Left to right: Michael Jäger, Tianyao Yang, and Vincent Beudez
Awe-inspiring scenes of the Milky Way, dancing aurorae, and serene galaxies all feature on the shortlist for this year’s ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year.
The competition is run by Royal Observatory Greenwich, supported by ZWO and in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine. In 2025, the competition received over 5,500 entries from passionate amateur and dedicated professional photographers, submitted from 69 countries across the globe. Shortlisted images include a moonrise over the Dolomites, red-hued Northern Lights at Mono Lake, California and Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS).
The overall winner will take home £10,000 ($13,555). There are also prizes for runners-up £500 ($676) and highly commended £250 ($338) entries. The special prize winners will receive £750 ($1,016). All the winning entrants will receive a one-year subscription to BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
One of this year’s astronomical highlights was the solar eclipse visible from North America. Included in the ZWO Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year category is a 22-megapixel panorama capturing the event. Total Solar Eclipse by Louis Egan shows the different stages of the solar eclipse, photographed from Canada. Further highlights include peaks in solar activity. PengFei Chou’s photograph 500,000 kilometer (311,000 miles) Solar Prominence Eruption shows a massive solar outburst that lasted approximately an hour.
In this year’s competition, The Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation has become The Annie Maunder Open Category where entrants can experiment with different approaches to astronomy art, showcasing high concept, creative work. The striking image, Neon Sun by Peter Ward, uses images taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) remapped with a more vibrant palette. The same coronal data is turned ’inside out’ to surround the Sun, creating the illusion of it being enclosed in a neon tube.
The ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is now in its seventeenth year and returns with an expert panel of judges from the worlds of art and astronomy. The winners of the competition’s nine categories, two special prizes and the overall winner will be announced on Thursday September 11. The winning images will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum from Friday September 12, alongside a selection of exceptional shortlisted images. The competition’s official book, published by Collins in association with Royal Museums Greenwich, will be available exclusively on-site and online at Royal Museums Greenwich from the exhibition opening date. It will then be available more widely from bookstores from Thursday September 25.
July 8 (UPI) — The melting of glaciers due to the climate crisis could make volcanic eruptions more catastrophic than before, scientists cautioned in a study.
The loss of ice from the rapid glacial melting releases pressure on magma chambers underground and could cause volcanic eruptions to become more frequent and intense, the study, presented at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague, said.
“As glaciers retreat due to climate change, our findings suggest these volcanoes go on to erupt more frequently and more explosively,” Lead researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Pablo Moreno, said.
The study placed six volcanoes in Chile under crystal analysis to determine how the shifting of the Patagonia Ice Sheet impacted the strength and frequency of previous volcanic eruptions.
Studies linking the impacts of climate change on volcanic eruptions had previously been conducted in Iceland, but the latest study was the first to assess the links to continental volcanic systems.
“Our study suggests this phenomenon isn’t limited to Iceland, where increased volcanic activity has been observed, but could also occur in Antarctica,” said Moreno. “Other continental regions, like parts of North America, New Zealand, and Russia, also now warrant closer scientific attention,”
“We found that following deglaciation, the volcano starts to erupt way more, and also changes composition,” said Moreno. The composition changed as the magma melted crustal rocks while eruptions were suppressed. This made the molten rock more viscous and more explosive on eruption.
Scientists found that during the last ice age, thick ice covered and suppressed the number of eruptions. Then, as the Earth heated up, volcanic activity increased by two to six times.
“Glaciers tend to suppress the volume of eruptions from the volcanoes beneath them. But as glaciers retreat due to climate change, our findings suggest these volcanoes go on to erupt more frequently and more explosively,” said Dr Moreno. “The key requirement for increased explosive is initially having a very thick glacial coverage over a magma chamber, and the trigger point is when these glaciers start to retreat, releasing pressure, which is currently happening in places like Antarctica.”
Researchers Ukpong Eyo, PhD (from left); William Mills III, PhD; and graduate student Aida Lopez have made a discovery that could let us boost blood flow to the brain to battle Alzheimer’s.
New School of Medicine research suggests an unexpected way doctors may be able to improve blood flow to the brain to battle Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Scientists led by Ukpong B. Eyo, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Neuroscience, found that immune cells called microglia play an essential role in determining how well tiny capillaries deliver blood and essential nourishment to our brains. The scientists believe problems with these microglia could be contributing to failing brain health, and targeting them could help us prevent or reverse memory-stealing diseases caused or worsened by lack of adequate blood flow. This could include Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia and even some cases of Parkinson’s.
“For some time now, microglia have been suggested to play important roles in regulating vessel function. With this study, we have provided the most definitive evidence that they do regulate blood flow to the brain, specified the location of this function to the brain’s small vessels or capillaries and identified an enzyme that they use to do this,” said Eyo, of UVA’s Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG Center) and the UVA Brain Institute. “Although microglia are dysfunctional in neurodegenerative diseases, our work now raises the possibility of improving blood flow deficits by targeting microglia.”
The Brain’s Big Demands
Our brains require a tremendous amount of sustenance. Even though they make up only 2% of our body weight, they use 20% of our total energy. To provide this, the brain is surrounded by a 400-mile-long network of blood vessels that branch most extensively into tiny capillaries. Proper function of these vessels and capillaries is essential to good brain health.
Scientists have known that problems with myeloid cells can contribute to excess carbon dioxide in the blood, robbing our brains of life-giving oxygen. But Eyo and his team wanted to understand more specifically which cells were responsible and to see what would happen if those cells weren’t working properly.
The researchers determined that microglia are responsible for ensuring proper capillary “tone,” which determines how well the tiny vessels can feed blood to the brain. Eliminating microglia significantly reduced the capillaries’ diameter and reduced their ability to transport blood, the scientists found. Restoring the microglia fixed this problem.
“The microglial enzyme identified in this study has been targeted heretofore in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, albeit with mixed results. Our study suggests that these therapeutics would have maximal benefit if prescribed according to the therapeutic window of microglia in Alzheimer’s – a focus in our ongoing research,” said UVA researcher William A. Mills III, PhD, the first author of a new scientific paper outlining the findings. “We have determined that all microglia are capable of regulating basal capillary tone as opposed to a subset of them, thus revealing their importance to meeting energy demands in the brain.”
The researchers say additional research will be needed to better understand the complex cellular communication network responsible for maintaining proper capillary function. But by better understanding how the immune system maintains capillary health, scientists may be able to boost blood flow to ensure the brain is properly nourished.
“Now that we have identified a novel role for microglia in blood vessel structure and function as well as a specific enzyme involved, we are poised to examine how this enzyme and microglial functions change, and to subsequently develop therapies to reduce these changes during neurodegenerative diseases broadly and in Alzhiemer’s disease especially,” Eyo said. “However, questions abound that our group will pursue – e.g. do the microglia regulate the small capillaries independently or in concert with other brain cells? When during development do microglia begin to play this role, and is this role also important in neurodevelopmental disorders where vascular function is also compromised? Can microglial replacement facilitate blood flow rejuvenation in neurodegenerative diseases? These are exciting questions we hope to answer in the near future.”
UVA recently established the Harrison Family Translational Research Center in Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases specifically to pioneer new treatments for Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders. The center is part of UVA’s Paul and Diane Manning Institute for Biotechnology. The institute will be housed in a four-story, 350,000-square-foot facility under construction at UVA’s Fontaine Research Park that is expected to bring hundreds and potentially thousands of jobs to Virginia as part of a new “ecosystem of innovation.”
Alzheimer’s Findings Published
Eyo and his collaborators have published their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The research team consisted of Mills III, Niesha A. Savory, Aida Oryza Lopez-Ortiz, Dennis H. Lentferink, Fernando González Ibáñez, Praise Agochi, Elina Rastegar, Arnav Gupta, Deetya Gupta, Arya Suram, Brant E. Isakson, Marie-ÈveTremblay and Eyo.
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, grants NS122782 and NS119243; the NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, grants HL007284, HL137112 and HL171997; the Owens Family Foundation; a UVA Brain Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship; and an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship, 25POST1376070.
To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making of Medicine blog.
Thermonuclear detonations on white dwarf stars are “lithium factories,” according to a gamma-ray signal that is the first hard evidence that these explosions are creating the lithium used in our electronics.
Lithium was the heaviest element to be produced in the Big Bang, which also generated hydrogen and helium. Today, lithium is an integral part of our modern technology, utilized in lithium-ion batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.
Yet lithium is central to one of the great mysteries of the cosmos. As the universe cooled during the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, the first elements were forged. Hydrogen made up about three-quarters of those elements, and helium about a quarter. Then there was lithium, which was but a trace amount. Yet when astronomers look at the stars, they find that most of them show evidence for even less lithium in their composition than we’d expect from the amount produced in the Big Bang.
(Image credit: NASA/EESA/L. Hustak (STScI))
Astronomers have explained this by showing how lithium can be dragged down inside a star from its outer layers and destroyed. Yet some stars go against the grain — younger generations have much more lithium than older stars. Where is this lithium coming from?
The chief suspect has been novae. Unlike a supernova, which obliterates a star, a nova is just an explosion on the surface of a white dwarf that has gravitationally accreted too much matter from a companion star. A white dwarf is the core of a sun-like star that has reached the end of its life. When this happens, a sun-like star’s outer layers expand, transforming the star into a red giant, which eventually casts its outer layers adrift into space, forming a planetary nebula. This ultimately dissipates, leaving behind just the white dwarf.
Most stars in the universe are found in binary systems, so it’s not surprising that many white dwarfs have companion stars keeping them company. In some cases, the companion star is close enough for the more compact white dwarf to start to steal matter from it.
As the stolen matter crashes down onto the surface of the white dwarf, the temperature and pressure at the point of contact become greater and greater until they are high enough to ignite thermonuclear reactions — and boom.
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Nova explosions do not destroy a star (although eventually so much matter will be captured that the entire star will explode as a Type Ia supernova), but they do cause it to brighten drastically in our sky — the word “nova” is Latin for “new” (as in new star).
Novae make sense as a source of modern lithium: As time goes by, more sun-like stars evolve into white dwarfs, leading to more novae and more lithium being spread into the interstellar medium, hence why younger stars have a greater abundance of the stuff. But what was needed was hard evidence.
In December 2013, the nova V1369 Cen, in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Centaurus, went into outburst and was observed by a range of telescopes, including the European Space Agency‘s INTEGRAL (International Gamma-ray Astrophysics Laboratory) space telescope.
In theory, a nova would create lithium when beryllium-7 forged in the nova undergoes radioactive decay into lithium-7, releasing gamma rays with an energy of 478 keV (kiloelectron volts) in the process.
Before-and-after images of the nova V1369 Cen. (Image credit: E. Guido and M. Rocchetto (Spaceflux))
When V1369 Cen went nova in 2013, it was thought that it was too far away for INTEGRAL to detect this spike in gamma rays. However, astronomers led by Luca Izzo of INAF, the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, have used observations by ESA’s Gaia astrometric satellite to show that this was not the case.
“Initially, the estimated distance of V1369 Centauri made detection of the 478 keV line unlikely,” said Izzo in a statement (in Italian, translated by Google translate), explaining why it took 12 years for this to come to light. “But thanks to the Gaia satellite, we discovered that the nova was much closer — about 3,200 light-years distant — than was estimated, making it possible for INTEGRAL.”
With the realization that V1369 Cen was within range of INTEGRAL, new analysis by Izzo’s team of INTEGRAL’s old data subsequently detected the 478 keV signal. Based on the intensity of the signal, Izzo’s team calculated that on the order of 10^-8 solar masses — about 100 millionths of the sun’s mass — worth of lithium was forged in the nova. This tallies with rough estimates of the amount of lithium made in V1369 Cen and other novae based on visible-light observations.
There is a caveat: The gamma-ray signal is not particularly strong, meaning that the signal-to-noise ratio is low, and the significance of the detection by INTEGRAL is not wholly convincing — scientists describe it as being 2.5-sigma, which means there’s about a 2.1% chance that the signal might not be real. That sounds like a small probability, but it’s not unheard of — scientists really prefer 5-sigma detections, meaning there’s just a 0.00006% chance the detection is false.
However, that’s not putting off some astronomers.
“The observation of the 478keV line is proof of the existence of beryllium-7 in novae envelopes,” said Massimo della Valle, who is a member of Izzo’s team from INAF. “The fact that the emission is observed to coincide in time with the nova, exactly at the expected energy and with the expected intensity, makes it highly unlikely that this is a coincidence, leading to a statistical significance well beyond 3-sigma.”
Astronomers have been searching for this evidence for a long time, and while this detection is not yet confirmed, it gives astronomers confidence that the next time there is a nova in range of our gamma-ray telescopes, they’ll be able to find the signal again and prove that novae are creating the lithium that powers the batteries used in the device that you are reading this on.
The research was published in the June issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A human clinical study has confirmed that a tocotrienol-enriched functional beverage, containing PhytoGaia’s TocoGaia, delivers “clinically meaningful anti-aging improvements.” These benefits include “enhanced psychological quality of life, stronger antioxidant defenses, and improved telomerase activity, a key marker of genomic stability in healthy aging adults.”
The study spanned six months and involved 67 healthy participants between the ages of 50 and 70. Researchers at the National University of Malaysia conducted the trial.
The key clinical findings from the study showed clinically meaningful improvement in psychological well-being, such as better mood and emotional resilience, when participants consumed the tocotrienol-enriched beverage.
“This is one of the most comprehensive human trials to date showing that tocotrienols (TocoGaia) can positively modulate several key hallmarks of aging, from reducing inflammation and oxidative stress to enhancing genomic protection,” says Dr. Ariati Aris, scientific affairs specialist at PhytoGaia.
“What’s truly encouraging is that these benefits were seen within just six months of supplementation, with no reported side effects. These findings add robust support to the growing scientific evidence positioning tocotrienols (TocoGaia) as a safe and effective nutraceutical for healthy aging.”
Antioxidant and cellular aging benefits
Additionally, TocoGaia enhances the antioxidant enzyme activity of superoxide dismutase and catalase, which are key in the body’s antioxidant defense to protect against oxidative stress.
The study also reported a boost in telomerase activity, noting that telomerase — an enzyme critical for maintaining telomere length —- was significantly elevated in the TocoGaia group, suggesting enhanced genomic stability and a potential slowing down of cellular aging.
Furthermore, the research indicated reduced inflammation and oxidative DNA damage, with the supplemented group showing reductions in key inflammatory markers such as TNF-α, as well as other cytokines including IL-6 and TGF-β, along with lower levels of 8-OHdG, a biomarker of oxidative DNA damage. This highlights tocotrienol’s role in modulating inflammation and promoting cellular integrity.
Importantly, the study highlighted an excellent safety profile as “no adverse effects were reported.” Clinical markers such as cortisol, insulin, liver enzymes, and lipid levels remained stable within normal ranges throughout the study.
“This study comes at a pivotal time when brands and consumers alike are demanding natural, effective, and, above all, safe solutions for healthy aging,” comments Bryan See, VP of PhytoGaia.
Synergies with squalene
The study is titled “A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial on the Effects of Tocotrienol-Rich Vitamin E on Quality of Life, Antioxidant Status, and Genomic Stability in Older Adults” and was recently published in Nutrients.
PhytoGaia also offers STGaia, a novel synergistic formulation of plant squalene and tocotrienols/tocopherol developed specifically to support healthy aging across both internal and external dimensions, including skin nutrition, mitochondrial health, and hair vitality.
While TocoGaia claims to strengthen antioxidant defences and genomic stability, STGaia complements it by replenishing age-depleted squalene and promoting mitochondrial function, skin barrier integrity and cellular energy balance.
“Together, TocoGaia and STGaia provide a clean-label, clinically supported foundation for brands formulating science-backed solutions for longevity, beauty-from-within, and total wellness,” concludes PhytoGaia.
Nutrition Insight recently sat down with Aris to explore key trends and innovations shaping market growth. He highlighted the current aging population is projected to reach 1.6 billion by 2050, noting that cognitive health, memory support, and mental clarity are top priorities.
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The ocean absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, but exactly how much is uncertain. For instance, estimates from the 2023 Global Carbon Budget ranged from 2.2 billion to 4 billion metric tons of carbon per year. One source of this uncertainty may be that the effects of bubbles have not been incorporated into air-sea carbon flux estimates, according to Rustogi et al.
When waves break, they create multitudes of tiny bubbles that carry gases such as carbon dioxide back and forth between the atmosphere and water. Models used to evaluate how fast this exchange occurs typically rely on measurements of wind speed, assuming that wind speed directly relates to the prevalence of bubble-forming waves. However, waves can be affected by other factors as well, meaning this assumption doesn’t always hold.
To assess the role of bubbles in air-sea carbon exchange in more detail, scientists applied a recently developed “bubble-mediated gas transfer theory” to the ocean. As with other models, the bubble-mediated approach incorporates wind strength, but uniquely, it also accounts for wave conditions that form gas-carrying bubbles. The researchers compared the results from their new model to a simpler, wind-only model that ignores the effect of bubbles.
The two models yielded similar estimates for total annual ocean carbon storage, but the bubble-mediated model showed much higher variability, both seasonally and regionally; in some instances, local fluxes it indicated differed by 20%–50% from the wind-only model. The bubble-mediated model also suggested that intense wave activity in the Southern Hemisphere leads to much higher carbon storage than in the relatively calm Northern Hemisphere—a difference that’s not obvious in the wind-only model.
That north-south difference could have implications for interpreting and projecting carbon cycle dynamics in a changing climate. With average wind speeds and wave heights likely to increase with global warming, it is essential to anticipate accurately how these changes will influence ocean carbon storage, the authors say.
The work is also important for marine carbon dioxide removal projects aiming to enhance carbon uptake to mitigate climate change effects, they note. A prerequisite for these efforts is quantifying how much carbon the ocean takes up naturally. Without a comprehensive understanding of the processes affecting uptake, the impacts of such interventions may be vastly under- or overestimated. (Global Biogeochemical Cycles, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GB008382, 2025)
—Saima May Sidik (@saimamay.bsky.social), Science Writer
Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2025), More bubbles means more variation in ocean carbon storage, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250244. Published on 8 July 2025.
Fish make hanging motionless in the water column look effortless, and scientists had long assumed that this meant it was a type of rest. Now, a new study reveals that fish use nearly twice as much energy when hovering in place compared to resting.
The study, led by scientists at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, also details the biomechanics of fish hovering, which includes constant, subtle fin movements to prevent tipping, drifting or rolling. This more robust understanding of how fish actively maintain their position could inform the design of underwater robots or drones facing similar challenges.
The findings, published on July 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overturn the long-standing assumption in the scientific literature that maintaining a stationary position in water is virtually effortless for fish with swim bladders.
The reason for this assumption was that nearly all bony fishes have gas-filled sacs called swim bladders that allow them to achieve neutral buoyancy — neither sinking nor rising to the surface. The presence of a swim bladder and the stillness of hovering fish caused the research community to assume hovering was a form of rest that was easy for fish to maintain.
Prior research from lead study author and Scripps marine biologist Valentina Di Santo found that the energy required for skates to swim at various speeds followed a distinct U-shaped curve, with slow and fast swimming requiring the most energy and intermediate speeds being the most energy-efficient. Based on these findings, Di Santo suspected there might be more to hovering than meets the eye.
To learn more, Di Santo and her co-authors conducted experiments with 13 species of fishes with swim bladders.
The team placed each fish in a specialized tank and recorded their oxygen consumption during active hovering and motionless resting (when the fish supports its weight with the bottom of the tank). While the fish were hovering, the researchers filmed them with high-speed cameras to capture their fin movements, tracking how each fin moved and how frequently they beat.
The researchers also took a variety of measurements of each fish’s body size and shape. In particular, the scientists measured the physical separation between the fish’s center of mass, which is determined by weight distribution, and its center of buoyancy, which is related to the shape and location of its swim bladder. All these measurements provided a way to quantify how stable or unstable each fish was.
The study found that, contrary to previous assumptions, hovering burns roughly twice as much energy as resting.
“Hovering is a bit like trying to balance on a bicycle that’s not moving,” said Di Santo.
Despite having swim bladders that make them nearly weightless, fish are inherently unstable because their center of mass and center of buoyancy don’t align perfectly. This separation creates a tendency to tip and roll, forcing fish to make continuous adjustments with their fins to maintain position. The study found that species with greater separation between their centers of mass and buoyancy used more energy when hovering. This suggests that counteracting instability is one of the factors driving the energy expended during hovering.
“What struck me was how superbly all these fishes maintain a stable posture, despite their intrinsic instability,” said Di Santo.
A fish’s shape and the position of its pectoral fins also influenced its hovering efficiency. Fish with pectoral fins farther back on their body were generally able to burn less energy while hovering, which Di Santo suggested may be due to improved leverage. Long, slender fish, such as the shell dweller cichlid (Lamprologus ocellatus) and the giant danio (Devario aequipinnatus), were less efficient at hovering, and fish with deep, compact bodies, such as the goldfish (Carassius auratus) or the figure-eight pufferfish (Dichotomyctere ocellatus), were more efficient.
“This changes how we see hovering. It’s not a form of rest at all,” said Di Santo. “It’s an energetically costly activity but one that fish engage in anyway because it can be very useful.”
Activities like guarding nests, feeding in specific locations or maintaining position in the water column are far more demanding than previously thought. The study’s findings also reveal an evolutionary trade-off in fish body shapes, where increased maneuverability comes at the cost of hovering efficiency and vice versa. Rather than being a drawback, Di Santo said, the high energy cost of hovering is a necessary trade-off that gives fishes the exceptional agility required to navigate the challenges of complex habitats such as coral reefs.
These findings could inform the design of underwater robots and vehicles, which must also maintain stability while remaining agile.
“By studying how fish achieve this balance, we can gain powerful design principles for building more efficient, responsive underwater technologies,” said Di Santo.
In particular, the findings could help improve the maneuverability of underwater robots, which could allow them to access and explore complex, hard-to-navigate environments like coral reefs or shipwrecks. According to Di Santo, underwater robots have historically been designed with compact shapes that make them stable. As in fish, shapes with more built-in stability are less maneuverable.
“If you want a robot that can maneuver through tight spaces, you might have to learn from these fishes to design in some instability and then add systems that can dynamically maintain stability when needed,” said Di Santo.
In addition to Di Santo, the study was co-authored by Xuewei Qi of Stockholm University, Fidji Berio of Scripps Oceanography, Angela Albi of Stockholm University, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and the University of Konstanz, and Otar Akanyeti of Aberystwyth University in Wales. The research was supported by the Swedish Research Council, the European Commission, the Stockholm University Brain Imaging Centre and the Whitman Scientist Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
The chance at an unlikely but substantial monetary reward gets people more jazzed about recycling than a small but certain reward, according to a new study. The findings suggest that implementing “bottle lotteries” as part of deposit return schemes could increase recycling rates, at no extra cost to local governments.
Two trillion beverage containers are produced every year, but only 34% of glass bottles, 40% of plastic bottles, and 70% of aluminum cans get recycled. Fifteen countries, 11 U.S. states, and 12 Canadian provinces have bottle-deposit refund systems in which a small sum (about 5 to 45 cents) added to the price of each beverage sold is refunded when people return the empty container for recycling.
These schemes lead to recycling rates of 78.3% on average – much better, but still leaving millions of tons of recyclables moldering in landfills.
Enter the idea of a bottle lottery, which aims to bring to recycling the same thrill that attends buying a lottery ticket. Norway currently has the world’s only bottle-recycling lottery system, which was implemented in 1997. The country boasts impressive beverage container recycling rates of nearly 97%, but until now there have not been any causal studies to work out to what degree this is due to the lottery.
In the new study, researchers conducted two experiments in which they offered people the choice between a guaranteed 10-cent reward for turning in recyclable beverage containers or a chance to win a larger reward (1-in-10 chance of $1, 1-in100 chance of $10, 1-in-1,000 chance of $100, or 1-in-10,000 chance of $1,000). Each study involved about 300 people; one took place at a series of food courts in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the other at a community food festival in Alberta, Canada.
Since the current bottle deposit is 10 cents per bottle in British Columbia and 10 cents for containers up to 1 liter in Alberta, a lottery along these lines would not increase the total cost of the recycling system, the researchers point out.
Participants in both studies preferred the chance at winning $1,000, the researchers report in the journal Waste Management. This option was chosen by 26% of people in Vancouver and 39% of people in Alberta.
The finding is “not at all” surprising, says study team member Jiaying Zhao, an environmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “The insight came from the Nobel-prize winning work in the 70s from Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky that people prefer a small chance to win a large prize over the small guaranteed prize. So we applied this insight to the current recycling refund system, and it worked beautifully!”
Zhao and her collaborators also asked the study participants how happy they were about the prospect of receiving money and, in Vancouver, asked at the end of the study how happy they were with their participation. “What did surprise me was that people feel much happier about the chance to win a large cash prize, and even if they didn’t win, they didn’t feel less happy at the end,” Zhao says.
The researchers say this “anticipatory happiness” about the prospect of winning big could build more positive feelings about recycling programs.
In a third study, the researchers invited people to bring bottles for recycling into the lab. They were told either that they would receive 10 cents for each bottle they brought in, or would have a chance at winning $1,000.
People randomly assigned to the “bottle lottery” group brought in almost 3 bottles for every 2 returned by the other group, the researchers found. If a similar differential applied in a bottle lottery across the United States, it would result in over 2 million tons of additional bottles recycled, leading to greenhouse gas savings equivalent to taking 1 million cars off the road each year.
In addition, more people in the lottery group than in the other group brought at least one bottle to recycle. This suggests the scheme could increase the proportion of people who recycle, not just make current recyclers more diligent.
The researchers suggest implementing a bottle-lottery as an add-on while maintaining current guaranteed-payment recycling systems, since some people rely on collecting and returning recyclables for income. The team aims to arrange a larger study in collaboration with a British Columbia recycling organization see how their findings scale up, Zhao reports.
Source:Radke J. et al. “Probabilistic refunds increase beverage container recycling behaviour in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.” Waste Management 2025.
According to new research by UCL and the University of Cambridge, ‘space ice’ contains tiny crystals and isn’t a completely disordered material like liquid water, as previously thought.
Space ice is different to the crystalline form of ice on Earth, and for decades, scientists have assumed it has no structure, with colder temperatures meaning it doesn’t have enough energy to form crystals when it freezes.
The new study investigated the most common form of ice in the Universe, low-density amorphous ice, which exists as the bulk material in comets, on icy moons and in clouds of dust where stars and planets form.
They found that computer simulations of this ice best matched measurements from previous experiments if the ice was not fully amorphous but contained tiny crystals (about three nanometres wide, slightly wider than a single strand of DNA) embedded within its disordered structures.
Final structure depends on how space ice originates
In experimental work, they also recrystallised (i.e., warmed up) real samples of amorphous space ice that had formed in different ways.
They found that the final crystal structure varied depending on how the amorphous ice had originated. If the ice had been fully amorphous (fully disordered), the researchers concluded, it would not retain any imprint of its earlier form.
Lead author Dr Michael Davies, who carried out the work as part of his PhD at UCL Physics & Astronomy and the University of Cambridge, said: “We now have a good idea of what the most common form of space ice looks like at an atomic level.
“This is important as ice is involved in many cosmological processes, for instance in how planets form, how galaxies evolve, and how matter moves around the Universe.”
Findings help speculate about the origins of life
The findings also have implications for a speculative theory about the origins of life on Earth.
According to a theory known as Panspermia, the building blocks of life were carried here on an ice comet, with low-density amorphous ice acting as a type of space shuttle material, in which ingredients such as simple amino acids were transported.
“Our findings suggest this ice would be a less good transport material for these origin of life molecules. That is because a partly crystalline structure has less space in which these ingredients could become embedded,” Dr Davies explained.
“The theory could still hold true, though, as there are amorphous regions in the ice where life’s building blocks could be trapped and stored.”
Co-author Professor Christoph Salzmann, of UCL Chemistry, added: “Ice on Earth is a cosmological curiosity due to our warm temperatures. You can see its ordered nature in the symmetry of a snowflake.
“Space ice has long been considered a snapshot of liquid water – that is, a disordered arrangement fixed in place. Our findings show this is not entirely true.”
He added: “Our results also raise questions about amorphous materials in general. These materials have important uses in advanced technology.
For instance, glass fibres that transport data long distances need to be amorphous, or disordered, for their function. If they do contain tiny crystals and we can remove them, this will improve their performance.”
Additional questions about the nature of amorphous ice
The research team stated that their findings raised numerous additional questions about the nature of amorphous ices – for instance, whether the size of crystals varied depending on how the amorphous ice formed, and whether a truly amorphous ice was possible.
Amorphous ice was first discovered in its low-density form in the 1930s when scientists condensed water vapour on a metal surface cooled to -110°C. Its high-density state was discovered in the 1980s when ordinary ice was compressed at nearly -200°C.
The research team discovered medium-density space ice in 2023. It was found to have the same density as liquid water and would therefore neither sink nor float in water.
Co-author Professor Angelos Michaelides, from the University of Cambridge, concluded: “Water is the foundation of life, but we still do not fully understand it. Amorphous ices may hold the key to explaining some of water’s many anomalies.”
