News Feeds

From the NYT (click to read), but first I’m gonna say that yes, I was right again:

Excerpt:

President Biden, 81, abandoned his bid for re-election and threw the 2024 presidential contest into chaos on Sunday, caving to relentless pressure from his closest allies to drop out of the race amid deep concerns that he is too old and frail to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.

After three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for him to continue.

There’s more, but the race has suddenly become interesting. Will Kamala Harris replace him as the default candidate? (I hope not; I’m a Gretchen Whitmer fan.) Will Gavin Newsom throw his hat into the ring? Or will some dark horse emerge from the convention and go on to trounce Trump?

At this late date it’s probably too late to defeat Trump, but suddenly I feel hopeful again.

So who do you want to run?

In this 45-minute video, Christina Buttons, an independent journalist who used to write for The Daily Wire but now has her own Substack site, discusses the gender fracas with the Triggernometry crew.  As you know, the Cass Review in the UK has considerably rolled back “affirmative care” for those pondering gender transition, and several European countries adhere to many of its recommendations. But the U.S. obstinately rejects the Cass Review. In fact, the Biden Administration has gotten the powerful and affirmative-care-supporting WPATH organization to eliminate minimum age limits for dispensing hormones or performing surgery.

The problem is, as Buttons argues, that there is really no evidence supporting the efficacy of “affirmative care”.  Yes, there are transgender people who have been happy with their transitions, and that’s great, but that’s not the same thing as testing the efficacy of affirmative care on young people who are troubled, weighing it against an alternative: normal, objective therapy that, in many cases, allows gender dysphoric adolescents to come out as gay. (Buttons notes that about 70% of young people with gender dysphoria come out as gay without affirmative therapy.) No surgery or hormones required there. And, as Andrew Sullivan has emphasized, the affirmative-care crew have even come out as opponents of the gay-rights movement, perhaps because they think that gay kids really should be transitioning.

Buttons’s explanation of why this medical brouhaha is so pervasive in the U.S., despite the lack of evidence that it works, is convincing, but I’ll let you listen yourself. And her own experience with mental distress as a teenager spurred her passion for ensuring that children like she was aren’t put onto a conveyer belt leading to hormone therapy and surgery. Her personal experiences, describing a desperate search to understand what was happening to her, explain why so many young women latch onto the “I’m-in-the-wrong body” explanation.

In the last five minutes, Buttons describes her detransitioning from being a Social Justice Warrior to an objective journalist who is horrified when ideologues twist or reject the facts.

Here are the YouTube notes:

Formerly a Democrat, Christina’s primary focus is gender transition, detransition and the lack of evidence supporting the gender-affirming model of care. She is passionate about debunking pseudoscience, and her articles are informed by experts in gender medicine research and adhere to the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM). She also writes about ‘Social Justice’ ideology, mental health disorders, autism – she has Asperger’s Syndrome – and critical thinking.

h/t: Rosemary

I’ve written quite a bit about the brouhaha over species names of plants and animals considered offensive to biologists and laypeople.

Remember first that every species has two names: the Latin binomial that is standard for the scientific literature (e.g., Passer domesticus), and the “common” name, which varies among countries (e.g., “House sparrow” in English).  Along with the present climate of trying to purify the world from words considered offensive and hurtful, scientists have been trying to purify species names, too, changing common names to conform to modern ideology.

They’ve had mixed success with animals.  Common bird names, for example, are being purified, especially when birds are named after “bad people”, like John James Audubon. Anybody who had a connection with the slave trade is toast.  In fact, some have suggested that we simply ditch all common names derived from people’s names, and use descriptors of the bird’s appearance and location.  But even that has its drawbacks. Reader Lou Jost, for instance, pointed out that there is substantial benefits to conservation to name organisms after people, both in Latin binomials and common names:

. . . .  naming species after people has always been a powerful tool that biologists have used to thank their patrons, recognize their field assistants and honour their colleagues or loved ones. This is the highest honour that an individual biologist can bestow on a person; we have very little else at our disposal. In recent years some biologists have also used the naming of species to raise funds for research and, especially, for conservation. Guedes et al. mentioned the auctioning of names by the Rainforest Trust. Fundación EcoMinga2 —an Ecuadorian non-governmental organization that is managed by some of us — was the beneficiary of two naming auctions for species new to science3,4. With these funds the foundation was able to pay for journal publication fees so that the resulting articles would be open access as well as pay for some of the logistics of the investigations. Most importantly, we were able to use the funds to help to directly conserve many hundreds of hectares of the habitats of these very same species. In many megadiverse countries of the tropics, funds for these purposes are otherwise scarce or non-existent.

And of course common names vary from language to language, so the purification process occurs only in Anglophone countries.

The debate over the Latin binomials for animals has already been settled by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which decided that ANIMAL bibnomials will not be changed, for those Latin names are standard throughout the literature, and changing them now would seriously screw up the literature. The ICZN did suggest, however, that Latin names proposed for newly described species not be such as “would be likely to give offense on any grounds. But that is only their suggestion, not a rule.  So you could still name a species like the blind cave beetle Anophthalmus hitleri (yes, it was named in der Führer’s honor), though I doubt anybody would do that now.  As for common names, the ICZN has no authority over them, and no recommendations.  I agree with their decision not to give new Latin names to already-described species, as this would seriously confuse the scientific literature. And of course what’s considered “offensive” changes as our morality and ideology changes. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, for instance, were slaveholders, and any Latin binomials with their names would be seen as “offensive”; as should “Washington, D.C.” site of the ill-named “Jefferson Memorial.”

But the ICZN decision goes for animals only. The botanists, on the other hand, have just decided that offensive Latin names for plants already given can be changed, and some will be changed. Click below to read the article in Nature:

Excerpts (bolding is mine):

For the first time, researchers have voted to eliminate scientific names of organisms because they are offensive. Botanists decided that more than 200 plants, fungi and algae species names should no longer contain a racial slur related to the word caffra, which is used against Black people and others mostly in southern Africa.

he changes voted on today at the International Botanical Congress in Madrid mean that plants such as the coast coral tree will, from 2026, be formally called Erythrina affra, instead of Erythrina caffra.

“We throughout had faith in the process and the majority global support of our colleagues, even though the outcome of the vote was always going to be close,” says Gideon Smith, a plant taxonomist at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) in Gqeberha, South Africa, who proposed the change along with fellow NMU taxonomist Estrela Figueiredo.

Their proposal takes species names based on the word caffra and its derivatives and replaces them with derivatives of ‘afr’ to instead recognize Africa. The measure passed in a tense secret ballot, with 351 votes in favour against 205 opposed.

Alina Freire-Fierro, a botanist at the Technical University of Cotopaxi in Latacunga, Ecuador, says it was good that the ‘caffra’ amendment was passed, because of the offence it causes. But its passage could open the door for other similar changes, she says. “This could potentially cause a lot of confusion and problems to users in many fields aside from botany.”

And that’s the rub! I can barely agree with the notion of changing “caffra” (a derivative of “kaffir”, a deeply insulting term for a black African—the African equivalent of the n-word), but only because changing “caffra” as the species name to “affra” will not cause much confusion. But in general I think the botanists, do what they will with the common names of plants (“Trumpet vine” may have to go), should go along with the ICZN, and leave Latin names of plants alone, both new and old. The damage to the scientific literature is potentially large. Yet the International Botanical Congress also seems to be vetting all newly suggested Latin names as well:

A second change to the rules for naming plants that aimed to address problematic names, such as those recognizing people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, also passed — albeit in a watered-down form, says Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist at the Australia National University in Canberra, who made the proposal.

Scientists attending the Botanical Congress Nomenclature Section voted to create a special committee to deal with the ethics of names for newly described plants, fungi and algae. Species names — usually determined by the scientists who first describe them in the scientific literature — can now be rejected by the committee if deemed derogatory to a group of people. But this applies only to species names given after 2026, not to historical names that Thiele and others would like to see eliminated.

Still, this opens the door to Pecksniffian policing of plant names. I am not comfortable with someone vetting all suggested new binomials for offense, as “offense” is a slippery word, and a mere suggestion (like the ICZN’s) should suffice for guidance.  As for changing older names, well, the botanists have created a slippery slope here. If they can change one name, they might change others, as was suggested by Thiele in an earlier article:

Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist at the Australia National University in Canberra, expects that, if his proposal to create a mechanism to remove offensive names is approved, a relatively small number of species names would change. It’s likely that the argument for stability in species names would be outweighed only in cases in which plants are named after “sufficiently egregious” individuals, he says.

One change Thiele would like to see is to a genus of flowering shrubs, most of which have yellow blooms and are found in Australia, called Hibbertia, with new species routinely discovered. They are named after George Hibbert, an eighteenth-century English merchant who profited from the slave trade and fought abolition. “There should be a way of dealing with cases like Hibbert,” he says.

You know how these things go.  Once “caffra” is changed to “affra”, people like Thiele will create a movement to change older species names not derived from “kaffir”, because, after all, opposing changing the names of plants named after those in the slave trade (or who did other bad things) would be considered racist, and who wants to be called a racist? (Note that even the vote for “caffra”—>”affra” was pretty close.)  It is the loudest people, even when they’re in the minority, who ultimately win in this kind of endeavor.

These acts are performative only, for offensive species names don’t seem to affect whether people go into botany or zoology because of offensive Latin binomials (I haven’t heard of a single case). The Botanical Congress should simply make a suggestion to avoid offensive Latin binomials and then keep its sticky fingers off names that botanists suggests for new plants. And, after making the “caffra” change, they should vow that this one change will be the only older species name to be changed, and will also be the last one.

h/t: Ginger K.

Europa and Enceladus, icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn respectively, have evidence of oceans beneath their crusts. A NASA experiment suggests -- if these oceans support life -- signatures of that life in the form of organic molecules (like amino acids and nucleic acids) could survive just under the surface ice despite the harsh, ionizing radiation on these worlds. If robotic landers were to go to these moons to look for life signs, they would not have to dig very deep to find amino acids that have survived being altered or destroyed by radiation.

A while back I was a big fan of Doctors without Borders (or “MSF”, for “Médecins Sans Frontières”).  It was put in my will to get a big bequest, and when I auctioned of a copy of Why Evolution is True, autographed by many famous scientists and nonbelievers, and illustrated and illuminated by Kelly Houle, every penny of the $10,000+ we got on eBay went to MSF.

Then I heard that the organization was anti-Israel (this was well before October 7 of last year). Checking up on the Internet, I found some confirmation of that claim, including several reports that MSF refused to cooperate with Israeli medical teams working in the same location. This, from the article below, may be what I remember (Rossin is named as “secretary general of MSF in the 1970s”)

Rossin recalled his experience in 2010 on a mission to Uganda when an MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team dispatched to help. Rossin remembered it as an episode of “one-way empathy,” where prejudice had poisoned the MSF team’s ability to cooperate with Israel in their shared goal of helping civilians.

(See also here, though MSF denies all these allegations.)

I subsequently wrote MSF asking them if they ever used Israeli doctors in their relief efforts.  I got no reply, even though in the letter I told them I was a donor. Their ignoring me after the dosh I’d given them was, well, uncharitable.

Now I can’t really criticize MSF’s humanitarian efforts: they’ve done a great deal of wonderful medical work during crises all over the world.  No, here I’m pointing out an article in Canada’s National Post that documents a pervasive anti-Israel—a former MSF secretary calls it “antisemitic”—attitude on the part of the organization, an attitude reflected in its refusal to criticize Hamas for the terrorist’s group own blocking or hijacking medical aid and turning Gaza hospitals into terror centers.  In the piece below, quite a few former directors and employees of MSF, not to mention donors, weigh in criticizing the organization on this account.

My own decision, based on what I’ve read over the years, is to stop donating to MSF, and I’ve taken them out of my will, replacing them with other humanitarian organizations (and that is a fair amount of dosh!).  Read the article below for yourself (click on the headline) and decide if you want to support them.  The article is free, and you can also find it archived here.

I’ll simply give a number of quotes from the article. According to its charter, MSF is supposed to be politically neutral and impartial, but former executives, donors, and employees say that when it comes to Israel, that’s not the case.

Former leaders and a major Canadian donor of Doctors Without Borders are distancing themselves from the venerable aid organization after its employees celebrated the October 7 atrocities, gave aid to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, ran a one-sided social media feed and internally circulated articles accusing Israel of creating Palestinian “death worlds.”

“To be frank, I was very, very, surprised because it’s not the MSF I knew,” Alain Destexhe, the secretary general of the organization, popularly known by its French acronym MSF, from 1991 to 1995, told National Post.

Destexhe said MSF’s messaging throughout the Israel-Hamas war is markedly different than past conflicts.

“We used to make statements, you know, in Bosnia and Rwanda, but not taking sides like this,” he said. “We always took into account the political context, but not to take sides from one group to another. In the Gaza War, I really got the feeling that MSF was totally biased.”

From a donor:

Destexhe wasn’t the only MSF loyalist to have an October 7 wake-up call. One major Canadian Jewish donor told the Post he urged his mother to support the group despite pushback from family members cautioning him against MSF’s reputation of being institutionally biased against Israel.

“I think most people know that they have a history of not being the friendliest towards Israel,” the philanthropist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Post.

He said he reassured his mother, following conversations with MSF Canada’s leadership, that the organization was duty-bound to be apolitical and strictly adhere to its mission of providing aid and observation. However, the inconsistencies between their initial promise and their treatment of Israel reached a boiling point in November 2023 when the patron confronted MSF Canada’s executives.

“I will be honest,” the donor told then-executive director Joe Belliveau in an email shared with the Post, “the more I review MSF public communications (Instagram, specifically), the evidence is overwhelming that the MSF stance has a pronounced bias. There is still not one single mention of the 200+ civilian hostages; not one mention of Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire into civilian centers, both of which are war crimes and violations of the Geneva conventions,” he wrote in late November.

. . . and a former MSF executive:

The donor’s November 2023 email rattled Byron Sonberg, who’d proudly served as MSF Canada’s treasurer for two years. He’d begun to sense the organization straying from its principle of impartiality, especially after he was copied on the donor’s email chain expressing growing frustration with the group. But the final straw came in mid-February 2024 when he, and hundreds of MSF global leaders, were forwarded an article: “Israeli necropolitics and the pursuit of health justice in Palestine.” [JAC: I found some of that article here; just read the “summary box”]

It was shared by Ruby Gill, president of MSF Canada’s board of directors, to provide “more insight” into the ongoing conflict. It argued that “framing Palestinian violence on October 7 as provocation and Israeli violence as response is ahistoric and indicates indifference to the everyday violence experienced by Palestinians.”

In other words, Israel “had it coming” on October 7. And the article was apparently sent out by MSF!  More:

Hamas receives a single passing reference in the piece, while Israel is cited nearly eighty times to bolster the claim that the Jewish State’s military response is unjustifiable. It accuses Israel of creating “death worlds” for Palestinians. The ideas expressed in the article, and the silence of MSF’s leadership, disturbed Sonberg, a self-described political moderate.

This concentration on Israel and complete neglect of Hamas is distressing in light of the fact that Hamas repeatedly impedes medical efforts in Gaza, including highjacking medical supplies, turning hospitals into terror bases, and even shooting Gazan civilians.

From another former MSM executive:

Richard Rossin, who served as secretary general of MSF in the 1970s and later co-founded Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), said that he perceived a tone shift within the organization several decades ago.

“I think it was perceptible around the beginning of the ‘80s,” Rossin told the Post by phone from his home in southern Israel. Antisemitism within MSF “began under the cover of anti-Zionism.”

See the quote from Rossin in the opening paragraphs.

One of the most distressing parts of this narrative is that MSF blamed Israel for the attack on the al-Ahli Hospital on October 17 of last year, an “attack” that did not involved Israel at all, but came from a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad that landed in the hospital’s parking lot, with the casualties greatly exaggerated by Hamas. MSF never retracted its accusation, which has been abandoned by everyone familiar with the evidence, including the Associated Press (no fan of Israel), which summarizes the evidence. (there’s also a telling conversation between two Hamas operatives saying the rocket was “from us).

By comparison, after the al-Ahli Hospital blast on Oct. 17, 2023, MSF rushed to blame Israel.

“We are horrified by the recent Israeli bombing of Ahli Arab Hospital in #Gaza City, which was treating patients and hosting displaced Gazans. Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed. This is a massacre. It is absolutely unacceptable,” MSF International wrote on X on the day of the explosion.

Although the blast was the result of a misfired rocket from Gaza, likely launched by a Palestinian group, MSF never corrected the record. The post, as well as several Instagram posts published by major chapters — including Spain, Canada, Brazil, and France – remain active. No apology or correction has been issued.

To a scientist, refusal to retract an accusation like this is shameful. But that’s MSF. Here’s their tweet, still up on X, but with “context corrections”:

We are horrified by the recent Israeli bombing of Ahli Arab Hospital in #Gaza City, which was treating patients and hosting displaced Gazans. Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed. This is a massacre. It is absolutely unacceptable…

— MSF International (@MSF) October 17, 2023

More:

After Hamas invaded and killed over a thousand people, MSF did not release a single post addressing the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust and it has not called for the return of kidnapped Israelis. Five days after the terrorist attack, the group issued a statement drawing a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. [JAC note: I think the link is meant to go to the MSF “X” feed, not to just one post.)

“We are horrified by the brutal mass killing of civilians perpetrated by Hamas, and by the massive attacks on #Gaza now being pursued by Israel,” MSF International wrote on Oct. 12. The remainder of the thread denounced Israel for “indiscriminate violence and the collective punishment of Gaza.” Two days later, the group called on Israel to “show humanity.”

The tone set by MSF International trickled down to its chapters across the globe.

By Oct. 17, MSF Canada wrote, “unconditional humanity needs to be restored in Gaza,” calling Israel’s response “unimaginable” and “inhumane.” The statement made no reference to Hamas or their invasion, which ignited hostilities.Before October 7, several nations facing humanitarian issues were highlighted in MSF Canada’s social feeds – including Malawi, Venezuela, Sudan, Haiti and Burkina Faso – but its coverage following the Hamas attack veered near-exclusively to covering Israel. At one point, in early November 2023, MSF Canada’s Instagram account was blanketed with six red-bolded calls for an immediate ceasefire, something not previously done as part of its advocacy for Sudan or Ukraine.

No calls on Hamas to “show humanity,” not just towards Israel but to civilian Gazans?

Despite the fact that the Gaza Ministry of Health, run by Hamas, is known to exaggerate death tolls, which have been revised strongly downward by even the UN, MSF continued to use them. Another comment from MSF’s former secretary-general:

MSF’s relationship with the Hamas-run Ministry of Health was another major reason why Destexhe lost faith. Their failure to admit “health facilities (are) being used by Hamas and by soldiers,” he told the Post, left him “really sad, and then I became angry.”

More:

MSF International’s Instagram page was comparatively muted in February 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling the situation “extremely worrying.” Within a month, the organization’s focus had quickly shifted to Libyan refugees, midwives in South Sudan, and social workers in the Palestinian Territories.

The messaging inequality was studied by Gerald Steinberg, founder and leader of NGO Monitor, a watchdog organization based in Jerusalem, who combed through MSF’s X feed. He found over a hundred tweets between the Hamas invasion and late November, “not one (solely) mentions Israeli victims.” There were five instances when Israelis were mentioned, but always alongside Palestinians.

Steinberg has grown accustomed to this discrepancy. “MSF is both a humanitarian and advocacy organization, and on Israel and the Palestinians, the partisan dimension is dominant and destructive,” Steinberg told the Post by email. He recalled the group showing similar favouritism during an earlier flare-up in 2009.

Finally, there are further claims in the article that a sizable percentage (a third) of MSF staffers celebrated the October 7 massacre, that some MSF employees have been linked to terror groups, and that MSF had donated to Gaza’s Ministry of Health but refused to respond when asked how MSF ensured that medical supplies weren’t getting hijacked by Hamas.

And a final comment by another former secretary general of MSF:

Rossin, a former secretary general who predated Destexhe, remains pessimistic that MSF can take a more balanced approach to Israel and Gaza moving forward.

“It cannot be fixed,” he said, exasperated. “How can you fix antisemitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?”

Although I long ago decided to give no more money to MSF, but divert it to organizations that have a “more balanced approach”, readers may wish to have a look at this article.  I was angered by MSF’s failure to even respond to my email about Israel, despite Kelly Houle and I having given them a substantial lump of money. (I haven’t asked Kelly for her opinion on this article.)

If you’re looking for reputable organizations that do good humanitarian health work without constantly impugning Israel and making unretracted false claims, I’d suggest you do what I did: go to Peter Singer’s list of reputable charities called The Life You Can Save. It shows a number of charities (not all involved with health), all of which have been vetted by Singer’s uncompromising criteria of providing the most assistance for the least money. The second time Kelly and I did an eBay auction of an autographed and illustrated book, my Faith Versus Fact, we deep-sixed MSF and gave all the money to Helen Keller International, a charity that prevents blindness and death in children by giving them inexpensive vitamin A supplements. The charity provides a lot of bang for the buck.

And you can bet that in my rewritten will, the part that goes for children’s health and poverty (the other parts go for wildlife conservation and purchasing lands for reserves) isn’t directed to MSF, but to Singer’s charities.

It’s Sunday, and so we have a batch of bird photos from John Avise. John’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

More Avian Young-‘uns

Last Sunday I mentioned that mid-summer would be the doldrums for avian photography here in Southern California, except for the welcome appearance of chicks in resident species.It’s fun to watch them grow.This week’s photos show youngsters (and their parents) in several more avian species that live here year-round.All of these photos were taken near my home in mid-summer.The Egyptian Goose is an introduced species, native to Africa.

Canada Geese (Branta canadensis), proud parents:

Canada Goose, head portrait:

Canada Goose, young gosling:

Canada Goose, parent with young gosling:

Canada Geese, parents with slightly older goslings:

Egyptian Geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca), proud parents:

Egyptian Goose, parent with chick:

Egyptian Goose, goslings swimming:

Egyptian Goose, goslings standing:

Egyptian Goose, “awkward teenager”:

American Coot (Fulica americana), proud parents:

American Coot, parent with chick:

Americn Coot chick;

American Coot, teenager swimming:

Ducks in a row; Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) keeping her kids in line:

Mallard teenager swimming:

Actual death is worse than theoretical death. This didn't used to be controversial in medicine.

The post Dr. John Ioannidis: Yet Another Doctor Who Treats Theoretical Death From The Vaccine With More Gravity Than Actual Death From COVID first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The International Space Station (ISS) has been continuously orbiting Earth for more than 25 years and has been visited by over 270 astronauts, cosmonauts, and commercial astronauts. In January 2031, a special spacecraft designed by SpaceX – aka. The U.S. Deorbit Vehicle – will lower the station’s orbit until it enters our atmosphere and lands in the South Pacific. On July 17th, NASA held a live press conference where it released details about the process, including a first glance at the modified SpaceX Dragon responsible for deorbiting the ISS.

As usual, the company shared details about the press conference and an image of the special Dragon via their official X account (formerly Twitter). As they indicated, SpaceX will deploy a modified spacecraft that will have six times the propellant and four times the power of “their “today’s Dragon spacecraft.” The image shows that the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle will have a robust service module in place of the trunk used by the standard Crew Dragon vehicle. This module is larger and has additional fold-out solar arrays in addition to hull-mounted solar panels.

With 6x more propellant and 4x the power of today’s Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX was selected to design and develop the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for a precise, controlled deorbit of the @Space_Station https://t.co/GgtuplTwqQ pic.twitter.com/E23sS7CE4U

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 17, 2024

It also appears to have more Draco engines than the standard Crew Dragon vehicle – which has 18 engines capable of generating 400 Newtons (90 lbf) each – for a total of 7,200 N (360 lbf) of thrust. Presumably, this means the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle will have 72 Draco thrusters (arranged concentrically) and be capable of generating close to 30,000 Newtons (1,440 lbf) of thrust. The image also shows the spacecraft docking with the Kibo module operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

NASA announced the selection of SpaceX in late June to develop the vehicle as part of a single-award contract with a total potential value of $843 million. While SpaceX is responsible for developing the spacecraft, NASA will take ownership once it is complete and operate it throughout the mission. Both the spacecraft and ISS are expected to break up during re-entry, and the remains will land in the “spacecraft cemetery” in the South Pacific. The contract for the launch services has not yet been awarded but is expected to be announced shortly.

SpaceX is also responsible for developing the Human Landing System (HLS) – the Starship HLS – that will transport astronauts to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis III and IV missions. SpaceX has also been contracted to launch the core elements of the Lunar Gateway – the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) – into lunar orbit using a Falcon Heavy rocket in November 2025.

The International Space Station (ISS) in orbit. Credit: NASA

Since 1998, the ISS has served as a unique scientific platform where crew members from five space agencies – including NASA, the Canadian Space Agency), the European Space Agency (ESA), JAXA, and the Russian State Space Corporation (Roscosmos). During its operational lifetime, crew members have performed experiments ranging from the effects of microgravity and space radiation on human, animal, and plant physiology. This research will play a vital role as NASA and its international partners conduct long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars in the coming decades.

The station has also allowed for extensive research into space science, biology, the physical sciences, and technology demonstrations that are not possible on Earth. Above all, the ISS has served as a symbol of international cooperation, consistent with the Outer Space Treaty and its core philosophy of “space is for all.” NASA, the CSA, the ESA, and JAXA have all committed to operating the station through 2030, while Roscomos has committed to continue operations until 2028 at least. The safe deorbit of the ISS is the responsibility of all five space agencies.

Further Reading: NASA

The post SpaceX Reveals the Beefed-Up Dragon That Will De-Orbit the ISS appeared first on Universe Today.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss449_Yuval_Levin_2024_07_20.mp3 Download MP3

Common ground is hard to find in today’s politics. In a society teeming with irreconcilable political perspectives, many people have grown frustrated under a system of government that constantly demands compromise. More and more on both the right and the left have come to blame the Constitution for the resulting discord. But the Constitution is not the problem we face; it is the solution.

Blending engaging history with lucid analysis, conservative scholar Yuval Levin’s American Covenant recovers the Constitution’s true genius and reveals how it charts a path to repairing America’s fault lines. Uncovering the framers’ sophisticated grasp of political division, Levin showcases the Constitution’s exceptional power to facilitate constructive disagreement, negotiate resolutions to disputes, and forge unity in a fractured society. Clear-eyed about the ways that contemporary politics have malfunctioned, Levin also offers practical solutions for reforming those aspects of the constitutional order that have gone awry.

Hopeful, insightful, and rooted in the best of our political tradition, American Covenant celebrates the Constitution’s remarkable power to bind together a diverse society, reassuring us that a less divided future is within our grasp.

Yuval Levin is the director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at the New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. His previous books include The Fractured Republic and A Time to Build. A former member of the White House domestic policy staff under George W. Bush, he lives in Maryland.

Shermer and Levin discuss:

• Trump assassination attempt: conspiracy or incompetence?
• Biden cognitive infirmities and why the party can’t replace him
• Out of 340 million Americans why did we end up with these two guys?
• why we have a two party system
• why the country is more polarized than ever before
• historically divided elections: 1800, 1824
• the unique genius of the founding fathers
• human nature and how politics builds on it
• how liberals and conservatives differ in their view of human nature (and thus politics)
• what is unique about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
• The Federalist Papers
• why the three branches of government—legislative, executive, judicial—were established
• what the founders got right and what they got wrong.

Notes

“Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything—high and low and, most especially, high—lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away.” —Charles Krauthammer, Things That Matter, 2013

“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.” —John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” —James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51

In Federalist No. 10, Madison outlined the problem with competing factions in a direct democracy (“a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest…”):

“[A] pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

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Conspiracy Theories; News Items: Lunar Cave, AI Love, AI Scams, Solar Clams; From TikTok: Antimony and Air Fryers; Your Questions and E-mails: Judith Curry; Science or Fiction

For over ten years, the ESA’s Gaia Observatory has monitored the proper motion, luminosity, temperature, and composition of over a billion stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond. This data will be used to construct the largest and most precise 3D map of the cosmos ever made and provide insight into the origins, structure, and evolutionary history of our galaxy. Unfortunately, this sophisticated astrometry telescope is positioned at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point, far beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.

As a result, Gaia has experienced two major hazards in recent months that could endanger the mission. These included a micrometeoroid impact in April that disrupted some of Gaia‘s very sensitive sensors. This was followed by a solar storm in May—the strongest in 20 years—that caused electrical problems for the mission. These two incidents could threaten Gaia‘s ability to continue mapping stars, planets, comets, asteroids, quasars, and other objects in the Universe until its planned completion date of 2025.

Micrometeroids are a common problem at the L2 Lagrange Point, roughly 1.5 million km (932,057 mi) from Earth, so engineers designed Gaia with a protective cover. Unfortunately, the particle was traveling at a very high velocity and struck the cover at precisely the wrong angle, causing a breach. This has allowed stray sunlight to interfere with Gaia’s ability to simultaneously collect light from so many distant stars. Gaia‘s engineering team was addressing this issue the moment the solar storm hit, adding electrical issues to their list of problems.

Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighboring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. Credit: ESA

Mission controllers first noticed signs of disruption in May when Gaia began registering thousands of false detections. They soon realized that this may have been due to the solar storm that began on May 11th, which could have caused one of the spacecraft’s charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to fail, which converts light gathered by Gaia’s billion-pixel camera into electronic signals. The observatory relies on 106 CCDs, each playing a different role. The affected sensor was vital for Gaia’s ability to confirm the detection of stars and validate its observations.

While the spacecraft was built to withstand radiation, it has been operating in space for almost twice as long as originally planned (6 years) and may have been pushed to its limits. As Edmund Serpell, Gaia spacecraft operations engineer at ESOC, explained in an ESA press release:

“Gaia typically sends over 25 gigabytes of data to Earth every day, but this amount would be much, much higher if the spacecraft’s onboard software didn’t eliminate false star detections first. Both recent incidents disrupted this process. As a result, the spacecraft began generating a huge number of false detections that overwhelmed our systems. We cannot physically repair the spacecraft from 1.5 million km away. However, by carefully modifying the threshold at which Gaia’s software identifies a faint point of light as a star, we have been able to dramatically reduce the number of false detections generated by both the straylight and CCD issues.”

Meanwhile, the Gaia teams at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), and the European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) have spent the past few months investigating these problems. They have also worked closely with engineers from Airbus Defence and Space (the spacecraft’s manufacturer) and payload experts at the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. Thanks to their efforts, the Gaia Observatory recently returned to regular operations.

Illustrated effects of Space weather. Credit: ESA/Science Office

In addition, the engineers used the opportunity to refocus the optics on Gaia’s twin telescopes one last time, which has led to some of the best-quality data Gaia has ever produced. As a result, we can expect that Gaia’s final Data Release (DR5)—which will include the full mission data—will be even more poignant!

Further Reading: ESA

The post Gaia Hit by a Micrometeoroid AND Caught in a Solar Storm appeared first on Universe Today.

When deciding what material to use for infrastructure projects, metals are often selected for their durability. However, if placed in a hydrogen-rich environment, like water, metals can become brittle and fail. Since the mid-19th century, this phenomenon, known as hydrogen embrittlement, has puzzled researchers with its unpredictable nature. Now, a study brings us a step closer to predicting it with confidence.

Understanding how soft materials fail under stress is critical for solving engineering challenges as disparate as pharmaceutical technology and landslide prevention. A new study linking a spectrum of soft material behaviors -- previously thought to be unrelated -- led researchers to identify a new parameter they call the brittility factor, which allows them to simplify soft material failure behavior. This will ultimately help engineers design better materials that meet future challenges.

Engineers have shown that using a type of AI that revolutionized computer vision can greatly enhance modern adaptive radar systems. And in a move that parallels the impetus of the computer vision boom, they have released a large dataset of digital landscapes for others to build on their work.

Engineers have shown that using a type of AI that revolutionized computer vision can greatly enhance modern adaptive radar systems. And in a move that parallels the impetus of the computer vision boom, they have released a large dataset of digital landscapes for others to build on their work.

A new study describes a chemical reaction that can convert Styrofoam into a high-value conducting polymer known as PEDOT:PSS. Researchers also noted that the upgraded plastic waste can be successfully incorporated into functional electronic devices, including silicon-based hybrid solar cells and organic electrochemical transistors.

Researchers use microscopy to chart amyloid beta's underlying structure and yield insight into neurodegenerative disease.

A new analysis of deaths during the covid-19 pandemic estimates that women and those in certain minority groups experienced the greatest declines in life expectancy

Here, to end the week on a high note, is a 24-minute video of animals who have been captive their whole lives but are now freed. It’s very heartening. The only reason to keep wild animals in captivity is to rehabilitate them for release or to grow an endangered species to the point when it can be released.

Have a great weekend! I got my seventh Covid shot yesterday and have no reaction save a sore arm. (I got it for traveling to South Africa.)  I’m one of the few people I know that hasn’t caught the virus.

Galaxies that stop making stars don’t usually start up again, but now we’ve seen one wake from the dead for the first time – and it may explain what we’ve got wrong about galaxies in the early universe