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Potential Hidden Cause of Dementia Detected by Cedars-Sinai Research – Can Be Cured!
A recent Cedars-Sinai study indicates that some patients diagnosed with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia, an incurable condition causing loss of behavior control and daily living abilities, may actually have a treatable cerebrospinal fluid leak instead.
A Cedars-Sinai study suggests physicians treating dementia should look for cerebrospinal fluid leak—a treatable cause of an otherwise incurable condition.
Wouter Schievink, MD, director of the Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak and Microvascular Neurosurgery Program, said many patients with brain sagging—which can be detected through MRI—go undiagnosed, and he advises clinicians to take a second look at patients with telltale symptoms.
A new Cedars-Sinai study suggests that some patients diagnosed with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD)—an incurable condition that robs patients of the ability to control their behavior and cope with daily living—may instead have a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which is often treatable.
Researchers say these findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal
On the Left: An image of brain sagging. On the right: Post-op resolution of brain sagging. Credit: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulates in and around the brain and spinal cord to help cushion them from injury. When this fluid leaks into the body, the brain can sag, causing dementia symptoms. Schievink said many patients with brain sagging—which can be detected through MRI—go undiagnosed, and he advises clinicians to take a second look at patients with telltale symptoms.
“A knowledgeable radiologist, neurosurgeon or neurologist should check the patient’s MRI again to make sure there is no evidence for brain sagging,” Schievink said.
Wouter Schievink, MD. Credit: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Clinicians can also ask about a history of severe headaches that improve when the patient lies down, significant sleepiness even after adequate nighttime sleep, and whether the patient has ever been diagnosed with a Chiari brain malformation, a condition in which brain tissue extends into the spinal canal. Brain sagging, Schievink said, is often mistaken for a Chiari malformation.
Even when brain sagging is detected, the source of a CSF leak can be difficult to locate. When the fluid leaks through a tear or cyst in the surrounding membrane, it is visible on CT myelogram imaging with the aid of contrast medium.
Schievink and his team recently discovered an additional cause of CSF leak: the CSF-venous fistula. In these cases, the fluid leaks into a vein, making it difficult to see on a routine CT myelogram. To detect these leaks, technicians must use a specialized CT scan and observe the contrast medium in motion as it flows through the cerebrospinal fluid.
In this study, investigators used this imaging technique on 21 patients with brain sagging and symptoms of bvFTD, and they discovered CSF-venous fistulas in nine of those patients. All nine patients had their fistulas surgically closed, and their brain sagging and accompanying symptoms were completely reversed.
“This is a rapidly evolving field of study, and advances in imaging technology have greatly improved our ability to detect sources of CSF leak, especially CSF-venous fistula,” said Keith L. Black, MD, chair of the department of Neurosurgery and the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience at Cedars-Sinai. “This specialized imaging is not widely available, and this study suggests the need for further research to improve detection and cure rates for patients.”
The remaining 12 study participants, whose leaks could not be identified, were treated with nontargeted therapies designed to relieve brain sagging, such as implantable systems for infusing the patient with CSF. However, only three of these patients experienced relief from their symptoms.
“Great efforts need to be made to improve the detection rate of CSF leak in these patients,” Schievink said. “We have developed nontargeted treatments for patients where no leak can be detected, but as our study shows, these treatments are much less effective than targeted, surgical correction of the leak.”
Reference: “The reversible impairment of behavioral variant frontotemporal brain sagging syndrome: Challenges and opportunities” by Wouter I. Schievink, Marcel Maya, Zachary Barnard, Rachelle B. Taché, Ravi S. Prasad, Vikram S. Wadhwa, Franklin G. Moser and Miriam Nuño, 18 December 2022, Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions.
DOI: 10.1002/trc2.12367
11 Hidden iOS 16 Features That Will Make Using Your iPhone So Much Better
You might be happy with everything your iPhone can do, but if you’re running iOS 16, your phone is more powerful than you might think. Underneath all the major new features, like unsending text messages and a revamped lock screen, there are lesser known tools and settings that are just as impressive and can help make your day-to-day more efficient, interesting and fun.
I’m going to walk you through what to know about the best hidden gems in iOS 16, like password-protected photo albums and easily accessible Wi-Fi passwords.
Read more: All the New Features on iOS 16.3
And while you’re here, make sure you also brush up on the major new iOS 16 features you’ll love and a few that you might just hate (luckily, there’s a fix).
View and share saved Wi-Fi passwords
View and share saved Wi-Fi passwords Apple has allowed iOS users to share Wi-Fi passwords for a while now, but only by placing two Apple devices near each other. And if that feature didn’t automatically work, you couldn’t just dig out the password from your settings. Plus if you wanted to share a saved Wi-Fi password with someone else, like an Android user or someone on a computer, you had to remember the password. Until now.
In Settings, go to Wi-Fi and tap the tiny information icon to the right of the network you want the password for. To view the network password, tap the Password section and then use Face ID or enter your passcode to view it. You can then tap Copy to copy the password into your clipboard and share it.
You can view the password for any Wi-Fi network you’ve ever connected to, as long as you’re currently connected to it or near enough that it appears under My Networks.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Find and remove duplicate photos and videos
Maybe you’ve saved the same photo multiple times or downloaded a video more than once, resulting in duplicates littering up your photo album. It may not be a problem if you’ve got storage to spare, but you’re running out of space, you can now remove every single duplicate easily with iOS 16.
Read more: You Can Finally See Your Saved Wi-Fi Passwords on an iPhone
In Photos > Albums, you should see a new Duplicates album under Utilities. Apple scans through all of your photos and shows you any photo or video you’ve saved more than once in that album. From there, you can either delete any duplicates, or simply press Merge, which will keep the photo with the highest quality (and relevant data) and then move the others to the trash.
Merging will keep the highest quality photo and delete the rest.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Although you’ll probably want to go through each set of duplicates, to ensure that they’re actually exact copies and not similar photos, you can also hit Select > Select All > Merge to remove every single photo and video that Apple thinks is a duplicate, all at once.
Hang up a phone or FaceTime call with Siri
Siri does a lot of things. You can use the virtual assistant to send a text message, get directions or play music — but one thing she’s never been able to do is hang up a phone call. Weird right? Now that’s finally a possibility with iOS 16.
In Settings, go to Siri & Search and first make sure Listen for “Hey Siri” is toggled on. If it is, you should see a new option underneath — Call Hang Up. Go into that option and toggle on Call Hang Up. When you’re on a phone call or FaceTime video chat, simply say, “Hey, Siri,” and ask her to hang up your current call.
For this to work, Listen for “Hey Siri” must be toggled on first.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Pair Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons with your iPhone
Apple has long allowed you to pair third-party controllers, like the PS5 Sony DualSense and Xbox Core Controller, to your iPhone and iPad, in order to more comfortably play mobile video games like the Apple Arcade library, Minecraft and Call of Duty. Now you can add another console controller to that list.
If you own a Nintendo Switch, you can now pair your Joy-Con controllers to your iPhone or iPad running iOS 16. To start, hold down the little black pairing button on the Joy-Con, until the green lights start running back and forth. This means the device is in pairing mode. Next, open your iPhone and go to Settings > Bluetooth and select the Joy-Con from the list. Repeat this step with the other Joy-Con.
Watch this:
iOS 16: Powerful Features You May Have Missed
6:28
Hidden and Recently Deleted albums are now password protected
The Hidden album in the Photos app is clearly not hidden, seeing as anyone can easily find it. That makes it impractical for adequately hiding private photos and videos. While Apple does have an option to make the Hidden album “invisible,” anyone with access to your phone could make it visible again and view everything inside.
Thanks to iOS 16, you can now lock the Hidden album. You don’t actually need to do anything to toggle this feature on. If you want to check it out, launch the Photos app and go to the Albums tab at the bottom of the screen. If you scroll down, you’ll see a tiny lock next to the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums. To view the contents of those albums, you’ll need to use Face ID or your passcode.
The Hidden and Recently Deleted albums now require Face ID to be accessed.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Copy and paste photo and video edits
If you use the editor tool in the Photos app, you’ll be happy to learn that you can now copy and paste edits, including saturation, contrast and brightness, between photos. If you edit one photo or video and are happy with the look, you can paste those same exact edits to any other photo or video in your camera roll.
To do this, launch the Photos app and open a photo that’s been edited in full-screen. Next, tap on the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and then hit Copy Edits. This option will only appear if the photo has been edited within Photos, not any third-party photo editor. Finally, go to the photo you want to copy these edits over to, tap on the three-dot menu and then hit Paste Edits. After a second or so, you should see the photo edits appear.
This feature works between photos and videos.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Bring haptic feedback to your keyboard
The iPhone has long had haptic feedback. It’s what you feel underneath your fingertips whenever you attempt to delete an app from your home screen or enter the incorrect password on your lock screen. Strangely enough, haptic feedback has never been available for the stock iOS keyboard — until now.
If you want to enable a slight vibration for every single key you type in, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle on Haptic. The sound option you see is the loud and annoying clacking sound you might hear when you type in something and your phone isn’t on silent mode, so you can keep that disabled.
Every single time you type, you’ll feel a slight vibration for each key you hit.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Pin your favorite tabs in Safari
Safari caps your open tabs at 500, and if you’re nearing that limit, it might be pretty darn hard to find the exact tab you’re looking for. You could scroll endlessly, but there’s now an easier way to find the exact tab you’re looking for.
In Safari, if you press down on an open tab, you now have the option to hit Pin Tab. This will move that tab to the top of Safari, where it will exist as a tiny tab preview, permanently pinned there, which you can then tap to view. If you press down and unpin a tab, it will move to first in your grid of open tabs.
All your pinned tabs appear at the top of Safari.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Use Face ID while you’re lying down
If you’ve ever tried to unlock your iPhone while it’s vertical, like when you’re lying on your side, you might have noticed that it doesn’t work. You have to place your iPhone in portrait orientation, or upright, for Face ID to work. With iOS 16, you can finally use Face ID to unlock your iPhone when it’s in landscape orientation. However, for this to work, you must have an iPhone 13 or 14 running iOS 16.
Copy your screenshots to your clipboard without saving them
You don’t need to save a screenshot to your photo album to share it with someone else. A new iOS 16 feature allows you to take a screenshot, copy it to your clipboard, delete it from your phone and paste it where you see fit. After you take a screenshot, tap the screenshot preview that appears, hit Done on the top-right and then tap Copy and Delete to copy the screenshot to your clipboard.
If you take a lot of screenshots, this feature can help you save storage.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET
Remove more preinstalled Apple apps
Since iOS 10, you’ve been able to remove some preinstalled iOS applications like Stocks, Maps and Calculator — but not all of them. With the release of iOS 16, you can add three more apps to this list of ones you can remove: Find My, Clock and Health. However, deleting these apps can negatively affect and break support with other apps and connected devices, like your Apple Watch.
For more on iOS 16 and the iPhone, check out the iOS 16 Cheat Sheet.
Potential Hidden Cause of Dementia Discovered
Summary: Some patients diagnosed with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bv-FTD) may instead be suffering from a cerebrospinal fluid leak that leads to brain sagging.
Source: Cedars Sinai Medical Center
A new Cedars-Sinai study suggests that some patients diagnosed with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD)—an incurable condition that robs patients of the ability to control their behavior and cope with daily living—may instead have a cerebrospinal fluid leak, which is often treatable.
Researchers say these findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions, may point the way to a cure.
“Many of these patients experience cognitive, behavioral and personality changes so severe that they are arrested or placed in nursing homes,” said Wouter Schievink, MD, director of the Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak and Microvascular Neurosurgery Program and professor of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai.
“If they have behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia with an unknown cause, then no treatment is available. But our study shows that patients with cerebrospinal fluid leaks can be cured if we can find the source of the leak.”
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulates in and around the brain and spinal cord to help cushion them from injury. When this fluid leaks into the body, the brain can sag, causing dementia symptoms. Schievink said many patients with brain sagging—which can be detected through MRI—go undiagnosed, and he advises clinicians to take a second look at patients with telltale symptoms.
“A knowledgeable radiologist, neurosurgeon or neurologist should check the patient’s MRI again to make sure there is no evidence for brain sagging,” Schievink said.
Clinicians can also ask about a history of severe headaches that improve when the patient lies down, significant sleepiness even after adequate nighttime sleep, and whether the patient has ever been diagnosed with a Chiari brain malformation, a condition in which brain tissue extends into the spinal canal. Brain sagging, Schievink said, is often mistaken for a Chiari malformation.
Even when brain sagging is detected, the source of a CSF leak can be difficult to locate. When the fluid leaks through a tear or cyst in the surrounding membrane, it is visible on CT myelogram imaging with the aid of contrast medium.
Schievink and his team recently discovered an additional cause of CSF leak: the CSF-venous fistula. In these cases, the fluid leaks into a vein, making it difficult to see on a routine CT myelogram. To detect these leaks, technicians must use a specialized CT scan and observe the contrast medium in motion as it flows through the cerebrospinal fluid.
In this study, investigators used this imaging technique on 21 patients with brain sagging and symptoms of bvFTD, and they discovered CSF-venous fistulas in nine of those patients. All nine patients had their fistulas surgically closed, and their brain sagging and accompanying symptoms were completely reversed.
“This is a rapidly evolving field of study, and advances in imaging technology have greatly improved our ability to detect sources of CSF leak, especially CSF-venous fistula,” said Keith L. Black, MD, chair of the department of Neurosurgery and the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience at Cedars-Sinai.
“This specialized imaging is not widely available, and this study suggests the need for further research to improve detection and cure rates for patients.”
The remaining 12 study participants, whose leaks could not be identified, were treated with nontargeted therapies designed to relieve brain sagging, such as implantable systems for infusing the patient with CSF. However, only three of these patients experienced relief from their symptoms.
“Great efforts need to be made to improve the detection rate of CSF leak in these patients,” Schievink said.
“We have developed nontargeted treatments for patients where no leak can be detected, but as our study shows, these treatments are much less effective than targeted, surgical correction of the leak.”
See also
About this dementia research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Cedars Sinai Medical Center
Contact: Press Office – Cedars Sinai Medical Center
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“The reversible impairment of behavioral variant frontotemporal brain sagging syndrome: Challenges and opportunities” by Wouter I. Schievink et al. Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions
Abstract
The reversible impairment of behavioral variant frontotemporal brain sagging syndrome: Challenges and opportunities
Introduction
Due to loss of brain buoyancy, spontaneous spinal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks cause orthostatic headaches but also can cause symptoms indistinguishable from behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) due to severe brain sagging (including the frontal and temporal lobes), as visualized on brain magnetic resonance imaging. However, the detection of these CSF leaks may require specialized spinal imaging techniques, such as digital subtraction myelography (DSM).
Methods
We performed DSM in the lateral decubitus position under general anesthesia in 21 consecutive patients with frontotemporal dementia brain sagging syndrome (4 women and 17 men; mean age 56.2 years [range: 31–70 years]).
Results
Nine patients (42.8%) were found to have a CSF-venous fistula, a recently discovered type of CSF leak that cannot be detected on conventional spinal imaging. All nine patients underwent uneventful surgical ligation of the fistula. Complete or near-complete and sustained resolution of bvFTD symptoms was obtained by all nine patients, accompanied by reversal of brain sagging, but in only three (25.0%) of the twelve patients in whom no CSF-venous fistula could be detected (P = 0.0011), and who were treated with non-targeted therapies.
Discussion
Concerns about a spinal CSF leak should not be dismissed in patients with frontotemporal brain sagging syndrome, even when conventional spinal imaging is normal. However, even with this specialized imaging the source of the loss of spinal CSF remains elusive in more than half of patients.
The True Extent of Global Warming Has Been Hidden, Scientists Warn : ScienceAlert
Increasingly tempestuous winds have been sweeping dust from Earth’s deserts into our air at an increasing rate since the mid-1800s. New data suggests that this uptick has masked up to 8 percent of current global warming.
Using satellite data and ground measurements, researchers detected a steady increase in these microscopic airborne particles since 1850. Soil dust in ice cores, ocean sediments, and peat bogs shows the level of mineral dust in the atmosphere grew by around 55 percent over that time.
By scattering sunlight back into space and disrupting high-altitude clouds that can act like a blanket trapping warmer air below, these dust particles have an overall cooling effect, essentially masking the true extent of the current extra heat energy vibrating around our atmosphere.
Atmospheric physicist Jasper Kok from the University of California, Los Angeles, explains that this amount of dust would have decreased warming by about 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Without the dust, our current warming to date would be 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius).
“We show desert dust has increased, and most likely slightly counteracted greenhouse warming, which is missing from current climate models,” says Kok. “The increased dust hasn’t caused a whole lot of cooling – the climate models are still close – but our findings imply that greenhouse gases alone could cause even more climate warming than models currently predict.”
Higher wind speeds, drier soils, and changes in human land use all influence the amount of dust swept into our atmosphere. Some of this then falls into our oceans, feeding important nutrients like iron to photosynthesizing plankton that draw down carbon as they grow and reproduce.
This complicated desert dust cycle has yet to be factored into our climate models, and whether or not the amount of desert air particles will increase or decrease in the future is still unclear.
“By adding the increase in desert dust, which accounts for over half of the atmosphere’s mass of particulate matter, we can increase the accuracy of climate model predictions,” says Kok. “This is of tremendous importance because better predictions can inform better decisions of how to mitigate or adapt to climate change.”
This research was published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment.
Atmospheric dust may have hidden true extent of global heating | Climate crisis
Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions.
Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions.
The analysis by atmospheric scientists and climate researchers in the US and Europe attempts to tally the varied, complex ways in which dust has affected global climate patterns, concluding that overall, it has worked to somewhat counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gasses. The study, published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, warns that current climate models fail to take into account the effect of atmospheric dust.
“We’ve been predicting for a long time that we’re headed toward a bad place when it comes to greenhouse warming,” said Jasper Kok, an atmospheric physicist at UCLA who led the research. “What this research shows is that so far, we’ve had the emergency brake on.”
About 26m tons of dust are suspended in our atmosphere, scientists estimate. Its effects are complicated.
Dust, along with synthetic particulate pollution, can cool the planet in several ways. These mineral particles can reflect sunlight away from the Earth and dissipate cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere that warm the planet. Dust that falls into the ocean encourages the growth of phytoplankton – microscopic plants in the ocean – that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
Dust can also have a warming effect in some cases – darkening snow and ice, and prompting them to absorb more heat.
But after they tallied everything up, it seemed clear to researchers that the dust had an overall cooling effect.
“There are all these different factors that play into the role of mineral dusts in our atmosphere,” said Gisela Winckler, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. “This is the first review of its kind to really bring all these different aspects together.”
Although climate models have so far been able to predict global heating with quite a bit of accuracy, Winckler said the review made clear that these predictions haven’t been able to pin down the role of dust especially well.
Limited records from ice cores, marine sediment records, and other sources suggest that dust overall had also been increasing since pre-industrial times – in part due to development, agriculture, and other human impacts on landscapes. But the amount of dust also seems to have been decreasing since the 1980s.
More data and research is needed to better understand these dust patterns, Winckler said, and better predict how they will change in coming years.
But if dust in the atmosphere is decreasing, the warming effects of greenhouse gases could speed up.
“We could start to experience faster and faster warming because of this,” Kok said. “And maybe we’re waking up to that reality too late.”
Atmospheric dust may have hidden true extent of global heating | Climate crisis
Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions.
Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions.
The analysis by atmospheric scientists and climate researchers in the US and Europe attempts to tally the varied, complex ways in which dust has affected global climate patterns, concluding that overall, it has worked to somewhat counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gasses. The study, published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, warns that current climate models fail to take into account the effect of atmospheric dust.
“We’ve been predicting for a long time that we’re headed toward a bad place when it comes to greenhouse warming,” said Jasper Kok, an atmospheric physicist at UCLA who led the research. “What this research shows is that so far, we’ve had the emergency brake on.”
About 26m tons of dust are suspended in our atmosphere, scientists estimate. Its effects are complicated.
Dust, along with synthetic particulate pollution, can cool the planet in several ways. These mineral particles can reflect sunlight away from the Earth and dissipate cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere that warm the planet. Dust that falls into the ocean encourages the growth of phytoplankton – microscopic plants in the ocean – that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
Dust can also have a warming effect in some cases – darkening snow and ice, and prompting them to absorb more heat.
But after they tallied everything up, it seemed clear to researchers that the dust had an overall cooling effect.
“There are all these different factors that play into the role of mineral dusts in our atmosphere,” said Gisela Winckler, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. “This is the first review of its kind to really bring all these different aspects together.”
Although climate models have so far been able to predict global heating with quite a bit of accuracy, Winckler said the review made clear that these predictions haven’t been able to pin down the role of dust especially well.
Limited records from ice cores, marine sediment records, and other sources suggest that dust overall had also been increasing since pre-industrial times – in part due to development, agriculture, and other human impacts on landscapes. But the amount of dust also seems to have been decreasing since the 1980s.
More data and research is needed to better understand these dust patterns, Winckler said, and better predict how they will change in coming years.
But if dust in the atmosphere is decreasing, the warming effects of greenhouse gases could speed up.
“We could start to experience faster and faster warming because of this,” Kok said. “And maybe we’re waking up to that reality too late.”
Hidden Magma Chamber Reaching Critical Point ‘Poses Serious Threat’
A giant magma chamber has been discovered growing underneath an active submarine volcano in Greece.
Scientists, who have published a study on the chamber in the American Geophysical Union’s Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Geosystems, have determined that the magma chamber under Kolumbo increases the chances of a future eruption. They believe it could reach a critical point in the next 150 years and pose a “serious threat.”
Kolumbo last erupted in 1650 C.E. During this eruption, the explosion breached the sea surface and killed 70 people. This eruption occurred after magma reservoirs beneath the volcano continued to grow and accumulate at a large scale.
Scientists believe that this previously undiscovered magma chamber is growing at an average rate of roughly 4 million cubic meters per year since the submarine volcano last erupted. The amount of melt in there is now 1.4 cubic kilometers, the study reported.
Getty/solarseven
It is now reaching a similar volume that caused the 1650 eruption, meaning another large one may be around the corner as its rate of growth counteracts its cooling and crystallization processes.
Although scientists are not able to predict the exact time of the next Kolumbo eruption, they are now calling on better monitoring facilities near the volcano.
The magma chamber was discovered using full-waveform inversion technology, which records ground motions and analyzes wave velocities near volcanoes. Magma chambers can be detected by a reduced velocity of seismic waves traveling beneath the seafloor, the study reported.
Michele Paulatto, a volcanologist at Imperial College London, U.K., and second author of the study, said in a press release: “Full-waveform inversion is similar to a medical ultrasound. It uses sound waves to construct an image of the underground structure of a volcano.”
Nia Schamuells and Michele Paulatto
The study—prior to which detailed data was unavailable—helps inform scientists about submarine volcanoes in the region.
Kolumbo could potentially produce a highly explosive eruption. Scientists compare it to the recent eruption of Hunga Tonga, which last erupted in January 2022 and caused tsunami waves up to 66 feet high.
Scientists report that a Kolumbo eruption could be more destructive than the recent Tonga eruption due to its close proximity to Santorini—which is a well-known tourist destination. Popular hotspots on the island are only 4 miles from the volcano.
As the volcano is also in a shallow area of the sea, lying 1,600 feet below the surface of the ocean, this could make the explosion even bigger.
Underwater volcanoes like this have the potential to cause destructive tsunami waves as well as ashfall.
Although an explosion does not appear imminent, the findings of the study show scientists that the area needs increased monitoring.
“We need better data on what’s actually beneath these volcanoes,” Kajetan Chrapkiewicz, a geophysicist at Imperial College London and lead author of the study, said in a press release. “Continuous monitoring systems would allow us to have a better estimation of when an eruption might occur. With these systems, we would likely know about an eruption a few days before it happens, and people would be able to evacuate and stay safe.”
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about volcanoes? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
References
Chrapkiewicz at el, “Magma chamber detected beneath an arc volcano with full-waveform inversion of active-source seismic data”, Geochemistry, Geophysics and Geosystems, January 2023, 10.1029/2022GC010475
Hidden Magma Chamber Reaching Critical Point ‘Poses Serious Threat’
A giant magma chamber has been discovered growing underneath an active submarine volcano in Greece.
UP NEXT
Scientists, who have published a study on the chamber in the American Geophysical Union’s Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Geosystems, have determined that the magma chamber under Kolumbo increases the chances of a future eruption. They believe it could reach a critical point in the next 150 years and pose a “serious threat.”
Kolumbo last erupted in 1650 C.E. During this eruption, the explosion breached the sea surface and killed 70 people. This eruption occurred after magma reservoirs beneath the volcano continued to grow and accumulate at a large scale.
Scientists believe that this previously undiscovered magma chamber is growing at an average rate of roughly 4 million cubic meters per year since the submarine volcano last erupted. The amount of melt in there is now 1.4 cubic kilometers, the study reported.
It is now reaching a similar volume that caused the 1650 eruption, meaning another large one may be around the corner as its rate of growth counteracts its cooling and crystallization processes.
Although scientists are not able to predict the exact time of the next Kolumbo eruption, they are now calling on better monitoring facilities near the volcano.
The magma chamber was discovered using full-waveform inversion technology, which records ground motions and analyzes wave velocities near volcanoes. Magma chambers can be detected by a reduced velocity of seismic waves traveling beneath the seafloor, the study reported.
Michele Paulatto, a volcanologist at Imperial College London, U.K., and second author of the study, said in a press release: “Full-waveform inversion is similar to a medical ultrasound. It uses sound waves to construct an image of the underground structure of a volcano.”
© Nia Schamuells and Michele Paulatto
A graphic shows how the magma chamber, hiding under the volcano works. Although scientists are not able to predict the exact time of the next Kolumbo eruption, they are now calling on better monitoring facilities near the volcano. Nia Schamuells and Michele Paulatto
The study—prior to which detailed data was unavailable—helps inform scientists about submarine volcanoes in the region.
Kolumbo could potentially produce a highly explosive eruption. Scientists compare it to the recent eruption of Hunga Tonga, which last erupted in January 2022 and caused tsunami waves up to 66 feet high.
Scientists report that a Kolumbo eruption could be more destructive than the recent Tonga eruption due to its close proximity to Santorini—which is a well-known tourist destination. Popular hotspots on the island are only 4 miles from the volcano.
As the volcano is also in a shallow area of the sea, lying 1,600 feet below the surface of the ocean, this could make the explosion even bigger.
Underwater volcanoes like this have the potential to cause destructive tsunami waves as well as ashfall.
Although an explosion does not appear imminent, the findings of the study show scientists that the area needs increased monitoring.
“We need better data on what’s actually beneath these volcanoes,” Kajetan Chrapkiewicz, a geophysicist at Imperial College London and lead author of the study, said in a press release. “Continuous monitoring systems would allow us to have a better estimation of when an eruption might occur. With these systems, we would likely know about an eruption a few days before it happens, and people would be able to evacuate and stay safe.”
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References
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The Origins of Binary Black Holes May Be Hidden in Their Spins, Study Suggests : ScienceAlert
In a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysical Letters, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used various computer models to examine 69 confirmed binary black holes to help determine their origin and found their data results changed based on the model’s configurations.
Essentially, the input consistently altered the output, and the researchers wish to better understand both how and why this occurs and what steps can be taken to have more consistent results.
“When you change the model and make it more flexible or make different assumptions, you get a different answer about how black holes formed in the universe,” Sylvia Biscoveanu, an MIT graduate student working in the LIGO Laboratory, and a co-author on the study, said in a statement.
“We show that people need to be careful because we are not yet at the stage with our data where we can believe what the model tells us.”
Like binary stars, binary black holes are two massive objects orbiting each other, with both having the ability to potentially collide – or merge – together, with another shared characteristic being black holes are sometimes born from the collapse of dying massive stars, also known as a supernova.
But how binary black holes originated remains a mystery, as there are two current hypotheses regarding their formation: “field binary evolution” and “dynamical assembly”.
Field binary evolution involves when a pair of binary stars explode, resulting in two black holes in their place, which continue orbiting each other the same as before.
Since they initially orbited each other as binary stars, it is believed their spins and tilts should be aligned, as well.
Scientists also hypothesize that their aligned spins indicate they originated from a galactic disk, given its relatively peaceful environment.
Dynamical assembly involves when two individual black holes, each with their own unique tilt and spin, are eventually brought together by extreme astrophysical processes, to form their own binary black hole system.
It is currently hypothesized that this pairing would likely happen in a dense environment such as a globular cluster, where thousands of stars in close proximity could force two black holes together.
The real question is: What fraction of binary black holes originate from each respective method? Astronomers believe this answer lies in the data, specifically black hole spin measurements.
Using the 69 confirmed binary black holes, astronomers have determined these massive objects could originate from both globular clusters and galactic disks.
The LIGO Laboratory in the United States has worked with its Italian counterpart, Virgo, to ascertain the spins (rotational periods) of the 69 confirmed binary black holes.
“But we wanted to know, do we have enough data to make this distinction?” said Biscoveanu. “And it turns out, things are messy and uncertain, and it’s harder than it looks.”
For the study, the researchers continuously tweaked a series of computer models to ascertain whether their results agreed with each model’s predictions.
One such model was configured to assume only a fraction of binary black holes were produced with aligned spins, where the remainder have random spins. Another model was configured to predict a moderately contrasting spin orientation.
In the end, their findings indicated the results consistently changed in accordance with the tweaked models.
Essentially, results were consistently altered based on the model’s tweaks, meaning more data than the 69 confirmed binary black holes is likely needed to have more consistent results.
“Our paper shows that your result depends entirely on how you model your astrophysics, rather than the data itself,” said Biscoveanu.
“We need more data than we thought, if we want to make a claim that is independent of the astrophysical assumptions we make,” said Salvatore Vitale, who is an associate professor of physics, a member of the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, and lead author of the study.
But how much more data will the astronomers require? Vitale estimates the LIGO network will be able to detect one new binary black hole every few days, once the network returns to service in early 2023.
“The measurements of the spins we have now are very uncertain,” said Vitale.
“But as we build up a lot of them, we can gain better information. Then we can say, no matter the detail of my model, the data always tells me the same story – a story that we could then believe.”
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.