes from Daniel Jones changes the complexion of their attack. They also realize the guy is not the second coming of Randy Moss. Still, the Giants are also quite aware of the psychic jolt of energy a Golladay signing would inject into the fan base, and, no doubt, into those who roam the halls and work in the building where the Giants work and practice.

The Giants insisted on an in-person visit with Golladay, 27, because they want to get in a room with him and get a feel for who he is as a person, if he will accept hard coaching from a demanding Joe Judge staff and how willing he is to buy into Judge’s sense of team and sacrifice. The visit began Thursday evening and continued into Friday.

This is not to say the Giants think Golladay is a bad guy or that there are red flags flying with this player. They simply need answers to questions they have and those answers can only be gleaned by old-fashioned interpersonal contact.

The medical concerns stem from a hip flexor injury that limited Golladay to only five games for the Lions in 2020. He missed the first two games with a hamstring issue and then hurt his hip in a Nov. 1 loss to the Colts. He did not play again, but was not put on injured reserve, as the Lions held out hope for his return. There was speculation Golladay, looking for a new contract, was not rushing back onto the field.

Darrell Bevell, the Lions interim head coach at the time, said last season that claim was unwarranted. Asked if Golladay was making a business decision by not playing, Bevell told reporters in Detroit, “I can be clear that he is not.”

A source told The Post that during the 2020 season, Golladay turned down what was believed to be a long-term extension with the Lions for $18 million a year. He saw top receivers Amari Cooper, Keenan Allen and DeAndre Hopkins all sign new deals averaging at least $20 million per year, and a source said Golladay was eyeing that annual compensation. He is not going to get that in free agency, and probably will not come close.

Kenny Golladay’s NFL free agency meeting with the Giants continued Friday.
AP

Golladay last season staged a media boycott lasting longer than a month. In October, he posted a picture on Instagram along with the caption “This s–t gone cost you!” It was believed that was referring to the Lions not anteing up with a new contract. Not long after that, he “liked” an Instagram post by the NFL stating head coach Matt Patricia has been fired.

The Giants need to hear about what went down here. Remember, Judge told Golden Tate to stay home on a road trip to Washington for what Judge deemed selfish acts by Tate. That Tate’s wife complained about his usage on social media did not help. Tate was released this offseason.

Late last season, Golladay broke his media silence and said “I mean, everybody knows what I’m capable of doing. I wasn’t worried about like, ‘I need to play, man. I got to show the people.’ People know who Kenny Golladay is and I was really trying to make sure my body was right. I don’t want to go out there and put bad stuff on tape.”

Judge has a relationship with Patricia from their years coaching together with the Patriots on Bill Belichick’s staff. Judge can reach out to Patricia – and no doubt has – about Golladay. Belichick also has Patricia as a resource. That the Giants and Patriots, two teams that went into free agency looking for receivers, did not jump at the chance to sign Golladay is telling. That Golladay, considered by many the top receiver on the market, was not an early signing by anyone in the league is also telling.

The Giants this offseason added Kyle O’Brien to their personnel department and this is another source for Golladay information. O’Brien spent the past five seasons with the Lions and was there in 2017 when Golladay was selected out of Northern Illinois in the third round of the NFL Draft.

Judge will meet with Golladay, as will general manager Dave Gettleman. Spending time together could assuage the Giants’ concerns with Golladay and a signing could follow. They have to like what they see and hear. The same with Golladay. This is not a sure thing.

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Science

How Did This Skull End Up All Alone in a Cave in Italy? We Finally Have an Answer

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It was found in 2015 – an isolated clue to a macabre mystery set in motion thousands of years in the past.

This ancient puzzle consisted of just a single piece: a solitary human cranium, discovered all by itself with no other skeletal remains around, resting inside a cave in Bologna, Italy, at the center of a cavernous depression the locals call Dolina dell’Inferno (Hell’s sinkhole).

 

It was not an easy thing to find.

The well-concealed skull, missing its lower jawbone, could only be reached by traversing a difficult cave passage called the Meandro della cattiveria (Maze of Malice), and then ascending a vertical shaft to a height of 12 meters (39 ft), where the cranium rested on a rocky ledge.

Due to difficulty in accessing the spot, speleologists weren’t able to retrieve the cranium until 2017, at which point researchers had a chance to study this mysterious, ancient specimen.

The lonesome skull turned out to be ancient indeed, with radiocarbon dating suggesting the cranium belonged to an individual who lived sometime between 3630 and 3380 BCE, placing them within the archaeological context of the early Eneolithic (aka Chalcolithic) period of the region.

Other Eneolithic human remains have been found in the general area; not in Hell’s sinkhole, but in a rock shelter approximately 600 meters (nearly 2,000 ft) away from the cave in which the skull was found.

So, the greater context makes some sense. But how exactly did this solitary skull get so far away from its Eneolithic counterparts, positioned high up on a ledge, yet buried within a malicious maze of a cave, and concealed at a depth of 26 metres (85 ft) below the ground?

 

According to anthropologist Maria Giovanna Belcastro from the University of Bologna – the first author of a new analysis of the skull’s unusual fate – a number of factors were at play.

Belcastro’s team investigated the cranium, which the team says most likely came from a young woman, aged between 24 and 35.

Evidence of various lesions on the sides of the skull are likely the result of human manipulations of the skull at the time of the woman’s death, the researchers suggest, perhaps reflecting ritualistic acts to remove flesh from the cranium, as part of a funeral custom.

Other lesions on the cranium, some believed to have been sustained antemortem (prior to death), may have been due to an injury that killed the woman, and other markings could be evidence of a kind of medical treatment delivered by her people.

As for how the skull became so separated from the rest of its skeleton, the researchers hypothesize that the cranium may have intentionally or accidentally been removed from the rest of the body, before rolling or being pushed along the ground by water or mud flows, until it somehow came to the edge of Hell’s sinkhole, ultimately falling within the depression.

 

Over time, water infiltration in the sinkhole could have dissolved gypsum deposits within the cave, creating the vertical shaft beside the skull’s secure resting place.

“The reactivated cave passage started evolving downward, with the formation of a lateral sinking creek and carving out the maze lying below,” the researchers write in their paper.

“This new reactivation was able to entrench approximately 12 meters of gypsum, connecting to the lowering base level.”

Various sediments lodged within the cranial cavity offer some support for this argument, suggesting matter got stuck inside the skull during water or debris flow, as the skull made its improbable, chaotic journey into the cave. Signs of other trauma to the cranium suggest plenty of bumps along the ride.

This hypothetical interpretation isn’t what necessarily happened, of course, which is something we can never truly know for sure. But as the researchers point out, of all the parts of a human skeleton, the shape of a skull makes it the most suited to doing a runaway.

“If the skeleton was intact by the time of this sequence of events, other skeletal elements, different in shape and size, might have remained stuck elsewhere and dispersed during transportation,” the authors suggest.

“The cranium would have rolled more easily than other skeletal parts in a water stream and debris flow… During its decomposition and those dynamic phases, it would have been filled with sediment. Therefore, it would have reached the cave and come to a stop on the plateau where it was found.”

The findings are reported in PLOS One.

 

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Science

Scientists Found a Way to Communicate With People Who Are Asleep And Dreaming

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Scientists have identified a new phenomenon they describe as “interactive dreaming”, where people experiencing deep sleep and lucid dreams are able to follow instructions, answer simple yes-or-no questions, and even solve basic mathematics problems.

 

As well as adding a whole new level of understanding to what happens to our brains when we’re dreaming, the new study could eventually teach us how to train our dreams – to help us towards a particular goal, for example, or to treat a particular mental health problem.

There’s plenty about the psychology of sleep that remains a mystery, including the rapid eye movement (REM) stage where dreams usually occur. Being able to get responses from sleepers in real time, rather than relying on reports afterwards, could be hugely useful.

“We found that individuals in REM sleep can interact with an experimenter and engage in real-time communication,” says psychologist Ken Paller from Northwestern University. “We also showed that dreamers are capable of comprehending questions, engaging in working-memory operations, and producing answers.

“Most people might predict that this would not be possible – that people would either wake up when asked a question or fail to answer, and certainly not comprehend a question without misconstruing it.”

The researchers worked with 36 individuals in experiments across four different laboratories. One volunteer had narcolepsy and frequently experienced lucid dreams, while the others varied in terms of their experience with lucid dreaming.

 

During the deepest stages of sleep, as monitored by electroencephalogram (EEG) instruments, scientists interacted with the study participants through spoken audio, flashing lights, and physical touch: the sleepers were asked to answer simple maths questions, to count light flashes or physical touches, and to respond to basic yes or no questions (like “can you speak Spanish?”).

Answers were given through eye movements or facial muscle movements agreed in advance. Across 57 sleep sessions, at least one correct response to a query was observed in 47 percent of the sessions where lucid dreaming was confirmed by the participant.

Confirmation of the lucid dreaming states was done in a blinded fashion, with sleeper responses needing to be agreed upon by several witnesses.

A summary of the experiments. (Konkoly et al., Current Biology 2021)

“We put the results together because we felt that the combination of results from four different labs using different approaches most convincingly attests to the reality of this phenomenon of two-way communication,” says neuroscientist Karen Konkoly from Northwestern University.

“In this way, we see that different means can be used to communicate.”

 

The individuals involved in the study were usually woken up after a successful response in order to get them to report on their dreams. In some cases, the external inputs were remembered as being outside or overlaid on the dream; in others, they came through something inside the dream (like a radio).

In the published study the researchers compare trying to communicate with lucid dreamers to trying to get in touch with an astronaut in space, and it’s the immediacy of the responses that make this new approach so exciting.

The research could be helpful in the future study of dreams, memory, and how important sleep is for fixing memories in place. It might also come in useful in the treatment of sleeping disorders, and further down the line might even give us a way to train what we see in our dreams.

“These repeated observations of interactive dreaming, documented by four independent laboratory groups, demonstrate that phenomenological and cognitive characteristics of dreaming can be interrogated in real time,” write the researchers in their paper.

“This relatively unexplored communication channel can enable a variety of practical applications and a new strategy for the empirical exploration of dreams.”

The research has been published in Current Biology.

 

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Health

As 170,000 in NH register for COVID-19 vaccine, officials answer frequently asked questions about process

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State health officials say they’re ahead of schedule with the Phase 1B registration process for COVID-19 vaccines. But along the way, there have been some common questions from those signing up.As of Saturday afternoon, about 170,000 people had registered, and 160,000 of them had already received an email to schedule their appointments. But some have been leery of clicking on the link provided in the email to schedule an appointment because the email doesn’t come from the state. Instead, the email comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Vaccine Administration Management System, also known as VAMS. State health officials say that is the correct and safe email. “That’s a legitimate email, and that email is going to allow you to create an account in that system, so you can go ahead and take that next step for scheduling an appointment,” said Dr. Beth Daly, chief of the state’s Bureau of Infectious Disease Control.Because of the concerns, the state has sent a separate email with tips to help navigate the process.Another frequent question surrounds registering two people at once. Officials say after you register yourself, you can check the box saying you’re bringing another eligible person. When you write in their name, you will only need to make one appointment and simply bring that person with you.“People are expecting to be able to schedule both persons, but it’s just one appointment,” Daly said. You cannot use the same email address for two separate registrations. So if you separately register for someone else and then later try to register for yourself, you’ll need to use a different email address or call 211 to schedule the appointment. Some senior citizens who have signed up expressed frustration with the registration and scheduling process. “For the folks my age and older who are trying to do it, it needs to be a little bit more user friendly,” said Robert Scheifele of Nashua. But not all experiences have been difficult. James and Barbara Graham registered, successfully booked their appointment for Saturday and have already received their first doses.“I was kind of amazed. I thought it would be longer,” said Barbara Graham.In about a week, the state is expecting to move to a process where registration and scheduling are all done in one step.>> Step by step: How to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine through New Hampshire’s Phase 1B

State health officials say they’re ahead of schedule with the Phase 1B registration process for COVID-19 vaccines. But along the way, there have been some common questions from those signing up.

As of Saturday afternoon, about 170,000 people had registered, and 160,000 of them had already received an email to schedule their appointments.

But some have been leery of clicking on the link provided in the email to schedule an appointment because the email doesn’t come from the state. Instead, the email comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Vaccine Administration Management System, also known as VAMS.

State health officials say that is the correct and safe email.

“That’s a legitimate email, and that email is going to allow you to create an account in that system, so you can go ahead and take that next step for scheduling an appointment,” said Dr. Beth Daly, chief of the state’s Bureau of Infectious Disease Control.

Because of the concerns, the state has sent a separate email with tips to help navigate the process.

Another frequent question surrounds registering two people at once.

Officials say after you register yourself, you can check the box saying you’re bringing another eligible person. When you write in their name, you will only need to make one appointment and simply bring that person with you.

“People are expecting to be able to schedule both persons, but it’s just one appointment,” Daly said.

You cannot use the same email address for two separate registrations. So if you separately register for someone else and then later try to register for yourself, you’ll need to use a different email address or call 211 to schedule the appointment.

Some senior citizens who have signed up expressed frustration with the registration and scheduling process.

“For the folks my age and older who are trying to do it, it needs to be a little bit more user friendly,” said Robert Scheifele of Nashua.

But not all experiences have been difficult. James and Barbara Graham registered, successfully booked their appointment for Saturday and have already received their first doses.

“I was kind of amazed. I thought it would be longer,” said Barbara Graham.

In about a week, the state is expecting to move to a process where registration and scheduling are all done in one step.

>> Step by step: How to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine through New Hampshire’s Phase 1B

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Science

What happens to the brain on sudden impact? Egg yolks could hold the answer

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A rotational deceleration experiment with egg yolk, using an egg scrambler and measuring the soft matter deformation, to find possible answers about concussions.

A growing number of professional football players have been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), likely the result of suffering repeated concussions or similar repetitive brain trauma over the course of their careers. It’s also common in other high-contact sports like boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing, and ice hockey. We might find clues about the underlying physics by studying the deformation of egg yolks, according to a new paper published in The Physics of Fluids. This in turn could one day lead to better prevention of such trauma.

Egg yolk submerged in liquid egg white encased in a hard shell is an example of what physicists call “soft matter in a liquid environment.” Other examples include the red blood cells that flow through our circulatory systems and our brains, surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid (CBR) inside a hard skull.  How much a type of soft matter deforms in response to external impacts is a key feature, according to Villanova University physicist Qianhong Wu and his co-authors on this latest study. They point to red blood cells as an example. It’s the ability of red blood cells to change shape under stress (“erythrocyte deformability”) that lets them squeeze through tiny capillaries, for instance, and also triggers the spleen to remove red blood cells whose size, shape, and overall deformability have been too greatly altered.

In the case of traumatic brain injury, it is linked to how much the brain deforms in response to impact. The precise cause of CTE is still a matter of ongoing research, but the prevailing theory holds that repetitive brain trauma can damage blood vessels in the brain, causing inflammation and the growth of clumps of a protein called Tau. Eventually those clumps spread throughout the brain killing off brain cells. Those suffering from CTE often experience memory loss, depression, and in severe cases, dementia, among other symptoms.

Prior studies have shown that deformation of soft matter in a liquid environment occurs in response to sudden changes in the fluid field, such as shear flow or a sudden change of the flow pathway. Wu et al. were interested in the specific case of soft matter in a liquid environment that is also enclosed in a rigid container—like the yolk of an egg, surrounded by liquid egg white, all encased in a shell. They wondered if it was possible to break the yolk without breaking the shell, since it’s the case with most concussions that the brain can be damaged without cracking the skull.

  • (A) Translational impact setup. (B) Rotational impact setup.


    Ji Lang and Qianhong Wu

  • A) Reactions of egg yolk under translational impact. The shell was hit with a hammer to achieve translational acceleration. B) Reactions of egg yolk under rotational acceleration impact. C) Reactions of egg yolk under rotational deceleration impact.


    Ji Lang and Qianhong Wu

To answer that question, Wu et al. set up a simple preliminary experiment with a Golden Goose Egg Scrambler, a novel kitchen device that enables users to scramble an egg right in the shell. Wu’s team applied rotational forces to scramble the egg and were intrigued by how the egg yolk deformed and broke while the shell remained intact. That inspired them to conduct additional experiments to glean insight into the fundamental flow physics behind the effect.

They purchased fresh eggs from a local grocery store, removed the yolks and egg whites, and then placed them in a transparent rigid container, the better to monitor the deformation by recording the entire process with high-speed cameras. They built two separate apparatus. One administered so-called “translational impact”—i.e., striking the container directly—via a small hammer falling from a vertical guide rail (see Fig 1A in gallery), with a spring at the bottom enabling the container to move vertically. They used an accelerometer to measure the container’s acceleration.

For the second setup (see Fig 1B in gallery), they connected the container to an electric motor to study two types of rotational impact: accelerating rotational impact and decelerating rotational impact (i.e., when the outer contained is speeding up or slowing down as it rotates). They also peeled off the membranes surrounding the fresh yolks and suspended them in petri dishes filled with water, the better to study how those membranes, too, respond to stress.

Wu et al. were somewhat surprised to find that, in the case of translational impact, there was almost no deformation of the yolk. Instead, the entire container (and its contents) moved as a single rigid body. In the case of accelerating rotational impact, the team found that the yolk would start out in a spherical shape and then begin to stretch horizontally to form an ellipsoid. The yolk could maintain a stable ellipsoid shape for several minutes if the angular velocity was kept constant.

The most intriguing results occurred in the case of decelerating rotational impact. Here, the yolk began deforming significantly almost immediately, expanding horizontally and increasing its radius at the center—sufficient deformation to severely damage the yolk under sustained stress.

“We suspect that rotational, especially decelerational rotational, impact is more harmful to brain matter.”

To make sure this wasn’t primarily an effect of the yolk as a biomaterial, Wu et al. conducted the same experiment with synthesized soft capsules submerged in a calcium lactate solution, enclosed by a thin membrane of calcium alginate. They got similar results, confirming that “the dominant mechanism leading to the deformation of soft matter in a liquid environment is a result of mechanical forces instead of biological responses,” they wrote.

Based on this, “We suspect that rotational, especially decelerational rotational, impact is more harmful to brain matter,” said Wu, and that centrifugal force likely plays a critical role. “The large deformation of brain matter during this process induces the stretch of neurons and causes the damage.” This could explain why a boxer can get knocked out by a sharp blow to the chin. “Considering the chin is the farthest point from the neck, hitting on the chin could cause the highest rotational acceleration/deceleration of the head,” the authors concluded.

“Critical thinking, along with simple experiments within the kitchen, led to a series of systematic studies to examine the mechanisms that cause egg yolk deformation,” Wu said of the implications of their findings. “We hope to apply the lessons learned from it to the study of brain biomechanics as well as other physical processes that involve soft capsules in a liquid environment, such as red blood cells.”

DOI: Physics of Fluids, 2021. 10.1063/5.0035314  (About DOIs).

Listing image by Ji Lang/Qianhong Wu

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