June 14: JWST spots the farthest galaxy in the universe, why palliative care should be more widespread, and brown seaweed is choking Caribbean beaches. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Pedestrians walk across a beach past live (brown) and dead (black) sargassum washing onshore in Petit Bourg in the French Caribbean region of Guadeloupe on April 16, 2023. Oliver Moris/AFP via Getty Images | | | • Huge clumps of sargassum seaweed are choking beaches in the Caribbean. | 5 min read | | | • Summer activities expose us to many different germs, says microbiologist Bill Sullivan. Here's how to stay healthy. | 4 min read | | | • Meet the unknown female botanists from the early 20th century who established the field of ecological restoration. | 30 min listen | | | Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope spotted an unusually large and radiant galaxy that existed a mere 290 million years after the big bang—the youngest system ever detected. The galaxy, named JADES-GS-z14-0, is billions of light-years away, so the light it emits appears to us as it did during the early history of the universe. The galaxy has a redshift of 14.32, the highest ever recorded (redshift is a measure of the wavelengths of light–the farther away an object is, the higher its redshift).
Why this is so cool: Most early galaxies are rather dim and small. But JADES-GS-z14-0 is especially radiant, suggesting that somehow this young giant had already manufactured a half billion stars–with hundreds of millions of times the mass of our sun--packed into a space approximately 1,700 light-years across. The galaxy is also glowing red, perhaps from galactic dust from clouds of ionized oxygen--the remnants of dead stars.
What the experts say: "Usually gases like oxygen show up only after large groups of stars have lived their lives and died in supernova explosions," says Kevin Hainline, a University of Arizona astronomer. "So seeing oxygen in a galaxy this young is like if you are an anthropologist and you find an enormous, ancient city that has evidence of iPhones." |  | In this deep field image, almost every visible object is a far-distant galaxy. JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown in the pullout) is the most distant known galaxy. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), P. Cargile (CfA) | Two recent studies found that palliative care, which focuses on minimizing pain and improving quality of life, shortened the length of hospital visits and had lasting positive effects for patients with a variety of disorders, from COPD to organ failure to dementia. For 24,000 patients across 11 hospitals in eight states, researchers implemented automatic enrollment in a palliative care program–resulting in a 43.9 percent increase in care referrals, and shortened hospital stays by 9.6 percent for those who received care. A second study found that palliative care for people with COPD, lung disease and heart failure improved quality of life, even after care ceased. Why this matters: Palliative care is woefully underused. In 2021, only an estimated one in 10 people worldwide who needed palliative care received it, according to the WHO. Palliative care is misunderstood to be "end of life" care, when in fact it's a multidisciplinary field that addresses physical, mental and spiritual needs over the course of an entire illness. For cancer patients, for example, wound care and infusions to improve red blood cell counts are considered supportive, palliative care; chemotherapy is not.
What can be done: Though most major hospitals have a palliative care unit, people don't know to ask about it. In rural areas, providers can be harder to come by. Cancer doctor and palliative care specialist David Hui of the MD Anderson Cancer Center advocates for a system that directs services to patients who would benefit most. Usually, and not surprisingly, those are people with the most severe symptoms. Such a system would use early screening of symptoms to identify candidates for palliative care. | | | • The current outbreak of the subtype of bird flu called H5N1 in dairy cows has escalated to an alarming level and is now infecting humans. The dairy industry and regulatory agencies need to move quickly to stop H5N1 from seeding a human epidemic, write veterinarians Kay Russo, Michelle Kromm and Carol Cardona. "At this point, the dairy industry must put aside cultural and operational differences and start the kind of broad-scale influenza testing and reporting that occurs in the poultry and swine industries," they say. | 8 min read | | | MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • Chemists Finally Made a Compound Containing Mysterious Element Promethium | 4 min read | • Prime Number Puzzle Has Stumped Mathematicians for More Than a Century | 7 min read | • What It's like to Live with a Brain Chip, according to Neuralink's First User | 7 min read | | | • Fields medalist Terence Tao explains how computer proof checkers and AI programs are dramatically changing mathematics. "I think in three years AI will become useful for mathematicians. It will be a great co-pilot," he says. | 12 min read | | | • From the archive: A vacuum is not completely empty. So-called "virtual particles" pop in and out of empty space, giving it energy. An experiment underway 110 meters underground in an abandoned Sardinian mine is attempting to capture measurements of this energy. | 16 min read | | | The deeper we look into the universe, the farther back in time we see. I wonder if, on some distant planet billions of light-years away, some intelligent creature is looking through an advanced telescope (or other device) and seeing the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. | Thank you for reading Today in Science this week. Consider recommending us to a friend. They can sign up here.
| —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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