Chinese FM announces sanctions on former Philippine senator Tolentino, experts say move is necessary and sends warning

China has decided to impose sanctions on former Philippines' senator Francis Tolentino for his egregious conduct on China-related issues and prohibit him from entering the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced on Tuesday. 

Chinese experts believe the sanctions are necessary and targeted, serving as a warning, since Tolentino's claims have seriously damaged China-Philippines relations and affected the lives of the Chinese community in the Philippines.

For quite some time, driven by selfish interests, a handful of anti-China politicians in the Philippines have made malicious remarks and moves on issues related to China that are detrimental to China's interests and China-Philippines relations. The Chinese government is firmly resolved to defend national sovereignty, security and development interests, said the spokesperson.

When asked to provide some specific examples of the "improper behavior" that led to Chinese sanctions, and more details as well as the reasons behind the sanctions, following the announcement the same day, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that the website of Chinese Foreign Ministry had released the sanction decision and elaborated on it, which you may refer to.

"Let me stress that there are consequences for hurting China's interests," Mao said.

Tolentino is one of the key figures behind the passage of the so-called "Act Declaring the Maritime Zones under the Jurisdiction of the Republic of the Philippines" in the Philippine Senate, newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported.

With regard to the "Act Declaring the Maritime Zones under the Jurisdiction of the Republic of the Philippines" ("Maritime Zones Act") and the "Act Authorizing the President of the Philippines to Establish the Archipelagic Sea Lanes in Philippine Archipelagic Waters" ("Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act") announced by the Republic of the Philippines on November 8, 2024, the Chinese Foreign Ministry solemnly stated in November 2024 that the Philippine Maritime Zones Act illegally includes China's Huangyan Dao and most of the islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao and relevant waters into the maritime zones of the Philippines, and attempts to enshrine the illegal award of the South China Sea arbitration in the form of domestic legislation. 

China strongly condemns and firmly rejects this as the move gravely infringes upon China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall by no means be affected by the enactment of the Act, said the statement.

Tolentino is the malicious driving force behind the so-called "Maritime Zones Act" pushed by the Philippines, which not only violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea but also contravenes the UN Charter and other relevant international laws, said Ding Duo, director of the Research Center for International and Regional Studies at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies. 

Yang Xiao, an international strategy scholar who has long tracked issues in the South China Sea, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the South China Sea has been an integral part of China's territory and maritime rights since ancient times, and he believed that Tolentino's actions in promoting "Maritime Zones Act" are one of the reasons China decided to impose sanctions on him.

Tolentino, leveraging his family's political influence, holds considerable sway in Philippine politics and has long maintained an anti-China stance, Ding said, further noting that Tolentino has consistently actively pushed laws to support the illegal ruling of the South China Sea arbitration and consolidate the Philippines' illegal claims.

Yang noted that Tolentino has also been hyping up the so-called "China threat" narrative, interfering in China's affairs and stirring up fear of China among the Philippine elite.

According to a May report by Philippine media outlet Rappler, Tolentino claimed that the Philippine Senate should launch probes into suspicions of Chinese espionage and interference in the country's 2025 elections. 

By presenting so-called evidence, he claimed that the Chinese Embassy in Manila hired a local public relations firm tasked with influencing public perception through fake social media accounts, while simultaneously attacking Philippine government policies seen as unfavorable to Beijing, the Straits Times reported in April.

In response to related inquiry, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated that China follows the principle of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs. We have no interest in interfering in Philippine elections.

"Tolentino has seriously damaged China-Philippines relations and shows no political integrity," Ding said, adding that Tolentino often attacks people with fair views on China, accusing them of "selling out" the Philippines to smear his political opponents.

China's sanctions are not simply in response to rhetoric, but are based on actual actions that have harmed China's sovereignty and development interests, and they serve as a legal countermeasure, Yang said.

China, EU eye deeper cooperation, joint response to global challenges

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi here on Wednesday, with both sides expressing willingness to deepen cooperation and jointly address global challenges.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, noted that this year marks both the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the European Union (EU), and the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations.

The more complex and challenging the international landscape becomes, the more China and the EU, as two great civilizations and major forces, need to strengthen communication, enhance mutual trust, assume responsibilities, and serve as forces of global stability and certainty, he said.

Describing the upcoming China-EU leaders' meeting as a significant event taking place at a critical juncture, Wang said China looks forward to working with the EU to summarize the valuable experience and important insights from the past 50 years of the China-EU relations, and map out the future direction of dialogue and cooperation for the next 50 years, sending a clear, positive, and constructive signal to the world.

Meanwhile, Wang stressed that China has always supported European integration, calling on both sides to uphold multilateralism and free trade, safeguard international rules and order, promote peaceful resolution of international disputes, and join hands in addressing global challenges such as climate change.

He also underscored that China remains committed to high-quality development and high-level opening-up and voiced China's readiness to work with the EU to uphold the positioning as partners, deepen economic and trade cooperation, expand two-way openness, and properly handle differences through consultation to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.

For her part, von der Leyen said the upcoming EU-China leaders' meeting will be the best opportunity for both sides to jointly mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties.

Highlighting the EU's commitment to developing stable and constructive ties with China, and mutually beneficial economic and trade cooperation, von der Leyen said she looks forward to in-depth discussions with Chinese leaders on issues of mutual concern, demonstrating the two sides' commitment and responsibility to deepen cooperation and jointly tackle global challenges such as climate change, thereby sending a strong and positive signal to the world.

Von der Leyen also reiterated that the EU will continue to adhere to the one-China policy.

China launches series of cultural events to mark 80th Anniversary of WWII victory

A number of cultural events and outstanding cultural works were unveiled to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War, according to a press conference held by China's State Council Information Office on Thursday.

Lu Yingchuan, a vice minister of Culture and Tourism of China, said at the press conference that an evening gala will be held on September 3 in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

From August to October, a series of outstanding stage performances will be held to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. Around 20 high-quality productions will be selected from across the country and staged in major theaters in Beijing for approximately 40 performances in total, according to Lu. 

Meanwhile, an art exhibition will be held at the National Art Museum of China from August to September. Over 300 artworks — including traditional Chinese paintings, oil paintings, prints, sculptures, and watercolors — will be selected from across the country for the exhibition. Lu said. 

Liu Jianguo, a deputy director of the National Radio and Television Administration, said that a large number of outstanding radio, television, and online audiovisual works and programs will be released, telling stories of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and promoting its enduring spirit.

"We are advancing the creation of a series of themed works that tell the story of the Chinese people's unyielding struggle before, during, and after the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, including the TV series Our Homeland and Eight Thousand Miles of Cloud and Moon," said Liu, adding that a series of documentaries and online docuseries on the theme of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression will be released throughout the year.

A dedicated commemorative exhibition will open its doors to the public on July 7 to mark the 80th anniversary of victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, said Luo Cunkang, curator of the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

Xi Jinping champions the cause of Global South

by Xinhua writer Jiang Hanlu

On the banks of the shimmering Huangpu River that cuts through the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai sits the headquarters of the New Development Bank, co-founded by the BRICS countries more than a decade ago to foster the shared development of the world's emerging economies.

In his visit to this new landmark in China's financial center late April, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the bank's president and former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff this multilateral institution has been a result of "a pioneering initiative for the Global South to seek strength through unity."

For the Chinese leader, the BRICS mechanism is a major platform for promoting cooperation among countries in the Global South. In the coming days, this year's BRICS summit will open in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro under the theme of "Strengthening Global South Cooperation for More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance."

Xi's April visit to the bank demonstrates his long-standing commitment to bolstering the solidarity and common development of the Global South, amplifying the role of over 6 billion people in a world fraught with uncertainty and challenges unseen in a century.
COLLECTIVE RISE

"The collective rise of the Global South is a distinctive feature of the great transformation across the world," Xi observed when addressing the "BRICS Plus" Dialogue held in Kazan, Russia, in October last year.

Much more than a pure geographical or economic term, the Global South refers to a community of emerging markets and developing countries that share similar historical experiences, development stages and goals, and political pursuits.

The concept of "South" was first coined in Antonio Gramsci's work "The Southern Question" written in 1926, in which the Italian Marxist philosopher highlighted the development gap between northern and southern Italy.

The rise of the Global South has been decades in the making. Back in 1955, the landmark Bandung Conference convened in Indonesia under the flag of solidarity, friendship and cooperation, marking the awakening of the Global South after centuries of Western colonial rule. In 1964, the Group of 77, a coalition of developing countries, was established in Geneva within the United Nations to promote South-South cooperation and form a new international economic order.

Through extensive cooperation, the countries of the Global South have emerged as a key driver of global growth. These countries have contributed as much as 80 percent of global growth over the past 20 years, with a share of global GDP increasing from 24 percent four decades ago to more than 40 percent today.

China, the world's largest developing country, is a natural member of the Global South. In 2004, the United Nations Development Programme included China in its list of more than 130 Global South countries in a report titled "Forging a Global South." Some Westerners have challenged China's position that it is part of the Global South. In response, Xi has provided a clear answer.

"As a developing country and a member of the Global South, China breathes the same breath with other developing countries and pursues a shared future with them," Xi once said.

Historically, China has suffered from Western colonialism and imperialism, much like other developing countries, said Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar.

"Even today, despite inordinate success by Beijing to rise from the backwaters of development to be the second-largest economy in the world, as well as the first developing country to eliminate extreme poverty, China still faces common development challenges, and holds similar views regarding the current international order and global governance," he added. "Because of this, China has emerged as a strong champion for the legitimate rights and interests of many Global South countries."

LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND

Ahead of Xi's state visit to Brazil late last year, the Portuguese edition of the book "Up And Out Of Poverty" was officially launched in Rio de Janeiro. The book, first published in 1992, outlines Xi's perspectives on poverty eradication, local governance, reform and development when he worked in the formerly impoverished prefecture of Ningde in China's southeastern Fujian province.

Poverty has long ranked atop among the problems facing the Global South. With Xi's steadfast commitment and strong leadership, China has eradicated absolute poverty in its rural areas, a feat that no one had accomplished in China for thousands of years.

At the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro last year, Xi spoke with quiet conviction, recounting his lifelong dedication to poverty alleviation, from his time as a local official to his current role as China's top leader.

In his speech, Xi said a weaker bird can start early and fly high. "If China can make it, other developing countries can make it too. This is what China's battle against poverty says to the world," he said.

Xi's "weaker bird" metaphor originated from his book on poverty. His speech struck a chord with several foreign leaders, who asked the Chinese delegation whether they could share a copy of the speech.

The Chinese leader has placed great emphasis on development. For him, "development holds the master key to solving all problems," particularly when the global development gap continues to widen. Over the years, Xi has also been active in rallying global efforts to put development back on the international agenda as a central priority.

When attending the general debate of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in 2021 via video, Xi proposed the Global Development Initiative, an international policy framework to promote sustainable development around the world. To date, the initiative has garnered the support and participation of over 100 countries and 20 international organizations.
To boost common development in the Global South, Xi has been promoting practical cooperation through major infrastructure projects within the Belt and Road Initiative. During his foreign visits over the years, Xi would launch or visit major projects, such as the Chancay Port in Peru, the Dushanbe No. 2 power plant in Tajikistan and the Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka. When hosting leaders of the Global South in Beijing, Xi would also discuss with them major projects for cooperation during their talks.

Xi believes that the Global South should be the main driving force for common development and that "On the path to modernization, no one, and no country, should be left behind." He also supports countries of the Global South exploring paths of modernization tailored to their distinctive national conditions, rather than following Western development models.

Also at last year's G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Xi outlined eight measures in support of Global South cooperation, ranging from high-quality Belt and Road cooperation to boosting development in Africa. Months earlier, at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing last year, Xi unveiled 10 partnership actions and granted zero-tariff treatment on all product categories to the least developed countries with which it has diplomatic relations.
Gu Qingyang, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said, "China can play a positive role in the development of Global South countries," adding that Chinese technology and expertise in industrial development can support the modernization of the Global South's various regions.

EMPOWERING GLOBAL SOUTH IN INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE

As Xi once observed, in the face of global changes of the century, pursuing modernization and working for a more just and equitable international order are the sacred historic missions of Global South countries.

Xi described the BRICS countries as "leading members of the Global South," calling for building BRICS into "a primary channel for strengthening solidarity and cooperation among Global South nations and a vanguard for advancing global governance reform."

Since becoming Chinese president in 2013, Xi has always been a steadfast champion of BRICS cooperation. In Xiamen, he advocated for the "BRICS Plus" program at the 2017 BRICS summit, calling for more active participation from other emerging markets and developing nations. He played a crucial role in propelling the BRICS' historic expansion in 2023, ushering in the era of greater BRICS cooperation.

Effective coordination between BRICS members and other countries in the Global South has been adding more bricks to the global governance architecture. The New Development Bank exemplifies this effort.

Xi said the bank serves as "an important emerging force in the international financial system," which should work to "make the international financial system fairer and more equitable and effectively enhance the representation and say of emerging markets and developing countries."
Over the years, China, under Xi's leadership, has taken concrete steps to advocate for developing countries, help Global South countries enhance their representation and voice in international governance, and promote a more just and equitable international order.

At the 2022 G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, China took the lead in supporting the African Union (AU)'s membership in the G20. In their meeting on the sidelines of the summit, then Senegalese President Macky Sall, who was also the AU chairperson that year, thanked Xi for being the first to publicly support the AU's G20 membership.

The global leadership today remains lopsided, and rebalancing this skewed system is a shared imperative for both the Global North and South, said Paolo Magri, managing director and chair of the advisory board of the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, a think tank.

"Global South countries marching together toward modernization is monumental in world history and unprecedented in human civilization," Xi said at the "BRICS Plus" Dialogue in Kazan, Russia, last year, while acknowledging that "the road to prosperity for the Global South will not be straight."

"No matter how the international landscape evolves, we in China will always keep the Global South in our heart, and maintain our roots in the Global South," Xi pledged.

Magnetic fields in sun rise at 500 kilometers per hour

About 20,000 kilometers beneath the sun’s surface, magnetic fields rise no faster than about 500 kilometers per hour. That speed (roughly one-third of previous estimates) is about the same speed that gas rises and falls within the sun, implying that moving parcels of gas help steer magnetic fields toward the surface, researchers report July 13 in Science Advances.

Aaron Birch of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany, and colleagues estimated the speed by combining observations of the sun’s surface with computer simulations of how gas moves within the hot orb. By studying the sun’s inner workings, researchers hope to understand what drives sunspots and flares — the blemishes and eruptions triggered by magnetic fields punching through the surface.

Painted lady butterflies’ migration may take them across the Sahara

Butterflies look so delicate as they flitter from flower to flower. And yet, they are capable of migrating incredibly long distances. The monarch, for example, migrates between Canada and Mexico, covering distances of up to 4,800 kilometers, riding a combination of columns of rising air, called thermals, and air currents to travel around 80 to 160 kilometers per day.

No single monarch makes this entire journey, though. The round trip is done by a succession of as many as five generations of butterflies. But now scientists have found that there’s a species of butterfly that may rival the monarch’s migratory record — the painted lady (Vanessa cardui).

Painted ladies are found throughout much of the world, except for South America and Australia. They’ve been seen as far north as Svalbard, Norway, and nearly as far south as Antarctica. The butterflies are known to migrate, particularly between Europe and Africa, but their route has been largely unknown. Scientists had tracked the butterflies to northern Africa (the region known as the Maghreb), but there have been hints that they may fly across the Sahara. Two new studies back up this claim.

Gerard Talavera and Roger Vila of Harvard University visited four sub-Saharan nations — Benin, Chad, Ethiopia and Senegal — in 2014. They found butterflies moving south through Chad. There were dense aggregations of breeding butterflies in Benin and Ethiopia. And as the dry season approached in Senegal, the pair found butterflies old and worn, as if they had just finished a long, tortuous journey. Plus, the timing of these appearances coincided with the butterflies’ fall and winter disappearance from Europe.

“Taken together, the results of our fieldwork provide evidence suggesting that most European populations may undertake long-range migratory flights to tropical Africa, thus crossing the combined hazards of the Mediterranean Sea and the completely hostile Sahara,” the pair write September 21 in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

If butterflies truly are making that flight, they could be traveling more than 4,000 kilometers in a single generation — a potential record for a migratory insect, the researchers note. And while this seems nearly impossible, it may not be. A previous study found that with favorable winds, painted butterflies could travel as fast as 45 kilometers per hour. At that speed, it would take them as little as four days to make it from Central Europe to Central Africa. Since an adult painted butterfly lives for around four weeks, such a journey is feasible, Talavera and Vila argue.

But this evidence is only circumstantial; it doesn’t prove that butterflies are truly making that journey. So while Tavalera and Vila were in sub-Saharan Africa, they collected hundreds of adult painted ladies and larvae. Some of these were used in a second study, published October 4 in Biology Letters and led by Constantí Stefanescu of the Natural History Museum of Granollers in Spain. In this study, the team analyzed the isotopes of hydrogen found in the adult butterflies’ wings.
The hydrogen in the water that falls as precipitation can come in different isotopes, or forms, that vary in the number of neutrons. The ratio of these isotopes varies geographically. And the ratio present wherever the butterflies lived as larvae correlates with that later found in the adults’ wings. So researchers can tell where the adults were born.

Stefanescu and his team analyzed butterflies collected in seven European and seven African countries and developed a rough map of where the adults were moving. Those in sub-Saharan Africa had indeed started in Europe. But those in the Maghreb came from both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe.

What explains all this movement? The butterflies are following a combination of prevailing winds and favorable conditions for breeding. As rains come and go, the butterflies breed and move on. And while crossing the Sahara may seem like quite a way to go just for some rainy days and lush vegetation, painted lady butterflies are hardly the only creatures willing to go that far, Stefanescu and his colleagues note. There are plenty of other insects that make such a journey — as well as billions of birds.

Vacuum’s quantum effect on light detected

Observations of the dense remnant of an exploded star have provided the first sign of a quantum effect on light passing through empty space.

Light from the stellar remnant, a neutron star located about 400 light-years away, is polarized, meaning that its electromagnetic waves are oriented preferentially in a particular direction like light that reflects off the surface of water (SN: 7/8/06, p. 24). That polarization is evidence of “vacuum birefringence,” a quantum effect first predicted 80 years ago caused by light interacting with the vacuum of space in a strong magnetic field. Scientists report the result in a paper to be published in the Feb. 11, 2017 issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“It’s the most natural explanation,” says astrophysicist Jeremy Heyl of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who was not involved with the new result. But he cautions, other sources of polarization could mimic the effect, and additional observations are necessary.

According to quantum electrodynamics, the theory describing how light interacts with charged particles such as electrons, empty space isn’t really empty. It is filled with a roiling soup of ethereal particles, constantly blipping into and out of existence (SN: 11/26/16, p. 28). As light passes through the void, its wiggling electromagnetic waves interact with those particles. Under strong magnetic fields, light waves that wiggle along the direction of the magnetic field will travel slightly slower than light oscillating perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field, which rotates the overall polarization of light coming from the star.

A similar effect commonly occurs in a more familiar situation, in what are known as birefringent materials. The liquid crystals in computer monitors similarly rotate the polarization of light. Horizontally polarized light, for example, is sent to each pixel, but a filter lets only vertically polarized light escape. To switch on a pixel, the liquid crystals twist the light waves 90 degrees so the waves will pass through.

But evidence for the quantum version of the effect was not easy to come by. Observing it requires a magnetic field stronger than those that can be produced in the laboratory, says astrophysicist Roberto Mignani of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Milan, coauthor of the new study. The magnetic field around the neutron star that Mignani and colleagues studied is about 10 trillion times the strength of Earth’s. But the star is incredibly faint, making measurements of its polarization difficult. “A neutron star of this kind is about as bright as a candle halfway between the Earth and the moon,” Mignani says.

Using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, the scientists found that visible light from the neutron star was about 16 percent polarized, a result consistent with scientists’ theories of vacuum birefringence. But, says Heyl, the polarization could also occur as a result of an unexpectedly large amount of plasma surrounding the star.
For airtight evidence of the effect, scientists could study X-rays from neutron stars, where the polarization effect should be even stronger. Although no telescope currently exists that can make such measurements, there are several proposed X-ray satellites that may soon be able to clinch the case for vacuum birefringence.

Scientists might want to keep their fingers crossed. If future measurements overturned the evidence for vacuum birefringence, the effect’s absence would be difficult to reconcile with the theory of quantum electrodynamics, Heyl says. “It’s essentially one of the basic predictions of the theory, so to fix it you’d really have to rip the theory all the way back down to the foundations and rebuild it.”

Just one night of poor sleep can boost Alzheimer’s proteins

How well, not how much, people sleep may affect Alzheimer’s disease risk.

Healthy adults built up Alzheimer’s-associated proteins in their cerebral spinal fluid when prevented from getting slow-wave sleep, the deepest stage of sleep, researchers report July 10 in Brain. Just one night of deep-sleep disruption was enough to increase the amount of amyloid-beta, a protein that clumps into brain cell‒killing plaques in people with Alzheimer’s. People in the study who slept poorly for a week also had more of a protein called tau in their spinal fluid than they did when well rested. Tau snarls itself into tangles inside brain cells of people with the disease.
These findings support a growing body of evidence that lack of Zs is linked to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Specifically, “this suggests that there’s something special about deep, slow-wave sleep,” says Kristine Yaffe, a neurologist and psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the study.

People with Alzheimer’s are notoriously poor sleepers, but scientists aren’t sure if that is a cause or a consequence of the disease. Evidence from recent animal and human studies suggests the problem goes both ways, Yaffe says. Lack of sleep may make people more prone to brain disorders. And once a person has the disease, disruptions in the brain may make it hard to sleep. Still, it wasn’t clear why not getting enough shut-eye promotes Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers led by neurologist David Holtzman of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis speculated that lower levels of brain cell activity during deep sleep would produce less A-beta, tau and other proteins than other stages of sleep or wakefulness. Holtzman, Washington University sleep medicine physician Yo-El Ju and colleagues recruited 17 volunteers, all healthy adults between ages 35 and 65, who had no sleep disorders. “These are good sleepers,” Ju says.
Volunteers wore activity monitors to track their sleep at home and visited the sleep lab at least twice. On one visit, the volunteers slept normally while wearing headphones. On the other visit, researchers played beeps through headphones whenever the volunteers were about to go into deep sleep. The sounds usually didn’t wake the people up but kept them from getting any slow-wave sleep. Volunteers slept just as much on the night when deep sleep was disrupted as they did on the night when no sound was played through the headphones.
Spinal taps showed that the more deep sleep people missed out on, the higher their levels of A-beta in the morning. Tau levels didn’t budge because of just one night of slow-wave sleep disruption, but people whose activity monitors indicated they had slept poorly the week before the test also had higher levels of that protein.

“This study in humans is really an elegant experimental demonstration” that bolsters Holtzman’s hypothesis that lack of rest for brain cells could be detrimental, says Adam Spira, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Without proper deep sleep, brain cells continue to churn out, producing more A-beta and tau than a well-rested brain.

Some research has suggested that toxic proteins get flushed out of the brain during sleep (SN: 11/16/13, p. 7). Messing with slow-wave sleep doesn’t seem to interfere with this wash cycle, Ju says. Levels of other proteins made by nerve cells didn’t vary with the lack of deep sleep, she says.

Scientists create the most cubic form of ice crystals yet

Cube-shaped ice is rare, at least at the microscopic level of the ice crystal. Now researchers have coaxed typically hexagonal 3-D ice crystals to form the most cubic ice ever created in the lab.

Cubed ice crystals — which may exist naturally in cold, high-altitude clouds — could help improve scientists’ understanding of clouds and how they interact with Earth’s atmosphere and sunlight, two interactions that influence climate.

Engineer Barbara Wyslouzil of Ohio State University and colleagues made the cubed ice by shooting nitrogen and water vapor through nozzles at supersonic speeds. The gas mixture expanded and cooled, and then the vapor formed nanodroplets. Quickly cooling the droplets further kept them liquid at normally freezing temperatures. Then, at around –48° Celsius, the droplets froze in about one millionth of a second.

The low-temperature quick freeze allowed the cubic ice to form, the team reports in the July 20 Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. The crystals weren’t perfect cubes but were about 80 percent cubic. That’s better than previous studies, which made ice that was 73 percent cubic.