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Editorial of the “World”. The war in Afghanistan has ended, but not the suffering of the people. The alarming signals keep piling up. A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, released on October 25, predicts that half of the population, around 20 million people according to IMF and UN estimates, are at risk of famine.

Decades of fighting and their millions of displaced people, poverty and repeated climatic disasters have produced what is already one of the world’s worst crises. The implosion of the economy, caused by the end of the financing of the State by the United States and the blocking by Washington and Europe of the funds of the Afghan Central Bank, strengthens it. The winter season, which accentuates the isolation of rural areas, can only make it even worse. Testimonies are piling up of families forced to sell their property, and even, in the most desperate cases, their children in an attempt to survive.

Read also Tensions within the European Union over attitude towards the Taliban

The dilemma facing the traditional providers of international aid, predominantly Western, is as much moral as it is political. He opposes those who, like China or Russia, demand the return of funds from the Afghan Central Bank to those who refuse. It also divides Europeans, and its consideration at a special session of the G20 in Italy on October 12 did not go beyond declarations of intent.

The population taken hostage

The terms of this dilemma are simple. Should we help and mechanically reinforce a Taliban power which has so far failed to obtain international recognition? Or refuse to do so, in order to retain levers likely to force the new masters of Afghanistan to make concessions on the status of women, the inclusion of ethnic minorities, or even the fight against small terrorist groups still present in the country. country ?

Read also Afghanistan: the G20 tries to stop the humanitarian crisis without comforting the Taliban

The analysis underlying this second option may appear relentless. Bolstered by their status as the winners of the longest war ever waged by the United States, the Taliban have so far refrained from any political or diplomatic openness in the eyes of the international community. No doubt they will know how to present the arrival of significant international aid such as the validation of their strategy.

This postulate, however, raises two serious reservations. The construction of a balance of power based on aid appears singularly theoretical with regard to ex-insurgents who triumphed over the most powerful army in the world, supported by those of its allies, at the end of a twenty-year war. . This choice then places the Afghan population at the mercy of a confrontation of which they are hostage, especially women, who are very exposed to food insecurity.

In September, the United States Treasury Department granted licenses allowing non-governmental organizations to assist the Afghan people without incurring prosecution related to the sanctions in force against the new power in place in Kabul. This relaxation, and the announcement on October 28 of emergency aid of 144 million dollars (124 million euros), from the big loser of the Afghan war, is probably the maximum he can agree to, but this realism opens up a path, however narrow it may be. Urgency demands pragmatism, and politicization of humanitarian aid must be avoided.

The world

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The population taken hostage

Read also Afghanistan: the G20 tries to stop the humanitarian crisis without comforting the Taliban

The world

Journal Reference:

Evan C. Lien, Anna M. Westermark, Yin Zhang, Chen Yuan, Zhaoqi Li, Allison N. Lau, Kiera M. Sapp, Brian M. Wolpin, Matthew G. Vander Heiden. Low glycaemic diets alter lipid metabolism to influence tumour growth. Nature, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04049-2

The study examined the effects of a calorically restricted diet and a ketogenic diet in mice with pancreatic tumors. While both of these diets reduce the amount of sugar available to tumors, the researchers found that only the calorically restricted diet reduced the availability of fatty acids, and this was linked to a slowdown in tumor growth.

The findings do not suggest that cancer patients should try to follow either of these diets, the researchers say. Instead, they believe the findings warrant further study to determine how dietary interventions might be combined with existing or emerging drugs to help patients with cancer.

?There?s a lot of evidence that diet can affect how fast your cancer progresses, but this is not a cure,? says Matthew Vander Heiden, director of MIT?s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the senior author of the study. ?While the findings are provocative, further study is needed, and individual patients should talk to their doctor about the right dietary interventions for their cancer.?

MIT postdoc Evan Lien is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature.

Metabolic mechanism

Vander Heiden, who is also a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, says his patients often ask him about the potential benefits of various diets, but there is not enough scientific evidence available to offer any definitive advice. Many of the dietary questions that patients have focus on either a calorie-restricted diet, which reduces calorie consumption by 25 to 50 percent, or a ketogenic diet, which is low in carbohydrates and high in fat and protein.

Previous studies have suggested that a calorically restricted diet might slow tumor growth in some contexts, and such a diet has been shown to extend lifespan in mice and many other animal species. A smaller number of studies exploring the effects of a ketogenic diet on cancer have produced inconclusive results.

?A lot of the advice or cultural fads that are out there aren?t necessarily always based on very good science,? Lien says. ?It seemed like there was an opportunity, especially with our understanding of cancer metabolism having evolved so much over the past 10 years or so, that we could take some of the biochemical principles that we?ve learned and apply those concepts to understanding this complex question.?

Cancer cells consume a great deal of glucose, so some scientists had hypothesized that either the ketogenic diet or calorie restriction might slow tumor growth by reducing the amount of glucose available. However, the MIT team?s initial experiments in mice with pancreatic tumors showed that calorie restriction has a much greater effect on tumor growth than the ketogenic diet, so the researchers suspected that glucose levels were not playing a major role in the slowdown.

To dig deeper into the mechanism, the researchers analyzed tumor growth and nutrient concentration in mice with pancreatic tumors, which were fed either a normal, ketogenic, or calorie-restricted diet. In both the ketogenic and calorie-restricted mice, glucose levels went down. In the calorie-restricted mice, lipid levels also went down, but in mice on the ketogenic diet, they went up.

Lipid shortages impair tumor growth because cancer cells need lipids to construct their cell membranes. Normally, when lipids aren?t available in a tissue, cells can make their own. As part of this process, they need to maintain the right balance of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, which requires an enzyme called stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD). This enzyme is responsible for converting saturated fatty acids into unsaturated fatty acids.

Both calorie-restricted and ketogenic diets reduce SCD activity, but mice on the ketogenic diet had lipids available to them from their diet, so they didn?t need to use SCD. Mice on the calorie-restricted diet, however, couldn?t get fatty acids from their diet or produce their own. In these mice, tumor growth slowed significantly, compared to mice on the ketogenic diet.

?Not only does caloric restriction starve tumors of lipids, it also impairs the process that allows them to adapt to it. That combination is really contributing to the inhibition of tumor growth,? Lien says.

Dietary effects

In addition to their mouse research, the researchers also looked at some human data. Working with Brian Wolpin, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an author of the paper, the team obtained data from a large cohort study that allowed them to analyze the relationship between dietary patterns and survival times in pancreatic cancer patients. From that study, the researchers found that the type of fat consumed appears to influence how patients on a low-sugar diet fare after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, although the data are not complete enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of diet, the researchers say.

Although this study showed that calorie restriction has beneficial effects in mice, the researchers say they do not recommend that cancer patients follow a calorie-restricted diet, which is difficult to maintain and can have harmful side effects. However, they believe that cancer cells? dependence on the availability of unsaturated fatty acids could be exploited to develop drugs that might help slow tumor growth.

One possible therapeutic strategy could be inhibition of the SCD enzyme, which would cut off tumor cells? ability to produce unsaturated fatty acids.

?The purpose of these studies isn?t necessarily to recommend a diet, but it?s to really understand the underlying biology,? Lien says. ?They provide some sense of the mechanisms of how these diets work, and that can lead to rational ideas on how we might mimic those situations for cancer therapy.?

The researchers now plan to study how diets with a variety of fat sources ? including plant or animal-based fats with defined differences in saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acid content ? alter tumor fatty acid metabolism and the ratio of unsaturated to saturated fatty acids.

The research was funded by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Lustgarten Foundation, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, Stand Up to Cancer, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, the Noble Effort Fund, the Wexler Family Fund, Promises for Purple, the Bob Parsons Fund, the Emerald Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and the Ludwig Center at MIT.

We would love to say thanks to the writer of this article for this awesome content

How diet affects tumors

Journal Reference:

Evan C. Lien, Anna M. Westermark, Yin Zhang, Chen Yuan, Zhaoqi Li, Allison N. Lau, Kiera M. Sapp, Brian M. Wolpin, Matthew G. Vander Heiden. Low glycaemic diets alter lipid metabolism to influence tumour growth. Nature, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04049-2

MIT postdoc Evan Lien is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature.

Metabolic mechanism

Dietary effects

One possible therapeutic strategy could be inhibition of the SCD enzyme, which would cut off tumor cells? ability to produce unsaturated fatty acids.

We would love to say thanks to the writer of this article for this awesome content

How diet affects tumors

Elected president, Joe Biden wanted to promote national harmony. Today, he struggles to meet this challenge within his own party. Thursday, October 28, the White House wanted to interrupt the clashes between Democrats over the major legislative project that is the Build Back Better (BBB) ??plan, which plans to revitalize the welfare state and invest massively in the green economy. For this, she published a long framework text outlining the main lines of the project, after two months of fierce negotiations between the left wing of the party, which has become its center of gravity, and two moderate senators, Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona). The final version provides for an envelope of 1.7 trillion dollars (1.5 trillion euros) for measures ranging from childcare to the extension of medical coverage, through an effort of 555 billion dollars in the fight against climate change.

The President of the United States hoped not to arrive empty-handed at the G20 summit in Italy, which begins on October 30, and especially at the climate conference (COP26), in Glasgow (Scotland). America’s ability to lead by example in this area is at stake. He also knows how much Democratic procrastination could weigh in the decisive election for governor of Virginia on November 2.

Read also In the United States, Joe Biden gives up taxing billionaires

Postponing his trip to Rome for a few hours, Joe Biden went once again to the Capitol on Thursday morning to meet with elected Democrats and convince them to accept the painful compromises that mark out the framework text. Bernie Sanders (Vermont), for example, wanted medical coverage extended to dental and eye care. They are no longer mentioned. Only hearing aids for the elderly are taken into account. Another flagship measure promoted by the left wing of the party, the possibility for the health system, Medicare, to negotiate the price of drugs with industry. Abandonment. Same fate for parental leave, reduced from twelve to four weeks over the negotiations, and finally removed from the project.

Risky political bluff

?No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s it, a compromise. A consensus. And I campaigned on it ?Joe Biden explained to the White House in a mid-day address. “It’s not about left against right or moderates against progressives or anything else pitting Americans against each other,” he added. It’s about competitiveness versus complacency. ” But how can we focus attention on the envisaged progress, which would be substantial, and not on the renouncements? This is the whole difficulty for the White House. Superlatives fall in fine rain in the press release, to welcome a text “Historical”. But nothing being acquired, this communication looks like a lap of honor before the end of the race. Or a risky political bluff, for lack of an alternative.

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Read also In the United States, Joe Biden gives up taxing billionaires

Risky political bluff

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On paper, British justice must decide whether the refusal to extradite Julian Assange to the United States for acts of espionage – his 2010 work on secret American documents in partnership with numerous media, including The world – must be maintained.

In fact, this appeal hearing, which ended at the High Court in London on Thursday, October 28, did not address the merits of the case. Legally limited to a small number of elements from the hearing at first instance, the debates focused on the psychological health of Julian Assange and the conditions of detention to which the founder of WikiLeaks would be exposed if the extradition were finally to take place. .

Read also Julian Assange: the refusal of his extradition to the United States examined on appeal

At first instance, in January, Judge Vanessa Baraitser had determined that an extradition to the United States, and the conditions of detention which would result from it, were incompatible with the state of health of Julian Assange as diagnosed by several doctors, and put him at risk of suicide.

The lawyer representing the United States, James Lewis, tried to discredit the testimony of Michael Kopelman, one of the psychiatrists who concluded that the Australian was very fragile. He criticized him for not having mentioned in his first written testimony to the court that Julian Assange had a partner, Stella Morris, with whom he had had two children, a factor which, in his view, could improve his condition. psychological. Assange’s lawyers countered that this omission, justified by the doctor’s desire to respect the couple’s privacy while their relationship was not public, had been corrected in her final testimony and the judge was aware of it, l ‘having indicated in the judgment rendered in January.

Contested American guarantees

Counsel for the Australian and lawyers representing the United States also clashed at length over the “Guarantees” offered by Washington as part of this appeal process. Over the summer, the United States indeed promised that, in the event of extradition, Julian Assange would not be held in the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, and that he could ask to be served. his sentence in his native Australia.

For James Lewis, these guarantees are legally “Binding”. He also assured that the United States used to keep its promises. Mr Lewis tried to convince the judges that the commitments significantly changed the situation and nullified fears for the Australian’s life.

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Read also Julian Assange: the refusal of his extradition to the United States examined on appeal

Contested American guarantees

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Journal Reference:

Yannick Fotio, Kwang-Mook Jung, Francesca Palese, Andre Obenaus, Alex Mabou Tagne, Lin Lin, Tarif Ibne Rashid, Romario Pacheco, Amandine Jullienne, Jade Ramirez, Marco Mor, Gilberto Spadoni, Cholsoon Jang, Andrea G. Hohmann, Daniele Piomelli. NAAA-regulated lipid signaling governs the transition from acute to chronic pain. Science Advances, 2021; 7 (43) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi8834

Findings from the study, titled ?NAAA-regulated lipid signaling governs the transition from acute to chronic pain,? published today in Science Advances, show that disabling N-acylethanolamine acid amidase (NAAA) ? an intracellular enzyme-in the spinal cord during a 72-hour time window following peripheral tissue injury halts chronic pain development in male and female mice.

?Delineating the nature, localization and timing of the events involved in pain chronicity is necessary to pinpointing control nodes in the process that can be targeted by new classes of disease-modifying medicines beyond analgesics,? said Daniele Piomelli, Distinguished Professor in the UCI School of Medicine Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology. ?This study is the first to identify that NAAA, a previously unrecognized control node, can be effectively targeted by small-molecule therapeutics that inhibit this enzyme, and block the transition from acute to chronic pain.?

Chronic pain evolves from acute pain caused by the physical trauma of tissue damage due to surgery or injury and is a massive problem, affecting more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. Chronic pain continues long past tissue healing, is often resistant to therapy, and remains seriously undertreated. Treatment is largely dependent on a handful of analgesic drug classes such as opioids, which may lose effectiveness over time and can also lead to addiction. Nerve damage is considered to be a critical factor in the transition to chronic pain, but the underlying molecular events leading to its emergence have been poorly understood.

?Our findings suggest a new class of drugs ? NAAA inhibitors ? can be used to treat various forms of chronic pain and in preventing incisional and inflammatory injuries following surgery,? Piomelli said.

This work was funded by grants R41NS106999, R42DA033683 and DA041229 from the National Institutes of Health.

Journal Reference:

Yannick Fotio, Kwang-Mook Jung, Francesca Palese, Andre Obenaus, Alex Mabou Tagne, Lin Lin, Tarif Ibne Rashid, Romario Pacheco, Amandine Jullienne, Jade Ramirez, Marco Mor, Gilberto Spadoni, Cholsoon Jang, Andrea G. Hohmann, Daniele Piomelli. NAAA-regulated lipid signaling governs the transition from acute to chronic pain. Science Advances, 2021; 7 (43) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi8834

This work was funded by grants R41NS106999, R42DA033683 and DA041229 from the National Institutes of Health.

Fuel distribution was halted on Tuesday, October 26, at around noon at all service stations in Iran, state television said. “Due to disruptions in the computer system, the distribution of fuel to service stations across the country has been interrupted”, thus affirmed the same source.

First unidentified, this general blackout is in fact due to a cyberattack, said the highest security body in the country shortly after. “The Supreme National Security Council confirmed that it was a cyberattack against the computer fuel distribution system”, state television reported. “Details of the attack and its origin are under investigation”, added the same source, without further details.

Read also Ebrahim Ra�ssi, Iran’s tough new face

Official channels showed gas stations closed as queues lengthened. “An urgent meeting is held at the Iranian National Petroleum Products Distribution Company to resolve the problem”, also declared his spokesperson, Fatemeh Kahi. In Tehran, technicians from the petroleum ministry took the computer system of a few gas stations offline to dispense fuel manually, television reported later in the day.

“No plan to increase the price of gasoline”

From the start, “Officials concerned” had not ruled out that it could be a cyberattack, evoked by Iranian social media. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, however, had preferred to ensure that the interruption was “Due to a technical problem which will soon be resolved”.

Conservative news agency Fars has linked the blackout to the anniversary of November 15, 2019, when violent protests erupted in Iran after news of a sudden rise in gasoline prices. The government “Has no plan to increase the price of gasoline and people shouldn’t be worried”, promised Mr. Vahidi, questioned by the public broadcasting.

In July, a cyberattack had already crippled the country’s rail system and sparked scenes of ��chaos��, wrote then The Times of Israel. In addition to train delays and cancellations, hackers disseminated erroneous traffic information messages, calling on users to contact a number – which turned out to be the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Read also All eyes turn to Israel after incident at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site

If the attack had not been claimed, the New York Times reported in July that an investigation, conducted by an Israeli-American cybersecurity firm, concluded that a group named Indra and opposed to the Iranian government was likely behind the cyberattack.

The World with AFP

Read also Ebrahim Ra�ssi, Iran’s tough new face

“No plan to increase the price of gasoline”

Read also All eyes turn to Israel after incident at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site

The World with AFP

Laotians do not want a giant Chinese Buddha: the Chinese real estate group Wanfeng Real Estate, of Shanghai, which since 2012 has been building a 3.65 square kilometer special economic zone in Vientiane, in the That Luang swamp region, in the east of the Laotian capital, is under fire from critics. In question, the project to erect a giant statue of Buddha, intended to become the central attraction of an aquatic theme park for tourists – mainly Chinese.

The project is not new. But its implementation seems imminent, since the country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Kikeo Khaykhamphithoun, visited the promoter’s premises at the end of August to learn about it. That the communist leader – Laos has been led since 1975 by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party – welcomed, according to the official Laotian press, that this “Gigantic representation of Buddha can give an impetus to Buddhism in the era of globalization, while encouraging the economic development of the SEZ”, still happening. But that he was introduced a replica of the future statue, in the form of a standing Buddha, in the typical style of the Mahayana school known as the “great vehicle”, the majority in China and North-East Asia, causes a shock: in Laos, where predominates, as in Thailand and in Burma, the Theravada school known as the ?small vehicle?, the Awakened one – the meaning of ?Buddha? in Sanskrit – is most often represented in a sitting position of meditation.

Read also Buddhism: the three great schools

Critics immediately rocketed on social networks. “They should build a Laotian Buddha, or if they want to build it as a symbol of cooperation between the two countries, then they build two Buddha statues – one Chinese and one Laotian side by side., a Vientiane resident told Radio Free Asia’s Laotian service. If they are content to build only that of China, Laos will lose face �.

“Symbol of sovereignty”

For Adisorn Semyaem, director of the Mekong Studies Center at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, quoted by Nikkei Asia magazine, “It would be unacceptable for Laotians for a large statue to be built in the That Luang Swamp Special Economic Zone to attract tourism, not far from the Pha That Luang stupa, the symbol of Laotian sovereignty.”

In reality, the distinction between the two schools of Buddhism is far from being so clear: there are many statues of seated Buddhas in China. And at least one dispatch from the Laotian press agency quoted, in August 2020, that is to say a year earlier, a Chinese official evoking a “Statue in a seated position” of a hundred meters for the Chinese economic zone. The question, according to connoisseurs, has more to do with Laotian nationalism, faced with a China which is multiplying infrastructure projects in this small country of 7.5 million inhabitants with which it shares a border.

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Read also Buddhism: the three great schools

“Symbol of sovereignty”

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Resistance is not futile: Predicting how changes in manufacturing, materials impact EV battery life ? NovLink

We would like to give thanks to the author of this short article for this outstanding material

Resistance is not futile: Predicting how changes in manufacturing, materials impact EV battery life

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Resistance is not futile: Predicting how changes in manufacturing, materials impact EV battery life ? NovLink

This is the story of a Congolese child, born December 31, 1965 and officially named Eulalie-Brigitte Kou�lany. Very quickly, the nickname of Bill, given by his father to express the indomitable character of his daughter, erased this civil status: “Bill, like Billy The Kid, a thug, a bandit, a boss – always climbing trees, not saying hello to visitors, eating with my fingers, insulting body and soul, punching punches , to crack my dresses, to steal food and money. “

Her mother goes further and milks her kipiala, a nickname close to the invective for ?A person without barriers, unpredictable, free in his speech and in his actions. Capable of anything. A scary person ?. The tone is set. As a narrator and author of the story of his life, Bill Kou�lany will make this double masculine and pejorative denomination a force. Until writing this punchy text: Kipiala or the rage to be oneself.

Read also Literary start in 2021: the selection of “World Africa”

This world-renowned artist, who was the first creator of sub-Saharan Africa exhibited at the Documenta de Kassel, tells in this autobiographical book her journey, that of a woman constantly spurred on by a fierce need for independence. He began in France where Bill was sent from 13 to 15 years old by his parents, with the hope that she would come back sober, broken in good manners and crowned with diplomas. It will not be. Far from her native Congo-Brazzaville, tossed from one home to another among uncles with questionable activities, sometimes forced into the D system to feed and equip herself, the young girl withers.

” Wild animal “

?In France, it was like the momentum of an arrow suddenly stopped in its course. The heavy silence of words, emotions, desires, closed fists. ” Fortunately, literature opens a saving breach in its universe. ?I fell into reading like other kids my age fell into drugs and prostitution. With passion. “ From there will also be born the desire to write.

Back in his country in 1980, Bill is 15 years old and has a freer spirit than ever. As a keen observer of her family, she deciphers the dysfunctional couple formed by her parents, paints the portrait of her grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins ??as well as her siblings of ten children. Among the Kou�lany, love and affection make less noise than arguments, beatings, neighborhood dramas.

Read also Fann Attiki, subversive and quiet Congolese author

In the midst of this great commotion, Bill remains the” wild animal “ which bothers and never finds its place. No matter how much she does, she only succeeds ?Go beyond, get out of the conventional framework. Get out of the family photo ?. She thus narrates without taboo the vicissitudes of her love and sexual life and this devil with the body which seizes her in front of certain beings, men as women: ?I wasn’t trying to be normal. I wasn’t looking for men. I wasn’t even looking for a man. I was looking for myself. “

She also tells about her motherhood, her friendships, her many moves, the difficulty of living in Brazzaville, this dilapidated capital. And how creation will become her backbone, the center of her life as a visual artist and teacher. The last third of the book looks back on the various wars that, in the 1990s, mourned the Congo and how Bill and his people experienced them in their flesh, forced, in panic, to flee and to flee. roaming.

Read also Laura Nsafou: ?How to keep hope when it suddenly disappears? ”

The often raw tone of the book draws the course of an impressive woman, and behind this silhouette can be seen the outlines of a rich but complicated country, in which artists like her must prove their legitimacy on a daily basis. “One day, in the maze of writing where I was battling, the ?is? appeared without warning, writes Bill Kou�lany. It was like the pocket of water that pierces after hours of walking. ” His story, however, escapes navel-gazing, captivating the reader by its sincerity as much as by the proud despair that emanates from it.

In the Congo of the late 1990s, engulfed in civil war, Bill – starving and wandering from shelter to shelter – still keeps with her the pages of her manuscript, begun a decade earlier. And it is undoubtedly this irrepressible desire for expression that touches in this text written from ” real reinvented ?. A book retracing the life path of an intense being, in whom “Life goes out[ait] everywhere “.

Kipiala or the rage to be oneself, by Bill Kou�lany (ed. Les Avrils, Paris).

Kidi Bebey

To stay up to date on African news, subscribe to the ?Monde Afrique? newsletter from this link. Every Saturday at 6 a.m., find a week of current events and debates treated by the editorial staff of World Africa.

Read also Literary start in 2021: the selection of “World Africa”

” Wild animal “

Read also Fann Attiki, subversive and quiet Congolese author

Read also Laura Nsafou: ?How to keep hope when it suddenly disappears? ”

Kipiala or the rage to be oneself, by Bill Kou�lany (ed. Les Avrils, Paris).

Kidi Bebey

Journal Reference:

Hsin-Yu Chen, Salvatore Vitale, Francois Foucart. The Relative Contribution to Heavy Metals Production from Binary Neutron Star Mergers and Neutron Star?Black Hole Mergers. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2021; 920 (1): L3 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac26c6

A new study by researchers at MIT and the University of New Hampshire finds that of two long-suspected sources of heavy metals, one is more of a goldmine than the other.

The study, published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters, reports that in the last 2.5 billion years, more heavy metals were produced in binary neutron star mergers, or collisions between two neutron stars, than in mergers between a neutron star and a black hole.

The study is the first to compare the two merger types in terms of their heavy metal output, and suggests that binary neutron stars are a likely cosmic source for the gold, platinum, and other heavy metals we see today. The findings could also help scientists determine the rate at which heavy metals are produced across the universe.

?What we find exciting about our result is that to some level of confidence we can say binary neutron stars are probably more of a goldmine than neutron star-black hole mergers,? says lead author Hsin-Yu Chen, a postdoc in MIT?s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Chen?s co-authors are Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor of physics at MIT, and Francois Foucart of UNH.

An efficient flash

As stars undergo nuclear fusion, they require energy to fuse protons to form heavier elements. Stars are efficient in churning out lighter elements, from hydrogen to iron. Fusing more than the 26 protons in iron, however, becomes energetically inefficient.

?If you want to go past iron and build heavier elements like gold and platinum, you need some other way to throw protons together,? Vitale says.

Scientists have suspected supernovae might be an answer. When a massive star collapses in a supernova, the iron at its center could conceivably combine with lighter elements in the extreme fallout to generate heavier elements.

In 2017, however, a promising candidate was confirmed, in the form a binary neutron star merger, detected for the first time by LIGO and Virgo, the gravitational-wave observatories in the United States and in Italy, respectively. The detectors picked up gravitational waves, or ripples through space-time, that originated 130 million light years from Earth, from a collision between two neutron stars ? collapsed cores of massive stars, that are packed with neutrons and are among the densest objects in the universe.

The cosmic merger emitted a flash of light, which contained signatures of heavy metals.

?The magnitude of gold produced in the merger was equivalent to several times the mass of the Earth,? Chen says. ?That entirely changed the picture. The math showed that binary neutron stars were a more efficient way to create heavy elements, compared to supernovae.?

A binary goldmine

Chen and her colleagues wondered: How might neutron star mergers compare to collisions between a neutron star and a black hole? This is another merger type that has been detected by LIGO and Virgo and could potentially be a heavy metal factory. Under certain conditions, scientists suspect, a black hole could disrupt a neutron star such that it would spark and spew heavy metals before the black hole completely swallowed the star.

The team set out to determine the amount of gold and other heavy metals each type of merger could typically produce. For their analysis, they focused on LIGO and Virgo?s detections to date of two binary neutron star mergers and two neutron star ? black hole mergers.

The researchers first estimated the mass of each object in each merger, as well as the rotational speed of each black hole, reasoning that if a black hole is too massive or slow, it would swallow a neutron star before it had a chance to produce heavy elements. They also determined each neutron star?s resistance to being disrupted. The more resistant a star, the less likely it is to churn out heavy elements. They also estimated how often one merger occurs compared to the other, based on observations by LIGO, Virgo, and other observatories.

Finally, the team used numerical simulations developed by Foucart, to calculate the average amount of gold and other heavy metals each merger would produce, given varying combinations of the objects? mass, rotation, degree of disruption, and rate of occurrence.

On average, the researchers found that binary neutron star mergers could generate two to 100 times more heavy metals than mergers between neutron stars and black holes. The four mergers on which they based their analysis are estimated to have occurred within the last 2.5 billion years. They conclude then, that during this period, at least, more heavy elements were produced by binary neutron star mergers than by collisions between neutron stars and black holes.

The scales could tip in favor of neutron star-black hole mergers if the black holes had high spins, and low masses. However, scientists have not yet observed these kinds of black holes in the two mergers detected to date.

Chen and her colleagues hope that, as LIGO and Virgo resume observations next year, more detections will improve the team?s estimates for the rate at which each merger produces heavy elements. These rates, in turn, may help scientists determine the age of distant galaxies, based on the abundance of their various elements.

?You can use heavy metals the same way we use carbon to date dinosaur remains,? Vitale says. ?Because all these phenomena have different intrinsic rates and yields of heavy elements, that will affect how you attach a time stamp to a galaxy. So, this kind of study can improve those analyses.?

This research was funded, in part, by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the LIGO Laboratory.

Journal Reference:

Hsin-Yu Chen, Salvatore Vitale, Francois Foucart. The Relative Contribution to Heavy Metals Production from Binary Neutron Star Mergers and Neutron Star?Black Hole Mergers. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2021; 920 (1): L3 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac26c6

A new study by researchers at MIT and the University of New Hampshire finds that of two long-suspected sources of heavy metals, one is more of a goldmine than the other.

Chen?s co-authors are Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor of physics at MIT, and Francois Foucart of UNH.

An efficient flash

?If you want to go past iron and build heavier elements like gold and platinum, you need some other way to throw protons together,? Vitale says.

The cosmic merger emitted a flash of light, which contained signatures of heavy metals.

A binary goldmine

This research was funded, in part, by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the LIGO Laboratory.