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Health

4 easy strategies for adding more vegetables to your plate

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(Lindsey Made This for The Washington Post)

December 29, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. EST

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Whatever your wellness goals for the new year, one powerful change could go a long way toward your success: Eat more vegetables. The proven benefits of doing so read like an infomercial: Boost gut health! Manage blood sugar! Reduce inflammation! Improve immunity! Keep blood pressure in check! Lower risk of heart disease! Support a healthy weight! But wait, there’s more! In this case, however, the too-good-to-be-true is actually true.

We know why, to a degree. Vegetables brim with health-protective compounds, including essential vitamins and minerals, fiber, and a broad spectrum of antioxidants, which destroy damaging free radicals in the body. Scientists have isolated and studied many of these plant compounds, but they have only scratched the surface. One thing they have discovered is that taking the compounds in pill form doesn’t have the same benefit. It’s the package deal of the vegetable that protects us. As David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine, so cleverly put it, “The active ingredient in broccoli is broccoli.”

Yet roughly 90 percent of Americans fall short of the recommended vegetable intake (two to three cups a day for women and three to four cups a day for men), and about 62 percent of the vegetables we do eat come from the same five sources, three of which are white-potato-based, with one of the most common being french fries, according to a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2022. Not that there’s anything wrong with potatoes — they are nutrient-rich and darn delicious. We just need to branch out (and fry less often).

Vegetables have unique nutrient and antioxidant profiles, so more variety is key to a broader spectrum of health-protective benefits. Color is a helpful cue, since different antioxidants impart different hues to food. Harnessing the full color wheel of produce (including white) not only works in our favor nutritionally, it also makes our meals so much more alluring.

On top of the nutrients you get from eating more vegetables, there is a beneficial displacement factor. Opt for, say, mushrooms and peppers on your pizza instead of your usual pepperoni, or dip sliced cucumbers rather than pita chips in your hummus, and you not only get more nutrition, you also, by default, typically reduce calories, sodium, refined grains and processed meats. But it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Even if you get mushrooms, peppers and pepperoni on your pizza, you’re still better off.

(I know, I know, mushrooms are not vegetables, botanically speaking. Neither are tomatoes, cucumbers or zucchini, for that matter, but from a nutritional and culinary point of view they all count as vegetables.)

Whether you are a beginner who is ready to venture beyond the occasional baby carrot or a vegetable aficionado who wants to broaden your horizons, here are simple ways to eat more plants.

Add a vegetable to what you already eat

There’s no need to overhaul your life to incorporate more vegetables — simply toss them into what you are already making. Cooking pasta with tomato sauce? Add a handful of prewashed arugula or baby spinach to the warm sauce to gently wilt it, or pile the greens on top of the finished plate to add a burst of fresh color and flavor. Fresh chopped baby spinach is also nice to add to chicken noodle soup, minestrone or ramen. If you are ready for something more adventurous, try escarole or dandelion greens instead.

Frozen peas, cauliflower or broccoli are ideal add-ins to mac and cheese. Add a handful to the cheese sauce to warm through before you stir in the pasta. (Frozen vegetables are comparable nutritionally to cooked, fresh vegetables; they are also economical, often require no chopping and are easy to keep on hand, so take advantage of them.)

When you make a sandwich, venture beyond the usual lettuce and tomato. Pile on thinly sliced radishes or cucumber, grated carrot, or sprouts. A handful of spinach or kale in your morning smoothie is basically undetectable but adds nutrient-rich dark-green leafys.

Get the recipe for Golden Chicken Vegetable Soup With Chickpeas here.

Sub vegetables for some of the meat in dishes

Beef up meat dishes with extra vegetables to allow for a more sensible-size serving of meat while keeping overall portions bountiful. Mushrooms do the job especially well thanks to their meaty texture and savory flavor. Saute them first so they are nicely browned and release their water, then add them to just about any meat dish, from burgers and meatloaf to sloppy joes and stroganoff. This allows you to reduce the meat by about 1/4 pound per eight ounces of mushrooms used. Add plant power beyond the usual carrots and potatoes to meaty stews, too, with mushrooms, bell peppers, green beans, and root vegetables such as rutabaga, turnips and celery root.

Get the recipe for Blistered Green Beans With Lamb and Aromatic Spices here.

Use vegetables as wraps and scoops

Don’t relegate vegetables to the realm of the side dish — they can do so much more. Cuplike lettuce leaves, such as Bibb or baby gem, make lovely wrappers for all sorts of fillings — think anything you might put in a taco or wrap sandwich. You can also use sturdier collard greens or kale leaves to make bigger, heartier wraps. (I like to blanch those first to tenderize them.)

Vegetables also make supreme scoops for dips. Beyond the usual carrots and celery, try scooping with endive, radishes, snap peas, and blanched broccoli, cauliflower and green beans.

Get the recipe for Jamaican-Spiced Beef Collard Wraps here.

Flip the narrative from the passe one, where the protein gets all the culinary love, and dote on the vegetable instead. Preparing vegetables in surprising, enticing ways keeps you wanting more and can turn around vegetable naysayers. It doesn’t have to mean more work, just a shift in focus.

Serve boldly tasty dishes such as braised red cabbage wedges or honey-glazed carrots with carrot-top chimichurri alongside simply seasoned roasted chicken or fish, for example. Broccoli-haters have been known to gobble up my flatbread pizzas with broccoli pesto, and even those who recoil at the thought of the boiled Brussels sprouts they were forced to eat as a child can’t get enough of the vegetable when it is roasted and crispy, and garnished with apple and sunflower seeds.

Get the recipe for Halibut and Spring Vegetable Skillet here.

I hope these ideas spark you to get more vegetables into your life, and in more varied ways. Start small, choosing a couple of suggestions you feel are doable and build from there. It’s a habit well worth cultivating, in the new year and beyond.

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World

Fears Kosovo-Serbia number plate row could spark violence | Kosovo

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A row over car number plates in Kosovo is threatening to erupt into open unrest and one of the most serious regional crises in years as tensions between Serbia and its breakaway former province continue to mount.

The EU, US and Nato have expressed alarm after more than eight hours of emergency talks in Brussels on Monday failed to resolve the dispute over Kosovo’s plans to fine ethnic Serb residents who refuse to surrender their Belgrade-issued plates.

Hours before a 7am deadline when police were to start issuing the €150 (£130) fines, the Kosovan prime minister, Albin Kurti, agreed early on Tuesday to hold off for another 48 hours, saying he was “happy to work with the US and EU” to find a solution.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said both sides had shown a “complete lack of respect for their international obligations” and would bear “full responsibility for any escalation of violence that might occur on the ground in the following days”.

The US state department spokesperson, Ned Price, expressed Washington’s concern, calling on both sides to make “concessions to ensure that we do not jeopardise decades of hard-won peace in an already fragile region”.

Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of Nato – which has 3,700 peacekeeping troops still deployed in Kosovo – said he was “disappointed it was not possible to solve the licence plate dispute” and urged “pragmatic solutions” to avoid any escalation.

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina have flared in recent weeks as the number plate issue has become the focus of a long-running sovereignty dispute that dates back to Kosovo’s formal declaration of independence in 2008.

While about 100 countries have recognised Kosovo, whose 1.8 million inhabitants are majority Albanian, and it has been granted membership of several international institutions, Serbia and its key allies, Russia and China, refuse to do so.

Serbia’s constitution defines Kosovo as part of its national territory and many of the estimated 50,000 Serbs in the north of the former province remain fiercely loyal to Belgrade, which provides them with significant financial and political support.

Locals in a dozen or so Serb enclaves reject Pristina’s authority, fly the Serbian flag, use its currency – and an estimated 10,000 are steadfastly refusing to swap pre-independence Serbian number plates for new Kosovo Republic plates.

Pristina began implementing its multi-step exchange plan – involving warnings, fines and finally road bans – on 1 November, sparking heated resistance and the mass resignation of Serb police officers, judges, prosecutors and other officials in Kosovo.

Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, whom Kosovo accuses of deliberately fomenting the tensions, has warned of “hell on the ground” if Kosovo police try to enforce fines or bans and warned the two sides are “on the verge of conflict”.

Borrell said the EU, which also has a 130-member mission on the ground in Kosovo, had proposed a compromise that might have avoided escalation, but while Vučić accepted it, Kurti, who wants broader negotiations on normalising relations, did not.

The EU’s foreign policy chief said the situation sent “a very negative political signal” given that both sides have made it an objective to the EU.

He urged Pristina to suspend all further steps related to re-registering vehicles in northern Kosovo, and Serbia to stop issuing new number plates. Both sides needed “space and time to look for a sustainable solution”, he said.



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Business

Elon Musk says ‘I have too much work on my plate’

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NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he was working “at the absolute most amount…from morning til night, seven days a week” when asked about his recent acquisition of Twitter and his leadership of automaker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O).

“I have too much work on my plate that is for sure,” Musk said by videolink to a business conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.

Musk is chief executive of both companies and also runs rocket firm SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company. Wearing a batik shirt sent by the organizers, he appeared on screen lit by candles, explaining that he was speaking from a place that had just lost power.

Tesla investors worry that Musk, a self-confessed “nanomanager” who has been personally involved in working-level decisions from car styling to supply chain issues, is distracted at a critical time for the world’s largest electric vehicle maker.

Tesla’s shares have halved in value since early April, when he disclosed he had taken a stake in Twitter. His Tesla share sales, including another $4 billion last week to bring his Twitter-related sales to $20 billion, have added to the pressure.

When asked about the complexity of industrial supply chains “decoupling” from China and the risks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Musk returned to how busy he was.

Responding to an observation that many business leaders in Asia wanted to be the “Elon Musk of the East,” Musk said: “I’d be careful what you wish for. I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same thing as actually being me. The amount that I torture myself is next level, frankly.”

Musk also said he wanted to see Twitter support more video and longer-form video so that content creators could make a living on the platform, but did not provide details. His remarks were streamed live on Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube.

Indonesia has been trying to secure a deal with Tesla on battery investment and potentially one for SpaceX to develop a rocket launch site.

Musk made no commitment to either of those but said Indonesia had a large role to play in the electric vehicle supply chain and that it would make sense “long term” for SpaceX to have multiple launch points around the globe.

It was not clear where Musk was during the Bali event. His personal jet has remained in Austin, Texas, Tesla’s headquarters since the weekend, according to @ElonJet, a Twitter account that tracks Musk’s Gulfstream G650.

“I’m just looking at this video and it’s so bizarre,” Musk said. “I’m sitting here in the dark surrounded by candles.”

Musk added he believed that the economy would make the transition to sustainable energy, adding it was “just a question of how long it takes.” He said space exploration should remain a priority “so we can understand the nature of the universe and our place in it.”

“Maybe we’ll find alien civilization or discover civilizations that existed millions of years ago, but we see the ruins of ancient civilizations. I think that would be incredibly interesting,” he said.

Reporting by Leika Kihara; Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

North Kosovo Serbs quit state jobs in licence plate protest

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MITROVICA, Kosovo, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Minority Serbs in the north of Kosovo said on Saturday they were quitting their posts in state institutions including the government, police and courts to protest Pristina’s order for them to start using Kosovo vehicle licence plates.

The long-running licence plate row has stoked tensions between Serbia and its former province of Kosovo, which gained independence in 2008 and is home to a small ethnic Serb minority in the north that is backed by Belgrade.

Following a meeting of Serb political representatives in the north of Kosovo, Minister of Communities and Returns Goran Rakic said he was resigning from his post in the Pristina government.

He told reporters that fellow representatives of the 50,000-strong Serb minority in the north had also quit their jobs in municipal administrations, the courts, police, and the parliament and government in Pristina.

Rakic said they would not consider returning unless Pristina abolishes the order for them to switch their old car licence plates, which date to the 1990s when Kosovo was a part of Serbia, to Kosovo state plates.

They also demanded the formation of a union of Serb municipalities giving Serb-majority districts greater autonomy, he said.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti urged the Serbs not to “boycott or abandon Kosovo’s institutions”.

“They serve all of us, every single one of you. Don’t fall prey to political manipulations and geopolitical games,” Kurti added in a Facebook post.

An interior ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters some police units were extending shifts to up to 12 hours from the normal eight to make up for the absence of the Serb officers.

NATO, which still has around 3,700 troops to maintain the fragile peace, asked Pristina and Belgrade to show restraint and prevent escalation.
“NATO remains vigilant and ready to intervene should stability be jeopardised,” NATO’s Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana tweeted after he spoke with the European Union’s envoy for Kosovo and Serbia, Miroslav Lajcak.

In the north side of Mitrovica, inhabited mainly by Serbs, there were no police to be seen. Some Swiss soldiers and Italian Carabinieri, part of NATO peacekeeping forces, were the only ones in uniform in the main square.

In Serbia, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said her government “stands by our brave and proud people in Kosovo”.

Kosovo’s government has said it will start issuing fines this month to Serb drivers using old pre-independence plates, and will confiscate vehicles that have not had their registration numbers changed by April 21, 2023.

Kosovo’s main backers, the United States and the European Union, have urged Kurti to postpone implementing the car plates ruling for another 10 months but he has refused.

Writing by Ivana Sekularac; editing by Helen Popper

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Science

Study offers new, sharper proof of early plate tectonics, flipping of geomagnetic poles

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An interior cutaway of the early Earth highlighting its major geodynamic processes. Magnetic field lines are drawn in blue and red emanating from the liquid core that generated them, while plate tectonic forces rearrange the surface and play a role in the churning circulation of the rocky mantle below. Credit: Alec Brenner

New research analyzing pieces of the most ancient rocks on the planet adds some of the sharpest evidence yet that Earth’s crust was pushing and pulling in a manner similar to modern plate tectonics at least 3.25 billion years ago. The study also provides the earliest proof of when the planet’s magnetic north and south poles swapped places.

The two results offer clues into how such geological changes may have resulted in an environment more conducive to the development of life on the planet.

The work, described in PNAS and led by Harvard geologists Alec Brenner and Roger Fu, focused on a portion of the Pilbara Craton in western Australia, one of the oldest and most stable pieces of the Earth’s crust. Using novel techniques and equipment, the researchers show that some of the Earth’s earliest surface was moving at a rate of 6.1 centimeters per year and 0.55 degrees every million years.

That speed more than doubles the rate the ancient crust was shown to be moving in a previous study by the same researchers. Both the speed and direction of this latitudinal drift leaves plate tectonics as the most logical and strongest explanations for it.

“There’s a lot of work that seems to suggest that early in Earth’s history plate tectonics wasn’t actually the dominant way in which the planet’s internal heat gets released as it is today through the shifting of plates,” said Brenner, a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and member of Harvard’s Paleomagnetics Lab. “This evidence lets us much more confidently rule out explanations that don’t involve plate tectonics.”

For example, the researchers can now argue against phenomena called “true polar wander” and “stagnant lid tectonics,” which can both cause the Earth’s surface to shift but aren’t part of modern-style plate tectonics. The results lean more toward plate tectonic motion because the newly discovered higher rate of speed is inconsistent with aspects of the other two processes.

In the paper, the scientists also describe what’s believed to be the oldest evidence of when Earth reversed its geomagnetic fields, meaning the magnetic North and South Pole flipped locations. This type of flip-flop is a common occurrence in Earth’s geologic history with the pole’s reversing 183 times in the last 83 million years and perhaps several hundred times in the past 160 million years, according to NASA.

The reversal tells a great deal about the planet’s magnetic field 3.2 billion years ago. Key among these implications is that the magnetic field was likely stable and strong enough to keep solar winds from eroding the atmosphere. This insight, combined with the results on plate tectonics, offers clues to the conditions under which the earliest forms of life developed.

“It paints this picture of an early earth that was already really geodynamically mature,” Brenner said. “It had a lot of the same sorts of dynamic processes that result in an Earth that has essentially more stable environmental and surface conditions, making it more feasible for life to evolve and develop.”

Today, the Earth’s outer shell consists of about 15 shifting blocks of crust, or plates, which hold the planet’s continents and oceans. Over eons the plates drifted into each other and apart, forming new continents and mountains and exposing new rocks to the atmosphere, which led to chemical reactions that stabilized Earth’s surface temperature over billions of years.

Evidence of when plate tectonics started is hard to come by because the oldest pieces of crust are thrust into the interior mantle, never to resurface. Only 5 percent of all rocks on Earth are older than 2.5 billion years old, and no rock is older than about 4 billion years.

Overall, the study adds to growing research that tectonic movement occurred relatively early in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history and that early forms of life came about in a more moderate environment. Members of the project revisited the Pilbara Craton in 2018, which stretches about 300 miles across. They drilled into the primordial and thick slab of crust there to collect samples that, back in Cambridge, were analyzed for their magnetic history.

Using magnetometers, demagnetizing equipment, and the Quantum Diamond Microscope—which images the magnetic fields of a sample and precisely identifies the nature of the magnetized particles—the researchers created a suite of new techniques for determining the age and way the samples became magnetized. This allows the researchers to determine how, when, and which direction the crust shifted as well as the magnetic influence coming from Earth’s geomagnetic poles.

The Quantum Diamond Microscope was developed in a collaboration between Harvard researchers in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) and of Physics.

For future studies, Fu and Brenner plan keep their focus on the Pilbara Craton while also looking beyond it to other ancient crusts around the world. They hope to find older evidence of modern-like plate motion and when the Earth’s magnetic poles flipped.

“Finally being able to reliably read these very ancient rocks opens up so many possibilities for observing a time period that often is known more through theory than solid data,” said Fu, professor of EPS in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Ultimately, we have a good shot at reconstructing not just when tectonic plates started moving, but also how their motions—and therefore the deep-seated Earth interior processes that drive them—have changed through time.”

Tectonic plates started shifting earlier than previously thought

More information:
Brenner, Alec R., Plate motion and a dipolar geomagnetic field at 3.25 Ga, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2210258119. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210258119
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Study offers new, sharper proof of early plate tectonics, flipping of geomagnetic poles (2022, October 24)
retrieved 25 October 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-10-sharper-proof-early-plate-tectonics.html

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Science

Slowing of continental plate movement controlled the timing of Earth’s largest volcanic events

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Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Scientists have shed new light on the timing and likely cause of major volcanic events that occurred millions of years ago and caused such climatic and biological upheaval that they drove some of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history.

Surprisingly, the new research, published today in Science Advances, suggests a slowing of continental plate movement was the critical event that enabled magma to rise to the Earth’s surface and deliver the devastating knock-on impacts.

Earth’s history has been marked by major volcanic events, called large igneous provinces (LIPs)—the largest of which have caused major increases in atmospheric carbon emissions that warmed Earth’s climate, drove unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and resulted in mass extinctions on land and in the oceans.

Using chemical data from ancient mudstone deposits obtained from a 1.5 km-deep borehole in Wales, an international team led by scientists from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Natural Sciences was able to link two key events from around 183 million years ago (the Toarcian period).

The team discovered that this time period, which was characterized by some of the most severe climatic and environmental changes ever, directly coincided with the occurrence of major volcanic activity and associated greenhouse gas release on the southern hemisphere, in what is nowadays known as southern Africa, Antarctica and Australia.

On further investigation—and more importantly—the team’s plate reconstruction models helped them discover the key fundamental geological process that seemed to control the timing and onset of this volcanic event and others of great magnitude.

Micha Ruhl, assistant professor in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, led the team. He said, “Scientists have long thought that the onset of upwelling of molten volcanic rock, or magma, from deep in Earth’s interior, as mantle plumes, was the instigator of such volcanic activity but the new evidence shows that the normal rate of continental plate movement of several centimeters per year effectively prevents magma from penetrating Earth’s continental crust.

“It seems it is only when the speed of continental plate movement slows down to near zero that magmas from mantle plumes can effectively make their way to the surface, causing major large igneous province volcanic eruptions and their associated climatic perturbations and mass extinctions.

“Crucially, further assessment shows that a reduction in continental plate movement likely controlled the onset and duration of many of the major volcanic events throughout Earth’s history, making it a fundamental process in controlling the evolution of climate and life at Earth’s surface throughout the history of this planet.”

The study of past global change events, such as in the Toarcian, allows scientists to disentangle the different processes that control the causes and consequences of global carbon cycle change and constrain fundamental Earth system processes that control tipping points in Earth’s climate system.

Scientists show solar system processes control the carbon cycle throughout Earth’s history

More information:
Micha Ruhl, Reduced plate motion controlled timing of Early Jurassic Karoo-Ferrar large igneous province volcanism, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo0866. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo0866
Provided by
Trinity College Dublin

Citation:
Slowing of continental plate movement controlled the timing of Earth’s largest volcanic events (2022, September 9)
retrieved 10 September 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-09-continental-plate-movement-earth-largest.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.



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Science

Did giant impacts start plate tectonics?

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One of Earth’s defining features is its plate tectonics, a phenomenon that shapes the planet’s surface and creates some of its most catastrophic events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. While some features of plate tectonics have been spotted elsewhere in the Solar System, the Earth is the only planet we know of with the full suite of processes involved in this phenomenon. And all indications are that it started very early in our planet’s history.

So what started it? Currently, two leading ideas are difficult to distinguish based on our limited evidence of the early Earth. A new study of a piece of Australia, however, argues strongly for one of them: the heavy impacts that also occurred early in the planet’s history.

Options and impacts

Shortly after the Earth formed, its crust would have been composed of a relatively even layer of solid rock that acted as a lid over the still-molten mantle below. Above that, there was likely a global ocean since plate tectonics wasn’t building mountains yet. Somehow, this situation was transformed into what we see now: The large regions of moving, buoyant crust of the continental plates and the constantly spreading deep ocean crust formed from mantle materials, all driven by the heat-induced motion of material through the mantle.

The primary explanation for the origin of plate tectonics is to simply assume that mantle circulation was also what triggered the phenomenon’s onset. Eruptions over mantle hotspots would bring less dense material to the surface, with the added weight forcing more dense material down into the mantle. As these processes continued, more buoyant material would be brought to the surface over time, expanding some areas into nascent plates. This explanation has the advantage of showing the process starting with the same factors that drive it today—scientists tend to hate having to rely on multiple, distinct explanations.

But they also hate coincidences, and a coincidence is what’s behind an alternative explanation. The earliest indications of plate tectonics appeared about 3.8 billion years ago, not too long after the Earth’s formation. That period also overlaps with a series of large impacts, called the Late Heavy Bombardment, that struck the bodies of the Solar System.

These impacts would have delivered a lot of energy to the crust, both fragmenting it and causing local melting. This would allow hot material from both the melted crust and the mantle to break through to the surface through volcanism. The effect is a bit like eruptions above a hotspot, with lower density materials being brought to the surface, but it would happen at multiple locations across the planet over hundreds of millions of years.

Because of the similarities between the two theories and the fact that a lot of evidence has been destroyed over the last several billion years, it’s difficult to determine which is better supported by the evidence. But researchers in a new paper claim they have found evidence that impacts were likely to be critical.

Starting with a bang

The work relies on zircon crystals, extremely stable structures that include the oldest confirmed pieces of Earth. The authors focused on crystals originating in a part of Australia called the Pilbara Craton. Cratons are the oldest, most stable pieces of continental crust, and they tend to form the cores of modern-day continents. Pilbara is one of the two oldest known cratons on Earth.

The researchers screened the zircons for indications that they had been modified by geological processes after their formation, eliminating those from further analysis. And they also obtained dates for all the crystals based on uranium decay. They then focused on two things that tell us something about the environment the crystals formed in. The first involved looking at the type of rock that the crystals were embedded in, which was assumed to reflect the environment they formed in. The second was the fraction of oxygen that was from a specific isotope (18O). This analysis provides some indication of the temperature that the crystal formed at, which is generally related to its depth.

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Science

New tectonic plate model shows how Earth was organized as a supercontinent 2.8 million years ago

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New tectonic plate model shows how Earth was organized as a supercontinent 2.8 million years ago: Scientists hope it will help predict natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes

  • A new model of Earth’s tectonic plates aims to help us better understand earthquakes and volcanoes 
  • The model organizes continents like the first supercontinent, Vaalbara
  • Vaalbara broke up some 2.8 million years ago
  • Using this design allowed scientists to include more microplates 
  • This allowed them to better explain ‘the spatial distribution of 90 percent of earthquakes and 80 percent of volcanoes from the past 2 million years 

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

Published: | Updated:

Scientists have produced a new map of Earth’s tectonic plates that shows the continents organized like the first supercontinent, Vaalbara, which broke up about 2.8 million years ago.

The team, led by the University of Adelaide, believes the updated model will help provide a better understanding of natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes.

Tectonic plates are the gradual drift of continents across the Earth’s surface that causes earthquake and volcanoes to erupt.

By reverting back millions of years ago, scientist are able to include new microplates, such as the Macquarie microplate which sits south of Tasmania and the Capricorn microplate that separates the Indian and Australian plates.

This allowed them to better explain ‘the spatial distribution of 90 percent of earthquakes and 80 percent of volcanoes from the past two million years whereas existing models only capture 65 percent of earthquakes,’ said Dr Derrick Hasterok, Lecturer, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide who led the team, in a statement. 

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Scientists have produced a new map of Earth’s tectonic plates that shows the continents organized like the first supercontinent, Vaalbara, which broke up about 2.8 million years ago

To achieve these statistics, Hasterok and his team also added more accurate information about the boundaries of deformation zones: previous models showed these as discrete areas rather than wide zones.

‘The biggest changes to the plate model have been in western North America, which often has the boundary with the Pacific Plate drawn as the San Andreas and Queen Charlotte Faults,’ said Hasterok.

‘But the newly delineated boundary is much wider, approximately 1500 km [932 miles], than the previously drawn narrow zone.

‘The other large change is in central Asia. The new model now includes all the deformation zones north of India as the plate bulldozes its way into Eurasia.’

This allowed them to better explain ‘the spatial distribution of 90 percent of earthquakes and 80 percent of volcanoes from the past two million years whereas existing models (pictured) only capture 65 percent of earthquakes’

The last time the tectonic plate model was updated was back in 2003.

‘The plate model can be used to improve models of risks from geohazards; the orogeny model helps understand the geodynamic systems and better model Earth’s evolution and the province model can be used to improve prospecting for minerals,’ Hasterok said.

A separate study, published in 2019, supports the new model, as it found tectonic plates began to form around 2.5 billion years ago – shortly before Vaalbara broke up.

To assess when Earth’s tectonic plates kicked off, geologist Robert Holder of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and colleagues studied metamorphic rocks from 564 sites across the globe that date back as far as 3 billion years ago.

Metamorphic rocks are those that form when other types of rock — those made from sediments, or that cooled out of lava or magma — are altered through either extreme temperatures or pressures.

By reverting back millions of years ago, scientist are able to include new microplates, such as the Macquarie microplate which sits south of Tasmania and the Capricorn microplate that separates the Indian and Australian plates

By analyzing these rocks, the team could determine the depths and temperatures at which they were formed, building up a picture of the changing heat flow at different places across the Earth’s crust — and, in turn, the plate tectonics that controls such.

Paper author and Curtin University geologist Tim Johnson said in a statement: ‘Some geologists consider that Earth has had plate tectonics throughout its four-and-a-half-billion-year existence.

‘Whereas others consider that plate tectonics appeared abruptly some one billion years ago.

‘Using a simple statistical analysis of the temperature, pressure and age of metamorphic rocks, we have revealed that plate tectonics evolved gradually over the past 2.5 billion years as our planet slowly cooled.’

The Earth is moving under our feet: Tectonic plates move through the mantle and produce Earthquakes as they scrape against each other

Tectonic plates are composed of Earth’s crust and the uppermost portion of the mantle. 

Below is the asthenosphere: the warm, viscous conveyor belt of rock on which tectonic plates ride.

The Earth has fifteen tectonic plates (pictured) that together have moulded the shape of the landscape we see around us today 

Earthquakes typically occur at the boundaries of tectonic plates, where one plate dips below another, thrusts another upward, or where plate edges scrape alongside each other. 

Earthquakes rarely occur in the middle of plates, but they can happen when ancient faults or rifts far below the surface reactivate. 

These areas are relatively weak compared to the surrounding plate, and can easily slip and cause an earthquake.

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Sports

Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani strikes out nine, hitless at plate in loss to Astros

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ANAHEIM, Calif. — The second pitch Shohei Ohtani threw on Opening Day was a 98 mph fastball spotted on the very edge of the inside corner to Jose Altuve. By the end of Thursday night’s first inning, the Los Angeles Angels’ two-way sensation threw seven pitches at a higher velocity. Oftentimes in 2021, while feeling for command after a half-decade without consistent pitching, Ohtani eased into those higher velocities, saving the bigger numbers for tighter situations late in games.

Trusting it early shows just how much has changed for him on the mound in one year.

“He’s just gradually gotten better command of his fastball — that’s what I think the big difference is,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said after his team’s season-opening 3-1 loss to the Houston Astros. “And you saw it again tonight — a lot of 97s and 99s. In the past, the early part of the game would be lower numbers until he needed it. Right now, even when it’s not needed, he’s still doing those things.”

Ohtani — limited, like all Angels starters, to the 80-pitch range because of the shortened spring training — allowed one run on four hits in 4⅔ innings against one of the most dangerous lineups in the league, with one walk and nine strikeouts. Three of those strikeouts came against Altuve, who had struck out three times in a game only three times through 11 previous major league seasons.

Despite the abbreviated pitch count, Ohtani threw seven 99 mph pitches, third-most in his career. The average velocity on his four-seam fastball, which seemed to display a little more cutting action, was 97.8 mph, more than two ticks higher than last year’s average. The effect of that pitch noticeably played up his slider, which induced seven whiffs on nine swings.

Ohtani, coming off unanimous selection as the American League’s Most Valuable Player, began spring training talking about how much stronger he felt.

Perhaps it’s showing up in a fastball that can consistently approach triple digits.

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “It’s gonna be a long season, so I don’t know how the fatigue’s gonna play into it, but I’m gonna try to pick my spots and throw hard.”

A sold-out crowd of 44,723 crammed into Angel Stadium to watch Ohtani begin to follow up on arguably the most impressive season in baseball history, when he coupled a .965 OPS with 46 home runs and 26 stolen bases as a hitter with a 3.18 ERA and 156 strikeouts in 130⅓ innings as a pitcher. By taking the ball in the top of the first and leading off in the bottom half of the inning, Ohtani became the first player in history to both throw and face the first pitch of his team’s season.

The Angels’ offense struggled against Astros lefty Framber Valdez, who twirled 6⅔ scoreless innings and at one point retired 15 straight batters. But they finally broke through with two outs in the eighth, when David Fletcher’s sinking line drive scurried past a diving Yordan Alvarez in left field, scoring Brandon Marsh and bringing the tying run to the plate. Up came Ohtani, who launched a 98 mph fly ball that initially stirred the audience but was ultimately caught at the edge of the outfield grass.

“I thought it might have a chance to leave,” Ohtani said after an 0-for-4 night offensively. “I just got a little under it.”

Ohtani was removed as a pitcher with one on and two outs in the fifth partly because Maddon wanted to use lefty reliever Aaron Loup to attack the left-handed-hitting Michael Brantley. Upon returning to the dugout, Maddon approached Ohtani to ask if he wanted to remain in the game and take advantage of a new rule that allows him to keep hitting even after he’s done pitching.

Ohtani’s response: “Of course.”

By the end of the night, Ohtani said, he had almost forgotten he had pitched. He treated the last third of the game as if he were the designated hitter — and he very nearly tied the score while doing so.

“Nothing’s too quick for him,” Maddon said. “Nothing’s too big for him.”

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World

Serbs lift roadblocks in Kosovo as NATO moves to end car plate row

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Kosovo ethnic Serbs pass through barricades near the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje, Kosovo, September 28, 2021. REUTERS/Laura Hasani

JARINJE, Kosovo, Oct 2 – Kosovo’s border crossing with Serbia was reopened on Saturday as Serbs removed trucks and cars and NATO troops moved in under a European Union-mediated deal to end a dispute between the neighbouring countries over car licence plates.

Kosovo special police forces withdrew from the border crossing in the north of the country nearly two weeks after Serbs blocked roads to protest at Kosovo’s decision to introduce temporary licence plates for all cars from Serbia.

The Kosovo government said the licence plate requirement was imposed in retaliation for Serbian measures taken against drivers from Kosovo since 2008, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.

“From this weekend and for the next two weeks, KFOR will maintain a temporary, robust and agile presence in the area, in accordance with the mentioned arrangement,” said a statement by the NATO-led peacekeeping force, called KFOR.

Serbia, which lost control over Kosovo after NATO bombing in 1999, does not recognise Kosovo’s independence and therefore its right to take actions such as registering cars.

This month’s confrontation boiled over into violence, but the two countries – with mediation by EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak – struck a deal on Thursday.

Under the deal, stickers will be used on licence plates to cover state symbols, and NATO, which has some 3,000 troops in Kosovo, will be allowed to control the area.

Local Serbs chatted on Saturday with Slovenian soldiers, who are part of the NATO force, as they removed barricades while Kosovo police vehicles stood at the border crossing.

The deadline for their withdrawal was 4 p.m. (1400 GMT).

As Serbia moves towards EU membership it must resolve all outstanding issues with Kosovo. The two parties agreed to an EU-mediated dialogue in 2013, but little progress has been made.

Kosovo’s independence was backed by Western countries including the United States and Britain, but it is still not recognised by five EU member states and its membership of the United Nations is blocked by Serbia’s traditional ally Russia.

Reporting by Fatos Bytyci
Editing by Ivana Sekularac, Alexander Smith and Helen Popper

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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