The black-legged deer ticks that transmit Lyme disease to thousands of Americans every year can survive below-freezing temperatures and go more than a year without a meal.
Want to see their superpowers evaporate? Bring on hot, dry weather.
One thing deer ticks hate: Hot, dry weather
When deer ticks are exposed for too long to the type of conditions that make for a perfect beach day, they will dessicate or dry out, says Constantin Takacs, a Northeastern assistant professor of biology who studies ticks in his lab.
He says deer ticks thrive in an environment of more than 90% relative humidity and start dying after a day or two when the humidity in the atmosphere is 85% or below.
“The drier the environment is, the faster they die,” Takacs says. The process is sped up when temperatures are high and accelerate the evaporation of moisture.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Remember when Britney Spears shaved her head and attacked a paparazzo’s SUV with an umbrella? Or when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars?
Celebrity meltdowns like these once played out on TV or in tabloids. Now, anyone can go viral for an emotional breakdown, or what Gen Z calls a “crash out.”
Search #crashout on TikTok and you’ll find videos of people screaming, having emotional outbursts or acting erratic (or pretending to) over relationships, politics, hunger, video games or shopping mishaps. Some creators even rank dramatic crash outs and lip-sync to songs that embody the “crash-out” energy.
But such content also finds empathy among social media users who leave supportive comments for their peers experiencing a hard time. Some even encourage crash outs as a way to release emotions and cope with feeling overwhelmed.
With its growing popularity, could “crash out” reflect a shift in how we talk about mental health — and even become the next word of the year? Is crashing out acceptable behavior?
What does it mean to “crash out”?
Previously, “to crash out” meant either “falling asleep from exhaustion” or “being eliminated” from a competition.
But in early 2024, the verbal phrase took a new meaning on TikTok. Now, it refers to losing control or acting irrationally, impulsively or destructively due to intense emotions, often resulting in unnecessary altercations or reckless decisions.
That kind of shift in meaning is not unusual for slang words, says Adam Cooper, an associate teaching professor and director of the linguistics program at Northeastern University.
“The expression has, in its core sense, this very physical understanding, but it’s shifted metaphorically into other domains,” Cooper says. “It’s a very visceral expression for the kind of feeling that it’s meant to describe. You very much feel what’s going on in a person’s mind as they’re experiencing this sudden wave of emotions or mental instability.”
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
The grass tennis courts of Wimbledon are among the most recognizable in the world.
But despite its fame, grass is one of the rarest surfaces on which tennis is played today; many tennis fans and players may never set foot on its lush turf during their lifetimes.
How does the iconic Centre Court lawn compare to the gritty red clay courts of the French Open, where last year’s Summer Olympics took place? Understanding how different tennis court surfaces like grass and clay play requires knowledge of the physics behind them.
Wimbledon’s grass courts create fast, low bounces
There are fundamental differences in the physics of grass and clay courts, says Arun Bansil, a university distinguished professor of physics at Northeastern University.
“Grass courts have lower friction and absorb more energy during the bounce,” Bansil says. “As a result, the ball bounces low due to loss of vertical speed, but bounces fast due to lower friction and smaller loss of horizontal speed.”
It’s that zippy, low-bouncing quality that defines gameplay on a grass court. For amateurs and professionals alike, the surface is among the trickiest on which to find your footing — requiring that you keep your body low to meet the ball.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo: Press Association via AP Images
The deluge that surged through Central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend devastated the hill country and shocked the world with its intensity and loss of life.
The Guadalupe River at Kerrville rose from 1.73 feet to 34.29 feet in three hours on July 4, according to a river gauge maintained by the federal government.
The floodwaters have killed at least 108 people, including 27 campers and counselors from the all-girls Camp Mystic near Kerrville, with five campers and one counselor still missing.
“The rainfall rate was extremely high, in some places reaching more than four inches per hour,” says Samuel Munoz, an associate professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern University.
“When the rainfall is that intense, the ground cannot absorb the water, so water flows quickly to streams and rivers,” he says.
As extraordinary as it is to have months’ worth of rainfall in hours, scientists say to expect more flash flooding in the future as warmer water and air temperatures lead to increased precipitation from hurricanes and other storms.
What happened in ‘flash flood alley’
The hill country in Central Texas where the Guadalupe River overflowed its banks is known as “flash flood alley” due to its susceptibility to flooding.
One factor is the area’s soil, which is hard-packed, dry and shallow with little organic matter, says Peter “James” Dennedy-Frank, Northeastern assistant professor of marine and environmental sciences with an expertise in hydrology.
What happens when it rains is known as “infiltration of excess overland flow,” he says.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo: Coast Guard/Handout via REUTERS
People often turn to therapy for answers about themselves, their lives or their relationships, but one psychologist says we need to get more comfortable with saying, “I don’t know” –– and that includes therapists too.
Aaron B. Daniels, an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University with a decade plus of experience as a practicing therapist, wants to know what happens when we encounter something that seems unknowable. Do we retreat from that feeling and look for easy answers? Do we dive headfirst into the unknown and change in the process? Most of all, what would it mean for therapists and clients to embrace the unknown, “the inscrutably alien” as he calls it, and dare to be a little more ignorant?
In the new essay collection, “A Phenomenology of the Alien,” Daniels and his collaborators wrestle with all of these questions, citing Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as much as they do movies like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the books of cosmic horror author H.P. Lovecraft.
Through science fiction, real accounts of alien abductions and even smart houses, the authors want to get us thinking about how the strange, truly mysterious moments in our lives might defy explanation and seem meaningless until we give them meaning.
The collection was also produced with copyediting by students in Daniels’ Psychological Humanities at Northeastern University workgroup.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Scientists sometimes compare predicting the course of epidemics to forecasting the weather.
But there’s a major difference — the impact of human behavior — says Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute.
Consider what happens during a downpour, he says. “If we all open an umbrella, it will rain anyway.”
“In epidemics, if we all open the umbrella in the sense that we behave differently, the epidemic will spread differently,” Vespignani says. “If we are more risk averse, we might avoid places. We might wash our hands more and so on and so forth.”
That makes modeling the interplay between human behavior and infectious disease transmission one of the remaining key challenges in epidemiology, according to a paper Vespignani and colleagues published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“It’s very difficult to integrate behavior in the models,” especially since existing behavioral models often lack real-world data calibration, says Vespignani, Northeastern’s Sternberg Family Distinguished Professor.
But now, thanks to what they learned during COVID-19, researchers say they have found a solution.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Ahh, summer, a time of vacations at the beach or mountains — and sky-high electricity bills as your air conditioner labors against the heat and humidity.
But what is the optimal temperature to set your air conditioner at?
And how does your body adapt to heat?
Northeastern University’s Stefan Kautsch, a teaching professor in physics, explains heat transfer and how the concepts he discusses in the classroom can also help humans survive sweltering temperatures.
This interview with Northeastern Global News has been condensed and edited.
Tell me how concepts of physics apply to air conditioners?
Heat (a form of energy) flows naturally from warm to cold. An air conditioner is that principle but reversed: Heat is moved from a cold area (inside) to a high-temperature area (outside).
But there are a few problems with this in a warming world.
Work is required to do this — meaning we need electricity to make that work and power the compressors.
But the more air conditioning we use, the more energy we need to use, and more energy means more power plants and — unfortunately — renewable energy is not that common here in the United States.
So the more we contribute to climate change at the same time we try to protect ourselves from global warming.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo: Getty Images
Northeastern University astrophysicist Jonathan C. Blazek knew to expect stunning views of galaxies when the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile released its first images of the night sky on June 23.
And the sights were extraordinary. With a telescope as wide as a tennis court and the world’s largest digital camera, the observatory captured more than 10 million galaxies in one image.
Planetary defense
What surprised Blazek, an expert in observational and theoretical astronomy, was the observatory’s detection of 2,104 new asteroids, including seven near-Earth objects.
“Seeing those asteroids was amazing. In several nights, they discovered thousands of asteroids that have never been seen before. I was not expecting that,” he says.
Asteroid detection is just part of the observatory’s overall mission, but it can play an important role in planetary defense, Blazek says.
“The fact that we’ve been around for a long time as a species means we don’t get hit by big things that often,” he says. “But it’s possible, and this is by far the best tool we’ve ever had to find asteroids that might be a problem.”
“There’s also an intermediate category of objects which are not necessarily planet killers” but could still cause destruction, Blazek says. He cites the example of the Tunguska asteroid that exploded over a sparsely populated area in Siberia on June 30, 1908, flattening millions of trees and setting off massive forest fires.
“If that happened now in a populated area, you would want to have some warning to get people out of the way,” or to use asteroid-redirecting technology, he says. “This gives you that warning.”
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Researchers at Northeastern University have discovered how to change the electronic state of matter on demand, a breakthrough that could make electronics 1,000 times faster and more efficient.
By switching from insulating to conducting and vice versa, the discovery creates the potential to replace silicon components in electronics with exponentially smaller and faster quantum materials.
“Processors work in gigahertz right now,” said Alberto de la Torre, assistant professor of physics and lead author of the research. “The speed of change that this would enable would allow you to go to terahertz.”
Via controlled heating and cooling, a technique they call “thermal quenching,” researchers are able to make a quantum material switch between a metal conductive state and an insulating state. These states can be reversed instantly using the same technique.
Published in the journal Nature Physics, the research findings represent a breakthrough for materials scientists and the future of electronics: instant control over whether a material conducts or insulates electricity.
The effect is like a transistor switching electronic signals. And just as transistors allowed computers to become smaller — from the huge machines the size of rooms to the phone in your pocket — control over quantum materials has the potential to transform electronics, says Gregory Fiete, a professor of physics at Northeastern who worked with de la Torre to interpret the findings.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
To some, fake news may be a tweet, a Facebook post or a url on the dark web.
To Northeastern University professor Albert-László Barabási and students in the Barabási lab, fake news is hundreds of small spheres bubbling up across the walls of a darkened room, in reds, oranges, then blues and pinks, while unintelligible whispers grow louder and morph with the sound of a dripping faucet.
“It’s an animation of how (conveyors of fake news) are actually sending their messages out, and how they are effectively infecting the social network behind Twitter with their messaging,” explains Barabási, the Robert Gray Dodge professor of network science and a distinguished university professor of physics at Northeastern. “Art and the language and the medium of art offer us a way to engage with this data in a way that is different from what we normally do.”
This month, Barabási and students displayed four pieces as part of an exhibit at Harvard’s CAMLab in Cambridge. The other pieces on display in the exhibit, interestingly, were created by Kim Albrecht, a former student in Barabási’s lab who is now a professor of information design at a university in Germany.
Read more at Northeastern Global News.
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
You might have heard from a social media post or a friend that sunscreens can be toxic. And more and more cosmetics products on the U.S. market contain sunscreen ingredients.
Should you avoid sunscreen?
The answer is no, says Leila Deravi, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern University.
“Absolutely everybody should wear sunscreen because it does protect against skin cancer,” she says.
However, some chemicals in sunscreens and other cosmetic products can become toxic, Deravi says, if they exceed the threshold levels recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Read more from Northeastern Global News.
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It’s officially summer, a time for barbecues, the beach — and protecting yourself against the teeny, tiny black-legged deer ticks that cause most Lyme disease cases.
Nearly a half-million cases of Lyme disease are diagnosed and treated each year, and the majority of them are reported in June, July and August.
“This is when a lot of people get infected,” says Northeastern professor Kim Lewis, director of the university’s Antimicrobial Discovery Center.
Not only are people more likely to be outdoors during the summer months and encounter ticks, the ticks are in what is called their nymphal stage and are so small — the size of a poppy seed — they are hard to spot and remove.
Preventing bites is key to avoiding disease, according to experts at Northeastern University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here are five tips to keep ticks at bay and guarantee their quick removal if they end up on your clothes or skin.
Read more from Northeastern Global News.
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In eighth grade, Richard Porter was far more interested in sculling than studying.
“The teachers didn’t really challenge me to understand the material,” says Porter, a professor of mathematics at Northeastern University. “On my part, I didn’t really spend any time trying to understand it at all.”
He was failing math, and was close to being expelled from his private boarding school in Delaware. But his math teacher stepped in, offering tutoring and helping him engage with the subject.
That helped Porter catch up with his classmates — and realize he saw math differently than most. Soon he was outperforming his classmates.
Porter went on to earn a doctoral degree in mathematics from Yale University.
Now, after five decades at Northeastern, he is retiring, leaving behind a legacy of leadership in mathematics education and mentorship.
Read more from Northeastern Global News.
Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
When Israel launched airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure last week, Israel said it was doing so to disrupt the development of nuclear weapons by Iran, which it claimed was nearing capability.
Iranian officials have said that the country’s nuclear facilities are not being used to create weapons but solely for civilian purposes, primarily for the production of energy. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency recently criticized Iran’s “general lack of co-operation” and warned that the country had enough enriched uranium to be near weapons grade and could potentially make several nuclear bombs.
Concerns that Iran could start making nuclear weapons have grown as Iran has accumulated more than 400 kg (880 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60%. The IAEA reported that Iran is in breach of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action it signed with several major countries stating that it would not surpass the 3.67% uranium enrichment level limit. The United States abandoned the agreement in 2018.
Understanding how enrichment fuels reactors and bombs
So what is the difference between a nuclear program used for civilian purposes and one used for military purposes?
Pran Nath, Northeastern University’s Matthews Distinguished University Professor of physics, says it’s first useful to understand the uranium-enrichment process.
Read more from Northeastern Global News.
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File