One of the largest ever seen on a star of its type, the huge explosion of energy and plasma is around 10,000 times bigger than the largest solar flare ever recorded from our own Sun.

The discovery is detailed in a paper for the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and reveals how this huge ‘tantrum’ could even perturb the material orbiting a star which would create the building blocks for future planets.

The flare was seen on a young M-type star named NGTS J121939.5-355557, located 685 light years away. At around 2 million years old, it is what astronomers refer to as a pre-main sequence star which is yet to reach the size that it spends the majority of its lifecycle.

It was observed as part of a large flare survey of thousands of stars by University of Warwick PhD student James Jackman, as part of a project searching for explosive phenomena on stars outside our solar system. He used the Warwick-led Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) telescope array in Chile which is designed to find exoplanets by collecting brightness measurements of hundreds of thousands of stars and is based at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory. His attention was drawn to NGTS J121939.5-355557 as it had one of the largest flares seen in these types of stars.

A stellar flare occurs when the magnetic field of a star rearranges itself, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. This accelerates charged particles, or plasma, within the star which crash into its surface, heating it up to around 10,000 degrees. That energy produces optical and infra-red light, but also x-rays and gamma rays that can be picked up by telescopes on Earth and in orbit.

Magnetic fields on M stars are a lot stronger than those on our own sun and the astronomers calculated that this size of flare is a rare event, occurring anywhere from every three years to twice a decade.

James, who is studying in the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics, said: “This is normally a star that shows little activity and stays a constant brightness. Then, on this one particular night, we saw it suddenly grow seven times brighter than normal for a few hours, which is pretty extreme. And then after that it goes back to normal.

“We see these types of flares on the Sun, but no-where near as big as this. On our Sun, you can do incredibly detailed studies on this kind of activity. It’s difficult to extend that understanding to other stars because the data we need hasn’t been available until now.

“This is an incredibly young star, only about 2 million years old. You’d call it a baby — it’s going to live for ten of billions of years, so it’s in the first one percent of its lifetime. Even though it’s much cooler than our Sun by about 2000 degrees it is roughly the same size, but pretty large for an M star. This is because it’s still being formed from gas in the disc and contracting and cooling until it reaches the main sequence, staying at a certain radius and luminosity for billions of years.

“Finding out these kinds of details has only been possible thanks to the Gaia mission that began earlier this year.”

The X-rays from these large flare events are thought to affect the formation of ‘chondrules’, flash-melted calcium-aluminium-rich grains in the star’s protoplanetary disc. These gather together into asteroids that eventually coalesce into orbiting planets. The study adds to our understanding of how flares ‘perturb’ the protoplanetary disc, moving around the material that impacts on planet formation and affecting the eventual structure of a planetary system.

Professor Peter Wheatley, James’s PhD supervisor, said: “A massive flare like this could be advantageous for planet formation, or it could be disruptive. This particular star won’t have formed its planets yet so this type of flare activity is something that astronomers will need to take into account when considering planet formation.

“There’s a discussion at the moment around whether flares are a good or bad thing for life on orbiting habitable planets, because they output a large amount of UV radiation. That could cause biological damage to surface organisms and damaging their DNA. On the other hand, UV radiation is required for various chemical reactions to start life and that’s not typically provided in great enough quantity by these types of stars. These flares could potentially kickstart these reactions.”

Stem cells are considered to be the all-rounders of our tissues: they can multiply indefinitely and then — if they are pluripotent embryonic stem cells — generate all conceivable cell types. In 2006, the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka recognized that such cells could also be produced in the laboratory — from mature body cells. Four genetic factors alone are sufficient to reverse the course of development and produce so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) that have identical properties to embryonic stem cells. Yamanaka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2012 for this discovery.

“This was a major breakthrough for stem cell research,” said Andreas Trumpp, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Director of HI-STEM in Heidelberg. “This applies in particular to for research in Germany, where the generation of human embryonic stem cells is not permitted. Stem cells have enormous potential both for basic research and for the development of regenerative therapies that aim to restore diseased tissue in patients. However, reprogramming is also associated with problems: For example, pluripotent cells can form germ line tumors, so-called teratomas.

Another possibility is not to completely turn back the course of development. For the first time, Trumpp’s team has succeeded in reprogramming mature human cells in such a way that a defined type of induced neural stem cells is produced that can multiply almost indefinitely. “We used four genetic factors like Yamanaka, but different ones for our reprogramming,” explains Marc Christian Thier, first author of the study. “We assumed that our factors would allow reprogramming to an early stage of development of the nervous system.”

In the past, other research groups also reprogrammed connective tissue cells into mature nerve cells or neural precursor cells. However, these artificially produced nerve cells often could not be expanded and could therefore hardly be used for therapeutic purposes. “Often, it was a heterogeneous mixture of different cell types that might not exist in the body under physiological conditions,” said Andreas Trumpp explaining the problems.

Together with stem cell researcher Frank Edenhofer from the University of Innsbruck and neuroscientist Hannah Monyer from DKFZ and the Heidelberg University Hospital, Trumpp and his team have succeeded in reprogramming different human cells: connective tissue cells of the skin or pancreas as well as peripheral blood cells. “The origin of the cells had no influence on the properties of the stem cells,” said Thier. In particular, the possibility of extracting neural stem cells from the blood of patients without invasive intervention is a decisive advantage for future therapeutic approaches.

What is special about the reprogrammed cells of the Heidelberg researchers is that they are a homogeneous cell type that resembles a stage of neural stem cells that occurs during the embryonic development of the nervous system. “Corresponding cells exist in mice and probably also in humans during early embryonic brain development,” said Thier. “We have described here a new neural stem cell type in the mammalian embryo.

These so called “induced Neural Plate Border Stem Cells” (iNBSCs) have a broad development potential. The iNBSCs of the Heidelberg scientists are expandable and multipotent and can develop in two different directions. On the one hand, they can take the path of development to mature nerve cells and their supplier cells, the glial cells, i.e. become cells of the central nervous system. On the other hand, they can also develop into cells of the neural crest, from which different cell types emerge, for example peripheral sensitive nerve cells or cartilage and bones of the skull.

The iNBSCs thus form an ideal basis for generating a broad range of different cell types for an individual patient. “These cells have the same genetic material as the donor and are therefore presumably recognized as “self” by the immune system and are not rejected,” explains Thier.

The CRISPR/Cas9 gene scissors can be used to modify the iNBSC or repair genetic defects, as the scientists have shown in their experiments. “They are therefore of interesting both for basic research and the search for new active substances and for the development of regenerative therapies, for example in patients with diseases of the nervous system. However until we can use them in patients, a lot of research work will still be necessary,” emphasizes Trumpp.

In order to understand how bees count, the researchers simulated a very simple miniature ‘brain’ on a computer with just four nerve cells — far fewer than a real bee has.

The ‘brain’ could easily count small quantities of items when inspecting one item closely and then inspecting the next item closely and so on, which is the same way bees count. This differs from humans who glance at all the items and count them together.

In this study, published in the journal iScience, the researchers propose that this clever behaviour makes the complex task of counting much easier, allowing bees to display impressive cognitive abilities with minimal brainpower.

Previous studies have shown bees can count up to four or five items, can choose the smaller or the larger number from a group and even choose ‘zero’ against other numbers when trained to choose ‘less’.

They might have achieved this not by understanding numerical concepts, but by using specific flight movements to closely inspect items which then shape their visual input and simplifies the task to the point where it requires minimal brainpower.

This finding demonstrates that the intelligence of bees, and potentially other animals, can be mediated by very small nerve cells numbers, as long as these are wired together in the right way.

The study could also have implications for artificial intelligence because efficient autonomous robots will need to rely on robust, computationally inexpensive algorithms, and could benefit from employing insect-inspired scanning behaviours.

Lead author Dr Vera Vasas, from Queen Mary University of London, said: “Our model shows that even though counting is generally thought to require high intelligence and large brains, it can be easily done with the smallest of nerve cell circuits connected in the right manner. We suggest that using specific flight movements to scan targets, rather than numerical concepts, explains the bees’ ability to count. This scanning streamlines the visual input and means a task like counting requires little brainpower.

“Careful examination of the actual inspection strategies used by animals might reveal that they often employ active scanning behaviours as shortcuts to simplify complex visual pattern discrimination tasks. Hopefully, our work will inspire others to look more closely not just at what cognitive tasks animals can solve, but also at how they are solving them.”

Brain size matters a lot when it comes to bees. They have only one million nerve cells in total, so they have precious little brainpower, and must implement very efficient computational algorithms to solve tasks. In comparison, humans have 86 billion nerve cells which are responsible for receiving information and sending commands.

To model the input to the brain, the authors analysed the point of view of a bee as it flies close to the countable objects and inspects them one-by-one.

The results showed the simulated brain was able to make reliable estimates on the number of items on display when provided with the actual visual input that the bee is receiving while carrying out the task.

Professor Lars Chittka, also from Queen Mary University of London and leader of the team in which the study was performed, added: “These findings add to the growing body of work showing that seemingly intelligent behaviour does not require large brains, but can be underpinned with small neural circuits that can easily be accommodated into the microcomputer that is the insect brain.”

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The tool, a report on which has been published in Talanta, can distinguish between apparently similar oils that present notable differences in quality. This is possible thanks to the use of laser diodes, because the fluorescence emitted by adulterated oils is slightly different to that of pure extra virgin olive oils.

The tool is inexpensive both to use and to manufacture (with a 3D printer). “Other clear advantages of our tool include the possibility of conducting on-site analyses, because the equipment is the size of a briefcase and therefore portable, and of generating results in real time,” explained José S. Torrecilla, a senior lecturer and researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials at the UCM.

The tool offers the olive oil sector a means to tackle a problem that generates large economic losses. “The quality of olive oil is recognised nationally and internationally. It is therefore necessary to protect this quality and combat the fraudulent activities carried out with increasing frequency and skill in the sector,” the UCM researcher continued.

One example of fraudulent practice, noted Torrecilla, is adulterating fresh, pure virgin olive oil with inferior, cheaper olive oil or oils of another botanical origin.

Analysis using chaotic algorithms

To conduct the study, researchers mixed single-varietal, protected designation of origin oils with other protected designation of origin oils that were past their “best before” date. All the oils were purchased from shopping centre stores.

Subsequently, mixtures were made using oils with between 1 and 17% acidity that were also past their “best before” date. Lastly, measurements were performed using the sensor, which was manufactured with a 3D printer, and an analysis was conducted of the results obtained by means of chaotic algorithms.

“This technique is available for use at any time, and only requires oils prior to packaging for quality control or after packaging to detect fraudulent brands and/or producers,” concluded the UCM researcher.

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Materials provided by Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.